Читать книгу Finding His Child - Tracy Montoya - Страница 8

It’s been two weeks….

No new sign…no new sign….

Her head felt as if someone had filled it with cement, thick and ponderous and nearly impossible to lift. She struggled to open her eyes.

Rosie’s gone.

“Nooo.” Pushing down with one arm, Sabrina propelled herself onto her back. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she saw a cup of steaming tea on her pale teak nightstand, smelled the cinnamon and herbs. Then, because keeping them open took too much effort, she let her eyes close once more.

The likelihood of her surviving up there isn’t…I’m sorry….

Wake up. She had to wake up. Everything just felt so…weighted, as though she had anchors tied to her limbs that were pulling her down, down under an ocean of still, quiet, dark water. She could hear the blood rushing in her ears, the thum-thump beat of her heart.

Two weeks.

Reaching up, she slowly dragged the back of her hand across her face, concentrating intensely on the movement so she wouldn’t stop halfway and fall asleep again. So tired. With all of the effort it was taking to wake up fully, Sabrina considered just letting herself fall into unconsciousness again. Just for a little while.

Rosie’s gone.

“Tara.” The sharp memory of the missing girl suddenly gave Sabrina the strength to propel herself into a sitting position, the movement causing her head to spin ever so slightly.

“Whoa.” The familiar deep voice came from her right, where a small, overstuffed chair sat tucked in the corner of the room. “Holy Bride of Frankenstein, that was sudden.” She turned toward the voice and saw her brother Patricio sprawled in said chair.

“Rico, what the heck are you doing in my room?” The last vestiges of sleep abruptly disappeared from the surprise, and once her pulse went back to normal, Sabrina grinned, glad to see him despite her words. “How did you get in my house?”

His light brown eyes, the mirror image of her own—though he would have said his were the more masculine version—sparkled a bit as he relaxed back into the chair, looking rather smug and satisfied with himself. “I have my ways.”

She rolled her eyes, and thank goodness, the movement didn’t make her head throb anymore. “Okay, whatever.” She quickly finger-combed her long hair. It was stick straight, so that small amount of effort was enough to get it to fall into place. Then, scrambling her way out of a pile of sheets, quilts and one puffy flowered comforter, she catapulted off the mattress and wrapped her arms around her brother. “I’m glad you’re here.”

He stood, lifting her off her feet in the process with an exaggerated grunt. She pretended to smack him on the head, after which he put her down, his broad hands still on her arms. “Me, too.”

They’d found her less than a year ago, her three brothers. They’d all been separated when she was a baby, scattered by the California adoption system after the brutal murder of their parents. Thanks to a combination of bureaucratic red tape, a recordseating fire, and the machinations of their parents’ killer, it had taken the siblings over twenty years to reunite. But from the moment she’d first seen Joe, Daniel and Patricio, Sabrina had felt instantly connected to them. And that feeling had never gone away, even though they were still separated by geography, she in Port Renegade, Washington, her brothers in Los Angeles.

“So when you moving to L.A., Bree?” Patricio asked as they walked out of her room and into her three-bedroom bungalow’s sunny kitchen. Or, at least, it would have been sunny if it weren’t raining all of the time. Having lived most of her life in Port Renegade with her adoptive parents and sister Casey, Sabrina found the rain comforting. Her oldest brother Joe hated it, Patricio’s twin Daniel tolerated it and Patricio himself seemed neutral on the subject.

“Um, as soon as the Los Angeles Search and Rescue Team offers me a job. Because I’m sure my tracking skills would be in high demand in that concrete jungle, doofus.” Shooting him a smile to soften the sarcasm, she reached up into one of her cupboards and brought down two coffee mugs, one with a caricature of Jane Austen on it, the other emblazoned with the logo of a save-the-forests nonprofit. “Coffee?” She’d taken a few appreciative sips of the tea Patricio had made for her, but coffee was her one true love in the morning.

“Sure.” Patricio leaned his elbows on the breakfast bar in the middle of the room.

“What kind?”

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the silver-and-black espresso maker on her counter. “None of that stupid Seattle frou-frou stuff. Just coffee. Black.”

Sabrina pulled the machine toward her, twisting off the metal filter. She and Patricio went through this routine every time he visited—it was as predictable as an Abbott and Costello conversation about baseball. “You sure? No mochaccino? No double-tall, half-decaf, two-percent with a shot of caramel? I’ve got some nice mint-flavored cream I could use to make you a breve…”

“Coffee. Black.”

“Aw, come on. Just a little fluffy milk? I know how to make a heart on top with the foam.”

Patricio made a noise that sounded like a strangled “urrrgh.”

She gave an exaggerated sigh, filled the filter with ground Bolivian blend, and flipped the switch. A few seconds later, the save-the-trees mug was full, so she handed it to her brother. “There you go. Coffee. Black. You are so boring.”

He took it, then reached out with his free hand to ruffle her hair. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” After she made herself a quick cappuccino, she got a package of orange-cranberry muffins out of the fridge and took it and her mug over to the table. Patricio grabbed a couple of plates out of the cupboard and followed.

“So what are you doing here?” Sabrina asked as they sat. “I wasn’t expecting you, and unfortunately, I’ll have to go to work soon.” Her house sat on the southern edge of Port Renegade, so it had an unobstructed view of the mountains from the kitchen and dining room. She scanned the ridge as she sipped her coffee, knowing that it wouldn’t yield any clues about Tara’s disappearance from this distance.

“Handling security for a political fund-raiser,” he replied. “Jessie told me about Tara when I called you last night. Said you were down with a migraine and she was here taking care of you, so I came over and sent her home.” Wrapping his big hands around the mug, Patricio looked at her…no, through her would have been a more appropriate way to phrase it. Of all of her brothers, he seemed to be the one who read her best, who could understand her even when she hadn’t said a word.

Still looking out the window, Sabrina pondered the mountain.

“So what’s up with this Donovan dude?”

Whipping her head around, Sabrina could only stare at her brother. He took a drink of his coffee, considering her serenely over the mug.

“He was hanging around the house when I got here, but Jessie wouldn’t let him in,” he continued. “I’m thinking anger issues.”

She shrugged, trying to look nonchalant.

“Do I need to make him go away?”

The piece of muffin between her fingers crumbled at the sudden pressure of her hand, raining crumbs down on the tabletop. “What? No!” Patricio was a well-known bodyguard with training in a million different ways to “make someone go away.” And as uncomfortable as Aaron now made her, she hardly wanted to sic her mad, bad and dangerous-to-know brother on him.

Then again, with Aaron’s cop training and all that muscle, maybe he’d be the one to give Patricio a run for his money.

Something on her face as she contemplated Aaron’s muscles must’ve tipped her brother off, because he set down his coffee cup and leaned forward.

“Are you involved with him?”

Whoa. Now there was an awkward question. Wrapping her hands around her own mug, trying to leach some of the warmth from it, Sabrina dropped her gaze to the maple tabletop and shook her head. “No.”

“Sabrina Inez.”

Might as well confess. Patricio and his weird intuition would figure it out anyway, damn him to everlasting torment. “We’ve known each other for a while. We flirted, but…” She paused, thinking about the time she’d run into Aaron at the annual Police Ball. She’d been someone else’s date, but they’d danced, they’d talked and they’d danced again. Then she’d said good-night to her date, and she and Aaron had gone to an all-night café, where they’d had coffee and had talked some more, until the sun had risen over the snow-capped Olympic Mountains and the waitress had offered them breakfast. She’d thought about him nonstop for the next few days, thrilled at the sound of his voice when he called her and told her how he was trying to get away to see her again. Before that had happened, his daughter had gone missing. But she didn’t want to share all of those details, not even with her brother.

“I think he almost asked me out once, but that’s it.” Basically, that was all the details boiled down to.

“You were interested in him,” Patricio said, not a shred of doubt in his voice at the idea.

“Yes. But…” She bit her lower lip, considering her words. “He’s Rosie’s father,” she told him quietly.

Patricio leaned back in his chair with a low whistle. He knew all about Rosie—she’d spilled her guts to all three of her brothers after declaring Rosie’s trail cold. “And you called off the search for his daughter. They never found her, did they?”

Sabrina shook her head, wincing a little at her brother’s choice of pronoun. She was the “they” who had never found Rosie Donovan. She was the one who’d had to give up, who’d convinced the entire SAR network and the police it was time to declare the trail cold. How painful that must be to a parent, to have someone get in their face and deliberately kill any last bit of hope they were clinging to. She knew Aaron hated her now, and she had never blamed him for that.

Patricio tapped his fingers against the smooth, green ceramic of his mug, looking as if he was weighing his words as he stared out the window at the mountains. “There are similarities between Tara’s disappearance and Rosie’s,” he said. “But you already knew that.”

She nodded, unable to form words around the lump in her throat.

“Before he left last night, Donovan said the police are considering the possibility that you have a serial kidnapper at large. He seemed pretty sure of it, himself.”

She knew that, too, but to have it put into words was just too much. Abruptly, she pushed her chair back from the table, leaving her coffee cup full and her muffin barely touched. “I have to shower.” I need a minute.

Patricio just nodded, a movement which she barely processed before whirling around and heading up the stairs to the master bath. Kicking the door closed once she reached it, she stripped off her sweatpants and fitted T-shirt and turned on the water, closing her eyes with relief as it pounded the skin of her back with its warmth. Steam rose in thin curls around her, and she leaned back and let the water stream over her hair, the sound of the shower jets drowning out everything else.

A serial kidnapper. She could barely bring herself to consider the possibility, although of course it had been lurking in the back of her mind like a malignant shadow.

Rosie Donovan had vanished over six months ago. Which meant that the serial kidnapper was most likely a serial killer—Patricio just hadn’t wanted to voice that possibility. And if they had a serial killer on their hands…

Tara was already gone.

One more colossal failure to add to a growing list. One more search she’d have to call off when the trail went cold. One more set of parents whose hearts she’d have to break. One more young girl sacrificed to the whims of a madman.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit.” She reached her hands up to tangle her fingers in the thick, wet ropes of her hair. And then her hands moved around to her face, scrubbing at her eyes, blending the tears into the water running down her cheeks.

She’d never forget the day Aaron Donovan had started hating her.

“Aaron, it’s been two weeks, with no new sign of Rosie.”

She mouthed the words in the shower as every last detail of that horrible day came back to her, playing in her mind like a motion picture she couldn’t turn off.

She remembered how his mouth had twitched ever so slightly when she’d said his daughter’s name. She’d reached up to wipe the rain out of her eyes. She hadn’t had time to put on a hat or rain hood, and her hair had been soaked through with icy water just like his. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but you know the likelihood of her surviving up there isn’t…” Sabrina hadn’t been able to bring herself to even finish that sentence.

His jaw, dusted with more than a five o’clock shadow, clenched tightly, and he quickly turned his head away from her—but not before she saw his gray eyes go wild with an angry grief.

“Aaron, I—” She took a deep, shaky breath. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. “I can’t even imagine what you’re going through. But I had two hikers go missing a few hours ago.” Sabrina stopped talking for a moment. Just to gain control, to soften her voice and the words she was about to speak. “They deserve to have us put every last resource we have into finding them.” They still have time.

He turned back to face her, and Sabrina knew she’d never forget the deep, deep emptiness, the hopelessness in his expression. Every time she’d see him from this moment, it would bring back her failure. Failure to mobilize quickly enough, to get on the ridge fast enough, to find his beautiful teenage daughter before she’d gone so deep into the mountains, she might never be found. Sabrina had been a search-and-rescue tracker for almost ten years now, and it was always painful to tell the families that her team had been too late, that their loved one had stepped off an incline or succumbed to the elements, had encountered a cottonmouth or had fallen into one of the swirling mountain rivers. But she’d never, ever had someone vanish as completely as Rosie Donovan had. Never had to call off a search before she could bring closure to a family.

She’d heard about them, the ones who seemed to vanish. Other trackers had told her their own painful stories. But she’d prayed that such a thing would never occur under her watch. And it hadn’t, until Rosie had decided to go hiking alone.

The fifteen-year-old had made it to an old logging road, that much she knew. But the road was still well-traveled by cars, and Rosie’s footprints, as well as those of the unknown man who’d been following her had been obscured by tire marks. Sabrina had personally searched that road until the command center had ordered her to stop. They hadn’t found a single trace of Rosie Donovan, or her probable assailant.

Vanished.

“My daughter is still alive,” Aaron ground out, and though his words were spoken softly, each one had the weight of stone. “I know this.”

Sabrina couldn’t bring herself to respond.

A slight movement drew her glance downward. Aaron’s hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists, but that didn’t stop her from seeing that he was trying to keep them from shaking. Heaven help her, Aaron Donovan, one of the Port Renegade Police Department’s best detectives, was about to fall apart, and she was the reason. Her failure. Her decision. “She’s been with me all her life,” he continued, oblivious to Sabrina’s thoughts. “I’d know it if she were gone.” It was a statement, not a question, thank God. She couldn’t have answered it if it had been.

“I wish—” Sabrina stopped. She couldn’t leave him room to argue with her, to persuade her to keep throwing valuable time and resources at a hopeless cause. She tried to soften her words by putting a hand on his arm. He didn’t even seem to feel her touch. She could practically feel him willing her to say that word, to ignore the missing hikers from Tacoma and keep the search going, to go up on the ridge one more time and bring back his daughter. “We can’t keep searching forever, Aaron,” she said.

The look he gave her then made her ache. “I can.”

With a quick, jerky movement, Sabrina twisted the shower knob, abruptly stopping the water and the memory along with it. God, it hurt to think about Rosie, about Aaron. It hurt to think about what had happened to Tara.

Yanking open the shower curtain with a jerk that caused the metal holders to scream against the shower bar in protest, Sabrina stepped out, wrapping a towel around her body. It had been less than twenty-four hours. They could still find Tara. No matter what had happened to Rosie, Tara still had a chance, and Sabrina would give everything she had to try to bring Tara home. Safe. Alive. And if she happened to find the person who’d stolen Tara away in the process, she’d tear him apart.

Sabrina quickly dressed for work in a long-sleeved blue T-shirt, thick socks and a pair of nylon twill hiking pants lined with moisture-wicking mesh—not the sexiest things she owned, but they would keep her warm on the ridge. Pulling her towel-dried hair back into a messy knot on top of her head, she padded back downstairs to the kitchen, where her brother was still waiting for her.

“So, about Donovan…” he began without preamble, leaning against the kitchen island. “I think you should be careful. Word on the street is even though he’s returned to work and is trying to be a functioning member of society, he’s still pretty messed up.”

The implication behind his words made her forget all about the probably lukewarm coffee she’d been about to grab off the table. “Word on the—? How would you know what the word on the street in Port Renegade is? You just got here.”

He flashed a grin at her. “Made some calls.” As usual, he didn’t volunteer any more information. All the better to look like Creepily All-Seeing Big Brother, ready to jump out and smother you with overprotectiveness at the least sign of something suspicious.

“At six-twenty in the morning you made some calls? Who is up at oh-dark-hundred waiting to spill all the secrets of our fair city?”

“If I told you that, I’d have to—”

She rolled her eyes. “Kill me?”

“Nah. Just make you my receptionist.”

Sabrina grunted, taking a sip of the now lukewarm brew. It’d be a cold day in you-know-where before she’d confine herself to an office job, even at her beloved brother’s security company. “He’s a good cop, Rico. He got an award from the city last year for having an amazing homicide solve rate—I think the paper said somewhere over ninety percent.”

“Makes sense. My contact said the chief of police was willing to do backflips to keep him on board.” Patricio leaned back against the table, bracing himself with his hands. “All Donovan’s doing at work right now is reporting in once a week to shuffle some papers around so the brass can feel like they’re keeping an eye on him. Spends most of his time in the park.”

Clutching the mug with both hands, Sabrina looked down, tracing the patterns on her hardwood floor with her eyes. “Searching for his daughter,” she said quietly. Rosie had been hiking the Dungeness River Trail the last time anyone had seen her. The trail made a figure eight to the Dungeness River Falls and back, and she saw the smooth-soled prints of shiny black cop shoes every time she herself stepped on it. She’d stopped going to the Falls after a while.