Hidden Falls (68 page)

Quinn didn’t answer, though. An automated voice came on and informed Ethan that the voice mailbox he was trying to reach was full. Ethan smiled at the thought that Quinn must have finally given up his antiquated answering machine and learned to use the message feature that came with his phone service. Pacing briskly to the front door, Ethan raised the brass knocker and pushed it heavily against the door. He rang the doorbell. He knocked again. Then he circled the house, examining every window, every curtain, for any sign of occupancy or disturbance.

Nothing was different. No one was home. No one had been there.

Ethan hated to admit it, but he needed Dani.

Back in his car, he drove to her house. At least this time, he wasn’t asking for anything but a single piece of information.

Was the man in the photo the same man who came to see Quinn every year out on the lake?

Ethan’s stomach sank when he didn’t see Dani’s Jeep in her driveway, but he didn’t want to make a wrong assumption. He got out and rapped on her door. Hearing no sounds from inside the house, he knocked again, this time less vigorously.

He’d missed her already. Ethan leaned against the hood of his car and ran his hands through his hair, frustrated. Nicole would be waiting for him, and he needed to go see Lauren. It would be up to him to decide whether to discharge her or not, and he wanted to be certain. But Dani was the only person who could answer the question on his mind right now.

An engine cut off, and Ethan realized someone had parked a car in front of Dani’s house. Cooper got out of a sheriff’s department squad car. “Morning,” Ethan said.

“Morning. Let me guess. She’s not here.”

Ethan shrugged. “I guess we’re both too slow today.”

Cooper scratched his chin. “I was really hoping to make sure she got hold of herself last night. She was pretty upset the last time I saw her.”

“I heard you arrested the guy she thinks wrecked her boat.”

“Yes, but not for that. She’s steamed we don’t have enough to charge him, when she practically delivered him to our door.”

“I can see her point.”

“The law is the law.” Cooper glanced toward the house.

Ethan slid one hand into a pocket and jingled his keys in the other. He could tell Cooper about the image he caught last night. They’d been through enough the last few days that he trusted Cooper to do the right thing. So far his by-the-book personality had paid off. He had in custody the man who stole Quinn’s car, smashed Sylvia’s shop, and probably drilled a hole in Dani’s boat.

“I guess I’ll be dropping by to see your father today,” Cooper said.

“Oh?” Ethan hadn’t expected that.

“Maybe you know your father was attacked in the park a few days ago.”

Ethan did know. He saw the incident from the window in Lauren’s apartment. So did Nicole.

“The green shoes,” Cooper said. “That’s what Dani said tipped her off. And that’s the one thing your dad remembers about the guy who tried to grab his wallet. I just wish I could find a witness.”

Ethan’s gut heated. But he hadn’t seen the man clearly either. He hadn’t even noticed the green shoes.

Cooper tossed his keys up a few inches and caught them again. “Guess I’d better get to work and make sure Bobby Doerr didn’t break out overnight. Maybe I’ll see you later at the hospital.”

Cooper walked to his car without looking back. The impulse to call him back strangled in Ethan’s throat as he got in his own car. He wouldn’t hold out on Cooper—or the mayor—all day. Just a little longer. Just until he found out what he wanted to know from Dani.

Which meant he had to find Dani. Ethan didn’t have any idea who she might be working for today, but maybe it didn’t matter. She preferred to be up at the lake whenever she could. If Cooper was right about how upset Dani was last night, Ethan suspected he knew where to find her.

Ethan started his car.

When he pulled up to the cabin, he saw Dani on the pier. She wasn’t fishing, to his surprise, just standing at the end of the short platform jutting into the lake and cradling a large mug between both hands. If she heard the approach of his car, she didn’t let on. Ethan lifted his laptop off the passenger seat and closed his door as unobtrusively as he could before walking slowly toward the pier. He stood, wordless, beside Dani.

Dani sipped her coffee. “We have to quit having these early-morning meetings.”

“This shouldn’t take long,” Ethan said.

“I’m having a pretty good morning so far. Please don’t ruin it.”

“I think I took Quinn’s picture last night,” Ethan said.

Dani turned her head, expectantly.

“No,” Ethan said, “I
did
take Quinn’s picture—by accident. But there’s someone else in the frame, and I want to know if he’s the person who comes to see Quinn every year. You’re the only one who can tell me.”

She flicked her eyes down at the laptop he held in one hand like it was a book. “Show me.”

Ethan opened the computer, tapped the space bar to wake it up, and watched as the photo filled the screen before turning it toward Dani.

“I know right where that is,” she said. “And yes, it’s Quinn.”

“By the time I realized what I’d caught, he was gone,” Ethan said. “What about the other man?”

“Too short,” Dani said. “It’s hard to tell someone’s age from the back, but the guy I’ve seen is taller than Quinn.”

“You’re sure?”

“You asked a question, and I answered it.” Dani turned her eyes back to the view of the lake. “I kept telling you that when Quinn was ready, he would come home.”

Ethan closed the laptop. “Thanks for taking a look.”

“Talk to Cooper,” Dani said.

“Enjoy your morning.” Ethan didn’t commit himself.

He returned to his car and decided his next stop would be the hospital. Once he satisfied himself that Lauren was progressing well, he would go to her apartment and see Nicole. Last night she’d been eager to hear about his visit with his parents. It was a long and complicated conversation, and Ethan didn’t want to incite wild ideas by telling Nicole about his photo of Quinn. But she would be the next person he told.

He went in through the main entrance and passed the gift shop on his way to the elevators. On the second floor, he stopped at the nurses’ station to pick up Lauren’s chart, which showed nothing noteworthy. Her vitals were within normal ranges, she was eating well, she’d slept well, her pain was well managed and decreasing. Most important, the amount of fluid collecting in the drain was notably less.

Nurse Wacker swiveled in her chair to face him and removed her reading glasses. She seemed to work long shifts, and Ethan had come to expect to see her there at any time of day.

“Good morning, Dr. Jordan.”

“Good morning.”

“Dr. Glass was looking for you a few minutes ago.”

Ethan looked up from the chart. “Do you know where he is now?”

“He has office hours this morning, but he asked me to tell you he’d like to see you in the staff lounge at about five this afternoon.”

“Thank you.” Ethan closed the chart and suppressed his urge to exhale heavily. “I guess I’ll go make my rounds now.”

“Funny.” She turned back to her paperwork.

Ethan knew what Dr. Glass wanted to ask him. He just didn’t know what his answer would be.

9:40 a.m.

Nicole slept late. Two nights in the hospital waiting room and a late evening with Ethan had caught up with her, and even pulsing pain in her ankle didn’t keep her awake. She woke grateful for a solid night’s sleep in a real bed.

A week earlier Nicole was charged up to find Quinn—as soon as she took a run that turned her week inside out. She hadn’t found Quinn, and now she hobbled around in a cast on crutches and was staying in Lauren’s apartment instead of her childhood home. Waking up without Lauren in the apartment felt odd. Even though she knew Lauren was in the hospital, subconsciously Nicole expected to hear the shower start or the clink of dishes in the kitchen or one of the network morning TV shows. Instead, only an occasional street sound permeated the closed second-floor windows while Nicole got herself dressed and managed to pour herself a bowl of cereal and brew some coffee.

No matter how many times Nicole told herself to stop looking at the clock, she glanced at it again. A string of messages to people in St. Louis were still unanswered, which only aggravated her restlessness. Nicole liked excitement. She liked puzzles. Without those two traits, she wouldn’t be as good as she was in her work as an investigative reporter. But the upheaval of the last ten days had punched the air out of her, and impatience flooded the crevices of her mind. Was there a neatly typed letter awaiting her return to St. Louis—the sort of communication an employer would not trust to e-mail? Where was Quinn? Was Ethan going to repair his relationship with his parents, or was his visit with them on Sunday all there was to it?

Nicole wanted answers.

Ethan hadn’t said what time he would come by, but Nicole hoped that when he got there he would be ready to tell her whatever it was he had avoided last night. He probably thought he’d done well at controlling the conversation, of keeping her on the topic of what he’d learned about his own heritage in the space of twenty-four hours. But Nicole knew he was holding back—something about his parents or his job or she didn’t know what. But something. While she rolled in Lauren’s small desk chair, carrying a second cup of coffee, Nicole reminded herself that Ethan didn’t owe her an explanation of every detail of his life. Circumstances had thrown them together, and Nicole believed Ethan did feel something for her, but they hadn’t had a conversation that entitled her to more.

Still, Nicole’s antennae were up.

Finally, his knock came on the door, and Nicole rolled over to turn the locks. When he bent to greet her with a kiss, Nicole offered her lips without reluctance.

“How’s Lauren?” Nicole asked.

“Downright perky, I’d have to say.” Ethan set his laptop on the dining table.

“Can she come home?”

“I think we’ll wait another day before we consider that question. And I want to get one last scan.”

“Was Sylvia there? Or Cooper?”

“No.” Ethan opened his computer. “And I’m glad. They don’t need to hover over her at this point. They’ll do themselves good to do something normal.”

Nicole chuckled. “That arrest yesterday wasn’t exactly a normal day in the life of a Hidden Falls deputy.”

Ethan didn’t respond, instead absorbed in arranging his computer.

Nicole rolled up to the table. “What’s going on?”

“Something happened last night that I didn’t tell you about.”

No kidding. Nicole waited.

“Take a look at this picture and tell me what you see.” Ethan nudged the laptop toward her.

Nicole leaned in to study the screen. Less than two seconds passed before she gasped. “When did you take this?”

“Yesterday, just before sunset.”

“That’s Quinn.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We covered a lot of ground last night.”

“Not about this, we didn’t.” Nicole pushed back from the table so she could give Ethan a full-on glare.

“It was an accident,” Ethan said. “I didn’t see them in the frame when I snapped it, and I had the telephoto lens on. They weren’t even in shouting distance. By the time I realized I had it and went looking for him, they were long gone.”

Nicole’s brain sorted possibilities.

“I scoured the trails before I came here.” Ethan pulled out a chair and sat. “And when I left, I went to Quinn’s house and sat in my car for half the night. He didn’t come home.”

“Maybe you dozed off.”

“No. He didn’t come home.”

“But—”

“I went back this morning in the daylight. Nothing has changed since the night we were there.”

With her good foot, Nicole rolled the desk chair forward and backward, forward and backward. “And your theory about the other guy?”

Ethan shook his head. “I saw Dani this morning. She says it’s not the man who comes to visit Quinn every year.”

“Did she recognize who it was?”

Ethan didn’t answer. He only ran his tongue over his lips.

“Ethan?”

“I don’t think I asked that specific question.”

“Dani isn’t going to volunteer information.”

“I know.”

Nicole bit back her frustration. Ethan’s face told her he felt bad enough as it was. Obviously Quinn had a secret.

“What if Quinn broke the rules?” Nicole asked.

“Rules?” Ethan echoed.

“Of the witness protection program. They keep people safe as long as they follow the rules. But what if he broke the rules, and you caught the consequence on camera?”

“You think Quinn is in the witness protection program?”

“He could be. Maybe this other guy is keeping him from going home.”

Ethan looked doubtful but had the kindness to keep his thoughts to himself.

“Quinn came home to Hidden Falls,” Nicole said. “I don’t know why he didn’t go to his own house, but if he was out walking in a place where someone could take his picture—even accidentally—that means someone else could have seen him, too.”

“I’m going to get a few prints made and start asking some questions,” Ethan said.

“I’m coming with you.” Nicole started to roll into the hall. Her shoe was in the bedroom.

“No, you’re not.” Ethan caught the seat of her chair and impeded progress.

“Ethan.” Nicole pushed against his grasp, but he held firm.

“You have a broken ankle, Nicole. Even in a wheelchair, the trails wouldn’t be accessible. I’d be crazy to take you out there on crutches.”

“I’ll sit in the car.”

“You’ll sit here.”

“You’re not the boss of me.” She protested, but with reduced vigor.

“I promise I’ll stay in touch at every move.” Ethan squatted in front of her chair and held her gaze.

“Cooper,” Nicole said. “And Sylvia. We have to tell them.”

“I know. And I will.”

“But you’re not going to depend on them.”

“Would you?”

Ethan had her there. As an investigative reporter working on criminal stories, Nicole had been told on several occasions to step back and let professional law enforcement do what they knew how to do, but she always found a way to steer clear of official channels while also digging up her own information. The important thing was to find Quinn. They’d lost a whole night already since Ethan’s photo, and Cooper’s plate was full. What could it hurt for Ethan to show the photo around?