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Lucas recognized he could fall for her if he allowed himself. But he wouldn’t allow it, because even though she’d made love with him, he guessed that the emotions they felt were driven by circumstance.
Sooner or later this case would be resolved one way or another, and with that resolution would come an end to the unusual and intense relationship they’d forged.
As he moved away from the window, he realized it was time for him to build a wall around his emotions where she was concerned. He’d allowed himself to get too close, both in his position as sheriff and as a man.
He returned to the kitchen, where his legal pad awaited him at the table. One thing he and Mariah hadn’t discussed the day before when they’d been going over things was the fact that the kidnapper could be almost anyone.
Just because they had Phillip Ribideaux and Remy Troulous in their sights didn’t mean either man was responsible. Just because she thought this was something her ex-husband might be capable of didn’t mean Frank Landers was responsible.
Who knew what acquaintances Jenny had who might want to do this? Who knew what neighbor or friend might harbor some sick twist in their mind that might have led to this?
The phone rang and Lucas snatched up the receiver, his heart pounding as it had every time the phone rang. “Hello?”
“Hi, this is Miranda Thomas with Channel Four news. I was wondering if I could speak with Mariah?”
His heart slowed once again. “She isn’t taking calls.”
“Who am I speaking to?” she asked.
“A ‘no comment’ kind of guy,” he replied, and hung up the receiver.
The calls from the press had been constant, as had the calls from Richard Welch wanting updates. There had still been a few other phone messages, also—well-meaning people who wanted to know what they could do, how they could help. But so far the call Lucas most wanted hadn’t come.
This time there would be no taped monologue. This time there was going to be a dialogue and maybe, just maybe, in having that dialogue Lucas could figure out what about that voice sounded so familiar.
The doorbell rang and he hurried out of the kitchen to the front door. He met Mariah coming down the hallway. She cast him a tired smile as he peeked out the door and took a step back in surprise.
“It’s Remy Troulous,” he said to her as he opened the door. What was he doing here?
Mariah stepped in front of Lucas. “Mr. Troulous, please come in,” she said as if he were an expected, welcome friend.
Remy looked distinctly uncomfortable as he stepped through the door and into the small entry. “Please, come in and sit,” Mariah said, and gestured him into the living room. “Would you like something to drink?”
“No, I’m good,” he replied.
Lucas frowned at the young man. “What are you doing here, Remy?”
“I didn’t want to talk to you at the office. My business is nobody’s business, and I didn’t want anyone to hear what I’m going to tell you.” Remy’s eyes gleamed with a hard edge, and he lifted his chin defensively.
“Do you know where my son is? Where Jenny is?” Mariah asked, her voice filled with urgency as she stepped closer to him.
“No.” His gaze softened slightly as he looked at Mariah. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t know anything about what happened to them.” He looked back at Lucas. “You and I have butted heads a lot of times in the past, but even you should know this isn’t my style. I don’t mess with kids.”
“So, what do you have to tell us?” Lucas asked.
“It’s about me and Jenny.”
“What about you and Jenny?” Lucas tried to hang on to his emotions.
“We were sort of seeing each other, but it’s not what you think.” Again Remy’s chin lifted. “It wasn’t anything romantic or nothing like that.”
“Then what was it?” Lucas couldn’t imagine what this man and his sister would have in common, why they would be seeing each other at all.
Remy shoved his hands into his pockets and gazed first at Lucas, then at Mariah, then back to Lucas. “Look, this is something I don’t want anyone else to know. That’s why I came here instead of telling you yesterday. You had that other dude in the room and I wasn’t going to talk about it.”
“Talk about what?” Lucas asked with more than a touch of impatience.
“Jenny was teaching me to read, okay? I know I can’t be a gangbanger forever. I want something better, okay? But I can’t do nothing about my life unless I learn how to read.”
He eyed them belligerently, as if expecting them to mock or belittle his efforts. “Anyway, that’s why I was meeting with her. I just thought you should know so you’ll get off my back ‘cause I had nothing to do with her being missing.” He backed toward the door. “Sorry I can’t help. I liked Jenny a lot and she was nice to me even though she didn’t have to be.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. “This is my cell phone number. If I can do anything to help find her, give me a call.”
Lucas could feel Mariah’s disappointment, as rich and deep as his own. He took the piece of paper from Remy but wasn’t finished with his questions. “How did you arrange this with my sister?”
Remy shrugged his narrow shoulders. “I was in the library and looking at books on reading. Jenny was in there, too, and she saw the books I was looking at. We started talking and she offered to help me. I trusted her. I knew she wouldn’t tell nobody, so we met a couple of times here during the day.”
“And you haven’t heard anything on the streets about her disappearance?” Lucas asked.
Remy shook his head. “Nothing. Whoever took them, he ain’t talking to nobody. Look, Jenny was helping me. I wouldn’t have repaid her by doing something like this. I just wanted you to know.” Without another word, Remy shot out of the front door.
Mariah closed the door after him and turned to face Lucas. “Do you believe him?”
“I have absolutely no reason to believe anything that falls out of that man’s mouth, but yeah, I believe him.”
She nodded. “So do I. It’s just the kind of thing Jenny would do. I told you she would have made a great teacher.”
A stab of guilt gored him. He’d been so busy worrying about the kind of woman Jenny might be that he hadn’t taken the time to see what kind of woman she had become.
He sighed. “So, if we believe Remy, then he comes off our list of suspects.”
“And since Phillip Ribideaux has done nothing suspicious in the past couple of days and we don’t know where Frank is, that leaves us with nothing.”
Lucas opened his mouth to protest her assessment, then closed it. Because she was right.
Chapter Ten
It had become a waiting game, and as the afternoon hours crept by, Mariah felt as if she might explode. Why didn’t he call? If she and Lucas walked out the front door, would the kidnapper call then? Leave one of his cryptic messages to lead them on yet another wild-goose chase?
Lucas had remained for much of the day at the table, alternately talking on his cell phone and staring at her telephone as if willing it to ring.
Dusk was falling and the panic that night brought with it formed a big, tight lump in her chest. Another night. How many nights could she survive? How long before she lost her mind with grief?
The house had been so quiet. Until his disappearance, Mariah hadn’t realized how much Billy filled up the house with sound. He often clomped when he walked, he hummed and whistled while he did his chores. And he laughed. God, what she wouldn’t give to hear the sound of his laugher once again.
When the doorbell rang at seven that evening, Mariah hurried to answer it, grateful for the break from the tension, from the monotony of waiting for the kidnapper to call.
She opened the door and froze as she saw the man with a sprinkle of gray in his black hair, the narrow dark eyes that had once haunted her dreams.
“Hello, Mariah. How in the hell did you manage to lose our little boy?”
“Frank.” Mariah wouldn’t have thought it possible for the cold inside her to intensify, but it did at the sight of the man who had caused her such pain. A fear she thought she’d gotten past filled her.
“Your hair always looked so nice when you wore it short,” he said. “Now, aren’t you going to invite me in?”
Mariah felt Lucas’s presence just behind her. “I don’t know if she’ll invite you in, but I certainly will.”
As Lucas placed a hand on Mariah’s shoulder, she was filled with strength. This man, this monster, couldn’t hurt her ever again, and she refused to allow him to create fear inside her.
“By all means, come in,” she agreed and opened the door to her past. “We’ve been looking for you.”
“Who are you?” Frank asked Lucas as he stepped into the small foyer.
“I’m Sheriff Lucas Jamison and I have some questions for you, Frank.”
“I’ve got questions for you. Where in the hell is my boy? What kind of an investigation is going on that a little boy and some woman have been missing for the past four days and you can’t find them?”
Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “Why don’t we all go in and have a seat. I’ll be happy to answer your questions after you’ve answered mine.”
It was obvious Lucas intended to maintain the control in the situation. The three of them moved into the living room where Frank sat on the sofa and patted the cushion next to him with a smile at Mariah.
“When hell freezes over,” she muttered under her breath and sat in the chair opposite the sofa. Lucas remained standing next to Mariah’s chair.
“Can you tell me where you’ve been for the past four days?” Lucas asked.
Frank straightened his shoulders, as if affronted by the very question. “Surely you don’t think I had anything to do with this.” He glared at Mariah. “Ask her what she did to put our boy at risk. She’s always been irresponsible. If anyone is at fault here, it’s her.”
“Right now we’re talking about you,” Lucas replied, his tone holding an iron edge. “I’m going to ask you again, where have you been for the past four days?”
“Up until this morning I was in my home in Shreveport,” Frank said.
“We had the authorities in Shreveport looking for you, but they couldn’t find where you lived or worked,” Mariah said. Funny, for so many years he’d been a monster in her mind. He’d been big and strong and scary. But now, seated on her floral-patterned sofa, he looked small and petty and nothing like a monster at all.
“I’ve been living with a friend and I’m between jobs at the moment. It was during breakfast this morning that I saw a newscast about Billy and Mariah and of course I came right here.” He cast a sideways look at Mariah. “My new friend knows how to treat a man right.”
If Mariah had to guess, his new “friend” was probably a young, impressionable woman who didn’t realize the path she’d chosen when she’d hooked up with Frank Landers.
“I’ll need your address in Shreveport and the name of your friend,” Lucas said.
Frank’s square jaw tightened. “You’re wasting your time investigating me.”
“It’s my time to waste,” Lucas replied evenly.
For the next few minutes Lucas questioned Mariah’s ex-husband, and though she tried to stay focused on the conversation she found herself comparing the two men.
She’d once thought Frank the handsomest man she’d ever known, but now she saw the weakness of his jaw, the furtive cast of his eyes and the voice that radiated belligerence rather than strength.
Handsome was a man who loved his sister to distraction. Handsome was a man who had held her in his arms when she thought she might fracture. The fact that Lucas remained standing next to where she sat, creating a subtle united force to Frank, that was beyond handsome.
Somewhere in the madness of the past four days, her attitude toward Lucas Jamison had changed. As she watched the byplay between the two men, she realized she’d allowed her past to color how she saw Lucas and his actions toward Jenny.
“I demand to know exactly what’s being done to find my son,” Frank said, his strident tone bringing Mariah out of her thoughts. He stood as if unable to sit still another moment.
“We can discuss all that at my office,” Lucas replied. “Tomorrow morning at ten. I’ll meet you there and fill you in.”
“Fine. I look forward to hearing what’s going on.” Frank headed for the front door. Mariah started to get up, but Lucas touched her shoulder.
“Stay put,” he said. “I’ll walk him out.”
She remained in the chair and realized seeing Frank again had somehow freed her. She hadn’t known until this moment that he’d still owned a part of her, that a little piece of fear still reigned in her heart where he was concerned. Facing him again had evaporated that fear, and she knew he’d never have the power in life or in dreams to scare her again.
Now if she could just get her son back…. She rose from the chair and went to the window that looked over the backyard and stared out into the deepening shadows of the night.
Strange. The wrist Frank had broken didn’t ache now. Her worst nightmare had come true. Frank knew where they lived, but she wasn’t running this time. He’d chased her from everything she’d known once. He wouldn’t do it again. This was Billy’s home. He loved it here, had friends and roots here.
She’d gone to court before to ensure that Frank had no visitation with his son. He had no legal right to be here, and this time she wasn’t running.
She heard the front door open, then close. She knew when Lucas stood behind her, because she smelled the familiar scent of him. She wasn’t surprised when he placed his hands gently on her shoulders and turned her around to face him.
“You okay?” he asked, his features radiating concern.
“I’m fine.” She smiled. “He was my boogeyman for so long, but seeing him now I realized he isn’t anymore. He’s just a pathetic little man who likes to abuse women.”
“I called Agent Kessler while I was outside,” Lucas said. “I want your ex-boogeyman checked inside out and upside down. I want to know everything about his movements over the past four days.”
She frowned. “So you think he has Billy?”
“I think his concern for his son came off like an orchestrated act,” Lucas replied. “I’ve definitely moved him to the top of my suspect list.” He frowned. “He’s a nasty piece of work.” His frown fell away for a moment and a soft smile curved his lips. “But I will tell you now that you look beautiful with your long hair.”
She touched his jaw, the place where a muscle knotted when he was filled with angry emotion. “I owe you an apology.”
He covered her hand with his, his expression curious. “An apology for what?”
“For telling you that you remind me of Frank, for allowing you to believe that you have anything in common with that man.”
A pained expression chased across his face and he dropped his hand from hers. “I would never, ever willingly hurt Jenny or any woman, but there was some truth in what you said to me.” He stepped away from her and raked a hand through his hair. “I have been overbearing with Jenny. I didn’t mean it to be that way, but over the past couple of days I’ve given it a lot of thought.” His jaw knotted and his eyes darkened. “I just want a chance to do things differently.”
She moved into his arms and leaned her head against his broad chest. It scared her just a little bit, how comforting the act was, how much she felt as if she belonged in his arms.
What they were experiencing had nothing to do with real life. The connection she felt with him had been forged in circumstances of heightened emotions, of tense drama and fear. It had nothing to do with reality, and she’d be a fool to think otherwise.
Still she remained in his arms and thought of her son and his sister and wondered if there was a happy ending to be found in this mess.
Then the phone rang.
THE RING OF THE PHONE electrified Lucas. He broke their embrace and raced for the kitchen. He hit the record and speaker button, then picked up the receiver.
“Jamison,” he answered.
“Ah, the good sheriff. Listen carefully. At the corner of Main and Cotton Street …”
