She couldn’t get warm. She was wrapped in two Mylar blankets and in full sun, lying flat on her back in the middle of her front yard. Michael had wedged a backpack from his truck under her feet and knelt by her head, rubbing at her hands.
“Just a little shock, princess. You’ll feel better in a few minutes.”
“Why do you keep calling me princess? And make them go away.” Her teeth still chattered as she glared at the circle of uniforms staring down at her. Wasn’t she conspicuous enough? What were her neighbors thinking?
“Back off,” Michael directed. The cops obeyed. “Princess popped in my head the first time I saw you. Actually, I thought you looked like a queen. Something about the way you carry yourself. You’ve got a regal bearing. Not snooty or stuck-up. Just…calm, kind, and self-confident.”
Regal? “I’d call it my principal posture. Makes the kids listen to me.” Her damned body wouldn’t stop shivering. “I can’t get warm.”
Michael leaned closer, green eyes concerned.
Jamie blew out a long breath, closed her eyes, and concentrated on making her muscles relax. The shivering dropped to short spurts, down from continuous attacks.
“That’s better,” he said softly. “Do you think you can talk now?”
She opened her eyes. The concern in his gaze touched her deep in her chest. She nodded. “Sit me up.”
He shook his head. “Not yet.” He gestured for Byers to come back.
“How much description of the guy did she give you already?”
Byers consulted his flip notebook. “Caucasian male, probably six foot one or six foot two, medium build, late forties or early fifties, sandy-blond hair, blue eyes, navy light running pants, long-sleeved white T-shirt, tattoos on backs of both wrists.”
Jamie nodded in agreement. “I think the tattoos went up his sleeves. Like they covered his arms. I could see faint patterns through the material of his shirt.”
“Probably why he was wearing long sleeves in the middle of July,” Michael commented. “Wonder if the long pants were for the same reason?”
“More tats?” Byers asked.
Michael shrugged. “Possibly.”
Jamie’d had enough of being on her back and having people speak down to her. “Sit me up.”
Michael gently pulled her into a sitting position and steadied her with a hand on her back. And left it there. Its heat soaking into her skin felt heavenly.
“I don’t recall getting a glimpse of his legs or even ankles.” Jamie mentally reviewed her struggles with the assailant. “But he looked weird.”
“Define weird.” Michael’s lips curved up on the right.
She paused. “His eyes weren’t right. The color seemed fake.”
“Lenses?” Byers asked.
She nodded slowly. “Maybe. It was the same with the hair. The color seemed forced. Like a home dye job.”
“Christ. Vain,” Michael said wryly. “Can’t handle a little gray hair?”
“Maybe his hair was actually really dark, almost black. And he lightened it to throw her off. Same with the eyes. Maybe they’re brown or hazel,” Byers theorized. “You feel positive about the colors being changed? I mean, I had no idea my wife’s been coloring her hair for the last five years until her sister mentioned it. How can you tell?”
Uncertainty crept into Jamie’s brain. Maybe she was wrong. “Women look at hair. Most men don’t. It’s just a gut instinct with this guy.” She fumbled about for a way to explain. “You asked for his hair color. I pictured it and stated what I remembered, but something bugged me about my answer. I think it didn’t feel accurate because I’d imperceptibly picked up that it was colored. And that didn’t register till a minute ago.”
Both men stared at her. Byers’s pencil hung motionless above his notebook.
“Women can tell these things,” she asserted.
Byers recited as he wrote in his notebook: “Female instinct says hair colored and colored contacts.”
Gerald crammed his latex gloves in his pants pocket. That hadn’t gone well.
Rephrase that. It’d been a f*cking disaster.
Sitting in his car in the McDonald’s parking lot, he sucked on a Coke and took inventory of his injuries. His legs were going to be bruised for a week, and he had a finger sprain that’d swollen to twice its size. Damn thing had better not be broken.
Christ, she’d fought hard.
He’d never had a woman fight so hard. Surprisingly, in the past it’d been the women who put up the biggest fights. For some reason the men hadn’t. Maybe he’d simply picked men who didn’t mind being victims. The women had all minded. For prostitutes, they’d pissed off easily when they realized things weren’t going as planned.
Jacobs had surprised the crap out of him when she returned early from her run. From his observations, this woman never varied her routine. He should have left. Attacking her hadn’t been the smartest move, but he’d been frustrated with his empty search of the house. And his “interrogation” hadn’t accomplished anything either.
Except that the Jacobs woman had seen his face.
It didn’t matter.
He bit at the inside of his cheek. It didn’t matter. He kept his hair colored and his real eye color covered up. Maybe it was time for a change? Darken the hair a bit? Eyes too? He had every contact lens color available. He usually stuck to nondescript blues and greens. The people he worked with never noticed that his eye color slightly varied some days. Lots of people’s eyes normally do that.
No f*cking way was he telling his boss that she’d seen him.
And he still didn’t know where Chris Jacobs was. He’d found nothing in the house. No addresses, no mail, no pictures. Nothing that indicated she had a brother.
If she hadn’t said she didn’t know where Chris was living, he’d almost think the guy was dead. People don’t vanish. There’s always a record, somewhere.
Now what?
Angry pale jade eyes filled his brain. She’d been scared, but determination had also shone from those eyes. Jamie Jacobs was quite a specimen. She was tall and lean and fit. No spare fat on that woman’s body. He could still feel her muscles under his fingertips. And her long, glossy dark hair. She reminded him of her brother a little bit. Chris Jacobs had been tall and lanky. Well, he’d grown tall and lanky during his two years. To start with, he’d been kind of a pudgy kid. At the end, both boys had been incredibly thin. Gerald had found it was easier to control them if they didn’t have much energy. He kept their calorie intake at a minimum.
How they both had managed to escape was a mystery.
Their escape was a personal affront to him. A score he’d wanted to settle for a long time. No one else had ever humiliated him like that. Not since he was a teen.
He’d been visiting the boys about once a week before they vanished. His day job was a nine-to-five requirement, and sometimes he was simply too tired to make the long drive to visit the boys. Truth be told, just thinking about his captives in their prison was enough mental fantasy fuel to get him to the weekend. He’d kept people before. Adults. Both men and women. People he’d found on the streets of Portland or Salem who seemed like they wouldn’t be readily missed.
Disposable people.
Male or female didn’t matter to him too much. Both were useful. Both served the needs he had. He’d been surprised to find that almost-teen boys worked as well. The younger children he’d snatched were a waste of time. He’d disposed of them quickly. But the older boys…that had been different.
He closed his eyes. When he was younger, boys had been the enemy. They hit him, kicked him, spit on him, and called him names. Girls had simply looked the other way. When he was thirteen he’d fought back. Bruce had been one of the worst bullies. He and his buddies had been taunting Gerald on the bus. It was his usual daily ride from hell. When they’d got off the bus, Bruce’s mouth hadn’t stopped. As they walked past the apartment garbage dumpsters, Gerald snapped. He remembered seeing red, feeling his anger bleed into rage. He’d dropped his backpack, grabbed the gate to the dumpsters, and swung it into Bruce’s face. Wailing, Bruce dropped to his knees, his hands covering the blood that dripped from his nose.
And Gerald felt the rush. The rush of pleasure and adrenaline and high that came from the dominance. He’d stood over the groveling boy, his heart pounding, and was instantly addicted.
It’d changed his life.
It’d awakened a bloodlust he’d never dreamed existed. The sight of the boy in pain from his action was energizing. And it proved that he had the ability to take control.
It was better to be the executor than the victim.
In the bunker, one of the kidnapped boys had fought back immediately. He couldn’t recall which one. But it’d been eye-opening. The rest of the children had cowered and annoyed him. But the older two boys had shown fight.
He’d kept the boys.
He would have never believed boys could do that for him as an adult if it hadn’t been for a phone call twenty years ago from the prosecutor.
He hadn’t seen the county prosecutor in two years. The prosecutor had dropped several of the charges pending against him when the police couldn’t produce key evidence. He’d sweated during the hearing, knowing full well the police had collected plenty of evidence that proved he’d been present at Sandra Edge’s murder. They didn’t have proof that his hands had touched her, but they definitely had proof that he’d been in the room with her and his buddy, Lee.
But then the blood and trace evidence from the sheets and carpets went missing. Not just a little bit of evidence, a lot of it. All the important parts were completely gone.
The prosecutor scared him. He’d been a sharp, intense, and intelligent man. Gerald had firmly believed he was going to prison for a very long time. Instead, he served a few months on a much lesser charge.
He’d gotten away with accessory to murder.
Lee ended up getting the murder rap. Which he’d deserved. He’d been the one who’d actually finished strangling Sandra, and he was stupid enough to admit it.
For two years, Gerald had stressed, waiting to hear that the evidence had turned up in a dark corner of a storage room somewhere. Instead, when the phone call came, the message and the person who made the call were unexpected.
Yes, the evidence was still in existence. No, it hadn’t been lost. Yes, the evidence would stay away from the courts if Gerald would do him a favor.
“What kind of favor?” he’d asked.
“I need a kid taken care of.”
A kid?
The former prosecutor had gone on to say he was fully aware of Gerald’s role in Sandra’s murder.
“Why me?”
“Because I know what you’re capable of. And if you don’t, you’ll be in prison for the rest of your life.”
“And after I take care of this for you?”
There’d been a long pause on the phone. “I might have a permanent job for you.”
Gerald had been interested in the job. He’d done it well for over two decades now and wasn’t about to let his employer down again. He knew when he’d kept the boys that his employer wasn’t going to be happy, so he didn’t tell him. His boss had been royally pissed that so many children had been affected when only one needed attention.
Gerald had shrugged. “I handled it the way I saw best. You needed fast action and you got it. No witnesses to anything. Plus, it confuses the motive. With so many kids gone, who was the primary target? Or was there a mass target? It’ll keep the police scratching their heads for years.”
After that his boss had no complaints about his job. He’d been impressed for two years when no evidence of the missing children had been found. No sign of the bus or the driver anywhere. His boss had never asked for details about how he’d accomplished the feat.
Then Chris Jacobs had walked out of the woods. Half dead, no memory, and miles from the underground bunker.
His boss had nearly blown a gasket. But when he learned of the boy’s brain damage, he relaxed a bit. At that point, he grilled Gerald on the fates of the other children and then relaxed a bit more.
Gerald had been crazy to hang on to the two boys for as long as he did, but they’d fueled his soul in a way that adults never did.
Now Jamie Jacobs was proving to be a challenge.
He watched the line of vehicles snaking through the drive-through, reliving the events of that morning. Jamie was the type of woman who made men turn around and watch as she walked by. He hadn’t been with a woman in over a month now, and he could still feel the silkiness of her skin from this morning. He shifted in his seat.
He needed to get laid.
He had a list of phone numbers of women who weren’t too expensive. Damn it. Every woman on that list belonged in Walmart, and he was craving Saks Fifth Avenue.
Gerald’s phone vibrated in his car console. He popped it open and scowled at the screen. Already? He’s asking for an update already? Shit. He hit the green button.
“Yeah.”
“What the f*ck happened this morning? What did you do? There are cops crawling all over the Jacobs house.”
Gerald’s chest tightened. An adult bully. Gerald overlooked it because he knew it meant his boss was sweating a bit. And he liked the pleasure from putting his boss in that situation.
He had control. Not his boss.
“I was looking for a lead on her brother. You knew that. I didn’t expect her to come home so fast. She might have got a bit banged up on my way out.”
He wasn’t about to mention that the woman had neatly handed his ass to him.
“What’d you find?”
“I’ve got a stack of paperwork and mail to look through. A couple of address books, too.” He lied.
“I got something that’ll work a bit faster for you.”
“Like what?”
“Michael Brody, a reporter, is showing an unnatural interest in Jamie Jacobs.”
“I figured he was watching the story pretty close because of his brother, but you mean a personal interest in the woman?” Gerald’s gut twisted in an odd way. Something about Brody and Jamie together didn’t sit right with him.
“Exactly. A personal interest. And I know this guy. When he’s got his nose deep in a story, nothing gets in his way. He’s gonna dig until he unearths Chris Jacobs.”
“You want me to wait and follow him?”
“See? You’re smart. That’s why I hired you. Other than the one big f*ck-up way back, you usually pull things through.”
Gerald swallowed the bitter words he wanted to hurl at the man. “You know me best, boss.”
“Damn right. And don’t ever forget I own your ass.”
Ditto.
“You want to explain to me what you’re doing in the damned bull’s-eye of this case?”
“Not my fault,” Michael said into his phone. Detective Mason Callahan could bitch all he wanted, but Michael knew the man held a grudging respect for him. And vice versa.
“I could swear I told you to stay away from the Jacobs woman.”
Michael ignored him. “They told you he beat her up pretty good?”
“Yeah, she okay?”
“She will be.” Michael leaned against the fender of his truck, twisting to catch sight of Jamie. She still sat on her lawn, the Mylar blanket next to her on the grass, trying to recall the tats she’d seen. A cop handed her a bottled water and squatted beside her as she sketched, studying her drawing.
“I was told the attacker wanted to know the whereabouts of Chris Jacobs. And that he told her he’d made the scars on her brother’s face.”
“That’s right,” said Michael. “And threatened to do the same to her.”
“Doesn’t mean he’s the one who actually made the marks on her brother. It was even in newspaper articles back then that the boy had been burned with cigarettes,” Callahan stated.
Michael didn’t have an answer for that.
“What reason could he have to want her brother if it’s not because Chris might get some of his memory back and identify him?” Michael argued.
“Maybe he owes him money,” Callahan quipped.
“F*ck you.”
Callahan laughed. “I’ll interview Jamie. Hear what she has to say.”
Michael wasn’t done. “She thinks he was in his late forties, maybe early fifties. That’d put him at the right age to pull that shit twenty years ago.”
“I’m not saying he didn’t. Christ, Brody. I’ll follow up. Right now I’ve got a stack of children’s autopsy reports on my desk. I take a break from reading them every fifteen minutes to go punch the wall, I get so pissed. After I get through those reports, I have a smaller stack from the pit with the adult remains. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll swap jobs with you. You read, and I’ll drive around town in the sun, getting a tan and sticking my nose into other people’s business.”
“I get it, Callahan.”
The detective’s voice lowered. “I’ll get to her, Brody. I want the bastard as bad as you do.”
“Impossible,” Michael muttered.
“Too bad he’s so average looking. Nothing really stands out visually.”
“What?” Michael stood straighter. “Didn’t they mention the tattoos?”
“Tattoos?” Callahan asked sharply.
“Tats on the backs of his wrists. Jamie got the impression they went a lot farther up his arms.”
Callahan’s swearing made Michael pull the phone away from his ear.
“What?” Michael said when Callahan stopped to catch a breath. “What the f*ck is up with the tats?”
“We’ve got pictures.”
“Pictures? Pictures from what?”
Callahan had turned away from his phone and was urgently talking to someone in the background.
“Callahan. What pictures?” Michael spoke through clenched teeth.
“Lusco’s pulling them up. F*cking pervert.”
“Lusco?” Michael could hear the other detective’s voice in the background now.
“No, Jamie’s attacker.”
Michael was ready to strangle the detective. “What the f*ck are you talking about?”
Callahan cleared his throat. “We found pictures in the bunker. Old Polaroids. Sick Polaroids. They weren’t even hidden. They were just left on one of the shelves for anyone to find.”
Michael’s stomach turned to pure acid. Daniel?
“The creep took some nasty pics of those kids. His hands, or someone’s hands, show in some of them. There’re tats on the wrists.”
“His wrists?”
“Yeah, they don’t look like they go up his arms. Forearms are clear. It’s just a few Asian characters on the backs of the wrists. Pretty big, though. About an inch and a half in diameter.”
“You can’t see his face?” Michael asked. His head suddenly felt weightless. He leaned on his elbows on his hood, head down.
“Not of him. Just the kids. Nothing else shows of the adult.”
Michael didn’t want to know any more. No details. His brain was supplying too many details of its own.
“What’d Jamie say the tattoos looked like?” Callahan asked.
“She didn’t say. She’s working on some sketches with the cops. I don’t know if she saw specifics. She said there were a lot of them.”
“He could have added to them.”
“Hang on, Callahan.” Michael strode over to the lawn where Jamie sat. “Hey, princess, you come up with any images yet?”
Jamie gave him a weak smile. “Don’t call me princess, please.” She looked down at her paper. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t picture them.”
“I told her to start with just colors,” the cop next to her said. “Then add stark lines or shapes.”
“Let me see.” Michael held his hand out for the paper.
It appeared she’d traced her own hands and wrists for the outlines. She’d made muted multicolored swirls that started at mid-forearm and spread nearly to the knuckles. The colors intensified on the backs of the hands. Blues, reds, greens.
Directly on the wrists, over the colors, she’d drawn thick black crisscrossing slashes, like pound signs.
Acid from Michael’s stomach burned up his esophagus.
“It’s him,” he said into the phone. “We’ll be downtown in thirty minutes.”
At the police station, the young woman in front of Mason looked like she’d been brutalized, but she held her chin up, her stance solid, her back straight. Jamie Jacobs was tough, and he admired that. Looked like Brody was admiring her, too. Mason hadn’t ever seen him hover over a woman like this before. He’d been plenty protective of that little dentist, Lacey Campbell, but that was in a big-brother type of way.
Mason caught his partner’s gaze, and Ray Lusco nodded with a wry smile, agreeing. Looked like the reporter had been hit in the head with a love stick.
The bandages on her face pissed him off, and Mason knew she had more under her light pants. She was agitated, trying to reach someone on her cell who wasn’t picking up.
“Are you sure it’s the right number?” Brody asked her.
“Yes! It’s in my contacts and in the call history. I know it’s right, but it’s been disconnected.”
“Has he ever left you without a way to reach him before?”
“Never. There’s always been a phone number. Sometimes he doesn’t get right back to me, but he’s never done anything like this before.”
Mason interrupted. “You’re talking about your brother?”
Unusual light green eyes looked to him.
Holy crap. No wonder Brody’s smitten.
“Yes, and no, I don’t know where he is. But he’s always left me a number to call in the past. Maybe someone got to him…like that guy got to me today.”
Brody carefully took her hands, getting her to look at him. “Jamie, you’ve told me how smart your brother is. I think he’s well aware that someone from his past could one day seek him out. I think that’s part of the reason he left and why he doesn’t let you know how to find him. I have no doubt he’s gone deeper into hiding.”
Mason raised a mental eyebrow at Brody’s soft and reassuring tone. Yep. He’s in deep.
Jamie stared at Brody for a few seconds and then nodded. “We need to warn him, though. He should at least know what happened to me today.”
Mason cleared his throat. “Let’s talk about that.” He waved a hand at two chairs. “Have a seat.”
Ray tactfully and thoroughly led Jamie through the events of the day. Surprisingly, Brody kept his mouth shut but watched everyone in the room like a hawk.
Mason only interrupted once, directing a question to Brody. “You traced his call?”
“Yep.”
“How?”
Brody said nothing and just looked back at Mason.
“Okay. Fine. I suppose you’re still planning a trip to find him?”
Again, Brody just looked at Mason and then asked a question of his own. “Tell me about the tattoos in the pictures.”
Mason noted he didn’t ask what else was in the pictures. He only wanted to hear about the tattoos.
Mason moved Jamie’s sketch of hands and wrists to the center of the table. “There’s a lot more color and detail here than in the pictures. Possibly, he’s added ink.” Mason pulled out four hazy close-ups of wrists that they’d created off the Polaroids. The pictures weren’t the greatest, but anyone could see that the tattoos in the pictures were in the exact same position and same size as the black marks on Jamie’s drawings.
Jamie stared at the close-ups. “Those are them. They’ve been enhanced with design and colors. It must be the same person.”
Mason shook his head, but Ray spoke up first. “No, we have to keep open the possibility that two people could have the same black tattoos. Maybe they’re associated with each other. Maybe some sort of private, sick club.”
Brody snorted.
Mason agreed with Brody’s sentiment, but he knew better than to jump to conclusions. “We know it’s unlikely to be two different people, but we won’t rule it out. Yet. I’ve passed the Polaroids and drawing to a detective in the gang unit. No one knows more about tattoos than this guy. And if nothing jumps out at him from the images, then he knows who to ask and where to look.”
“I doubt it’s gang related,” Brody argued. “We’re talking about a white guy with tattoos from twenty years ago. To me that makes the tattoos sound more military related or foreign.”
Mason nodded. “Agreed. Obviously this guy isn’t a gangbanger, but the people who work with them are our tattoo experts. They’ll know where to turn next. It’s our best lead so far.”
“Why would someone leave something so incriminating as pictures in that place?” Jamie asked. “You said you haven’t found fingerprints anywhere, but you found photos? That doesn’t sound like the same person. This”—Jamie paused, eyebrows narrowing—“crook…murderer…isn’t being consistent if they’re not leaving fingerprints but are leaving pictures.”
“Agreed,” Lusco said. “We might be dealing with more than one person.”
“Someone else had to take the pictures,” Brody added.
“One of the other kids could have been behind the camera.” As Mason spoke, he saw Brody imperceptibly flinch. “Not willingly, of course,” he added.
Jamie’s face flushed. “I’ve seen a lot of child abuse in my position. I do what I do because I want to help kids better their lives. Nothing makes me sicker than a defenseless kid.” She met Mason’s gaze straight on. “My brother was horribly abused, and I’ve sat back, thinking I was letting him heal and doing the right thing by not pushing for answers. It was how my parents handled him, and I continued it. Now I think it’s time for him to actively help. The man who attacked me could still be hurting kids. I don’t care if my brother claims he remembers nothing, I’m gonna drag him to every therapist and hypnotist in the country until he gives you something to help find who killed those children, before this person hurts more.”
She turned to Brody. “I’m ready to go with you to find Chris.”
It was evening by the time Jamie and Michael drove into the outskirts of the dry, beige town of Demming, Oregon. The trip east had taken six hours, and Michael drove the entire stretch. Jamie had offered to take a shift, but he’d turned her down.
“I get antsy if I’m sitting in the passenger seat. Driving helps me focus.”
Their conversation had been minimal. If Michael wasn’t on the phone with an editor or co-worker, his music was blasting through the SUV. His taste was eclectic, ranging from traditional rap to the most heart-stirring classical she’d ever heard. She’d relaxed and simply let him drive, taking the time to study his profile and the world outside.
The scenery changed as they moved east. Dryer, browner, flatter. Once they’d left the Portland metropolitan area and passed through the Cascade Mountain Range, it was as if they’d entered a different state. More pickup trucks, longer stretches between towns, and less greenery. The fir trees were few and far between, while the cowboy hats grew in number. Gun racks started to appear in the back windows of the pickup trucks. Bumper stickers told politicians to keep their change to themselves and keep their laws off their guns.
They were now on the red side of the blue-voting state. By the square mile, the east side of the state was nearly twice as big as the west, but much lower in population and income. Oregon was a state divided in half by the Cascade Mountains, economics, and politics.
Jamie suddenly craved a handcrafted iced cappuccino and knew she wasn’t going to find one. The self-service machines at 7-Eleven didn’t count.
“The sheriff is expecting us, right?” she asked.
“Yes, but I didn’t tell him exactly when we’d get in. We’ll stop at his office in Demming, see if he’s available to talk a bit. He wants to give me better directions out to your brother’s. I guess it’s hard to find. Also cautioned me to not sneak up on anyone. People in these remote areas have a tendency to shoot first, ask questions later.”
“Chris wouldn’t do that.”
Michael raised a brow at her. “He’s hiding from something. That’s the only reason for a man to live like he does and not introduce his son to his sister.”
Jamie looked out her window. The words stung deep. “He doesn’t like to be around people. After he recovered…he avoided everyone. He has burn scars on his face.”
“I’ve known plenty of people with disfigurations who operate just fine.”
Jamie was silent for a few moments. “What were you doing that day?”
Michael didn’t ask what day she meant.
She saw him swallow hard and then run a hand across his forehead. He kept his gaze forward on the road.
“I’d stayed home sick from school. I knew there was a field trip to the state capitol building scheduled that day, and to me nothing was more boring.” He snorted. “Daniel was pumped. He had a freaky fascination with politics.”
“Your father was a US senator at the time, right?”
“Yes, the junior senator. He’d just started his second term.”
“Your father liked Daniel’s interest?”
“He was thrilled. He had Daniel’s political future mapped out.”
“That’s insane. What kind of pressure does that put on a kid?”
Michael laughed. “The Senator and Daniel used to talk about it for hours. Where he could go to law school, where was the best school for undergrad—”
“And you? What were your plans?”
“I had no plans.” His voice went flat.
A small stab of sorrow touched Jamie’s heart. She’d seen too many kids in her school ignored by their parents. “That didn’t mean he had no reason to love you.”
Michael twisted up one side of his mouth. “I know my parents loved me. It just didn’t feel like they liked me. I wasn’t the type of kid they’d planned to have. I wasn’t interested in school. I just wanted to skateboard and ski. I used to pay high school kids to take me along when they skipped school and went skiing. I got caught over and over, but I didn’t care.”
“How’d your parents know you went skiing?”
“You know what raccoon eyes are?”
Jamie laughed. “You didn’t know to use sunscreen when skiing?”
“Naw, sunscreen was for wimps.”
Was he trying to avoid her original question by distracting her? “So were you really sick that day?”
He shook his head. “Not at all.”
“When did you find out?”
“Phone calls started coming in. Daniel wasn’t home from school, the bus never returned to the school, no one could locate the bus driver. The Senator was in Washington DC and immediately flew home. My mother didn’t go back to the hospital for three days. I’d never seen them so panicked.”
“Of course they were. Their son was missing. They would have reacted the same way if you’d never come back from skiing.”
The wry look on Michael’s face said he doubted her words.
She sat straighter in the SUV’s seat. “You think they would have simply brushed it off if you vanished? That’s ridiculous. No parent reacts like that!”
Michael tried to control the expression on his face. The absolute indignation on Jamie’s was killing him. His parents had never been the same after Daniel disappeared. Before DD—long ago Michael had divided up his life into Before DD and After DD—he’d simply thought his parents connected better with Daniel, as if they understood the chemical wiring in Daniel’s brain versus the ricocheting impulses that bounced through Michael’s.
At many points in a child’s life, one wonders what it’d be like to be an only child. Michael had experienced that daydream often, assuming all his parents’ focus would be on him…as an adult he’d often thanked God that hadn’t happened. He and his parents would have gone nuts if they’d tried to shape Michael into their own image. Looking back, he’d been grateful that Daniel had meshed so well with them and kept the focus off himself. Once Daniel was gone, the focus never shifted. It’d stayed on Daniel. And Michael had spread his wings. And spread. Usually to the point of risking his neck.
Mountain climbing, check. Run with the bulls in Spain, check. Crab boat trapping in the Bering Sea, check. Infiltrate a Los Angeles biker gang for an exposé on crime, check. That one had nearly cost him his life. He still had the knife scars on his gut and an intense dislike of the harsh tequila that they’d all drunk by the gallon. No margaritas for him, thank you.
“I know my parents cared,” he said. It felt like an over-spoken line in a play. Lifeless and meaningless. Deep down, he knew they’d cared, but for some twisted reason, they couldn’t show it. A therapist had once theorized that they were afraid of the pain of losing another child, so they tried to keep their distance, protecting themselves if something happened to Michael. And perhaps that was why he thrived on risk. Trying to coax a reaction out of his parents.
Michael had stared at the therapist, pulled three hundred dollars out of his wallet, slapped it on the table, walked out, and never returned. Why pay money for what he already knew? What he wanted was someone to fix it. Fix them. Fix him. Give him the family he’d never had, the one that lived in movies and books. It existed; he just had to find it.
Lacey Campbell was the closest thing he had to family. She was the little sister who mothered him when he needed it, sent him to get a haircut, and stocked his fridge when it only held beer and three-day-old pizza. They’d tried romance, but it’d failed. Miserably. Friendship worked best. For a long time, he’d pretended the friendship was fine with him, believing that if he stuck close and waited, it’d evolve into more and it’d be right the second time around. That dream had crashed and burned with the presence of her fiancé. He’d wanted to murder the man at first, but now…he accepted it.
Michael stopped his vehicle in front of a squat brick building in the small town, a large sheriff sign over the door. The town was quiet, one main drag through a row of storefronts, a couple of people moving from store to store. A few empty storefronts echoed the recession that’d stomped on the nation in the last few years. He killed the engine and rolled down his window, surprised that it wasn’t as hot as he’d expected for the dry town in the middle of summer. The elevation must keep it a bit cooler. Jamie lowered her window, too.
“Most parents care in one way or another,” stated Jamie. “But some just have a f*cked-up time showing it. I’ve seen parents who can never look their child in the eye but threaten to kick my ass if their child flunks an assignment.” She rolled her eyes.
Michael snorted. “I know my parents cared,” he repeated. Perhaps if he kept saying it out loud he’d really feel it. He shifted in his seat. He wasn’t ready to go into the sheriff’s office just yet. Jamie hadn’t moved either. There was an aura of openness in the vehicle that he didn’t want to lose. Jamie looked at the sign on the building, and her eyes softened.
“Luna County. I love the sound of that. The word Luna sounds so much prettier than moon. I wonder if the moon seems bigger out here. I went camping in Central Oregon once. The sky seemed so big, the stars brighter, and the moon closer.”
Michael stared at her profile. He grabbed every available chance to study her features when she wasn’t looking at him. The woman was gorgeous. Gorgeous in the way of fresh and healthy. Not because of makeup and hair product. She dressed minimally, shorts and tanks. Little makeup or fussing with her hair. She let the glow of her skin and toned muscles subtly grab attention. And her eyes…that color…outlined with the black lashes. He could stare forever. He’d memorized the outside, now he wanted to know what was inside. He didn’t remember her from their private school. She had been several years behind him and too young to go on the field trip. Then her parents had yanked her out of school and homeschooled her after the children vanished.
“What did your parents do that day?” he asked.
Her gaze fell to her hands, playing with the hem of her shorts. “They were in shock. The school called and told my mother they were trying to find the bus. She simply sat by the phone for the rest of the day and stared into space. I remember watching cartoons, thrilled that she didn’t care how long I watched that day. Usually there was a strict time limit. That day she didn’t care. She called my father, but he couldn’t leave work. When he got home, he joined her…waiting at the table. I was the only one to eat dinner. They sat there and watched me eat. It felt weird, but I knew my brother would be home soon. I figured the bus was just lost.” Jamie turned her face away, looking out her side window as her voice went quieter. “It was like they knew he wasn’t coming. Looking back, I swear they had no hope at all.”
“And the day Chris returned?” Michael felt a brief rush of jealousy at the survivor and his family. It faded rapidly as Jamie turned her green gaze to him.
“They didn’t believe it. It wasn’t until they actually saw him in the hospital that they let themselves believe. They’d lost all hope. Absolutely all hope. Those two years were so dark. I look at pictures from Christmas during those two years. I can see the despair in their eyes even as they smiled for the camera. My mother stayed in the hospital with Chris until he came home. She wouldn’t leave.”
“Wasn’t he there for three months or so?”
Jamie nodded. “It seemed like forever. He was in a coma for a few weeks. I think the doctors induced it to allow his brain injuries to heal. He had five surgeries on his face and more on his right leg. I kept waiting for everything to return to normal, but his medical issues dragged on and on. It never was the same around our house. I thought joy would return. Instead, I still heard my mother cry at night and watched my father’s liquor supply dwindle and refresh.
“Christmas pictures from then on weren’t much different. My parents still had shadows in their eyes, and Chris would never look at the camera. The left side of his face was so bad, he always turned it away, hating his looks. My parents finally stopped taking pictures of him.” Jamie frowned. “That seems so wrong now. But it wasn’t because they were ashamed of him; it was what he wanted. He was so withdrawn. He acted like he didn’t want the world to know he existed. When reporters would come around every few years, he wouldn’t come out of his room for days. I think it was nearly a relief to my parents when he moved out.”
“That’s horrible.”
“I agree,” she nodded thoughtfully. “But the stress was hard on them. Of course, it was worse when he’d vanished, but living with the shell of the child who returned was difficult. Therapy went nowhere. He was only content being alone, working on his computer. It’s hard to be a parent when your child is untouchable. When you want to help but nothing works.”
Silence filled the vehicle. Not an uncomfortable silence. A commonality. A connection. Michael reached over and squeezed her hand. Jamie glanced down at the gesture, a small smile curving her lips, and then she met his gaze.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“Yes, I do. I hated your family for years. I hated your brother, I hated your parents, and I hated you for getting your brother back when I had nothing.”
Jamie’s face blanched.
“But I didn’t get it,” he added quickly. “I was a kid. It was my outlet. It was easy to hate faceless people. I just wanted my brother back. Still do. I think any shrink would say it was a pretty normal reaction.”
Color slowly seeped back to her cheeks. “I understand. I probably would have been the same way.”
He held tight to her hand and felt the pressure returned. Warmth spread through his chest, and she smiled. A real smile, not a fake I-don’t-believe-a-word-you’re-saying smile.
“God, you are gorgeous,” he blurted.
Her eyes crinkled in mirth, and she chuckled. His heart double-thumped. If he’d thought she was beautiful before…
She pulled her hand from his and touched his cheek. “You’re not so bad yourself, Brody.” Her gaze moved from his eyes to his mouth, and the heat in his chest flared.
“Christ.” He couldn’t breathe.
She chuckled again and ran a finger across his upper lip. “Ready to go find that sheriff?”
Michael blinked. He’d completely forgotten their purpose. How did women shift gears so fast? “Uh…sure.” He didn’t sound sure at all.
Jamie unbuckled her seatbelt and opened her door, swinging sleek legs out. Michael bit the inside of his cheek. She slammed her door and glanced at him through the open window. He hadn’t moved.
“You coming?”
He felt glued to his seat. And it wasn’t from the heat. Something about their conversation and the touch of her hand on his face had utterly undone him. His heart had moved into a foreign position, and he was clueless how to handle it. He swallowed hard, feeling like he was about to step out of a plane. With no parachute. He reached for his door handle.
“Always.”