Racing Against Time (9 page)

Brent had to shove his hands into his pockets to keep from giving in to the urge to help with the search. “Is he— Is he—?”

“Dead?” Though she knew it was futile, she felt for a pulse in Walker’s neck. There was none. The man’s color was gone. He’d bled out. “Very much so.” She glanced up at the manager, who looked as if he was going to be sick right on the spot. “I hope he paid for the room in advance, because he’s sure as hell not going to be making any payments now.”

Taking care to keep out of her way, Brent squatted down beside Callie. “Do you think he was involved in Rachel’s kidnapping?”

Her very first case had involved a man who’d been dead a little more than a day. Walker was stiffer than that man had been.

“If he was, I’d say it was way before the actual fact.” Holding up Walker’s hand she tested its flexibility. There was none. “Judging from the rigor that’s set in, not to mention the smell, this man has been dead for about three or four days. He certainly wasn’t the one who just placed that call to you, or snatched up your daughter.” Her stomach inching its way into her throat, Callie rose to her feet and stepped back. She automatically dug out her cell phone as she turned from the body. “We’ll know more once the CSI team gets here.”

Brent looked down at her. The blood had drained from her face. “You all right?”

“I’m not at my best around dead people. Thanks for noticing.”

The words sounded sarcastic. The smile of thanks she offered was not.

It was another frustrating dead end.

Callie frowned, hating to have her back against the wall. Again. It had taken very little investigating to discover that this was just a drug score gone bad. The dealer had taken Walker’s money and left with the stash he had come to pedal. The whole thing was completely unrelated to Rachel Montgomery’s kidnapping case.

They weren’t getting anywhere with the other suspects on the list, either. So far, all had alibis that were holding up under investigation. She was beginning to wonder if perhaps this
was
a clumsy random snatch and someone was just using it to taunt the Judge.

She kept this latest theory to herself, not wanting to add to Brent’s agitation.

He’d been with her for the duration of the day, offering suggestions but mostly waiting. Waiting for a break. Waiting to get his life back in order. She felt as if she was failing him.

It was an odd feeling. No matter how caught up she got in a case, she’d never felt it as personally as she did this one. Having him with her didn’t help, she thought. But she would have felt inordinately cruel, asking him to stay home to carry out his vigil on his own.

They were back at the cemetery where they had originally gotten hooked up this morning. Her thought was to get him back to his car and call it a night, but now that she was here, she couldn’t quite make herself slip quietly into the darkness.

Pulling up the hand brake, she looked at Brent. If his square jaw was any more clenched, she was certain it was in danger of shattering.

“Look, it’s getting late, why don’t I follow you to your house? I could make you something to eat. You haven’t eaten anything all day.”

As if to agree with her, his stomach growled. He laughed shortly, but there was little humor evident in his eyes. “You haven’t eaten, either.”

“All right, I’ll make something for both of us. I figure you’re probably too tired to be very critical. I’m not my father.”

Desperate to have something to think about rather than dwell on the obvious, he picked up the thread of her conversation.

“Very few people can cook the way he can,” Brent agreed. “I’m surprised he never opened up a restaurant after he retired.”

“I think he likes being exclusive.” She tried to remember ever seeing Brent at their table and failed. It had to have been for one of those dinners she’d missed, she decided. But she was curious. “When did you have my father’s cooking?”

He shook his head as he looked around. The cemetery was peaceful. It only added to his sense of agitation.
Where was she?
“I haven’t. But I’ve heard Judge Morehead talking about attending one of your father’s cook-outs.”

She smiled. “Dad likes to keep abreast of what’s going on. Inviting all his old friends and their families does that for him. He usually winds up playing host to half the Aurora police force. He cooks, they talk, everyone ends up happy.”

Brent nodded, only half listening. What made a woman like her get into this line of work, he wondered. A line of work that involved unsolved cases and staring down at dead people. What did she do with her nights to cleanse herself? To get herself to sound this bright, this chipper? This hopeful.

He realized that she’d stopped talking, and he dug the conversation back from the borders of his mind. “Must get expensive.”

“Not so bad,” she contradicted. “Besides, that kind of thing is priceless for him.” She nodded toward his car. They should get going. She hadn’t believed in creatures that went bump in the night since she was a little girl, but that didn’t mean she liked standing around at the gates of a cemetery at night with a fog encroaching. “Why don’t you get into your car and I’ll follow you home?” she repeated. Her words played themselves back to her. She was being pushy, she realized. As usual. She gave him a way out. “Unless you want to be alone.”

Aiming his key ring at the car, Brent pressed down. Two short noises signaled that the alarm was disarmed, the car unlocked. Brent shook his head. “No, I don’t want to be alone.”

Callie didn’t realize she was smiling until she caught her own reflection in the side mirror as she got into her own vehicle.

The ground floor of Brent’s house was spacious, airy. If his wife had done any decorating here, there was precious little evidence of it now. The furnishings were decidedly masculine. Massive pieces chosen for comfort rather than for elegance.

She followed him to a kitchen her father would have approved of. It had a great deal of counter space and looked out onto a family room that was built around a giant projection screen. Her own apartment could have fit into one of the corners of the room.

“Make yourself at home.” Brent indicated the giant built-in refrigerator. “Use whatever you need, although I have to tell you, I’m not hungry.”

“You have to eat. You have to keep up your strength.” My God, she sounded just like her father whenever she protested that she didn’t feel like eating. With a shake of her head, Callie opened the refrigerator. She was going to have to watch that.

Unlike her own, this refrigerator was almost fully stocked. Delia must have gone shopping just before she was killed, she thought. Callie decided on something simple. “How do you feel about an omelet?”

Brent had walked into the family room. Picking up the remote, he aimed it at the set.

“That’ll be fine.”

As had been his habit since he’d been in college, he turned on the television set to see what else had been going on in the world. Without looking, he moved his thumb from TV to cable mode and pressed a button. Instead of the all-news channel he expected, he heard the sound of childish laughter.

The screen flickered. The next moment, the image of his daughter appeared. She was at someone’s birthday party. He’d accidentally hit the VCR mode instead of the auxiliary cable.

His heart froze.

Callie’s head jerked up the moment she heard the laughter. She moved away from the stove as she heard a high voice cry out, “Watch me, Daddy, watch me!”

He hadn’t meant to play this, she realized. Most likely, the tape had been in the machine all this time. That first night Rachel had been kidnapped, had Brent stayed up looking at videotapes of his little girl?

Leaving the kitchen, she crossed to Brent. For a moment she stood beside him, watching the child on the screen. “She’s a beautiful little girl.”

He felt as if his throat was constricting again. His eyes stung, and this time he didn’t bother trying to blink back the tears. Would he ever see her again?

“Yes, she is,” he agreed quietly. His fingers tightened around the remote, but he made no move to stop the video. “I shouldn’t be standing here, doing nothing. Thinking about eating. Thinking about—” His voice halted as guilt abruptly washed over his face.

“Thinking about what?” Callie half expected him to say something about killing the man who’d done this horrible thing.

She was caught completely by surprise when he quietly confessed, “You.”

Chapter 9

B
rent wasn’t sure if he made the first move, or if Callie did.

It didn’t matter.

All he was aware of was the incredible need he had to make human contact, to find comfort and somehow lessen this pain he was feeling. Make it fade for just a moment.

There had been something humming between them all along. It had been there since that first moment at the fund-raiser when he’d seen her from across the room and asked for her name.

It urged him on now, playing upon this awful vulnerability he felt.

Cupping the back of her head, he turned her face up to his. Brought his lips down to hers.

The moment froze in time.

For a second Callie didn’t know what to think, how to react. And then her arms were around his neck and she was leaning into the kiss. Giving him comfort. Taking the same away for herself.

She’d been so alone since Kyle had been killed, alone in that secret place in her heart that he had brought to life. That place where love had existed. After Kyle was killed, it had felt like a barren waste-land. Until this moment.

Brent took her breath away and with it the thoughts that always lingered on the outskirts of her mind, haunting her. They all burned away in the heat of the kiss as it traveled up and down the length of her body, taking the shell of the woman she once was and recreating her.

Callie felt herself surrendering without a single shot being fired, before a single line of defense had the opportunity to be set up.

The kiss grew in intensity, in demand. She melted with it.

When he’d been in college and on the boxing team, there’d been a term for this. Sucker punched. He’d just been sucker punched, trying so hard to hold his line of defense in place, he’d never seen this coming.

And had taken it squarely on the chin. It sent him reeling.

His senses on fire, Brent slipped his arms down to her waist, and he drew her closer to him. Drew her warmth, her comfort, into him. He would have absorbed her completely if he could.

And then his mind went on the alert.

Damn it, what was he thinking, what was he doing? His baby was out there somewhere, needing him, and he was standing in his family room, with a video of Rachel flickering in the background, kissing the woman in charge of finding her.

Like a shell-shocked soldier, Brent drew back, shaken and in disbelief over what had just happened. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

She knew what was coming, inexplicably privy to his thoughts. Callie placed her finger against his lips, stopping the flow of words.

“Shh. There’s nothing to apologize for.” She took a breath to steady her own nerves and found that it really didn’t help. All she had was honesty. “This kiss was a long time in coming.” Her eyes held his, the memory of the dance they had once shared firmly in place for all time. Taking another breath, she turned back to the kitchen. “The omelet’s coming along. How do you feel about red peppers?”

It took him a second to come around. He felt as if everything inside of him vibrated like a tuning fork. “What?”

“In your omelet, how do you feel about red peppers?” Callie tried very hard to sound unaffected. As if she hadn’t just crossed over into another time zone entirely. As if that kiss hadn’t shaken something loose.

His stomach was the least of his concerns. Crossing to the television set, Brent waved a dismissive hand at the question.

“All right, I guess. Detective—” He wanted to regain ground, but you couldn’t call the woman you’d just kissed by some formal title the city had awarded her. Stopping the videotape, he closed the television set and tried again. “Callie—I had no business kissing you.”

She offered him a tenuous smile, then turned away to the stove. “That had nothing to do with business. That was about one human being comforting another.”

He blew out a breath. This one was steadier. “Is that what it was, you were comforting me?”

She looked at him over her shoulder, an enigmatic smile playing along her lips. “I said human being, I didn’t say who was doing the comforting. Why don’t you go wash up? This’ll be ready soon.” She saw the smallest hint of a smile bloom on his face and then spread out. “What?”

“The last time someone told me to wash up, I was eight. It was the maid,” he tagged on, delineating how different his home life had been from hers when he had been growing up.

She grabbed at the innocuous topic with both hands, grateful for its appearance. “Then it’s high time you followed the rules of proper hygiene. By the time you finish, I should have your serving ready. Now go.” Callie waved him on with the edge of her spatula.

When he’d returned from the bathroom, the omelet was waiting for him. Taking his seat, he knew he should have felt ill-at-ease or at least awkward in her presence because of the momentary lapse in his control.

But he didn’t feel awkward, didn’t feel as if he was tottering on a cliff, about to make a fatal misstep. Instead, there was something about Callie Cavanaugh that put him at his ease, even after kissing her without any preamble. He’d felt it right from the start. At the fund-raiser. Felt the electricity crackling between them despite the fact that he had never seen her before. Despite the fact that he was struggling to keep his marriage alive and together.

Electricity. The same kind that was crackling between them now, despite the dire situation that existed in his life.

He took another forkful, allowing himself to savor the taste before asking, “So, what do we do now?”

Callie had almost finished her own portion. Her stomach in an uproar, she’d sought to appease it even though she really wasn’t hungry. The cheese omelet seemed to settle it as much as it could be settled, given the circumstances.

“About the case?” Afraid he was referring to what had just happened between them, she didn’t want to give him the opportunity to respond and jumped in with a reply. “We continue chasing down leads.” She’d checked in with Ramon Diaz, one of her men, for a progress report just before Brent had walked in. “There’s no shortage of those. At last count we’ve logged in something like eight thousand phone calls and there’s no end in sight.” She did her best to sound upbeat as she told him, “All the callers are certain they saw your little girl. And my team still hasn’t finished checking out those people on your list. There are several more names to go.”

What if none of them had her? What if they all checked out clean? What then? He looked at her. “And after that?”

Checking out the phone calls would keep them busy. But she was hoping they’d have their answer before that happened. “One step at a time, Brent, we take it one step at a time.”

Impatient, restless, he pushed his plate away. “Time. Isn’t that what we’re running out of?” He gave voice to what had been haunting him with each passing hour. “I heard that if you don’t find a child within the first thirty-six hours…” Choked with emotion, his voice trailed off.

“It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, Brent.” She slipped her hand over his. “We’re doing everything we can. Every available police officer has been put on this. Vacations have been canceled. Nobody’s taking any time off. We
will
find her.”

The smile on his lips was so sad, it tore at her heart. “You must be getting tired of telling me that.”

“I’ll say it as often as you want me to.” She gave his hand a firm squeeze and with it, a silent promise. “Because it’s true.”

He nodded. He knew she meant what she said and he had to believe it was true. Resigned, trying to make the best of it, Brent drew the plate toward him and forced himself to take another bite of the omelet. Until he’d begun eating, he hadn’t realized that he was actually hungry. His stomach rallied around the offering, reminding him that it was still pinched.

He felt her watching him and raised his eyes to hers. “This is good.”

Callie grinned. “Of course it’s good. I learned from the best.” She saw him about to lay down his fork again. “Less talking, more eating,” she urged.

“Yes, ma’am.”

He watched her sleep. When she had her hand tucked under her cheek like that, she looked just like Alice. His Alice used to sleep that way.

He felt his heart swelling as he sat down beside her. The little girl looked dwarfed in the double bed. It was only temporary. When he got his bearings, he’d get her a better bed. Her own bed.

Very gently he brushed away the hair that had fallen into her face. She stirred, and he immediately withdrew his hand, freezing his motion, his very breath. He didn’t want to risk waking her. It had taken her a while to drop off to sleep. But it was better than yesterday. Which had been better than the night before.

She was getting used to him.

He wondered how she would react to being called Alice. It was a far better name than Rachel.

Alice.

It suited her.

Cocking his head, he continued to stare at her small, innocent face. If he tried real hard, he could almost believe that this was his Alice. She had the same blond hair, the same round face. She was even the same age as he remembered.

His Alice.

His mouth curved in a satisfied smile, seeing the humor in the situation. The judge taketh away and the judge giveth. Not willingly, of course, but that didn’t count. The only thing that counted was that he had his daughter back. Finally.

The sound of the phone ringing bore into Brent’s brain, startling him awake. He was grabbing both sides of the armchair, braced, before he was fully conscious. He tried to focus.

He couldn’t remember falling asleep after Callie had left. He’d sat down in the chair to try to think, and exhaustion had gotten the better of him. It fled now as he grabbed the telephone, hoping it was the kidnapper. “Hello?”

There was no formality, no greeting, the female voice on the other end of the line went straight for the attack. “I just had two of Reno’s so-called ‘finest’ banging on my hotel room door like I was some common call girl. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Jennifer. Nothing had changed, he thought, scrubbing his hand over his face, trying to pull together his senses. The sound of her voice, once so melodious to his ear, only grated on his nerves now. “I’ve been trying to reach you for the past three days.” He wanted to ask her where the hell she’d been for that time, but it really didn’t matter. Having Jennifer close by wouldn’t have helped to bring Rachel back.

“Well, these two burly cops could certainly ‘reach’ me,” she huffed. “They told me some idiot named Detective Cavanaugh wants to see me for questioning. What the hell happened?”

He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising at her tone, especially the way she spoke of Callie. But he wasn’t up to getting embroiled in another shouting match with Jennifer. He’d vowed the last time around that there would be no more, that he didn’t care enough about her to unleash his emotions again. But this wasn’t about her, it was about Rachel, and he could feel his control thinning.

As succinctly as he could, he gave her the highlights of the past three days.

“And there’s no other news?” she demanded.

He couldn’t get a handle on whether she was actually genuinely concerned or she wanted to know what kind of clothes to wear for the occasion. Black for mourning, red for hope.

How could he have ever fallen in love with someone so shallow, so transparent?

“None.”

He heard her huff in his ear again. “How could this have happened? What kind of nanny did you get for our daughter?”

Our daughter. She’d never been that, not from the moment of conception. Rachel had always been his. He’d saved her life before she ever drew her first breath. And somehow, some way, he was going to save it again.

Taking umbrage in defense of Delia, he snapped, “The best, Jennifer. The woman gave up her life trying to save Rachel.”

Jennifer snorted disparagingly. “How do you know that?”

He nearly lost it then. “She’s dead, Jennifer, that’s proof enough for me.”

“I don’t have time to argue with you,” she announced. “I’ve got to pack. I’m getting the first plane to Aurora in the morning.”

He glanced at his watch. It was almost eleven. Flights left almost every hour. In her situation he would have grabbed the first flight he could get on. Chartered a plane if he had to. But Jennifer liked to make entrances, and there would be more reporters around in the daytime. More people around to see the grieving mother disembark. He had no doubt that she was probably on the phone with someone from
Gentry Magazine,
making sure there would be a photographer alerted as to which flight she was arriving on. It had taken him four years to finally admit to himself that everything was always about her.

“There’s nothing you can do, Jennifer.”

There was indignation in her voice as she retorted, “I’m her mother. I should be there.”

She didn’t sound very convincing, but maybe he was just feeling more jaded than usual. The hour was late and he didn’t feel like being charitable. He was operating on overload as it was.

“Fine, suit yourself.”

He could tell by her tone that it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. But the days of trying to appease her were long behind him.

“I’ll call you in the morning with my flight number,” she informed him icily. “You can meet me.”

He was right. She was angling for a photo op. “I’m going to be too busy trying to find Rachel, Jennifer. You can take a cab from the airport. On me.”

She snapped at him, saying something disparaging about his lineage. He had no energy to take offense. More likely than not, there was probably a kernel of truth in it, he thought. He heard a loud bang on the other end before the line went dead.

Brent shook his head as he replaced the receiver. To think that he had once given his heart to that woman. How could he feel so certain, so clear-headed on the bench and make such a terrible misjudgment in his personal life? It made a man doubt himself.

But then, if he hadn’t married Jennifer, he would never have had Rachel in his life. And she, he reminded himself, was worth anything he had to go through.