Safe Harbor (15 page)

Which, when he came down to it, wasn’t such a big deal one way or the other. Part of him had been dead a long time anyway. But the fact that harm might come to any of these good people who had taken him in was something he couldn’t live with, couldn’t accept. If anything happened to any of them, especially Stevi, he’d never forgive himself. He had to disappear rather than risk something like that ever possibly happening.

“You could call it a break,” he agreed. “A permanent one. I realized there didn’t seem to be much of a purpose in fighting. The bad guys just keep coming,” he told her. “You kill one, another comes to take his place. And another, and another.”

“But if you don’t take them off the street, there’s that many more who are
on
the street, that many more who can hurt people. Who can hurt children,” Stevi emphasized.

He looked at her, trying to fathom what she was saying. “Are you telling me you think I should go back into the ranks?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think,” she said, placing her hand over his. “And what I’m telling you to do is to follow your conscience.”

He laughed shortly. “Sorry, my conscience was the first casualty.”

She couldn’t believe that. Didn’t believe that. “No, it wasn’t. You’re a good man, Mike. I can tell.”

He shrugged, looking away. “If that’s what you want to believe, I can’t stop you, but you’re wrong. I’m not.” He’d lost track of who he was, what he was, a long time ago.

“Maybe I’m wrong about other things—my sisters will be happy to give you a long list, verbal and otherwise, of my misjudgments and mistakes—but I’m not wrong about this. I’m definitely not wrong about this.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“S
O
,
DO
YOU
think that our Stevi is going to decide not to go to New York after all and stay put here instead?”

Alex put the question to Cris as she stood in the kitchen, sipping a rather large cup of freshly brewed vanilla chai tea. The break in her regular routine was her one concession to both her doctor’s orders and Wyatt’s pleas to take things a little easier for a while.

As she spoke, she held the cup in both hands, letting its warmth radiate out to her palms.

Despite the fact that it was summer, there was a chill in her bones that Alex couldn’t quite get rid of. She chalked it up to being pregnant and her hormones going wild.

A little like the rest of her, she supposed.

“You know our Stevi,” Cris replied, her attention focused, for the most part, on the twenty-five miniature apple-cinnamon pies she was preparing for dinner. “Nothing’s ever definite with her until after it’s happened.”

Her restlessness kicked into high gear despite the tea, Alex had drifted over to the window, which afforded a limited view of the lawn out back and the ocean beyond it.

“Oh, I think it’s happened already,” Alex said, looking out the window. Specifically, she was looking at her sister sharing a meal with the man she had rescued a month ago.

Stevi and Mike looked good together, she thought. Maybe destiny had taken things into its own hands.

Cris glanced up and saw where her sister was looking. Inasmuch as Stevi had come in about twenty minutes ago, asking for two plates of food, it wasn’t difficult for her to put two and two together.

“You mean Mike?” she asked.

“No, I mean Brad Pitt,” Alex answered impatiently as she looked at Cris. “I heard he’s leaving Angelina and coming here to ask Stevi to marry him. Of course I mean Mike.” Alex looked back out the window. Their body language said a lot. They were into each other even if they didn’t know it. “Stevi’s like a whole different person ever since she found Mike on the beach and took him on as her own personal project.”

Cris stopped rolling out another ball of dough, her attention diverted by something she heard in her sister’s voice.

“You think they might...?”

“Yes, I think they ‘might,’” Alex replied. “Why? You disapprove?”

A lock of Cris’s hair came loose from the clip she used to keep it pulled back and she moved it out of her eye with the back of her wrist.

“Disapprove?” she echoed incredulously. “No, of course not. I think he’s a really nice guy and Stevi seems happier around him than she’s been in a long time. It’s just that...”

Why did Cris insist on doing that? On letting her voice trail off like that? It drove her crazy. But then, since she’d become pregnant,
so
many things drove her crazy. “That what?” Alex asked impatiently.

“It’s just that I wish we knew more about him,” Cris said.

Alex laughed shortly. The lack of information about the newcomer really didn’t bother her at this point. The inn served as a safe haven for people from time to time. It had been that way for as far back as she could remember.

“How much did we know about Dorothy or Silvio when Dad took them in?” Alex pointed out. “They both turned out to be really good for the inn—and for our family.” There had been other people as well, but they had, for the most part, moved on, after staying as long as they could—and a little longer. “Maybe Mike will, too.”

“Maybe,” Cris agreed, getting back to work. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I just don’t want to see Stevi hurt, that’s all.”

Abandoning the window, Alex crossed to the steel table where her sister was working.

“And by that you mean what?” she questioned, bending slightly in order to get a better look at Cris’s face. “You don’t think he’s going to stay, do you?”

“I really don’t know,” Cris answered. “But I get the feeling that he’s not all that at peace.” And then she shrugged and, in a lighter tone, concluded, “Or maybe it’s just me and these hormones.”

“Hormones?” Alex echoed with a scoff. “Please, don’t get me started on hormones. I had no idea I could run the gamut from high to low and back again in under sixty seconds before. You certainly didn’t give me a clue when you found out you were pregnant,” she accused, sparing Cris a long, hard look.

Maybe Alex should have taken her cue from what she had been physically going through at the time, Cris thought. “I was too busy throwing up to say anything to anyone,” she pointed out.

“Excuse not accepted,” Alex informed her, then glanced at her watch. “Time for me to get back to the desk.”

Now that she looked at her, Alex did look a little peaked.

“Why don’t you have Dad spell you?” Cris suggested. “I know he wouldn’t mind going back to manning the reception desk for a little while, especially if he’s doing it so that his pregnant daughter could get some rest.”

Alex frowned at the suggestion. It went against everything she believed in. “I am not about to use my condition as an excuse not to do my job, Cris.”

Why was everything with Alex an argument, Cris wondered wearily. “I’m not telling you not to do your job. I’m just telling you it’s okay to lighten up a little once in a while.”

Alex glared at her. “Says the woman who practically delivered in the kitchen, cooking.”

“I got to the hospital in time.”

Alex laughed. “Just barely and only because it was the break between lunch and dinner. In between contractions you were worried that there wasn’t enough consommé on hand for Dorothy to make beef stroganoff for the guests the way the menu promised.”

Cris knew she couldn’t very well claim that it didn’t happen that way since it did. “I guess being obsessed runs in the family,” she replied.

“I’ll say. I barely survived Stevi being in charge of my wedding.”

“Our wedding,” Cris corrected automatically. Taking a tablespoon full of sugar, she drizzled it across the tops of the pie crusts.

“It didn’t become ‘our’ until the last minute,” Alex reminded her. “You had barely an hour. I had over a month of her bossing me around.”

Cris grinned. Turning from the worktable, she regarded her older sister. “How did it feel being on the receiving end for a change?”

Alex pressed her lips together. “I think I’d better get back to the reception desk before this winds up being an argument.”

Cris feigned surprise and laid her wrist to her forehead, melodramatically. “You wouldn’t want to upset a pregnant woman now, would you?”

“I already have,” Alex retorted as she left the kitchen. “Me.”

“Lots of luck, Alex’s son or daughter,” Cris murmured under her breath. “Your mom’s a pistol, but you can always come and cry on Aunt Cris’s shoulder anytime.”

Smiling at the prospect, Cris went on making miniature pies.

* * *

“C
AN
I
HELP
?”

The high-pitched, inquisitive voice came from directly behind him—where he had assumed, until just now, that Stevi was standing.

Then he remembered that Stevi had said something about going to scrounge up more nails, so he realized that it couldn’t be her asking the question.

Besides, Stevi’s voice was far more melodic and not that high-pitched.

Mike turned to find Stevi’s nephew standing behind him, his head cocked to one side, his eyes opened wide to take in everything that was being done.

Ricky was here by himself.

“Isn’t there supposed to be somebody with you?” Mike asked.

As far as he had observed since he’d been here, the energetic boy was never alone. There was always an adult just a few steps away, supervising him because he was so very energetic. But when Mike scanned the immediate area again, he didn’t see either of the boy’s parents, his doting aunts, uncle or grandfather anywhere in the vicinity.

Apparently, for now, it was just the boy.

And him.

Children made him uncomfortable. He had no idea what to do with them or how to communicate with them for that matter. As far as any dealings with them went, they seemed to be a whole breed apart to him, like tiny alien beings.

During his own childhood he’d never been able to really relate to or interact with any of the kids he found himself thrown in with. Part of the problem arose from the fact that he was never around any other child long enough to form a relationship. So he became a loner. In the long run, it was easier that way.

“Grandpa’s supposed to be minding me,” Ricky volunteered.

Mike scanned the area a third time. Except for the two guests strolling away from the inn in the distance, there was no one else around and definitely no sign of the boy’s grandfather.

“Where is he?” Mike asked.

“In his office. Talking to somebody.” Ricky shrugged his small, slender shoulders. “It was boring so I came outside. I heard you hammering. Can I help hammer?” he asked again. “I like to hammer things.”

“I just bet you do,” Mike murmured more to himself than the boy.

As if to try to convince him to hand over the tool under discussion, Ricky added, “Daddy says I’m good at it. He’s not my real daddy but he’s nice so it’s okay. My real daddy’s dead.”

Mike almost dropped his hammer at the little guy’s sad revelation. He was at a loss how to respond to that news. Gripping the handle of the tool more tightly he began to fish for something, anything, to say. “I... It’s quite a... I mean, you—”

“He was a soldier.”

Mike sucked in a breath.
Harsh.
“At least you knew who your dad was,” he muttered under his breath, as he still struggled with what to say to the kid about his huge loss.

“You never met your daddy?” he asked sympathetically.

Did kids that age even
have
sympathy, Mike thought, amazed. He hadn’t the vaguest idea what, if anything, went through a child’s head. Where was Stevi, anyway? She could talk to the kid. He sure couldn’t.

But it was obvious that the boy was waiting for some sort of a response. “No, I never met my father.”

“Me, neither,” Ricky responded. “Mama said he was killed before I was born, so I couldn’t meet him. I guess we’re alike, huh? You can borrow my new daddy if you wanna,” he offered. “Mama says it’s good to share.”

Where
was
she? He looked around impatiently again, but he didn’t see Stevi. This boy was killing him. “Thanks, kid, but I’m too old for a daddy.”

“No, you’re not. Mama’s old like you and she’s got a daddy,” he said, proving his point. “Grandpa’s her daddy. Would you like to share him instead?”

As if on cue, Richard hurried from the veranda and came down the steps as quickly as he could, heading directly for the boy.

“Oh, thank heaven, there you are, Ricky!” Reaching him, Richard wrapped the boy in a bear hug, relieved beyond words. “You made my heart stop,” he cried.

“Is it still stopped?” the boy asked, looking at him curiously.

“No, it’s beating again,” Richard assured him with a relieved laugh, still holding on to the boy. Ricky was fearless and had already wandered off more than once, despite repeated warnings and entreaties not to.

“That’s good,” Ricky replied. “But you’re squishing me, Grandpa. I can’t breathe.”

“Sorry.” Richard loosened his hold on his grandson. He looked up at Mike. “I got caught up in a conversation with a friend of mine and when I looked around, Ricky was gone.” He shook his head. “They move faster than lightning at this age.”

“Grandpa was talking to a policeman,” Ricky said, stretching out the word. “He had a gun and everything. But he wouldn’t let me touch it.” He pouted.

“Guns aren’t safe to hold,” Mike told him gruffly.

Ricky’s expression was the personification of innocence as he asked, “Why not?”

“Ricky, don’t bother Mike,” Richard chided. “You can see that he’s busy helping Aunt Stevi decorate for the Fourth of July party.”

“They go off,” Mike said. “When somebody who isn’t familiar with a gun holds it, sometimes the gun goes off. That’s dangerous.”

There had been an incident in one of the foster homes he had been in. Another boy had gotten into the family’s gun cabinet, which had been left unlocked. The girl he’d aimed at hadn’t survived the trip to the hospital. The incident had left him with a very healthy respect for weapons, even those that were supposedly unloaded.

He had no idea how to convey that to Ricky, or how much he could or couldn’t tell him.

“Oh,” Ricky replied, instantly subdued. “Do people get dead, then?”

He paused, then made a judgment call and said, “Sometimes.”

Ricky turned to Richard. “You should tell your friend to throw his gun away, Grandpa. So you don’t get dead.” He threw his small arms around his grandfather as far as they could reach. “I don’t want you dead.”

Richard stroked the boy’s silky hair. “Don’t worry, Ricky. Officer Crenshaw’s been a policeman for a long time. He knows how to handle his gun.”

Crenshaw.

The name shot like a bullet right into his consciousness.

“This Officer Crenshaw,” Mike said in an emotionless voice.

Richard was trying to gently peel his grandson’s arms away from the death grip the boy was executing. “Yes, what about him?”

“What’s his first name?” Mike asked casually.

“Larry.” Curious, Richard looked at him quizzically. “Why?”

“No reason,” Mike answered, a shrug accompanying his words. “I knew someone named Crenshaw once. Thought it might be the same person.”

“Is it?”

Mike shook his head. “No. The guy I knew was David.”

Except that he wasn’t. He was Larry. And he didn’t actually know him, but what he
did
know was that the man on the cruiser, the local law enforcement officer who he suspected was the one responsible for blowing his cover, that man’s name was Larry Crenshaw.

The pieces fell together.

The man, according to Ricky, that Richard had been talking to in his office, the man Richard acknowledged as his friend, was involved in drug trafficking. This same man, he was certain, had seen him take a header off the side of the boat after being shot.