Not Without Her Child, page 15
He had to know, as practical as he was being, as much sense as he was making, that the issue wasn’t just her safety.
Or even her money.
Was he going to bring it up or did she have to do so?
Watching him, she waited.
It took a good full minute, but he finally looked over at her. Met her gaze.
“And if we end up in bed together?” she asked him. Because there was nothing she could think of at that moment that would be a better antidote to the fear and worry threatening to strangle the lifeblood out of her.
“I meant what I said last week,” he told her, his gaze unshaking. “You have nothing to fear from me.”
The loud half grown, half huff that came out of her shocked Jessica as she said, “I’m afraid of my own shadow at the moment, Brian, but you don’t scare me one bit. The truth is, I’m not averse to going to bed with you. This...whatever it is between us...is a welcome distraction...and it’s not like it would ever go anywhere.”
She wasn’t open to another relationship at the moment and, after the past week of Clint revelations, she wasn’t sure how soon she would ever be.
And he clearly wasn’t.
He wasn’t responding. At all. Just sitting there, a blank look on his face.
“I’m not saying I’m going to hit on you, or come crawling under your covers,” she said, all business in that moment. “It would be mutual. But if you’re going to be staying here, I just need the possibility clearly acknowledged, and dealt with, before something happens that we might regret.”
“‘Dealt with’?” His head cocked a little with the question. And there was an odd light in his eyes. An interesting light.
“Brought out into the open,” she clarified, though she wasn’t sure what she’d really meant by that remark.
He watched her for another minute or so. Then, with a shrug, said, “It’s there. A possibility of something that could take place over the course of this investigation. It would be mutual. And mean nothing beyond the moment.”
She didn’t know what to do with that. Was he agreeing? Propositioning her? Playing with her?
Clint would lose his mind if he found out. Guilt clouded all good feeling for the instant it took her to step away from it. Whoever was watching her already knew Brian had spent the night.
And her ex-husband had always seen breaking her down as a challenge. Would he walk away from her, from telling her about Brooke, if he knew she’d had sex with another man?
He’d accused her of doing so many times.
He’d never left.
Things were different, though, since the kidnapping. Since he had the upper hand.
She was going to find Brooke. With Clint or without him. She needed his clues. He was her surest way to get to her daughter when he chose to finally really help her. But she had herself, too.
And she’d made the choice to hire an expert investigator who’d moved the case along more in one week than anyone had in eighteen long months.
And when Clint got out of jail...he’d need money. She’d always been his money source. She had her own power.
“You change your mind?”
Brian’s question pulled her from the fog just as she was finding her way out by herself.
“No.” Her response was emphatic.
“You want to call and postpone the dinner order until we get the apartment cleared out? I’d rather be back here before dark.”
She’d rather that, too.
And wondered, as she made the restaurant call, whether or not she’d be finding a small bit of ecstasy that night to help get her through hell.
* * *
He wasn’t going to rush into bed with her. Sex couldn’t even be on his radar, as much as his body might want it to be.
Brian hadn’t been just giving her words when he’d assured Jessica that no matter what he wanted, or how attracted he might be to her, there was no worry of him losing sight of his reason for being there. He’d get the job done.
After he’d settled his things into the fourth bedroom in the house—on the other side of her office from her room, he was back at the dining room table. She had taken charge of the grocery bags she’d helped him pack and carry in from his place. And had shown him where to find towels for the hall bathroom, which he’d be using. She’d offered the master suite.
With the possibility of someone watching her, he didn’t want to be across the house from her at night.
Thankfully, her room had an en suite bath attached. And anyone coming from the rest of the house would have to pass his room first.
He’d be sleeping with the door open.
Anderson had police crew driving by frequently, keeping a watch on the house, too. Until they knew more about what they were up against, Brian wasn’t going to let up on his protection of Jessica. Whether she’d hired him to offer it or not.
If things got tough—if he had to go recover a body—he could call in a Sierra’s Web expert bodyguard, but for the moment, considering Jessica’s finances, and how long the case could take, he was going to give her double duty.
They’d had dinner. He’d sent the prison computer-hack information to Hudson Warner, the Sierra’s Web IT partner, and had settled in with his search databases, looking for anything he could find out about Harriet Lichen, her granddaughter Bonnie, and all of the other known residents in Lincoln.
Paying particular attention to the preacher of the little church where Jessica had told him she’d watched the playground. Churches were notorious for drawing people who needed sanctuary. Perhaps that was where she’d been seen. Wayne Bennet, the church’s minister, had graduated from an online seminary course, but other than that, Brian had found little on the man.
Anderson had called to say that he’d personally made a trip out to the blue barn in Bountyville, where Brian and Jessica had been shot at. He’d found shell casings, was having them analyzed, but no one was there and the place was locked. He’d been trying to get in touch with the owner of the property, but so far with no luck.
“It’s possible that whoever is trying to scare me either has Brooke, or knows who does, and that person has fallen so much in love with her, they aren’t going to willingly give her back. They just want me to give up.” Jessica had been going through the cell tower records Anderson had been able to legally give her, just looking to see if there was anything she recognized.
There’d been too many signals bouncing off of multiple places for them to pinpoint enough specifics to even have a good guess as to where the text message the night before had come from. Brian wasn’t hopeful for any better success with that day’s message.
Whether the sender was savvy enough to know how to bounce off several towers, or just lucky enough to get lost in the shuffle, they had no way of knowing. Their best hope was to find a similar pattern, but they’d need more messages to be able to do that.
He wasn’t hoping for more messages.
“We have to consider the possibility that Clint has made friends in prison.” He broached the subject carefully, wanting her to be able to consider the idea before believing she’d know whether or not he was right because she knew Clint so well. He needed her to see that she might not have known Clint as well as she thought she did.
That he wasn’t the man she thought he was.
Disappointment settled over him as she immediately shook her head. “I know he hasn’t,” she said, glancing at him but looking away just as quickly.
Odd, the way her eyes skittered from his. Granted, he hadn’t known her long, but they’d been through some extraordinary circumstances in a very short time, had been on the opposite side of some very electric fences, and she’d never once shied away from meeting his gaze.
“How do you know that?” Gut clenching, he waited, pretty sure he wasn’t going to like what was coming.
When she didn’t answer right away, he tried again. “He had a phone in his cell. Unless a guard planted it there when he was out, which is highly unlikely though not impossible, he had to get it from someone inside. Or...the text messages are coming from someone inside who’s sending them for him. Or he has someone on the outside doing it for him. Since we now know by his communication report from the prison that he’s had no known communication with anyone on the outside, other than you, not even his lawyer, we could only assume that someone who was recently released is doing it for him.”
Anderson was already checking on that. Looking for any recent releases who might have had contact with Clint on the inside. Who could be taunting Jessica with the texts on Clint’s behalf.
She’d turned back to him, looking him straight in the eye, a strange look on her face. As though she was resolved about something.
He didn’t like the look. Braced himself.
And was in no way prepared for the words that came out of her mouth.
Chapter 19
“I know he doesn’t have friends in prison because I’ve been sending money every month to his commissary account, which he then somehow lets others use. It’s ransom money so that he’ll be left alone.”
Jessica felt sick, just saying the words. What she’d been doing was perfectly legal. The State of Arkansas made provisions for people to deposit money in inmates’ accounts electronically. She could put money in every account in the prison if she so chose.
Inside, the prisoner’s access of the account was supposed to be monitored. How Clint used the money to buy his safety, she didn’t want to know.
Maybe she didn’t even care anymore.
She just couldn’t have Brian and Anderson off on another wild-goose chase while Brooke was still out in the world somewhere. Possibly not even being loved. They’d spent days on the gun and it had come to nothing.
Other than the Timberline shooting range where no one remembered Clint. They’d yet to hear on the surveillance footage there, but she was sure it wouldn’t pan out.
Brian had ceased looking at her after her words “sending money.” He appeared to be studying the small strip of wood visible through the papers, folders and electronics strewn across her dining room table. His thumb was working that strip of furniture pretty hard. Back and forth. Back and forth.
She waited. Knowing how it sounded—like she was some kind of road kill lying on the pavement being run over again and again. A woman letting herself be used up by a selfish jerk.
She wasn’t either of those things. “He showed up on a Friday call with a black eye and split lip,” she said softly. Owing him nothing. But wanting him to know. “Clint doesn’t attract friends in the stronger sector,” she continued. “He gloms onto nurturers. Not many of those in prison, from what I hear.”
Maybe she shouldn’t be sending money. She had her reasons.
“His whole block was behind it. Ganging up on him. He said that they told him that if he paid the ransom, they’d see that no one bothered him again. And they haven’t. They won’t be seen hanging with him because he’s not respected in there, but they leave him alone.”
“‘They’?” He glanced over at her. “Obviously not every one of them beat him up or he’d have had more than a black eye and a split lip.”
She shrugged.
“How long ago was this?”
“A couple of weeks shy of fifteen months.”
“You’ve been paying him the entire time he’s been there.” Paying him to do his time for kidnapping her baby girl.
She got his message.
It wasn’t like that. Though she understood that was how it looked. That was why she’d never said anything about the money to anyone. “I need him alive, Brian. He’s the only one who knows what he did with my daughter.”
“How much?”
“Four hundred a month. It’s the maximum the state allows.”
He’d told her the amount “they” were requiring. She’d found out about it being the state-allowed maximum when she’d looked up the process, making damned sure she wasn’t breaking any laws.
“I don’t doubt that Clint would love to make me desperate enough to do something so off the wall that I get locked up myself. That would be his kind of justice. But I’m no good to my daughter—either finding her or mothering her when she finally makes it home—if I’m in prison.”
His jaw was clenching again.
“If I break the law, I no longer have a career,” she added, though for what purpose she couldn’t say. Maybe a reminder to herself of the successful life she’d built, in spite of the hardships that choosing Clint had brought to her world.
Maybe Brian Powers was just making her feel defensive and she had to fight back. He had no right to judge her.
“Did it occur to you that any one of these guys could be working for Clint? On his payroll?”
It hadn’t. Not once. “He can’t put anyone else first enough to know how to figure out what others need. Without that, how could he possibly manage to keep an entire wing full of prisoners happy? He’s not a big man, or an imposing one.”
“Maybe he’s promising them all more when he gets out. He’s only got another twenty-one months, right? He’s proving to them that you’re his gravy train.”
No.
Guns. Drugs. Clint with an entire prison block in his pocket? It didn’t fit.
“And maybe he’s a scaredy-cat who pays to be left alone while he demonizes the person giving him the money to do so,” she said softly and gathered up her laptop, her journal, and went to bed.
Or at least to her bedroom.
Far too het up to sleep, she was scared, confused...desperate to find Brooke.
And alone.
* * *
She’d been sending Clint Johnson four hundred bucks a month. Brian didn’t even want to imagine what kind of contraband that amount of money could have purchased over the past fifteen months.
Texting Anderson the news that there’d been a glitch in the initial report Brian had had on Clint’s prison reports, that Jessica had been sending her ex money, he had an unending pit of dread in his gut. He’d come to town to find a little girl and instead he’d found a hidden gun, connections to drug and arms dealing, they’d been shot at, his client was being threatened, or at least harassed in a very creepy manner...
And now he knew the kidnapper had had funds at his disposal the entire time he’d been in prison.
Even before Anderson responded, Brian had a new theory. Quickly texted it.
What if Johnson was using the money Jessica had been sending to pay off whoever had Brooke? Was he sending money for his daughter’s care?
Or simply paying off whoever had helped him dispose of the child? Either by arranging some kind of pass-off to someone who had Brooke, or by getting rid of the body.
Was Clint paying for silence?
Could explain the guy’s cocky attitude.
Anderson’s two messages popped up one right after the other. The detective said he’d get in touch with the prison warden first thing in the morning, find out what he could. Put a trace on the money if necessary.
Sending a thumbs-up, Brian went back to his databases. Cross-checking lists of names of recently released inmates for associations in Lincoln.
Sometime after midnight, he sat up straight, wide awake, as he happened on a small piece of information that might mean absolutely nothing.
The owner of the blue barn property in Bountyville had a son. An adult son who’d done time in the same prison housing Clint. He’d been in for three years for aggravated assault—his second offense. Brian only found the guy by doing an internet search of the name: Jim Brandywine. Father and son shared it.
Jim Brandywine had been released from the Arkansas prison five weeks after Clint’s incarceration, so his name hadn’t come up on the list they had of recent releases. And son, Jim, had just been arrested for assault in Missouri a couple of weeks before Brian had been called to Fayetteville.
Could be nothing. Not even big enough to call a coincidence, but Brian’s heart was pumping a bit less sluggishly.
In the next second, it started to pound. Had Jessica just cried out? Jumping up, he grabbed his gun off his waist and, keeping himself along the wall, weapon raised, headed down the hall to Jessica’s bedroom. He couldn’t be sure if he’d heard a dog yelping in the distance or his client making a distress sound, but all senses on alert, he was damned well going to find out.
“Ahhhlllllaaa!” The gargled, painful cry sounded again. Definitely coming from Jessica’s room. Passing the office, he got down there as soon as he could. She’d shut the door.
Holding back an urge to slam his shoulder into the wood and get inside, he turned the knob slowly. If anyone was in there, hurting her, he’d serve her better if he took them by surprise.
The restraint made him sweat. Beads of it popped on his forehead. Trickled down his spine.
Without a creak, the door slid slowly open, showing him a room filled with shadows, broken only by the night-light plugged into the wall. Curtains were drawn.
No one stood...anywhere. Not by the quilt-covered shape in the bed or anyplace else in the room.
“Ack!”
Brian jerked back when Jessica’s shriek rent through the room as she flew upright off the pillows. And then his gaze met her wide-open, unfocused eyes, mere pinpricks in the near darkness. The glaze of moisture in them grasped the light, catching him, and he moved slowly toward her.
He wasn’t all read up on nightmares, but common sense told him he didn’t want to terrify her any more than her subconscious was already doing.
She’d been shot at. And they’d barely talked about it afterward. Not as big a deal for him. But then, it hadn’t been his first time.
Or even his tenth.
Her gaze didn’t follow him as he approached. Her breathing ragged, she continued to face straight ahead. He sat on the very edge of the queen-sized bed, on the side opposite of where she’d been sleeping.
