Silk and Stone (66 page)

Doop grunted happily. “Bonafide, certified, gold-medal-winning hall-of-famer.”

Enough was enough. Every astrologer, palm reader, crystal gazer, and self-styled mystic who had played on her mothers need for reassurance floated through Sam’s disgusted thoughts. Mom’s good-hearted faith in bullshit artists had primed her for Malcolm Drury. Sam would never look for easy answers that way.

She drew a deep breath and stared Doop straight in the eyes. “Sir, Jake’s parents and
sister
burned to death in a house fire. If Jake were psychic, he’d never have let that happen.”

Doop’s pleased expression faded into troubled confusion. “It don’t always work that way, ma’am. Nobody bats a thousand. And maybe we’re not supposed to know everything. Only God sees the big picture.”

“Jake was away from home that night. Tracking a stranger, just like today. Helping other people. Doing what he was asked to do by men like yourself. He lost three people he loved dearly, and where they went he couldn’t follow. He couldn’t track them, and find them, and bring
them
home safely. He was never the same after that. He was so bitter and hurt, he couldn’t think straight. He saw threats everywhere. He went looking for them, and he’s
still
looking.”

Sam grasped the detective’s coat lapel with her free hand. “Don’t make him look alone.” Her voice was hoarse, pleading. “Don’t add a dead child to the heartbreaking memories he has to carry around by himself.”

She lowered her hand and sagged against the car, trembling. She couldn’t tell whether she’d made a dent in the detective’s bizarre ideas about Jake. She’d failed at so much.

“I can’t read you the way he can,” Doop said grimly. “But I can damned sure see why you’re special.” He clamped his pipe between his teeth, pulled a key from his coat pocket, and unlocked the handcuffs. “Go on.”

Chapter
            Twenty-Nine
 

J
ake and Bo had vanished. Twenty minutes of hopeless wandering made her understand the panic a person lost in the woods must feel. Rain began to fall—at first in slow, fat droplets that barely found their way through the canopy of forest, but now with steady force, soaking her. Sam wiped her eyes as she picked her way among muscadine vines that hung like soggy garlands from the smaller trees.

She climbed a hill, pushing through dripping huckleberry shrubs and briars. The sound of rustling leaves made her halt, searching anxiously. A fallen poplar sprawled across the hill’s crest, its ripped base propped precariously on the rotting stump.

Bo peered at her from a narrow shelter beneath its trunk. He was curled up. With rainwater running along the creases of his skin, he looked like a red clay sculpture in danger of dissolving. All he could manage to move
was his long red tail, which wagged among the matted leaves.

Frowning, Sam dropped to her heels and stroked his droopy ears. Where was Jake? How could he work without a tracking dog?
Unless Bo’s only a prop. So people won’t suspect the truth
. Sam ignored that ridiculous thought.

Bo had run out of steam, she decided, and Jake had been forced to leave him there. He’d probably circled back toward the junkyard. He was probably there now, telling Hoke Doop they’d need one of the police department’s dogs, a stretcher for Bo, and a less soft-hearted guard for
her
next time.

“I know you’re tired,” she told Bo. “But can’t you follow Jake’s trail at least? Come on, Bo. Get up.” She tugged at his collar. “Try, okay?”

Blah blah blah, Jake, blah blah
was undoubtedly how Bo interpreted it. But
Jake
was enough to get him on his feet. He sneezed, then shuffled stiffly down the hill, nose to the ground.

Sam followed right behind him. Her breath caught in her throat. He was leading her farther away from the junkyard.

He was close. He could feel it. But he didn’t know what awful scene he’d find, and he tried not to think about that. At least he’d prevented Samantha from seeing the worst. And from seeing how he worked. He’d realized before they started that Bo was too old to keep up with him.

Maybe he could have convinced Samantha that
he
was the one with the extraordinary sense of smell.

Jake followed a muddy ravine. The familiar sensations stole over him, a trance of déjà vu that lingered. He recognized the ravine as if he’d seen it before.

Around the next bend a gnarled crabapple would be clinging to an undercut lip of clay. The crumbling hulk of a radiator would protrude from a bed of ferns. A pock-marked metal sign with
GILMAN’S
AUTO SALVAGE
fading into rust would be lying in the ravine’s narrow bottom.

The search would end there.

“Jake!”

Samantha’s voice. His concentration evaporated. He halted and turned unerringly toward the sound, then watched, amazed, as she and Bo came up the ravine behind him. Her face was flushed. She squinted at him with unrepentant determination, rubbing rain from her eyes as she dodged roots and slipped in the mud.

A shattering combination of admiration, anger, and dread filled Jake’s chest. “What did you do?” he demanded. “Pick the cuffs’ lock with a fingernail file?”

She staggered to a halt in front of him. “Detective Doop listened to reason. He let me come after you.” Bo collapsed at her feet, his sides heaving. “Good thing he did,” she added, her puzzled gaze boring into Jake. “You lost your dog.”

“Go back. Turn around and
go back.
”

“
You left Bo behind,
” she insisted with rising intensity. She stared up at him as if she were afraid of his explanation, as if she desperately needed to hear a logical answer. Her eyes flickered to the baby’s pink shirt, clutched in one of his fists, then back to his face. “How can you—” she swallowed hard—“how can you track the baby if you don’t use Bo?”

She was hammering at the only door he didn’t want her to open. They’d known each other almost all their lives. He couldn’t suddenly reveal a side of himself that would change her whole idea of him.
There’re a few things you’ve never known about me, sweetheart. I like to watch soap operas, and brussels sprouts make me choke. And, oh, by the way, I’ve got a psychic phone line to the astral plane
.

When he said nothing, she made a hoarse sound of alarm. Her hands darted forward. She snatched the baby’s shirt from him and knelt by Bo. “Here, Bo,” she said urgently. “
Please
. You can do it. I know you can.”

Bo snuffled the shirt, wheezed, then dropped his head to his paws. “Please, Bo,” she said. Her voice was
ragged. “Jake can’t track people by-guess-and-by-God. That’s not possible.”

A low groan curled from Jake’s throat. He bent over and pried the shirt from her viselike grip. She refused to let go. They froze, locked in a tug-of-war that threatened her most basic understanding of him, their past together, their future, and all of her self-protective commitment to common sense.

Suddenly, as if the vivid emotions between them had called up something equally strong, he knew exactly what he’d find around the bend of the ravine.
Life
.

He left the shirt in her hands, whirled around, and ran to find it. Dimly he heard her startled cry and the sound of her hurrying after him.

Jake squeezed himself between an overhanging ledge and the gnarled roots of a massive tree. Sam stumbled up behind him. She gasped.

Jake knelt on one knee. A tiny girl dressed in a diaper and a dirty T-shirt lay curled up, her eyes closed, atop a rusting sign that said
GILMAN’S AUTO SALVAGE
.

Jake reached out, his large, brutal-looking hand posed over the child’s drenched hair. He touched his fingertips to her cheek.

She stirred, mewled softly, and opened her eyes.

Samantha scrambled through the opening and fell to her knees beside Jake. She made small fervent sounds, cooing to the little girl. Jake leaned back, removed his shirt, and handed it to her. She wrapped the baby in it and quickly cradled her in her arms. Jake watched in bittersweet anguish.

Maybe Samantha would forget about the rest.

Tears slid down her cheeks. She looked at Jake over the baby’s head. “You
found
her. It’s true. Oh, my God, it’s true, isn’t it? Hoke Doop says you have a gift.” Terrible sorrow hollowed her voice. “I’ve loved you since a time when I wasn’t much older than this baby. Why couldn’t you tell me?”

He didn’t feel the cold rain on his bare shoulders and chest. He didn’t feel anything except the strangling sense of doom crawling through him.

He got to his feet. His knees were weak. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said between gritted teeth. “I’ll carry Bo back. You follow with the kid.” He left her sitting there.

She knew. And all he could do was lie to her, because every question she’d ask would bring her closer to learning what he knew about her aunt.

“He’s not here. No surprise.” Ben said it morosely. They stood at Jake’s campsite. Charlotte concentrated on not thinking about the pitiful clearing where the old house had been. The oaks hovered around it like courtiers to a missing king.

Gray clouds blanketed the sky so deeply that the granite head of the distant bald was hidden in them. Evening mist rolled across the pine forest that had overtaken the old pastures. “There used to be a barn over there,” Charlotte said, pointing wearily. “A few years ago Joe Gunther called Sammie to report that the roof sagged and the walls were covered in graffiti. He said the local kids had decided the Cove was irresistible. Haunted. A wonderland where they could find arrowheads and gemstones. He was worried about the barn collapsing on one of them. Sammie told him to bulldoze it. She told him to send her a piece of board from the walls.”

Ben frowned. “A piece of board?”

“The day it came in the mail, I found her sitting in the living room of her apartment. She’d had most of a bottle of wine. She was hugging the damned chunk of wood. Told me she had to save it for Jake.” Charlotte stared grimly at Jake’s empty tent. “I don’t think he cares.”

Rain began to pour down. Ben took her by one hand, then ducked into the small tent. Charlotte refused to follow—considering her attitude toward Jake, it didn’t seem right to take refuge in what passed for his home. Ben scowled up at her and tugged. “Wet and cranky or dry and cranky,” he called over the sound of the rain. “It’s your choice.”

She scrambled inside. They sat side by side on a sleeping bag atop an air mattress. She shivered, and Ben put his arm around her wet shoulders. “Relax,” he whispered. “Think about what I’m thinking about. It’ll warm you up.”

Charlotte gave in and leaned against him. “That’s an understatement. We might start to steam.”

She glanced around with gloomy curiosity. A lantern hung from the center of the ceiling supports. Various belongings of Jake’s—a mining pick, clothes, canned food—protruded from small canvas bags. She spied a closed bag.

She dragged it into her lap. It was enticingly bulky. She fiddled with the knotted ties. “What are you doing?” Ben asked sternly.

“I’m an inspector for the Boy and Girl Scouts Alumni Association.” She pointed to the ties. “Now, I’d say this square knot doesn’t meet our standards.”