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Although those greetings had dwindled to a halt even before the divorce two years ago. He had wondered whether he should phone Kirsten with condolences when Brad described the new love of his life—a former Miss Scottsdale whose attraction had faded so quickly that she’d never been mentioned again. But he had decided against it.
There wasn’t much he could say beyond, “I never expected that.” Nobody would’ve expected that if they’d known her and Brad back in high school…the way he had, during those years when the three of them shared a long bus ride each day. They’d become a trio of best friends, which had amazed J.D. even as it warmed him—but still, that long-ago friendship was no justification for getting in touch with Kirsten. She’d probably put him out of her mind a long time ago, and he didn’t need her taking up any more space in his awareness.
The way she would if he let himself hear her voice again.
But this phone message was something he couldn’t ignore. She’d asked for him specifically, which meant it couldn’t be a simple coincidence of her needing some police officer. Not that a Tucson homemaker would likely need a Phoenix narcotics detective in any case, especially one with only two weeks left on the job.
She’d left a new phone number, J.D. noticed, looking at the message slip and steeling himself against the impact of seeing her name again. This wasn’t the number he remembered using for Brad on those rare occasions he’d called his friend in Tucson. But it made sense that Kirsten would’ve found a new place…she probably wouldn’t have wanted to stay in the same house she’d shared with her ex-husband.
An ex-husband J.D. would have pummeled for walking out on her, old friendship or not, if only she hadn’t wound up happier without him.
Brad hadn’t said that, of course. But he had said that after trying to talk Kirsten into a reconciliation and being flatly refused, the only conclusion he could come to was that she preferred someone who’d take more of an interest in the kids.
Which Brad, in spite of his comfortable heritage, apparently never had done. Except at their last meeting in January, J.D. recalled, when his friend had waxed eloquent about the glories of family. “I never realized how great my parents were until that plane crash, and now all I’ve got are the kids. But once the boys and Lindsay come visit this summer, I could keep them with me. Show ’em a great time…Las Vegas, skiing at Telluride, sailing off Catalina Island…”
The list of sites sounded almost like an itinerary, J.D. had thought at the time, but after the Super Bowl broadcast he had dismissed it as “bar talk.” While Brad might conceivably be planning to abscond with his kids, the possibility wasn’t worth mentioning to Kirsten. There was no reason, J.D. had managed to convince himself, for phoning a woman he hadn’t seen in eight years.
A decision he’d come to, he admitted, mainly because of the same uneasiness he was feeling right now.
J.D. flattened the message slip against the front of his desk. Drew it across the curved edge to smooth out its surface. Propped it against the phone and gazed at it, trying to imagine how Kirsten looked—as quietly stunning as ever, probably, with those incredible blond tresses and the perfect skin to match—and how she might sound when he called. Did her voice still have that faint lilt, that occasional edge of huskiness when—
Forget it, Ryder.
It was a phone call, nothing more. No reason to sit here gaping at a piece of paper as if it contained all the promise of a desert rainfall. Torn between annoyance at himself—he was a combat veteran, for God’s sake, and acting like a teenager!—and a grim awareness that he couldn’t quite seem to draw a full breath, J.D. punched the number into his phone.
One ring.
Gazing blankly across the cluttered squadroom, he forced himself to breathe in as much air as he could. If he wound up talking to her answering machine, he should at least sound reasonably in control of his own voice.
Two rings.
Kirsten might not even be there. She spent every summer taking the kids to art classes, swimming, gymnastics, the kind of thing “every mom does,” according to Brad. J.D. knew that wasn’t true of every mom, but he’d never argued the point. Even though he now had plenty of casework to cite, he’d spent the past decade letting his friends believe that their all-American lifestyle was the normal one.
Three rings.
“Hello?”
It was Kirsten. Sounding exactly the way he remembered. J.D. gripped the phone tighter and closed his eyes.
“Kirs, it’s J.D. How’re you doing?”
He could have said something smoother than that, he realized with a twinge of embarrassment as soon as he heard himself. But she hadn’t called to evaluate his social skills. All he needed to do was listen to her reunion invitation, explain he was taking off for Chicago in another few weeks, and put her out of his mind.
Again.
“Oh, I’m glad you called!” The warmth in her voice startled him, it sounded so close to what he’d fantasized about during those nights in basic training. But why would she be so excited about hearing from him now? “I’ve been trying to find anyone who might have talked to Brad lately.”
Well, that answered that. “Ah,” J.D. said, crumpling the message slip and aiming it at the wastebasket behind his desk. “Yeah.”
“I know this is going to sound really strange, but…did he by any chance mention any plans with the children? Because they were supposed to be home today, only his cleaning lady said he was taking them on vacation—and I don’t know where they are.”
J.D. closed his eyes, feeling as if he’d just been sucker-punched. So Brad hadn’t just been shooting off his mouth.
And here you didn’t want to call and warn her….
“Oh, God,” he muttered. “I’m sorry, Kirs.”
“Well, so, I was just hoping—I mean, nobody’s heard anything, and—” With every phrase her voice sounded shakier. “The police said they can’t do anything about a custody violation, and I’ve been asking everyone, only it’s like they—they’re just gone—I mean, it’s probably okay, because when I got the mail there was a…a…what, a postcard, only—”
“Kirsten,” he interrupted. “Take a breath.”
There was a momentary silence, then he heard a quick, shuddering gasp. All right, she was listening to him.
“Good,” J.D. said. “Another breath, okay? A big one.” He couldn’t make up for what he’d failed to do, but he could at least keep her from passing out.
A longer breath. “Okay,” she said, sounding slightly more composed. But then he heard the panic slipping back into her voice. “They’re just gone—and I don’t know what to do!”
Neither did he, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. “It’s okay,” he said in his best soothe-the-assault-victim tone. “We’ll get it handled.” Kirsten was right about the police not pursuing civil cases—which always shocked parents who viewed custody violations as a crime—but he’d make damn sure she got whatever assistance he could line up. “You say you got a postcard?”
“From the Space Needle,” she confirmed. “Brad always takes them there when they first get to Seattle, and they always send me one of those big postcards. Except this time, Lindsay and the boys wrote their names and drew pictures like they always do, and Brad added a note—”
“Can you read it to me?” This was the kind of thing a private investigator should handle, J.D. knew, but he couldn’t think of anyone to recommend in Tucson or Seattle. His only other contacts were cops, who couldn’t offer the kind of help she needed—and yet it was his fault she needed help in the first place. If only he’d phoned her in January….
“Let me get it. Just a second.” It took only a little longer than that before she cleared her throat and read, “Never realized till I lost my folks how great it is, having family around. Call if it’s a problem, but I want to give these kids a really fun summer—show them all the places we’ve never been. Don’t worry, I’ll have ’em home for school. Love you, Brad.”
He could hear his buddy’s breezy, carefree tone even through the tremor in Kirsten’s voice. That sounded like Brad, all right—blithely assuming she wouldn’t mind giving up her kids on the one hand, and signing off with “love you” on the other.
That son of a—
But he couldn’t trash the father of Kirsten’s kids, no matter how upset she sounded right now.
“I never would’ve agreed to let them spend the rest of the summer with him!” she cried. “Two weeks, all right, they can eat candy every morning for two weeks, and it’s important for them to spend time with their dad. But the whole summer—when he’s never been all that responsible in the first place—”
“Right,” J.D. acknowledged, forcibly channeling the heated anger into the cold concentration he employed virtually every day of his life. “You’ve already tried calling him?”
“When they weren’t on the plane, I talked to the cleaning lady—only it was too late by then. Brad probably thought it was fine to take them, since I hadn’t said no, but the postcard only came today. And I’d never, ever let him keep Lindsay and Adam and Eric that long!”
At best the Seattle P.D. might send someone over to the house, leave a message, check back a few times…. Kirsten needed more than that. “Let me get someone on this, okay?”
“The police?” She sounded both hopeful and apprehensive. “Will that—I mean, as much as I hate him for doing this, I don’t want Brad to get arrested or anything. It’d be horrible for the children to think their father was— I just want them home.”
It wasn’t all that horrible, seeing your father arrested…although, J.D. reminded himself, Kirsten’s kids had grown up in the same comfortable, happy-ending world she’d always taken for granted. Maybe it would be horrible for people like that.
“I’ll get you a private investigator,” he told her, “someone who can start right away.” He would have to give the P.I. everything he could remember from that conversation during the Super Bowl, when Brad had boasted about all the great things he could do for his kids if Kirsten weren’t so fussy about school attendance. “Find a couple photos of them, okay? And write down everything you know about Brad—where he likes to stay, friends he might call, any credit-card numbers, that kind of thing.”
“I will,” Kirsten promised, sounding somewhat reassured. “J.D., really, I appreciate your help. I was hoping someone could…I mean, I can’t let them go all summer—”
“No, I know.” Brad had always been good company, but the same blithe irresponsibility that made him fun to spend time with was probably a major drawback when it came to looking after kids. “You’d just as soon they didn’t live on candy bars, right?”
“Well, that, and the kindergarten needs Adam and Eric in by August first. If they’re going to be in separate classrooms instead of together, I have to—” She broke off, sounding suddenly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, that’s mom stuff. And here I didn’t even ask…how have you been?”
The question startled him, coming over the phone on which no one had ever asked such a thing. “Uh, fine,” he said, gripping the receiver a little tighter as he scanned the list of private investigators he recommended to parents seeking children sucked into the world of drugs. “I’m moving to Chicago in a few weeks.”
“Chicago! What will you be doing there?”
“Narcotics task force. I got the call last month.” He’d been elated at getting into a department where the work would be more demanding, more challenging, more of a chance to make a difference. More opportunity to keep addicts and dealers from inflicting on anyone the kind of childhood he’d endured. “Same kind of thing I’m doing here, but a bigger city. With better pizza.”
He could almost hear her smile at that last comment. “You always wanted to travel,” she observed, surprising him with how much she remembered of the dreams he’d never shared until that one summer. “It’s wonderful you’re getting the chance.”
She sounded a lot happier for him than anyone else had. Not that he’d told many people—just the captain, a few of the guys he worked with and the manager at his apartment complex.
“Well, thanks.” It was typical of Kirsten, he recalled, to show such genuine pleasure in a friend’s good fortune. Although he couldn’t exactly call himself a friend, not after the way he’d failed to warn her about Brad’s bar talk. “I’ve still got two weeks here, but there’s not much left to do. So I’ll find you a P.I. right away.”
“I really appreciate it,” she said again. “What shall I do besides make that list? And should I—do you know how much they charge?”
He couldn’t let her pay for his mistake, J.D. knew. It was partly his fault that she’d lost her kids, although he couldn’t quite bring himself to confess it…especially when she was already hurting. Somehow he’d have to make things right for Kirsten without letting her know that both members of her old trio had let her down.
“Depends on who you get,” he began. “But the thing is…I mean, if that’s a problem—”
“No, of course not!” The indignation in her voice startled him—Brad had said she’d refused anything beyond a single large settlement in exchange for his promise to stay involved with the kids—but apparently money was of no importance when it came to her children. “I’ve still got my grandmother’s trust fund, and my parents can always help. It’s not a problem.”
Did her parents still think Brad Laurence was the best thing that could happen to their daughter? J.D. wondered. Not that it mattered—the whole issue had been settled a long time ago, and in fact he’d agreed with their opinion—but he couldn’t help feeling a twinge of curiosity.
“All right,” he said, deliberately squelching it and returning his gaze to the list of investigators. He owed her a lot more than a P.I.’s name, but what else could he offer without explaining how badly he’d failed her? And while he deserved her condemnation, she didn’t deserve to hear about yet another betrayal. “I’ll phone some people and get right back to you. It shouldn’t take long.”
“I’ll wait right by the phone,” she promised.
“No, I meant, it shouldn’t take long for someone to find them.” Especially with his list of all the places Brad had mentioned. He could handle the search himself, if only he had the freedom to—
The freedom…
He could do this for her. For the woman he had loved, the woman he’d vowed never to hurt. The woman he had failed to protect.
J.D. took the Freedom Form from its stack and stared at the vacation-refusal box he’d marked. “Tell you what, Kirs,” he said slowly, scratching out his initials and inking a heavier X in the opposite box. “I can be in Tucson in three hours. You get those photos ready…and I’ll find your kids myself.”
Chapter Two
In ten more minutes, she’d be face-to-face with J.D. Ryder. Kirsten cast another glance around her half-decorated living room, knowing she shouldn’t care how it looked right now, and moved her carefully selected photos and list from the still-empty bookshelf to the Mexican-glass coffee table.
Then back again.
It was silly to feel nervous. There was no reason for her heart to be jumping around this way. Although meeting a detective would probably make anyone nervous, at least anyone who needed help in finding their children….
How on earth, she wondered through another rush of anguish, could she have let this happen? What kind of mother could lose track of her children? Especially to a father who’d never been all that excited about parenting before, who had once forgotten to retrieve them from a hotel sitter until two in the morning.
She should have taken steps to make sure this could never happen, Kirsten knew, twisting her fingers together around the drapery cord. She should have phoned five times a day from the moment they arrived in Seattle, the way she used to before admitting it wasn’t fair to keep intruding on the children’s rare opportunities to see their father. She should have stayed in constant contact, never mind interrupting their time with Brad, because now he was—
Take a deep breath.
She could still hear the command J.D. had given her three hours ago, and she’d been following it ever since. Emotions, anger, fury at Brad wouldn’t help her children now. And unless she wanted them to view their father as a horrible person, she couldn’t allow herself to feel this kind of rage at him…because it would surely slip out at the wrong moment.
So take another breath.
This whole situation, she reminded herself as she took a series of deep breaths and resumed her pacing, called for the kind of steady control she had always admired in J.D. Ryder. The kind of control she hadn’t learned early enough. The kind she’d seldom had the chance to practice…until now.
But now it was silly to be nervous. J.D. would find the children, exactly as he’d promised. It was even more silly to wish she had a mirror in here, in the first living room she’d ever decorated without bowing to her parents’ or Brad’s wishes. She didn’t need to check her reflection again, didn’t need to make sure her yellow cotton sweater fell smoothly to her waist, because this wasn’t a visit from someone who cared about what she looked like. This was a matter of business, nothing more….
He didn’t want you, remember?
She remembered. All too well.
This might be his way of making up for that long-ago wound, although she had no reason for believing she knew how J.D.’s mind worked. But if he’d ever suspected how much his departure had hurt her, he might very well want to make amends. There was a fundamental decency about the man…although no one but Brad and herself had ever recognized that.
Maybe because he’d never shown it to anyone else.
He’d shown everyone else exactly what they expected from the delinquent son of a drunken brawler. From a newcomer living on an outlying piece of land in a condemned trailer that only Brad had managed to visit…and only once. Through the entire three years he’d spent at Tubac High, J.D. had shown the kind of smoldering darkness that made teachers stiffen their posture whenever he shifted in his seat. But he’d also shown intriguing flashes of wry humor—and, occasionally, of genuine, searing compassion beneath the stark and gritty defiance he wore like an impenetrable shell.
A shell he probably still wore. And that was fine, Kirsten told herself. She didn’t need to know what lay inside J.D. Ryder. All she needed was his professional expertise, nothing more. There would be no reminiscing, no sharing the kind of confidences she’d shared so trustingly before he shot out of her life.
Leaving her reeling. Leaving her lost.
Leaving her with no one to turn to but Brad.
Yet she couldn’t regret her marriage to Brad, in spite of how it had turned out, because of the children. The children who brightened her world beyond measure, who deserved all the love and security and happiness she could give them…no matter how much effort it took when their father viewed them with such indifference. She’d vowed, from the day she first held Lindsay in her arms, to give her children a life as comfortable, as nurturing and as perfect as she could possibly make it.
And here she’d sent them off without ever imagining an outcome like this….
But—please, God—with J.D.’s help, she would have them safe at home soon.
Seven more minutes, Kirsten noted, glancing at her platinum bracelet watch again. He might not be exactly on time, of course; there was no accounting for traffic and navigation delays. But during the worst of rush hour he would’ve been on that empty stretch of desert freeway between Phoenix and Tucson, and her new house off Ina Road shouldn’t be too hard to find.
At least not for J.D. Ryder, who had always been good with directions. She remembered him pointing out the distant constellations, that night of the desert bonfire, and how matter-of-factly he’d directed Brad’s attention to the North Star. How easily he’d guided them home from that hike in Aravaipa, the one time her parents had let her spend a Saturday with the boys. That was back when all three of them were friends, before she and Brad had become a couple, before J.D. had gone his own way….
The chime of the doorbell sent a jolt of shock radiating through her. She moved to the front window, hoping for a glimpse of him before he turned and saw her, then caught her breath in amazement.
J.D. Ryder hadn’t changed. At least not that she could see. He looked older, yes, but that darkly compelling aura of focused strength still glimmered in his cool demeanor, his watchful stance. He still gave the impression of banked fires beneath a deceptively relaxed exterior, of the ability to strike without warning and retreat without moving.
But when he saw her at the window, his eyes reflected the same astonishment she’d felt at the sight of him. For a moment he hesitated, staring at her as if he couldn’t quite believe Kirsten Laurence was waiting for J.D. Ryder, and she saw his guarded expression grow warmer. Then, when she flung open the carved wood door, he gave her the slow, almost challenging smile of greeting she remembered from eight years ago.
“Kirsten,” he said simply.
“You haven’t changed,” she blurted. It shouldn’t be such a surprise—eight years wasn’t all that long—and yet somehow she had never imagined that J.D. Ryder could still exude such solitary strength.
“Neither have you,” he murmured, moving past her into the foyer as if he needed all the space around him he could get…and setting off another familiar chord of recognition. The man seemed to command the very air around him, and Kirsten felt her breath coming a little faster as she turned away to close the door. Which made no sense, she reminded herself hastily. This was an old friend, nothing more.
And she’d better remember that.
“I’m glad you could come,” she told him, wondering whether he’d spent the day testifying at a trial or something. It was hard to picture J.D. choosing such a flawlessly cut summer-weight suit to complement his deep brown eyes and close-cropped black hair, but she had the impression of a catalog model…except, again, for that ever-present sense of smoldering darkness.
