Operation Reunion (9 page)

Chapter 14

K
ayla was still shaking. She tried to tell herself it was anger that was causing the tremors that gripped her, but deep down she knew better. Oh, there was anger, but it was dwarfed by a rush of other emotions she couldn’t even begin to sort out, not yet.

Dane thought Chad was guilty.

Had he always? If so, how had she not known that?

She’d known he had never believed in the hunt for Chad the way she did, but he’d supported her, at least until recently. She’d even admitted he had a right to feel the way he did; when the tenth anniversary of her parents’ murders and Chad’s disappearance had rolled around, she’d been a little stunned herself to realize how long it had been and how relatively little she’d accomplished in those years.

And she had meant everything she’d said. She’d meant her promise that she would accept whatever Foxworth found or didn’t find and move on. She’d been so relieved when Dane had agreed to give them another chance and had spent the past few days beyond grateful that he had come back. Nothing meant more to her than Dane and what they’d built between them.

Except that it had apparently all been built on a lie.

She hadn’t said a word since Dane’s flat declaration. Nor had he. At least not to her.

He had spoken to Quinn privately. The man had taken Dane aside, no doubt to quiz him on his accusation. She’d watched, still a little in shock. She could only imagine what Dane was telling him.

Meanwhile Hayley had gently reassured her that this changed nothing, that Foxworth would continue as long as she wanted them to, while Teague made an awkward escape as soon as he could, looking uncomfortable with the sudden flare of emotion. She couldn’t blame him. She’d like to escape herself.

When the little town was dry of information, including the tiny clue Teague had gleaned from one of the seniors that Chad had talked about Seattle before he’d absconded with the money, they headed back to the small airstrip.

It was no less awkward there when Dane jumped at the chance to sit up front with Teague. She reminded herself that the suggestion he do so had come on the flight down here, before any of this had happened, but somehow that didn’t make it seem any less a pointed display of the new, seemingly unbridgeable distance between them.

They’d been in the air for half an hour when Hayley, who had been talking quietly with Quinn in the back-facing seats, got up and crossed the small cabin to sit beside her.

“He’s just tired of it,” she said. “It’s been ten years.”

“He promised,” Kayla said, aware she sounded a bit like a thwarted child but unable to help it at the moment. “He said he’d see this through with me.”

“Apparently he thinks he has. And he does have a point.”

She didn’t want to hear any defense just now, but she didn’t want to antagonize the only people left on her side either.

“This lead may be more detailed than you’ve ever had before, but it’s still three months cold. We know more, and that will help, but I’m not sure how much closer we really are.”

Kayla winced. Maybe they weren’t on her side either. Maybe she really was alone in this.

“Quinn said we’d keep going as long as you wanted us to. He meant it. It’s only been a week, so we’ve really only just begun.”

Soothed slightly, Kayla tried to pull herself out of the emotional murk. “What’s the longest you’ve spent looking for someone?”

“Well, I don’t know all the Foxworth history yet. I do know there are some cases that have gone for more than a year. And two that are still open after longer than that.”

She glanced over at Quinn, who was reading through his own notes taken during the hours spent canvassing the small town.

“Those are the ones that eat at him. He hates not being able to at least give people the kind of closure he never got.”

“He’s a remarkable man,” Kayla said, meaning it.

“Yes, he is,” Hayley agreed, her voice soft, full of love and admiration and respect. All the things she herself had always felt for Dane.

Until now.

“I won’t say he didn’t mean it,” Hayley said, obviously seeing Kayla’s gaze flick up front to Dane and then quickly away. “I can’t read his mind. But I’m guessing he feels like he’s been putting his life—your lives—on hold for ten years, and now he’s thinking it’s never going to end.”

“I think he pretty much ended it today.”

“Doesn’t have to be that way,” Hayley said. “You can get past this.”

“Get past him believing my brother is guilty?”

Hayley gave a half shrug. “I got past Quinn kidnapping me.”

Kayla seized on the diversion. “Teague said something about that. It was really true?”

Hayley nodded. “In the middle of the night, Cutter and I both, in that blessed black helicopter of his.”

“And those were really bullet holes?”

“Yes.” Hayley’s expression changed; whatever memory had just struck her, she didn’t like it much. “And I’d be happy to tell you the whole, annoyingly heroic, self-sacrificing story, but right now I think you need to focus on one thing.”

“Finding Chad,” Kayla said with a nod.

“I was thinking more along the lines of deciding how high a price you’re willing to pay.”

This time it was Hayley who glanced forward to the copilot’s seat where Dane sat, giving every appearance of being engrossed in Teague’s explanations of what was going on, and no doubt asking very intelligent questions about the “slick, new avionics” Teague had been so eager to show off.

“He’s a good man, Kayla. They don’t come along every day.”

Don’t lose a good man chasing after a bad one.

Someone had told her that once. Crystal’s mother, she thought. Although she obviously hadn’t meant it to refer to Chad. Or maybe she had; Crystal had always had a bit of a crush on him.

Kayla felt the old ache and tried to quash it. Crystal had been her best friend. Or at least she’d thought she was her best friend; the girl, and the friendship, had vanished after that bloody night. In adult retrospect she was sure Crystal just hadn’t known how to deal with such trauma, hadn’t wanted to be around it. It was a dose of harsh, grim reality delivered years before a young mind knew how to cope. Kayla didn’t blame her, not anymore, but it still hurt to have been abandoned that way.

Only one person had stayed, only one person had been there through it all, supporting her, helping her on every step of the awful path she’d had to walk.

And he was sitting a few feet away, yet at the moment as far away as the moon.

Don’t lose a good man chasing after a bad one.

Dane was definitely a good man. She could never deny that, no matter what happened between them.

She just couldn’t accept that her brother was a bad one.

Chapter 15

T
eague had gone into such detail that by the time they landed, Dane felt as if he should be able to fly the darn plane himself. But he’d given all the information less than his full attention. Because it was hard to concentrate when your whole life had just fallen apart.

He wished he hadn’t said it, but at the same time he was glad it was out. He’d been thinking it for a long time.

Do you really think he did it, or are you convicting him in your mind because he’s ruining your life without even being here?

Quinn Foxworth’s words echoed in his head. And Dane wasn’t really sure of the answer.

“I’ve been where she is,” Quinn had said. “And I wanted the person who murdered my parents dead as much as she wants to find Chad.”

“And you got that, eventually.” Even as he’d said it, Dane knew it wasn’t a good analogy; Quinn, he suspected, was the kind of man who would want to do the job himself.

“After he got to spend three years at home with his family, three years that we and the families of the other victims never got, I’ll never get over that.”

“But look how you channeled that,” Dane had countered. “Into something really good.”

“Kayla’s work is something good.”

He was still chewing on it as they piled into the car they’d come to the airstrip in early that morning. Funny how different things had been then. If he could have imagined how it would go, he never would have gotten on that plane.

He couldn’t deny Quinn’s words. She was doing good work, and she had credibility with grief-stricken fellow travelers that couldn’t be denied. It made her very effective.

It also drained her. In fact, he thought now as they went about the business of deplaning, the real problems had started about then. At first he’d been glad, no, delighted that she’d found something to do other than search for her brother. But the work did take a lot out of her, and he suspected there simply wasn’t enough energy for all three: the work, her obsession with Chad, and him.

He’d just never thought it would be him who would lose. He’d always thought she’d get past it, get over it, that it would gradually fade.

He told himself to snap out of it as they reached the Foxworth buildings. It hadn’t faded, and it was time to accept it never would.

He and Kayla had come in his car, so there would be an uncomfortable trip back to her place. And then he would, once more, gather up what things he had there—only this time they wouldn’t be going back.

They got out of the big SUV. Dane heard a bark, and Cutter came dashing toward them, he wasn’t sure from where. The dog greeted Hayley and Quinn joyously and gave Teague a nudge that seemed almost teasing. Then he turned to Dane and stopped. The animal looked from him to Kayla, who was standing a careful three feet away. Cutter came forward, stood between them for a moment, then sat.

A sound escaped from the dog, something so much like an exasperated, weary, human sigh that Dane blinked.

“Did I mention,” Hayley said casually, “that Cutter has very good instincts about people who belong together?”

Kayla let out a harsh, compressed breath. Dane made himself not look at her.

“How is he with insurmountable obstacles?” he asked sourly.

“I don’t think the word insurmountable is in his vocabulary,” Quinn said dryly. “Which is, by the way, huge. For a dog.”

“Not so huge for whatever he really is,” Hayley quipped.

The awkward moment passed, although Cutter was still looking at them both as if he were contemplating drastic action.

“—stolen money would have bought him a ticket if he was really headed back north.” Dane tuned into Quinn as he spoke to Kayla. “We’ll start working that angle.”

Dane tuned back out again, telling himself it no longer concerned him. He separated himself, walked over toward his car, hitting the button on the fob to unlock it.

To his surprise, Cutter followed him. And positioned himself between Dane and the driver’s door.

“What? I didn’t pet you hello, so I can’t leave?”

He reached down and scratched behind the dog’s ears, but it had no effect. Cutter never even reacted, and his steady, intense gaze was unnerving.

“What do you want me to do?” Dane asked; clearly the dog wanted something.

For the first time Cutter’s gaze shifted, to Kayla, now twenty feet away. Then the dog’s eyes were back on him, steady, intense, commanding.

Dane gave a sharp shake of his head. He was giving this animal far too much credit. He was, after all, just a dog.

When Kayla finally came over to the car, she came nowhere near him, nor did she say a word as she opened the passenger door. Cutter didn’t pull the same stunt with her, so apparently in the dog’s view, he was the one who was supposed to bend. Again.

“Sorry, buddy,” he said to the dog, “I can’t. Not this time.”

For an instant something flickered in the animal’s eyes, something oddly like understanding. Acknowledgment. Something.

And he was losing his mind, giving human attributes and intelligence to a dog, however remarkable he might be.

He got into the driver’s seat. Cutter trotted around the car to the passenger side, where Kayla had now slid into the seat. He poked his nose at her, then rested his chin on her knee. She bent over the dog, petting him, crooning something he couldn’t hear into those alert ears. Maybe that’s what she needed, Dane thought. A dog. A companion who would never question what she was doing, never begrudge her her obsession, who would go along with her every desperate effort unconditionally.

The light was fading as he started the car and headed back to the little house he’d thought of as home for nearly four years now. They didn’t speak, and the atmosphere between them grew stiffer, chillier, with every mile.

When they got there, he pulled into the driveway but not the garage. Kayla glanced at him, and he knew she had seen this simple action—or lack of action—for the sign it was. He wasn’t staying.

He got out, slamming the car door shut with more force than was necessary. He regretted it when he realized her neighbor, Mr. Reyes, was outside working on his pickup, and the noise had made him look their way. But after a friendly wave he stuck his head back under the hood. At least it wasn’t the man’s wife, who would have come over to say hello and put them through ten minutes of agony as she chattered on.

Kayla just sat for a moment, then got out of the car, moving gingerly, as if every motion hurt. He had to stop himself from going to her.

“Let me grab my stuff, and you’ll be rid of me,” he said, hating the way he sounded but not able to stop the bitterness that was welling up in him from seeping into his voice.

“Fine.”

Short, sharp, to the point. Not a word of protest, not a single request to reconsider.

“Kayla—”

“Just hurry and get out,” she snapped. “Get it over with.”

It was done. The rupture was complete and final. She’d made her choice, and it wasn’t him.

He was so focused on that choice that he was unprepared for the flood of memories that hit him the moment they walked into the house. The past few days, when they’d made love hungrily, everywhere, whenever the need took them, every sweet touch flavored with gratitude that they hadn’t lost this singular passion.

He couldn’t deal with this. He grabbed up things and threw them in the duffel bag he’d stuffed into a corner of the closet. Clothes, shoes, razor, toothbrush, books, his tablet, they all went haphazardly into the bag and he zipped it hastily shut; he’d sort it all out later.

He intended to just leave. To walk out the door without a word because there was nothing left to say. But as he passed the bookshelf in the living room, something stopped him. He looked at the row of framed photographs she had there. Her parents, them all as a family, and at the other end one of him she’d taken last year, and Chad’s high school portrait.

He reached out and moved Chad’s picture in front of his own. It was childish, he knew it, but he did it anyway. Then he turned around to look at her.

“You’ve made your choice, Kayla. I hope you’re happy with it when you’re a lonely old woman still chasing a phantom.”

“What makes you think I’ll be lonely?” she retorted. “Do you think you’re the only man in the world?”

He knew it had been a mistake; he should have just walked out as he’d intended. “No,” he said quietly. “But no other man will love you like I do.”

It wasn’t until he was back in his car, sitting in the darkness, trying to will himself to turn the key, that he realized he’d used the present tense.

With a realization of just what was ahead of him, just how long and hard learning to live without her was going to be, he started the car and drove into the night.