скачать книгу бесплатно
“Emily?”
The deep voice that she shouldn’t have recognized so easily sent a flood of hope through her. “Mitch.” She turned, then rushed over to him. “What are you doing here? I thought you were SWAT.”
“Temporary assignment while I’m rehabbing.” He clasped her arm and guided her toward a chair next to a desk with his name. “What’s going on?”
Mitch’s concern wrapped around her like a warm blanket. She looked up as he escorted her, strong and able—almost a knight in shining armor. Last night, even though someone had almost killed her, she’d felt safe and protected in his arms after he’d snatched her out of harm’s way. Could she trust him to do the same now?
She had no choice. She had to go with her instincts. She sat down and clutched her evidence satchel meeting his gaze. “Detective Tanner.”
“My temporary boss,” Mitch clarified gently as he hitched his hip on the edge of the desk.
“Oh.” Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea, but she’d run out of options, and no matter what William had advised, she wasn’t giving up. “I received a tip about Ghost’s tattoo, and it reminded me of something from the night of the accident. I asked Tanner to let me see the mug shots or the tattoo database, but he won’t. He wouldn’t even let me see Ghost.”
“Did you see his tat?”
“Well, no, but I heard one of the girls—”
“Tanner’s a real by-the-book kind of guy,” Mitch said. “He doesn’t bend regs. If you didn’t see the tat, he won’t let you at the photos.”
“Do you ever break the rules?”
Mitch quirked a small smile. “Let’s just say in SWAT sometimes a little creative thinking is required. I wouldn’t say I break regulations, but I might bend them a bit.”
Hope flickered through Emily as she stared at the man who had taken down Ghost. She leaned forward in her chair and gripped Mitch’s arm. “I need your help to find my son.”
“I’m not a real investigator, Emily. Just on temporary assignment. You need—”
“I need someone who believes in getting at the truth…and in finding Joshua. No one here does. They never have.” Bitterness crept into Emily’s voice. “I know you’ve heard the rumors, but they’re not true. I loved Eric. Please, help me find Joshua.”
She saw the turmoil and indecision in his eyes, and something that almost looked like guilt. “It’s not your fault this department has let me down, but you can change that.”
“Bradford. In my office. Now.”
Tanner’s order made Emily jump, but Mitch had been expecting the interruption. He patted her arm. “I’ll be right back. Don’t worry.”
He walked into his boss’s office.
“Wentworth came to see me like you said she would. So…what does she want from you?” Tanner asked.
“Help to find her son. Because she doesn’t trust the rest of your unit.”
The detective sank back into his chair and smiled. “This couldn’t be better if I’d planned it. Do it.”
“Tanner—”
“This is your chance. She might let something slip. Maybe her son’s disappearance was part of a plan gone wrong. But even if she’s not involved, she knows something. Tell her you talked me into letting you take over her investigation. Tell her you need to stick close because of Ghost’s escape. Earn her trust.”
“But—”
“Get out there before our chicken panics and runs away. Work Emily any way you can. Find out if she’s into something that got her husband killed and her son taken. I’ll work the money angle. I want to know who murdered Eric Went-worth.”
His boss’s jaw twitched as he passed over a single cardboard box. “Here are copies of the key forensic and evidence reports on the accident and kidnapping. No real leads. Most of that file’s full of initial interviews and her PI’s false tips. It’s been vetted. Show it to Wentworth. Use it to gain her trust and get her reaction.”
“I’ll do my best.” Mitch snagged the evidence and stared at his boss. “Why so rabid on this, Tanner?”
His boss let out a long sigh. “Eric Wentworth called me the day before he died. I’d taken time off. Turned off my cell. Wentworth said he had some vital information for me, but he needed to be discreet. No details on the message. He died before I could return the call. I never turn off my phone anymore.”
“Damn, Dane.”
“Find out who killed him.”
Mitch gave a stiff nod to his boss and pasted a satisfied expression on his face as he returned to the bullpen. He lifted the box. “It took some convincing, but I got the case.”
Emily’s face broke into a relieved smile. Guilt burned through Mitch’s gut. He liked straightforward and honest, not games.
He shifted the evidence in his arms. “Look, we should talk in the conference room, but let’s get out of here first. It may be bending the rules a bit, but there are things I need to tell you, and—” he peered around the room “—we have an audience.”
Emily looked about then turned to Mitch. “I’ve been watched more than enough in this police station. Follow me to my place. Let me show you what I’ve done. Maybe you’ll see something I haven’t.” She snagged a sticky note and pen from the top of his desk and scribbled her address. She handed him the yellow paper. “Just in case I lose you.”
He took the slip but didn’t need the information. He’d memorized her address.
Mitch didn’t like the sour taste success left in his mouth. Emily trusted him, and every word he spoke had a lie hidden behind it. He’d have to live with the consequences.
As they passed the desk sergeant, one of his SWAT-mates, Reynolds, ran past. “Mitch. Wish you were back, man. We got a bad one at the Denver Federal Center.”
Reynolds shoved through the doors to the SWAT Den, and Mitch could see the flurry of activity.
“Okay, children. Mount up,” Lieutenant Decker, his SWAT commander, yelled.
The steel door closed out the noise. Mitch’s knuckles whitened around the box handles. “I should be there.” But until Ghost was caught, he couldn’t let this case go…whether he was reinstated to SWAT or not. Emily was in danger, and he couldn’t turn his back on his responsibility to her.
He felt the warmth of her hand on his arm.
“You’ll get back to them,” she said. “Soon.”
Was her concern real or had she recognized his desperation to return to SWAT? Was Tanner right? Was she a black widow? A beautiful, tempting black widow, but a dangerous predator nonetheless?
God, he hoped not. They walked out together.
After shoving the box in his SUV, Mitch followed her around winding curves to an isolated neighborhood that backed up against the Rocky Mountains. She slowed to fifteen miles below the speed limit when they reached the curve where the accident had occurred. A single white cross with a red wreath of poinsettias decorated the side of the road. He’d watched as she placed them there. Would she stop as she sometimes did?
After slowly passing the spot, she sped up and took a few more turns to her house. A picket fence surrounded her ranch-style home. As she pulled into the driveway, Mitch frowned at the Priced to Sell sign in the front yard. That was new since this morning. So, money was as tight as Tanner believed.
He grabbed the evidence box from the backseat and met her at the front door. “How long has it been on the market?”
“Not long.”
“You’re in a nice neighborhood. That should help it sell faster.”
“I hope so,” Emily said. “Let’s go into the dining room.”
They passed a kitchen, and Mitch noted a single cereal bowl and coffee cup on a drying towel. Nothing out of place. He glanced past a living room with a layer of dust on most of the wood surfaces. He hadn’t expected that. No magazines, no DVDs thrown about. The house didn’t really look lived in. He opened his mouth to pry as she slid open a walnut door. The words stuck in his throat when he entered the dining room.
“Whoa.” The walls had been converted to murder boards. Articles, photographs, dates had been attached, connected with arrows and lines, and adorned with notes.
Emily pointed to one side. “It’s a timeline of every event from the month before the hit-and-run until one month after. On the map, I’ve recorded every infant kidnapping in North America.”
Mitch rounded the dining room table and stepped up to the dozens of photographs tacked across the country. “You have found written on all of them. None of these kids are still missing.”
“Except Joshua.”
“And the small d in the corner of the photo?”
“Deceased,” she whispered.
Her words had gone so soft he could barely hear her. She probably hadn’t been able to write the word. Either way, the letter became a stark reminder of the worst that could happen.
He studied the third side of the room. Tips and newspaper clippings of missing children papered from ceiling to floor. On the final wall, a photo of Sister Kate’s refuge. She’d added two large questions. How many babies? Adoption?
No wonder what he’d seen of the rest of the house looked untouched. She spent all her time in this room, searching for clues to her son’s whereabouts. He couldn’t get over the detail. He disliked the tediousness of investigation, and this amazing woman had taught herself most of the techniques they’d covered in Mitch’s training at the police academy. She impressed him more and more with each passing moment.
“You’ve done a lot of work.”
“Not much else to do.” She sat in one of the hard cherry chairs, the only one that wasn’t perfectly aligned around the table.
“You have any help?”
“No one else seems inclined. Including your boss.”
Mitch didn’t blame her for the accusation in her tone. “What about your friends, family?”
“My brother’s stationed overseas. And friends…It’s been a while since I had any of those.”
Mitch let his surprise show. “You seem like a person people would latch onto—for movies, hiking, dinner.”
“I make most of my old friends…uncomfortable.”
She brought a self-conscious hand to her throat. Mitch had become accustomed to her husky voice, in fact he liked it, but it was another reminder. “Because of your son.”
“And this room. They said I was obsessed…the few who came over.” She clasped a locket resting on the outside of her turtleneck. “I remind them that nightmares can happen. Do happen.”
“You won’t give up until you find him.”
“Never. No matter what the Wentworths say or do.”
Mitch eyed a high chair pushed into the corner, a bib draped over the back. A small teddy bear with one blue eye and one brown eye sat in the seat right next to an empty wooden cradle. Unused for the past year. She faced the memory every day. This woman didn’t know where her child was. She didn’t know who took him. If she’d had anything to do with her husband’s death, she would know where to start.
If she were playing him, if this were an elaborate hoax, she deserved an Oscar. His job was to prove one theory or the other.
Placing the box with the few flimsy files on the floor, he sat beside her and stretched out his leg. “Let’s ignore the records for now and start from the beginning. What do you remember about that day?”
Emily’s expression fell, her vulnerability embedded in her eyes. Then she straightened her shoulders with an inner strength he recognized even after only a few conversations. While part of him wanted to take her into his arms and comfort her, he couldn’t. He’d already crossed a line. He liked her. He believed her. He had to keep his distance. No matter how tempting he found her.
“I try to remember the details of that night a dozen times a day,” she said. “I don’t know exactly what happened. Everything seemed fine. We’d barely left the house on the way to Eric’s parents’. The road was slick, but nothing out of the ordinary. I remember the lights coming at us, and flashes, the sound of Joshua’s cry—” her husky voice caught “—a hooded figure, but not much else.”
She rubbed her eyes with one hand and clutched at her throat with the other. “By the time I regained consciousness, a week had passed. Eric was dead. His family had held the funeral, and they blamed me for his death and Joshua’s disappearance. More than that, they thought I had something to do with the crash.” She reached out a hand to Mitch. “I know they believe I cut myself with the glass, but I would never…You have to believe me.”
“Think, Emily,” he said. “We know from the paint scrapes that you and Eric were run off the road. The question is why. They took your baby. Was your son the target? Had you been threatened?”
She shook her head firmly. “Nothing like that. Look at the map. Infants aren’t taken very often, not by strangers. And most of the time they’re found within two weeks. There’s not a slew of stolen babies in any one geographical area. Not anywhere in the country. And certainly not here.”
Mitch rose and turned to the map. He ran his finger from pin to pin. “I know that. I don’t necessarily think your son was taken as part of a baby ring. This was personal. About your family.” He faced her. “You and your husband took out a life-insurance policy just before he died. Why?”
Emily stilled, her entire body tense with suspicion. “Wait a minute. How do you know about the insurance? And the paint? I just asked for your help today.”
Oh, boy. His first big slip. Well, one thing SWAT had taught him was to think on his feet. “Tanner mentioned a few things, but I have to admit, after last night, I looked into your case. I didn’t think the attempted hit-and-run was an accident. I still don’t.”
How long could he mix truth with lies and still remain credible? The question churned in Mitch’s gut.
“Ghost could’ve called someone. He threatened me. Did you ask him?”
Mitch let out a long, slow breath. “I’ve got some bad news about Ghost. He’s no longer in custody.”
“You let him go?” She rose from her seat, her eyes sparking with fury. “How could he make bail? He’ll disappear.” She crossed to Mitch, hands planted on her hips, toe-to-toe with him.
He hated to admit the truth. “That’s not quite what happened. He escaped. Before we could get prints or mug shots.”
“I have to talk to him.” Emily paced around the room. “He’s all I’ve got.”
“You can’t, Emily. That’s one reason Tanner gave me your case. I believe, and he agrees, that you’re in danger. He knew, given your history with the police department, you wouldn’t be receptive to protection.”
“He was right about that.” Emily glared at him. “Your boss should’ve told me the second I asked to see Ghost. He lied to me. And so did you.”
“We didn’t tell you everything,” Mitch acknowledged.
“How am I supposed to trust you? I thought you were on my side. That you believed me.”
“I do believe you. I don’t think you know where your son is, but Ghost threatened you, and I’m sure he’ll come after you. You need my help.”
Emily let out a slow breath and met his gaze. “If we’re going to work together, you can’t lie to me, Mitch. Or keep secrets. I can’t do that again.” She bit her lip and turned away.
“Wait a minute.” Mitch touched her shoulder. “What do you mean again?”
She whirled around and raised her chin in challenge. “It doesn’t matter. You want to know about the money. Eric and I bought the policy because of the baby. Joshua was only a month old, but Eric planned for the future, especially since he and his family…weren’t communicating.”
Mitch didn’t like the frozen expression on Emily’s face. He’d really blown it. “Your husband didn’t get along with his parents?”
“They’d been estranged for a while. Ever since, well, ever since we got engaged. I wasn’t quite the daughter-in-law they had in mind. Not blue-blooded enough, if you get my meaning. They made no secret of it, so Eric left the family business. He gave up everything for me.”
