Truth and Consequences (21 page)

An hour before dawn, Jason donned his army sweats and running shoes. He couldn’t handle the waiting anymore. Ignoring the protest in his side, he set off down the road, loose gravel grinding and crunching under his feet. He should be thinking ahead, planning a way out if Jim Ed tried anything, but all he could focus on was the sound of Kathleen’s whispered “I love you”.

Just remembering the words slammed warmth into his chest. She loved him.
Kathleen Palmer
saying she loved him. How many times had he fantasized about that?

Was it real? She’d whispered the words with passion exploding between them, with fear hanging around them. Maybe it wasn’t real, but he wanted it to be with a desperation that scared him. He couldn’t see how it could be, though. He’d lied, shown her only what he could. Was that enough for her to love?

I love you, Jason.

With her breathy whisper, answering words had leapt to his lips and he forced them back. He’d fallen, hard, for the real Kathleen—not the shining icon of his youth. He wanted the flesh-and-blood woman, the one who sparkled with energy and grace and used a tough exterior to hide any softness from the world. He loved her.

He just couldn’t say it. Right now, what could he offer her? The uncertainty of his future? More of the fear that had gripped them last night? No way. That wasn’t the foundation he wanted for a relationship. Better to wait until his life wasn’t a shifting pile of sand under his feet. See if she could love the real Jason Harding.

His feet pounded against the road, jarring his side, a perfect backdrop for the uncertainties whirling in his head. So much remained that he didn’t know about her, either. Her marriage, the loss of her son, what she wanted out of life. Too easily, his vision of their future stretched before him like the endless country road—marriage, wrapped in the security of their love, children, a home. A real home, something he hadn’t really had, although he knew his mother had tried her damnedest to give him one.

A son. Kathleen had had a son. Would she want a child with him? The thought of making her pregnant, giving her his baby, shot a thrill through him, frightening in its intensity. But hell, what did he know about being a father? He didn’t have any models to follow—his own father who’d disappeared from his life overnight, leaving only fuzzy memories, his mother’s tears and overwhelming poverty. Jim Ed’s father. Yeah. He wanted to be like Uncle Jimmy, browbeating and diminishing his children to nothing.

Guess he knew where Jim Ed got his parenting skills.

Best not to think about Kathleen and babies.

Should have thought about that last night, genius, and remembered the damn condom.

Wiping sweat from his face, he groaned and turned toward home. What if he’d already made her pregnant? Not the smartest thing he’d ever done, letting his need to touch her overwhelm his common sense. All he’d been able to focus on was her presence, her hands on him, and how damned much he
needed
her, how much he wanted to lose the horror and fear in her.

God, what if he’d made her pregnant and he didn’t come out of this? The idea of Kathleen in his mother’s position, raising a child alone, made him ill. He didn’t want that for her. Didn’t want her to face the debilitating worry, the derision heaped on his mother by her family, his Uncle Jimmy most of all. Didn’t want his child to be an outcast.

It wouldn’t happen. Not from one time. Never mind he’d been conceived during one of those “just one time” deals. It wouldn’t happen.

But he had to come out of this alive.

Just in case.

The early sun cast fingers of light through the woods in front of the trailer, spilling reds and golds on the damp grass. The light dispelled the fears from the night like mist burning off under the heat of morning. If Jim Ed suspected him, he wouldn’t have waited to get rid of him.

He walked toward the trailer, his chest and side burning with exertion, but the tension leaving his body. Relief trembled in his fluttering muscles. Hell, he’d scared Kathleen, too. Doubt she’d slept any more than he had.

Maybe Calvert had been able to reassure her.

He frowned at the thought. Damn it, he’d never been a jealous guy—it smacked too much of insecurity—but he’d developed a sense of possessiveness where Kathleen was concerned. As long as she didn’t see it, he was probably okay. He grinned. She wouldn’t appreciate it, he didn’t think.

He jogged up the front steps. Coffee. He needed caffeine and some food. Anything but Rice Krispies. The day stretched before him, an empty expanse without Kathleen.

What were her normal Sundays like? Probably church with her parents, huge Sunday dinner, lazy afternoon by the lake. Wanting curled through him, the need to just
be
with her.

The unlocked door swung inward and the smell of well-oiled leather hit his nostrils. Adrenaline flooded his suddenly tense muscles and he froze, one foot in the door, his heart pounding a desperate rhythm against the walls of his chest. Nerves jumped in his stomach, huge vulture-sized butterflies fluttering and bumping around.

He stared down the barrel of a forty-caliber handgun.

“Oh, shit.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Malicious satisfaction filled Jim Ed’s taunting voice. His gun belt, duty pistol in the holster, gleamed in the dim light. Jason swallowed a curse. Stupid, careless…damn it, he should have
known
. “And I hope you have hip boots, boy, because you’ve stumbled into it deep this time.”

A deep, cold evil glittered in Jim Ed’s eyes and fear wrapped clammy fingers around Jason’s insides. He knew that look, had seen the remnants in his cousin’s eyes the day those boys had died.

He’d just never expected to face it himself. Not really.

Now he faced more than his irate cousin. He faced the man whose only intent was to see Jason dead.

Curled in Tick’s leather armchair, Kathleen sipped her third cup of coffee and glared at the phone. Altee slumped on one end of the couch, eyes closed and, from the bedroom, the sounds of Tick dressing filtered into the living room—drawers closing, soft whistling, the thud of shoes being dropped on the wood floor. She wanted to scream at his casual cheerfulness.

She wanted to throttle Agent Falconetti for not calling.

She wanted Jason.

Tick’s bedroom door opened and he stepped into the living area, his hair damp. “Did you leave me any coffee?”

“Plenty.” She waved a hand toward the kitchen and directed a glower at the back of his head. Sooner or later she’d make him pay for this. Maybe help Lynne convince everyone in the county he was gay. Hide his damn cigarettes when he was having a nicotine fit. Tell his mother and hers he
really
wanted help to find a nice girl so he could settle down and have babies.

He returned with a mug bearing the BASS logo. He reached for the Sunday paper lying on the coffee table.

The phone rang.

Kathleen jumped, her heart jerking upward into her throat.

Coffee sloshed over his mug and he cursed, setting the mug down and grabbing the phone. “Hello?”

He closed his eyes, his body relaxing. “Hey, Barbara. What’s up?”

His sister-in-law. The urge to scream built in Kathleen’s throat again.
Damn it, Barbara, get over it. Get over Del and the separation and over this weird fascination you have with Tick. He’s not interested. Get off the damn phone!

“He did
what
?” Anger tightened Tick’s jaw. Even Kathleen could hear Barbara’s panicked squawking. Tick sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Okay. We’ll find him. I can’t leave right now…I
can’t
, Barb, I’ve got something going on here. I know. I know. I’ll call dispatch, put out a bulletin. Let me
go
, so I can do it. I’ll call you.”

He hit the disconnect bar. “Son of a bitch.”

“What?”

“Blake decided to sneak out of the house and take Barbara’s car for a joyride. She doesn’t know how long he’s been gone.” He punched numbers with a savage finger. “That boy needs a father. I ought to kick Del’s ass for taking off to Atlanta like that.”

She frowned. “Does Blake have his license?”

“No. I’m going to—” He bit the words off. “Roger, it’s Tick. I need you to put a bulletin out. Late model Toyota 4-Runner. White. If it wasn’t stolen, would I be asking you to…oh, hell, Roger, just do it! Yeah. My nephew Blake should be driving it. He’s fifteen, about five ten, slight build. Whoever finds him, hold him until I get there. Got it?”

He slung the receiver back into the cradle and jumped to his feet. “I swear, if it’s not raining, it’s pouring. Last week, he got into a fight at school. What is it with that kid?”

“We did the same thing,” Kathleen said, drawing her knees up, glad to have the distraction. “You’d had your license two days and we took your daddy’s truck down that old dirt road by the lime mine.”

He shot her a lopsided grin over his shoulder. “You convinced me to let you drive. Put the damned thing in the ditch. Cried when your daddy got there, too. He was convinced it was all my fault. You got off with a good talking to and I spent a month working in a tobacco field as punishment.”

Footsteps rattled across the back porch. Kathleen rose and moved toward the door with Tick. One hand on the butt of his holstered gun, Tick swung the door open. The two teenagers standing on the porch blinked at him.

One had the dark coloring, straight nose and stubborn jaw that marked him as a Calvert. The other had sandy hair and fearful blue eyes, but his chin drew Kathleen. She frowned. She knew that chin and something familiar about the shape of his eyes nudged at her mind.

Tick clenched the door’s edge until his knuckles whitened. “Blake, son,” he said, anger trembling in his voice, “you are in a load of trouble. What were you thinking?”

“Uncle Tick, chill a minute, would you? It’s important—”

“Chill? You stole your mother’s car! And you want me to chill out?”

“You said you’d always listen to me if—”

“Sir, it’s my fault.” The other boy stood straighter. “I called Blake and asked him to come get me.”

Tick turned a glare on him. “Really? Blake, what have I told you about letting people lead you into things?”

“Uncle Tick! Shut up and listen!”

Kathleen stifled an inappropriate smile at Tick’s outraged expression. The skin around his mouth pale, he stepped back, arms over his chest. “Delbert Blake, this better be darned good.” He turned a narrow-eyed look on the other boy. “Just who are you, son?”

He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing in his thin throat. “Jamie Reese. And you’ve got to stop my dad because he’s going after Uncle Jason.”

Jim Ed grabbed a handful of Jason’s hair and jerked his head back, forcing him to look up at Thatcher. Both men smiled with sick satisfaction. Jason stared at his cousin through narrow eyes, hatred and disgust boiling in his aching chest.

“Stupid.” Jim Ed flung Jason’s head back and let go of his hair. “Just like your old man. Always wanting to do the right thing, the
lawful
thing. I shoulda known.”

“You look just like Alex.” Thatcher made the observation as though commenting on the weather. He rubbed a thumb over his jaw and eyed Jason. “Talk big like him, too. At the end, though, he begged for his life like all the others.”

The breath strangled in Jason’s lungs.

His father. He hadn’t abandoned them.

He’d been killed. For wanting to do the right thing.

And the same man wanted Jason dead, too.

“Crooked sumbitch.” He pushed the words past swollen lips.

Thatcher’s thick brows lowered in an ominous frown and he nodded at Jim Ed. Jason watched with queasy, disconnected fascination as his cousin pulled the three-cell Maglite from his belt and swung the heavy flashlight down to connect with Jason’s forearm. A nauseating wave of numbness moved up his arm, followed immediately by an excruciating sledgehammer of agony.

Thatcher leaned over him, chuckling. “Now, boy, do you want to tell me what you told Palmer and Calvert?” he asked in his best good-old-boy voice. “Or do you want to play some more games?”

“Go to hell.” Jason gasped for air, his jaw clenched in an effort to avoid screaming from the pain radiating up his arm.

With a long-suffering sigh, Thatcher shook his head and nodded at Jim Ed. “Hit him again.”

Impatience thundered with Kathleen’s pulse. Tick dragged the two boys into the kitchen, attempting to get the story out of them, with both boys talking over each other at once.

He pointed a finger at Blake. “You, hush.” The finger turned on Jamie. “You, talk.”

The boy swallowed, his thin shoulders hunched under the Haynes-Chandler High School T-shirt he wore. “I got up early to run before chores. I wanted to go out for cross country, but Daddy doesn’t like me being at school late for practice.”

Kathleen pressed her lips together, biting her tongue to keep from telling him to hurry up. He had the twitchy look of a scared rabbit, ready to bolt at any second.

“All right.” Tick nodded, his voice holding infinite patience. “Go on.”

“I let myself back in the house after I fed the dog. I thought I’d have time to take a shower and my dad wouldn’t ever know I’d been out.” He rubbed his palms down his gray sweatpants. “He was in the kitchen on the phone. I ducked into the laundry room so he wouldn’t see me. He was talking to Mr. Bill. You know, the sheriff.”

“What did he say, Jamie?”

“He was really mad. I could tell from his voice. You know, the way he talks when one of us doesn’t do what we’re supposed to the first time. He gets all low and growly and then he starts cussing.” Jamie drew in a deep breath. “Anyway, I couldn’t move. He was going on and on about Uncle Jason, that he was a traitor and an undercover cop and a whole lotta other stuff, about him and…”

His voice trailed away, and he darted a quick look in Kathleen’s direction. “He talked about you the way he talks about my mom. He calls her…he talks to her real ugly and makes her cry. She-she don’t deserve that.” His hands clenched at his sides, knuckles white. “And I can’t do anything about it.”

Kathleen met Tick’s shuttered gaze and fought back a wave of fear. Damn the regulations. They should have put Jason’s safety first.

Tick passed a hand through his hair. “Jamie, how do you know he’s gone after Jason?”

“Because he said he was. He told Mr. Bill they’d have to take care of him now. He said he’d go get him.”

“Son, this is really important. What time was this?”

“About six-thirty.”

Oh, God, please.
It was almost eight. An hour and a half. Her mind crowded with images of everything that could happen in that time. Altee’s gripped her hand with cool fingers and Kathleen glanced at her partner. With her other hand, Altee rubbed Kathleen’s back, a silent source of support.

“There’s a code on the phone at home so we can’t call out without it. He won’t let any of us have it; we have to ask him to put it in for us.” A note of panicked apology invaded Jamie’s voice. “I had to wait and make sure he was gone, then I ran to the gas station out on the highway. I ran as fast as I could, but I didn’t know who to call. It’s not like I could dial 9-1-1.”

“He called me,” Blake said, his voice quiet. “We’ve been buddying around at school since we took Mrs. Hatcher’s drama class together last fall. Kept it quiet because we knew his daddy would have a duck, and I figured you would, too. I guess he thought you could help, since I brag on you so much—”

“All the time,” Jamie finished for him. “Uncle Tick this, Uncle Tick that. Like you’re danged Superman or something.”

Tick looked as dazed as Kathleen felt. He wrapped a hand around Blake’s nape. “You did good, kid, but I wish you’d called me immediately.”

Blake shrugged away from his hold. “Yeah, but then I wouldn’t have gotten to drive Mama’s car.”

“We’ll talk about that later. I see a lot of yard work at Grandma’s in your future. Jamie, I need you to tell us where your dad might have taken Jason.”

Jamie took a step back, shaking his head. “Not until my mom and my sisters are safe.”

Tick looked at Kathleen, then at the boy. He reached out a hand, and Jamie flinched away, suspicion darkening his eyes. The mulish set of his chin punched Kathleen in the chest. He had Jason’s chin.

“Jamie,” Kathleen said, keeping her voice soft and even, “we have to find him. You know that. And you’re the one who can tell us where to look.”

“I know.” His voice shook and he blinked, a suspicious glitter in his eyes. “I like Uncle Jason. He’s a good guy and I don’t want anything to happen to him. But I
can’t
tell you until I know Mama and the girls are safe. Mama…Daddy hits her. Not where it’ll show or anything, and he doesn’t hit the girls yet, but…I can’t. Not until they’re out of the house. Don’t you see? I have to take care of them.”

Tick nodded. “Okay. We can do that right now.” He pulled his cell phone from his belt and handed it to Kathleen. “Call Botine. Have him send someone to get Stacy and the girls. And tell him we need the helicopter on standby.”

She did, keeping the conversation as brief as possible and listening to Tick talk with Jamie at the same time. He did so with a patience she found admirable, because hers was long gone.

She handed Tick the phone. “Where?”

“Probably Thatcher’s home.”

“Oh, Lord.” Thatcher’s house nestled into a hundred acres of heavily wooded land, the entire compound surrounded by a state-of-the-art security fence. Besides the primary residence, there were various outbuildings and a huge pond. Her throat ached with tears. “Tick, how are we going to find him?”

“We’ll find him.” He glanced at Altee. “Price, I hate to ask, but I can’t leave these two alone.”

“Reduced to babysitting.” Altee’s smile was strained and Kathleen knew it was more for the boys’ benefit than hers. Altee’s mission here could be as deadly as Kathleen and Tick’s, if Jamie’s absence had been discovered and the Haynes County boys were looking for him. “Get moving.”

“Thank you.” Kathleen moved to embrace her partner.

“He’ll be fine.” Altee tightened her arms for a moment and pushed her toward the door. “Go find him.”

In Tick’s truck, Kathleen fumbled with her seatbelt. Disjointed prayers flooded her mind, jumbling with the fears already rolling around.
Lord, please don’t let it be too late. Let us find him. Watch over him. Please.

Frightened tears spilled over her lashes and she brushed them away with shaking fingers. They would find him. They had to. She couldn’t face losing him, too, not after he’d reawakened her.

She drew in a deep, steadying breath and tried to pull her reserve around her. Right now, the cop had to win out over the woman. She had to keep it together. The situation would be god-awful ugly, no matter what, and Tick would need steady backup, not a distraught liability.

Tick drove with one hand, taking the curves with skillful speed and familiarity. His other hand held the cell phone to his ear and Kathleen listened as he called in every favor he’d ever earned. In her lap, she curled her hands into tight balls, fingernails biting into her palms. They would need those favors.

He dropped the phone on the seat between them. “Botine and Stanton are up in the chopper, looking for Harding’s truck. It’s not at his trailer, so it’s a good bet if we find that piece of junk, we’ll find Harding.”

Watching the trees blur past, Kathleen hoped he was right and that it wasn’t already too late.