Cop by Her Side (The Mysteries of Angel Butte) (8 page)

Clay shook his head. Poor kid. “I stopped by the house earlier. Drew said you’d talked him into staying home.”

“I hope he’ll take a nap when Alexis does.
And
that she actually sleeps. She must be getting tired, too.” She searched his face. “Why did you stop by?”

“More questions for your brother-in-law.”

“You are wasting your time going after him, you know.”

“Are you so sure?”

“I’m sure.” And damned if she didn’t sound it. “Drew and Lissa may have been fighting. I don’t know. But he’d never have hurt her or Bree. He might be able to tell you something useful, I won’t argue about that, but...” She started to shrug.

“He’s so
nice
he’d never hurt another soul?” Clay’s interruption came out barbed.

Her eyes widened. “What, you’ve decided you don’t like him?”

I don’t like the way you defend him.

“I think nobody is that nice,” he said curtly.

“You’re wrong.”

“You meet a lot of nice people every day on your job?” Clay asked with exaggerated interest.

“Yes!” She pressed her lips together. “They’re usually the victims,” she said finally, grudgingly.

Clay let out a huff of air. “You’re right. I won’t argue. There are decent people out there. He may be one. But, damn it, he’s hiding something.”

He didn’t like to see the lines of worry on her forehead.

“You’re a stranger,” she said. “And a hostile one at that. His whole world has imploded. Do you really blame him for not wanting to express every doubt about his marriage and his wife to you?”

Put that way—no. But the fact he understood didn’t make Clay like Drew Wilson any better.

“Why are you so hot to defend him?” he asked. “Are you that good of friends?”

“Yes!” She glowered at him, not relenting even as her salad and his cup of chili were delivered by a cheerful slip of a girl who looked like a middle schooler to him.

Maybe he should remind the proprietor of child labor laws. Or— Hell, maybe he was just getting old.

Even when they were left alone, Clay didn’t reach for his spoon. “There’s not some awkwardness, you being such good buddies with your sister’s husband? I’ve got to tell you, I don’t think my brother would like it much if I was suddenly best friends with his wife.”

“That’s...that’s ridiculous!” Anger didn’t look natural on a face as gentle as Jane’s. On the other hand, Clay thought with the first amusement he’d felt since they sat down, he would swear her wild curls writhed like Medusa’s snakes when she got mad. He’d never seen hair so alive.

Thinking about what it would feel like falling over his chest was enough to keep him awake during nights when he couldn’t get her out of his head.

“Is it?” he asked. “I don’t see you two having that much to say to each other.”

“Why not?” she challenged him. “You must have had plenty of female friends who were
nice.
Did you run out of things to say to them?”

He felt as if a punch had robbed him of air. It was a minute before he could say quietly, “I guess I must have. None of them stuck, did they?”

This was
not
a good time for a revelation.

Jane and he stared at each other, neither of them seemingly able to look away. He was afraid his shock must be showing, and damned if there wasn’t a hint of shock in her eyes, too.

“Drew and I aren’t best friends,” she said suddenly, her voice stifled. She looked away, as if someone had caught her eye across the café, but Clay knew better.

He felt as if an essential connection between them had been severed. Stupid.

“I’m being a jackass,” he admitted.

“Why?” she asked, tilting her head when she looked at him again.

“I didn’t like seeing the two of you wrapped around each other yesterday.” The words came out as a rumble.

“But...” The word formed on her lips, almost soundless. She gave her head a slight shake. “It’s not as if you and I are even seeing each other.”

He was blowing it here, Clay knew, and couldn’t seem to stop himself. “That’s not my choice.”

“Oh.” Her eyes shied from his. She looked down at her salad as if it was some foreign substance. “You aren’t...seeing someone else?”

“Right now? No.” Pride wouldn’t let him admit that he hadn’t had a date since last October, when she’d ditched him. For months, he’d deluded himself she’d forgive him and they could start again. Even once he knew that wasn’t happening, Clay hadn’t worked up enough interest in any of the women who might have been receptive to ask one out. He’d begun to worry about himself. He hadn’t been celibate for an entire year since he was about fifteen. Maybe middle age had hit, he’d thought with some horror.

Then, two and a half weeks ago, he’d seen Jane again and knew what his problem was. Continuing celibacy had now become painful.

“You?” he heard himself ask gruffly.

Her teeth sank into her lower lip and she shook her head.

Yeah, but just because she wasn’t dating anyone right now didn’t mean she
hadn’t
been sometime in the past ten months. Or decided what she really wanted was a man like her brother-in-law.

“We’d better eat,” he said in that same gruff voice. “The rest of our lunches will be out any minute.” And he knew damn well at this point in an investigation, he should have grabbed a bite on the run, not sat down for a leisurely meal with the woman he craved.

“Oh,” Jane said, seeming startled by the reminder of her surroundings, and picked up her fork.

No, this lunch wasn’t social, he reminded himself. It was a disguised attempt to penetrate her defenses and get her to help him.

The chili had cooled off some, but was still good. The chunk of corn bread that came with it was even better, Clay discovered. It was unexpectedly spicy.

Jane saw him looking at it. “Not what you expected?”

He guessed she was trying to get the conversation back to a more conventional place, and made an effort himself. “No. You want a bite?”

She shook her head. “I’ve had it before. It’s really good.”

He nodded at her food. “Eat. This is the second salad I’ve seen you push around on a plate.”

She wrinkled her nose at him, looking absurdly young for a moment, but did start eating.

They were able to talk after that, him asking a few questions about the owner of the café because it was an easy topic.

Sure, get her comfortable,
then
go in for the kill.

“You and Nell McAllister friends?” he asked.

“Yes, and I’m getting to be with Noah Chandler’s wife, Kait, too. They’re both interesting women.”

Clay knew enough about Angel Butte’s mayor Chandler to guess it would have to be an unusual woman who’d be able to stand up to him.

The thought fed back into his earlier epiphany, which he had no intention of pursuing right now. Instead he asked, “Have you talked to your sister’s doctor?”

“Yes, this morning. He’s still claiming to be optimistic, but...” Her throat worked. “I could be wrong, but I had the feeling he’s getting worried.”

Clay reached across the table and covered Jane’s hand with his. He felt her tremble. “Hey. It’s barely been two days.”

She smiled gratefully at him. “I keep telling myself that. It’s been a really long two days, though.”

“She’s your sister—”

As if she didn’t hear him, she said, “It’s mostly Bree I’m thinking about. Whether...whether she’s even alive. And if she is, is she hurt? She has to be petrified. Oh, damn.” She freed her hand from his grasp to swipe at the tears that suddenly overflowed. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Clay discovered how much he hated seeing her cry. Sometimes he’d resented her strength. Now all he wanted was to see her strong again. Not afraid. “I keep thinking about her, too, and I’ve never even met her.”

“I love her.” Those beautiful eyes, still swimming with tears, met his. “I love both the girls, but Bree... She’s more vulnerable, I guess. Unsure of herself. She hates change. That’s why the summer has been so hard for her, losing her best friends. Even if we find her...”

“We’ll find her, damn it.” The words felt raw. “I won’t let up until we do.”

She seemed to be looking deep into him, her eyes searching, intense. “I know you won’t,” she said at last, softly. “Whatever happened between us, I always knew you were really good at your job. Smart and tenacious. That’s why I called you. I mean—” she made a small gesture “—two weeks ago. And...I told Alexis yesterday that I trusted you to find Bree if anyone could.”

Man. It was like having a boa constrictor squeezing his chest until his ribs creaked. She trusted him.

And the cop in him thought,
You need her if you’re going to find the little girl. Use her mood. That’s what you’re here for.

It took him a minute to overcome his paralysis. “If you trust me, Jane, you’ve got to help me. Find the answers I need. Don’t let your sympathy for your brother-in-law blind you.”

Her expression changed, and he felt like a ruthless bastard. He didn’t take back what he’d said, though. His first priority
had
to be that little girl. In the absence of Drew Wilson’s cooperation, Clay needed Jane’s. It was that simple. This wasn’t some kind of competition, him needing to prove she was on his side.

He didn’t like that he had to wonder if he was lying to himself.

He softened his tone. “Help me, Jane.”

She took what seemed to be an angry swipe at her eyes, and after a moment nodded. “For Bree,” she said tightly. “What is it you want to know?”

Was it that easy? Was she surrendering because she really did trust him—or because her loyalty to her niece was more powerful than her also steadfast loyalty to her brother-in-law?

“I want to know about Melissa and Drew’s finances.”

“What?” Despite the chair, she lurched back enough to have given herself whiplash.

“Did they have a big down payment on their house?” he said, voice hard. “Or do they have one hell of a mortgage? You know his car is two years old and hers only one? Do you know what that summer day camp costs?” He told her. “And has your sister told you what she earns?”

He saw from Jane’s expression that either her sister or Drew had.

“Tell me how they afforded all this, Jane.”

“With them both working...”

“With them both working, they might just squeak by. What do you think, did they make so much they were able to stash a bunch in savings for a rainy day?”

She looked stricken.

“Drew was laid off four and a half months ago, Jane.” His jaw tightened. “You tell me. How are they paying all those bills?” He paused. “Or are they?”

“Ask Drew!” she cried.

“Oh, I’ve asked, and he doesn’t want to tell me. That’s why I need you.”

She stared at him for a long moment, and he could tell she didn’t like what she was seeing. “I thought,” she began, barely above a whisper, then stopped, gave a brief, unhappy laugh and shook her head. “Who’d have thought I was so stupid?”

“What are you talking about?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She bent down, making him wonder what she was doing until she reappeared above the tabletop with a couple of twenty-dollar bills in her hand. To his shock, she dropped them by her plate. “Since this was my idea, I should pay.” Then she pushed her chair back and stood. “The answer is no. My sister is in a coma, my niece is missing, my brother-in-law is distraught and grieving and you want to believe they did this to themselves. I will not spy on my family.”

Shocked and suddenly pissed, he shot to his feet and grabbed her arm as she started past him. He tugged her close so their bodies were almost touching. He
wanted
the plush mound of her breasts pressed against him.

“Tell me, Jane,” he said roughly, aware enough of surrounding diners to keep his voice low. “Why are you so determined to fight me?”

Color came and went in her cheeks. She had to know he was talking about more than what he’d just asked her to do. Looking into her eyes, a green so dark there was no hint of gold, he was perilously close to kissing her whether they were in the middle of a damn restaurant or not.

But she wrenched herself back, actually stumbling in her desperation to escape his touch. “Did you really think I was the docile little woman who’d do anything you wanted her to?”

Her utter disgust made him feel as if she’d just belted him.

Stunned, he watched her wind her way between tables and leave.

CHAPTER SEVEN

J
ANE
COULD
NOT
believe she’d almost fallen for that load of bull from a man who was apparently a master manipulator. She was mad as hell, but underneath flowed an unseen current of something that felt an awful lot like grief.

She heard him saying,
That’s not my choice.
And,
I didn’t like seeing the two of you wrapped around each other yesterday.
Asking if she was seeing anyone else. Giving her a funny, floaty feeling of hope. She’d remembered the night of the raid to rescue Matt Raynor, when Clay had told her so quietly that she could trust him, if only she’d believe it.

No, she thought, that wasn’t exactly right. He’d said,
You’ll never believe it, will you?
And she had said no. But the Clay she’d been getting to know this past couple of days wasn’t quite the man she’d thought he was. When he had mentioned wanting to talk to her and agreed readily when she suggested lunch at a favorite restaurant, she had, oh, so foolishly
begun
to believe.

Until she’d found out all he was doing was playing her, trying to get her to wait until Drew was out of the house so she could hunt for passwords that would allow her to break into their computer and see exactly how much he and Lissa earned and owed. Incredibly private things they didn’t tell her, even though she was family. The kind of things she didn’t tell them, either.

Tell me how they afforded all this, Jane.

What difference did it make? Maybe they
couldn’t
afford it. So what? Plenty of people lived beyond their means. They didn’t kill their child because they were freaked about their finances, if that was what Clay was trying to suggest. It made no sense. Drew and Lissa could have put the house on the market, or Drew could have accepted one of the jobs he’d been offered. If he was determined to hold out for a great opportunity, he could take something temporary that would bring in more than his unemployment did.

What
sense
did Clay’s insinuations make? His fixation on Drew felt like a vendetta.

I didn’t like seeing the two of you wrapped around each other yesterday.

Could he possibly really believe she and Drew had something going? And that he minded so much, he’d go after Drew like this just to...she didn’t even know. Prove something to her?

She didn’t know whether believing that was worse, or knowing he’d deliberately set out from the minute they’d sat down at the café to get her thinking he actually felt something real for her, only so he could use her feelings.

But that was what he’d done, wasn’t it?

Jane stomped down the sidewalk, only as aware of passersby as she had to be to avoid crashing into someone.

She’d let herself cry in front of him!

Well, never again. To hell with Clay Renner and his “you can trust me” crap.
Was
he really looking for Bree, or was that a lie, too?

She didn’t realize she was mumbling under her breath until she intercepted a pair of startled looks from two people who then steered wide around her, the crazy woman of Angel Butte. Imagining the dark smudges of exhaustion under her eyes and her wild hair flying loose, she would have laughed if she hadn’t known it would come out sounding hysterical. Thank God, there was her Yukon ahead.

Of course, some idiot had all but blocked her in. It took her five minutes to squeeze out of the too-small parking space by dint of backing up a few inches, cranking the wheel, going forward and doing it all over again—and again. Her mood did not improve. She wanted to make herself feel better by slapping a traffic ticket under the idiot’s wiper blade. Unfortunately, the driver hadn’t actually done anything overtly illegal.

Now, if she’d found a certain dark green Jeep Cherokee blocking her in, she could have rammed it with pleasure. It would totally be worth the boost in insurance rates.

By the time she reached the hospital, the anger had seeped away, leaving only the sadness and fear, which she assured herself didn’t have anything to do with Clay. She wanted to walk in and, when she took Lissa’s hand in hers, feel a faint squeeze in response. See a flutter of breath not driven by the machine. A flicker of eyelashes.
Something.
Hope.

Of course, there wasn’t anything like that. She’d have been called if there had been any change in Lissa’s condition at all. Feeling obligated, Jane sat with her sister for an hour, holding the chilly hand that could have been molded from wax like in Madame Tussaud’s, and remembered for some absurd reason a time when Lissa, fifteen or sixteen, had called her, whispering that the boy she’d gone out with was drunk and she was scared and please, please, please could Jane come and get her.

I did rescue her sometimes.
If only she hadn’t been mad later that she’d
needed
rescuing.

Oh, didn’t that sum them up perfectly: Lissa, fiercely, angrily independent, desperately unable to depend on anyone but herself, and Jane, hungry to be needed, always the responsible one. Lissa lithe and beautiful, Jane in comparison squat and ordinary.

No,
she thought,
I like myself. I do. It’s just that sometimes I wish...
She hardly knew what. Not that anyone would rescue her, because she didn’t need it. Maybe she hoped that in one particular person’s eyes, she would be beautiful and awe-inspiring, not either the stereotype of the too-buxom woman with a plain face or the worse stereotype of female cop who was subject to sexual innuendo if anyone thought of her as a woman at all.

Ugh. She hated feeling sorry for herself. Hated looking at her sister now, waxen and not at all beautiful and utterly dependent on tubes and lines snaking in and out of her body to sustain life.

Feeling like a coward, Jane slipped away, amazed at Drew’s courage in staying at Lissa’s side hour after hour.

* * *

“A
LL
RIGHT
.” C
LAY
pinched the bridge of his nose until the cartilage complained. “You were on the Cabot Lake Trail...”

“No!” the woman caller exclaimed. “I mean, you can turn off to Cabot Lake, but we’d been up to Carl Lake. We were coming down the switchbacks when we met this man with a little girl.”

“This time of year, there must have been a lot of hikers up there.” If he was remembering right, Cabot Lake was up in the northwest corner of the Metolius Basin, a good distance from Angel Butte. The country was spectacular, and this was August, the height of tourist season. “These folks caught your eye because...?”

“The age of the girl, for starters. I mean, this isn’t the toughest hike in the world, but it’s five miles into Carl Lake. There was no way a child that young could be expected to make it, but the man was getting mad at her and I thought she looked scared of him.”

His interest abruptly sharpening, he asked, “Did you stop to talk?”

“We tried. I said something like, wow, you know there’s another three miles to go, and the man just snapped, ‘We’re fine.’ Completely uninterested. He had this grip on her shoulder and sort of pushed her ahead of him so we couldn’t see her very well, except I’d already noticed how curly her hair must be because it was escaping from these really crooked braids. I looked back when I got to the next switchback and saw that he was staring after us. I don’t know what it was about him, but he gave me the creeps.”

It wasn’t the first time Clay had heard someone say that:
He gave me the creeps.
People didn’t always listen to their instincts, but sometimes they couldn’t help themselves. The guy must have given off really strong vibes of wrongness to worry this woman so much.

“Were they carrying overnight gear?”

“Yes, he had on a fully loaded backpack, which meant he wasn’t going to be able to carry the girl piggyback. We’d spent a couple nights up there and Irv had some trout hanging from a line. Most people we passed wanted to talk about how the fishing was, but not this guy.”

Even as he continued to question her, Clay asked himself why in hell some creep would abduct a seven-year-old girl, then take her backpacking. On a grunt, Clay reflected that maybe a better question was why not? Once you got up in that country, there were trails sprouting off every which way. If memory served him, the Pacific Coast Trail was nearby. Head into the back country, enjoy the cute little girl you’d picked up for as long as you could afford to disappear from your everyday life, then dispose of her. Not hard out there.

Wouldn’t she have begged for help? But he was already shaking his head. A kid Bree’s age could be terrorized into silence in any number of ways.

“So it wasn’t until you got down that you saw a newspaper with Brianna Wilson’s picture.”

“We stopped at a store to pick up some cold drinks. And I felt this awful sinking sensation and said, ‘Irv, isn’t this that little girl we saw?’ and he thought she might be, too. So we decided we had to call.”

Clay noted their contact information, hung up and groaned. Most of the tips they’d received were easy to check out. They could send a unit out to that Arco station where someone was absolutely
positive
he’d seen Brianna using the restroom and returning the key to the clerk who didn’t pay any attention, only it turned out the clerk had paid enough attention to know the little girl’s mother had also come in and bought candy bars for the girl
and
her brother, and by the way the girl didn’t look much like the one on the front page of the paper. In fact, the mother had commented on the picture and how scary it was having a child that age disappear. A good hour, hour and a half of an officer’s time wasted.

This latest caller, though, had hit some hot buttons. Unfriendly man who had his hands on the kid to quell her; the suspicious stare back.
He gave me the creeps.
The kid’s curly hair, her air of distress, the absurdity of a lone father—if that was what he was—taking a girl that young on a ten-mile round-trip hike.

Clay dragged out a map and determined that Carl Lake was in Jefferson County. He could start with the Forest Service...but he didn’t want to send anyone in who wasn’t armed, just in case. If the trailhead had been closer, he’d have gone himself. The elevation gain wasn’t great; he could jog five miles, no problem, and hope with the kid pooped out the man wouldn’t have tried to take her farther. But the afternoon was advancing, and the drive alone would take him...an hour, hour and a half.

He put in a call to Jefferson County, gave them specifics and received a promise to send a couple of deputies who were also experienced hikers in to find the man and girl. He knew they were taking him seriously. Everyone was already watching for Brianna; there wouldn’t be a cop in Oregon who hadn’t memorized her face. He knew—he’d been working the phones whenever he had a minute, calling every jurisdiction he could think of, asking them to visit gas stations, mom-and-pop grocery stores, cheap motels and out-of-the-way resorts. Get Bree’s picture out there. He’d met with nothing but cooperation; a missing child, likely abducted, was every cop’s worst nightmare.

Hanging up, he should have been satisfied by the sergeant’s promise to call the minute they learned anything, but instead he felt edgy.

Clay didn’t usually mind delegating; these days, that was half his job. It made no sense anyway for him to focus without any good reason on this one tip, not when so many were pouring in.

But he didn’t have to like it.

“Hey,” Nguyen called from a few desks away. “You might want to talk to this one.”

Clay waved his thanks and picked up the phone again.

A minute later, he was saying, “Yes, sir, we do appreciate you calling. Now tell me again....”

* * *

T
HE
CALLS
KEPT
coming, not only to the Butte County Sheriff’s Department, but also to the FBI, Deschutes County, every city jurisdiction. Probably the DEA and the ATF and the CIA, for all he knew. The frustrating thing was that the vast majority of callers were so off base, if not downright delusional. They’d seen a kid trip on the sidewalk and sit there sobbing over her bloody knee, but no mother or father had come running, so it had to be the missing child even though, it was true, this girl had black hair and might have been a little bit older. Was he
sure
Brianna was only seven?

There were always the lonely folks who wanted an excuse to feel important for a minute, to be listened to. There were the nut jobs who ranted about extraterrestrials and how Brianna’s parents would be lucky if those gray creatures with the pointy heads weren’t cutting her heart out right this minute to study it.

And then there were the semireasonable callers, the ones consuming the time of half the law enforcement officers in central Oregon.

Jefferson County got back to Clay in the early evening. Yes, indeed, they’d caught up to the scared little girl and her daddy, who really was her daddy, except that he had only very limited visitation allowed by the court and hadn’t brought her back after supposedly taking her to breakfast. The mother had been hysterical. The cops in Jefferson County didn’t consider their trek to Carl Lake a waste of time. They’d already phoned the nice lady who had worried about that girl and told her she did a good thing. Daddy, who had anger management issues, was behind bars with charges still undecided. And yes, the child did have curly hair, although it didn’t have any hint of red in it, and she was actually six years old.

Clay thanked them for jumping on it and ended the call wishing like hell that Brianna Wilson had been rescued instead. The other little girl hadn’t been in as much danger as Bree was.

He kept going until after eight, even though tiredness was clouding his thinking. He needed a decent night’s sleep. There was nothing he was doing here that others who hadn’t been going for twelve plus hours straight couldn’t do better. Walking across the parking lot to his Cherokee, he called the hospital and got put through to ICU, where he was told that Melissa’s coma seemed to be getting lighter. Muscles were spasming, eyelids twitching. Once she’d pursed her lips.