Read In the Enemy's Arms Online

Authors: Marilyn Pappano

In the Enemy's Arms (19 page)

A mile or more passed before he spoke again. “Okay, so we’re agreed on the plan. According to Garcia and the credit card activity, Mrs. Sutton and the horses she’s showing are well on their way to L.A. We’ll scope out the place tonight, then come back early in the morning, before the pervert doc leaves for work. And after he’s gone,
I’ll
check out the house while you wait in the car.”

She’d agreed to that on the plane, mostly to keep him from blaming himself for her confrontation with Grayson, but she hadn’t actually promised. She was surprised he’d thought she had. “We’ll play it as it comes.”

His narrowed gaze flickered to her, then back to the winding road. “You can wait in the passenger seat or the trunk. It’s your choice.”

She looked at the photo on top of the stack of papers, comparing the roads to the map on the GPS screen. Let him take her silence for agreement. Her real answer was clear enough to her, though:
we’ll see.

“The Sutton house should be around this next curve on the left.”

Now his mouth thinned to match his glare. “Cate, I will tie you up in the trunk. I’m not letting you take that kind of risk again.”

An unamused laugh burst from her. “You’re not
letting
me? Are you kidding? You’re not my father, my grandfather, my boss, my husband, my boyfriend or my conscience. You’re not in any position to
let
me do anything.”

The muscle twitched again in his jaw. “I’m not gonna put you at risk, Cate. I’m not gonna lose you.”

For a moment, all she could think was
Wow.
That sounded serious, like when he’d used the
C
word the night before. On Monday she’d gone to Cozumel to treat a few patients and enjoy a visit with Trent and Susanna, and on Thursday here she was in Arizona with Justin Seavers talking about commitment and him losing her. She couldn’t have imagined so different a situation if she’d tried.

And the scary thing was, she didn’t
want
to imagine a different situation. Oh, sure, she’d much prefer that Trent, Susanna and the girls were safe and happy and healthy, but for her and Justin…

When only four days ago there had never been and didn’t seem could possibly ever
be
a her and Justin.

White board fence appeared on the left, signaling the beginning of the Sutton property. It was exactly the sort of fence she would imagine keeping horses in their Kentucky pastures, but here it was an odd contrast to the desert landscape made up of mostly scrub, cactus and rock. It ran straight and true to the driveway, where pipe painted white led to the house and, beyond, the outbuildings.

Unlike the other houses they’d visited, this one, though large, wasn’t particularly imposing, at least from the outside. It was simple in design, two stories, white, with a broad porch. The buildings that housed the animals were much larger, elaborately landscaped, much more impressive.

“The barn and kennels make the house look like an afterthought,” Justin said as he slowed.

“I guess champion breeding stock get to live like kings.” While orphaned little girls…

An oversize SUV was parked in the driveway beside steps leading to the porch, and lights shone in a few downstairs windows, uncurtained thanks to the lack of nearby neighbors. Was Luisa in there now, having dinner with her adoptive father? Was one of those dark upstairs windows her room, painted pink or lavender, filled with stuffed animals and dolls, or did it hold the toys a pedophile preferred? Did she go to bed each night saying a prayer for the wonderful life she now lived, or did she cry herself to sleep, wishing she were back at La Casa, safe and loved?

As the board fence came to an end, Cate checked the photo again. “Up here on the right, there’s a cleared space where we can pull off the road.”

Neither of them had specified what “scoping out the property” meant, but she had a fair idea from the purchases he’d made at the sporting goods store: a pair of jeans and lightweight jackets for each of them; a couple of powerful mini-flashlights; a pair of night-vision binoculars and two cans of pepper spray. It wasn’t the same strength the police used, the salesman warned, but it was still good for self-protection.

How much protection would it afford against big ugly guns?

Justin turned into the clearing and stopped. It looked as if it had been scraped clean for a onetime construction site. Dozed trees and bushes were mounded to one side, and a heap of rotted boards were piled in the middle. Either would hide the car from passersby.

After surveying the area, he grinned at her. It was the first grin since they’d talked to Amy, and it sent warmth and reassurance through Cate’s veins.

“I’m hungry. Are you?”

“You’re always hungry. How come you don’t weigh four hundred pounds?”

“Do you know how many calories you can burn in an hour underwater? Between 550 and a thousand. Downhill skiing? Six hundred. Mountain climbing? About seven hundred.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t do any of that stuff, and twelve-hour shifts in the E.R. don’t burn as many calories as you’d think.”

His smile came slowly, strengthening as his gaze moved from her face to her chest, over her waist and hips, and rested a moment too long on her legs. Self-consciously, she uncrossed, then recrossed them. “Let me teach you to dive. Or ski. Or mountain climb. Better yet, we can forget all that and make up our own workout. No equipment necessary but what God gave us.”

He slid his palm so lightly over her hair that she might have imagined it, but there was nothing insubstantial about his fingertips on her neck, coaxing her toward him. If she leaned forward a few inches, and so did he, they would definitely be within kissing distance, and if he kissed her, she would kiss him back, no doubt about it. She knew in her head that caution was always a good thing, but her heart could throw caution to the wind as quickly as Justin could.

Maybe she was a bit of a risk taker after all.

She let him nudge her almost close enough, then she laid her hand on his chest and pushed back. Just a bit of a risk taker, remember.

“Okay, okay.” Her voice was hoarse enough to embarrass her. “I’m hungry, too.” Before the cocky grin could return, she hastily added, “For food.”

The sun was setting when they found a restaurant ten miles away, turning the sky delicate pastel shades that faded into blue and purple before finally giving way to night.

By the time they finished off greasy burgers and the best onion rings she’d ever had, the sky beyond the reach of streetlights and civilization was velvety black, dotted with tiny pinpoints of stars. While he fiddled inside the car, Cate shrugged into the new jacket to cut the evening’s chill, then stood there, staring upward, sending quiet pleas to anyone up above who might listen.

Let the girls be safe and unharmed. Let Trent and Susanna survive. Let Justin and me survive.

Don’t let him break my heart.

The car’s interior lights went dark, though both front doors stood open. Grinning, he slid out of the driver’s seat, then retrieved the rest of their purchases from the trunk.

He offered her a flashlight, which she tucked into her left jacket pocket. Next he took out both pepper sprays, the cylinders seeming small in his large hand as he shook them the way the sales guy had instructed. “If I give you one of these, will you promise not to spray me with it?”

“Okay.” She reached, but he caught her hand with his free hand.

“Huh-uh. Not enough. I’ve noticed you say ‘Okay,’ when what you really mean is ‘I plan to do what I want, but maybe I’ll let you in on it first.’ I want a promise. The kind you don’t break.”

She lifted her left hand as if in court. “I swear by my Hippocratic oath.”

His face wrinkled into a frown. “Hm. Let’s see… You’ve smacked me. Pinched me. Threatened to claw my face off. I’m not sure that oath is strong enough.”

Lazily she took the steps necessary to bring her body in contact with his. Her mouth brushed his jaw before reaching his ear, where she murmured, “I swear if you don’t give me that pepper spray, I
will
use it on you the first time you go to sleep and leave it unprotected.” Wiggling her fingers into the fist where he clenched the two cans, she got a grip on one and worked it free.

He stopped her own victory smile by pressing his forehead to hers, staring into her eyes. “Sweetheart, I don’t leave
anything
unprotected around you. Especially me.”

The words stilled her in the act of stepping back. Her breath caught in her lungs, and the elephant tumbled a time or two in her stomach. She strained a little closer, until her nose bumped his, then murmured, “That might be the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.” That he considered her a risk. That he was vulnerable to her.

Something swept through her—warm enough to flush her skin, cold enough to raise goose bumps. Something optimistic and pessimistic and full of potential, good and bad. Something hopeful.

As she’d done, he brushed his mouth across her jaw, leaving a fiery, tingling trail behind, then whispered into her ear, “If you’re through promising things you aren’t going to deliver, we’d better get going.” He backed off, turned her to face the car and nudged her into the passenger seat.

Was he talking about her refusal to be pinned down on issues like staying out of the way or taking orders? Or getting close to him, touching him, kissing him, if she had no intention of following through?

She knew anatomy down to the tiniest, most insignificant bone, muscle and nerve, but she was learning something new: the heart had a will of its own. Her head might know all the reasons a relationship with Justin would be bad, but her heart only knew that she felt safe with him. Comfortable. Protected. Wanted. Her head could keep him at a distance, but her heart had developed a bit of a defiant streak. It might be willing to sacrifice her well-being for its desires.

And she might be willing to let it.

* * *

The ten miles back to the clearing passed much more quickly this time. There was no moon tonight, and once Justin shut off the headlights, darkness settled around them. All he heard in the sudden quiet was the pops and clicks of the engine settling and the beat of his own heart. He opened the door, glad the overhead light he’d disconnected didn’t give away their presence, and picked up the binoculars from the console. He didn’t even suggest that Cate wait in the car.

He pushed his door shut with a quiet thud, and she did the same, then met him at the front of the car. The jeans she’d picked fitted her nearly as well as the dive skin, hugging thighs and hips and butt before she tugged down the jacket to cover everything interesting.

“Is it too cold for snakes to be out?” she whispered.

“It is. Snakes like the heat.”

“What about spiders and tarantulas and Gila monsters? Is it too cold for them?”

He didn’t have a clue about the temperature preferences of desert residents but figured it was in her best interest to pretend he did. “Yeah. Everything’s tucked away in its burrow or web or wherever the hell it lives until the sun warms things up tomorrow.”

“Good. Then we go that way.” She pointed to a boulder on the west side of the clearing. At first she led the way, then they walked side by side until they reached the scrub. She wasn’t great at following, he’d noticed, but she didn’t hesitate to slide in behind him when the going got rougher.

It would have been easier with a full moon. Dressed all in dark as they were, they wouldn’t have stood out against the landscape. Instead, they used the flashlights, sheltering them in their hands to minimize detection until they reached a vantage point directly across from the Sutton house.

He did a quick scan of the ground with the light before dropping down behind the cover of a low, sloping boulder. He wasn’t any more anxious than she to make the acquaintance of Arizona’s creepier life forms, not that he’d admit it.

The only exterior lights across the road, besides a lone pole lamp that shone on the SUV, were back by the kennels and barns. Those were lit up as if it were midday, making the shadows around the house seem deeper, starker. Lights were on upstairs now, muted by curtains but seeping out from two front windows, two side windows. Weaker light came from downstairs—the kitchen, he saw when he focused the binoculars. It was at the back of the house, on the other side of a large, unoccupied living room. The distortion made him squint and turned his stomach queasy, but what he could see of the room was functional but dated. Neither Sutton was much of a cook or surely they would have modernized the appliances and countertops in the past forty years.

As he panned across the room, shock stabbed through him. “Luisa,” he whispered, jerking to a stop on the slight form standing at the kitchen sink. She wore a shapeless dress, was barefooted, and her ragged haircut looked as if it had been self-inflicted.

Cate, on her belly beside him, was damn near vibrating with the need to see for herself, her hands half-
extended, her fingers shaking. He handed the binoculars to her, and she zoomed in on the large picture window that showed through to the kitchen. “Oh, my God, it
is
her.”

“How does she look?”

“Green” was her immediate response. “Thinner than in the photograph. Someone did a whack job on her hair. She’s scrubbing the sink like an expert. Do you suppose that’s what they wanted her for—a servant?”

“When you buy someone, I think that makes her a slave.” Then he shoved his fingers through his hair. “Maybe she’s just doing her chores. Most kids have chores, right?”

She took her gaze from the binoculars for a moment. “Aw, that’s cute. The trust-fund baby knows what chores are. Did you have any?”

“I went fishing with my grandfather every Saturday six months of every year until I turned sixteen.”

“Fishing’s not a chore.”

“Doing it with my grandfather was.”

She focused on the scene inside the house again. “My sisters and I set the dinner table, cleared it, did the dishes, made our beds, cleaned our rooms, helped with the yard work, did our own laundry by the time we were ten and ran most of the errands once we got our drivers’ licenses.” A sigh escaped her. “Maybe she is just doing chores, but she seems…withdrawn. Sad.”

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