Harlequin Superromance September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: This Good Man\Promises Under the Peach Tree\Husband by Choice (65 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

C
HANTEL
STOOD
AS
she hung up the phone. With her hands on her hips, hips that looked smaller in the jeans she was wearing than they did in the uniform she'd arrived in the week before, she faced Max toe-to-toe.

“Wayne spoke with Meredith.”

His shoulders sank. Every bit of nervous energy drained out of him, and Max knew a second of sheer relief.

It was only then that he consciously acknowledged that deep down inside he'd been afraid that Steve had killed her—his sweet, beautiful, vulnerable wife.

“Where is she?” he asked as the tension seeped back.

“I can't tell you,” she said, looking him straight in the eye.

“But, obviously, since Wayne had just gotten off duty when he went to see her, she's still close by.”

Chantel stared at him.

“And she's okay?”

“She's fine.”

“I check the hospitals in the area every morning....”

“She's in no need of a hospital. She's fine.”

No, she wasn't. She couldn't possibly be fine. She wasn't home.

“Was she alone?”

“No.”

“She's with Steve.”

“No.”

“She has to be. Maybe not that she's saying, but I know he's behind this.”

She wasn't alone. Thoughts came and went in no apparent order. “Who was she with?”

“I can't tell you that.” Chantel's expression, her voice, held more pity than anything else.

If she wanted him to believe that Meri was with another man...that she'd left him for someone else....

“There's no way you're going to convince me she's having an affair....” Not ever. Not Meri. It was just something he knew.

“I'm not trying to convince you of anything, and I have no evidence whatsoever that suggests there's another man involved here. More that Meredith just wants her freedom.”

“Her freedom.” The words didn't make sense to him. How did he apply them to the Meri he knew, to the son he and Meri shared, to their marriage? “I didn't realize she was feeling trapped.” He shook his head. He was not a stupid man. Or an overly spiritual one, either. But he knew his wife.

“What did she say?” He needed Meri's words. Not an outsider's interpretation of them.

“She's using an assumed name,” Chantel said.

Another wave of relief consumed him. With a fear chaser. “It's Steve,” he said. “There's no other reason she'd use an assumed name.”

“She has identification under the alternate name, Max. It takes time to get that. This wasn't a spur-of-the-moment plan.”

That stopped him. For the moment it took him to remember that his job was to remain calm. “It's because of Steve. I'm telling you. She knew someone in Vegas, a broker, she called him, who supplied her with identities. He'd been Steve's snitch at one point, I think. I'm telling you Steve found her and she ran.” Because she didn't trust him to be able to help her? “Tell me what she said.”

“Wayne asked her if she was Meredith Bennet and she said no. Several times.”

“Who did she say she was?”

“I can't tell you that.”

“But you know.”

“Yes. I asked only so that I could use it as I investigate Steve Smith. If he's using her assumed name in conjunction with anything he's doing—the purchase of plane tickets, for instance—I'll get a hit.”

One thought rang clear in that second. Chantel wasn't giving up. Because of something she'd heard that she wasn't telling him?

Or just because he'd asked?

“You're still looking for Steve.”

“Yes.”

“Because of something Wayne told you?”

“Let's just say that something that occurred today leads me to believe that while Meri isn't in danger, it might be good to be certain that Smith hasn't been in touch with her.”

She knew something she couldn't tell him. Something pertinent. Her expertise was far beyond his. As was her reach. This was why he'd called her.

Max sat down. He wasn't going to do anything, ask her anything that would jeopardize her job. Or put pressure on her to tell him things that, ethically, she shouldn't.

He was scared to death.

“So she never admitted to being my wife?”

“Wayne asked if she knew a Dr. Bennet. He could tell by her reaction that she did. After that, she opened up. She told him that she was your wife. That she was Caleb's mother. He asked if she was okay. She assured him several times that she was.

“He asked if she needed any help. She insisted that she didn't.”

It was hard to sit there and listen to that. “Steve had to be within earshot. Maybe he's got her bugged.” Okay, his imagination might be running a bit wild. “Maybe he was in the other room.”

“I can assure you he was not.”

“But you don't know whether or not he has her wired. He's a former cop, Chantel. He'd play it out like a cop.”

Her brown eyes softened and he felt like a stupid kid. It was a feeling he hadn't experienced in twenty years.

“I can't guarantee that she wasn't wired, no,” Chantel said. “Because she wasn't searched. But I'd bet my life on the fact that she wasn't. We have ways of finding out if someone is being coerced,” she said. “In this case, Wayne wrote on a piece of paper, asking her if she was on the run. She shook her head. She was calm, Max.”

“This person she was with, was it a professional?”

“I can't tell you that.”

“But you know.”

“Yes.”

“Is she staying with this person?”

“No.”

“But Wayne knows where she's staying.”

“Yes.”

“How certain can he be that she's safe there?”

“As certain as it's possible to be.”

And he knew.

“She's at The Lighthouse, isn't she?”

“No, Max. She's not. Now, please, stop this. I did as you asked. I found her. I'm certain she's okay. Leave it at that, okay?”

He had more questions. Too many of them. And needed a few minutes to figure this out. To understand what Meri was doing, what she was trying to tell him.

“She knew that I was behind this evening's visit?”

“After a time, yes.”

“Did she have a message for me?”

As Chantel's chin dropped, his gut got hard as rock. His friend looked over at him and he wanted to end the day. To wake up in the morning and start fresh, a married doctor with a two-year-old son and a wife who didn't want their toddler in day care.

He'd play it differently. He'd tell Meri that she could keep Caleb with her if that was what she wanted. He'd trust her to raise their son into an emotionally healthy young man.

Chantel's hand covered his, bringing his attention back to her. “She said to tell you that she didn't need your help, Max. Or ours. She asked that you let her go.”

His chest burned.

And he sat down, a stabbed man with a big gaping wound.

* * *

“I
HAVE
SOME
other news.”

Chantel's voice broke into Max's private hell. He'd promised Meri he could handle being married to a woman with an abusive ex in her past. And he wouldn't put it past Meri to say whatever she thought she had to say for whatever reason she had to say it. She would not have left him, just to get away from him, without telling him. He would bet his life on it.

She would not have left Caleb just to go start a new life.

Something else was going on.

“Max, did you hear me? I have other news.”

Chantel sat down next to him. She was there to help him. He needed her. “What other news?”

“Steve Smith. He quit the force with a perfect record, but I talked to someone today—a person someone else had told me I might want to talk to—and this person intimated that Smith might have quit before his record could be tarnished.”

“He was in trouble?”

“From what I heard, an internal investigation was never opened, there's no record of anything, but there was talk that one might have been opened if he'd stayed.”

“For what?”

“I don't know yet. I'm getting this all second-and thirdhand, and cops don't talk bad about their own to their own, let alone to someone they don't know.”

“So how do you know there was talk?”

“A daughter of a woman who spoke at a Las Sendas library fund-raiser is a dispatcher in Las Vegas. She asked around.”

“What were you doing at a library fund-raiser?” For a second he was twenty-five again. Sitting in his living room with Jill and Chantel, having a glass of wine to take the edge off long hours at the hospital with no pay.

For just that second he wasn't a man trying to assimilate facts about his wife that just wouldn't come together. His head dropped to the back of the couch.

“I read books, Bennet,” Chantel said, with a small smirk, before growing serious once again. “Sandra, the dispatcher, put me in touch with a detective who she thought might be able to help me. I'm waiting to hear from her.”

He stared at the ceiling, looking for the energy he needed to get up in the morning, get his son out of bed, and tell Caleb, when he asked, as he inevitably would, that his mother wasn't home yet. How long would it be before Caleb quit asking?

Chantel settled back, as well. It was late. It had been a long six days.

“Does this detective know you're calling for personal reasons?”

“Yes.” She turned her head just as he turned his and they were facing each other, lying back against the couch.

Max sat up. “I don't blame you if you don't believe me at this point, but I know without a doubt that Steve is behind all of this,” he said, his thoughts finding clarity all on their own. “I can't explain it to you. I can't tell you why Meri is still in town, or why she didn't ask for help. I can't tell you why she didn't come to me before she bolted. But I am absolutely certain that her ex-husband is behind it all. Find him and we'll find our answers.”

“And what if those answers turn out to include the fact that Meredith no longer wants to be married to you?”

The question was a hard one. Asked in the gentlest way.

“What if she really can't stand the stress of worrying about Caleb every day?”

He knew better, but he didn't expect Chantel to believe that.

“Women who are abused...they've experienced something that none of the rest of us will ever understand, Max. The aftermath, a lot of times it's worse than the actual beatings. Paranoia is a very real, very painful consequence. Its real power comes from the fact that, for abuse victims, it's based in truth. In having experienced the horror which everyone fears most—being betrayed in the most heinous ways by the one person in the world you thought you could trust.”

Meri had said things like that before. But her words had been less concise, mixed with example and emotion and tears, all things he'd had to contend with at the same time she was delivering her message. He'd needed to comfort as well as understand.

Hearing those same words from Chantel—they took on new meaning. Frightening meaning. And then something else occurred to him.

“How do you know this?” Meri had told him that one in four women suffer from domestic violence. He'd found the statistic staggering. And kind of hard to believe.

He'd carefully watched the mothers coming into his exam rooms with their children. If he saw eight kids a day that meant eight mothers. Statistically, two of every eight had been or were currently being abused.

“The Las Sendas P.D. required every one of us to take a course on domestic violence.”

“The women you mean?”

“No, I mean all of us. Every single officer on the force, no matter how junior, has had training to recognize and deal with potential DV-related situations. Every one of us has to respond to a DV call at some point.”

It made a sickening kind of sense.

“I'm just saying, Max....” Chantel was closer to him, leaning toward him. “It's possible that Meri knew her paranoia was out of hand, getting the better of her. It's possible that she knew she couldn't control it anymore and saw that it was already starting to have an effect on Caleb. The way you describe her, as devoted as she was and as committed to serving others...I just think you need to consider that she's done exactly what she told you in the note. She's loving you and Caleb the best way she knows how. By removing herself from your home before Caleb is infected with her paranoia.”

He didn't want to consider anything of the kind.

He was a doctor; he understood that mental issues were medical issues. He knew that they could be treated, and that sometimes treatments failed.

But he also knew Meri. She talked to him about her fears. About Steve's ability to hunt her down. His tenacity and patience with undercover work. But she'd been through counseling and knew how to control her fear.

“If she'd come to you, would you have let her go?” Chantel's voice was too close now. Softly working its way in when he just wanted to be alone with Meri.

“Or would you have promised to support her, tend to her, help her back into counseling, stand by her....”

“Of course I would have supported her, stood by her, tended to her, helped her in any way I could.” It's what a spouse did. Which was why marriage vows said “for better or worse” and “in sickness and in health” and...

“Exactly. She'd have known that. So maybe she'd reached a place where she knew that none of the above was going to work anymore. She knew what you did not, that the treatments didn't work....”

No. He was not going to listen to this. Not now. Not ever.

He stood up. “Steve's behind this, Chantel,” he said, while doubts pressed in on him from all sides. “I won't turn my back on her. I won't give up. I'm going to find this fiend. Somehow. Some way. Either with you or without you.”