Cold Case at Cobra Creek (16 page)

Dugan’s labored breathing echoed in the air as they lay entwined in the aftermath of their lovemaking. But he pulled away too quickly and strode to her bathroom.

A minute later, he returned. His expression looked troubled, his body tense.

Naked, he was so sexy and masculine that she reached for him again. The familiar guilt threatened, but she shut it out and pulled him back in bed with her.

He wrapped his arms around her, and she curled against him. “Sage?”

“Don’t say anything,” she said softly. She especially didn’t want an apology or promises that he couldn’t keep.

She trusted him to help her find her son, but she’d vowed never to chance losing her heart again.

All she wanted tonight was to have him comfort her and keep her warm and chase away the nightmares.

Those would be waiting in the morning, just as they had been for the past two years.

* * *

D
UGAN WAITED UNTIL
Sage fell asleep, then slid from beneath the covers and dressed. He walked downstairs and outside to the back deck overlooking the creek.

Dammit, he shouldn’t have taken Sage to bed.

Normally he considered himself a love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of guy. Sex was sex. No attachments. No emotional ties.

He was not the kind of man to stick around or to belong to a family. Hell, he’d never been part of a real one and figured he’d screw it up just as his old man had.

The old man he’d never known.

Besides, letting emotions get in the way caused him to lose focus. And right now he needed to focus on finding Benji.

That one lead hadn’t panned out, but the little boy’s picture was all over the news, so hopefully if he was still alive, someone would spot him.

Yeah, right. If whoever had Benji had kept his identity a secret for two years, they certainly wouldn’t want to be found now. Worse, the story might cause the person to panic and flee the state, even the country.

To take on another name, go into hiding somewhere completely off the grid.

He texted Jaxon and asked him to be sure to alert airports, train stations, bus stations and border patrols to look for Benji.

Somewhere in the woods, leaves rustled. The wind whipped them into a frenzy. An animal howled.

He stepped closer to the end of the porch, searching the darkness. Was that a shadow near the creek?

Senses on alert, he studied the trees and creek edge, hunting for a predator.

Another noise, and he spotted a figure slipping behind a boulder.

Dugan pulled his gun from his holster, descended the porch steps and crept through the woods. The figure moved again, tree branches crackling. Something darted across the dark...the figure running?

He hunkered low, using the trees as cover as he moved closer. A noise to the right startled him, and he glanced toward it. A flicker of a light. A thin stream of smoke.

Hadn’t Sage mentioned that her attacker smelled like cigarette smoke?

Had he returned to make good on his threat?

* * *

“
T
HEY’VE GOT HALF
the country looking for that little boy. You have to do something. No one can ever know what we did.”

“Dammit, I’m doing the best I can.”

“Kill the woman if you have to. She’s getting too close. She went to see Janelle Dougasville today.”

“What did that woman tell them?”

“She told them about Sandra Peyton.”

Hell. The Dougasville woman should have kept her trap shut.

Now Sandra Peyton had to die.

Chapter Sixteen

Dugan rounded the corner of the oak, his gun drawn. “Hold it or I’ll shoot.”

A shriek echoed in the air, and then the silhouette of a man filled his vision. A thin young man with his hands up in surrender. “Please, don’t shoot, mister.”

Dugan frowned, then pulled a penlight from his pocket and aimed it at the guy. Damn. He was a teenager. A big guy who looked as though he might play football.

And he was shielding the girl behind him, who was frantically rebuttoning her blouse.

“A little cold to be out here in the woods this time of night, don’t you think?” Dugan asked.

The boy shrugged, his leather jacket straining his linebacker shoulders. “We weren’t doing anything wrong.”

The girl yanked on a jacket, then inched up behind the guy, her eyes wide with fear. “Please don’t hurt us, mister.”

“I’m not here to hurt anyone,” Dugan said, irritated they’d drawn him away from Sage’s. What if someone really was watching her house, and Dugan was chasing two randy teenagers and that person got to Sage?

“I thought you were stalking the inn, here to cause trouble for the owner.”

The boy said a dirty word that Dugan didn’t even use himself. “We came here ’cause Joy’s mama won’t let me come to the house.”

“I can’t say as I blame her,” Dugan said, “considering you’re mauling her daughter and cussing like a sailor.”

“He wasn’t mauling me,” the girl said, her tone stronger now. “I’m seventeen. I make my own choices.”

These teenagers weren’t his problem. When he was the boy’s age, he was probably doing the same thing.

Dugan tucked his gun back in his holster, then gestured for them to settle down. “Go on, get out of here.” He gave the boy a warning look. “And don’t come back to these woods again.”

“No, sir, we won’t.” The boy grabbed the girl’s hand, and they hurried back toward the wide part of the creek where they’d crossed in a small boat from the other side.

Something about seeing that boat nagged at Dugan. The creek ran wide and deep in certain areas and eventually emptied into the river that kayakers, rafters and boaters frequented. People could park in one area and boat to the other. In fact, rafters or boaters often parked cars in two areas, one where they put in and the other where they got out.

He remembered glancing at the report showing the location of Lewis’s crash.

He wanted to see that report again. And he wanted to go back and walk the search grid, as well. Maybe the sheriff and his team had missed something.

* * *

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Sage rolled over, sated and more rested than she had been in ages.

Memories of making love with Dugan the night before floated back in a euphoric haze.

But the bed beside her was empty. Not just empty but cold, as if Dugan hadn’t slept there.

She’d been so deep in slumber that she hadn’t even known when he’d left her bed.

Two years of exhausting, sleepless nights had finally caught up with her.

But morning sunlight poured through the window, slanting rays of light across the wood floors and reminding her that today was one more in a long list where Benji wasn’t home.

One more day closer to another Christmas she would spend alone.

God, she was so tired of being alone.

Her heart clenched as if in a vise. What if she never found him? Could she go on day after day without knowing? Would the fear and anxiety eventually destroy her?

Throwing off the covers, she slid from bed. Muscles she hadn’t used in forever ached, but with a sweet kind of throb that had eased the tension from her body and chased the nightmares away. At least for a little while.

She hurried into the shower, regretting the fact that the inn was empty of guests. At least having to cook breakfast for guests gave her something to do to start the day. Some sense of normalcy when nothing in her life for the past two years had been normal.

Dugan...was he still here?

She quickly showered and threw on some clothes, then dried her hair and pulled it back at the nape of her neck with a clip. Last night had sent them hunting down a false lead.

But today might provide another lead to pursue. She firmly tacked her mental resolve into place.

Rejuvenated by the night of mind-blowing sex, she pulled on boots and hurried to the kitchen. A pot of coffee was half-full and still warm. She poured herself a cup, then searched the living area for Dugan, but he wasn’t inside.

Had he left? Why hadn’t he told her?

She took her coffee to the back porch and found him there in one of the rocking chairs. He looked rumpled, his beard growth from the day before rough and thick, his eyes shadowed from lack of sleep.

“Have you been out here all night?”

“Off and on.”

She sipped her coffee and sank onto the porch swing, using her feet to launch it into a gentle sway. “Why did you leave the bed?”

Silence, thick and filled with regret, stretched between them for a full minute before he spoke. “I offered to do a job, Sage. I shouldn’t have slept with you.”

True. But his words stung. Still, she sucked up her pride and lifted her chin. “So, what do we do today?”

“Last night I saw a shadow in the woods and came out to check it. Turned out it was a couple of teenagers necking in the woods.”

Why was he telling her this? “So?”

“I ran them off, but it started me thinking about the day Lewis crashed.”

“I don’t get the connection.”

“The teenagers tied a boat downstream. They took it back across the creek where they’d probably left a car.”

Sage sipped her coffee again, the caffeine finally kick-starting her brain and dragging her mind away from memories of bedding Dugan again.

That was obviously the last thing on his mind.

“Anyway, after the crash, no bodies were found in the fire or anywhere around the area. Which made me start thinking—if Benji is alive and he didn’t die with Lewis, who we now know was murdered—how did the shooter escape? As far as I know, the police report didn’t mention another car. No skid marks nearby or evidence anyone else had stopped until the accident was called in.”

Slowly, Sage began to grasp where he was headed. “You’re thinking that whoever killed Ron escaped on a boat across the creek?”

Dugan shrugged. “It’s possible.” He stood. “It’s also possible that Lewis was meeting someone else. It’s just a theory, but let’s say that he had reconnected with his first love, Sandra Peyton.”

“The woman who’d been pregnant and lost his child.”

“Exactly.” Dugan stood. “What if she was meeting him and he planned to take Benji to her so they could have the family they’d lost?”

Hope sprouted in Sage’s head again.

They had to find Sandra Peyton. But if she had Benji, she probably didn’t want to be found.

* * *

D
UGAN WANTED TO
look at that report again, and see the area for himself, so he drove to the sheriff’s office.

Sage insisted on accompanying him. Luckily Gandt was out, but the deputy was in. Once Dugan explained that he was helping Sage look for her son, the deputy pulled the file, handed it over and allowed Dugan to make a copy while he returned some phone calls.

“Was there any mention of a boat?” Sage asked as she looked over his shoulder.

“I’m looking.” Dugan skimmed the report. The accident had happened at approximately six-forty. A motorist had called it in when she saw the fire shooting up from the bushes.

Sheriff Gandt had arrived along with the fire department, but the car was already burned beyond saving. Once the fire had died down and the rescue workers found no evidence of anyone inside, Gandt organized a search party to comb the area.

During that two-hour interval, Lewis’s shooter had escaped.

Dugan spread the photos of the area across the desk in the front office. Sage made a low, troubled sound as she studied the pictures. The land looked deserted. The weather had been cold that day, patches of dead brush and desolate-looking cacti.

“No boat,” Sage said.

“The shooter could have been following Lewis. He caused the crash, then shot Lewis...or he shot him first, causing Lewis to crash.”

“If he shot him first, why not let the fire take care of destroying evidence and his body?” Sage asked.

“Because finding the body proves Lewis was murdered, that he didn’t die in an accident.”

Sage shivered. “If the shooter dragged him out, he must have been bleeding. But I don’t see blood in the pictures.”

“You’re right.” Dugan analyzed each one, looking for signs that a body had been dragged from the car, but saw nothing.

He tried to piece together another possibility. What if Lewis had planned to meet someone and fake his death with the car crash? Perhaps whoever it was he’d met had turned on him and shot him.

But why not leave Benji?

Maybe the shooter took Lewis and Benji at gunpoint, shot Lewis, then dumped his body? But again, why take Benji? Because he was a witness?

“Sage, I’d like to go back to the scene and walk the area.”

“If you think it’ll help.”

“Sometimes I work with a dog named Gus. He’s an expert tracker dog. Do you have something of Benji’s that carries his scent, for Gus to follow?”

Another pained look twisted Sage’s face. “Yes.”

The deputy was still on the phone, so Dugan mouthed his thanks and they left. He drove to the inn, and Sage hurried inside to get something that had belonged to her son.

* * *

S
AGE CLUTCHED
B
ENJI’S BLANKET
to her and inhaled his sweet scent. Even after two years, it still lingered. She hadn’t washed it, and had held on to it for his return, the memory of him cuddling up to it so vivid that it still brought tears to her eyes.

She blinked them back, though, and carried the blanket to Dugan, who was waiting in his SUV.

“He slept with this all the time,” Sage said. “I...don’t know how he made it the past two years without it.”

Dugan squeezed her hand as she laid it in her lap. “Hang in there, Sage.”

That was the problem. She was hanging on to the hope of finding him alive and bringing him home.

As strong as she pretended to be on the surface, she didn’t know if she could handle it if that hope was crushed.

Her mind traveled down that terrifying path that had opened up to her two years ago, to the possibility that he was dead and that they might find his body lying out in the wilderness somewhere. She’d seen the stories on the news and had no idea how parents survived something so horrible.

Dugan drove to his place, a ranch with horses running in the pasture and cattle grazing in the fields, and she forced herself to banish those terrifying images.