Книга - Wednesday’s Child

Wednesday's Child
Gayle Wilson


FROM AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR GAYLE WILSON comes a gripping tale of tension-filled romance and heart-stopping suspense.IT WASN'T OVER YET Susan Chandler's husband vanished without a trace…along with their one-year-old daughter. Now, seven years later, their car has been pulled from a river in some backwater Mississippi town, along with the body of her husband and an empty baby seat. The local sheriff is calling it an accident, but for Susan, things just don't add up.Major Jeb Bedford has one thing on his mind–to get his body back into working order and rejoin his Delta Force team ASAP. But Susan Chandler's quiet desperation echoes his own struggles. And somehow, protecting Susan and helping her discover the truth becomes more important than anything…









Rave reviews for In Plain Sight


“Gayle Wilson is one of the best romantic suspense writers in the business.”

—Chronicle Herald (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

“In Plain Sight sizzles from start to finish. I couldn’t put it down.”

—New York Times bestselling author Carla Neggers

“Wilson’s novel mesmerizes from first page to the last, with chilling twists and a compelling plot.”

—Romantic Times

“Gayle Wilson pulls out all the stops to give her readers a thrilling, chilling read that will give you goose bumps in the night.”

—ReadertoReader.com




More praise for Gayle Wilson


“Gayle Wilson is one of the Divine Ones, a writer who combines impeccable craft with unsurpassed storytelling skills. Her books are dark, sexy and totally involving. I can’t recommend her enough.”

—bestselling novelist Anne Stuart

“Gayle Wilson will go far in romantic suspense. Her books have that special ‘edge’ that lifts them out of the ordinary. They’re always tautly written, a treare trove of action, suspense and richly drawn characters.”

—New York Times bestselling author Linda Howard

“Rich historical detail, intriguing mystery, romance that touches the heart and lingers in the mind. These are the elements which keep me waiting impatiently for Gayle Wilson’s next book.”

—USA TODAY bestselling author BJ James

“Writing like this is a rare treat.”

—Gothic Journal




Also by Gayle Wilson


IN PLAIN SIGHT

DOUBLE BLIND




Wednesday’s Child

Gayle Wilson







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


Monday’s child is fair of face.

Tuesday’s child is full of grace.

Wednesday child is full of woe.

Thursday’s child has far to go.

Friday’s child is loving and giving.

Saturday’s child works hard for its living.

But the child that’s born on the Sabbath day Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.


To Meg Ruley

for her continuing support and enthusiasm

for my work,

for always being there when I need her,

and for having the most wonderful laugh

in the entire world.

Thank you!




CONTENTS


PROLOGUE (#u2affa251-174d-5f4a-929e-2328801d5499)

CHAPTER ONE (#u2a7ed751-b1cd-56b4-a811-ed7b0562037b)

CHAPTER TWO (#u02d0febb-d597-5ea0-8885-cf4451ea9010)

CHAPTER THREE (#ubbc5f188-dadf-5a12-bcbe-d84c3728039a)

CHAPTER FOUR (#u53b9ba72-9e3e-5492-8060-8ba66631cce8)

CHAPTER FIVE (#u8b1721c0-166e-53ef-8c47-ed0427a9e5da)

CHAPTER SIX (#ud3da2473-c04c-54ba-b0d0-24e0c4441ac3)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#u76f12f02-283d-53e6-aa07-fbf488de7fca)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)




PROLOGUE


WORKING FOR an almost artistic perfection, he draped the body over the steering wheel, carefully aligning the top of the head with the starred crack he’d created in the wind-shield. He was almost finished. And as soon as he was—

There was a rustling from the bushes behind him. He backed out of the car so quickly he slammed his head into the top of the door frame. Stifling a curse, he peered into the darkness, hardly daring to breathe. For endless seconds he waited, but there was no repetition of whatever he’d heard.

Coon, he thought. Or maybe a beaver, although he hadn’t heard the distinctive slap and glide into the river. Something that wasn’t human, in any case. And humans were the only witnesses he cared about.

He eased back through the open door of the SUV, being careful this time to duck below its frame. He tried to position the corpse higher over the wheel, but its dead weight and the angle he was working from made that impossible.

It doesn’t matter, he told himself. This body wasn’t going to be found. Trying to place it so the location of the head wound made some kind of sense was simply a precaution.

But then, he was a careful man by nature. Nothing left to chance. Nothing forgotten.

He took one last look around the interior of the car, his eyes searching with the aid of the bright moonlight for anything he might have overlooked. That, too, was unnecessary. He’d gone over the car with a fine-tooth comb. And he’d found what he’d been sent to retrieve. The river would take care of any other evidence. Just as it would take care of the marks on the body. And even if it were found—

But it wouldn’t be. He intended to make sure of that.

He reached across the driver’s seat, leaning in behind the corpse, to locate by feel the lever of the emergency brake. His fingers closed around it as his thumb depressed the release. Despite the angle at which it was parked, the car didn’t move.

His cheeks puffed slightly with the breath of relief he released. So far so good.

Satisfied that everything was going as planned, he withdrew his torso from the vehicle to take one more slow survey of his surroundings, evaluating the stillness. He’d been out here long enough that the normal night sounds along the river had resumed. Tree frogs and crickets. The occasional plop of a fish jumping. From the distance came the throaty call of an owl.

Satisfied, he eased the door closed, pushing hard enough at the last to make sure the latch caught. Again he listened, but other than a slight hesitation in the nocturnal symphony, there had been no reaction to the noise.

He’d driven the SUV off the bridge entrance and parked it on the reinforced slope leading down to the river. If he had left the headlights on—as he’d thought about doing in order to monitor its descent—they would now be shining down into the swift, rain-swollen current. All he needed was a little luck. And if he got it, the car would never be seen again.

As he walked up the incline toward the rear of the vehicle, his eyes once more searched the woods and the two-lane blacktop that led to the bridge. It was an automatic precaution. There was no traffic. Not here. And especially not now. Nobody was going to be out in Linton at 3:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

Taking a deep breath, he put his hands against the back of the SUV and pushed as hard as he could. Despite the incline and the fact that he had left the car out of gear, nothing happened.

He fought the urge to open the door and check that the brake was off and that it was indeed in neutral. Instead, he put his shoulder against the rear door, trying to rock the heavy vehicle to get it started. Still it didn’t move.

The first curl of panic fluttered in his stomach. In desperation he bent his knees, trying to bring the muscles of his buttocks and thighs to bear on the task. The soles of his shoes slipped against the concrete, making it hard to get traction. And then, like a miracle, he felt the SUV shift.

That small indication of success was enough to intensify his efforts. With a grunt of exertion, he threw his body against the metal again, feet churning, as they had when he’d butted the practice dummy on the high-school football field.

Just as that seemingly immovable object had eventually given in to his determination, this one did, too. The car moved so suddenly that he fell to his hands and knees as it slowly rolled away from him.

He scrambled up, slipping and sliding down the incline in time to watch the front tires enter the water. Eyes straining to follow the car’s path through the darkness, he felt a sense of vindication as the current caught it.

As he’d anticipated, the car was too heavy to be carried downriver, but the rushing water turned the SUV as it began to sink, aligning it so it was parallel to the base of the bridge.

Then, as if on command, the car began to nose downward into the exact resting place he’d designed for it, directly beneath the old concrete supports. Exhilaration filled his chest.

Suddenly, by a bizarre trick of moonlight, the rear window seemed to be illuminated. He could see straight through it and into the back seat of the car that was by now more than half submerged. He watched, unable to pull his eyes away, as water covered the infant seat that had been strapped into the back. He didn’t look away until the SUV and all it contained had disappeared forever beneath the surface of the river.




CHAPTER ONE


Seven Years Later

“MRS. KAISER?” The masculine voice on the other end of the phone sounded hesitant. Almost uncertain.

Wrong number, Susan Chandler thought as she considered how to respond. A telemarketer. Some kind of survey. Nothing to get excited about, despite how he’d addressed her.

“Who is this, please?”

“Wayne Adams with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department, ma’am. I’m trying to get in touch with a Mrs. Richard Kaiser.”

Despite the fact that by now she had realized this might be the call she’d waited for for so long, Susan knew she still couldn’t afford to let down the emotional barriers she’d struggled so hard to put into place. Not yet. Not until she was sure this was somehow connected to Emma.

She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before she repeated, her voice sounding remarkably steady, “Johnson County? And where is that, please?”

“Mississippi. Johnson County, Mississippi. Sorry, ma’am. You get used to folks you’re calling knowing that, I guess.” A hint of amusement, clearly self-directed, colored the words.

Amusement. Then in all probability…

“What’s your call in relation to, Mr. Adams?”

“Sheriff Adams,” the caller corrected a little pompously. “You are Mrs. Kaiser, then? Mrs. Richard Kaiser?”

“That’s right.”

She didn’t bother to explain the divorce she had finally obtained four years ago, granted on the grounds of desertion. If she mentioned she was no longer Mrs. Kaiser, there was always the possibility he might hang up without giving her whatever information he had.

She needed to hear what he had to say, but she also needed to maintain a tight rein on her emotions until she had. Too many times in the past she’d anticipated being told something positive, only to be devastated when that didn’t occur.

“Then…I’m afraid I have some bad news, ma’am.”

“Bad news” wasn’t one of the phrases she’d been preparing for. Not after his previous tone. Her heart rate accelerated, its too-rapid beating filling her throat and sending blood rushing to her brain until she was almost light-headed.

“What kind of bad news?”

“There’s been an accident.”

When she had first walked into that eerily empty house seven years ago and gone from room to room, calling their names, that had been one of the first things she’d thought of. There’s been an accident. Something terrible has happened to them….

Even later, during the long, sleepless nights after they’d told her what Richard had done, she had paced the floor, trying to work out some other explanation. Something that would explain the nightmare she was living.

She licked her lips, which had suddenly gone dry. “What kind of accident?”

“It’s your husband, ma’am. We found his car submerged in the Escatawpa River. Looks like he must have run past the entrance to the bridge in the dark. It’s a tricky turn if you don’t know the road.”

“Richard?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. His body was in the car. I should have told you that at the first.”

“He’s dead.”

Her voice was too flat. Unemotional. She could imagine what the sheriff in Mississippi must be thinking. Even so, she was unable to summon up any regret that Richard’s life had ended. After all he’d put her through—

With that thought came another. A terrifying one.

“Was there anyone in the car with him?” Her heart now hesitated, refusing to beat again as she waited for the answer.

“No, ma’am, there wasn’t. There was no one else inside.”

He probably thought she was concerned about another woman. And at one time she might have been. Long before she understood there were anxieties far more compelling than those.

“As a courtesy, we asked the Atlanta PD to go to the address on his license,” the sheriff went on. “The folks living there now didn’t recognize the name, so we ran it through the national databases and found…Well, I expect you know what we found. I wasn’t sure this number would still be active after all these years. There hadn’t been any updates since the initial report was filed, but I figured it was worth a shot.”

She’d had to sell the house almost immediately, but due to the circumstances, the phone company had allowed her to keep this number. It wasn’t as if Emma had known it, but they told her it was customary with cases involving missing children.

Only then, in thinking back to those first terrible weeks, did she realize the significance of what the sheriff had just said. “Are you saying Richard had identification on him? That his driver’s license gave that name and address?”

She had long believed Richard was living somewhere under an assumed name. That’s why they hadn’t been able to locate him. How could he have escaped those countless inquiries if he’d kept his real name? Especially if he were still in the South?

“His wallet was in the car. Surprisingly, despite all the time it had been in the water, most of the things it contained were in pretty good shape. Of course, his license was the easiest to read since it was laminated.”

There was a disconnect between the sheriff’s words and what she’d been thinking. It wasn’t until she allowed them to replay in her mind that their import began to dawn.

“I don’t understand. You said it was an accident.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The uncertainty was back in his voice.

From what Adams had said, she’d been operating under the assumption that the accident he referred to had just occurred. Obviously, that assumption was wrong.

“Just how long do you believe my husband’s body has been in the water?”

There was a long beat of silence.

“Actually, the coroner can’t tell us that for sure—not yet. Given the condition of the car and the body…We’re guessing shortly after you notified law enforcement he was missing.”

Shortly after you notified law enforcement…

The words seemed to exist in some parallel universe. All the months she’d spent searching for him—and for Emma—Richard had already been dead, his car submerged, his body slowly decomposing.

Images of the black SUV sinking into the murky water of some Mississippi river were suddenly in her head, despite her near desperation to keep them out. Refusing to allow herself to entertain those kinds of thoughts was an art she had believed she’d perfected. She’d been wrong.

Despite the endless number of times she had attempted to imagine what Emma would look like now, it was always her daughter’s face the last time she’d seen her that was forever in her mind’s eye. A picture as clear as the August morning she’d left for the airport and the children’s literature conference. She’d had an appointment with an editor who had shown an interest in her illustrations—an appointment which had led to her first freelance assignment with the publisher she still worked for.

Emma had been fourteen months old then. Her hair slightly curling and dark blond. Her eyes, almost the same clear, dark blue as her father’s, were surrounded by impossibly long lashes that spiked, jeweled with tears, whenever she cried.

She had cried that morning. She had held up her arms to Susan, begging to be taken. Laughing, Richard had swooped her up and begun dancing her around the kitchen to allow Susan to escape. That was the last time she had seen either of them.

She had long ago accepted that unless something extraordinary happened or unless Richard decided to contact her, she would probably never see Emma again. And now…

“My daughter,” she managed, pushing the words past the constriction in her throat.

“Ma’am?”

“My daughter was with my husband when he disappeared. I was away for the weekend, and when I got back—” There was no need to give him those details. All she wanted was what he knew about Emma. “He took her with him when he disappeared.”

Unable to afford two, they had swapped the toddler seat between their cars. It had been in Richard’s SUV that morning. And when she’d returned…

“Her safety seat was in his car,” she finished. The images of the dark water closing over the top of the SUV were back in her head, no matter how hard she tried to block them.

The sheriff’s hesitation lasted so long this time her knees went weak. She sagged against the kitchen counter, closing her eyes against the burn of her tears.

“There was an infant seat in the car, ma’am, but there was no baby in it. I told you. There was nobody else inside your husband’s SUV when it was found. Are you sure she was—”

Her strangled sob interrupted his question. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been over this a dozen times with the police. Richard, the SUV, the infant seat and Emma had all been missing when she’d returned to Atlanta the following Monday.

“Is there someone there with you, Mrs. Kaiser? Or someone you could call?”

It was concern she heard in the deep voice this time. In spite of the emotional stoicism she’d adopted to deal with the law enforcement community through the years, his sympathy was her undoing. Still holding the phone, Susan slid down the side of the kitchen cabinets until she was on the floor. Sobs, finally unleashed again after all these years, shook her body.

Richard was dead. He had been dead for seven years, making a lie of all the times she had told herself that no matter what else he might be guilty of, Richard had genuinely loved Emma. Loved her enough to give up his life for her. The thought that, no matter what happened, he would take care of their baby was all that had kept her sane.

Now she knew that wherever Emma was, there was no one of her own to look after her. And there had been no one during all those long years she had prayed and longed for her daughter.

WHEN SUSAN MET Sheriff Adams the following day, she realized immediately that he was older than she had pictured him during their conversation. She estimated now that he must be in his mid or maybe even late forties.

His face bore the perpetual tan of someone who virtually lived outdoors, however, so her guess could be off by several years. His skin’s darkness was unrelieved except for the pale green eyes and the delicate web of small white lines radiating from their corners. Even now, despite the bright sunshine of the October afternoon, he wore neither hat nor sunglasses.

His features were angular, matching the rangy body. The slight paunch around his midsection gave additional evidence for her estimate of his age, although he wore his fading blond hair longer than she would have expected from the sheriff of such a rural community. Or maybe that was because it was still the style here rather than any attempt to appear younger.

As soon as she’d arrived in Linton, he had taken her in his squad car out to the site where the SUV had been found. The old two-lane bridge across the narrow river stood side by side with a wood-and-metal railroad trestle.

According to the sheriff, it had been a train derailment that had led to the discovery of Richard’s body. During their efforts to recover the railcars that had gone into the river, the salvage company had stumbled across the submerged SUV.

“Gave that crew a shock, I can tell you.” His eyes were focused on the cranes, still parked on the riverbank below. Since it was Friday afternoon, they were idle.

“And they’re the ones who pulled the car out?”

“Thought it was a junker. Some folks just as soon roll ’em into the river or push ’em over a ravine as take ’em to the junkyard. You know how people are.”

Apparently realizing how far off the subject of her husband’s death that had taken him, the sheriff turned from his contemplation of the equipment to look at her.

“Sorry. That ain’t got nothing to do with why we’re here.”

“And that’s when they discovered his body?” she asked, ignoring his attempted apology.

“They called the office, and we notified the coroner.”

“And no one found any evidence Emma had been in the car?”

“Nothing but that infant seat. Like I told you, there was no second body, Ms. Chandler.”

Almost without her conscious volition Susan’s eyes returned to the slowly moving water below. There were questions she didn’t want to ask right now because she was afraid of the answers. Since Adams’s phone call, she had managed to regain control of the emotions that had momentarily escaped the long restraint she’d forced on them. She didn’t want to do anything that might put that fragile containment into jeopardy.

“Were the windows rolled up when the car was found?”

“All I can tell you is they were when I got here. The driver’s-side door was open, however.”

The men would have had to open it to find the body, she supposed, but the information made her wonder if Richard might have tried to get out. He was a good swimmer, and the current didn’t look strong enough to keep him from reaching shore. Unless he’d been too badly injured to try.

“But was it open when they pulled it out of the river?”

Adams’s mouth pursed slightly as if he were thinking about that. After a moment he shook his head.

“Don’t know. Have to confess I didn’t ask. We all knew what had happened. If you live around these parts, you know all about this place. More cars than I can count have missed that turn in the dark. No guardrail. Nothing to keep you from driving right off into the river if you misjudge the entrance. State ain’t gonna do nothing about it since they built the new bridge up on 84. Now this road don’t get enough traffic to make fixing this worth their while. It could even have been raining that night. Slick pavement. Poor visibility. Your husband a drinker?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A lot of folks who miss that turn have had a few too many, if you know what I mean.”

“Richard didn’t drink. Not to excess.”

How confident she sounded. Almost smug. And how ironic that was coming from a woman who’d had no idea her husband was planning to disappear, taking everything they owned with him. Everything including their daughter.

“The current doesn’t look very powerful.” She was still thinking about the terrible possibilities of that opened door.

The sheriff’s lips pursed again as he looked over the water. “Can be. Depends on the rain upriver. And if you’re out in the middle of the channel, it runs a lot faster. Could have been what happened that night.”

“I’m sorry?” She turned, her eyes questioning as they focused on his weathered face.

“If the door was open, I mean. Maybe the current just took her out of his hands.”

Emma. He means Emma, she realized, sickness stirring the pit of her stomach.

But if Emma had been in the car when it had gone off the bridge, she knew Richard well enough to know Emma would have been strapped into her seat. Open door or not, there was no way the current could have washed her out of those restraints.

“She would have been strapped in.”

The sheriff shrugged. “Maybe when your husband realized what was happening, he tried to get her out. Maybe he had her free and the current just took her—”

“No,” Susan said.

The single syllable was loud in the afternoon stillness. The scenario he had just suggested wasn’t an idea she was willing to entertain. Not yet.

Adams had already admitted that he didn’t know if the door had been open when the car was pulled from the water. And if it had been, then why hadn’t Richard, an experienced swimmer, gotten out of the car and swum to safety.

Because he was trying to locate his baby in that dark, rushing water? Struggling to unfasten straps he couldn’t see? Trying desperately to get them both to safety?

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Ms. Chandler. I’ll be glad to find out about the doors and the windows. Did you ever think that maybe your husband left your daughter in the care of a relative or some friends? Maybe she wasn’t with him at all when he come down here.”

Did you ever think…

There was literally no one she hadn’t questioned about that possibility. No relative or mutual acquaintance that she had been aware of—and some she hadn’t been aware of until after Richard’s disappearance—that she hadn’t asked about Emma. And about Richard, of course.

None of them had professed any knowledge of their whereabouts. And despite her desperate need for information, there had not been one of them she’d doubted. Now she knew they’d been telling the truth. Richard had contacted no one in the weeks after his disappearance because he had been here, hidden by the waters of this narrow, marshy river.

“When will they be back?”

“Ma’am?”

“The people those belong to.” She tilted her chin toward the cranes on the bank below. “Will they be back out here on Monday?”

“I’m not sure what their schedule is. I can call the main office of Southern Georgia first thing Monday morning. See if I can talk to the men who were here that day. I’ll let you know what they say as soon as I find out. You do understand that nobody had any idea at the time that we ought to be looking for your daughter.”

There should have been a cross-reference to Emma in the national database of missing persons the sheriff had searched for Richard’s name. Apparently that had been another bureaucratic screwup. There had been plenty of those.

Emma had always been listed as an abducted child. Susan had been advised that was the best way to draw attention to her case. Not that she had ever been able to tell it had made any difference. After all, Emma was with her father. And Susan, unaware at that time of how the system worked, had admitted that Richard had no history of mistreating their daughter.

That was the truth, of course, as well as what had kept her sane through the years. But it had lowered the urgency with which the various agencies had responded to her pleas for help.

“I’d like to talk to those men myself, if you don’t mind,” she said, thinking of all the other “comforting” platitudes she’d listened to during those first few months.

There was too much at stake to trust that another set of law enforcement officials would do everything in their power to find her baby. She was no longer as naive as she had once been.

She had been given another chance to find Emma. A chance to right all the things she had done wrong seven years ago.

“In all honesty, ma’am, I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Adams said. “First place, it’s bound to be upsetting. And those men might not tell you everything they’d be willing to say to somebody who’s not as…emotionally involved in this.”

“Is there a motel nearby?” she asked, ignoring his advice.

That was something else she had done the first time. Listened to all the people who were supposed to know the best thing to do. And look where it had gotten her.

“A motel?”

She couldn’t remember seeing any near the exit to Linton. It seemed there had been only miles and miles of trees along both sides of the interstate, their leaves just beginning to be tinged with color from the fall nights.

“Somewhere I can stay while I’m in town.”

The green eyes widened in surprise, exposing the network of lines at their corners. “Plenty of motels in Pascagoula.”

Which was more than sixty miles away. Despite the fact that most of the distance was state highway and interstate, she didn’t want to make that commute every day. And until she found out what had happened to Emma…

“I mean here. Somewhere I can stay in Linton.”

Somewhere close enough that she could talk to anyone who might have encountered Richard—and please, dear God, encountered Emma—while they were here.

“No motels around here. We had a hotel at one time, but—” The sheriff stopped abruptly, his lips still slightly parted.

“What is it?”

“I was gonna say that the hotel closed due to lack of business once the state highway opened up, but then I remembered Miz Lorena’s.”

“Miz Lorena?” The title the sheriff had used was the old-fashioned Southern one that had nothing to do with women’s rights and a great deal to do with age and respect.

“Miz Lorena Bedford. Got a big ole house a few miles outside the city limits. Tried to make it into one of those bed-and-breakfast places, aiming to get the Yankees heading to the Gulf and the casinos. Once that stretch of the four-lane opened, there wasn’t enough traffic on the Linton cutoff for her to make a go of it. Same thing that happened to the hotel. That’s what made me think of her place.”

“And you think she might rent me a room?”

The sheriff shrugged, looking back down on the river. “Got no idea how she’d take to the idea, but she’s got the space and the bathrooms. Had ’em put in special for all those guests that didn’t show up. It’s worth a try. I can tell you how to get out there. You tell Miz Lorena what you’re here for, and I doubt she’s gonna turn you down.”

Susan nodded, taking a last look at the sluggish current below. She wasn’t going to leave Linton until she had some answers. Maybe that determination was simply a recognition that this place represented her last chance of finding Emma, but in her heart—the one that had been frozen for the last seven years—there was again a delicate flame of hope.




CHAPTER TWO


DESPITE THE SHERIFF’S repeated reference to Lorena Bedford’s “big ole house,” Susan’s first sight of it through the trees was a shock. Classic Greek Revival in style, its graceful columns soared from the porch to the roof of the second story. The structure was situated at the end of a long, unpaved driveway, bordered by two perfectly spaced rows of oaks, strands of picturesque Spanish moss hanging from their low branches.

She slowed the car as she made the turn onto the property. The rays of the dying sun touched the white paint with gold and shimmered off the glass of the front windows. The house looked like some Hollywood producer’s fantasy of the antebellum South.

As she approached, reality was less kind. There were areas of flecked paint on the Doric columns, and the side veranda was devoid of furniture. The foundation plantings were neatly trimmed, however, and the grass, although not closely mown, was still, despite the season, thick and green.

The driveway circled around a garden, which had been planted directly in front of the steps leading up to the front door. A few of the small old-fashioned roses that comprised most of it were, surprisingly, still in bloom.

She pulled her car parallel to the steps and shut off the engine. Before she got out, she sat a moment in the twilight stillness. The murmur of insects could be heard from the surrounding woods. There were no other sounds. No traffic out on the two-lane she’d followed here. Not even the small-town noises she’d been aware of in the hours she’d spent in Linton.

She opened her door, stepping out again into the heat and humidity. She had discarded the jacket to her navy linen suit before she and Adams had gone down to the river. She thought about retrieving it from the back seat and then decided the temperature should preclude any such attempt at formality.

She brushed her hands over the wrinkles on the front of her skirt, deciding that, too, was a lost cause. Miz Lorena would just have to take her—or leave her—as she was.

Her keys still in the ignition, she walked around the front of the car and climbed the steps. Her heels echoed as she crossed the wooden boards of the porch.

The front door was open, probably as a concession to the late-afternoon heat. She tapped on the molding of the screen door, the sound echoing down the inside hallway she could see only dimly. She waited, politely looking at the roses beyond her car rather than watching for someone to answer her knock.

After a few moments without any response, she turned back to the door. She could hear no movement from inside the house. She cupped the outside of her hand against the screen, peering in under her arched palm.

Was it possible no one was home, despite the open door? Of course, the screen might be latched. Maybe this far out of town that was considered protection enough against intruders. She touched its frame, pulling the door toward her just enough to determine that it wasn’t fastened.

She let the screen slip back into place and again tapped on its molding. Although she tried to apply more force than before, the resulting sound didn’t seem appreciably louder.

This time she watched the hallway as she waited. Again there was no response.

She should have phoned before she drove out. The sheriff hadn’t suggested that, and, as he apparently had, she’d assumed the old woman would be home.

Despite the fact that the hotel in town had closed, she had noticed a café on the square. She could drive back into Linton, look up the Bedford number and place a call from there. Actually, she would probably be wise to have dinner in town, she realized. Even if Miz Lorena agreed to rent her a room, the sheriff hadn’t said she would also be willing to provide meals.

Decision made, Susan crossed the porch and descended the front steps. Her hand had already closed around the handle to the car door when a creak announced the opening of the screen.

Her eyes were drawn back to the porch. Since her arrival the daylight had faded enough that, under the overhang of the second-floor balcony, the area was now as dark as the interior hallway had been. She could see a figure in the open doorway, but little else.

“Mrs. Bedford?”

“She’s not here.” The voice was masculine, its accent not local, and its tone decidedly unwelcoming.

“Could you tell me when she’ll be back?”

The pause after her question stretched far past politeness. So much for Southern hospitality.

“That depends on who wants to know.”

Susan controlled a spurt of anger at the man’s rudeness, acknowledging most of that was due to emotional exhaustion rather than his treatment of her request. After all, she’d shown up here without so much as a phone call asking permission.

Mrs. Bedford’s house was no longer a commercial establishment. It was someone’s home. And she needed a favor from the owner. Whoever this was, he might be able to exert some influence in that direction.

“My name is Susan Chandler.” She tried to make her voice as pleasant as possible, considering the circumstances. As she talked, she walked back around the front of the car and headed toward the steps. “I had hoped Mrs. Bedford might rent me a room for a few days. I’m aware she’s no longer in business—”

“Then why ask to rent a room?”

He had apparently turned on a light in the front of the house as he’d come to the door. His body was silhouetted against its glow, wide shoulders almost filling the frame.

Looking up at him from the foot of the steps, Susan’s impression was that he was also taller than average. In spite of the width of his shoulders, his torso narrowed to a lean waist and slim hips. She could still see nothing of his face.

“Because Sheriff Adams suggested I ask her. It’s…”

She let the sentence trail. She might have been willing to try and explain her compulsion to stay in town to another woman, but something about this man’s attitude made her doubt he would sympathize with anything she might say.

“It’s what?”

“Are you a relative of Mrs. Bedford’s? Or…”

A guest? The yardman? As she tried to settle on a second option, he made the process unnecessary.

“You seem to have a proclivity for unfinished sentences.”

Obviously not the hired help. Not unless handymen were better educated down here than she was accustomed to. And just as obviously determined to be rude.

“My husband’s body was pulled from the river here two days ago,” she said, deciding she had nothing to lose by a matching bluntness. “I need a place to stay until the coroner can tell me how he ended up there.”

The silence stretched longer this time. In the few minutes she’d been here, the night creatures had joined the insect chorus, the combined noises the only sound for several seconds.

“I’m Jeb Bedford. Lorena is my great-aunt,” he said. “At the moment I’m also her guest—a paying one, in case you were wondering.”

She hadn’t been. She didn’t give a damn about whatever arrangements he had with Lorena Bedford.

Actually, she was beginning not to give a damn about any of this. The commute back and forth to Pascagoula was becoming more appealing by the second.

“Lorena’s gone to the monthly fellowship supper at the church. Judging by previous ones, she should be back in less than an hour.” His tone had changed. Still not welcoming, it didn’t contain the edge of sarcasm. “If you’d like to wait.”

Would she? A better question might be whether there would be any point. After all, she still didn’t know that Mrs. Bedford would rent her a room.

“Actually…” she began, and then hesitated, unwilling to burn any bridges. Of course, she also didn’t want to be reminded of her so-called proclivity for unfinished sentences. “I’d rather not wait if she’s likely to turn me down. If I’m going to have to try to find a room in Pascagoula on a Friday night, I should probably get started in that direction now.”

“Lorena’s not going to turn you down. Not…under the circumstances. However, you might want to see the accommodations before you decide. What some people consider quaintly charming, others view as not having all the modern conveniences. All the rooms have private baths. And despite the area’s reputation, those are inside the house.” There was a hint of amusement or self-deprecation in that, but no sarcasm. “No coffeepots or microwaves, but with Lorena around you aren’t likely to need either. She enjoys waiting on people.”

Which sounded more inviting right now than he could probably imagine.

“The beds have feather mattresses,” he went on. “Not orthopedically sound perhaps, but you soon get used to them.”

He certainly seemed to have changed his tune. She hadn’t intended to play the grieving widow, but he’d driven her to it. Given the results, right now she couldn’t regret that she had.

“She should hire you for PR. You’re quite a salesman.”

“I couldn’t sell ice in hell, but frankly Lorena can use the money. If you’re going to spend it somewhere, it might as well be with her. Do you want the grand tour or not?”

The abrasiveness was back. For some reason her remark, intended to be humorous, hadn’t had the desired effect. So much for trying to mend fences.

“With you as guide?” she couldn’t refrain from asking.

Something of her irritation must have come through in the question. He responded in kind.

“Since I’m all that’s available. Take it or leave it.”

Her inclination was to tell this arrogant jackass what he could do with his aunt’s room. Only the knowledge that she would be cutting off her own nose prevented her from getting back into her car and heading toward the interstate.

“Lead the way,” she said, stepping onto the bottom step.

The screen door creaked again. She glanced up in time to watch him step back into the hallway. Although she was aware there was something awkward about the movement, it was not until he was inside and illuminated by the overhead chandelier that she understood what. He moved a couple of steps back in order to allow her to enter, heavily favoring his left leg.

Despite the fact she had continued to climb the steps as if nothing had happened, an unfamiliar emotion stirred in the pit of her stomach. Guilt, perhaps, that she’d returned his rudeness with her own? Embarrassment? Pity?

As he held the screen door for her to enter, she kept her eyes averted, examining the hallway instead of looking directly at him. The floor was of some dark wood that had been fashioned into narrow, irregular planks. It was probably a dozen feet wide and stretched into the darkness at the back of the house.

Pocket doors opened onto a formal parlor on one side and a dining room on the other. Both were furnished in keeping with the age of the house. In the sitting room an old pianoforte sat in the corner. Several pieces of sheet music were scattered on its stand and on the upholstered bench.

“When Lorena operated the house as a bed-and-breakfast, all the downstairs rooms were available for the use of the guests,” her guide said. “I’m sure that will still be the case.”

With his comment, there was no way Susan could avoid looking at him. She turned, prepared to make some politely conventional reply. All of them, instilled in her brain since childhood, flew out of her head.

She wasn’t sure what she had expected Mrs. Bedford’s great-nephew to look like, but certainly nothing like this. His close-cropped hair was so black the chandelier over their heads created no highlights in its midnight depths. In contrast, his eyes were a deep, clear blue. Black Irish, her grandmother would have said. Given the strong Celtic heritage of most of the South’s population, in this case she would probably have been right.

His skin was almost as darkly tanned as the sheriff’s. It didn’t have the same weathered texture, but then this man was probably a decade or so younger. Although Jeb Bedford wasn’t handsome in any conventional sense of the word, no woman would ever have overlooked him in a crowd.

She suddenly became aware that her lips had parted to reply to what he’d said, but no words had yet emerged. She was simply staring at him, stupidly open-mouthed.

“That’s nice,” she managed.

He was probably used to having this effect on women, she thought with a trace of disgust. She, however, wasn’t accustomed to reacting to a man in this way. Not to any man. And certainly not in this situation.

She owed no loyalty to Richard, of course. He was the one who had walked away from their marriage. The sense of guilt her attraction to this man’s rugged good looks produced was because she had something far more important to concentrate on right now—her desperate need to find out what had happened to Emma.

“The guest rooms are upstairs.”

He tilted his head down the hall to where a narrow staircase climbed to the second floor. It was uncarpeted, its wooden treads visibly worn from the passage of thousands of feet going up and down them through the years.

“How old is the house?” she asked, more as an attempt to get back on some normal footing with him than because she had any real interest in its history.

He had already taken a step forward, but at her question he turned, looking back at her over his shoulder. “It was built in 1852. It’s been in the hands of the family ever since. When Lorena dies…” He shrugged a dismissal.

“But surely there’s someone—”

“My grandfather and Lorena were joint heirs to the property. Now that he’s dead, there is no one else.”

“Perhaps your father…” He was right, she realized. She did have a proclivity for not finishing sentences, maybe because she always seemed to be stating the obvious.

“My father died two years ago. He and my mother were divorced several years before that. Believe me, she wouldn’t have anything to do with this place. Or with the Bedfords.”

This time she avoided the obvious reply. Whether or not he chose to sell the house or to let it go to rack and ruin when his great-aunt died was none of her business. She wasn’t even sure why she had bothered to pursue what he’d said. Maybe to postpone the moment she would have to follow his limping progress up the stairs.

“I…I really don’t need to see the room,” she stammered. “I’m sure it’s fine. After all, from what the sheriff told me, there isn’t any other accommodation near town.”

The blue eyes told her that he knew exactly what she was thinking. They held on her face long enough that she felt color rise along her throat.

“You have a bag?” he asked, finally breaking the standoff.

Ridiculously, for a second or two she didn’t know what he was talking about. “It’s in the car.”

“Then if you’re going to take the room, I might as well get it before I show you up. Keys?”

Whatever she had seen in his eyes when she’d attempted to keep him from having to climb those stairs was back. In force. Challenging her to make another excuse.

That wasn’t a mistake she would make again. Whatever was wrong with his leg, he obviously didn’t want her concern.

And in all honesty, despite the limp, he looked like someone who was well able to take care of himself. Someone who was accustomed to doing that.

“They’re in the ignition. My suitcase is in the trunk.”

For an instant there was a gleam of something that looked like approval in his eyes. Whatever the emotion, it was quickly masked by a downward sweep of coal-black lashes. They weren’t long, but both their thickness and their proximity to the blue irises made them noticeable.

Without another word, he started down the hall toward the front door. As he passed her, Susan pretended to look up the stairs as if the bit of the second story she could see from this vantage point was so interesting she couldn’t pull her eyes away. Then, drawn by a compulsion she didn’t pretend to understand, she turned, watching him limp toward the door.

She’d been right about the breadth of his shoulders. The damp material of the olive-drab T-shirt he wore stretched tautly across them, revealing the contoured muscles of his upper back. The shirt was tucked into a pair of faded black sweatpants.

Despite whatever was wrong with his leg, he looked like an athlete. She wondered if he might even have been working out when she’d disturbed him. That would explain the V of moisture at the neck of his shirt as well as the slight color along his cheekbone and dew of perspiration she’d put down to the heat.

“Only one?”

Startled, she looked up from her contemplation of the play of muscle in his back to find him looking at her over his shoulder, waiting for an answer before he opened the screen door. It must have been obvious that she’d been watching him.

He seemed amused by her scrutiny rather than annoyed. For the first time the hard line of his mouth was relaxed.

“Just the one.”

“First room on the right,” he said. “I’ll bring the suitcase up, but you don’t have to wait.”

She wasn’t sure why, but the instructions felt like a reprieve. At least a concession. As if she had just passed some kind of test and earned a grudging acceptance.

“Thank you.”

“You want me to move your car around back?”

She hesitated, wondering if she’d missed a sign indicating that’s where guests were supposed to park.

“Don’t worry,” he said when she didn’t answer immediately. “As long as it’s an automatic, I shouldn’t be able to do too much damage.”

“I’d be very grateful,” she said, ignoring the attempt to intimidate her with the blatant reminder of his disability. “And it is an automatic. I never learned to drive a stick.”

There was a slight upward movement at one corner of his mouth. “Somehow I was sure you hadn’t.”

She didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t matter. Without giving her a chance at a parting shot, he allowed the screen door to slam behind him, leaving her alone in the wide hall. She drew an unsteady breath, wondering if she had made a mistake in coming out here.

She had sworn she would never trust officialdom again, and yet, because of what the sheriff had told her, she was in an isolated house with a rude stranger who carried an outsized chip on his shoulder. And she had just agreed to rent, sight unseen, a room in that house, never having met her hostess.

If the accommodations were truly awful, she could always leave in the morning. She’d been vague enough about her intentions to allow for that.

At least then she wouldn’t have to pretend she wasn’t aware of the absolute masculinity of the man who had gone out to retrieve her luggage. Sexual awareness this potent was a feeling she’d almost forgotten. And one she wasn’t sure she was ready to experience again. Especially not now.

She turned, looking up the narrow stairs once more. Whatever the room at the top of them was like, it was hers for the night. Everything would probably look different in the morning. As for right now…

Right now she needed a hot shower and a bed with clean sheets, even if it had a feather mattress. If Lorena Bedford’s house could provide either of those, she’d deal with everything else. Including Miz Lorena’s arrogant nephew.




CHAPTER THREE


“MY GOODNESS,” Lorena said. “I’d been thinking about that poor man’s family. Wondering how they must feel to finally know what happened to him. I knew some of them would come to Linton, but I never dreamed they might end up staying here. I’ll have to thank Wayne the next time I’m in town. What’s she like?”

Jeb wasn’t sure his impression would be the kind of information his aunt was looking for. Since he’d been wounded, his reaction to people was too frequently measured by their response to his physical condition. It was a fault he was aware of, but unable to entirely suppress.

When he had turned around tonight and found Susan Chandler watching him, resentment that his limp now seemed to be the most interesting thing about him had resurfaced. In the past, before Iraq, his relationships with women had been based on any number of things: mutual sexual attraction, shared interests, even simple proximity. Now he seemed to be defined by only one thing.

He wasn’t sure at what point during the course of his rehabilitation he’d become aware of that. Certainly not in the beginning. He’d been too focused on his own adjustment to his new physical limitations to notice how others reacted to them.

Maybe it had been coming back to Linton, where he’d spent a large part of his adolescence, that had made him aware of how differently the people he’d known then treated him now. Some were openly curious, which he’d been surprised to discover didn’t bother him. Others pretended not to notice, as Mrs. Chandler had done tonight when he’d opened the door for her.

Some—and those were the ones he detested—were determined to be “helpful.” There was nothing more certain to set his teeth on edge than solicitude. Especially from a woman to whom he was physically attracted.

In that respect, he would have to give his great-aunt’s guest credit. In a matter of minutes, she had been able to conceal, if not destroy, any tendency to try to protect him. She hadn’t wanted him to climb the stairs to show her the room, which had been a strike against her. She hadn’t tried to circumvent his determination to retrieve her suitcase or move her car, however, and thank God she hadn’t met him halfway up the stairs to take her bag from him. Despite that ridiculous announcement that she didn’t need to see the room she was about to rent, he grudgingly gave her full marks for the rest.

“Exhausted,” he said aloud in answer to Lorena’s question. “And obviously still stunned.”

“Why, I should say so. Bless her heart. What a thing to have happened. I swear they ought to close that bridge, as many people as have gone off into the river through the years.”

“Maybe between the train wreck and this, they will.”

He was leaning against the kitchen counter watching Lorena take things out of the refrigerator. Although she was almost ninety, she moved exactly as she had when he’d spent those long-ago summers down here. Her motions were quick, almost birdlike, an impression that was magnified by her size and her thinness.

“I didn’t promise her supper,” he said when she pulled a loaf of homemade bread out of the bread box and began unwrapping it. “Actually, I didn’t promise her anything but the use of the room. You don’t have to fix her a meal.”

“You think she’s already eaten?” Gnarled fingers paused over the loaf she had baked this morning, she looked up at him, faded blue eyes questioning.

“I doubt it,” he said, reluctant to add hunger to the many problems Susan Chandler faced. “She’s probably used to eating later than we do.”

Most nights Lorena had supper on the table by six. Of course, since they both began the day shortly after five, Jeb wasn’t complaining. The timing had been an adjustment, however. As he imagined it would be for Mrs. Chandler.

“From Atlanta, you say?”

“That’s what her tag says.”

“That poor woman.” Lorena’s eyes and hands had returned to her task. “I can’t even imagine what she must be feeling.”

“According to the paper, her husband’s car had been submerged for years. She’s had a long time to come to terms with his disappearance.”

Maybe this was only a welcome closure for something she had dealt with long ago.

“Still…” Lorena said. “I mean she was married to the man. She must have loved him. And then…I guess he just disappeared, and she never knew what happened to him. It breaks my heart to think about that.”

Jeb watched as she laid the two thick slices she’d cut off the loaf on a plate she had taken from the cabinet. After she’d spread mayonnaise thickly on both, she began piling ham on one.

“Did you like her?”

His great-aunt’s question caught him off guard. For one thing, he wasn’t sure whether he had or not. There was no denying that he’d found her attractive. And he had also admired her. Despite the day she’d had, she hadn’t backed down when he’d challenged her about the car. And even as much as she obviously wanted the room, she hadn’t been willing to cater to his rudeness. More pluses than minuses.

“Well enough to offer her a room.”

“You knew I’d want you to do that,” Lorena said.

“Still, I wouldn’t have. Not unless I thought she was someone we could share the place with. At least for the night.”

“Is that all she’s staying?” Lorena looked up from the act of slipping a slice of tomato onto the ham. “Seems like it would take longer than that to work out the arrangements.”

“Actually, I don’t know how long she’ll be in town. We didn’t discuss it in detail. And she may decide she wants something more modern after tonight.”

“Maybe I can convince her to stay,” Lorena said, fitting the second piece of bread on top. “I think hot tea, don’t you? I’ve got some chamomile. That should help her sleep.”

“Judging by her eyes—” Jeb began and then stopped.

He’d been about to say that she would be tired enough to sleep without any of his aunt’s herbal remedies. When he remembered what Susan Chandler had been through today, he thought she might appreciate something to help remove the images that must be in her mind.

“What about her eyes?”

“Like I said. She looked exhausted. More emotionally than anything else, maybe, but…I think she’d like that tea.”

His great-aunt reached over and turned the gas on beneath the kettle that always sat in the exact same place on the back of the stove. “Did you show her where the extra quilts are? There’s supposed to be a cold snap, either tomorrow or Sunday.”

“Why don’t you wait until you find out whether she’ll be staying that long before you go worrying about extra cover. She’ll be fine tonight.”

“Maybe I should spoon up some of that peach cobbler.”

“You don’t even know if she’s eaten, Lorena. Why don’t you ask her about dessert before you carry it up?”

The kettle began to whistle, putting an end to his attempt to rein in his great-aunt’s innate hospitality. There was some part of him that welcomed the idea that Susan Chandler’s stay in the house would end after tonight. Another part admitted a degree of interest in her plans that went beyond casual curiosity. She was an extremely attractive woman. Woman being the operative word. At thirty-five, Jeb wasn’t interested in someone who thought JFK referred only to an airport.

Susan Chandler was probably a few years younger than he. Late twenties, early thirties, maybe. Her fair skin showed little signs of aging, but with that dark auburn hair, she would have had no choice but to stay out of the sun.

Physically, she wasn’t the type he was normally attracted to, both taller and thinner than he preferred. Even as that negative assessment formed, he rejected it.

Given his profession, he’d never been interested in long-term relationships. He had judged women he became involved with on their willingness to accept that. As well as on their physical attributes, he admitted. Something he wasn’t particularly proud of. Not considering his present situation.

Despite Susan Chandler’s ability to mask her initial feeling of pity, he’d been aware of it. And the look in her eyes wasn’t one he wanted to see in a woman he was attracted to.

“There now,” Lorena said, stepping back to admire the tray she’d prepared. “What do you think?”

“I think she’s damn lucky Wayne Adams sent her here.”

“Don’t you curse, Jubal Bedford,” Lorena scolded, although it was obvious the compliment pleased her. “Remember, you’re an officer and a gentleman.”

So far, he thought. So far.

“IT’S A BED-AND-BREAKFAST on the outskirts of Linton,” Susan said into her cell phone. “There isn’t a motel around here, but this will do for the time being.”

“Are you sure you don’t want Dave to come down?” her sister asked. “You know he’s more than willing.”

“Dave’s place is there with you, taking care of my very precious nephew.”

After years of trying, including more expensive in vitro attempts than they could afford, Charlotte had finally conceived. Although the pregnancy had been difficult, she was only a couple of weeks away from delivery now. And no one, including her doctor, believed she would go that long.

“I just hate to think of you doing all that by yourself.”

“I’m fine. Just tired. A little overwhelmed with the thought of the possibilities.”

Although she and Charlotte had already discussed the fact that Emma had not been in the car when it was found, Susan hadn’t shared the information about the open door. She had decided there was no point in doing that until the sheriff had had time to confirm whether it had been open when the crane had pulled the SUV from the river.

“And you really think Emma might still be in that town?”

“All I know is that for some reason Richard was here. I need to know what he was doing in such an out-of-the-way area. That’s one thing I need to find out. And maybe then…” She hesitated. “Maybe if someone here remembers seeing him, then—”

“They might have seen Emma, too,” Charlotte said softly.

“She has to be somewhere. God knows I’ve already asked everyone any of us ever knew and gotten nowhere.”

“Well, you keep us informed, you hear? If you don’t call me every day, I swear I’m going to send Dave down there whether you like it or not. And you take care of yourself.”

“I will. You, too. Take care of you and my sweet Davey.”

“He’s fine. We’re both going to be fine. I can feel it,” Charlotte said with a laugh. “Everybody’s so uptight about all this, and I swear, Suz, I’m gonna breeze right through this delivery and pop this baby out quicker than anyone ever has before. Maybe I don’t get them or carry them worth a damn, but I’m gonna be spectacular at birthing them.”

At the joy and confidence in her sister’s voice, tears welled in Susan’s eyes. “I know you will. I’m counting on you, sweetie. We all are.”

“You call me, you hear?”

“I will. Don’t worry.”

“Any news, good or bad, I want to know. Don’t you two try to protect me. I need to know everything.”

“No, I won’t,” Susan promised, “but…” She hesitated again, wondering if this was something she could share, even with someone she was so close to.

“Suz? You still there?”

“You know how you said you knew the delivery would go well?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s the way I feel, Charlotte. She’s here. I know it. I couldn’t tell you how I know that to save my life, but I do.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line before her sister’s voice, filled with love and concern, came across it. “Honey, don’t you let this break your heart. You can’t. Not again. You just take care of you. Try not to get your hopes up too much. There’s always the possibility…”

Her sister’s warning faded, but the unspoken message was clear. Just because Richard’s body had been found didn’t mean Emma was here. Or even that she was still alive. Most people would argue that the discovery of her father’s body would indicate exactly the opposite.

“I know, but…I have to try.”

“I know. Just remember that all kinds of things could have happened. Seven years is a very long time.”

An eternity in the life of a child. In Emma’s case, the only part of it that she would remember. Whatever had happened during those first fourteen months would have been long forgotten. All the scraps of memory Susan had cherished would mean nothing to her daughter.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Susan said, unwilling to let her sister’s warning interfere with her surety. “Sleep tight.”

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

They must have said the same silly rhyme thousands of nights, lying side by side in their twin beds. Tonight, with so much riding on the events of the next few days—for both of them—the familiar words were comforting, providing the same web of love and protection Charlotte and David would give their son from the instant of his birth. The kind that unless Susan found her, she could never be sure that Emma had ever known at all.

“I HOPE JEB MADE YOU welcome. He can sometimes be…a little off-putting.”

Susan wasn’t sure she’d ever heard the term before, but it was appropriate. Lorena, however, had proved to be as warm and welcoming as her great-nephew had been “off-putting.”

“Jeb? Is that your nephew?”

“Great-nephew. And it’s not really Jeb. It’s Jubal. Jubal Early Bedford the Fourth. We’d run out of nicknames by then, so they just used his initials.”

However he’d acquired the name Jeb, Susan thought, it fit. As hard and totally masculine as he had been.

“I know I should have called before I came out.”

Susan smiled her thanks as she accepted the tray the old woman had brought up to her. Although it contained only a sandwich and a cup of tea, the bread was obviously homemade and the piece of ham large enough to droop out over the bottom crust. At the sight, Susan’s mouth watered, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten anything since the cereal bar she’d grabbed from her pantry this morning.

“You want some cobbler to go with that?” Lorena asked as she bustled over to turn back the covers on the bed. “I canned the peaches myself. Not as good as they were this summer, of course, but pretty good for October, I promise you.”

“This is fine, Mrs. Bedford. I don’t expect you to feed me, too.”

“Lorena. You call me Lorena. Everybody does. And as far out as we are, you’ll find it convenient to take your meals with us. I have to cook for Jeb anyway. There’s always plenty.”

The house was less than five miles from town, but apparently to Lorena that seemed a distance one should find onerous to travel for meals. Susan suspected she would find it convenient to eat some of her meals here.

The thought of sharing a table with Jeb Bedford was a bit intimidating, however. That was the second time she had used that word in conjunction with Mrs. Bedford’s great-nephew. Apparently his tactics tonight had been successful. He would probably be pleased to know that.

“Has he been living with you long?”

“Jeb? Since he was released from Walter Reed. I’m glad to have him, of course. Even if some days we don’t say two words to one another, it’s nice to know there’s another soul in the house. You know what they say about having a man about the house? All those things I used to have to find someone in town to do for me, the yard work and such, Jeb does without me even having to ask him. Not that I would have asked him—”

The old woman stopped, putting the arthritis-twisted fingers of both hands over her lips. When she removed them, she smiled at Susan.

“You’d think I’d learn, wouldn’t you. That’s the one topic of conversation that’s forbidden around here. What Jeb can’t do. He admits to no limitations, of course. And he can’t understand why I find it so hard to see him struggle to do things. I guess it’s his training. Some kind of secret unit. Special Forces, but I’m not supposed to tell that either. Anyway, that’s where he got that never-admit-defeat and all, but sometimes…” She shook her head, her smile fading.

“I think it’s always hard to watch those we love struggle,” Susan said. “No matter what it’s with.”

“He was just always so adept at anything physical. Not that he’s not plenty bright, too, you understand, but Jeb could do anything. I remember when he was a little boy, he was as rough-and-tumble as a child could be. Into every sport known to man. Far more than my brother, Jubal, or his father ever were.”

It was slightly disconcerting for Susan to think about the man who had answered the door tonight as a little boy. The persona he’d projected had been too blatantly masculine, even to his determination not to allow her to make any of the normal concessions because of his limp.

“Here I am, babbling on while your tea’s getting cold,” Lorena said. “It’s just so nice to have a guest again. You go on now and eat up. I didn’t mean to keep you from your meal. Folks always like to just settle in their first night.”

Susan smiled, unable to resist either the kindness or the food. She picked up the sandwich, bringing it to her mouth as the old woman crossed the suite and closed the door to the hall. As soon as she disappeared, Susan lowered the food, hunger forgotten.

Special Forces, Lorena had said. And the information fit her initial impressions of Jeb Bedford. The military-style haircut. The olive-drab T-shirt. Even his arrogance.

He was old enough, maybe midthirties, that he must have been a career soldier. And an officer, of course. There was no logical reason for her certainty about that, nothing except the indefinable air of being in command that had been obvious even in the few minutes she’d spent with him.

And it had been only minutes. She had no idea why Jeb Bedford had made such an impression. He had been outright rude, at least until she had told him why she was here. Apparently, although he clearly rejected any sympathy for himself, he wasn’t incapable of feeling it for others.

She attempted to put Lorena’s great-nephew from her mind, lifting the sandwich again. This time she took a bite, savoring the salt-smoke flavor of country ham, perfectly complemented by mayonnaise and the yeasty bread.

She ate half of it before she stopped to taste her tea and realized she hadn’t asked if it was decaf. Tonight it wouldn’t matter. Once she lay down on that feather mattress, she’d be asleep in a matter of minutes. Something devotedly to be wished for, given the events of the last few days.

This afternoon she had seen the river that had taken Richard’s life. No longer were the images of his death imaginary as they had been during the last forty-eight hours. She had been to the place where he’d died. Smelled the miasma of that muddy, slow-moving water. And she would never be able to forget any of it.

She banished those images, determined not to think about them anymore. Tonight she would finish her sandwich and drink her tea and then climb between the lavender-scented sheets her hostess had already turned back.

And then tomorrow she would set about finding Emma.




CHAPTER FOUR


JEB UNSTRAPPED the weighted belt from his ankle and tossed it on the stone floor, waiting for the familiar agony to subside. Damaged muscles still trembling in the aftermath of exertion, he picked up the towel that he’d draped across his waist and used it to wipe sweat from his eyes.

Despite the warnings of Dr. Duncan McKey, the rehabilitation genius at Southeastern Rehab whom he’d come down here to work with, he had increased all the weights this morning as he’d gone through the routine he did twice a day. And he knew he would pay for that senseless bit of bravado.

In spite of McKey’s continued encouragement, however, Jeb hadn’t been able to detect any improvement either in strength or flexibility during his last few sessions. With the medical board’s reevaluation in a few days, he desperately needed to believe there would be.

Although McKey had warned him that overdoing could be as harmful to his progress as slacking off, Jeb had taken matters into his own hands. If he wasn’t able to demonstrate progress this time, he wasn’t sure the Army would give him another shot. After all, he had just about used up the special leave he’d been granted. And the military experts had been skeptical from the first, given the extent of his injuries, that he could get back into the kind of shape necessary to resume his duties with Combat Applications Group, the elite Delta Force team he’d been part of for over ten years.

Actually, he was the only one who had ever believed that was possible. With encouragement from McKey, however, he had given it his all during the six months he’d been in Mississippi.

He’d known from the first time he walked into the surgeon’s office that he’d found a kindred spirit. Between the framed degrees and awards had been an old poem Jeb had remembered reading as a child. It hadn’t made much of an impression then, but the final lines “I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul” had, at the time, seemed to reflect his own determination. And obviously McKey’s philosophy as well.

The problem was determination apparently wasn’t going to be good enough, he acknowledged bitterly, running his palm down the scar that bisected his thigh. Although that was now the most visible of the injuries he’d sustained when the land mine had exploded under his Humvee, it was the mangled foot and ankle that had defied his attempts—and those of his doctors—to regain the mobility he’d had before the injury. That was what the Army was demanding before they would consider returning him to CAG.

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand their insistence. Or accept it. He did. After all, the lives of others might one day depend on how well he was able to perform. What he couldn’t seem to accept was that no matter how hard he worked, he might not be able to change what he feared was going to happen during the upcoming review at Walter Reed.

Disgusted with how skewed his thinking had become this morning, he put the evaluation out of his mind. He wiped perspiration from his neck before he ran the towel across his hair.

From upstairs came the familiar sounds of Lorena fixing breakfast. The soft clink of china. Water churning through the ancient pipes. And no voices.

He glanced at his watch. It was only a little after six. Probably too early for their guest to be up. Which meant that if he didn’t want any further disruption to the routine he’d established since he’d been here, he should go up now and have his breakfast before she came downstairs.

He didn’t bother to analyze why he wanted to avoid Susan Chandler. All he knew was that even after he’d cut out his bedside lamp last night, certain things about their meeting had replayed over and over, stuck in his mind like the notes of some half-forgotten melody. The way the dim light of the old-fashioned chandelier had put threads of gold in her hair. The way her eyes, their irises an unusual blue-gray, held on his, determined not to look at his damaged leg.

He was doing it again, he realized. Dwelling on those few awkward minutes they’d been thrown together last night. It had been a long time since he’d been this conscious of a woman. Actually, Susan Chandler was the first woman he had reacted to this way since he’d been wounded.

Just horny, he assured himself, his mouth relaxing into a grin. And a good sign. An indication of returning normality.

In truth, she was a damn fine-looking woman. He should be worried if he wasn’t aware of her sexually—and therefore aware of how long it had been since he’d been with a woman.

There was another sound from upstairs, one he couldn’t quite identify. Head cocked, he listened with a mixture of apprehension and anticipation, but again there were no voices.

He dropped the towel, running his left hand across the top of his hair as if to groom it. Then, balancing on his right leg, he pulled his sweatpants up over the gym shorts he wore.

He could smell the biscuits as he climbed the basement stairs, his muscles still trembling from the routine. The area where he’d set up his equipment had at one time served as cold storage for things like apples and potatoes. It was always ten or fifteen degrees cooler than the rest of the house.

Lorena’s age and the steepness of the stone steps prevented her from using it anymore. Since he’d been here, the basement under the kitchen had become his domain. One he would probably retreat to more often than before if their guest spent many more nights in the house, he acknowledged.

He opened the door at the top of the stairs and stepped into the light and warmth of the kitchen. His great-aunt was standing at the stove, brushing melted butter over the tops of the biscuits she had just taken out of the oven.

“Morning,” she said without turning. Whatever frailties of aging she suffered from, Lorena’s hearing was excellent.

Despite his belief their guest wouldn’t be up yet, Jeb took time to check out the small table that stood before one of the windows. It was set, as usual, with only two places. Relief he couldn’t quite explain washed over him in a flood.

“Those smell good.” He limped over to kiss Lorena’s cheek.

“I thought this morning we’d have some of that home-cured ham Isaac brought with the eggs yesterday rather than bacon. You can’t get ham like this at the store.”

Several slices of it lay sizzling in a cast-iron skillet, its scent mingling with that of the biscuits. Underlying both was the inviting smell of coffee, which perked gently on the back of the stove. In the months he’d lived here, he had become accustomed to having it prepared this way, so that he’d finally packed away the electric coffeemaker he’d brought with him.

Using a hot pad, he picked up the pot and poured a stream of black coffee into his mug, which Lorena had already set out on the counter by the stove. He stood sipping it, watching as his aunt broke eggs into the same pan from which she’d just taken the steaming slices of ham. The bits that had stuck to the bottom were churned into the eggs as she scrambled them.

“You go on and sit down,” she ordered as she did every morning. “Drink your coffee in peace.”

They had come to an unspoken understanding shortly after he’d arrived, one that satisfied them both. Lorena had desperately wanted to wait on him. At mealtimes he let her. She would bring the platter over when everything was ready, and then she would sit down opposite him, bowing her head as she invoked the Lord to bless their food.

The first few weeks he had waited through her prayer, eyes defiantly open. After a while he’d given in to her devotion and his own upbringing, bowing his head now as a matter of course.

Carrying his coffee, he made his way to the sunlit table. It was going to be another warm day, despite the calendar.

For some reason, that reminded him of Susan Chandler. Maybe it was the memory of her crushed-linen skirt. Or the sleeveless silk blouse she had worn with it. Or how damp tendrils of hair had curled at her temples and against the back of her neck.

“I thought I’d go into town,” Lorena said right beside him, startling him out of those memories. She set the platter of eggs, ham and biscuits down and then slipped into her place. “I can’t feed a guest what we eat.”

“Why not?” he asked, putting a biscuit onto his plate.

“Not fancy enough. That was one thing the bed-and-breakfast association told me. Folks that pay good money to stay in a home expect something special when it comes to food.”

“There’s nothing more special than what you fix every day,” Jeb said, smiling up at her. The crease between her brows smoothed with the compliment. “I mean it, Lorena. You serve Mrs. Chandler what you serve me, and I guarantee you she’ll be happy as a pig in mud.” His great-aunt wouldn’t have put up with the usual description in that phrase. “Besides, she isn’t a guest in the strictest sense of the word. I don’t think she expects you to go out of your way to cater to her every whim.”

“She certainly does not.”

Hearing Susan Chandler’s voice produced a jolt of sheer physical reaction. Jeb raised his eyes to find her standing in the door of the kitchen. She was dressed less formally today in a pair of brown knit slacks and a brown-and-white striped top.

“I hope I’m not intruding,” she said apologetically. “I smelled the coffee and hoped there might be enough for me.”

“Of course you’re not intruding.” Lorena pushed her chair back to stand. “You come right over here and sit down. The eggs are still hot. I’ll pour you a fresh cup of coffee.”

“I can’t take your place,” Susan protested.

“Yes, ma’am, you sure can. I just sit here to keep Jeb company. I ate a while ago.”

It was a lie. And since he was already dreading the unpleasant meal this was apt to turn into if their guest did sit down opposite him, Jeb was tempted to call his great-aunt on it, despite knowing how much that would embarrass her.

“You go on, now,” Lorena urged, starting toward the stove where coffee still occasionally perked up into the glass button on top of the pot, although it had been removed from the burner.

“I don’t normally eat breakfast.”

Still hesitating in the doorway, Susan seemed no more eager to join him at the table than he was to have her there. In spite of his own sense of dread, Jeb was suddenly—and bitterly—conscious of the probable reason for her reluctance.

“Have a biscuit,” Lorena went on, oblivious to the tension between them. “I made that apple butter myself. Or if you’d rather have it, there’s peach preserves in the icebox. I always put the other out because that’s what Jeb likes…”

The sentence trailed as she poured a stream of steaming coffee into a cup she took from the cabinet. Finally the lack of a response made the old woman turn to face her guest, brows raised questioningly.

Jeb looked down at the breakfast he had been anticipating only minutes before. He knew he would have a hard time forcing a bite of it through the angry tightness in his throat. And that was a reaction he again couldn’t quite explain.

“Apple butter’s fine,” Susan said, bringing his gaze up.

She had started toward the chair Lorena had deserted. Her eyes touched on his for the first time this morning. Again, the same heat of sexual awareness he’d felt last night roiled through his lower body, tightening his groin.

As if she were conscious of what had just happened, Susan quickly looked away, her gaze fastening on Lorena. The old woman crossed the kitchen and set the cup at the side of the plate she had intended to eat from herself.

“There now,” she said, beaming at Susan and then at him.

For an instant, Jeb wondered if his great-aunt could possibly be matchmaking. Even Lorena, die-hard romantic that she was, must realize any effort in that direction would be highly inappropriate. Although, according to the local paper, the body they’d found in the river had been there for years, that man had been Susan Chandler’s husband.

She was again looking at him, he realized, obviously as uncomfortable with the situation as he was, but for far different reasons. Angered by that as well, he mockingly inclined his head toward his aunt’s empty chair. Susan’s eyes held his a heartbeat before, lips tight, she slipped into it.

She picked up the linen napkin and unfolded it across her lap. Lorena dipped eggs onto her plate and then a slice of ham from the platter. When she reached toward the covered basket of hot biscuits, Susan again attempted to protest.

“I’m really not very hungry.”

Jeb had tried the same argument when he’d first arrived. It was probable that the first bite of Lorena’s cooking would convince her, as it had him, that she was mistaken.

“And a biscuit,” Lorena said, continuing to draw the basket closer. “Jeb, if you’ll pass that apple butter…”

He obeyed, watching as his great-aunt placed the apple-shaped glass dish near Susan’s plate.

“Now then,” Lorena said again, stepping back, her hands crossed in front of her apron as if she had performed some sleight of hand and was waiting for her audience to respond with the proper amount of awe.

Susan looked as if she wasn’t sure what had just happened. She took a breath, deep enough that it lifted her shoulders. Then she put a biscuit on her plate, split it deftly, and began filling it with the apple butter. She glanced up, finding his eyes on her.

“My aunt and I were wondering how long you plan to be in town, Mrs. Chandler.”

Not only did he really want to know the answer to that, Jeb also knew the question would constitute polite conversation in Lorena’s eyes. Never let it be said that he hadn’t done his part to make their guest feel welcome, he thought dryly.

“I’m not sure. I suppose it depends on how long it takes for certain things to happen.”

Like getting the autopsy results? Or the accident report? If they even did one of those for something like this.

“Like what?” Lorena asked, her eyes bright with curiosity.

“Lorena,” he warned softly.

“Did I say something wrong, dear? Don’t mind me. I’m just a nosey old woman who never knows when to keep her mouth shut.”

“It’s all right. I want the medical examiner’s report, of course, but…Actually, I need to stay until I can find out what Richard was doing here.”

“In Linton?”

Susan nodded, looking from one of them to the other.

“You don’t know?” Jeb asked.

“I have no idea. I can’t imagine why he would come somewhere like this—” She stopped, conscious of how that must sound. “I don’t mean to be insulting. It’s just that Richard was very much a big-city person. He’d take the freeway even if a local route were much quicker. It was just the way he was.”

“Maybe he was visiting someone,” Lorena suggested.

“If so, I need to find out who. As far as I know, he didn’t know anyone around here.”

What the hell difference could it make why he was here? Jeb wondered. The guy had been dead for seven years.

“In the circumstances,” he said aloud, “I understand your being curious about what brought him to Linton, but…” He lifted his hands, the right still holding a biscuit, in a gesture that questioned why it could possibly matter.

“He took my baby with him that morning.”

Into the river? If that’s what she meant, her phrasing was macabre. It also didn’t make any sense, he realized quickly. The papers had mentioned only one body.

“When he left home,” Susan clarified, as if sensing his confusion. “I was out of town for the weekend, and Richard was keeping Emma. When I got back, they were both gone.”

“And you think he brought her down here?” Lorena’s tone expressed her puzzlement.

“I don’t know. All I know is the authorities have been looking for her for seven years. I’ve questioned everyone either of us ever knew. No one saw them after that weekend. So if she was with Richard…”

Then she must also have been with him when the car went off the entrance to the bridge. Jeb looked down at the cooling breakfast on his plate, trying to imagine how a mother could deal with something like that.

“Her body should have been in the car,” she went on after a moment. “And apparently, it wasn’t. So…it’s possible she’s still alive. Maybe even right here in Linton.”

It was understandable that she didn’t want to accept the death of her daughter. But after this length of time, and especially after her husband’s body had been found, it must be very hard to cling to any kind of hope.

“And you think you’ll be able to find her?” Despite Jeb’s attempt to keep the skepticism out of his question, it obviously came through.

“All I want right now,” Susan said, her voice steadier, “is to know whether or not she was with him when he got to Linton. I just want to talk to someone here who saw them.”

Without a body, maybe a witness that the child was in the car with her father would help her find closure. There didn’t seem to be any other way for that to happen now, given the time that had passed and the ultimate destination of the river.

“I can’t imagine that coming to Linton was in Richard’s plans when he left that weekend,” she went on. “Something—or someone—sent him here. If I can figure out what that was…”

The soft voice faltered. Jeb looked up to find that she was looking at him. Hoping he could supply some kind of answer? He couldn’t. After all this time, there probably was no answer.

“Truck stop, maybe,” Lorena offered. “Maybe somebody there sent him into town.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he had car trouble. Maybe he needed a part for the car.”

Susan nodded as if that made sense. Maybe it did, but to Jeb there was something wrong with his aunt helping her with this hopeless quest. It was also macabre, just as he’d thought before.

The reality, whether either of them wanted to accept it or not, was that her daughter’s body had probably been washed downriver by the current. All the other what-ifs Susan Chandler wanted to consider seemed to him only attempts to deny the inevitable. A denial he didn’t intend to be a party to.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said, pushing up from the table.

His leg had stiffened during the few minutes he’d been sitting, which would make his limp more pronounced. And why the hell should I give a rat’s ass if it does?

“Land’s sake, Jeb. You’ve hardly touched your breakfast.”

“Why don’t you take my place and keep Ms. Chandler company? I’m not really all that hungry this morning.”

“Why don’t I leave instead?” Susan began to rise, but Lorena put her hand on her shoulder.

“Nonsense. You stay right there. We haven’t thought of half the people you ought to talk to. The truck stop on the interstate like I said. The two mechanics in town, of course. And the drugstore. Maybe he needed something for the baby.”

As he crossed the room, Jeb could hear his aunt pull out the chair he’d just vacated to take her place across the table from her guest. He had had too much experience with the brutal finality of death to play this kind of game, however.

Even as he walked away, he knew he was judging both of them too harshly: a mother who wanted to know what had happened to her baby and an old woman who always wanted to right the wrongs of the world. And if what they were doing helped Susan Chandler deal with the loss of her daughter, who was he to begrudge either of them that comfort?




CHAPTER FIVE


“HELL, LADY, I can’t remember who came in here yesterday, and you’re asking me about something that happened seven years ago?”

In response to her inquiry, one of the waitresses had called the owner of the truck stop out of his office. His impatience to get back to whatever he’d been doing was obvious.

Thankfully his attitude was in contrast to most of the people she’d talked to in Linton. They’d all known who she was and why she was here, one benefit of an effective small-town grapevine. Their willingness to help had made the process of asking questions easier than she’d expected. The downside was that none of them remembered seeing Richard.

“He was driving a black SUV,” she said for at least the tenth time today. “There would have been a toddler in the infant seat in the back.”

It was the same information she had given everyone she’d talked to during the last two days. In actuality, it was all she knew. And the part about Emma being with Richard was speculation, of course.

Since the baby hadn’t been in the car when it was found, but the car seat had been, that was the scenario that seemed to make the most sense. At least to her. If Richard had left Emma with someone on his way down here, then surely he would have left the safety seat as well.

“I already told you. Too many people come through here for me to try to remember ’em. The casino regulars maybe. Anybody else…” The owner shrugged, his eyes deliberately moving beyond her to whatever was going on at the crowded counter where Sunday supper was being served.

“He might have had car trouble. Or maybe he asked about a place to spend the night.”

There had to be some reason Richard had turned off the interstate at this exit. The next one was nearer to Pascagoula. And although the new state highway did eventually go into that city, Richard would have had to turn off that road in order to end up at the bridge in Linton. She couldn’t imagine that had been Richard’s plan when he left Atlanta.

Whatever that plan had been. She knew no more now about where he’d been headed than she had the weekend he’d disappeared.

“If that had been what he was asking, I sure as hell wouldn’t have sent him to Linton, now would I?” Realizing how abrupt that sounded, the owner attempted to modify his tone to something approaching compassion. “Look, I’m sorry about your husband. I really am, but I got a business to run here. And it seems to me you’re about seven years too late in trying to figure out how or why he ended up at that bridge.”

After that, there seemed little point in continuing the conversation. Maybe she should value his bluntness. At least he was being honest about the impossibility of what she was asking him to do. If it hadn’t been for Emma…

“Thank you for your time,” she said, choosing to ignore his advice because she had no choice. “If you remember anything that might be helpful, here’s my number.” She handed him one of her business cards with the number of her cell, knowing it would probably end up in the trash as soon as she walked out the door.

She had thought about talking to the waitresses, but neither of them looked as if they were old enough to have been working anywhere seven years ago. Besides, with the Sunday-night crowd, it was apparent they had no time for conversation. Maybe another day when they weren’t so busy.

As she stepped out the front door and into the halogen-lighted parking lot, she realized that while she’d been inside, the rain that had been falling off and on all day had gotten much heavier. Although the day had been warm, there was a definite chill in the night air.

Holding her purse over her head, she made a run for the car, unlocking the driver’s-side door and slipping quickly behind the wheel. She sat for a moment, listening to the rain beat down on the roof of the Toyota, trying to think if there was anything else she could do tonight.

During the two days she’d spent in Linton, she had talked to everyone Lorena had mentioned who might have seen Richard. Then she had followed up on any other possibilities the people she’d talked to had suggested. The owner of the busy truck stop, farther from town, had been the last name on her list.

Not only had she run out of people to ask about Richard and Emma, she was also tired, damp, cold and hungry. The thought of her hostess’s solicitude and the comforts of the room she’d been given offered more temptation than she could resist. She’d done all she could today. She would start again in the morning.

Maybe with Sheriff Adams, she decided. Surely there was some way he could speed up the coroner’s report. How long could an autopsy take, given what she’d been led to believe about the condition of Richard’s body? She shivered, deliberately destroying that unwanted image.

She turned the key in the ignition and then pulled out of the parking lot and onto the narrow two-lane that led back into Linton. There were no streetlights this far out, of course, and with the rain, visibility was poor. Although she had driven the same route this afternoon, she found it was a very different prospect under these conditions.

She concentrated on the centerline, the only marking on the blacktop. She leaned forward, peering over the steering wheel and through the windshield, which was beginning to fog. Keeping her eyes on the road, she felt for the defrost switch with her right hand. After a couple of attempts she located it, and in a matter of seconds, the windows began to clear.

She tried to relax her shoulders, which had tensed with the effort of following the winding, unfamiliar road. The sign just off the interstate had said it was twenty miles into Linton. This afternoon, she hadn’t been conscious of that distance at all. Tonight it seemed as if she had already been traveling forever.

For the first time since she’d left the truck stop, a vehicle approached in the other lane. Either the driver had his high beams on or the headlights reflecting off the wet asphalt made them seem brighter. She squinted to shield her eyes from the glare as she blinked her own lights from low to high a couple of times. The signal had no effect on the oncoming car.

Pickup, she realized as it flew by with a swish of tires. Judging by the way her car responded to the wind force created by its passage, it had been a big one. And making no concession in speed, despite the conditions.

Idiot, she thought before she put the pickup out of her mind, forcing herself to concentrate again on the centerline.

She had gone perhaps two miles when she became aware of headlights in her rearview mirror. She kept her eyes on the car coming up behind her long enough to determine it was traveling at a much higher rate of speed than she was. Obviously someone who was familiar with this road and who would undoubtedly want to pass because of the snail’s pace she was forced to maintain.

Although the line was double, indicating a no-passing zone, she eased as far to the right as she dared, considering there were no markings along the shoulder. She maintained her speed, fighting the urge to accelerate as the headlights behind her loomed larger in her review mirror.

There was a straightaway just ahead. She could see the double yellow lines change to a single one. Under her direction the Toyota hugged the edge of the road, giving the automobile behind her as much room as possible to pass.

As it did, the driver blew his horn. Not a quick honk to warn her he was coming around, but a long sustained blast that grew louder as the vehicle pulled alongside her car and then whipped by with the same noise she’d heard before.

Exactly the same, she realized. Through the rain and darkness, she caught only a glimpse as it sped by, but the size was right. As was the color, either black or a dark blue.

She would have sworn it was the same pickup that had been traveling in the opposite direction only moments before, its headlights on high. She watched until the red of the oval-shaped taillights disappeared around the curve ahead.

Only then did she draw a deep, relieved breath. The first one she’d taken in a while, she realized. Even if it was the same truck, she told herself, there were dozens of explanations. A couple of kids out joyriding. Or maybe the driver had forgotten something and had needed to go back to town for it.

Just because the same vehicle passed her twice on a relatively deserted stretch of highway didn’t mean she should get paranoid. Despite those attempts at self-assurance, she automatically slowed the car. Let whoever is in such a hurry get far ahead. Let him get to Linton long before I do. Let him arrive, take care of his business and get out of my way.

After a few minutes, that ridiculous sense of threat began to fade. She even managed to relax the grip her hands had taken on the wheel and to sit back in the seat. Despite the poor markings, the centerline was proving to be a reliable guide. Only a few more miles to the town limits, and then she could look for the turnoff that would take her to the Bedford house.

Daring to glance away from the road a moment, she adjusted the heater, feeling better as the warm air began to fill the car. She pushed the button on the CD player, letting the familiar, relaxing sound of Norah Jones’s voice wash over her.

She looked up at the rearview mirror to find the road behind her still deserted. There would probably be very few people out on a night like this. Even as the thought formed, headlights appeared in front of her at the top of the next rise. Her hands automatically tensed around the wheel again.

Ridiculous, she chided herself as she loosened them. Even if this were the same pickup, that was no reason to act as if its driver were targeting her. He probably hadn’t thought twice about her car, except to bemoan her lack of speed.

She tried to decide if the truck would have had time to return to town and then make it back here. Since she had no reference points along the unfamiliar stretch of highway, and since she’d failed to look at the odometer when she’d left the truck stop, she had no idea how far from town she was.

She tried to ignore the approaching lights, again keeping the car as near the shoulder as she dared. This attack of nerves wasn’t like her. And she hated it. All she could do was put the unaccustomed anxiety down to her exhaustion and the emotional toll of the last few days. After all, her husband had died on one of the roads in this area.

She raised her eyes from the yellow line, watching as the approaching lights grew larger. And they were still on high, she had time to think before she realized that they were not only blindingly bright, they were also headed directly at her.

She blinked, attempting to see through the driving rain. In the split second she had to evaluate the path of the oncoming car, she knew she hadn’t been mistaken. It was headed straight for her car.

She swerved to the right, that reaction unthinking. The right tires left the road with a jolt as the headlights shone into her eyes, their glare terrifying.

At the last second before collision, she jerked the steering wheel, plunging the Toyota completely off the road. It bounced over some unseen obstacle as the pickup roared by, so close she couldn’t believe it hadn’t struck her car.

She had automatically slammed on the brakes, but as the car began to fishtail, she released them, trying to steer back up onto the road. The back right tire seemed to be slipping in the roadside mud. All she accomplished was to turn the car so that it continued to slide sideways along the shoulder for a few more feet until the right front fender struck a telephone pole.

Her rate of speed had been slowed enough by then that the impact was minimal. Restrained by her seat belt, her head jerked forward, slamming back into the headrest as the car came to an abrupt stop.

Stunned, she sat without moving as the wipers continued to clear the rain off the windshield, revealing the twin beams of her own headlights shining across the two-lane at an upward angle. She looked to her left, but there was no sign of the pickup that had run her off the road.

She tried to analyze her impressions of its make or model, but everything about the last few seconds had been a blur. She’d been too busy trying to avoid a collision to get a clear picture of anything about it except those glaring lights.

After a few seconds, she reached over and punched the off button on the CD player. In the sudden silence, the drumming of the rain and the noise from the back-and-forth movement of the wipers seemed to intensify. As did her feeling of isolation.

Someone had just run her off the road. She was out in the middle of nowhere with a possibly disabled car.

That was the first thing she needed to find out, she realized. Whether the car could be driven back into town.

Her knees were shaking so badly with delayed reaction that it was difficult to get her foot back on the gas pedal. She eased the accelerator down, but the back tires spun, unable to get any traction in the mud. After a couple of careful attempts, she shut off the engine and then killed the lights.

Now there was only the sound of the rain, but she felt safer in the darkness. If he came back again—

Despite the fact that her body was vibrating as if she had a chill, she had enough presence of mind to realize that thought had slipped over the line. Someone had forced her off the road, but the idea that the driver had made a couple of preliminary passes at her before he’d done so was ridiculous.

This couldn’t have been deliberate. A drunk driver. Or, as she had speculated before, teenage joyriders.

The arguments presented by her rational mind had no effect on the surety of its more primitive, instinctive part. Someone had deliberately caused her to wreck her car. The same someone who had sped by her with his lights on bright. The same someone who had passed her with an angry wail of his horn.

Who might even now be turning his truck around to come back and finish the job he’d begun. She could sit here and wait for him to return, or—

Put in those terms, the decision was simple. She reached across and grabbed her purse off the passenger seat. Even as she climbed out of the car, her fingers fumbled her cell phone out of the bottom of her bag.

She could call 911, although they probably wouldn’t consider a car in a ditch an emergency. Better to dial information and get the name of the nearest wrecker service. It would probably be out of Pascagoula, but there might be something local. In any case, it didn’t seem she had a choice.

And then she needed to call Mrs. Bedford. She had already missed supper, and if she were a couple of hours later getting home, as she suspected she would be, she knew Lorena would imagine the worst.

Wrecker first, and then the Bedford house. Even as she dialed information, the image of a pair of mocking blue eyes was in her head. She could imagine Jeb Bedford’s reaction if she told him what she believed had happened tonight. The same one anyone in this sleepy little Southern town would have.

That didn’t mean she was wrong, of course. It only meant that she would be alone in her opinion. Being alone, however, was something with which she was now very familiar. Something with which she had long ago made her peace.




CHAPTER SIX


IF IT HADN’T BEEN for Lorena, there was no way in hell he’d be out here in the rain looking for a car that had gone off the road. Or for the woman who had been driving it.

And who do you think you’re kidding?

Jeb had known who was on the other end of the line as soon as his aunt picked up the phone. Just as she had, he, too, had been listening for it to ring as soon as it had gotten dark.

He slowed as the headlights of his Avalanche illuminated a vehicle on the side of the road. It was sitting perpendicular to the two-lane, the right front panel crushed against a telephone pole. He had no doubt the car belonged to Susan Chandler.

He drove past the small silver car, evaluating the damage as well as he could through the fogged driver’s-side window. Then he made a U-turn in the middle of the deserted highway and guided the big sport utility truck onto the shoulder a few feet from the sedan. He was careful not to pull off the road far enough to get stuck in the ditch where the rear wheels of the Toyota were mired.

Although his headlights were directed at the driver’s side of the car, there was no sign of the driver. Just as it had when the phone rang, a knot of unaccustomed anxiety began to form in the pit of his stomach. If Susan Chandler wasn’t in her car, then where could she be?

She’d told Lorena on the phone that she’d already called a tow truck and was going to wait here until it arrived. Clearly, since the car was still in the ditch, that hadn’t yet happened.

He rolled down his window, sticking his head out despite the downpour. “Mrs. Chandler?”

He waited, but the only sound was the rain pelting the roof of his car. Muttering profanities, he opened his door.

After the cocoon of warmth the heater had created inside the cab, the wet chill immediately assaulted him. He knew from experience it would seep into the shattered ankle, aching along all the pins and wires and screws that held it together.

Given the situation, however, it didn’t seem he had any option other than to go look for his aunt’s guest. He eased down from the high cab, holding on to the handgrip until the undamaged right leg was solidly on the ground beside the left.

“Mrs. Chandler?” Again he waited, rain pouring down on his bare head and shoulders. Surely she wouldn’t be stupid enough to start walking back into town. But, of course, he would have passed her on the way if she had.

Maybe someone driving back into town had spotted the wreck and stopped to help. It was the kind of thing he’d expect almost anyone around here to do. Whether or not Ms. Chandler would be trusting enough to accept a ride from a stranger was another question. If she had, maybe she’d left a note with instructions for the wrecker service on the dash.

Mindful of the treacherous footing, Jeb began to limp over to the Toyota. As he approached, he realized that she’d been right to call a tow truck.

Any idea he might have had that he could maneuver the Camry out of the ditch himself was discarded as he surveyed the situation. It was obvious someone had tried to drive it out, causing the wheels to sink even farther into the mud.

Still looking down at the back tires, now buried up to their rims, Jeb opened the driver’s door. The overhead light came on, making it obvious there was no note on the dash or in the seat. And no sign of Susan Chandler.

He blew out an exasperated breath before he straightened to look over the top of her car. He had left his headlights on, and the twin beams cut a swath through the rain and darkness into the area beyond the telephone pole. As he watched, a figure materialized out of the bushes along the side of the road, stepping forward into their illumination.

He recognized Susan immediately, despite her bedraggled appearance. Her clothing was soaked, making her cotton blouse cling revealingly to her body. The strap of her leather purse still hung over her shoulder, however, as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on.

He refrained from asking any of the obvious questions as she approached, shoes sloshing with each step. When she rounded the car, he could see that her eyes were wide and dark in a face that was far too pale. Strands of hair were plastered to her cheeks and neck, water streaming from them.

He couldn’t imagine why she’d gotten out in the rain rather than waiting inside the Toyota for the wrecker. Not unless—

The thought was sudden and disturbing. A concussion might create enough disorientation to cause that kind of behavior. He’d seen men with head wounds do some bizarre things.

“You hurt?” he asked as she stopped in front of him.

Wordlessly she shook her head.

“Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

“I didn’t know who it was.”

Not the most rational answer, he decided, considering that she was supposed to be waiting for the wrecker. There was no way she could have been certain he wasn’t the tow-truck driver, considering the poor visibility. Or had she been planning to hide in the bushes even after they’d arrived?

Hide. That was exactly what she’d been doing, he realized. For some reason, Susan Chandler had been hiding.

“Who did you think would be out here in a downpour calling you by name?”

She pressed her lips together as if deliberately refusing to respond to his sarcasm. With as much dignity as she could manage, considering that water was dripping off her chin, she pushed a piece of hair off her cheek before she shook her head.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded, knowing there was something else going on here. It would have taken more than a minor accident on a rain-slick road to rattle her this badly.

“Nothing. I…” Again she closed her mouth, cutting off whatever explanation she’d been about to make. “Nothing.”

“You did call a wrecker, didn’t you?”

She nodded, her eyes holding on his face. Seeing what was in them, something that looked very much like fear, he found that he had to resist the urge to put his arm out to draw her to him. He would have done that to Lorena or almost any other woman of his acquaintance. Susan Chandler, however, had given no indication she would welcome that kind of comfort.

Not from him or anyone else. The aura that surrounded her was one of unapproachability. Even now.

“They said it would be about an hour.”

Obviously not local. “They’re coming from Pascagoula?”

She nodded, pushing her dripping hair out of her eyes with the spread fingers of her right hand. Through her thin cotton shirt, he could see the outline of lace on the top of her bra. And under it, the too-rapid rise and fall of her breasts. As if suddenly aware of how revealing the wet fabric might be, she put that hand on its opposite arm, running her palm up and down.

Despite the Indian-summer temperatures of the morning, this rain felt winter cold, and she was soaked to the skin. He needed to get her somewhere warm and dry, or she was liable to end up with pneumonia. If she did, he’d never hear the end of it from Lorena.

“Come on,” he said, turning to head back to the pickup. The cab should still be fairly warm.

“Where?”

“To Lorena’s.” As he looked back at her, he raised his voice to make sure she could hear him over the downpour.

“What about the wrecker?”

“Leave them a note. Tell them they can take the car to Reynolds.”

“Reynolds?”

“It’s the service station on the square. He’ll pay them tonight. You can pay him tomorrow.”

“But…will he be open on a Sunday night?” she asked as she walked over to where he had stopped.

Probably not, Jeb realized. Like it or not, they were stuck here until the tow truck from Pascagoula showed up.

“I don’t know. What I do know is that it’s a lot dryer inside my truck than it is out here.”

He automatically put his hand in the small of her back, urging her toward his vehicle. This time she cooperated, walking ahead of him as he made his slow and careful way over the uneven ground. As he neared the passenger side, he looked up to find she’d been watching him as she waited. Without meeting her eyes, he reached out and opened the passenger door.

“There’s a handgrip,” he said, gesturing toward it. Although she was tall for a woman, probably five-seven or five-eight, she used it to climb up into the high cab. As soon as she was settled, he slammed the door and started around the back. Now that he knew she couldn’t see him, he held on to the enclosed bed of the truck for balance.

The dull, familiar ache in his leg had already started. Susan wasn’t the only one who needed to get in out of the cold.

He opened the driver’s-side door and, gritting his teeth against the pain, climbed into the seat. As soon as he closed the door, killing the interior light, he became aware of the intimacy of their situation.

The intensity of the rain would hold them prisoner as they waited for the arrival of the wrecker. Something over which they had no control.

“Did Lorena send you to find me?”

He debated telling her the truth. His great-aunt’s anxiety had been a factor, of course, but she would never have asked him to go out in this, no matter how worried she was. That had been his decision. Given what he’d discovered, it was one he couldn’t regret, even knowing what it would cost him tomorrow.

“Lorena takes her responsibilities seriously,” he said. “You’re her guest. That makes you hers to look after.”

Her laughter was a breath of sound. “I was thinking on the way home how unaccustomed I am to having someone worry about me. And how welcome her solicitude would be,” she added softly. “I didn’t expect it to extend to rescue missions, however.”

“Did you need rescuing?” He hadn’t forgotten that she’d been hiding when he’d arrived.

“A figure of speech. I didn’t mean to sound melodramatic.”

“It’s obvious you weren’t trying to avoid the tow truck by hiding in those bushes, Ms. Chandler, so I’m curious as to who you were avoiding.”

The rain seemed to beat down with renewed force as he waited for her answer. Or maybe in the sudden silence after his question he was simply more aware of it.

“Someone in an outsized pickup,” she said finally.

Since the description was a little too apt, he turned to look at her. She was staring out the windshield, so that he could see only her profile. Despite the darkness, he could discern the delicate shape of her nose and the slight upward angle of her chin. Its tilt was almost challenging.

“Are you talking about…my truck?”

Despite the fact that he hadn’t been particularly welcoming last night, he didn’t believe that anything he’d said would be grounds for trying to avoid him. Besides, she couldn’t have had any idea he would embark on this knight-errant foolishness.

Susan turned at the question, meeting his eye. “I’m talking about the truck that ran me off the road.”

The truck that ran me off the road…. There was only one possible interpretation of that.

“Are you saying someone forced you off the road?”

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but…that’s what he did.”

“He?”

“I guess I just assumed it was a man, maybe because of the size of the truck. I didn’t actually see the driver.”

“But you’re sure he deliberately ran you off the road?” Jeb made no attempt to hide his skepticism. That kind of thing didn’t happen around here.

“Yes.” She offered no explanation for her certainty. And made no defense of it.

“Why would someone run you off the road?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he was impatient because I was being careful. Or because I blinked my lights to get him to turn his down. All I know is he headed directly toward me, and that he was flying.”

When she’d mentioned the driver being impatient, he had pictured someone coming up behind her as she was negotiating an unfamiliar highway in the rain. The part about blinking her lights didn’t seem to fit that scenario.

“He was behind you? Or approaching you?”

“Both. Actually…” She took a breath, seeming to gather control. “He approached a couple of times. During the last one it was obvious that if I didn’t move over he would ram my car. Since he had a distinct size advantage…”

“You’re telling me someone went past you and then turned around and came back in order to force you off the road.”

“Or maybe he just made a U-turn,” she said.

As he had done. Which meant she’d been watching his arrival from her hiding place. And if what she had just claimed happened really did take place, it was no wonder she hadn’t wanted to be waiting inside her car when…

“You thought I was the person who ran you off the road.”

“I thought it was a distinct possibility. He’d already made a couple of passes at me.”

“After you went off the road?”

“I didn’t mean that. He passed me coming from town and then turned around and came up behind me. When he went around my car, he sat on his horn. Then the next time…That’s when he came at me. When I saw you go by, all I knew was that the size and color of your truck were the same as the other.”

He couldn’t tell from her tone if she still suspected he might have been its driver. Of course, she had responded to his call once she’d recognized him.

“I can’t believe anybody around here would do that.”

“I thought it might be kids. Showing off. Terrorizing the tourists.”

He thought about the possibility. His few encounters with the local population during the months he’d spent here hadn’t extended to any of the teenage population. Judging by the acts of violence the papers reported in other places, he supposed it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that some local kids, drunk or stoned, might have pulled this kind of stunt.

“You are going to report what happened to the sheriff?”

“I don’t have a lot to tell him. I doubt big, dark pickups are all that rare in this area.”

They weren’t, of course, as evidenced by the one they were sitting in. His was perhaps bigger than most, but a lot of the local farmers used their trucks for hauling supplies and produce and even for towing trailers filled with livestock. All of which called for heavy-duty vehicles.

“Besides, I get the feeling Sheriff Adams thinks I should just go back home and wait for someone else to figure out what happened to my daughter. The problem is, if I do that, I don’t think anyone ever will.”

He knew from town gossip Lorena had repeated to him today that most people believed the baby’s body must have been washed downriver. Under certain conditions the currents in the Escatawpa could certainly be strong enough to take a child out of a father’s hands, which according to Lorena was Wayne Adams’s explanation of what had happened.

“She would be eight years old now,” Susan went on, the anger he’d heard before no longer in her voice, leaving it flat and hard. “Everyone said she looked like Richard, but…with babies that age, it’s so hard to tell. And now…”

He waited through the silence, knowing there was nothing he could say that would temper the pain of her loss. Despite the passage of time, it was all still there in her voice.

Her chin lifted again as she swallowed the emotion that had threatened her control. Slowly she shook her head.

“I know what you’re thinking, but I’d know if she were dead. I’d know.” The declaration was almost fierce, brooking no argument. “She isn’t. She’s out there somewhere. Without anyone of her own.”

“Ms. Chandler—”

“That was the one thought I clung to all those years. That she was with Richard. I hated him for taking her away from me. I cursed him for not telling me where she was or why he’d taken her, but…no matter how bitter I was toward him, there was no doubt in my mind that he loved her. And I knew he’d take care of her.”

The rain pounding on the roof was the only sound in the cab after her last impassioned sentence. Even their breathing seemed suspended.

“Now…” she said again, turning to face him. “Don’t you see? Now I’m all she has. I just can’t let her go on thinking that no one has been looking for her.”




CHAPTER SEVEN


“I’M NOT EXACTLY SURE about what you want me to do, Ms. Chandler.”

Susan had known this would be an exercise in futility. She couldn’t believe she’d let the Bedfords talk her into calling the sheriff’s office. There was nothing he could do about what had happened last night. Reporting it only made her appear the hysterical type.

“I didn’t think there was anything you could or necessarily should do. I simply wanted to make you aware of the situation. It did occur in your jurisdiction.”

“Yes, ma’am. And I can tell you that things like that don’t normally happen around here.”

She wasn’t certain if he were doubting her word or defending his constituents. Not until he went on.

“Probably kids. There’s a bunch of wild-as-bucks young’uns across the county line. Sheriff over there’s had a lot of trouble out of them. I’ll give him a call and see if he recognizes that pickup as belonging to one of them. They may have seen your out-of-state tags and decided to make a little mischief. And I’ll make sure there’s a deputy on that stretch of road after sundown tonight. Don’t you worry about traveling around here. Now that we know what’s been going on, we can keep a closer eye on things. What about your car? Any damage?”

“Some. I’m not sure yet how extensive it is. I had it towed into Reynolds last night. It was probably still drivable, but I had to get the wrecker to pull it out of the ditch, so I decided to let them bring it on into town and check it out.”





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