“IT WASN’T ME,” Caleb repeated sullenly.
As if anybody believed him. The three adults at the table wore identical implacable expressions.
Paula cleared her throat. “Funny thing. TJ says the same.”
Looking at her bothered him. Usually she was so together, but tonight he could tell she was scared.
The other times, with the two fires, she’d either still been dressed or had gotten dressed really fast before Caleb had seen her. This time, she wore some kind of ugly, lumpy fleece robe over a high-necked flannel nightgown. It was the first time Caleb had seen her hair loose instead of braided. It was, wow, down to her butt. Wavy from the braids, but mostly gray.
Roger’s hair was wild, too, and he wore slippers, saggy flannel pajama bottoms and a faded Kansas City Chiefs sweatshirt.
Only Reid was fully dressed, in jeans, running shoes and a fleece pullover. Oh, yeah, and a shoulder holster holding a big nine-millimeter handgun. Thanks to Daddy, Caleb knew his guns.
They stared at him. He stared back.
“This was a threat, Caleb,” his brother said.
He laughed. “Yeah, no shit.”
“You think it’s funny?”
“No, I don’t think it’s funny. What’s funny is you thinking I’m stupid.”
It was always hard to tell what was really going on in Reid’s head, but right now was an exception. He looked sad. As if Caleb had let him down.
“You could try trusting me,” Reid said quietly, his eyes holding Caleb’s.
Temper and hurt flared. “Sure. Like you trust me?”
“I’d like to. Hard to trust someone who won’t talk to you.”
Caleb didn’t have to say anything. His brother’s eyes narrowed for a flicker, and then his face went blank. As usual.
Caleb swiveled toward Paula. “Are you done with me?”
They’d already asked whether he had heard anyone else up and around in the lodge the past couple of hours. Or anything unusual outside.
He’d said no. And no.
And tonight he hadn’t heard TJ get up. For some reason, he’d been totally out. But he knew. TJ was going outside most nights. What Caleb couldn’t figure out was what he was doing. Until this deal with the knife, there hadn’t been any excitement in a week. TJ had had plenty of opportunity, so why hadn’t he taken advantage of it until tonight?
When Caleb got upstairs, for once the other boy’s door stood half-open and his light was on. Caleb hesitated, then stepped into the opening. So far, he’d kept his mouth shut, but he didn’t like being judged because TJ was into some kind of shit.
Sprawled on his bed, TJ wore only a pair of sweatpants. He wasn’t any taller than Caleb, who was already six feet, but he had some serious muscles. He had a man’s facial and body hair, too. An unshaven growth of beard shadowed TJ’s lean face. His brown eyes were always flat and cold.
When he saw that he wasn’t alone anymore, his lip curled and he removed some earbuds. “That didn’t take long.”
“I said the same thing you did. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Bet that’s not what they wanted to hear.”
“No. They wanted me to say I hear you go downstairs every night. That I know it’s you who oiled the hinges on the back door so you can go in and out quietly.”
TJ didn’t move, but Caleb wasn’t fooled into thinking he was relaxed. Just because he’d never seen a coiled diamondback ready to strike didn’t mean he wouldn’t recognize its state of mind when he did almost step on one.
“I could say the same about you,” TJ said after a moment.
“But you’d be lying.”
“You don’t know anything, or you would have spilled.”
Caleb made himself laugh, even knowing TJ wouldn’t like it. “Yeah? Shows what you know.”
TJ sat up so fast Caleb jerked backward in instinctive reaction.
“You’re threatening me.” The jerk snorted. “Or do you think I’ll pay you to keep your mouth shut?”
“You don’t have anything I’d want,” Caleb scoffed.
“So what’s the point?”
Caleb balanced lightly on his feet and readied himself, even though he didn’t think TJ would attack him right now, not with Paula, Roger and Reid downstairs and alert. “I don’t want anyone to die because you’re pissed at everyone, okay?”
TJ laughed, an ugly sound. “Yeah, you really don’t know what you’re talking about. Go to bed, little boy.”
Caleb never liked to back down. He was already mad at himself for flinching. He knew his stubbornness was rooted in all the times he’d had to duck his head and pretend to be submissive to Dad to avoid being hurt. Sometimes he wished he’d had the balls to refuse to back down. He could have taken whatever Dad threw at him. Or, better yet, killed the son of a bitch. Dad was careless with his weapons, a nine-mil Beretta and a Colt .38. A couple of times Caleb had seen one of the weapons lying on the kitchen counter and imagined himself grabbing it and just blasting away. Bam. Bam. Bam. Seeing the explosion of blood and the shock on his father’s face followed by...vacancy. Caleb had wanted to do it so much, he’d shocked himself. I won’t be like him, he’d told himself, but maybe that was just an excuse for being a coward.
What he did know was that he’d never give anyone that kind of power over him again. TJ might beat the shit out of him, but Caleb would rather that than know how gutless he was.
So he shrugged, real nonchalant, and said, “Keep telling yourself that.”
Until now, he’d never seen anyone’s eyes dilate so much they were pitch-black. But he held TJ’s blistering stare long enough to satisfy himself, then turned and went to his room.
Which had no lock. He could stand up for himself when he was awake, but what if TJ sneaked in when he was sleeping?
After a minute, Caleb grabbed his desk chair and carried it to the door, bracing the back beneath the knob. At least this way he’d have some warning.
* * *
“WE MIGHT BE making a mistake to assume it was Caleb or TJ you heard going in,” Roger observed, once they heard Caleb climb the stairs.
“That’s occurred to me,” Reid admitted. “It wouldn’t be hard for any of the boys to get his hands on a key to the front door. He might be coming in that door, out the back, depending on what he thinks is safest. For that matter, he might have opened the door, heard me coming around the lodge or seen a spear of my flashlight beam, closed the door real quick and stayed in the kitchen. He could have let himself out later, once we were all out front.”
There were enough other possible scenarios to give him a headache. He had an image of clowns in whiteface and bulbous red noses opening and closing doors, popping in and out with bewildering speed until the watcher was confused over who was where.
“But they’re still the two likeliest,” Roger said.
Reid grunted.
My brother.
Without a word, Roger heaved himself to his feet and disappeared into the kitchen, carrying his empty coffee cup. When he returned with it full, Paula shook her head.
“The caffeine will keep you awake.”
He kissed her cheek, then straddled the bench beside her. “It’s four-thirty in the morning. I won’t be falling asleep again.”
“Well, I plan to,” she said with a sniff. “You two can stay up all night long if you want.” She slid off one end of the bench, bent briefly to rest her head against her husband’s back, then came around the table to squeeze Reid’s shoulder. “Thank you for being here.”
Reid, too, had just been thinking he could still get some sleep if he went home. He doubted anything else was going to happen here in the waning hours of the night. But clearly, Roger had something else to say, so Reid didn’t move.
“You’re sure you don’t want a cup?”
Reid shook his head. “You know something.”
“What?” Roger looked startled. “No! Just that we’ve had more to do with local law enforcement than I’ve told you.”
Reid tensed. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve heard the story on your predecessor’s wife?”
That was an unexpected sideways jump. Reid cast his mind back. “She had amnesia because of a blow to the head. Came back to town years later, and the guy who’d whacked her the first time tried to kill her again.”
“You knew one of those attempts took place out here?”
“You said something at the time,” Reid said slowly, thinking it through. “That she’d had a boyfriend who lived here back when she was a teenager.”
“Right. She drove out here without knowing where she was going because he’d brought her to see the place, way back when.”
What Roger had never said, it developed, was that an Angel Butte police detective named Duane Brewer had found the shelter years ago. Not long after Reid “graduated,” they figured out. This Brewer had been a runaway himself who claimed he wouldn’t have survived if not for the sanctuary given by a youth shelter. He wanted to help.
So he started mentoring kids, usually one at a time. Sometimes a girl, sometimes a boy. Only it turned out that he’d been sexually molesting those girls, a number of whom subsequently disappeared.
“We didn’t worry as much as we should have,” Roger said, his chagrin obvious. “You know kids walk out on us. We can’t hogtie them to keep them here.”
Reid nodded. His first year here, he’d thought about running away himself. He hadn’t liked the restrictions or having to feel grateful. He hadn’t wanted to trust anyone. During the three years he’d spent at the old resort, three—no, four—of the residents had taken off. One girl, three boys. Staying here, studying hard, keeping clean and abiding by the strict rules on any contact with outsiders wasn’t easy. On occasion, Roger and Paula had had to ask kids to leave, too, trusting that they weren’t angry enough to betray the shelter.
Reid had already asked if any kids who might be disgruntled had left in the recent past, but apparently it had been at least a year since the last had taken off. His choice, which made him unlikely for this campaign of fear.
“We know now that Brewer murdered those girls. It all came to a head when he tried to kill Maddie Dubeau—now Nell McAllister.”
More of what he’d read at the time was coming back to Reid. Wherever he was living, he had always paid attention to news from central Oregon. Yeah, he’d known that after Brewer was brought down, Jane Renner, née Vahalik, had taken over as lieutenant in Investigations. What Reid had never read was any connection with the runaway shelter at the old Bear Creek Resort.
“How’d you keep your heads down?” he asked.
“With help from McAllister and Lieutenant Vahalik,” Roger said. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. They both know what we’re doing out here and chose to keep their mouths shut.”
Reid had trouble believing that. Going for blunt, he asked, “Why? Given their jobs, the ethical decision would have been to shut you down.”
“In Sheriff McAllister’s case, I think his wife begged him to stay silent.” A frown gathered on his brow. “I’m less sure about the lieutenant. I guess I wondered—” He stopped.
When he didn’t continue, Reid did it for him. “Whether she might have reason to sympathize.”
“Yeah, that’s it. There’s something about her.”
Funny, because Reid didn’t yet know her well, but he’d had the same underlying sense. For all that she was, so far as Reid could tell, confident on the job, there was something...vulnerable about her.
The same something he’d recognized in Anna, he realized. Ghosts.
“Then, later,” Roger continued, as if he were thinking aloud, “there was another cop. That one was with the sheriff’s department. Sergeant Renner. He came out to ask questions about a kid that went missing on our road. I can’t be sure how much he knew, but he said something about us doing a good thing, and if we ever needed help to call him.”
“Clay Renner. He married Lieutenant Vahalik, you know.”
Roger hadn’t known. He and Paula read the local newspaper, but Reid doubted they paid attention to wedding or anniversary announcements, even assuming two cops would have bothered with that kind of thing.
“Why are you telling me this?” Reid asked. “Do you think we need more help?”
“Now? No.” Roger shrugged. “But in case.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.” Reid said his goodbyes and took off, his cover pretty much blown with the boys. But maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing, as it might make their troublemaker hesitate.
Assuming the troublemaker was one of the boys rather than the driver of the car Reid had heard.
He realized how tired he was when he couldn’t seem to make his mind grapple with what his next step ought to be. He kept picturing the knife, blade embedded in the door, and the ghosts in Anna Grant’s eyes.
He heard Roger’s voice, but it wasn’t Lieutenant Jane Renner he pictured.
There’s something about her....
And he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stay away from her.
* * *
ANNA PACKED A lunch on the Monday morning after the skiing expedition. In fact, she went to more trouble than usual, making a salad to go with a leftover burrito she could heat in the microwave in the staff room at Angel’s Haven. She was pleased with herself when she plopped the insulated canvas lunch bag down on the passenger seat next to her purse. She could credit herself with some pride, at least. She’d be damned if she was going to make excuses to herself every day about why having lunch at the Kingfisher Café would be a really fabulous idea—at, of course, exactly the time she and Reid had met there.
Her phone rang before she backed out of the driveway, and she groped in her purse for it. What crisis now? But when she saw the caller’s number, her heart gave a bump.
“Reid,” she said, answering coolly but pleasantly.
“Good morning. I was hoping we could meet for lunch.”
She almost groaned. Closing her eyes, she felt her pride melt like candle wax. Damn it. “The café? Or shall we shoot for some variety?”
“Are we talking Chandler’s or A&W?” His amusement was apparent.
“Actually, either.” Anywhere he wanted to go.
Her certainty shocked her, given that she hardly knew him.
No, if she were honest with herself, she didn’t know him at all and wasn’t sure she ever would. She had a very bad feeling that a woman could marry the man and spend the next fifty years with him while large parts of him remained closed to her.
“Chandler’s is close to the police station, too,” he said. “But your wish is my command.”
She’d have to drive either way. She agreed that sounded good, and they set a time. After dropping her phone back in her bag, she looked ruefully at the lunch, debated taking it back into the house, and decided she could safely leave it in the refrigerator at work. It would still be good tomorrow.
Her morning was less than exciting, spent working on reports for state agencies. She never let herself feel resentful, unlike some coworkers. Anna believed deeply in concepts like compliance and accountability. On her watch, no child would ever fall through the cracks. No foster parent would go unvisited for too long. She encouraged the caseworkers to make a certain percentage of their visits unexpected drop-ins, too. Foster parents with Angel’s Haven were all warned that would be the case when they signed on.
She wasn’t sorry to break at noon, however, hustling out of the office. The day hadn’t warmed up, and the gray of the clouds had a milky cast, making her suspect they might get another snowfall whether this was supposed to be spring or not.
Maybe Reid would like to take his new skis out again this weekend.
But this time, he’d have to do the asking, she vowed. Pride. Remember?
Parking downtown was more plentiful than it was much of the year. The ski areas hadn’t shut down yet, but would soon, snow or no. Once people flipped their calendars to April, their thoughts turned to gardening and summer sports. For locals, this was the best time of year to hit the slopes, with lift lines short.
She walked into Chandler’s to find Reid waiting just inside. As usual, he wore a well-cut dark suit that made her think attorney, not cop. When he saw her, his eyes crinkled in a smile that barely touched his mouth.
The hostess signaled to them, and he gently touched Anna’s back to steer her ahead of him. That slightest touch sent a shaft of pleasure through her.
She knew the menu at Chandler’s well enough to barely need to take a glance, which left her free to study Reid as he read his more thoroughly.
Somewhat dreamily, she decided it was especially sad that he should have to hate to own a face so perfectly formed. The camera would love him if he wanted to be a model. He possessed the kind of hollows beneath the jut of his cheekbones that she’d seen only a few times before in real life. His nose was thin and straight, his jaw cleanly cut, his mouth just soft enough to suggest a sensual nature. And then there was the color of those eyes, so mysteriously dark.
To her horror, she realized he was looking right at her, amusement quirking his mouth. “Did I turn purple?”
“No, I was just, um—” Give it up, she told herself, and laughed even as she knew her cheeks had warmed. “I was admiring you. And thinking that if your brother looks like you, the girls are probably blushing when he so much as glances their way.”
Warring emotions showed on his face. “Damn, I’d really like to kiss you,” he said at last in a low, husky voice.
They stared at each other. Anna’s entire body tingled.
“Hi, can I take your order for drinks?”
Anna started. Beside the table stood a curvaceous waitress in a snug, short black skirt and equally tight white shirt buttoned up barely high enough to keep her boobs contained.
Reid gave no sign of noticing the waitress’s deep cleavage or the way she fluttered her lashes when she looked at him. After a questioning glance at Anna, he told the waitress they were ready to order their meals, then he and Anna did so.
“Wow,” she mumbled, watching the ridiculously young and sexy creature saunter away. “Now I know why I don’t come here more often.”
Reid’s eyebrows drew together. “What?”
“Every single waitress I can see is young, beautiful and buxom. Ours was flirting with you besides. That’s tacky.”
Reid laughed. “Do you know how disgruntled you sound?”
She pretended to sniff haughtily. “I was going for disapproving.”
The grin made his handsome face breathtaking. “Jealous.”
“I’m entitled.”
“No, you’re not. I’d guess that waitress was eighteen if this wasn’t a brewpub and therefore I assume has to be twenty-one. She couldn’t quite be my daughter, but closer than I want to admit. And no, until you pointed it out, I didn’t notice her breasts.”
“Really?” Oh, beg, why don’t you?
It earned her another laugh. “Really. But I suspect you’re right. Pretty waitresses probably are a draw. From what I hear, Mayor Chandler is a smart man. This is the kind of place where decorative staff helps the bottom line. What’s more, he’s also smart enough to offer a huge selection of craft beers and really good food, or people wouldn’t come back.”
“Well.”
This smile definitely extended to his eyes. “You’re too intriguing a woman to be so insecure.”
No one had ever called her intriguing. “I’m a social worker,” she said. “I don’t have cleavage I could hide a passport in. My idea of makeup most mornings is sunscreen and maybe a brush of mascara. I can’t be too witty, or I wouldn’t keep scaring you away.”
He’d remained smiling until then. The smile died abruptly and an uncomfortable moment passed. “But you notice I keep coming back,” he said, a little deeper and rougher than usual.
“Oh, God, I can’t believe I said that,” she moaned.
“Why not?”
“Because I sound like I’m whining that you aren’t calling me daily and sending me flowers. I didn’t mean it that way.”
His expression softened. The change would have been imperceptible to someone paying less attention than she. “I know you didn’t,” he said.
Their drinks arrived, and then salads. Probably to head off her next wretched outburst, he asked about the rest of her weekend, and Anna admitted her legs were a little sore.
“I punished myself by going to the health club yesterday.” She grimaced, and he laughed.
“The elliptical.”
“I swam some laps, too. And lounged in the hot tub. What about you?”
His frown came and went so fast, she almost missed it. “I did...something of a stakeout Saturday night.”
“Aren’t police captains above boring duties like that?”
“This was pro bono. Remember the friend who had the fire? He’s had some other problems. I lurked to try to catch whoever has it in for him.”
That sounded more than a little strange to her, but maybe he thought it was fun. “Were you successful?”
“No.” If he’d been having fun, he shouldn’t sound so grim now. “He pulled another trick right under my nose.”
“What kind of trick?” she asked, feeling apprehensive for no good reason.
“He stabbed a hunting knife into my friend’s front door. A big sucker—” he measured the length with his hands “—black rubber handle.”
“That’s creepy!” Anna exclaimed.
“Yeah, no kidding.”
“But— Were there fingerprints?”
“No. Isn’t everybody older than kindergarten smarter than that these days?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Probably. And maybe even kindergartners, given what their parents let them watch on TV.”
“There you go.”
“This friend,” she said tentatively. “Is he the reason you took the job here?” And—had he ever said the friend was a he?
Well, there might be a whole lot she didn’t know about Reid Sawyer, but she felt confident he wouldn’t be spending time with her if he was already involved with another woman. He was too honorable for that.
Still, she recognized how cautious his glance was. “In a way,” he said finally. “The couple are the reason I’ve spent time in the area before.”
“Would I know them?”
“I doubt it.” He took a long drink of his cola. “Roger’s retired. They don’t mix much.”
So, not Reid’s contemporaries. Friends of his father’s? Um—the father he hated? Probably not. But even though nosiness did come naturally to her, she couldn’t bring herself to press him.
“How’d your home visit go Saturday?” he asked abruptly, telling her she’d been right not to persist.
“Oh— It raised some concerns for me, to tell you the truth.” She’d been disappointed, actually; she’d liked the couple, but the apartment had been too small to add an older child, and she’d learned that the husband was out of work and having trouble finding a new job. That made her suspect the stipend was a bigger part of their motivation than she liked.
“What do you look for?” he asked.
Since she could tell he was genuinely curious, she talked for a little about the kind of clues she sought on home visits, everything from the adequacy of the apartment or house to giveaways that might contradict something she’d read on the application or been told during the original interview.
“Everyone is sure I care deeply about dust or clutter, which is sad because I don’t. In fact, some messes suggest active, interesting people live there.”
“Sometimes you distinguish yourself from the caseworkers, but you seemed pretty hands-on with Yancey.”
She gave her introductory lecture about the web of interconnected services and supervision through the state, as well as private agencies like Angel’s Haven, and explained that she did continue to take on some children herself even as she oversaw the foster program.
“Yancey is one, obviously. But we’re not so big that I can’t keep myself informed about all the children we’re serving with foster homes.” She went on to tell him about the other services offered: counseling for kids and for families, a “shop” where low-income parents could choose clothes for themselves and their kids, and a Christmas house for holiday gifts. “We also pair with a safe house for battered women by offering day care for their children as the women rebuild their lives. It’s one way to help those kids stay with a parent and not need foster care.”
“That’s impressive,” he said. “I’m guessing a lot of locals have no idea those services are even needed.”
She chuckled. “I remember seeing an interview with your boss, Chief Raynor. He talked about how he’d chosen Angel Butte because he wanted a peaceful town for his family.”
“After which his nephew was kidnapped by drug traffickers and corrupt cops to put pressure on him to throw a trial.”
“There’s some famous last words.” She paused. “Did you think of Angel Butte as peaceful?”
“No.” The lines in his forehead deepened when he met her eyes. “I don’t delude myself.”
No, she thought sadly, he wouldn’t any more than she did. Abused children hardly ever grew up to be people who tried to believe the world was a kind place. They knew better.
“I’ve been wondering,” he said. “Are you ever forced to return children to a parent or guardian when you suspect the situation there isn’t safe?”
“Not often, but...occasionally.” She fiddled with her fork, not wanting to meet those sharp green eyes. “DHS—the Department of Human Services,” she corrected herself, remembering that he hadn’t grown up in Oregon, “and we are encouraged to weigh in when the court arrives at decisions. But of course in the end a judge makes the call. Sometimes, in my opinion, the wrong one is made.”
“So you just let the kids go.”
Why did she feel quite sure that was a criticism? And even that he was angry, whether it showed or not?
“‘Just’?” Suddenly, she was mad. “You say that as if it’s easy. No, it’s not. None of us like it. The truth is, though, that nobody is all-knowing. Maybe we’re sometimes too close to the child to see clearly. And what do you suggest as a better system? We immediately lynch all abusive parents—and, hey, who is going to judge the evidence?—so there’s no home the kid can be returned to? We set up an underground network to hide the kids? Of course, then the state wouldn’t refer children to us in the first place, which would mean we can’t help any kids at all.”
“I didn’t suggest—”
“Yes, you did. But before you judge, I’ll tell you that we do our damnedest always to keep a connection open with children being returned to a home, whether we believe it’s the right decision or not. We encourage the guardian to allow visits from the foster parents to ease the transition. We make sure the kids, if they’re old enough, have phone numbers they can call if things go bad. If we have any doubts, we put a lot of pressure on judges to court-order counseling and maintain supervision by the state for a reasonable length of time.” She stared fiercely at him. “We don’t toss them back like a fish that isn’t big enough and figure what the heck, win some, lose some.”
Reid looked torn between consternation and amusement. “Was all that fury really ignited by a simple question?”
“It wasn’t the question. It was the comment. ‘So you just let the kids go.’”
“I’m sorry.” He sounded gentle, as he sometimes could.
Anna’s anger immediately deflated. Her shoulders sagged. “No, I am. You hit a hot button, that’s all. Once in a while, we have to return a child to a home when we believe passionately it’s the wrong thing to do. But I also believe our system is filled with caring people all doing the best they can. Perfection is a pipe dream.”
“I suppose,” he said after a moment, “all I wanted was to hear you’re aware it happens and fight for those kids.”
“You mean, you wanted to know whether I really care.”
“No.” Now she could tell he was troubled. “I already knew that.”
She gave a little nod.
It was probably just as well that they talked about other things for the rest of their lunch.
And that a busy street only two blocks from the public safety building where he worked wasn’t a place where he could do more than kiss her lightly and say, “I’ll call, Anna.”
Getting into her car, it occurred to her that this might be the first time he’d left her with a promise that she would actually hear from him again.