Love Bats Last (The Heart of the Game) (29 page)

He pressed his lips into a firm line. “You could talk to Emilio in the morning.”

“I need to get back,” she said.

“We both need more sleep,” he said.

His tone was so gentle, so genuine, she hesitated. He was right—she was tired; she never thought straight when she was tired. Maybe she was blowing his response all out of proportion. She’d think it through in the morning. But she’d think it through in her own bed.
Alone
.

“Jackie.” The pain in his voice made her turn to him. “At least let me drive you home.”

“I think better when I’m alone.”

She grabbed her parka from the floor by the door. “Goodbye, Alex,” she said over her shoulder as she walked out.

Out into darkness and disorientation.

It took her a moment to find her way out of the stone-paved courtyard. She ran across the drawbridge and down to her truck. She climbed in, turned the key in the ignition and slid it into gear.

Only then did she let the hot tears spill.

She wished she didn’t care if he believed her. She tried not to. But she did care. His attitude shook her.

Wiping at her face with her sleeve, she talked back the tears as thoughts screamed into her head. Maybe he was in on it. Maybe his crew was using the chemicals. Hell, maybe they
all
were. She’d heard enough about the prices of wines in the region to know that it’d be tempting to try to bump up the yields.

But as she careened down the drive, her instincts told her Alex wasn’t involved, couldn’t be. She might not be the best judge of character, but she had a pretty good sense that Alex wasn’t the sort of man who’d lie.

And since when did she care about belief, about instinct? This was about facts. It didn’t matter that she’d told him—what harm could it do at this point? He couldn’t mess with her data, no one could. It was safe.

But she couldn’t say the same about her heart.

She wiped her face clear of tears again and tried to focus on her driving.

Where the drive to Trovare met the neighboring road, she stopped to pull a tissue from her glove compartment. Perhaps she should turn around and return to the castle. Surely she’d overreacted. Since the lab break-in, she’d been edgy. He’d offered to let her talk to Emilio—that was a good idea. He’d know what was going on in the area.

But more than that, she wanted to talk to Alex. She’d reacted before she’d thought. She’d
over
reacted. She’d had time to think about what was going on, months of time. And she expected him to catch on in an instant? Making love with him had obviously shaken her up. She’d go back and apologize. Talk it through. There had to be an explanation. But more than questions and answers, what she wanted was to close the aching gap she felt so deep inside that it threatened to engulf her. It was a very inconvenient time to discover the full-on power of her instincts, but right now, those instincts were screaming at her to get to Alex.

She snapped the glove compartment closed and sat up, dabbing the tissue against her face. Lights flashed into the cab of her truck as a huge van pulled across the road, blocking her way out of the drive.

A man leapt out, waving at her in the beam of her headlights. She peered at his silhouette and reached to put her truck in reverse. Before she could, the man opened her door, slashed her seat belt with a knife and dragged her from the truck.

It was Volkov’s colleague, Darron Bennett.

She blinked. What the hell did he want? And what was he doing with a knife?

“This is no place for a lovely lady like you,” he said in a smooth voice.

He pinned her arm behind her back. She groaned as pain shot through her. He clamped his other hand around her mouth so hard she could barely breathe. With a heaving effort, she kicked at his foot, aiming for his instep.

“Such a
tedious
move,” he said in an odd, almost velvet tone. “I expected more finesse from you, Doctor.” He wrenched her arm hard. She gagged against his hand and fought to keep from throwing up.

“Just come along with me,” he whispered close to her ear, “and you’ll be fine.”

She adjusted her steps to his to protect her arm as he marched her around to the passenger door of her truck. Her hat fell to the ground, but he jerked her up when she leaned to catch it.

The engine of the van started up. Panic flooded her as it drove away. She bucked back against Darron. He chuckled as he torqued her arm harder and pulled her back, wedging her between him and the passenger door. She felt him reach under his coat with his free hand and wrestle a hard object into his hand
No
.
Impossible
. He was going to
shoot
her. She bucked, not intending to go easily or quietly.

He jerked her around to face him and she had only a moment to recognize the shape of the stun gun before she blacked out.

Chapter Twenty-two

Alex stood in the kitchen, staring at the plates he’d cleared from the table and running the events of the night through his mind. Maybe he’d overreacted, but what Jackie had said about radon had seemed far-fetched.

He shoved the plates into the sink. The look she’d given him had stung far worse than her words. He should’ve just listened. He could’ve asked questions. He could’ve at least asked to look at her data. Numbers didn’t lie.

He’d been a jerk.

And the feeling roiling up in his gut told him he shouldn’t have let her go. He looked at his watch. She’d been gone twenty minutes.

He ran up to his room and stuffed a few things into his gear bag. Checked his watch again. Batting practice started in five hours. He might as well drive into town, shower and head to the ballpark. He’d call her from the road and apologize.

As he pulled away from Trovare, he ran the script of what he’d say. Nothing he came up with was likely to smooth his rejection of her theory, so he’d just have to give it his best.

He sped down the drive and considered what she’d told him. He’d known that the record harvests of the Di Salvo vineyard made no sense. Emilio had asked questions, but turned nothing up. Yet the workers had been evasive, even those Emilio knew well.

At the end of his drive he stopped to look toward Di Salvo’s. Were they doing something criminal? He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. In the beam of his headlights he saw tire marks across his drive. He shook his head—they hadn’t been there the night before. Then he saw something—Jackie’s cap?—at the side of the drive. He jumped out to make sure. Damn, how the hell’d it end up in the drive?

He imagined her tossing it in a moment of temper, but dismissed the thought.

He sped onto the road, tires screeching. It took thirty minutes to reach the freeway. Two miles beyond that point he picked up a cell signal. He called Jackie. When he heard her voicemail message, he drove faster. Maybe she was just obeying the law and not picking up while driving. But she was close to thirty minutes ahead of him, so she should be home by now.

He called Gage.

“Is Jackie home?”

“Alex?” Gage’s voice was fogged with sleep.

“Is Jackie
home
?” Alex repeated.

“She doesn’t live
here
, Alex. Jeez, I thought you were the rescue line calling. What time is it?”

“I don’t have her home number, and I can’t reach her. Is her truck there?”

“Umm. Hold on.” He heard Gage shuffling across the floor, heard the creak of a door.

“I don’t see it. What’s up?”

“Go into her house, see if she’s there,” Alex ordered.

“Rather bossy, aren’t we, for such an early hour?” When Alex didn’t respond he added, “I have to get my shoes on and find the spare key. What’re you so flashed about?”

“I think she’s in trouble,” Alex said. “Maybe more than just trouble.”

He told Gage about the tire marks and finding her cap. And about what she’d told him of her discovery.

“I knew about some of that, but... I hadn’t expected she could get hurt.”

The phone went silent, then Gage, voice tight and flatly sober, said, “Look, I’ll call you back from inside her house.”

Alex didn’t wait for the second ring when Gage called back.

“No Jackie,” Gage said. “But her climbing gear’s not here by the door. Maybe she went for a climb.”

The silence on the phone said neither of them believed that.

“She could be anywhere. I’ll run to the Center,” Gage offered. “If she doesn’t show up in a couple hours, I’ll call you.”

“I’m headed into town,” Alex said, trying to swallow the tightness in his throat. “I’ll call you from there.”

As he drove, what she’d said gnawed in his mind. He’d call Emilio before the game and have him check into it. But still, his thoughts kept circling. To calm himself, he started playing pitching sequences in his mind, tried to recall everything he knew about the starting pitcher he’d face in a few hours. There were two games left in the season and he’d have to play extremely well to clinch the Crown.

But he couldn’t keep his mind on the sequences or the looming game.

He called Gage back.

“She’s not at the Center,” Gage reported. “No one has seen her.” He paused. “When I looked through her house, her computer was gone and it looked like someone had rummaged through her desk. It isn’t like her to leave papers strewn all over the place. But maybe she was in a hurry. Did she tell you about the lab break-in?”

“No.”

Gage told him the details.

“Call the sheriff,” Alex said, trying to keep his voice steady. “And the Coast Guard.”

“And tell them what? I mean, I can tell them what you told me and I can tell them about the break-in, but they usually wait a while to start searches. Besides, we’re guessing. And if she’s in the park, it’d be the park police’s call.”

“Then call them,” Alex said. “They’re more likely to listen to you than me. I’ll call you back from the stadium.”

Usually Alex took the time to look out at the water when he crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, but today everything around him was a blur of unimportant details. He searched his mind for the best possible move.

There was one person who might be able to help him find Jackie.

“Berenson here.”

Vince Berenson was the helicopter pilot his mother kept on retainer. For once Alex was glad for his mother’s extravagance.

He filled the pilot in on the details.

“It’s just a hunch, Vince, and maybe I’m making too much of all this. But make a run up the coast anyway. Focus on the headlands and the area north of them. Look for a silver Toyota. I’ll keep my cell on when I get to the ballpark.”

He punched in Gage’s number and got his recorded message, then realized he’d likely already gone down to the Center. He punched in that number.

“California Marine Mammal Center,” the volunteer answered. “How can I help you?”

“I’d like to speak with Gage,” Alex said. Hell, he didn’t even know Gage’s last name.

“Are you reporting a stranded animal? I can put you through to the rescue line,” she said with the polite voice of one trying to direct the public along established channels.

If only that would make any difference, Alex thought.

“Put me through to Gage—it’s an emergency,” he added.

“I’m sorry, sir, but emergency calls are handled by the rescue line,” the volunteer said more firmly this time.

If nothing was wrong, Alex didn’t want to embarrass Jackie or create unnecessary anxiety. But something
was
wrong and he knew it.

“Look, put me through. I have a prearranged conference call with him.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.

By the time he got Gage on the line, he’d nearly lost his cool, what was left of it.

“Gage, call the cops, the Coast Guard, anybody you can muster. Tell them anything you can come up with to get them going. Use my name, though I doubt it will help.”

“I’m on it.”

Alex hadn’t yet reached Bay Street when Gage called back.

“I called both the park police and the Coast Guard. As I thought, they both said she has to be missing for a while, at least six hours. We have to show strong probable cause for them to break protocol. They didn’t seem to think a lab break-in, a dropped cap and a missing computer added up to much.”

Alex honked at an SUV that swung into his lane. He’d come close to hitting it.

“We had a disagreement earlier this morning,” Alex admitted. “She left in a huff.”

“She’s good at huffs. If it makes you feel better, I’ll go out and check her usual climbing spots. There are a couple close by. Sometimes she climbs to clear her head.”

“Yeah. Great. Call me if you find her. I’ll be at the ballpark. Like I said, I’ll leave my cell on.”

He knew Gage wouldn’t find her; a gnawing instinct told him that Jackie had not gone off on a climb.

He’d stuff his phone into his pocket with his batting gloves. So what if management gave him hell? They’d all be worked up about the playoff games coming up. With any luck, no one would notice.

Alex pressed a button on his steering wheel and ended the call.

He’d let her go.

He shouldn’t have.

Six hours.

Anything could happen in six hours.

He made a screeching U-turn on the Embarcadero. She was in danger, and he wasn’t going to wait for reluctant cops to figure it out.

He pressed on the steering wheel again. The Giants’ front office assistant answered in her usual, courteous voice.

“Tavonesi here, Beth. Tell Walsh I won’t be making the game.”

There was a moment of stunned silence. He ended the call. He didn’t need to explain; they’d know he’d had to have a good reason.

An all-Hell's-broken-loose reason.

Without another thought, Alex sped toward the headlands. He tried to calm his growing alarm by running scenarios in his mind. She could be anywhere. She could’ve gone climbing. She could’ve gone for a drive. Hell, maybe she’d decided to visit a friend—Sabrina often did that when she needed to sort something out.

He glanced at his watch.

Maybe she’d turn up and he’d make it back in time for the game. Although the Giants had already clinched the National League playoff spot, Alex was only seven RBIs in front of Duarte. He needed every possible at-bat to hold his lead.