Operation Reunion (5 page)

The unmentioned memory, of the even more hideous attack that had happened thirteen years later hung between them for a moment.

“That was, in essence, the reason our foundation exists. When they turned the man who did it loose, the injustice of it, when those men in back rooms who had never suffered the loss made that decision, Quinn made one of his own.”

“And started the Foxworth Foundation?”

Hayley nodded. Kayla understood.

“September 11 was one of the reasons we moved here,” Kayla said. “My parents wanted to be out of the city. My mother couldn’t even bear to look at a skyscraper, and my dad would stare at every jet that flew overhead until it was out of sight.”

She stopped abruptly, the old, sad irony battering at her. She heard a bark from outside and wondered vaguely if it was Cutter.

“And two years later, they were dead anyway.”

Hayley’s words would have seemed cold, harsh even, had they not been spoken in such a gentle voice. And if they hadn’t been exactly the words Kayla had been thinking herself.

She tried to pull herself together. Everything seemed so much closer to the surface than it had been for a while. It was like that whenever a note came, but she had to admit this was more. Because this time she was dealing with it without Dane’s help, without his steadying presence, without his unwavering strength bolstering her.

“Yes. They were.”

“What happened to you? At sixteen, you were too young to be on your own,” Hayley said.

“My dad’s sister happened, bless her. She took me in until I went off to college. Aunt Fay never had kids of her own, couldn’t, but she loved me. She did her best, we got along great, she was fun and smart and the best thing that could have happened to me, under the circumstances.”

“Dane,” Hayley said.

“He was already in college by then. I—”

“No. I meant...” She gestured toward the door to the meeting room. Kayla turned.

He was here.

Chapter 6

Q
uinn, who had come into the room right behind Dane, signaled to Hayley and they left them alone to talk. It was, oddly, Cutter who seemed most reluctant to go. The dog, who had arrived with Quinn, lingered in the doorway, looking from Kayla to Dane as if he didn’t want to leave them alone.

Maybe he thinks we’ll start fighting,
Kayla thought with a sigh.

But when Dane crossed the room and sat in the chair Hayley had vacated, she realized that, although he seemed tense, he wasn’t angry. She could read his mood almost as well as her own, sometimes better, and he wasn’t angry. Because he’d given up? Had he let all the anger go when he’d walked away?

“I checked them out,” he said abruptly. “From what I could find, they seem to be who they say they are.”

Kayla went still. If he no longer cared at all, surely he wouldn’t have bothered, right? She didn’t ask, mainly because she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer. She didn’t know why he was here, and she didn’t want to ask that either. Instead, she explained what Hayley had told her about the founding of Foxworth.

“So Quinn was a victim,” Dane said.

She heard the musing note in his voice and understood; it was hard to picture today’s strong, tough Quinn as any kind of victim.

“He was only ten,” Kayla said. “And Hayley’s father was a police officer who was killed when she was twelve.”

He drew back slightly. “Is that why you trusted them both so quickly? You felt connected because of all that?”

“I didn’t know all that then. But I knew they understood.”

“And I don’t.”

“I didn’t say that. I’ve never said that.”

“But I’m lucky, right?” He was starting to sound confrontational. “I’m not a member of the club. I’m the only one here not damaged by tragedy.”

She winced at the oblique reference to her counseling group. She’d called it Collateral Damage because that’s what they were. Just as wounded as the actual victims, yet still up and walking around. She’d thought of Walking Wounded, but that didn’t make the point she so strongly believed in—that the perpetrators didn’t care who else they hurt. In war, it was an expected part of the grim business. But for civilians, it was the ugliest of side effects.

“Believe me, it’s a club you don’t want any part of.” She took in a quick breath. “Besides, I always thought you’d been damaged by mine. Because you loved me.”

As quickly as that, his demeanor changed. He let out a long, compressed breath.

“All right,” he said. “If these people are as good as they say, maybe they can do something.”

Her heart leaped in her chest, and hope sparked to renewed life.

“Dane!”

He reached across the table and took her hands in his. The touch, the contact, made joy well up inside her, as if some vital part of her had been restored.

“Listen to me, Kayla. I’m willing to give them a chance. Everything I’ve found indicates they are really good at what they do.”

“Yes,” she answered, tightening her fingers around his, feeling an elemental fear that if she didn’t hang on, he would somehow vanish again. “Yes, I think they are. Maybe even the best. Hayley showed me some of their case records. No names, but—”

“Then if they can’t find Chad, it’s likely nobody can.”

She saw suddenly where he was going. And knew his next words would require a decision from her. A difficult one. But nothing could be more difficult than his absence from her life the past two weeks.

“Yes,” she finally said.

“Then if they can’t, if this comes to nothing, will you quit making this the sole purpose of your life?”

She drew in a deep breath. She’d had a brief taste of life without him, and it had been immediately clear that it was worse, much worse, than life without knowing how and where Chad was. And she knew Dane, knew she’d pushed him to the edge, and that he was here now at all was a testament to the power of what they’d built together from the day he’d climbed up that tree to sit beside her. He’d understood her even then, that what she’d wanted, needed, wasn’t someone to come along and rescue her, but someone to help her figure out how to rescue herself.

She knew what she would be promising if she said yes.

“I won’t ever stop wondering, or worrying,” she said, wanting it to be perfectly clear.

“I wouldn’t expect you to. I just want to know that you won’t obsess over it anymore, that you’ll take back your own life. Our life, together.”

He didn’t say, “Or it’s over,” but the words hung in the air between them as clearly as if he had.

“Will you give them a real chance and enough time?”

“I’ll give them a full, honest chance, if you’ll agree to accept whatever they find.”

Still feeling torn, she nevertheless gave the only answer she felt possible.

“All right,” she said.

Dane let out an audible breath. And then he was on his feet, pulling her up and into his arms. Kayla nearly wept at the rightness of it. She clung to him, trembling at how close she’d come to losing this, losing him, forever.

She didn’t know how long had passed before she heard a slight jingle from the doorway. She looked up and saw Cutter trotting into the room, tail up and waving slightly. The dog came to a stop before them and sat down. He looked at them both, with an expression Kayla would have sworn was satisfaction.

Quinn and Hayley followed the dog into the room.

“Why Cutter?” Kayla asked.

“He came with the name,” Hayley said, reaching to scratch the dog’s ear. “He turned up on my doorstep with only that tag. I tried but never could find out where he’d come from.”

The dog tilted his head way back to look at Hayley without changing position, looking so comical as he did it that Kayla couldn’t help but laugh. She heard Dane chuckle beside her and savored the sound of it; she’d missed his easy laugh, not just in the past two weeks but, she had to admit, for much longer. She’d caused that, she realized regretfully.

“I spent some time with a friend of mine this afternoon,” Quinn said in a back-to-business tone as Hayley gestured everyone back into the chairs around the table. “Sam works for the local sheriff’s office.”

Kayla sank down into the chair Dane held for her, feeling suddenly wobbly. This all seemed to be happening quickly now that it had begun. She’d only met them this morning, yet Quinn was already on the move.

“The sheriff’s office? But the Redwood Cove police handled the case.”

“Yes, but the sheriff’s office did most of the forensics. Redwood Cove doesn’t have its own lab.”

“Oh. Yes.”

“Sam was able to pull up the reports for me, at least the basics. The locals trust this guy. He can get answers that others can’t because of that.”

“Meaning distraught, crazy family members?” Kayla knew she sounded bitter but couldn’t help it.

“They never thought you were crazy. And if you were distraught, they knew you had good reason.”

She sighed. “To be fair, they never said so. In fact, except for a couple who got sharp about it, told me they had their suspect and to give up, they were unfailingly kind. Even though I knew they hated to see me coming.”

“Cops get that way when they can’t help any more than they already have.”

“But they could have. They could have looked for other suspects, they—”

She stopped herself before the whole, long, painfully familiar spiel unwound.

“You know what the evidence was,” Quinn said gently. “It’s pretty conclusive that Chad was in that room either during or shortly after the murders.”

“The bloody fingerprint,” Dane said.

Quinn nodded. “He’s certain it was left while the blood was...”

Quinn’s voice trailed off as he looked at Kayla.

“Still wet,” she finished for him. “Fresh. I know. I’ve heard it a hundred times. I’m used to it.”

“It’s still awful,” Hayley said. Her tone was comforting, but nothing made Kayla feel better than Dane’s arm tightening around her.

“Yes. But I’m not going to fall apart talking about it. I really don’t wallow it in every day.”

She managed not to glance at Dane, although that wasn’t really fair; he’d never accused her of wallowing, only of letting this overwhelm her own life.

“I never disputed that Chad was there,” she said. “He still came to the house often, even though he’d moved out. He’d sneak in through the den window and then head to the kitchen to get food.”

“So you think that’s what he intended that night? To raid the fridge?” Quinn asked.

She nodded. “And he found them lying there in the den, panicked and ran.”

“Leaving you to deal alone, as usual,” Dane said.

Kayla stiffened. Dane let out a compressed breath. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I’ll stop. I promised you one last shot, and I meant it.”

Neither Quinn nor Hayley commented on the moment of tension, although Cutter let out a low whine as if he’d sensed it and didn’t like it. After a moment, Quinn nodded.

“I’ll need some things from you,” he said. “Names of Chad’s friends, his interests. Then the same about your parents.”

Kayla frowned slightly. “That was all in the reports.”

Quinn smiled. “Sam bends the rules occasionally, but letting those reports leave the building without me jumping through all the hoops would be outright breakage. That we’ll have to do through regular channels.”

“Sorry,” Kayla said. “Of course.”

“Plus, I’d like to save bugging the local LEOs for things we can’t get anywhere else. They’re a bit understaffed.”

“Back at the time, they were thinking about dissolving the department and going back to contracting with the sheriff because they were so strapped and short-handed,” Dane said. “Maybe that’s partly why they didn’t pour a lot of energy into this after Chad ran.”

Kayla wanted to hug him for that; it was the most supportive thing he’d said lately.

“I know once they verified where I’d been at the time of the murders,” Dane went on, “they didn’t have time to talk to me much.”

“Except when you’d push them, for me.”

He deserved that acknowledgment, Kayla thought. For a long time, longer than most would, Dane had been right there with her, at the forefront, pushing, nagging, pressing the police. Dane gave her a smile that further warmed a heart that had been nearly frozen by his departure two weeks ago. He’d really asked so little of her, she thought. And she’d abused that.

“It got so they hated to see us coming,” Dane said.

“Can’t blame them,” Quinn said. “It’s a small department, they’ve got a huge case on their hands and they have no resources or experience dealing with that kind of thing. Sam said Detective Adams was a good guy, but he was out of his depth on this. And by the time he asked for help, what trail there was had gone cold.”

“He knows that,” Kayla said quietly. “He admitted that to me last year, when he retired. He feels guilty about it.”

Dane gave her a sideways look. “You never told me that.”

“You didn’t want to hear anything about it by then,” Kayla said, carefully keeping any sort of accusation out of her voice; Dane was back at her side, and she simply had to keep him there. She knew that now, that nothing mattered more.

“I’ll need the same info from you, too,” Quinn said to Dane. “Anything and everything you can remember.”

Dane nodded.

“And no comparing lists,” Hayley said. “You each have your own memories and viewpoint, and we need them as pure as possible.”

Kayla nodded, although the words made her a little nervous. Dane and Chad’s mutual dislike was going to color Dane’s recollections. But he was doing it, cooperating, which was more than she’d had this morning. She didn’t ever want to feel that alone again.

She would keep her promise as Dane was keeping his, she vowed. She would pour all she had into this last-ditch effort, she would do whatever Quinn and Hayley said was necessary and, in the end, she would accept the results.

And then, she swore silently, she would do what Dane had wanted her to do for a very long time now.

She would move on.

Chapter 7

A
ll the way back to her house, Kayla fought the memories stirred up by spending two hours writing down everything she could think of—the name of every one of Chad’s friends, descriptions of those she couldn’t remember the names of, every place he used to hang out and putting a star on the most frequent, even listing the times he’d gotten in trouble and with whom. She didn’t want to sugarcoat anything.

Dane had commented on that, when he’d seen her list after finishing his own, shorter one and going over it with Quinn; Hayley had taken Cutter outside for a run while they worked. Kayla had been grateful for that; the dog was almost spooky in the way he looked at them, the way he seemed to sense every change, every shift in mood, and understand it in a way that had to be impossible for a dog.

“You told them about when he got arrested twice,” Dane had said.

“Yes.” She’d stood up to face him. “Once, all I wanted was to prove Chad innocent. Now I just want the truth.”

Dane had blinked, clearly startled. “When did that happen?”

“About two weeks ago,” she had said, knowing he’d understand. “Everything changed two weeks ago.”

They’d agreed at the Foxworth facility that they’d spend some time searching their memories for anything they might have forgotten, any additional details that might help.

She pulled into her driveway now and for a moment just sat there.

She had considered, seriously, that she might have to sell her beloved little house. She’d bought it with the cash from the sale of her parents’ home, a place she had known she could never set foot in again. She didn’t want to move again, but she didn’t think she could bear to live here without Dane. They weren’t living together in the usual sense—he still had his place, but he also ran his business out of the den, and the work tended to spill over into the rest of the house. So he spent most nights here unless he was on a major project and working eighteen-hour days.

That boy’ll go far. He’s not afraid of hard work.

Her father’s words echoed in her head. As did his tone, touched with a sadness it had taken her a few years to figure out was over not being able to say that about his own son.

Her father had liked Dane, although that hadn’t stopped him from keeping a close watch when Kayla had been younger. But he’d soon been convinced Dane looked at her like a little sister, and sadly, he was a much better protector than Chad was, standing up for her more than once when those who thought her too studious and odd started harassing her.

And then Dane was there, pulling his compact SUV in beside her, and her world snapped back into balance. For a moment the relief that he was back swamped her, making it impossible for her to move.

He waved at her next-door neighbor, Mr. Reyes, who was out working in his yard as usual. The man called out a cheerful hello and went back to trimming his hedge. It was a measure of how distracted she was, Kayla supposed, that she hadn’t even noticed him there.

Dane came over and opened her driver’s door.

“You okay?”

“I will be,” she said, meaning it.

But when they got inside, it didn’t take long for her improved outlook to be shaken. She noticed first one thing, then another, ran to the bedroom then the bathroom and finally turned on him.

“Your things are gone.”

He didn’t deny the obvious. “Yes.”

“They weren’t this morning.”

“I knew you’d be gone this morning so I came over and got them. I didn’t want to fight.”

The same sort of creeping chill that had overtaken her when she’d realized he was serious this time began to envelop her again. He really had left her. He’d packed up all of the things that had gradually made their way over here—toothbrush, clothes, books, razor, the laptop he kept here in case something came up that was too much to handle on his tablet, all of it was gone. The reality pounded at her in a way it hadn’t when his familiar things were still there, and she realized she hadn’t really accepted it, investing hope in those inanimate objects, hope that he didn’t really mean it.

Now she knew he had. And was thankful he hadn’t done it before.

“Then why,” she said when she thought she could speak without her voice wobbling, “did you show up at the post office?”

He didn’t dodge that either. But then, this was Dane, who was utterly honest, forthright and occasionally blunt. As he was now.

“This,” he said, reaching into the watch pocket of his jeans and pulling out the square gold key that had been on his key ring since the day she’d given it to him five years ago.

A shiver went through her. “Dane—”

He waved a hand. “Let’s not. We’re going to deal with this, give it our best shot, and then...then we’ll see where we are.”

Slowly, reluctantly, she nodded. She wanted to know now, wanted to hear him say he was back, that things would be fine, that they would pick up their old, familiar life.

He didn’t say any of it.

He’s an honest one. Doesn’t just tell you want you want to hear. I admire that.

Again her father’s voice echoed in her head, as clearly as if he were standing beside her.

And she wondered if she’d really gotten Dane back at all.

* * *

Dane watched as she turned the pages of the old scrapbook she’d dug out of a box in the back closet. It seemed a good idea, to help stir any memories that might help.

He’d seen it before, had gone through it himself, because he wanted to know everything about her and loved seeing the early pictures of a wide-eyed, dark-haired pixie who had seemingly faced the world with an endless wonder.

There were several of her and her brother together, with Kayla generally staring up at him adoringly while Chad looked annoyed and sullen. They were eighteen months apart, Dane knew, and he’d often wondered if things would have been different, if Chad would have acted differently toward her, if it had been more.

She turned another page and there was the photograph he’d been waiting to see. Kayla, now a brand-new junior, off to her first school dance. A worldly high school graduate himself now, about to leave for college, he’d come by to return a borrowed book that evening and found her father chuckling over the fact that she and her mother had been holed up all afternoon, preparing.

But when Kayla, barely sixteen, had come down the stairs, Dane wasn’t chuckling at all. His odd, shy, bookish, tree-sitting buddy was nowhere in sight. Instead he saw a young, slender woman with graceful curves highlighted by the fitted, strapless, shimmery dress she wore. Her hair was smoothed into a sleek sweep, her eyes seemed huge and luminous, her mouth touched with a color that made him wonder what it would be like to kiss it off.

And that had taken his breath away.

She’d come to a halt at the bottom of the stairs and given him an impish smile.

“Did it work?” she asked.

“I— What?”

He knew he sounded like he felt—gobsmacked.

“I promised you I was going to play the game, do all the girly stuff, just to show them I could if I wanted to.”

“Kayla.” It was all he could get out, even though she was suddenly looking anxious.

“It’s like we talked about,” she said, the anxiety echoing in her voice. “Show them I can, then when I don’t, they know it’s because I don’t
want
to. My choice. Just like you did, making the football team, getting everybody fired up about how good you are, then walking away because it was your choice not to play their game.”

“And that had its down side, if you recall.” He’d proved his point, but he hadn’t realized some would take it as dissing the whole school by not wanting to play for the team that represented them.

“But they respected you,” Kayla had said. “That’s all I want.”

He didn’t remember now what he’d finally said to ease her nerves. But he’d made her smile, reassured, so it had worked. And he spent the remainder of his own evening reminding himself she was still his young, very smart, annoyingly honest and perceptive sounding board. And he was still the boy next door to her, her sounding board in turn, sometimes her protector, but always her listener.

“Dane?”

He snapped out of his reverie.

“I remember that night,” he said, unable to help or care that his voice was a little husky. “Two years seemed so little separation and yet so long.”

“I didn’t ask you to wait until I was eighteen.”

“Anything else seemed a little too...predatory to me.”

For a moment she just looked at him, and then she smiled, that slow, dawning Kayla smile that always reminded him that there was warmth in the world, no matter how cold it might seem at any given moment.

“You were—and are—a gallant man, Dane Burdette.”

Her use of the old-fashioned term made him smile in turn, even though he hadn’t felt in the least gallant at the time. Only his vow to wait until she was eighteen had made his new-found appreciation of her as a woman acceptable. Where his eighteen-year-old self had found the will to wait he wasn’t sure, although he was ruefully aware that the stigma of dating a high school girl when you’d graduated had played a bigger part than he’d like to admit. With Kayla’s support he had flouted the expected norms with some success, but he had found himself unable to get past that bit of peer pressure. And he’d harbored the notion that maybe, if he put her off-limits, he’d just get over her in that two years.

He hadn’t.

And then three months after that dance her parents were dead, changing both their lives forever, and self-control was no longer an issue. He would no more risk further damage to her already shattered soul than he would cut off his own arm. He’d shoved his newly awakened awareness of her into a cage and locked it, setting out to be what she needed and only what she needed—a strong shoulder, a comforting ear and a safe place to be.

He’d succeeded, he thought.

He’d just never expected to be in essentially the same place ten years later.