When Kane pulled to a stop in a quiet residential area, Hellhound straightened from his slouch against his Harley Fatboy, leaving his leather jacket and helmet lying on its seat. He strode over to meet us as we got out of the Expedition, the harsh streetlights transforming his battle-scarred features into a forbidding mask of beard and shadowed eye sockets atop a mountain of tattooed muscle.
“What’s the plan, Cap?” he rasped.
Kane hissed out a short breath between his teeth, flexing his hands as though trying to regain his circulation. “Let’s go and find out.”
Hellhound gave me a worried glance as we trailed behind Kane’s long strides, and I returned a helpless shrug.
At the front door, Kane pressed the doorbell without hesitation and we waited.
After several moments that seemed longer than they probably were, the door opened and a man surveyed us expressionlessly. Despite his civilian clothes, his short-cropped hair and level gaze said ‘cop’ just as clearly as the badge clipped to his belt.
“Yes?” he prompted.
Kane squared off into parade rest. “We’re here to see Alicia.”
The cop surveyed him with a frown, obviously picking up the ‘cop’ vibe from Kane in turn. “In what capacity?”
Kane drew a deep breath. “I’m John Kane. Daniel’s biological father.”
Sympathy transformed the other man’s face. “I’m Carson Mayweather with the Calgary City Police. I’m handling your son’s case. Please come in.”
He stood back from the doorway and we filed in.
As we rounded the corner, a soft-looking brunette sprang up from the sofa and hurled herself at Kane with a choked cry. I glimpsed brown eyes in white strained features before she flung her arms around Kane and buried her face in his chest.
His arms closed around her automatically, but his eyes blazed grey fire in an expressionless face.
“Oh, John, thank God you’re here,” she babbled, her voice muffled by his shirt. “You have to help me, you have to get him back!”
Kane’s gaze sought Officer Mayweather over her head. “Are there any new developments?” Kane asked. “Any ransom demands?”
Mayweather shook his head regretfully. “Nothing new.”
“Alicia.” Kane gently disengaged from her grip and stepped back. “Tell me what happened.”
“He was at a birthday party. His… his best friend Sammy, just a few blocks away…” She dashed tears from her eyes with trembling hands, gazing up at Kane imploringly. “They said Buck… my ex-boyfriend… p-picked him up…” Her voice broke.
Officer Mayweather touched her elbow. “Why don’t you sit down?”
She sniffled and turned away to pull a tissue out of the well-used box beside the sofa before perching on the edge of the cushions. Earlier today she might have been pretty, but terror had etched deep lines around her eyes and mouth, and her eyes were red-rimmed above blotchy cheeks.
A toy soldier lay half-concealed under the couch, and I sensed Kane’s pain as he glanced at it and then looked away, his lips tightening.
As if coming back to the present, Alicia glanced at Arnie and me for the first time.
“Hey, Lish,” Arnie rasped gently. “How ya holdin’ up?”
“Don’t call me that!” Red spots flared into her cheeks. “I hate it, I’ve always hated it!”
Hellhound blinked as though she’d slapped him. “Shit, Li… sorry, uh… Alicia, I wouldn’t’a called ya that if I knew. Why didn’t ya ever say anythin’?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She shredded the tissue without looking at it, her bloodshot gaze trained on the wall behind us. “It doesn’t matter; nothing matters except Daniel. I’m…” She shook herself and focused on us again. “Please sit down.”
We settled ourselves, Hellhound in the chair and Kane and I on the loveseat, and Alicia gave me a chilly once-over before turning to Kane. “I suppose this is your girlfriend.”
“John and I work together,” I said hurriedly. “Sorry I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Aydan Kelly.”
“Oh.” Her expression softened into relief. “So you’re a cop, too.”
“Um, no…” I began, but Mayweather interrupted, giving Kane a keen glance.
“Peters and Birch said you’d probably show up here. You know each other pretty well?”
“Not really, we just work together sometimes,” Kane said without inflection. “They’re good officers.”
“So you didn’t know you had a son at all.” Mayweather eyed him with the intensity I recognized from all the cops and agents I knew. Watching for lies.
“No. Not until they questioned me a couple of hours ago.” Kane turned a burning look on Alicia.
“Don’t you put this on me,” she said defensively. “I told them not to contact you. I told them you didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“But I do,” Kane said in a voice so soft it sent a shiver of primal fear down my spine. “He’s my son, too. And you kept him from me.”
The red spots were burning in Alicia’s cheeks again. “No, you did that. You were never here while we were married, and then you left and never came back. It’s your own fault that you never knew Daniel existed.”
“You told me to leave and never come back!” Kane snapped. “What did you expect me to do?”
Alicia lunged to her feet. “I expected you to fight for me… for us! You’re such a big hero, always ready to fight for everybody else, even total strangers in some horrid war on the other side of the world, but you wouldn’t fight for us!”
Kane was on his feet, too. “You packed my bags! You had the divorce papers ready! I don’t know what delusional world you live in, but life isn’t like those romance novels you love so much! In real life a guy who refuses to leave and tries to force a reconciliation gets slapped with a restraining order and labelled a stalker!”
“You didn’t even try!” Alicia was screaming up into Kane’s face, and Mayweather intervened with a hand on her elbow.
“Let’s cool it, folks,” he said in the same ‘everybody-stay-calm’ cop voice that Kane so frequently used. “Alicia, John, let’s just sit down. This isn’t helping Daniel.”
Alicia let him guide her back to the sofa while Kane sank onto the edge of the loveseat again, but he leaned forward, his gaze boring holes in Alicia.
“What did you tell him?” he asked in that deadly-quiet tone. “Did you tell him your boyfriend was his father?”
“No.” She stared through him, cold and remote. “I told him that his father was John Wyatt Kane, a man I once loved very much. A brave soldier who died fighting in a war, in a place far away over the ocean.”
“You told him I was dead?” Kane’s fists knotted. “You lied to him?”
“It wasn’t a lie.” Alicia dropped her gaze to watch her hands throttling each other in her lap. “John Wyatt Kane died in that war,” she whispered. “The man I loved never came back.”
Kane went grey-white as though he’d been stabbed in the gut. My hand flew to his without a conscious decision on my part, earning a dirty look from Alicia.
“I’m sorry,” Kane said hoarsely. “I tried. You have to know how hard I tried…” He swallowed. “But you should have told me you were pregnant. I would have-”
“Would have what?” Alicia demanded, her fists clenching. “Tried harder? I wasn’t good enough when I was barren, but if I could give you a son maybe I was worth a little more effort? Is that it?” Her voice was rising again, her knuckles whitening. “Was I just a… a… brood mare to you?”
“No, of course not, I-”
“Folks,” Officer Mayweather interrupted. “We’re not accomplishing anything here. John, was there something specific you wanted?”
Kane squared his shoulders. “Yes. I’d like to know exactly what happened, please. And what’s been done so far.”
“Alicia, will you please tell it again?” Mayweather inquired. “I realize it’s upsetting, but each time you tell it there’s a chance that you might remember something more.”
She nodded, her arms wrapped tightly around her body while she stared at the floor. “Daniel went to Sammy’s party. He was so excited. It was all he’d talked about for weeks. Sammy is his best friend and they share a passion for toy soldiers.” She shuddered. “They pretend they’re soldiers fighting in a war. I should never have told him John was in the military.”
“Please go on, Alicia,” Mayweather encouraged.
“Yes. Well.” She drew a deep breath, still hugging herself. “Anyway, the party was at two o’clock, and Marta…” She glanced briefly at Kane before returning her gaze to the carpet. “Marta is Sammy’s mother. Marta said she’d walk Daniel home after the party ended at four o’clock. At four-thirty I started to wonder. At five o’clock I called her, and she said…” Her voice wavered. “She said… my ex had picked him up at three-thirty.”
“Was she certain it was Murphy?” Kane snapped. “How well did she know him?”
“Yes. She knew him, and she didn’t think anything was wrong. Arbuckle told her…” She trailed off at Hellhound’s snicker and added, “Yes, his name is Arbuckle. Arbuckle Faulkner Murphy. His parents had great aspirations for their children. His brother’s name is Penobscot Salinger Murphy. No wonder they go by Buck and Scot.”
Hellhound stifled himself, scrubbing a hand over his beard as Alicia went on, “Anyway, Buck told her I’d asked him to pick Daniel up from the birthday party so they could go camping. Marta was pleased that he was making the effort because Buck was often critical of Daniel. He called him a girly-boy.” She glanced at Kane’s thundercloud scowl and hastened to explain, “That’s why we split up.”
“Don’t see what’s girly about playin’ with toy soldiers,” Hellhound observed.
“No, Buck approved of that because it was manly. But Daniel liked…” Her voice caught on a sob, but she stiffened her spine and went on firmly, “…he likes to draw and paint. And he likes to help me bake cookies.” She shot a defensive look at Kane. “I encourage him in whatever he enjoys. He’s not…” She made angry air quotes. “…‘girly’ or ‘manly’. He’s just a happy child who loves soldiers and art and bugs and mud and puppies and kittens and baking and books… and… h-hockey…” Her words trailed off into a quaver.
“You’re a good mother,” Kane said gently. “I always knew you would be.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. “And now he’s gone…”
“We’ll find him. Just focus,” Kane encouraged, his cop voice strong and calm despite the tension vibrating in his shoulders. “So Murphy abducted Daniel as… what? Leverage? Revenge? What did you do when you discovered he’d taken Daniel?”
“I don’t know why he’d take Daniel, he just wasn’t that interested in children…” Alicia gulped. “Maybe… maybe this is all a big mistake and everything’s fine and they’re on their way home…” She threw an imploring look toward Mayweather, but I could tell she didn’t believe her own words any more than he did. “Anyway,” she went on shakily, “I… I wasn’t too worried… at first. Angry, but not worried. Buck had asked earlier to take Daniel camping this weekend, and although Daniel was excited about the idea, I had said no.”
Kane’s voice came out bleak as bone. “Why? Did you have reason to believe Murphy couldn’t be trusted alone with Daniel?”
“No!” Alicia straightened, meeting Kane’s eyes directly for the first time. “No, he would never molest a child. I…” She dropped her gaze again. “I actually hired a private investigator to check on him when we first started going out. He wasn’t a pedophile.”
She swallowed. “It was just that… I wasn’t sure it was good for Daniel to continue seeing Buck when there was no chance we’d reconcile…” Alicia gulped back tears. “I c-called Buck’s cell phone but it went to voicemail. I thought he was probably just ignoring me until they’d set up camp so I wouldn’t have the heart to make him bring Daniel back. And…” She wiped her eyes with the crumpled tissue. “If… If he had called… I’m not sure I w-would have. Daniel was so… thrilled at the thought of camping, and he needs male influences…”
As if realizing she was twisting the knife, she gave Kane a guilty glance before continuing hurriedly, “But when he hadn’t called by six, I started to worry in earnest. I called the police…” She threw an imploring look at Mayweather. “I’d been calling and calling Buck’s cell phone b-but… I should have called the police right away, I should have…” She trailed off helplessly.
“If Murphy was contemptuous of Daniel and didn’t like children, why the sudden interest in camping?” Kane asked. “Had Murphy been acting unusual lately? Any changes in routine? Changes in the way he interacted with Daniel? Did Daniel say anything about him or act differently around him? Had anything changed recently in your relationship with him?” He broke off with an apologetic look at Mayweather. “Sorry, I’m sure you’ve already gone over this.”
Mayweather nodded. “It’s okay. It’s worth going over again. We never know when we might uncover some new detail.”
“Thank you,” Kane said. “Alicia? Anything?”
She let her hand fall open limply in her lap. “No. Nothing had changed. I wasn’t surprised by the camping trip because after we broke up it wasn’t unusual for Buck to drop by on a whim and take Daniel out for a few hours.” She wrinkled her nose. “He criticized the way I’m bringing Daniel up, and said he had to teach Daniel to be a man. But I think he just took Daniel to the park and tried to attract women by playing the doting dad. Poor Daniel lapped up the attention; he wanted a father so much…”
Kane made a small sound as if in pain, but if I hadn’t known him so well I would have thought he was only clearing his throat. His impassive expression never wavered.
“Fuckin’ sick!” Hellhound burst out. “What kinda sick fuckin’ asshole uses a kid like that?”
Alicia hunched her shoulders, still staring at the floor. “Anyway, he ‘borrowed’ Daniel last weekend, so that’s likely how he knew about the party at Sammy’s house. But…” She jerked forward, reddened eyes burning in her white face. “Don’t you see, it doesn’t matter how he knew! It’s too late for that! What if… oh, God, what if I was wrong about Buck? What if he sold Daniel to some horrible child prostitution ring?”
Hellhound shot a worried glance at Kane before returning his attention to Alicia. “Hush, now, darlin’,” he murmured. “Stop imaginin’ the worst. It’s gonna be okay. We’ll find him, an’ he’ll be fine.”
“I’m not your darling!” Alicia snapped. “And what do you know anyway? You don’t have children; you’re nothing more than a big child yourself!”
Arnie’s expression never changed, but I could see the hurt in his eyes.
“Take it easy,” I said, my voice coming out with a bit more of an edge than I’d intended. “He’s only trying to help.”
Hellhound reached over to squeeze my hand. “It’s okay, darlin’, she’s just gotta blow off some steam. I got broad shoulders, I can take it.” He turned back to Alicia. “Go ahead. Get it outta your system. It’ll do ya good.”
Her face crumpled. “I h-hate you,” she choked. “You always meant more to John than I did. Like… Like after that last appointment with the fertility specialist.” She shot a bitter look at Kane. “You went to the bar with him instead of staying with me.”
Kane jerked upright. “You said you wanted to be alone. You practically pushed me out the door. I was hurting, too-”
“Then why didn’t you show it?” she shouted. “Why didn’t you-”
“Hey, now,” Hellhound intervened gently. “Ya were talkin’ about how much ya hate me, remember?”
Alicia turned brimming eyes back to him, glaring through her tears. “You! You were always his excuse to withdraw whenever things got tough. You always came first. And look at you, you’re ugly and vulgar and… and…”
“An’ I called ya Lish for years,” Hellhound finished comfortably. “I’m a real fuckin’ asshole.”
“Oh…” Tears streamed down her face. “I hate you!” She lurched to her feet and flung herself at him.
Hellhound met her halfway, folding her into his arms and rocking her while she bunched her fists in his T-shirt and wept great wrenching sobs.
“It’s okay, darlin’, it’s okay,” he soothed. “Just let it out.”
At last her weeping subsided into broken whimpers, then quieted. She relinquished her grip on Hellhound’s T-shirt and hid her face in her hands.
Mayweather proffered the tissue box, and she mopped her face and blew her nose without looking at us. “I need to lie down for a while,” she whispered and turned away, arms wrapped around her body as if to hold herself together through sheer physical effort.
“Want me to sit with ya for a bit?” Arnie asked softly.
She stopped. “No. My parents are flying in. They should be here in an hour or so.” She turned and gave him a brief watery smile. “Remember, I still hate you.”
His answering smile was full of compassion. “Yeah, I know.”
She turned again to totter off down the hallway, leaning against the wall as if her legs could barely carry her weight.