No River Too Wide (35 page)

She ran anyway, as if pursued, not even sure why until she realized the dog was giving Maddie and the others a wide berth and heading straight for the water.

“Nilla!”

Now she wasn’t the only one shouting. She could hear Harmony calling the dog, and Maddie, too. But Vanilla had other plans.

Jan ran faster. Her stamina had increased from Adam’s class, and so had her strength. But fear propelled her steps. The dog was headed straight for the river.

And so was Maddie.

“No, Maddie!” she shouted, but the girl ignored her. Harmony was running, too, but she was hindered by the child in her arms, and Jan sped past her and headed straight for Maddie.

“Maddie, don’t get near the water!”

By that point Vanilla was wading, and then, as if the golden doodle had dropped beyond the overflow to the deeper waters of the river itself, she was swimming.

“No, Maddie!”

But Maddie was too far ahead to catch, and she was determined to rescue her beloved dog. She floundered along the edge of the water, then into it, and before Jan could reach her, she was swept by the current downstream.

Jan could hear Harmony running behind her, but it would still be seconds before she reached the bank and she had Lottie. Jan kicked off her shoes and was in the water before Harmony could reach her.

The water was icy, and for a moment it snatched the breath from her lungs. She had learned to swim and swim well as a child, but she knew immediately there was no hope of swimming in this. The current was swift and strong, and it swept her faster and faster. The best she could do was keep her head up to search for Maddie and save what strength she had to combat the current until she neared the girl. She was rewarded almost a minute later when she saw her not far away, driven directly toward a fallen tree that lay across the riverbank, its limbs clawing the water like skeletal fingers.

With all the strength she could summon, she aimed for the tree, as well, fighting the current and the cold that numbed her arms and legs. She knew if she passed the tree, she had no hope of rescuing the girl, and perhaps no hope of getting out herself. She put everything she had into each exhausted stroke, but in the end it was just enough. As she was about to drift past the tree, she grabbed the limb extending farthest into the river and held on tight.

She hadn’t accounted for the pressure of the water flowing beneath her. Her legs were pinned under and against the limb, and for a moment she thought she wouldn’t be able to move again. But little by little she inched toward the spot where she thought Maddie had landed. She was moving so slowly, and fear clutched at her. While the tree had seemed a haven, in reality it was a prison. Maddie was too small, too light, to fight her way to safety. Jan couldn’t even see her now, and she imagined the child being knocked unconscious by the force of the water and the unforgiving bulk of the tree.

Struggling and clawing, she moved along the branch to the trunk, searching for Maddie.

She saw her at last, three feet away. As she had feared, Maddie was pinned against the trunk, her face in the water. With everything she had left, she reached the girl and, holding the trunk with one arm, managed to cup her body around Maddie’s and then lift her face out of the water by her hair, just high enough that she could breathe.

The girl gasped, then began to panic and fight uselessly.

“Don’t fight, Maddie! Hold on to the tree!” Jan shouted. “Grab anything you can and don’t let go.”

Maddie continued to flounder, and Jan knew she wasn’t going to be able to keep her from going under again.

“Stop!” she shouted. “Find something and hold on. I’m going to lose my grip!”

She heard a splash from the riverbank, and she saw someone moving along the tree toward them.

“Just another few seconds!” a man shouted, and she realized it was Adam. “Hang on to her, Jan!”

Jan could feel her own grip on the tree slipping away, but she struggled to keep Maddie’s face out of the water. Then, just as she was sure she couldn’t hold on to either the girl or the tree a moment longer, Adam was turning Maddie onto her back and dragging her to the bank.

“Hang on to the tree. I’m coming back.”

She wrapped both arms around the trunk, or at least she thought she did. Everything was hazy now, and her arms were so cold she couldn’t feel them. Her legs floated under the trunk, and the force of the water pinned her there.

If she let go... If she let go...

She felt strong arms reaching for her, one wrapping around her waist. “I’ve got you now,” Adam said. “Help if you can. Hang on where you’re able, but we’re going to move toward the bank. I’ll keep you afloat.”

The trip seemed to take hours. She thought she grabbed for handholds. She thought she kicked to break the inexorable grip of the water. She thought she felt ground under her feet.

Then she was on the bank.

“Maddie?” She was on her back on the ground, and she tried to sit up but couldn’t.

“I want you to turn to your side. I’ll help,” Adam said. He knelt beside her and helped her before he answered. “Maddie’s going to be okay. You saved her life. Taylor’s got her.”

Tears ran down her cheeks; at least she thought they were tears. She coughed, and water flew from her lungs. For long moments she couldn’t speak again. When she was breathing easier she tried. “I think she...hit her head. I don’t think she was conscious when I...” She couldn’t form the words.

“We’re going to get you both to the emergency room. Harmony ran back for my car.”

She managed to sit up and put her head in her hands. “Take care of Maddie.”

He squatted down beside her. “You did a good thing, a great thing. Don’t ever underestimate yourself again.”

She gazed up at him. “The dog...” She shook her head.

“She got out just beyond the tree where the river curves. She was washed right up to the bank. She’s with Maddie.”

Jan began to cry in earnest. Not because Vanilla had survived. Not even because Maddie had. Because she herself had survived, and the little boy she had rescued all those years ago by her terrible promise to his father had not.

Chapter 28

Adam was tired to the marrow of his bones. The rescue, the race to the hospital with Maddie, Taylor and Jan in his SUV. Then hitching a ride back to the studio with Dante, after both he and Jan had been checked over and released. Retrieving Taylor’s car and parking it in the hospital garage, and finally waiting in the emergency room until he was sure Maddie was going to be okay. Maddie was a cute kid, and he’d been worried about that bump on the head and the time she’d spent in the water, which had been cold enough to suck the heat from her slender body while her heart rate and blood pressure soared.

He hadn’t been surprised the doctor had decided to keep her overnight. Not that long ago the girl had endured brain surgery to ward off epileptic seizures. But the staff who had examined her had been confident she was going to be okay. And while Adam was no particular fan of doctors, after getting to know far too many at the end of his military career, this one had seemed to know his stuff.

Once he was home he had time to put things in better perspective. This evening was supposed to have been very different, but maybe it was better that he wasn’t giving Taylor a tour of his apartment—or more accurately his bed—right now. As upsetting as the day had been, maybe one good thing had come from it, because Taylor had become an incredible complication. Adam needed to do his job and leave town. It was that simple and suddenly that complicated. He had made a commitment to see the Rex Stoddard case through to its conclusion. Nothing he had done here in Asheville was wrong by those standards. His job required secrecy, sometimes even lies, but it was a job that had to be finished.

He could still give notice, admit his real reason for being here and ask Taylor for forgiveness. She might have trouble understanding his role in the Stoddard drama, but in the long run he was afraid she might have
more
trouble understanding why he had turned over the case to someone without the time or inclination to give Jan Stoddard the benefit of the doubt.

Everything he had seen today was more evidence that Jan was a person of high standards coupled with regrettably low self-esteem. Both were compatible with his theory that Rex Stoddard had married a woman far above himself on the evolutionary chain and then worked off his daily frustrations by punishing her for her superiority.

Nobody risked her life in a mountain river in November just to prove a point. Jan had gone in after Maddie because she was a person who would put a child’s safety before her own.

As he stood and stretched, his stomach rumbled. Somebody on the floor below was frying chicken, a smell he recognized all too well from a summer job when he’d served up buckets of the Colonel’s finest. After that experience he hadn’t particularly liked anything deep-fried, but now, even though it had been a long time since he’d tasted meat, his stomach growled once more in response. Lunch had been hours ago, and he couldn’t even remember what he’d eaten.

He was rummaging through his fridge for leftovers when his cell phone rang. He fished it from his pocket and put it to his ear.

“Adam Pryor.”

“I got your message, but I was swamped. Couldn’t this wait until Monday?”

Adam’s gaze flicked to the clock display on his stove. It was seven on a Friday evening, but it wasn’t unusual for Philip Salter, the head of the special investigation unit of the Midwest Modern Insurance Company, to still be at his desk and cranky.

“There was a major incident here.” Adam described Maddie’s near drowning and Jan’s rescue, leaving out most of the details about his own part in it.

“Unless Rex Stoddard suddenly appeared to help you get the kid out of the water, I’m not sure why you’re calling.”

“I’m calling because Janine Stoddard risked her life today. It was a close call for both of them. This is a good woman. I think we’re looking for Rex Stoddard in the wrong place.”

“Maybe you
are
in the wrong place. That remains to be seen. But we’re looking for Stoddard everywhere we can, and so are the police. Maybe his wife saves little kids with one hand and helps her old man embezzle money with the other. Or maybe she’s just keeping busy while she waits for him to show up.”

“I’m more and more convinced she’s glad to be rid of this guy. There’s no doubt in my mind he was abusing her. And any woman who can leap into icy floodwaters isn’t one who would wait for her husband to show up and abuse her some more.”

“People are funny. You know that. They get used to things, make excuses, even hope their lives stay the same because they don’t know anything else or they’re scared of change. Maybe he did knock her around, but maybe that’s what she knows, what she feels comfortable with.”

“No.”

There was silence for a moment as Philip absorbed that. “Then how about this? Mrs. Stoddard looks for a way to get back at Mr. Stoddard after years of mistreatment. She’s no dummy, right?”

“Right.”

“Maybe she sees that the best way to get back at him is to file claims that don’t exist from his very own agency. Then, when the bogus claims are finally discovered, make it look like he’s the one who did it. She gets back at him
and
she gets out with a tidy little nest egg. She leaves town, maybe burns down the house he paid for on the way out, reunites with her long-lost daughter and has the last laugh.”

“That’s a nice bedtime story, but I haven’t seen any evidence to support it. How would she make those claims? Nobody ever saw her at his office. Nobody ever saw her
anywhere
except the annual holiday open house. It’s not like she was sneaking in at lunchtime to use the computers or file bogus paperwork.”

“She probably had access to his keys. Maybe he was a sound sleeper.”

“They lived almost forty-five minutes from his office.”

“He was on a bowling league. Maybe that’s what she did on league night. She played a con game instead.”

Insurance fraud investigation was filled with twists and turns. Adam got that. In the air force he had investigated airmen who’d tried to cover murder with a friendly slap on the back, rape with a flashy alibi, theft with convoluted fantasies, so he never took anything he saw or heard at face value. When he’d been ready to work again, his training and inclination to question everything had made him a natural for this job.

But he was still capable, for all that cynicism, of recognizing good people when he found them. And Jan was one of the good ones.

“It’s unlikely she was in this with him or without him,” he said. “Frankly I still think it’s unlikely
he
was involved, either. Stoddard might be a first-degree asshat, but everybody who knew the guy says he counted pens and legal pads at the end of the workweek to make sure nobody was taking them home. And he went a lot crazy if he thought anybody who worked for him was being disloyal to the agency or dishonorable.”

“Did anybody you interviewed say he abused his wife? That’s a big surprise, too, isn’t it? Maybe he was the master of disguises.”

“Rigid perfectionism goes hand in hand with the abuse scenario. In Stoddard’s warped mind, beating his wife was probably meant to make her a better person. But stealing? Being dishonest and disloyal to the agency he’d built from the ground up? My money’s still on somebody else.”

“He disappeared right before the fraud was discovered, Adam. So did Mrs. Stoddard. And you still think that’s a coincidence?”

“I think his disappearance is connected in a way we haven’t determined. I think she just jumped ship when the opportunity arose.”

“And one or both of them burned down the house.”

“There were no propellants, no signs of arson.”

Philip didn’t sound convinced. “Wonderful. When you see her, tell her to be sure she makes a claim on her homeowner’s insurance. I’m glad the Stoddard house wasn’t on
our
bill.”

Adam knew his boss was being sarcastic, so he didn’t bother to point out that Jan had no interest in anything except lying low. Like a woman who was terribly afraid of something or somebody.