A Family Homecoming (10 page)

When he returned to the kitchen, dressed and warm once more, Danielle was laughing and talking up a storm. Their guest was, too. Both stopped when he walked into the room.

Like he was some kind of predator who had landed in the chicken yard. He frowned in irritation. She was never at ease around him.

He picked up the small coat that Danielle had hung on the back of a chair. Inside, the name Jenny McCallum was clearly labeled, probably so it wouldn't get confused with the other kindergarten kids' coats at school.

“Where did you find this?” he asked, taking a seat at the table.

Danielle placed steaming mugs of coffee on the table. “At an old mining camp up in the hills,” she answered. “He'll take us up there if you want to go.”

Kyle nodded. “Can we get through the snow?”

“He says we can,” Danielle said.

Kyle gave her a pointed glance that told her to let the old man answer for himself. Looking more closely, he realized he could see the imprint of his body on her sweatshirt. The material was darker where it had absorbed the sweat from his torso when he'd held her. Heat rushed through him as need surged anew.

He wished they'd completed what they had started in the garage, but he no longer knew if she was on birth control or not. He realized there were lots of things he no longer knew about his wife.

In the two years since he'd been away, Danielle had changed. She'd always been a spunky, independent woman, but she had never been openly wary or hostile or remote. Not with him.

For a second he allowed himself to remember how she always welcomed him home, whether she'd just seen him that morning or at noon or a month ago, with a smile that reached all the way down to those quiet depths inside her.

For him. All for him.

She had taken him into her life, her heart and her bed. He had given her nothing in comparison to the gift of her love. His love, his devotion, his faithfulness to her—these meant nothing compared to the danger he carried with him wherever he went because of his job.

She followed his gaze to her clothing. Her cheeks went pink again. Turning, she removed rolls from the oven and set them on a plate on the table. “Help yourself,” she offered.

He noticed her hand trembled slightly when she sat and picked up her coffee cup. He was reminded of the situation at hand, the irony being that when she'd needed him the most, when their daughter had desperately needed him, he hadn't been available at all.

Homer helped himself to the treat. “Might be easier to get through with a snowmobile. The Kincaid ranch has a couple of 'em. Wayne lets me use one when they ain't using it.”

“Did you see anyone at the cabin?”

“Two men. Waited until they left before going inside and finding the coat.”

“You saw the men?” Kyle asked. This could be the break they'd been waiting for.

“Yep. Not their faces, though. It was too far away. I stayed in the trees while they cleared out.”

“Cleared out?”

Homer nodded. “I'd say something spooked 'em. They packed up and left, took everything. I thought they might have left a can or two of beans—”

Kyle pushed back from his chair. “I'd like to get out there right away. They might have left some tracks we can follow.”

“Maybe they've left the area for good,” Danielle said. “Maybe they've given up on getting Sara—”

“We can't count on that,” Kyle told her, hating to dash the hope in her eyes. He watched as it flickered and died.

He noticed the lines of strain around her eyes and mouth and knew she had been holding herself together by sheer willpower since this ordeal had begun. Noticing his perusal, she lifted her head and met his eyes.

Admiration grew in him. She wasn't about to fall apart. He smiled at her. After a second, she smiled back, only an upturn of the corners of her mouth, but a real smile.

“We'll get them if they're still around,” he promised.

 

“Yeah, those are the same tracks as the vehicle left over by your house the other day,” Rafe agreed.

Kyle and the lawman stood by the logging road that gave access to the old mining town. They didn't need the snowmobiles to get to the site. The road was passable.

Danielle and Homer watched them from inside the pickup and the lawman's cruiser, which was a four-wheel-drive SUV. Homer had ridden over with Rafe. Danielle had insisted on coming with him after arranging for Sara to go home with Jenny McCallum after school.

Kyle followed the SUV as they made their way along the old logging trail to the cabin where Homer had found the coat. He and Rafe inspected the cabin. They dusted for prints but didn't find any that could be used.

“Someone wiped the place down,” Rafe concluded.

“Yeah. Why do you think they're hanging around?”

“I've wondered that myself.”

“I'm thinking Dillon Pierce still wants the money he thinks Angela has. I talked to Luke Mason at the FBI office while we were waiting for you. He checked on some things for me. There was definitely about a million dollars embezzled from the company Angela's husband had with Pierce.”

“So he hangs around, trying to figure out how to get the money?”

“But first he has to get rid of Sara so he can move around town, maybe get a job and establish credibility while he figures out what his partner or Angela did with the money. It may be hidden somewhere and Angela doesn't realize she has it. I think he's figured
all those angles and intends to stay until he finds the million.”

A call outside drew their attention. They found Wayne Kincaid, rifle in hand, talking to Homer and Danielle. His dog nosed over and sniffed them out. Kyle patted the mutt's head and scratched his ears.

“You've found a friend for life,” Wayne told him. “Freeway never forgets a good ear scratching. Homer says the kidnappers holed up here with Sara?”

“Yeah.” Kyle brought him up to date.

Danielle listened, then spoke when he finished. “Homer says there's a cave near here, that they used it as a jail during mining days. He said aliens locked him in it, but everyone thinks it was Lexine Baxter.”

“Where is it?” Kyle asked.

“I'll take you,” Wayne volunteered. “Here, Freeway.”

Danielle, the four men and the dog followed a snow-covered trail through the woods to a clearing. There a ridge of rock lifted upward at a forty-five-degree angle from the earth. The mouth of the cave, fitted with a rusty iron gate, yawned like a black hole into hell.

“The girl was there,” Homer told them. “Her footprints are inside, but not the men's. She must've hidden here when she ran away from the cabin.”

Rafe and Kyle asked them to wait while they examined the cave for evidence. In a few minutes, they returned.

“Sara or another child was inside,” Kyle reported. “She hid in the back behind a boulder pile.”

His mood was grim as he thought about how cold and scared she must have been. And how brave and
quick thinking. She had stayed in the cave for a while, probably several hours, until the kidnappers had left. Then she must have followed their tire tracks out to the main road where the doctor had found her and brought her to town.

Thank God Jeremy Winters had happened by when he did. Kyle hated to think what might have happened if the kidnappers, or someone worse, had come upon her. A hand slid into his.

“It's okay,” Danielle murmured. “She's okay.”

“She doesn't talk,” he reminded her.

“But she will. I'm sure of it.”

Her smile smote his heart.
Dani.
Her name was the prayer he couldn't utter. He wished he could turn back the clock. If he'd been there, Sara might not have been taken. Maybe he would have gone by the school to pick her up and seen the two men attack the woman in the parking lot. He could have stopped them—

He shook his head. There was no going back. Danielle had succumbed momentarily to the passion between them, but she hadn't accepted him back in her life. He'd lost any right to even hope for it.

“Well, that's it,” Rafe said, putting his flashlight in the police cruiser. “Now all we need to do is find out where they've holed up this time.” He turned to the old man. “I appreciate your help in this, Homer. You want a ride back to your daughter's place?”

Homer nodded.

Danielle remembered to ask Wayne about a dog for Sara. He said he had a cute little female that needed a home. He'd bring it by one day soon and Sara could decide if it was the one for her.

They left Wayne and his dog at his truck on the Kincaid place, then drove into town. Rafe waved when Kyle turned off on Danielle's street.

“We're back to square one,” she said and sighed.

“Don't be discouraged. We've got them on the run now. They'll leave tracks. And make a mistake.”

She looked skeptical, but didn't argue as they went into the silent house. It was a mess.

“Someone broke in,” she said.

Kyle noted her stunned look, but only had time to give her a comforting pat on the shoulder. He realized he hadn't set the motion detectors when they'd left the house with Homer. A mistake on his part. Damn.

 

Willie carried the last of the supplies inside and slammed the door with his foot. He dumped the stuff on the rickety table in the old snow shelter shack and grimaced.

Here he was—in another log cabin in the woods. At least it was in good repair. The forest service maintained it.

He'd had a devil of a time getting to the place. Dillon had ended up breaking a trail for the truck with the snowmobile. Even with that and using four-wheel drive, he'd had a hard time driving the pickup over the icy road.

He wished he'd never gotten involved in this mess.

Glumly, he straightened up the cabin and put the stuff they'd stolen from the kid's house in the cabinets along one wall. Dillon didn't help. He'd come in, started a fire in the stove that served for cooking and heating, then had settled himself in a chair and let Willie do all the work.

Damn, but he wished he'd taken that job at the Kincaid ranch. They always needed help. Some people thought the place had a curse on it. Hell, anything would be better than this mess with Dillon. When he'd said he was leaving, Dillon had threatened him…
him,
his partner in this fiasco.

Fine way to treat a man.

Over at the Kincaid place, they always treated their cowhands decent-like. Hot food. A warm bunkhouse. Television and a VCR. A good selection of movies. He'd always liked that one about the dog.
Old Yeller,
it was called. His eyes smarted. They'd had to shoot the beast at the end. He wouldn't have had the heart to do it.

Hell, he couldn't even shoot a rabbit. His dad had laughed at him….

Well, that was the old days. His old man was in the ground now, right where he deserved to be, drunken lout that he was. A wife and kid beater.

At least
he
had never hit a woman or kid, not in his whole life. Which was pretty miserable right now. He cast Dillon a resentful glance, but the baboon didn't notice. All Dillon thought about was getting that million dollars. If there was a million dollars. Which he doubted.

He wolfed down another of the cinnamon rolls he'd found at Sara's house while he heated up some soup for their supper. Boy, Dillon had been mad when they hadn't found the kid and her mother there after they'd seen the pickup leave.

Willie smiled as he recalled his partner's cursing. Then he sobered. He sure wished he was someplace else.

“T
here.” Danielle put the last item in the pantry. The kitchen was neat once more and filled with groceries.

Kyle had helped her clean up, then they had gone to the store to replenish their larder.

“Ready?” he asked.

He stood by the mudroom door, coat in hand, waiting for her. They needed to run by the McCallum house and pick up Sara, then they were going out to dinner. She realized she was tired. The day had been filled with tension—

She shied from thoughts of that morning. Going down to the stables had been her first mistake.

And the next?

Swallowing hard against a strange restless despair that threatened to break her composure, she nodded
to Kyle and hurried over to put on her boots and parka.

The next mistake, her conscience insisted, had been giving in to the passion and all that old longing and desire. Why had she allowed that to happen?

Why not take physical satisfaction, a part of her demanded. What did it matter?

She wondered where it had come from, this more cynical self that she'd never known she had until the last couple of months. No, the last couple of years. It was during that time that she had stopped believing…in what?

Kyle?

Herself?

Love?

If my love could hold you…
She'd read that somewhere, or heard it, in a book or a song. Her love hadn't been strong enough to hold Kyle. Neither she nor Sara had been enough.

The tears burned her throat, and she fought the terrible need to weep the anguish she'd held inside for weeks and months, years….

“You look nice,” he said in a husky tone.

She had bathed and changed into black wool slacks, a black turtleneck and a black-and-white patterned sweater after they had returned from the old mining camp. She murmured her thanks without looking at him.

“Dani,” he said.

“We'd better hurry. Sara will be getting anxious. She worries about things now.”

“Things a five-year-old shouldn't have to worry about,” he added, his voice much harder.

“Yes.” She rushed out the door ahead of him, stopping any further conversation.

In the truck, as they headed for Jenny's house, he was silent, his face dark and closed. Danielle was painfully aware of him. He, too, had bathed and changed. He wore black cords with a white shirt, open at the neck, and a black leather vest under a wool cardigan she had given him their first Christmas. She remembered something else.

“We sent presents to you at the office. For Christmas. Year before last. We didn't do any for you this year since we didn't know…” She hesitated to say that she'd thought he might be dead.

“If I'd ever be home again,” he said flatly. “I got the gifts. Luke saved them for me.”

He stopped at a light and turned a dark gaze on her. Only one forlorn streetlight and those from the dashboard cast out the winter gloom and highlighted their faces.

“Actually, this all seems surreal to me, as if I might be living in a dream, only I don't know it.” She gestured to indicate them and the present moment. But she also meant the past two months and the time he'd been gone.

“You lost your faith in me.” His brief laugh was sardonic. “Why wouldn't you? I lost it myself. Sometimes I thought I'd never crawl out of that particular gutter. Sometimes when the night was dark and there wasn't a moon, I thought I'd be lost forever.”

She couldn't face the look in his eyes, as if he struggled deep within his soul, as if he wrestled with demons she couldn't begin to comprehend.

“At those moments, I let myself think of you. You
and Sara. Then I'd come back from the brink of madness.” He paused, then added, “But then there would be the loneliness to face. It was a toss-up on which was worse.”

“I know about the loneliness.” Her throat was so tight she could hardly speak. “I know about that. And being abandoned—”

“I never abandoned you,” he uttered in a low, angry growl. “Never. I had a job to do. It was too dangerous to involve you and Sara.”

She shook her head. “You chose the job over me and Sara. You can justify it because of the danger, but at some point you drew a line. Your family ended up on the other side of that line. We were cut out of your life. Without a word. We weren't part of that choice.”

The light changed. He drove on.

She stared out the window as the houses swept by, houses with families inside, warm and happy. She could see them moving about, talking, watching TV, eating dinner.

Outside, in the cold, dark loneliness of night, the truck lights beamed a path down the icy street, its occupants silent on the rest of their trip.

Jessica met Danielle at the door. “The girls behaved quite nicely today. They're putting away the toys now.”

“Good.”

“Did you find anything at the cabin? Sterling isn't home yet, so I haven't heard anything since you called.”

“Kyle said the place had been wiped clean. So had ours, or they wore gloves, which was likely.”

“Your place?”

“It was ransacked.” Danielle's smile was wry as her friend gasped. “They took most of my groceries. Including some leftover rolls I'd baked this morning.”

“Was it the kidnappers?”

Danielle lifted her shoulders and dropped them. “Shane and Rafe think so. Kyle hasn't said.” She gathered Sara's parka and book bag. “Thanks for taking Sara home from school with you. I wanted to see the place where she was kept. It was a mining cabin over on the old Baxter place. When she got away, she hid in a cave.” Her voice lowered in pain as she envisioned her daughter, cold and frightened, hiding from the men who had terrorized her.

Jessica flashed her a sympathetic glance as they went down the hall to collect the girls.

“Hi,” Jenny said brightly when the women entered her room. “Look, we got Sugar dressed up.”

Danielle couldn't help but join in Jessica's laughter at the young dog's dilemma. Sugar wore a pink tutu around her middle and a lace puff around her head. She cast the grown-ups a woeful glance, then lay down, her head on her paws, with a heavy sigh.

That brought forth fresh laughter. The girls chimed in.

“We're going to the Hip Hop for dinner. Do you and Jenny want to join us?” Danielle asked.

“Umm, that would be nice. Sterling said not to worry about him since he might be very late.”

“Oh, yes, let's go,” Jenny seconded the decision.

Sara rose with Jenny and her mom. They followed
the pickup to the café. It was busy, but not crowded, as usual for a Monday night.

They were seated at a large round table near the window. After hats and coats were disposed of, the girls ordered hot cocoa with marshmallows. Danielle decided on hot tea. So did Jessica. Kyle stuck with coffee.

“You have a mustache,” Danielle teased Sara after their drinks arrived.

“Your mom used to sport one, too, after she drank cocoa,” Kyle confided, leaning toward the youngsters.

Danielle met his gaze and was hit with a searing recollection of drinking cocoa their first winter together, of him licking the rim of chocolate milk off her lips and of all that had followed the simple act.

Heat swept over her in a radiant wave of hunger. She wanted those days again. She wanted to feel alive and needed and desired the way she had in those first glorious years of their marriage. What had happened to change all that?

Not the birth of their daughter. They had wanted a child right away. Sara had added to their marriage, not detracted. The passion and excitement had continued.

Right up until the last night he had come home, weary and cold and bone tired. She had run him a hot bath and let him soak while she prepared a meal. Together they had looked in on the sleeping Sara, then had crept into their bedroom and made love, creating their own glowing world.

Looking back, she thought that night had been different from the previous week when he'd come home
briefly for a meal and to pack some clothes. That last night, he'd told her he was going undercover, and she wasn't to speak if she saw him on the street. Then he had made love to her with such intensity it had seared right to her soul. He must have known then he wasn't going to return. It had been goodbye.

Only she hadn't known. She'd waited…and waited…and waited. The faithful Penelope of mythology, weaving her tapestries by day and unraveling them by night, waiting for her adventuring husband to return.

The pain of remembering made her throat ache with unshed tears and all the unspoken words between them.

What use were words? In spite of the episode in the stable that morning, their marriage was effectively over. She must remember that.

“There's Carey,” Jessica said. “Hi, Carey, over here. We have room for you.”

Dr. Carey Hall Kincaid, Wayne Kincaid's wife, came over. Danielle introduced the pediatrician to Kyle.

Carey spoke and took a seat. “Thanks for including me. I'm here for a quick meal before I go back to the hospital. I'm assisting Kane Hunter in surgery on a patient of mine in a couple of hours.”

Jessica made sympathetic sounds, then turned to Kyle. “Carey saved Jenny's life with a bone marrow transplant two years ago. Jen had leukemia and we had almost given up hope.”

“Until we found a match in Wayne,” Carey noted.

“Only Wayne Kincaid was going under the name J.D. Cade at the time,” Jessica informed them. “He
didn't want anyone to know he was the legitimate Kincaid heir.”

“He's my brother, only we got different last names 'cause he didn't get adopted like I did,” Jenny announced proudly. “He gave me some of the inside of his bones.” She thought intensely for a few seconds. “Mommy said I had to drink my milk because it would give me good bones so I would grow up tall and strong. Will I grow as tall as Wayne?”

“Not likely,” Carey told the disappointed five-year-old. “Your body has its own plan for how tall you'll be.” She smiled at Sara. “And how's Miss Sara tonight?”

Sara smiled and ducked her head shyly.

“Still not talking?” Carey teased lightly.

“Not yet,” Danielle forced herself to say in the same vein. “But she giggles a lot.”

“Their teacher had to separate these two at school today because they kept giggling,” Jessica mentioned, looking stern. Then she spoiled it by grinning.

“Giggling, huh? That's good. That's really good.” The pediatrician nodded approval.

Later when Jessica took the girls to the rest room, Danielle asked Carey if she thought they should do something more for Sara. “Maybe take her to a child psychologist?”

“I'd give it another few weeks. That was pretty traumatic for a child her age. I observed her tonight. She was lively and alert and interested in all that was going on around her. That's normal and all on the plus side. I think she'll be speaking again soon. Let's wait until the end of the month, then reassess the situation, okay?”

“Should we try to talk to her about what happened?” Kyle asked. “I mean, should we insist on it?”

“No, don't push. She's recovering at her own rate. Let's not force it. Discuss it when something comes up on the case, but otherwise let it be.” She glanced at her watch. “Oops, got to run. Thanks for letting me share a table with you.” She paid at the register and left.

“She's nice,” Kyle said. “Seems to have a head on her shoulders. I'm glad Sara has her.”

Danielle picked up a pair of gloves. “She forgot these. Can we go by the hospital on the way home and leave them?”

“No problem.”

No problem. Danielle sighed. His hand closed over hers for a second. She couldn't hide the sadness she felt when he peered into her face, studying her expression as if delving for some secret she was trying to conceal.

“It will be all right,” he said softly. “Things will work out. Then I'll get out of your life for good.”

For good.
She blinked at that, shocked and hurt anew without knowing why. For a moment, she felt overwhelmed by the double crises in her life—that of the kidnappers and that of her crumbling marriage. Her chest ached as the pressure built inside, but she would rather die than cry in public or in front of the husband who didn't want her in his life anymore.

Swallowing the despair, she nodded and pasted on a smile. “Here come the girls. It's time to go.”

After going to the hospital and dropping the gloves
off for the doctor, they returned to the shabby Victorian. A light was on inside.

Danielle frowned. “Did we leave a light on?”

“I don't remember. I'll check out the house. You two stay in the truck. Keep the engine running. Leave if you hear anything that alarms you. Okay?”

She nodded. He turned the truck so it was facing the street before he climbed out and saw her buckled into the driver's seat. Sara watched them, her eyes filled with fear as her father disappeared around the side of the house.

“It's okay,” Danielle assured the child with more confidence than she felt. “Daddy will take care of any bad guys. Besides, I'm sure I must have left the light on.”

Such a simple thing—leaving a light on, but now it struck terror in her heart. That was perhaps the worst thing criminals did to innocent people—destroyed their sense of security, of being at home in their community. Danielle felt they violated some deep sense of the self, something she had thought was inviolate.

Most of all, she hated it that her child had had to learn distrust of others firsthand. Children should grow up safe in their world.

“It's okay,” Kyle called out. “Can you back the truck into the garage?”

“Yes,” she called out the window and did so.

Inside, the furnace ducts popped cheerfully as heat spilled into the rooms they used during the winter. The house felt warm and welcoming again. Safe.

She studied Kyle in quick, sideways glances as she
helped Sara prepare for bed. Was it because he said the house was safe that she now felt it was?