Not Without Her Child, page 22
She’d spoken from the entry to the dining room. Was wearing the yellow negligee thing again.
Not fair.
She didn’t know he’d decided to sleep alone.
“But if not for those clues, we’d still have nothing,” she told him. “We wouldn’t have found Birds of Paradise, or spoken to Bonnie, wouldn’t have known about Clint’s burner phone, found in the cell search due to the text messages Bonnie was sending me. We wouldn’t have known that he’s been hacking the prison computer to message with her the past few months. Or know that he stayed in Barneysville after he took Brooke. We wouldn’t have found the Brandywines, or known that Clint was possibly getting information from other prisoners...”
She wasn’t wrong.
But...
“He’s ramping up, Jess. Like you said, he noticed a difference in you. And by tomorrow afternoon, he’ll know that you know about Bonnie. He’s out to hurt you, not help you. It needs to stop before he succeeds. You see now what he is, what he does. If you refuse to meet with him tomorrow, cut him off, and with Bonnie cutting him off...he’s going to come unglued. That’s when we have a chance for someone getting the truth out of him. Especially if he wants to gain any goodwill from you...”
When she stood there, calm, nodding, he had hope. Real hope.
“As you say, he’s going to know his gig is up, which is all the more reason for me to meet with him,” she said, and his heart sank. “Anytime he gets caught at anything, his response is to talk his way out of it. He’ll be eager to explain to me, to get me to understand, to forgive him. I’ve got a better-than-average chance that he’ll give me something real tomorrow.”
“Or he’ll get you killed.”
“If I don’t meet with him, and he comes unglued, he may kill himself.”
And take her last hope of finding out what he’d done with Brooke. He didn’t need to hear her say it to know that was what she’d been thinking.
“He’s threatened suicide before. If he truly believes that everyone is against him, that he can’t find a way out...”
Clint had lost her. But Brian wasn’t going to win with her either...
He looked up, needing a miracle to happen before the next afternoon. Needing to be better than he was.
“Come to bed with me, please?” She wasn’t begging. Or flirting either.
She needed him. For the moment. To get through the night.
And truth be told, he needed her, too.
* * *
Brian had no idea what woke him up. Feeling Jess beside him, he lay there, eyes still closed, fully alert as he listened. Was someone in the house?
He’d left his gun on the nightstand, within arm’s reach.
But all was silent.
And it hit him. What had woken him.
He’d been dreaming...
He knew where pieces fit.
Feeling as though he had gallons of caffeine rushing through him, he slid carefully from the bed where Jess had ridden him with desperation the night before.
And had cried a little as she’d fallen asleep in his arms.
He didn’t want to wake her.
Twenty minutes later, he went out into the garage and called Anderson, completely unapologetic for waking the man in the middle of the night. He immediately sent over the files he’d just compiled and sent to his phone. So he’d have them on the road.
He had no proof. Just a whole mess of puzzle pieces that fit together.
He might never find Brooke. He wasn’t inhuman. He was as fallible as the next guy.
He wouldn’t quit trying.
But he could fail.
He knew he’d found the way the pieces fit.
And would never be Jess’s knight in shining armor, even if he’d managed to find her answers.
“Brian?”
In the flowing yellow robe again, she opened the garage door. Saw him standing there with his phone, and tears in his eyes.
“Yeah.”
“I heard the garage door. What are you doing out here?”
“Calling Anderson.”
“Why?” She hadn’t come any closer.
He didn’t want to answer her. The more he thought, the more he told himself he was grasping at straws.
And while his gut told him he was not, that he’d just solved another case, for some reason, he couldn’t let himself accept the possibility of victory.
More, he couldn’t bear to watch Jess be disappointed again.
“What’s going on?”
He had to tell her.
What if he was wrong?
“Brian? You’re scaring me. Come inside.”
Because he couldn’t very well head out in the underwear he’d pulled on as he’d left her bed, he did as she asked. Glad to give her something she wanted.
Even while he knew, no matter what did or didn’t pan out from his fully put-together puzzle, he was losing her.
* * *
She put on coffee in spite of the fact that it was only four in the morning. Four and a half hours before the bell rang, at which time she’d be fully engrossed at her desk.
That would get her through until time for Clint’s call.
No matter what Brian thought, life would go on as it had until she had Brooke home.
“What’s wrong?” she asked again as Brian, coming back from the hallway pulling on his pants, joined her in the kitchen.
“I just had an idea, needed to run it by Anderson.”
“And?” Something was different about him. Not in a good way.
“He’s going to check it out.”
“In the middle of the night?”
He shrugged.
Had he angered the detective, getting him out of bed in the middle of the night?
She’d woken Anderson a couple of times. The man had always been kind to her about it.
But she was a grieving mother, not an investigator on a payroll.
“Is this because of Clint? Because I don’t agree with you about today’s call?” He’d been weird ever since they’d left the police station the evening before.
He looked at her, kind of assessing like. Didn’t answer.
Took the filled coffee cup she handed him. Turned back toward the dining room. As though he was just going to leave her there.
“I have a right to do what I need to do, Brian. I’m of sound mind and body, and even if what I believe is the best choice turns out to be wrong, I still have to do what my heart tells me to do.” She heard the words.
Was kind of shocked by them.
But couldn’t deny their truth.
“I know.”
“So...what? This is it? We can’t be...we aren’t... You’re done with me because of it?”
“Ah, Jess, of course not.” He sat, so she did, too.
“I’m not done with you.” He kind of mimicked the way she said it. Not in an insulting way, but more in understanding. “Not yet. But we both knew that us...you and me...wasn’t ever going to be a permanent thing. We’ve known all along that we’d both be done with it.”
“So you are done.” Panic filled her. She pushed it back. Knew he wouldn’t quit her job.
Like she’d known Clint? The man who’d been having an affair by mail the entire time he’d been swearing he wanted his family back with Jess?
He’d never been going to get that family, she’d have died before she’d ever have let that happen, but she’d believed he wanted it.
“You can’t be done,” she said. “You wouldn’t leave without finding Brooke.” Just like her heart was telling her she couldn’t not take Clint’s call, she knew the truth of what she’d just said.
“No, I wouldn’t.” He grinned, a sad, tired smile, as he met her gaze.
And she wanted to believe that everything was going to be fine with them.
But knew it wasn’t.
* * *
He had to tell her. Had to give her time to call for someone else to handle her clients’ affairs that last day before the market went on its weekly two-day hiatus.
Just in case.
If there was no news, if he was wrong, it would be better for her to be working. Oblivious.
And that wasn’t his choice to make.
Just like Jess wasn’t his to love.
The word knocked him blind for a second.
He didn’t do love.
It wasn’t enough.
He came in to help where love failed.
Not to keep a woman’s heart from breaking any further. That was the impossible task.
She was in her room, making the bed. “I put some pieces of the puzzle together.” He stood in the doorway, leaning on the jamb, his coffee still in hand.
Turning, she stared at him. Sat on the edge of the partially made bed, her hands in her lap. With her hair all tousled from sleep, and no makeup on, she looked...like an angel.
Something pure and sweet and mighty, too.
“Do they, um, do they fit?” Her voice was froggy. She swallowed.
He had to join her. Didn’t even question the why of it. Sitting down next to her, close but not touching, he shrugged. Put his coffee cup on the nightstand next to hers, and met her wide, worried gaze.
“I think they do,” he told her. “Anderson is checking things out now.”
“In the middle of the night?”
He knew what his nod was going to tell her. He gave it to her.
“And?” He’d worked a lot of cases, some with not good endings, a lot with not good endings, and he’d never seen such stark terror before.
“She might be alive.”
There.
He’d given her the hope she’d so desperately needed.
And if he was wrong...
* * *
Jessica’s head roared so loudly with sound through cotton, she barely heard his words. She stared at him, watching his lips.
Read the same message there that she was hearing.
“‘Might be’?” Heart on overdrive, she could feel the blood rushing through her face. Her temples. Pounding in her fingertips.
“If I’m right.”
Why wasn’t he more excited?
“Tell me.”
“It’s kind of far-fetched, Jess. Nothing like anything I’ve ever come up with before. But...considering Clint...his irrational need to have everything his own way, his inability to accept that he can’t always have what he wants...and his lack of control over the childish need to lash out...”
Yeah. Yeah. She was there with him. Clint was all those things. And...
She wanted to ask him to get right to the point. Needed what air she had just to stay conscious.
If it had been Clint talking, she’d have her guard up. But with Brian...she trusted every word he was saying.
Didn’t care if it was far-fetched.
“I think he took her on the spur of the moment. He’d been there in the house that morning. He had to leave. He knew you were going back to your room to tend to Brooke. To nurse her. An intimacy of which I’m guessing he was jealous, thinking as he did that your body was his...”
She nodded again, captivated by how right he was about things she’d never spoken of...and by the hope that she wanted him to keep alive as long as he could.
Once she heard his theory, she might know why it wouldn’t be right and then...
“And once he had her, he didn’t know what to do next. He’s not one to have planned it all out. When he’s not happy, his thoughts are more in the moment because, for him, only the current moment matters. How he’s feeling right then.”
Again, pretty accurate.
“So he drives her around, maybe she’s awake, crying, but she falls asleep. He ends up in Lincoln that first day, she’s asleep in the car seat. He’s hungry, needs to eat. To get away from what he’s done for a few minutes. Maybe he thinks he’d be better able to figure out what to do if she’s not right there. But, as you said, he’s not the type to hurt a baby...”
Good. Good. “Go on.” The words stuck in her throat and she coughed.
“He sees the Birds of Paradise. The big window. Figures if he parks his truck in front of it, he can leave her in it and keep an eye out to make sure nothing happens to her. The worst thing would be she’d wake up and cry some more, and he wouldn’t be having to listen to every minute of it.”
He paused. Met her gaze. And didn’t let go.
“He meets Bonnie that day,” he told her. “She nurtures him. Makes him feel like you used to.”
He stopped talking. She didn’t look away. Couldn’t find a thing off about the picture he was painting.
“She gives him her phone number and now he’s got a reason to hang on. To hang around. Her interest buys him some time. He can hide out with the baby, get to know Bonnie, and maybe she’ll help him figure it all out. Or, at least, she made him feel better in the moment while he decided what to do next.”
Right. He was right. It’s exactly what Clint would do. With absolutely no thought to Jessica at home, dying a little more every moment her baby girl was missing...
“He finds an out-of-the-way motel, probably one that takes cash. He finally gets the baby to sleep—he’s fed her before. He knows how to read to her. She knows him. Falls asleep. He calls Bonnie and they talk half the night.”
“She...she did know him. He...fed her sometimes, during the day, when I was working. I pumped and there were always bottles in the freezer...”
“One day becomes two and then three. He’s been watching the news. He’s seen his picture plastered all over the major sources. He’s getting desperate, not sure how long he can keep driving in to see Bonnie. And then, on that third day, he knows she’s going to be staying in the back, other than when she comes out to tend to him. And because he’s paranoid at this point, and doesn’t want his face to be recognized, he picks up a newspaper from a table by the door and buries his face in it the whole time he’s there.”
Brian had her completely captivated. She had to hear what happened next.
“But...why, then, does he take the paper with him?” he asked.
And she tried to find his answer. Had to find his answer.
“Because he’d read something in it that caught his attention,” he said.
Relieved that he’d found his own answer, realizing that, of course, he had or he wouldn’t have called Anderson and they wouldn’t be sitting there...
“This is where it gets dicey, Jess. And why I didn’t want to tell you until we know more.”
Scared again. Terrified. “Tell me.” She trusted him. He didn’t come up with harebrained schemes.
Or run out when the going got tough.
“The paper was the Barneysville Weekly Gazette. It didn’t have anything about the kidnapping because it had been published the night before he took Brooke. What it did have was an article about a car crash somewhere east of Barneysville, near a town called Slader.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
And if the accident had happened before the kidnapping, which it had since it was in that paper, then she didn’t have to worry that...
“There’d been a one car crash. A divorced couple and their baby had gone over a guardrail and into a river. They’d been in a custody dispute and, at first, it was believed that they’d been arguing and that that had been the cause of the crash. But when searching only turned up the body of the mother, when they pulled up the car and saw that the windows had been open, that the river’s current had been running through the car...”
“The river runs through it.” Oh God. “The river runs through it.”
His glance dropped. He stared ahead of him as he said, “They figured the other two bodies had been swept away, but after a week of searching, not even finding articles of clothing for either the father or the infant girl, authorities put out a ‘be on the lookout’ for the father. Theory was that he’d either staged the crash, planning to kidnap his daughter, or the crash happened and he’d seen his opportunity. Then, before they could investigate further—”
“I remember this.” Jessica jumped up. Paced to the dresser and back. Twice. Fast. “The baby turned up...in another town...where the maternal grandmother lived. She was left in a baby drawer at a church...you know, those box things they have if you want to abandon your baby, with a note that had her name and the words ‘I’m sorry. I will love Annabelle forever.’”
Reality hadn’t caught up with her yet as tears streamed down her face. Her heart was in her throat. Hands on her hips as Brian stood up from the bed and she faced him. “They thought the father left her there. I remember because by the time that all came out, Clint had been arrested for kidnapping and I was so glad to see that at least one father did the right thing. It gave me hope that Clint really would have, too.” She stopped. Heart pounding. Stared at him. “Are...you...telling me...you think Clint put our baby, Brooke, in that drawer?”
His nod undid her.
Sobs tore up out of her, cutting off any ability to speak. There was no thought. No burst of joy. No wondering if it made sense. No thought to the possibilities. Just the release of eighteen months of pent-up grief.
She had an answer that she could accept.
And Brian was there, wrapping his arms around her, holding her up.
Chapter 27
Jessica was doing just as he’d feared she’d do. Buzzing around the house, conquering dust bunnies and glass smudges, stopping every few minutes to cry a little. She’d showered, put on what she called her bumblebee outfit—the one she’d been wearing the first day they’d gone clue hunting together. A yellow short-sleeved, button-down shirt with puffy sleeves and her skinny black pants and black tennis shoes. She’d called someone to handle her client base for the day.
