Secrets Rising (25 page)

Jake stood to greet Mary. She stepped onto the porch as the door behind him opened. Rebecca must be coming back out. Jake kept his gaze focused on Mary to catch her reaction. She froze, eyes widening in horror, pupils shrinking to pinpoints, the blood draining from her face leaving her fair skin chalk white.

"Rebecca, you're just in time to meet my daughter-in-law," Doris said as if she hadn't noticed the odd reaction. "Mary Jordan, this is Rebecca Patterson and Jake Thornton. They're going to be my houseguests for a few days."

Before his eyes the caring daughter-in-law became the hard stranger they'd met in the library. Rebecca was right. She did have a haunted look about her.

But she wasn't normally a cold woman. Seeing Rebecca had sent her into shock. She knew something about Rebecca, and whatever it was, it upset her...a lot.

Rebecca stepped forward stiffly and offered her hand to Mary Jordan. "Nice to meet you, Mary," she said.

Mary stared at the outstretched hand as if it were covered in blood or horribly disfigured.

Then she lifted her chin, took the proffered hand and shook it once, briefly, before dropping it. "I'm pleased to meet you, Ms. Patterson." She nodded in Jake's direction. "And you, Mr. Thornton. Doris, thank you for inviting me to stay, but I have plans. And I'm late. If you'll excuse me, I have to run."

"What?" Jake demanded. "What did you think?" He was pretty sure he knew what Doris had thought and why she'd invited Rebecca and him to stay with her, but he asked anyway.

Doris smiled. "I thought we'd all get along famously, but apparently I was wrong. I'm getting quite hungry. I believe I'll go freshen up, and then we can leave for the restaurant."

"While you're doing that, I think we should get my car and bring it over here," Jake said. "I really don't like the idea of driving it after dark with that broken headlight. If I was leaving town, it'd probably be all right, but I think Farley Gates would like nothing better than to give me another ticket if he catches me. He'd probably take great delight in running me in for being a repeat offender."

Doris smiled at Jake's absurdity. "Farley does get a little carried away sometimes. I'm sure I'll be ready by the time you get back." She disappeared into the house, and he and Rebecca walked down the sidewalk to the street.

"She thought Mary was my mother, didn't she?" Rebecca asked. "She thought Mary had a baby and gave it up because she was scared she couldn't raise it after her husband died. She thought I was her granddaughter."

He nodded. "I suspect that's what she thought."

He opened her car door for her to get in. She turned to him, pushing the hair back from her face and gazing directly into his eyes as if forcing both of them to confront what had just happened.

"Doris may be my grandmother, but Mary isn't my mother," she said. "The way Mary looked at me today, the way she acted at the library, Doris' comments about her reaction to Ben's death, they all fit your theory of Ben Jordan leaving behind a pregnant girlfriend. Mary learned about his indiscretion and became so upset she couldn't even attend Ben's funeral. Now, every time she sees me, she's faced with the reality of her husband's infidelity. She does hate me."

"It's possible, but we don't know that for sure."

Rebecca sighed, sliding into the front seat as if exhausted, and he realized how much it had cost her to confront Mary, to force the woman to acknowledge her and shake her hand. "We know that a woman I never met before yesterday hates me. She must have a reason."

"Worst case scenario, Doris would be your grandmother. Wouldn't you rather have her son for a father than Charles Morton?"

She managed a weak smile. "Yes. I definitely would."

They drove to the park, and Jake got his car. As he pulled away with Rebecca following him, Jake thought he saw Farley Gates on a side street in a nondescript black car.

You're getting paranoid
, he told himself. Anyway, if it had been Gates, he'd probably have chased Jake down and written him a ticket...or worse. He could see Farley whacking himself in the eye with his stick just so he could swear that Jake had done it, providing him with an excuse to take him to jail for assaulting an officer.

The absurd thought brought a wry grin.

Of course, the whole situation in this town was absurd. He'd seen a lot of rude, callous people in his time including some who made it very clear they never wanted to meet the children they'd given up for adoption. But none of them had played with snakes or smashed out headlights or stolen evidence.

Rebecca's bonding with Doris Jordan was a very good thing, whether or not Ben was her father. Doris was a caring, lonely woman. She'd cared about Rebecca from their first meeting even before she'd apparently spotted some resemblance to Ben and decided Rebecca was her granddaughter. Maybe Rebecca would be satisfied with having a friendship with Doris. They could adopt each other as surrogate family, and Rebecca could give up her search for parents who made it clearer every day that they didn't want her.

Then he'd be off the case and back to Dallas and his life.

And in no time at all he'd forget about Rebecca and the way she'd felt in his arms, the way she could look so vulnerable one minute and strong the next. He'd even forget the twinge of...what? sadness? despair? loneliness?...that shot through him every time he thought of never seeing her again.

***

Following Jake back to Doris' house, Rebecca tried to focus on the evening ahead and forget about Mary Jordan. She'd been looking forward to dinner with Doris and, she had to admit, with Jake. After that she'd be spending the night in Doris' home, the first place where she'd felt comfortable in a long time.

But the image of Doris' daughter-in-law kept intruding. Mary had sounded so glad to see Doris, but as soon as Rebecca appeared, her gaze had turned cold. No, not even cold. Blank. A curtain had fallen, cutting her off totally from Rebecca. When Rebecca had forced her to shake hands, the woman had dropped her hand as if she'd grasped a dead fish.

She'd made the right decision to go back home, to remove herself from direct contact with people like Mary Jordan and Charles Morton. She'd begun this quest searching for an identity, the place in the universe where she fit, and all she'd found so far was where she didn't fit.

Ahead of her, Jake slowed to turn the corner onto Doris' street. Rebecca attempted to follow suit, pushing gently on her brake pedal, then harder as her speed didn't abate. She pushed harder on the brake pedal with no results.

She darted a quick glance to the dash and saw a red light blinking Check Brakes, Check Brakes. How long had it been blinking? Why hadn't she paid more attention?

Jake pulled up a little past Doris' house, leaving room for her...and she saw another of those spots of oil where she'd been parked earlier.

She scrambled out, her hands shaking and her heart pounding. Jake met her to survey the damage. "Jake, I'm sorry! My brakes went out!"

He wrapped an arm about her waist. "It's okay. Our bumpers locked, that's all. No real damage done. Thank goodness you weren't going very fast. What happened? When I drove your car earlier, the brakes were okay. Well, maybe a little spongy, but I just thought that was because I wasn't used to your car."

She shook her head. "When we turned the corner up there, I noticed it didn't seem to slow the way it should, and I noticed the brake light was blinking. Then—" She spread her hands helplessly. "I hit them and nothing happened! Those spots it's been leaving must be brake fluid, not oil."

He nodded slowly. "You could have a small leak in one of the lines. Every time you used the brakes, you pushed out a little of the fluid until it was all gone. That would explain the spots when you parked."

"Damn! Why didn't they notice something like that the last time I had my car serviced?"

"It could be too small to find unless you're looking for it. Anyway, it probably just happened, or you'd have lost your brakes on the drive down here."

"Just happened? How does a hole in my brake lines just happen?"

She looked at him. His dark blue eyes seemed gray in the shade from the tree overhead. He took his arms from about her, rubbed the back of his head and blew out a long sigh.

Surely he wasn't going to say what she thought he was.

"I'm no mechanic. There's probably a hundred ways it could have just happened. But taking into account everything else that's been going on, I think we need to consider the possibility that somebody tampered with your brakes last night, maybe cut a tiny slit in one of the lines, somebody who thought you'd be leaving the motel and going out on the highway before the problem was discovered."

"Somebody's trying to kill me?"

"Not necessarily. Even if this was deliberate—and we don't know that it was—it could be that somebody's trying to scare you. That would fit with everything else."

"Scare me? This isn't like the snake. If we'd left early this morning to find a new motel, the way we logically would have, I'd have been on the highway when this happened, probably going about seventy miles an hour. This could have killed me, couldn't it?"

"Yeah. It could have."

Her gaze locked with his as she tried to absorb the reality that somebody hated her so badly, that person actually wanted to see her dead. Or, at best, didn't care if his...or her...attempts to frighten her resulted in her death. Jake stared back, his expression grim, his eyes hard as if he would force her to accept that frightening truth.

"You warned me they might not want me." Rebecca's words came out in a whisper. She had no energy to speak louder. "You didn't warn me they might—" She swallowed, unable to continue.

Doris folded her arms in a self-protective, hugging gesture. As she looked from the cars to Rebecca then to Jake, Rebecca saw something she couldn't identify on Doris' face, in her eyes.

"Is your car drivable, Jake?" she asked.

"Yeah, Rebecca wasn't going fast enough to hurt it."

"Then you both need to get in that car and go back to Dallas tonight. Right now. You can send a tow truck for Rebecca's car tomorrow. I'm sorry, but you can't stay with me. I've brought Rebecca's luggage down." She gestured to the bags sitting behind her. "You must leave now."

The sting hit Rebecca with as much physical force as a slap in the face.

Doris turned and walked back to her house. She'd lost her relaxed posture. Now her walk reminded Rebecca of Mary Jordan's...rigid, stiff, unbending.

Chapter 18

November 5, 1979, Edgewater, Texas

Mary closed the door behind Clyde.

He had driven her by her bank, and she'd closed out Ben's and her account, taking the balance in cash. Then he'd brought her home, lingering on the porch, expressing his sympathy and urging her to let him know if he could do anything. She'd had to fight the urge to confess everything to him, beg for his help.

But she'd reminded herself not only that she could trust no one, but that if she did trust him, he might meet the same fate as Ben. She was on her own. It was the only way she could hope to get through this and save her baby.

Now she looked around her at the home she hadn't seen since the day Charles and Clyde had come to tell her about Ben. The sight of the familiar room, the blue sofa she and Ben had discovered in his parents' attic, the lamp they'd both fallen in love with the minute they saw it in the store...the home they'd created together...brought hot tears to her eyes. For a moment she wavered. For a moment she wasn't sure she had the strength to carry on.

Ben was gone. He wasn't coming back. He'd never walk through that door again, never sit on that sofa again, never wrap his big arms around her and hold her again.

For a moment, she stood in the middle of the room with the suitcase open on the bed, paralyzed with thoughts of so much to do, where to start, what she ought to take with her.