Through the Evil Days: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery (Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne Mysteries) (40 page)

It was hard to sleep with all her bones hurting, and she was so tired of feeling sick. She wanted to go home. She wanted to see Meme and Pepe. She wanted to be better, like she was at Ted and Helen’s house, when she could play outside.

Far off in the darkness, she heard a dog barking.
Oscar.
Ted had been right, he was a good dog. She remembered he had scared her, but it was hard to feel the feeling, because now she felt safe, knowing he was out there, protecting her.
Good dog, Oscar,
she thought, and then she slid into sleep.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14

1.

It was a wave of cold air that woke him up. Kevin shivered, snugged the fat down comforter more closely around his shoulders, and muzzily thought,
Time for more wood
. He had woken up once already around midnight, just long enough to load the stove’s firebox and then drop back into a profound slumber. Now he tried to rouse himself enough to crawl out of his warm cocoon and brave the chilly drafts by the wood rack.

He heard a clunk, then another. The creak of the stove door. He opened his eyes. Firelight on the wood-plank floor, and the orange-red glow of coals deep in the firebox, and the shiny trim and toggles on the stove glinting. Bare feet beside the black slate tiles. Bare ankles beneath another down comforter. There was a thunk and thud—wood tossed into the box—then the door closed again. The bare feet turned and the down collapsed in a fat puff and Hadley was sitting next to him.

“Hey.” Her voice was low and sweet. She reached out and stroked the hair off his forehead. “Hey.”

“Mmm.” He smiled and closed his eyes. This was one of those dreams. He loved these.

“Move over,” she said, and he scooted back, leaving a warm place on the folded quilts beneath him. She threw her comforter half over his and slid in next to him. He sighed regretfully. Usually, she was gloriously nude. This time, for some reason, she was wearing panties and a T-shirt.

Then she put her feet on his legs.

“Christ, that’s cold!” Kevin’s eyes flew open. Hadley was lying next to him, looking at him uncertainly. He stared.
Holy shit.
It wasn’t one of those dreams. “It’s you.”

“Yes, it’s me. Who did you think it was?”

“I…” His head refused to help his mouth out. Finally he blurted, “What time is it?”

“About three.”

“Oh.” His skin was relaying messages like
warm
and
soft
and
touch.
He had to stop himself from pressing against her. His thermal tee and boxers felt ridiculously inadequate. “Hadley.” His voice was too breathy. He coughed. “What are you doing here?”

She bit her lower lip. Her lips were chapped, and he could imagine what they would feel like, a little roughness over the sinking soft. He scooted back another inch. He waited for her to say something. When she remained silent, he asked, “Is it one of the kids?”

“No.” She shook her head. “God, this is hard.”

No kidding.

“I’m not very good at relationships, Flynn. You met the guy I married. And he was a prince, compared to some of the men I fell in with. So when you came along, all sunshine and puppy dogs, I just … I couldn’t believe you were for real. Then I got to know you, and it got kind of switched around in my head, and I saw that I was the one who wasn’t real. The stuff you like about me, the stuff you say you … love, that’s not me. I mean, it is, but it’s just the surface me.” She looked at him sadly. “I’m not a very good person, Flynn.”

He laid his hand on her cheek and stroked his thumb beneath her eye. “That’s not true.”

“I’ve been … cruel to you. There’s no other way to put it.”

He shook his head. “Hadley—”

“It’s true. I’ve been like Hudson was tonight, afraid and … disappointed, lashing out at you because I knew it was safe.” She swallowed. “I want to stop reacting like a hurt child. I want to be a grown-up. I want to be able to say that was my old life, this is my new one, and it’s okay to try trusting someone again.” She turned her head and kissed his palm. He shivered. “To try trusting you.” She licked her lips. “If, you know, you still…” Her voice trailed off.

“Want you.” He could barely hear himself. She nodded. He thought about the first time they had made love, after a long, stressful day full of fear and sorrow. “I do. Want you, I mean. God, I want you.”

Before he could get out his “but” she nudged closer. “Do you?” Then her hand closed over him, stroking, and all he could manage was a groan. “Flynn,” she whispered. She pushed him onto his back and slid his thermal tee up. His brain was trying to formulate a way to say she was just running away from her emotions again, but his hands went down and yanked his shirt off. She rose over him and bent her head to the blue Celtic knot circling his left nipple. His eyes fluttered shut as she licked his tattoo, licked and bit and sucked until he was panting and jerking beneath her.

“Hadley.” His voice was a wreck. He couldn’t push her away, so he patted his hands over her hair, her bare shoulder—when had she gotten rid of her T-shirt?—her soft, smooth back. “If this is another ‘have a bad day, screw Flynn to forget’ scene—”

“No.” She moved down. Hooked his boxers and pulled and he was kicking them off even while he was trying to talk her out of it.

“Hadley.” He caught at her arms. “Don’t play me. I can’t survive it. Don’t play me.”

“Oh, Flynn.” She stretched up and slid her arms around his neck. Then he was holding her, drowning in her kiss, and he didn’t care, didn’t care that he was flayed open to her, heart and soul hers for the taking. “I’m sorry,” she whispered into his neck. “I’m so sorry I hurt you.”

He couldn’t tell if it was sweat or tears on his skin. They rolled together, under and over, touching, tasting, pressing, testing until she was astride him again, sliding over the length of him all wet and slick and he thought he would die if he couldn’t bury himself inside her.

Then he remembered. “Shit!” He could barely get the words out. “Stop. Hadley, stop. I don’t have any protection.”

She gave him a wild, reckless smile. “My sweet Flynn.” She rode him, up, down. He moaned. “Have you slept with anyone else? Since me?”

“No,” he gasped. “No.”

“I’m clean. I got tested regularly before I left California.” She leaned forward, pushing the damp hair away from his face. “You’re the only lover I’ve had since I moved to Millers Kill.”

His heart did a thump-turn. “Hadley. Oh, God.”

“You can’t get me pregnant. I had my tubes tied after Genny.” That information skittered and stung across his brain before he buried it for another time. “It’s up to you. But I want this. And I trust you.” Her face was grave, her eyes clear and bright.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“That’s why I trust you,” she whispered back.

He took her then, skin on skin, such intense pleasure it felt like his entire nervous system had short-circuited. He kept his eyes on hers as he drove her up, as she whimpered and thrashed and clenched, as she gasped out her climax. When he came, it felt like a dam bursting, and as the floodwaters receded he opened, too, and found himself sobbing against her breast while she stroked his hair as she might have done with one of her children.

“God, I’m sorry,” he said, once he had gotten himself under control.

“It just means you trust me, too.” She kissed his hair. He could hear her smiling. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell the other guys.”

The other guys. The department. The chief. The Johnson case. So much they had to talk about … then he dropped out of the world.

2.

Lyle MacAuley was starting to worry. Well, to be honest, he’d been worrying the past three days, what with Russ stranded up at Inverary Lake and the rest of the force stretched thinner than a poor man’s undershirt trying to cover the storm.

Now, parked in his squad car on the corner of Burgoyne Street, watching snow pelting down—and wasn’t that just what they goddamn needed?—he had a new and exciting problem gnawing at his guts. Where the hell were Knox and Flynn?

He had confirmation from Harlene, who had it from the Albany dispatcher, that they had left the capital at the tail end of the afternoon. There had been some noise about her ex taking the kids, but Tim had stopped by Glenn Hadley’s house last night and the old man had told him they were only going as far as the Algonquin. The Northway had shut down, making an unchristly mess; travelers stranded, cars taking “shortcuts” along impassable roads, folks crowding into shelters at the elementary school and the Baptist church. But again, Flynn’s SUV had its emergency lights. He’d have just gotten waved on by the staties.

Ignoring his doctor’s orders to cut back on his caffeine intake, Lyle took a swig from the go-cup steaming in his holder. He’d gotten maybe five hours of sleep in one of the cots downstairs in the old cell block. With another eighteen-hour shift staring him in the face, it wasn’t going to be the damn coffee that killed him.

When Knox and Flynn hadn’t shown up this morning, he’d driven himself over to the Hadley house. Knox’s grandfather was doing okay, the gas holding out in his generator, but he hadn’t seen or heard from his granddaughter since the morning before.

So where were they? With the emergency channels already stressed to the breaking point, Lyle didn’t want to piss off every other law enforcement agency by passing along a BOLO on two officers who had probably stopped at the Days Inn to wait out the storm. He swallowed some more coffee. He hadn’t gotten a squawk himself yet, miracle of miracles. Maybe he was going to get a full hour without a car accident or fire or somebody triggering their carbon monoxide alarm.

If so, he was going to take advantage of it. He wedged his coffee into the plastic cup holder and shifted into gear. The chains on his tires clanked as he ground out of the parking spot. Goddamn ice and snow. He had half a mind to retire to Sarasota, spend the winters sport fishing.

He made pretty good time into Fort Henry, considering he got stuck behind a plow and then had to detour around a street where a tree had taken out an entire stretch of power line. He stopped to check, but Huggins had gotten his Fire and Rescue guys there already, and they didn’t need his help.

He rolled to a stop in front of the Johnson house. Seeing the driveway bare, he could admit he had been hoping Knox and Flynn had come here to fill the Johnsons in on whatever new information they had dug up in Albany. Not like he knew what it was. Nobody was giving up bandwidth for an extended chat.

A woman answered the door, her face alight with hope and fear. “Mrs. Johnson? I’m Deputy Chief MacAuley. No news, I’m afraid.”

“Oh.” She stepped back, letting him into the foyer. “Dear. Well, I guess that no news is good news. Isn’t that what they say?”

A man around Lyle’s age met them in the living room and introduced himself as Lewis Johnson.

“Mr. Johnson.” Lyle tucked his cover under his arm to shake hands. “I’m sorry that I don’t have anything to tell you. I just wanted to check in since the phones aren’t working. I don’t suppose you two have heard from—”

“Nobody’s dropped by to threaten me to keep my mouth shut, if that’s what you’re getting at.” Johnson sounded bone-tired. “They don’t have to. As soon as they clear up the roads again I’m headed to Fishkill. I’m going to talk to this Tim LaMar and tell him he doesn’t have anything to fear from me. I’m not testifying.”

“What?” Lyle turned to Mrs. Johnson. She looked resigned. “That’s crazy. You might as well put out a contract on yourself. If Tim LaMar knows who you are, you’ll be dead before you make it back home to Fort Henry.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” Johnson settled his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “If it saves Mikayla, it’s worth it.”

“Look, we still don’t know for sure that LaMar is behind her kidnapping. Right now we’re concentrating on finding your daughter.”

Mrs. Johnson shook her head. “Annie isn’t organized enough to keep Mikayla hidden away for this long. Either she handed her over to someone else”—she glanced at her husband—“or she never had Mikayla in the first place.”

Lyle jettisoned the argument he had been about to make. If these folks knew what they proposed was deadly and didn’t care, his bleating wouldn’t make much of a difference. He decided to try another tack. “I realize it seems hopeless right now, but I assure you, we’ve got law enforcement all over the state looking for your granddaughter. I have absolute confidence she’ll be found and returned to you
without
dragging Tim LaMar into it.”

“
If
she’s getting her medicine,
if
she has proper medical attention,
if
you find her before her liver fails—” Johnson broke off. He took a shaky breath. “We never should have agreed to let her stay with the MacAllens.”

His wife squeezed his waist. “The FBI agents—”

“We should have told that pair to go stuff themselves. If she had been with us, she’d be safe right now.”

Lyle shook his head. “I understand you folks are feeling desperate right now. All I ask is that before you go tearing off to Fishkill, you talk with us. Hmn?” He looked at Mrs. Johnson. He figured she’d do about anything to get her granddaughter back, but she’d rather it didn’t involve her husband painting a target on his back.

“Okay,” she said. “Yes.”

“We’re gonna do everything we can to get your little girl back for you. You have my word on that.”

Johnson sighed. “We know you’re trying. And we thank you for that. It’s just…” He trailed off, but MacAuley could hear the rest of the sentence.

It’s just not enough.

3.

“Mommy?”

Hadley grunted and burrowed deeper under the covers.

“Mommy?

“Is she awake?”

“I dunno.”

Something tickled her forehead. “Go watch cartoons,” she mumbled.

“We can’t! The TVs don’t work ’cause the power’s still out!”

Hadley cracked an eye open. Genny was almost nose-to-nose, her hair falling onto Hadley’s face. “Kevin told us we couldn’t bother you until you were awake.”