“Do you need any help in there?” Jane asked through the closed bathroom door.
“No,” Betty replied. It was so soft Jane probably hadn’t heard her.
“I could curl your hair for you,” Jane said.
Betty didn’t want her hair curled. She wanted—Her stomach erupted as she braced herself as everything she’d eaten that day forced its way up, out, and into the toilet, yet again.
The door opened, and she had no choice but to look at her sister as Jane knelt down beside her.
“It’s not that bad,” Jane said soothingly. “It’s only a date.”
Betty shook her head before she had to hang it over the toilet again. She’d been sick to her stomach for a couple of days now, cried at the blink of an eye, and was exhausted during the day, yet wide-awake at night. Yet she didn’t feel sick. She didn’t have a temperature or the chills or any other symptoms.
“Here.” Jane handed her a cool washcloth.
Betty took it, wiped her mouth, and then held the cloth over her face. The eruption in her stomach had settled. That was how it had been. Once she vomited, she felt better.
“Do you want me to tell Father you’re too ill to go out?” Jane asked.
“No.” Betty heaved out a sigh and removed the cloth. “I’ll be fine in a moment.” She sat on the floor and leaned the back of her head against the edge of the sink. “James is excited to go to the restaurant.”
Jane sat down on the floor. “So?”
Betty shook her head at Jane.
“Horsefeathers! The idea of going out with him makes you so sick you throw up, yet you—”
“He’s not that bad,” Betty insisted. “I’ve told you that, including yesterday when you threw cake on him.”
“I didn’t throw cake on him,” Jane said. “And yes he is.”
Betty closed her eyes and forced herself to not compare James to Henry because she cried when she did that.
“Do you really think you can spend the rest of your life with him?” Jane asked.
“Yes,” Betty said. It would be boring, but she could do it because that was who she was. She’d tried being someone she wasn’t, and that hadn’t worked out. She’d broken every rule, and her heart. James would never do that to her.
“Piffle!” Jane leaned her head back against the bathtub and stared at the ceiling. “Think of your children! A room full of dull, boring slugs.”
Betty had to swallow around the hard lump that formed in her throat. Children. Her body began to tremble. It hadn’t even been four weeks since she’d seen Henry. And he’d... No. No. She pressed hand to her stomach. That couldn’t have happened. It was not possible. She shot to her feet.
“Where are you going?” Jane asked.
Betty didn’t answer as she ran for her room.
Before she arrived, Father’s bellow echoed up the stairs, telling her James was downstairs, waiting on her.
Tears formed in her eyes.
Jane grabbed her arm. “I knew it. You don’t like him.”
Betty shook her head and tried to breathe.
“I’ll tell him—”
“No!” Betty swallowed hard. “Tell him I need a minute.”
Jane shook her head.
“Yes. Please, Jane.” Her anxiety was reaching a boiling point. “Please! I just need a minute.”
“Fine!” Jane stomped off.
Betty ran into her room and flipped the calendar hanging on the wall to the previous month. Stared at the date she’d put an X on. Her last monthly visit. She leaned her head against the wall. She’d thought she’d already broken every rule.
It took her far more than a minute to compose herself. Then she went back to the bathroom and quickly brushed her teeth, washed her face, and twisted her hair into a bun at the nape of her neck. She glanced in the mirror and instantly recalled an image of her and her sisters putting on makeup and getting ready to sneak out. That had been fun. Exciting to defy the rules. She’d pay for that for the rest of her life.
She willed herself to turn around and leave the room.
Mother and Jane met her at the bottom of the stairs. “You look lovely, darling. Although a little pale.” Mother pinched her cheeks. “A woman should always want to look nice for her husband, before they are married and afterward. Otherwise he’ll look elsewhere.”
“If only she could be so lucky,” Jane said dryly.
Mother’s lips pursed as she looked at Jane. “Your father chose James because he is a very wealthy man. He can provide Betty with everything she’ll ever want.”
Betty fought to keep the tears at bay. A baby. That was what she’d always wanted, but there were rules about that, too. Marriage first and then a baby. Not the other way around.
James walked out of Father’s office, and his expression upon seeing her was, well, dull. He smiled, but there was no shine in his eyes, no handsome glow on his face, nothing that even remotely sparked a hint of joy inside her.
Years of being seen and not heard played into her favor as James escorted her out of the house and into his car. She didn’t say a word, merely nodded as he talked. And talked. In a dull monotone. Nothing like Henry’s voice.
Her eyes filled with tears as she recalled their last conversation.
If there are any repercussions from this evening, I will provide for you.
That was fine and dandy but she had no idea where he was, how to find him, and even if she did, he didn’t have a house, a home. Those were things she wanted. Things a baby needed.
Provide. Money. That was what he’d said because he’d never be home. He’d be going from one job to the next, chasing down criminals. She didn’t need money. She needed a husband.
She took a handkerchief out of her purse and dried her eyes.
“Allergies?” James asked. “I have them, too. I was just at the new clinic—maybe you should go there.”
A clinic was the last place she needed to go right now. She squeezed her temples, and nearly leaped out of the car as soon as he parked along the curb in front of the restaurant.
They were only a block away from the newspaper office, and she couldn’t help but think about Patsy and Lane. They’d looked so in love yesterday. So happy.
So not pregnant and engaged to a worm.
Betty chided herself right then and there for calling him that. She was just at her wit’s end, and James was not helping. He was talking about hives from a bee sting.
She rushed into the restaurant as soon as he opened the door, pretending to be enthralled with the lush, elegant surroundings. There were crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, a trio of musicians playing music in a corner, and the waiters, dressed in black tuxedos, had white towels draped over one arm.
The maître d’ invited them to follow him to a table, and as soon as he led them through a doorway, the smells assaulted her, made her stomach gurgle. No. Not here. Her stomach seemed to settle as she walked, but she felt oddly woozy.
“Betty?”
She twisted at the sound of her name. “Patsy?” Surprised because she’d helped Patsy, as had Jane and Mother, fix up a cabin in the woods for them to honeymoon in for a few days. “What are you doing here?”
Her sister stood up, so did Lane, and they looked at each other, smiling. “We got hungry,” Patsy said.
Lane greeted James cordially as Patsy looked at her with an alarmed expression as Betty gripped the back of a chair.
“Lane, they can join us at our table, can’t they?” Patsy asked.
“Of course,” Lane said.
“Oh, well, uh—” James started.
“I insist,” Patsy said. “I haven’t seen Betty since the wedding.” She then grasped Betty’s hand. “We are going to visit the powder room. We’ll be right back.”
“You just got married yesterday,” Betty said as Patsy held her arm on the way to the powder room.
“I know, but you are as white as a sheet,” Patsy replied.
Once inside the elegant powder room, which had a waiting area complete with red-felt-embossed wallpaper and a matching velvet fainting couch, Betty sat down and hung her head between her legs.
“You look awful,” Patsy said. “Are you ill?”
Betty lifted her head, slowly. Thankful the spell had passed, she said, “Just a dizzy spell—I haven’t eaten much today.”
“Are you sure that’s it? Or is it how Father is insisting you marry James?”
“James isn’t as awful as we’d imagined. He’s...”
“Dutiful?”
“Yes.”
Patsy shook her head. “You’ve been dutiful your entire life—don’t you want more? Some fun and excitement.”
She’d had that, and it had gotten her... Pregnant, that was what it had gotten her, with a man she’d never see again. “No,” Betty said. “I like dutiful.”
“Betty—”
“Enough about me—tell me how you are,” Betty interrupted. She needed to eat and get home, where she could do some serious, serious thinking.
Patsy took hold of her hands. “I am so happy, Betty. So, so very happy. It’s amazing. Lane is so wonderful.” She giggled. “I know we’ve only been married a day, but even before then, he... I don’t even know how to say it. I can be who I want to be with him, not who someone else wants me to be and it’s so wonderful.”
“I’m happy for you.”
“I want to be happy for you, too, and I don’t see that happening with James.”
James wouldn’t force her to be anyone; he wouldn’t force anyone to do anything. It was just not in him. “He’ll provide...” She nearly choked on the word. “Well. He has a nice house. He drove me past it the other day.”
“A nice house?” Patsy shook her head. “A house is just a house. Father has a nice house, too, but it didn’t make us happy.”
“It will make me happy,” Betty insisted.
“I know that’s what you always wanted. Your own home to keep neat and tidy, your own children to take care of and keep in line.” Patsy giggled slightly. “If not for you, Jane and I would have been caught sneaking out months ago. We would have been in trouble over and over again throughout the years.” Staring her straight in the eyes, Patsy asked, “But are you sure James is who you want to have those babies with?”
Betty couldn’t answer that. She knew the answer, but couldn’t say it. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“It’s about when you and Lane helped capture Vincent Burrows. The article in the newspaper didn’t mention the FBI agents by name.”
“No, they have a dangerous job, and it could be even more dangerous if their names were in the newspaper.”
Betty laid a hand on her stomach. “Was one named Henry? Henry Randall?”
Patsy’s face lit up. “Why? Do you know him? Have you seen him?”
“No, I haven’t seen him.”
Patsy huffed out a breath. “I was hoping you’d say yes. He was shanghaied—”
“Shanghaied?” Betty’s heart leaped into her throat.
“Yes, almost a month ago and Lane and I are beginning to think the worst.”
Thankfully, Betty was already sitting down when she put the fainting couch to good use.
Henry stood in the shadows of a tall tree, where he’d easily be able to stop any and all women who climbed down the trellis tonight. He could have tossed a coin to decide if he should find Lane first, or Betty, but he hadn’t needed any help in making that decision. As soon as LeRoy had left, Henry changed out of the sailor’s uniform and drove here.
What he’d had to make a decision on was to knock on the front door and talk to William Dryer, or to talk to Betty first.
It had only taken him a moment to decide. The bedroom lights were on upstairs, which meant they hadn’t snuck out yet. So, he’d parked down the block and snuck into the backyard to wait.
He’d only been there a few minutes when the lights went out. First one and then the other. Next, a set of legs came out the bathroom window and started climbing down the trellis.
Jane. He recognized her as soon as she was completely out the window, which was where his gaze remained, watching for Betty.
She never emerged and Jane was already scampering across the yard, toward the tree he stood behind.
He waited until the exact moment and then stepped out and grabbed her arm.
She slapped a hand over her mouth, but removed it as the fear left her eyes.
“Well, if it isn’t the dancing Reuben.”
All three of the Dryer girls were pretty, but the younger two didn’t hold a candle to Betty. “Hello, Jane.”
She lifted a brow, but didn’t appear overly surprised that he knew her name. “Weeks of fun were wasted on looking for you.”
He released her arm. “By whom?”
“My sister.”
“Where is Betty?” He glanced at the window. “Her light went out right after yours did.”
“Because I shut it off,” Jane said. “Betty had left it on when she was picked up for her date.”
He clamped his back teeth together at the anger that rose up in him. A different level of anger that he didn’t know what to relate it to because he’d never known anything quite like it.
“With the man she’s going to marry,” Jane said. “She’s already engaged to him.”
He breathed through his nose at the hard ball that formed beneath his rib cage. “Engaged?”
“Yes. To James Bauer.”
“The man who builds houses for your father?”
“Yes.”
He balled his hands into fists. Engaged. “Where are they?”
Jane tilted her head back farther so the floppy brim of her yellow hat didn’t cover her eyes. “Why? What are you doing here?”
“Do you know where they are?”
She looked at him for a long moment before nodding. “Yes.”
He took her arm again, and they walked toward his car.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“To find them.”
“Ducky!”
Henry’s insides were a colliding mixture of burning anger and icy clarification. Engaged. That certainly hadn’t taken her long. Or had she known that when... She must have. He’d heard her father had put the word out for rich men to marry his daughters. That was why she’d wanted to have fun, to... His throat burned. She’d duped him all right, but it had had nothing to do with the case.
There was a burning pain in his chest, right where his heart was.
He didn’t know it could hurt like this, but what he did know was that a woman engaged to one man and seducing another, didn’t have a heart.
“The restaurant is near the newspaper office,” Jane said once they were both in the car.
He flipped the car around and headed into town. He flipped his mind around, too. “Do you know where Lane is?”
“Why?” Jane asked. “Do you know Lane?”
“Yes, and I know he got married yesterday. Did they go out of town for a honeymoon?” He hoped that was the case.
“No. He and Patsy are spending a few days in a cabin in the woods.”
“Where? What cabin?”
She leaned forward and stared at him. “Why?”
“I just need to know where the cabin is. It’s important.”
“Not far from here,” Jane said. “It’s on my father’s property.”
Henry cursed beneath his breath. It had to be the cabin that he’d stayed in, and that wasn’t a safe spot. Elkin must know about it. Just down the hill from it was where they’d knocked him out.
“What’s this all about?” Jane asked. “You aren’t just looking for my sister because you like her, are you?”
“No, I’m not.” He held his breath for a moment at how things could change hour to hour and minute to minute. He had liked Betty, still did if the truth must be known, but he’d never really known what to think about her. All the way from a coincidence to someone he needed to protect, she made him feel things he’d never felt before. “I’m an FBI agent, and believe your family may be in danger.”
“Danger? What kind of danger?”
“Does the name Curtis Elkin mean anything to you?”
“No. Should it?”
“No one’s ever mentioned it?”
“No! What kind of danger?”
The buildings had been rolling by for blocks, and he kept one eye on the rearview mirror and one on the road all the way, not knowing if Elkin was already watching him or not. “Serious danger.” He glanced at the businesses lining the street. “Where’s this restaurant?”
“Right over there.” She pointed toward the left. “There’s James’s car, and...and that’s Lane’s car!”
He had no idea what Lane drove. “Are you sure?”
“Yes! Pull over. Pull over!”
Jane was already holding on to the door handle. “We have to talk before going in the restaurant,” he said while pulling the car around the block. He couldn’t go inside. There was no telling if Elkin was following Lane, either.
“About what?”
“James Bauer.” He wanted to know more about that man, but would find that information out from sources other than Betty’s family. “This is serious, could be very dangerous and only family can know about it.”
“And you.”
“And the Bureau,” he clarified, while coming up with a plan of where they could meet. It couldn’t be inside, or the hotel—they were both too public. His only option was the abandoned house. The Bureau hadn’t been involved in the bust of the mob boss, Burrows’s uncle, so Elkin may not know about the house. Even if he did, the tunnel would be safe.
The keys to the house and tunnel had been on his key ring, the one he’d dropped on the floor of his car when he’d gotten hit over the head. LeRoy had given them back to him with his other items from the cabin. He hoped that meant Elkin didn’t know about the house or tunnel.
Huffing out a breath, he knew he didn’t have an option in not trusting Jane, either. “All right, this is what you are going to do.”
Jane listened as he told her to get rid of Bauer, however she had to, and to tell Lane to meet him at the abandoned house. Because he didn’t want them all together, he also told her to bring Betty to his car.
As Jane climbed out of the car, and he thought of seeing Betty, Henry’s emotions caught up with him, yet he was calm, accepting what had been, and what would be, which was exactly what he’d wanted.
No, it was what he needed. She was engaged. He was fine with that because that was not something he could ever have offered her. It shouldn’t have angered him in the first place.
He was to blame in all that had happened. He should have walked away from her that first night. Would have had it been anyone else.
He braced himself when the door of the restaurant opened, and let out a sigh of relief when it wasn’t her. The man walked to the car Jane had indicated as James Bauer’s car. Henry huffed out a grunt. James was short, stout and his shoulders were slumped forward. The man climbed into the car and drove away.
The restaurant door opened again, and Henry wasn’t quite as prepared as he’d thought. Betty, wearing a dark blue dress, frowned as she walked toward his car. Lost in a memory he shouldn’t have let enter his mind, it was last-minute when he opened his door so he could walk around and open hers.
As he stood, locked eyes with her over the top of the car, he wished he could take pride in himself for not feeling anything. But he couldn’t, because he did feel something.
She didn’t say a word.
Neither did he.
She opened her door.
He sat back down in the driver’s seat.
She climbed in and stared out the windshield. “Jane will ride with Lane and Patsy.”
He let the air that had been locked in his lungs out and started the car.
“What are you doing here, Henry?”
“We need to talk.”
The hands she had folded in her lap were trembling. “About what?”
Jane must have followed his orders. “Do you know a man named Curtis Elkin?”
“No.”
“Did you tell anyone about the tunnel in the abandoned house?”
“No.”
“Not even Lane?” He knew she hadn’t, but was buying himself some time to get his feelings under control. Hidden, where they belonged.
“No. Why would I have told Lane about that?”
He drove several blocks toward town, keeping an eye out for followers. The light, sweet scent of her perfume was filling the air, and a battle of wills fought inside him over how badly he wanted to touch her. Even just her hand. Her arm.
“Patsy told me you were shanghaied,” she said quietly.
“I was, and I returned as soon as possible.” He turned a corner and attempted to keep his mind on driving, not on how much he’d thought about her during his absence. No one had ever made him as confused as she had. As she did.
“Why did you return? Your case is over. Burrows was arrested.”
“Yes, Burrows was arrested, but my assignment isn’t over.” He turned a corner, still watching for followers. There hadn’t been any so far, and he hoped there wouldn’t be. He’d always preferred to be the follower, not the one being followed.
“Is that why Lane and Patsy and Jane are to meet us at the house?”
“Yes.”
“Why? What do any of us have to do with it?”
“I’ll explain all that when we get there.” He took another corner, heading back toward the outskirts of town and the house. “I wanted to talk to you first.”
“Why?”
There was another battle going on inside him, over how she was being so reserved, almost indifferent. That wasn’t the Betty he knew. The one he’d come to know very, very well. What had he expected? For her to leap into his arms? He should be happy she was so aloof because what had happened before couldn’t happen again. “Because I needed to ask you about the house, if you’d told anyone.” It was an excuse. He was again buying time before asking her if there were any repercussions he should know about. He’d thought about that a lot during his absence.
“No, I haven’t told anyone.” She looked out the passenger window. “Anything.”
He nodded. “Congratulations on your engagement.”
“Thank you.”
Her reply had been soft, and shaky. Embarrassed? For being engaged to someone else so shortly after their...encounter. That irritated him. No, it went deeper than irritation. To a place he didn’t know existed. Nor did he want to know. He forced it all to go away, to bury itself deep inside him as he drove a few more blocks where the sound of her uneven breathing echoed in his ears. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” Her reply was much faster and her breathing quickened.
“In every way?” He hoped she understood what he meant.
“Yes.”
“That’s good.” Guilt along with an odd disappointment wormed its way inside him. He wasn’t sure why, nor was he going to investigate it. What he was going to do was focus on this case. “I also owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
“When we met again, after three years, I questioned if meeting you was more than a coincidence. Questioned if you had been involved in the leaking of information that had happened in Seattle and here Los Angeles.”
“Me? Leaking information?”
He was blundering this. He wasn’t used to apologizing, and making it sound worse than it was. “Yes, I had to. That’s what I do. Investigate crimes. Find criminals.”
“Exactly what involvement did you need to investigate?”
She was looking at him now. Giving him a glare that could make men tremble in their boots.