Gone (41 page)

“Sure.” His voice was soft.

He went to the bed, stripping off his T-shirt, then unbuttoning his jeans.

“I meant I want to sleep alone,” she said.

Her tone was ice cold. The woman with him now bore no resemblance to the one who’d burned with passion in his arms two nights ago. This wasn’t about the investigation. No, this was something else.

“Something the matter?” he asked.

She turned on him. Her look was as cold as her voice. “I don’t care for your presumption that because we had sex once that’s the way it would be from now on.”

“As I recall, it was more than once,” he said with a smile.

She held his gaze.

He tried again. “Not presumption. Hope.” Again, she ignored his humor. He regarded the rigid set of her shoulders and wondered about them. “Your call, Clare.”

He could feel waves of tension coming off her. Whatever she was thinking had her wound tight. “You want to tell me what’s on your mind?”

“In the morning I’m going to take a hotel room in Columbia.”

“Why?”

“Because I shouldn’t have stayed here in the first place.”

“Where is this coming from?”

“Jake, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if my search for my sister hadn’t brought me here. We went three years without a word. In all likelihood, we would have grown old without our paths ever crossing again.”

“You’re here now.”

“And in a few days, or a week, I’ll be back in New York and you’ll still be here. You didn’t pick up the phone or hop a plane because you want us to be together on any terms than not be together at all. We’ve been down this road. I won’t go down it again.”

Jake struggled to hold onto his temper. “So that’s it? You made the decision and I have nothing to say about it?”

“No more than I had when you ended things.”

“Payback, Clare?”

“Of course not,” she snapped. “I’m saying that three years ago, I had to abide by your wishes. I expect you to do the same now.”

He held up a hand. “How the hell did we get here?” He shook his head. “It boggles my mind that we’re having this conversation.”

“I think it’s best we don’t talk about this anymore. We’ll just end up saying things that will stand between us on the job. We still have to work together and we need to be amicable.”

Jake stared at her. “Oh, yeah, absolutely, we need to be amicable!” he said with thick sarcasm. He left the room, slamming the door behind him.

Chapter Twenty Two
 

Clare was parked in front of what remained of the house she’d once been renting. She’d left Jake’s place before dawn. With no destination in mind, she drove around town for a while, ending up here. The house was crumbling, losing bits and pieces of itself to the elements. The search for Beth and the situation with Jake were tearing chunks out of Clare, and like the house, she was losing pieces of herself.

The sun cleared the horizon, illuminating the skeletal structure and the piles of ash that littered the ground.

Skeletal structure.

The unfortunate choice of words brought Sara McCowan to Clare’s mind. The detail of the missing ring pinched Clare like a sliver under her skin. The ring should have been with the videos and other souvenirs Dannon had saved of Sara. Yet, it wasn’t there.

What did they know for sure?

Dannon picked up Sara McCowan at The Starlight Club. Had sex with her on separate occasions, at different locations, the last at his cabin. Dannon claimed he left the cabin with Sara alive and well. Then Sara had gone missing. Four years later she was found dead.

Jake was rethinking the case against Dannon. If not Dannon, then there was someone else in Farley who’d abducted Sara and buried her in the woods behind Rich Dannon’s cabin. Was the location of the grave to the cabin a coincidence or a deliberate attempt to implicate Dannon in Sara’s murder?

Clare exhaled deeply. Where was she headed with this? They had Dannon neatly wrapped up like a Christmas package. That thought reminded her of the photo of Sara taken at Christmas time, and to the hand that wore the lapis lazuli ring. The ring that was missing. She was back to that.

She leaned back against the car’s headrest. Was she grasping onto the ring and the idea of another unsub because if it were Dannon, and he didn’t tell them where he was keeping Beth, then Clare had nothing to find her sister? The promise of someone else involved gave her new hope: Find the unsub. Find Beth.

Clare didn’t deny her desperation in finding her sister, and that she could not be objective when it came to Beth. It was possible that she was making something out of nothing to resurrect her flagging hope.

Sara had allegedly been kept at the cabin. The cabin was remote, but it was not unknown. Could Dannon have concealed a woman there for the length of time needed to kill her as Coroner Devoe had described, slowly by starving her to death? Others knew the place existed, which risked detection.

If the cabin was Dannon’s secret hideaway and he’d taken Beth, she hadn’t been there when they’d gone in. So where was she?

Jake was considering that the case against Dannon had come together too neatly. Was he right and the reason they hadn’t found Beth at the cabin was because someone else was holding her?

Round and round they went, getting nowhere.

Clare had left the car engine off when she parked. The windows were down. It was early enough in the day that the air outside was still cool and the car was comfortable without air conditioning. That wouldn’t last long, Clare thought, as the sun rose a little higher and she dug in her purse for her sunglasses.

Jake would be up soon. He’d look for her. In short order, he would put it together that she’d left. She hadn’t wanted to risk another altercation like last night. When she’d told him it was only the search for Beth that had brought them together, he’d said nothing. His silent acknowledgment had hurt. She’d felt as if something inside her had dried up. There was nothing more to be said now. They’d been over that same terrain so many times, they’d ground it to dust beneath the weight of their tread.

Clare’s lips trembled and she closed her eyes tight against a sudden rush of tears. She was so in love with him. Hadn’t stopped loving him.

Her cell phone rang. Jake said he’d call with the time of the interview with Dannon. She hesitated briefly, the thought of talking with him daunting at the moment. Of course, she would take his call because of the investigation, but her heart thumped as she checked caller ID.

It wasn’t Jake trying to reach her. Her caller was Earl Lowney. She frowned. She’d answered the questions from his insurance adjuster. What could Lowney want now?

Clare pressed her fingertips to her damp eyes, then drew a deep breath and answered the call. “Yes, Mr. Lowney.”

“Morning, Agent Marshall. I hope I didn’t wake you or Jake and the little one?”

“No. I’m not at Jake’s house at the moment. What can I do for you?” Her tone revealed her impatience.

“I was wondering if you’re going to be staying on at Jake’s or if you’re looking for your own place again.”

Clare bent forward a little at the question. “I am looking for another place.”

“I was worried that you might be.”

Worried my ass, Clare thought. No doubt Lowney was on the scent of a nice payoff.

“I take it you have something for me?” she asked.

“That’s why I’m calling. I do. Owners retired, packed up and moved to Florida recently. They don’t have any family. I’ll be going out to the place every few weeks. Check things out, you know. Part of the service. Being a good neighbor and all. I have the place listed for sale, but in the meantime they’re interested in renting. I have to tell you it’s a sweet place. I need to open the store in a little while. If you got the time, I could show it to you right now?”

He was giving her the hard sell and Clare could hear his excitement at the prospect. He didn’t need to convince her. She was just as eager as he was. She could no longer stay with Jake. She’d resigned herself to Columbia as her only option out of Jake’s house, and was glad at the alternative.

“I can meet you now,” she said. “Where?”

Clare obtained directions from Lowney. She drove away from the burned house. The route Lowney had instructed her to take went on and on. Clare left residences and farms behind. She was out of Farley, now in Blane County. The sun was now noticeably higher. She hadn’t seen anything but trees for some time and glanced at the directions she’d hastily scrawled in the notebook she carried in her purse. She hadn’t made any wrong turns. On the heels of that thought, she spotted the road that would take her to the house, and turned there.

The road was actually a long dirt driveway. She hadn’t wanted to be staying this far out of town. Columbia, then? No. Given the choice, she was better off at Lowney’s rented property. Even with the distance she’d driven, she would still be closer to Farley staying here.

When the house came into view, Clare stared, pleasantly surprised. The property was well maintained. Flowering plants flourished in a rock garden on the front lawn. Windows gleamed in the sunlight.

She parked in front of the residence to wait for Lowney. She lowered the windows then turned off the ignition. Even with the windows lowered, it was too hot to wait inside the car and she stepped out of the vehicle. She retrieved her crutch from the back seat then leaned back against the driver’s side door to wait for the man.

Another vehicle lumbered over the ruts in the road that led to the house and a sedan appeared and pulled up beside her car. Earl Lowney was behind the wheel.

“You made good time, Clare,” Lowney said as he stepped up beside her.

“Yes, well, we’re both pressed for time this morning. Can we get on with this?”

“I’m thinking the very same.”

But Lowney remained in place.

He covered his mouth with his hand. His eyes sparkled with excitement and color suffused his cheeks. He looked positively giddy, like a child with a new toy or a secret.

Clare narrowed her eyes. “Mr. Lowney?”

“Shame on you, Clare, thinking that pretty boy buffoon Rich Dannon could have taken Sara. I saw her after she left my store. Getting into Rich’s car on Bridge Road. When he left his cabin later that night, I went in and took her. Rich could
never
do what I’ve done.”

His lip curled in derision, and in a blink his excitement and giddy expression were gone, the childish mirth replaced by rage. His eyes darkened and went flat, like a shark’s. Just that quick his mood turned.

Lowney was the unsub?
Clare was taking in his words when he reached for her. She struck out with her crutch, catching Lowney hard in the mid-section. With a howl of pain, he went down on his knees. She followed that up with a solid jab to the groin with the tip of the crutch and Lowney rolled in the dirt.

She was now in a fight for her life. She turned away from him, got the car door open and dove onto the car seat, scrambling for her purse. Her gun was in her purse. Lowney was on her before she could reach it. Panting and groaning, he yanked her out of the car by her hair, flung her to the ground, and stomped on her injured ankle.

Clare cried out. Tears sprang to her eyes and her vision blurred with the pain. As it cleared, Lowney swung her crutch like a baseball bat.

Pain exploded in her head. Blood trickled into her eyes. Her stomach heaved and her eyelids fluttered. She feared she was going to pass out and fought a tidal wave of nausea. She struck out with her uninjured foot, putting all she had into delivering another strike to Lowney’s groin. He gasped for breath and fell back from her.

He wouldn’t be down for long. She had to get her weapon. She had to get up. Clare’s vision went gray. She needed to take him down, but she couldn’t make her limbs move again. She couldn’t stand and fight. As she thought that, Lowney advanced again. And again he had her crutch in his hand. She watched his arm descend to deliver another blow, and then all went black.

* * * * *

Jake entered his office. Messages were stacked on his desk. He ignored them and called Clare’s cell phone again. He’d been trying that number since he awoke, alone, in his bed two hours ago, then found her gone from his house. Last night she said she would be taking a room in Columbia. His mouth tightened. She’d wasted no time moving out.

He listened as her phone went to voice mail again. It wasn’t like Clare to remain out of touch and put her personal feelings before an ongoing investigation. It annoyed him that she was doing just that.

He waited out her message then said, “Clare, it’s now nine-fifteen. We’re meeting Dannon and his lawyer at noon. Call me.” His message was curt.

Jake disconnected. Clare knew where the meeting would be held. Dannon was in a holding cell in the sheriff’s office. A bail hearing was set for four o’clock that afternoon.

No doubt when they spoke to Dannon at noon, they would be treated to more protestations of his innocence. Every criminal Jake had put away had been innocent, according to them. Still, something wasn’t right about this case. The thought needled him again and again. After four years of searching for Sara, everything had come together in a rush. Had it all been too neat?