Читать книгу The Troublesome Angel - Valerie Hansen - Страница 8

Stacy Lucas couldn’t help praying the same thing over and over. “Please, Father, guide my steps and let me be in time. Please, Father…”

Barely two hours had passed since she’d received the emergency call. That was a plus. It would have been even better if she’d been at home in Cave City, instead of leading a search-and-rescue seminar hundreds of miles away. The quicker she went to work after a person was discovered missing, the greater the likelihood of success.

She focused her thoughts on the lost child as the small plane circled lower over the lush green hills of the Arkansas Ozarks, preparing to land. The scared little girl would probably hide. Most of them did. That was why Stacy’s trained tracking dogs were so essential.

Her friends, Angela and Judy, both rushed across the tarmac to welcome her with hugs as soon as she climbed down out of the Cessna plane. They were babbling so anxiously they drowned each other out.

“Whoa. Take it easy, you two.” Stacy stepped back and held up her hands. “Everything’ll be fine. You’ll see. Just give me a chance to get the dogs out of their crates and we can get started. You have no idea how worried I was when I realized it was your campground I was being sent to.”

“We didn’t want to bother you. Honest, we didn’t,” Angela told her. “Especially since—”

“Hey, don’t apologize. I’m glad to be here. When all this is over, we’ll have to catch up on old times.”

She turned back to the plane and retrieved her gear from the cargo area while she watched the pilot and another man unload her dogs in their lightweight traveling kennels.

As soon as both dog boxes were safely on the ground, Stacy concentrated on her worried friends. “I’ll want to know everything about the missing girl. Even the stuff you don’t think is important. You can fill me in while we drive back to your place, okay?”

“It isn’t going to be that easy,” Angela warned.

“Why not?” Stacy was releasing her older search-and-rescue dog, Lewis, from his portable kennel. The half-grown pup, Clark, whined and barked to be let out. As soon as she had both dogs secured on leashes, she looked to her lifelong friends for an answer.

Angela Gardino was short and dark-haired. Blond Judy McKenna was the tallest of the three. Neither seemed eager to fill her in. Stacy frowned. “Well, guys?”

“Because of him.” Judy nodded toward the Spring River Campground van parked at the edge of the tarmac.

Stacy shaded her eyes and peered. Tinted windows kept her from seeing inside. “Who is it?”

“The kid’s uncle.” Angela’s voice was strained. “You’ll never guess who he turned out to be.”

“Suppose you just tell me.”

Angela shook her dark curls and looked to Judy for moral support. “You do it.”

“Oh, sure. Hang this on me.” Judy bent, patted the eager dogs to stall for time, then straightened with a sigh. “Tell you what. Why don’t we all go over to the van and let you see for yourself?”

Stacy was getting exasperated. “Look, is there a little girl lost in the woods, or not?”

“Oh, there is, all right,” Angela grumbled.

“Then what are we standing around talking for? Every minute counts.” Stacy slung her pack over one shoulder. “Give me a hand with the dogs’ crates, will you?”

The other two women were already lifting the cages by themselves. “We’ll get these,” Judy insisted. “You go on ahead.”

“Okay. Just hurry up.” Leading the way to the van, Stacy had no trouble attributing most of her old friends’ obvious nervousness to the distressing situation of having a helpless child lost from their campground. Thank goodness the local authorities had had the good sense to call in a team of search dogs before the situation deteriorated.

She was barely twenty feet from the beige van when its sliding side door opened and a tall man stepped out. A baseball cap and sunglasses shaded most of his face. The rest of him was dressed far too formally for a trek in the woods, let alone camping. His suit was neatly pressed, his shoes obviously expensive. Something about his bearing reminded her of someone. Who?

The man raised his head. Dark glasses still masked his eyes, and yet… That strong chin! That arrogant mouth! That cynical expression!

Stacy’s breath caught. Her stomach knotted. Her eyes widened. Graydon Payne, of all people! No wonder Angela and Judy hadn’t wanted to tell her!

“Oh, dear God,” she whispered. “What have I done to deserve this?”

Sensing her sudden apprehension, Lewis bristled and growled at the man. Clark, however, seemed oblivious to anything but the exciting chance to meet a new person.

Stacy expertly controlled both dogs as she approached.

The imposing man frowned. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ll be coordinating the search efforts for a missing little girl.” She squared her shoulders proudly beneath her insulated jacket. “It’s what I do now.”

“For a living?” He sounded incredulous.

“Part-time, yes,” Stacy said. “I suppose that surprises you, doesn’t it?”

“It floors me.”

“Good.” She dropped her pack at his feet. “Stow that carefully, then help Judy and Angela load the dog crates in the back, will you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Stacy couldn’t help smiling. It had been years since pompous, arrogant Graydon Payne had done his best to ruin her life. She’d thought she’d never see him again. Now, here he was, apparently in need of her services, and it was a joy to be able to turn the tables and order him around for a change.

She pointed to the wire cages. “Those fold up. Lay them flat behind the back seat and let’s get going. We don’t want to waste precious time.”

That statement seemed to jar him into action. He strode to the rear of the van and helped Judy and Angela with the cages. Stacking them as Stacy had instructed, he slammed the rear doors and quickly followed the others around to the front of the vehicle.

To his chagrin, Stacy and her rescue dogs had climbed in ahead of him and were taking up most of the available bench seat in the center. The campground owners had already hopped into the two front bucket seats, leaving Graydon no choice but to sit by the panting canines. And Stacy Lucas.

Enjoying his obvious discomfiture, Stacy didn’t try to control Clark’s exuberance as much as she might have under other circumstances. The golden retriever-lab crossbreed wiggled happily at Graydon’s feet for a few seconds, then rose up and plopped his big paws into the man’s lap as he lunged to lick his face.

Graydon’s candid, “Oof!” almost made Stacy giggle. She knew this mission was a serious one—they all were—but humor often relieved the terrible tension associated with looking for missing people. And if ever there was a good reason to laugh in the midst of a potentially perilous situation, this had to be it. Pretentious Graydon Payne, the man who had once told her to leave his brother, Mark, alone because her kind didn’t belong in their elevated social circles, was getting his face thoroughly licked by a dog!

“I think he likes you,” Stacy wisecracked. “Although I can’t for the life of me see why. I thought he was smarter than that.”

“Very funny. I wish he wasn’t quite so affectionate. Call him off, will you?”

“Oh, okay. Clark. Down.” The dog obeyed immediately.

“Thanks.” Graydon dusted off his hands, then brushed at his dark slacks. “He’s shedding.”

“Probably. You’ll be glad to hear we haven’t been crashing through any patches of poison ivy lately, though.”

“Oh, good.” His tone was cynical.

Stacy got down to business. “So, the missing child is your niece?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“That sounds like typical Payne reasoning. Is she, or isn’t she?”

“She will be. She’s being adopted into the family.”

It took Stacy only an instant to remember that Graydon’s sister, Rosalie, already had children. Which probably meant the missing little girl was to be Mark’s new daughter. Therefore, Mark must have married. That assumption lay like a stone on her heart…until she thought about what had happened and clearly saw the Lord’s hand in shaping her life.

Graydon watched her, assessing her reactions. It was hard to believe this was the same Stacy Lucas he’d once known. That girl had been an under-achiever. All she’d had on her mind was marrying his brother and gaining the security that came with the Payne money and their good name. He’d have sworn there wasn’t an altruistic bone in her body. And now look at her.

He cast her a sidelong glance. In many ways she was the same, with long, golden-brown hair and eyes the color of a summer sky. But her attitude and bearing were totally different from what he remembered. She’d been shy and unassuming when Mark had brought her home to meet the family. This Stacy Lucas was self-assured, poised and evidently well thought of in her profession. He just hoped she didn’t hold a grudge when it came to doing what she and her dogs were trained for.

“Listen, Stacy, I’m sorry if…”

She waved her hand to dismiss his unfinished sentence, turned away and stared out the window. “There’s no need to apologize, Mr. Payne. You and I have had our differences but that’s all in the past. Actually, Mark did me a favor.”

“He did?”

“Yes. If we’d married back then, as I’d hoped, I might never have followed my heart and become involved with search and rescue. I’ve wanted to do this job ever since I was a kid. In a roundabout way, I guess you could say I owe you and your family for my rewarding career.”

Closing her eyes for an instant she had a fleeting flashback to the plane crash that had made her an orphan when she was barely ten years old.

Unconsciously, she rubbed the top of her thigh through her jeans. Nowadays, hardly anyone noticed the slight limp which was her only tangible tie to that awful night. In her memory, however, fragments of the incident replayed almost daily, especially when she was on assignment.

She felt a familiar nudge at her knee. Lewis laid his furry chin in her lap, begging her to scratch his ears. Not to be outdone, long-haired, golden Clark wiggled in between her and Graydon, trying his best to displace his comrade.

Stacy smiled down at them. “You boys are ready to work, aren’t you?” Lewis stared up at her as if understanding every word, his tail thumping against the wall of the van.

Impatient, Clark wasted no more time vying for her attention. Instead, he turned his efforts back to the man seated next to his mistress.

“Oh, no. Not again.” Graydon caught the dog’s front feet in midair and held him off. “Down!” To his surprise, Clark sank back to the floor as he was told. “Well, well. What do you know? Maybe he really does like me.”

Stacy was going to say, “He also likes to steal garbage out of the trash when I’m not looking,” then decided against voicing the thought. There was no use goading her former nemesis. Graydon Payne might live up to his name and be a real pain, but he was still a member of the public she’d sworn to serve. What was past was past. The important thing was the missing little girl, she reminded herself, again. All else was trivial.

Even the old scars on her broken heart.

When Stacy arrived at the campground, she was met with utter chaos. The local sheriff greeted her solemnly as he shook her hand. “I’m sure glad to see you, ma’am. It’s been a long time since we’ve needed you.”

“Hello, Frank. I’m glad I was available. You ready to fill me in?”

“Not much to tell. We’ve got a real mess out there in the woods, a bunch of folks beatin’ the bushes, hollering at each other and gettin’ nowhere fast.”

“That’s normal,” Stacy said. “Where’ve you set up your command post?”

“Over here.” He led the way.

Stacy sensed Graydon following. The fine hairs on the back of her neck prickled a primitive warning. What a jolt it had been to encounter him again! And how odd to sense that he was truly concerned for the missing six-year-old. The Graydon Payne she’d met when she was dating Mark had seemed totally oblivious to the needs and concerns of others.

Ignoring his formidable presence hovering directly behind her, she greeted the other searchers with a polite, businesslike nod and immediately launched into her standard instruction speech. They were to cover designated quadrants of the forest, reporting in at set intervals and notifying the command post before deviating from their assigned territory for any reason. Once each team had finished the first wave of searching, they’d be given orders as to what to do next.

“I’ll take my dogs and sweep out from the last place the girl was seen,” Stacy concluded. “I’ll be the only one moving in random directions. Is that clear?”

The men nodded. Pointing to the map, Stacy quickly gave out their assignments, then led them in silent prayer before she dismissed them. They moved away in groups of two. Only the sheriff remained to man the command post.

“I’m coming with you,” Graydon announced.

Hearing his deep voice so close behind her gave Stacy a start. She whirled. “Thanks, but no thanks.” A faint tremor in her hands was the only thing that betrayed her nervousness. “I work alone.”

“Not this time, you don’t.”

She glared up at him, fists on her hips, stance firm and wide, radiating authority. Her dog spoiled the image when he lunged to one side and almost pulled her off her feet.

Graydon was frowning. “I’m going. That’s all there is to it. If you don’t let me walk with you, I’ll just follow anyway. Which would you rather have?”

“Neither. But I don’t suppose that was one of the choices, was it?”

“No.”

“You’ll ruin your good clothes.”

“I have others.”

“I’ll bet you do.” She pressed her lips into a thin line. Reasoning with a stubborn man like him was impossible.

Clark gave another mighty jerk on the leash. Teenage dogs were usually incorrigible and this one was no exception. He was twice as headstrong as Lewis had been at the same age.

Stacy’s quick mind assessed the situation. Maybe there was a way around her dilemma after all. If Graydon went along with her plan, she’d have Clark out of the way so Lewis could work, unhindered. If he refused, she’d have him out of the way. Either choice made her the clear winner.

She extended her left hand, Clark’s leash held tightly in her fist. “Okay, take this. Borrow some survival gear and meet me back here in five minutes. I’m putting you in charge of this dog.”

“Me?” Graydon’s scowl deepened.

“Why not? You said he likes you.”

“Yes, but… What if I make a mistake? I don’t know anything about search and rescue.”

“Then you and the dog are about even,” Stacy countered. “He doesn’t either.” She heard the sheriff chuckle in the background.

Graydon snatched the leash out of her hand. “That’s comforting.”

“I thought you’d like it.” She met his challenging gaze boldly. “See if you can find something else the little girl touched recently, preferably an item of her clothing. Bring it with you when you come back. Remember, five minutes, tops. After that, I’ll be gone.”

To avoid any more argumentative conversation, she turned her back on Graydon Payne and concentrated solely on the sheriff. “Now, Frank, what other evidence have you turned up and what else can you tell me before I leave?”

Graydon returned within three minutes, much to Stacy’s chagrin. Over his suit he wore a bright-orange, hooded sweatshirt, the kind hunters used to keep from being confused with their prey. He reached into the pocket of the coat and brought out a small, pink glove with white-and-brown bunnies knit into the pattern on the cuff. “Will this do? I found it at the edge of camp.”

Stacy recognized it as the mate to the plastic-wrapped glove the sheriff had passed on to her. “Why didn’t you give that to Frank?”

“He has the other one. In all the confusion I forgot I’d stuffed this one in my pocket.”

“You’re sure it’s hers?”

“Positive. I bought these gloves and a matching jacket for Missy—Melissa—when I heard Mark and Candace were taking her camping. They said she loved them…wore them all the time, even at home.”

A twinge of mild regret stirred in Stacy’s heart. So, Mark was married, just as she’d figured. To her surprise, the thought didn’t linger long enough to make her melancholy. There was no time for self-pity. A poor, frightened child was wandering alone in the wilderness, probably crying, freezing and hungry. That was all that mattered.

She looked to Graydon. “Okay. Show me exactly where you found the glove. We’ll start there.”

“It was over by the rest rooms, on a path that leads into the forest.” He pointed. “That way.”

“And you’re sure she left of her own accord?”

“Positive. Several people saw her go.”

“Okay.” Taking the glove, Stacy held it for Lewis to smell, then guided him in the direction Graydon had indicated. It didn’t take him long to strike a trail, put his nose to the ground and start into the woods at a fast pace.

“Good boy, Lewis. Go on! Find her!” Adrenaline surged through Stacy, sharpening her already keen senses. Praise God, the trail was still warm so the chances of finding the child were very good, especially with a competent tracking dog like Lewis on the job.

He was the calm, sensible one of the pair, the one whose head was always clear, whose canine judgment she trusted implicitly. Clark, on the other hand, was a clown in a dog suit. It was hard to believe they were half brothers.

Which reminded her… Glancing over her shoulder, Stacy caught a glimpse of Graydon and the younger dog. They were lagging behind while Clark sniffed the base of an interesting tree. That figured. His faculties might be as good as Lewis’s but his instincts pertaining to a search were sorely lacking. Until he learned to prioritize, he was next to useless as a rescue dog, no matter how well he could find hidden items in the course of his training.

And speaking of useless, she added, there was also the matter of Graydon Payne. She should never have assigned Clark to him. It would probably take her weeks to undo the damage he was doing to the poor dog’s training.

She called back. “This way! Make him follow us.”

“How do you expect me to do that?” Graydon yelled. “This dog has a mind of his own.”

“Yours is supposed to be stronger,” she countered. “Show him who’s boss.”

“He is, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Whistling, Stacy got the retriever’s attention and he headed for her at a dead run, dragging the surprised man along behind him in a stumbling, sliding charge.

By the time Graydon and Clark arrived at the spot where Stacy had stood, she and Lewis were already underway again.

“You could wait for us,” he shouted.

“Not when there’s a child who needs me,” she called back over her shoulder.

He jogged to catch up, his smooth-soled shoes slipping on the pine needle carpet as Clark pulled him along. Short of breath, he managed to gasp, “You really take this stuff seriously, don’t you?”

Stacy’s jaw clenched. She was used to having people question her skills, especially since she was a fairly small woman, but coming from Graydon Payne the remark sounded even more negative than usual.

“Search and rescue is my life,” she said flatly. “And I’m very good at my job.”

When he answered, “I believe you,” sounding totally truthful, she was temporarily speechless.

“If this had happened a month ago, before all the trees leafed out, we’d have a better chance of spotting her.” Stacy paused to catch her breath and check her topographical map. The sloping, densely forested and rocky terrain had slowed Lewis’s progress considerably and he seemed to have temporarily lost the child’s trail.

Graydon was breathing hard, too. “We’ll still be able to find Missy, won’t we?”

“I hope so. It’s not as cold today as it has been. That gives us a bigger window of opportunity.”

“You don’t sound terribly concerned.”

“Don’t I? Sorry.” She took a drink of water from her canteen. “The truth is, I care very much. I also know that an emotional approach to a case like this often leads to critical mistakes. That’s the last thing we want. If Lewis doesn’t find her soon, I’ll call in other handlers and add more dogs to the search party.”

“Good.” Graydon eyed the canteen, held out his hand. “I could use a swallow of that.”

“Where’s yours? I told you to get survival gear before we left camp.” For the first time, she noticed he wasn’t carrying a backpack.

“You gave me so little time I didn’t have a chance to do more than grab this coat out of somebody’s truck,” he alibied, patting the front pockets of the bright-orange hunting jacket. “I’ve got a candy bar in here but that’s about all.”

“Terrific. I knew I shouldn’t have let you come along.”

Bestowing a slight, lopsided smile on his companion and trying to look suitably contrite, Graydon held out the candy bar. “Trade you half of this for a drink of water?”

“I have my own food. Thanks, anyway.”

“You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?”

“Nope.”

His smile grew. “You have changed.”

Stacy looked up at him and nodded. “Mister, you have no idea.”