Читать книгу Sarah's Secrets - Lisa Childs, Lisa Childs, Livia Reasoner - Страница 12

Royce clutched at the wrist of the hand that held the knife, ramming the knuckles against the side of the truck box.

Curses filled the air, some his. Then the knife clattered across the asphalt.

A high-pitched yelp of pain drowned out his curses. He lifted the would-be attacker, flinging his body against the SUV. Then he dragged back the sweatshirt hood.

Bleached-out hair stood up in spikes, and tears trailed down peachfuzz-covered cheeks. A teenage kid? “What the hell were you doing with that knife?”

The kid trembled. “I—I—”

Royce glanced down, noting the small gash in the tread of the rear tire. “Slashing my tires?”

“You hurt my hand!” The kid’s voice hitched in a sob.

“I’d call us even then. Why my tires? You don’t even know me.”

A warning pain tightened Royce’s gut. He clutched the kid’s sweatshirt, shaking him a bit. Something rustled in the pocket. Royce reached in and drew out a ripped half of a hundred-dollar bill. “Who gave you this?”

Tears dripped off the kid’s quivering chin. “I don’t know, man. Someone slipped it under the bathroom stall. Told me to slash all the tires of the silver Avalanche and I’d get the other half.”

“Where? What bathroom?”

“At the ice cream parlor.”

God, he’d left Sarah and Jeremy alone. From this side of the block, he couldn’t make out the lawn of the parlor. He dropped the kid, letting him sag against the box and vaulted around the SUV. Rubber soles pounding on the cement, he ran down the sidewalk, pushing aside people leaving the gathering spot on their way back to their vehicles.

“Someone call the police!” he shouted.

He searched the crowd around the parlor for a flash of red and gold, desperate for a sight of Sarah and Jeremy.

“Sarah!”

“Royce, what’s going on?” Concern deepened the gray of her wide eyes.

“Where’s Jeremy?”

“The bathroom—”

He clutched her shoulders, nearly shaking her. “Where is it?”

“Around the side—”

He followed the direction in which she swung her arm, tearing around the corner of the brick parlor. He skidded to a halt at the bathroom’s open door. Small clouds of smoke billowed past him. He paused on the threshold, his shadow falling across a small group of pre-teen boys.

A few of them cursed as they jumped. One dropped a cigarette and crushed it beneath the rubber sole of his running shoe.

Jeremy ran up to Royce. “Don’t tell Mom, okay? She’ll freak.” He lowered his voice and sidled closer. “I didn’t smoke, I swear. Did she send you in here?”

Royce’s heart thudded heavily against his ribs. He stalked past the boys and kicked open the stall doors. Nobody lingered inside. He turned to meet the nervous gazes that skittered away from his. “I didn’t see anything, okay? It’s your health. Pretty stupid and I bet the sheriff would love to get his hands on whoever gave you the cigarettes. But I want to know something else.”

“What?” Jeremy asked.

“Did you guys see anyone slinking around here?”

“Like who?”

“A stranger. Or maybe somebody you know acting strange.”

A cocky smile split the face of the kid with the butt under his shoe. “Other than you?”

His patience wearing thin, Royce stepped closer to the boy. “I don’t have time for this. I just caught a kid slashing my tires. While he was inside this bathroom, some guy slipped him half a hundred-dollar bill to do it.”

Sirens echoed off the cement walls, heralding the arrival of Winter Falls’s finest.

“I didn’t see anyone, Mr. Graham.” Jeremy’s voice cracked. Whether with fear or hormones, Royce couldn’t guess. But he took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. Jeremy was all right.

He had to tell Sarah. He turned to the doorway and found her leaning against the jamb. Her smoky eyes full of questions, she stared at him. “Dylan’s here, talking with some kid who’s a little bruised.”

One of the boys gasped.

Royce dragged a hand through his hair and exhaled a breath of relief. The kid with the knife hadn’t run for it. Any other city, any other kid, and he would have been gone before Royce had released his shirt. The kid had to know more, had to have some clue to the identity of Jeremy’s would-be kidnapper.

Or was there a kidnapper? Was it all the sick joke Sarah was desperate to label it? He hoped so, but the muscles tightened in his gut again. Instinct told him this was no joke. And that it had everything to do with his search for Sarah.

SARAH FUMBLED with the security pad by the front door, very aware of the tall, lean man who hovered too close behind her. His heat dampened the silk of her blouse, molding it to her back. With trembling fingers she flung open the door and stepped inside her temporary home.

Her entire body vibrated with anger she could barely contain. She wanted answers to questions she hadn’t been able to ask in front of Jeremy. While Royce and Dylan had questioned the kid Royce had caught slashing his tires, she had kept Jeremy occupied by helping him with his homework at one of the parlor’s outside tables. For once he wouldn’t have to do it while eating breakfast Monday morning.

Jeremy bounded past the adults, oblivious to the tension radiating between them. For that she could be thankful. For the moment. He skidded across the slate flooring. “I’m gonna take a shower, Mom.”

To wash away the traces of cigarette smoke still clinging to his hair and clothes. She hoped he hadn’t been smoking. A pre-teen rebellion was the last thing she had envisioned for Jeremy. She had thought he would be smarter than she’d been.

“Nice house.” The voice rumbled close behind her.

Sarah jumped, not that she’d forgotten his presence. How could she forget the stranger in her home? “It’s not mine. I’m staying here while I’m having a new place built.”

“You must have good references.”

She braced herself to face him, turning her head and finding him close. The warmth of those sandy-brown eyes wrapped around her, stealing the heat from her anger.

“I…uh…” What had she been about to say?

“Good security system, too.”

She heaved a sigh of relief when he moved away to walk across the slate floor to the security panel by the sliders. She wanted this stranger out of her home. Her questions could wait until Dylan returned from talking to people around the ice cream parlor. “You don’t need to stay until Dylan gets here. Jeremy and I are perfectly safe.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it and shook his head. “No, I need to wait for Dylan.”

For what? To make sure Dylan was here before he left? But somehow she didn’t think he had any intention of leaving. Yet.

“And anyway, I said good system, not great. Not foolproof.”

She shivered and admitted to the fear in her heart. She didn’t want to be alone right now. But perhaps being alone was safer than being with this stranger. She knew his reputation and that most people considered him a hero; Dylan considered him a friend. But he was no friend of hers. Whatever he had alluded to back at the parlor that he had to tell her, she knew she didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t care why he’d come to Winter Falls; she just wanted him gone.

“Evan bought the top-of-the-line system,” she said.

He lifted a brow until it disappeared into the hair hanging over his forehead. “Evan?”

“The owner. He’s staying in an apartment in Traverse City right now when he’s not traveling.” She’d lived in the town twenty minutes away, too, before her husband’s fatal heart attack. Afterwards the house they’d shared had seemed too big and empty, especially for Jeremy. Knowing Winter Falls was a good place to raise a child, she’d wrestled her bad memories, buried her pride and returned to her hometown.

He nodded. “Well, Evan bought last year’s security system.”

“Of course…he built this house a year ago.” She wanted to remain in the hall, anywhere but near him. Yet, she needed to see what he saw. Her heels clicked as she crossed the floor to the patio doors. The scent of butterscotch wafted over her when he turned his head.

“The pros have already figured out how to bypass last year’s security system.” He stared into her eyes, his intense.

Her breath hitched. “If you’re trying to scare me, it’s too late. I’m already scared. And I’m mad. And I’m confused. And I want answers!”

He stepped back to lean wearily against the glass doors. “I’m not trying to scare you.”

And perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps he was just telling the truth. Could she expect that from Dylan? Someone who cared about her might try to cushion the blow. But Royce Graham? What did he care about? This client who had brought him to Winter Falls?

“So tell me exactly what happened at the parlor,” she urged.

He rubbed his hand along his unshaven jaw. “I don’t know.”

She expelled a ragged sigh of frustration. “I thought you were into telling it like it is.”

He lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “I don’t know what it is, Sarah. I wish I did. It’d sure make things a lot simpler.”

The next sigh to break the silence was his.

She reached out, brushing her fingers across the tensed muscles of his forearm. “But you’re familiar with…”

She couldn’t say crimes against children. Not when one of those children could be her son. And somehow she was reluctant to bring back what seemed like painful memories for Royce. Perhaps it wasn’t that he didn’t care about anything but that he cared too much.

She let her fingers slide away, wishing she could shake off the wistfulness as quickly. She was pragmatic. She’d learned that at an early age. If a man acted as though he cared about nothing, he probably did.

Like Jeremy’s father. He hadn’t been the wounded soul she had thought him. He hadn’t needed her youthful, healing touch. At least not after he had gotten her pregnant.

“Sarah?”

She glanced up and into those light-brown eyes. She wouldn’t believe they were filled with concern. She wouldn’t be that gullible again. “You know what it means,” she stated flatly, “that someone stole Jeremy’s medical records.”

“And yours.”

She nodded. “What does that mean?”

He stared at her for a long moment. She could almost hear his internal debate.

“Dylan should be the one to tell you.”

“But he probably won’t because he’ll try to protect me. And I need to know.”

Royce nodded. “There are no guarantees, but it could mean that someone was checking Jeremy’s medical history to see if he has any special needs. Meds, that type of thing.”

Panic streaked through her stomach, churning it upside down. “So they’ll be prepared when they kidnap him.”

Softly he answered, “Yes, probably.”

Even whispered, the words shattered her. She shuddered.

Royce jammed his hands in his pockets. “Sarah, we don’t know that for sure.”

She jerked her chin up and down. “Yes, we do. The note. The medical records. And whatever happened at the parlor. Why would someone pay that kid to slash your tires?”

Realization dawned with a renewed throbbing behind her eyes. “So you wouldn’t be able to follow them once they grabbed him.”

Her knees weakened, threatening to fold beneath her. He reached out then, his hands on her shoulders all that held her up.

“That’s why…so they could make a clean getaway.”

His throat moved as he swallowed hard. “Sarah…”

“Don’t try to spare my feelings now.”

“Let’s not think about how they planned it. Let’s think about why.” His deep voice held the same desperation swirling in her heart and head.

She shrugged, but his hands remained, the heat of them burning through the silk of her blouse. “I don’t know why. I can’t believe this is happening. It has to be some sick joke. You saw the townspeople. They don’t like me.”

“But not liking a person and threatening her child…”

She blinked away the first hint of tears. She wouldn’t cry in front of a stranger. She didn’t even cry in front of those few friends she had. “I don’t know, Royce. I have money. Maybe that’s all it’s about.”

“Money?”

She glanced up at the questioning tone. “Yes, if it’s not about revenge or jealousy, couldn’t it be simple, impersonal? Couldn’t it just be about money?”

His eyes narrowed. “It could. But usually the targets for those type of kidnappings come from extremely affluent families.”

She lifted a brow. “I thought you’d formed an opinion about me, Mr. Graham.”

“A minute ago it was Royce.” He pulled his hands from her shoulders. But he didn’t lean against the patio doors again, his body was too tense.

“You know I’m a widow. You never asked how my husband died.” Why hadn’t he asked more questions about her? Because he already knew the answers? She suppressed a shiver.

He rubbed a hand along his unshaven jaw. “I know how. Old man with a bad ticker and a young wife. Heart attack.”

Foreboding cold seeped so deep into her bones that rubbing her hands up and down her arms did nothing to dispel the chill. “It wasn’t like that. But how do you know that much?”

His teeth flashed in a quick, unamused smile. “Small towns. People talk.”

She nodded. People had always talked about that Sarah Mars. She knew that and hated it. “Why did you listen?”

“Wouldn’t have made much sense to ask the questions if I didn’t listen to the answers.”

She cleared the bitter taste of fear from her throat. “Why ask?”

Drawing a butterscotch candy from his pocket, he toyed with the wrapper.

“Want one?”

“Not candy. Answers.”

“I intended to wait until Dylan got here before I got into any of this.”

Fear rose again. “Then maybe you should. And maybe you should wait outside until he does.”

“Sarah, don’t be scared of me.”

She eyed the panic button on the security panel. “I don’t like that someone I don’t know has been asking questions about me, not now, not when someone’s making threats to kidnap my son.”

Hurt flashed in his eyes. “Not me. I would never harm a child.”

He dragged in a deep breath. “You know what I used to do for a living and what I do now. You know I’m a friend of your son’s uncle.”

She nodded, unable to argue his friendship with Dylan, the easy camaraderie between them. And something more. Respect. Dylan respected this man. Most of the world respected this man. She released the breath she’d been holding, but some of the fear remained.

He popped the hard candy into his mouth. “I don’t quite understand that connection. You’re not Dylan’s sister. And your last name and his are different.”

“Since you’ve been asking questions, I’m sure you already know that I was never married to Dylan’s brother, Jeremy’s father.”

“I didn’t know that. You don’t consider him a suspect?” he asked.

“I think being dead would make it a little difficult for him to be behind this threat. Jimmy died before Jeremy was born.” She bristled, anger sweeping away the last of her fear. “Not that my life is any of your business. I want to know why you’ve been asking about me.”

“Because you’re the reason I came to Winter Falls.”

Stunned, she swayed on her heels.

“Are you all right?”

She wasn’t all right. Hadn’t been since this afternoon when her world had fallen apart. She lifted her hand and inspected the red spot on her finger where she’d pulled out the sliver early that afternoon. She’d thought that was the low point of her day—until she’d found the note threatening her son.

Until Royce Graham had come to Winter Falls. For her.

He leaned close, taking her hand in his. “You’re hurt.” His breath washed over her skin, raising disturbing tingles of awareness.

She tugged free and stepped back, gaining some breathing distance between them. “No, I’m confused. Why did you come here looking for me?”

“Because someone I care very much about asked me to find you.”

“Your non-paying client.” At the parlor, he’d told her his trip to Winter Falls was personal. She hadn’t guessed how personal. To her.

“My father’s business partner and best friend. My godfather.” A wealth of emotion deepened his husky voice on those last two words.

She shook her head, her hair tickling her cheek and neck. “I don’t understand why he wants to see me.”

Royce lifted a broad shoulder and let it drop. “Bart didn’t say.”

“Bart?”

“Bartholomew McCarthy.”

She searched her memory, but the name didn’t strike any chords, not the way Royce’s had. “I don’t know him.”

“He knows you, and he wants to see you, Sarah.” And from his determined tone, Royce would do his damnedest to precipitate a meeting between them.

“So ask him why.”

The candy crunched between his teeth. “I can’t. He’s in a coma.”

She closed her eyes, shutting out his serious face and the naked pain in his pale eyes. She had no time for him, no time for his mission. She had one of her own. To keep her son safe.

“My son might be in danger. That’s all I can think about now. Jeremy is my total focus. I don’t have time for anything else. I’m sorry if that sounds selfish, but for a lot of years it’s been just Jeremy and me.”

And if something happened to him… No, she couldn’t even entertain such a horrific notion. He was her life. Without him…

“You offered to help Dylan’s wife.”

She shook her head. “I wanted to offer. I feel horrible that I can’t, but Jeremy…”

She dragged in a deep breath. “That note, what happened at the parlor, this all has to be just someone’s sick idea of a joke. I can’t believe that anyone would really want to threaten Jeremy.”

“I hope you’re right.”

She couldn’t mistake the sincerity in his deep voice. Royce Graham did care about something. Kids. And this man named Bart McCarthy.

She nodded, accepting his concern.

“And I hope it has nothing to do with whatever Bart wants to tell you…”

“What?”

He sighed and pushed a hand through his overly long hair. “I’d like to think it’s just a coincidence that this all started as soon as I arrived in town. But I stopped believing in coincidence long ago.”

Her pulse tripped. “So you are involved?”