Love Me: The Complete Series (56 page)

Jackson snickered. “Guess I didn’t think that through very well. All I was thinking about was the right kind of movie to get you in my lap, not scare you to death when we came here. Sorry.”

“I’m a big girl. I can handle it. Besides, I took six months of kickboxing classes a year ago so if whoever’s in there goes
Deliverance
on us, I’m prepared.”

Jackson shot her a quirked brow. “Seriously? You took kickboxing?”

He acted like he didn’t believe her. “What? You don’t think I can box? I’m stronger than—”

“No, I’m just trying to imagine those long legs reaching up to snap a man’s jaw. That’d be lethal. Sexy but lethal.”

She nodded smugly. “You have no idea. Keep that in mind next time you think about pissing me off. Look, someone’s stepping out the door.” She grabbed Jackson’s bicep.

A scruffy dog with gray hair, speckled with brown, scuffed off the porch and squatted in the grass. It was followed by a man in dingy coveralls. Yep, just like one of the backwoods freaks from their movie last night. She swallowed the lump in her throat.

The man limped across the porch, his knees buckled, and he grabbed a chair, then lowered into a disjointed recline. Okay, so it was a senior citizen version of
Deliverance
. Not quite as scary.

She rose and stepped toward the house. Jackson grabbed her arm. “Hey, what are doing?”

She shot a glance at his fingers, then smiled into his eyes. “I’m going to meet our neighbor. Wanna come?”

“What if he has a shotgun up there and we startle him?” Oh brother, now
he
was getting chicken?

“No shotgun that I can see … and the guy doesn’t look like he moves fast enough to hurt a fly. Neither does his dog.”

Rover, or whatever the animal’s name, was splayed out on the grass soaking in the morning sun that splintered through the trees.

“Good point.” Jackson dropped his arm and followed Amanda.

Anticipation bubbled into her chest. Could this be Jacob Rickert? Surely he hadn’t been here all along, hidden right under their noses—on his own property. That would be too easy.

“I see you coming, whoever you are. Stop right there.” Birds bolted into the air above the house, startled by the voice. It wasn’t him. Who had called out? Where had the voice come from?

Jackson’s tap on her shoulder startled Amanda almost as much as the voice. “There’s your shotgun.” He pointed over her shoulder to a man in jeans, T-shirt, and tennis shoes standing in the trees to their right. The shotgun wasn’t aimed their way but he held it all the same just to make sure they were aware of the threat.

Amanda hesitated. The man looked to be mid-fifties or later, graying around the edges but clean-shaven and clean-dressed. The T-shirt wasn’t torn or tattered and the shoes were Nikes. Bad guys didn’t wear nice running shoes, did they? She smiled though her gut was fluttering. “Hi! We were just wandering around up here, doing a little rock-climbing, and saw the tree carvings. Our curiosity got the best of us. We didn’t mean to intrude.” She didn’t mention the climbing was yesterday.

“Where’s your ropes?”

Busted. “In our car. We haven’t really started yet.”

Jackson stood at her side. Silent. Geez, he could at least—

“Actually we climbed yesterday and saw the trees. There was a girl running around up here with a man and she screamed. It was late and my girlfriend here got spooked. We just wanted to make sure she was okay. Have you seen her? She had spiky hair and I think her name was—”

“Caroline. Her name was Caroline and she’s my daughter but she’s not here. She had to work.”

Jackson nudged Amanda forward. “I guess if she’s at work, then she’s fine. You guys live here? This is really remote.”

The man squinted but left the shotgun at his side. “That’s why we’re a little careful. Mind if I ask who you are just in case I have to ask my friend here to call the police later?”

Amanda tripped forward. “I’m Amanda Gillespie and this is Jackson Holstenar. We’re—”

“Attorneys. Or at least,
he
is. Your dad’s name is Robert, right?”

“Yes, sir.” Jackson kept walking and Amanda had no choice but to continue or get tromped.

“How is he? We were a little worried when we hadn’t heard back.”

Jackson darted a glance from the paunchy middle-aged guy to the old man on the porch who eyed them with an empty glare.

Following his gaze, the man with the shotgun grinned. “Don’t worry about him. He won’t hurt a soul. This is his place. Well, his family’s place, but the rest of them live elsewhere.” The dog lifted its head, took in the group, then dropped back to slumber.

Amanda found her voice. “Jackson’s dad had a stroke and he’s been recuperating. What were you expecting to hear back about?”

The man stepped her way and squinted again. “Robert’s in the hospital? Which one? We need to go visit.”

Jackson waved. “No, he’s at home now. He just can’t talk very well and he has to relearn a few things, mostly motor skills. He hasn’t been to work in quite a while. I’ve been sort of taking care of things until he’s able.”

“You think he will be? Able, that is. ’Cause we’re going to be in a big mess if he isn’t.”

Amanda couldn’t stand it anymore. She had to know. She pointed toward the porch. “Is that Jacob Rickert? The soldier?”

The man gasped. His eyes widened. “You know? How’d you know?”

She rolled her eyes. “We’re attorneys. Part of our job is to find people. Do you have a name, mister? You know ours but we don’t have yours.”

“Sorry about that. My name is Bob Levy Sanders. I’m a—”

Amanda gasped. No way. She strode forward and searched the man’s face. “Oh my God, you’re Bob Levy.”

Jackson snickered. Okay, the man had said that part but what he hadn’t said was, “You’re the journalist who did that big piece on war veterans in
Time Magazine
a few years ago. It was amazing, made me cry.”

Bob Levy leaned the shotgun against a tree and nodded. His face broke into a smile. “Thank you. It took a few years to put together. It was my wife’s passion. I can’t really blame her after what happened to her dad.” He hooked a thumb toward the porch.

“So he
is
Jacob? And you’re his … son-in-law?”

Bob didn’t acknowledge. “When she became ill, I had to force myself to finish. We’d looked for him for years and the entire process led us to so many different men who’d dealt with all sorts of hardships.”

“You told the stories well. All those men who’d done so much for our country and they were practically indigent when they returned.”

Bob motioned for them to follow him as he turned toward the house. “Many of them were. Jacob, here, was one of the worst. His head injury—”

Amanda threw a hand over her mouth. The article had told a story of a man with several wounds from shrapnel, the worst of which had required surgery to remove a piece of metal lodged in his skull. “Oh my God, he’s patient R? The man in your story with no last name?”

Jackson had been silent, trying to understand. “Patient R? What are you talking about?”

Amanda whirled around. “There was a man who returned from Korea with a serious head injury. He has a metal plate in his head. They did four surgeries to piece his face together and two to remove shrapnel in his head, hip, and leg but he survived. Unfortunately, no one knew who he was. His dog tags were lost at the hospital and everyone knew him only as Jacob R.”

Bob’s eyes clouded as he listened. “You have a good memory. I wrote that article five years ago. It took my wife and me two years to find out which hospital he’d ended up in. Then there was another two months of searching to find out where he went from there. When we located the mental hospital, we were relieved. At least someone who knew something about his injury was with him.”

Jackson finally put the pieces together. “But he didn’t stay there. He walked out.”

Bob smiled. “Yeah, he walked out without anyone even noticing. My Carol was fit to be tied. Her dad, a war hero, wandering around in the streets alone with no one to care for him. We didn’t sleep for days. She called every police station within five hours of the hospital. Oklahoma. Texas. She even called a couple in Louisiana.”

Amanda trudged up the steps after Bob, who placed a hand on the old man’s shoulder and squeezed. She waved into the quiet eyes. “Hi.” He didn’t respond, just touched Bob’s hand and closed his eyes.

Bob walked in the house and held the door for them to follow. They did. When the screen banged shut behind, Amanda sighed. “Where’d he end up?”

Bob pulled a coffee container from the fridge, pried off the lid, and scooped some brown grounds into a pot. “That’s the amazing part. He was right here. He walked his ass all the way from that mental hospital to this damned cabin in the woods. Can you believe that? The man can’t remember a damn thing about his family or the war, but he found this house.
His
house.”

Amanda felt tears welling up in her eyes. “He grew up here?”

Bob filled the pot with water and placed it on the stove. When the blue flames burst up to warm the pot, he turned their way and shook his head. “No, this is where he and his wife spent their honeymoon. Of all the places he’d been in the world, this place was the only one he could remember well enough to get back to. Makes you want to cry.”

Damn right. Amanda sucked in a breath and willed herself to be calm. God, she hated being such an emotional rollercoaster rider.

“How romantic,” Jackson said. He clutched her shoulders and squeezed.
The tears flowed.

Jacob Rickert—patient R. A man who’d saved more than half his unit by acting as a human decoy to draw troops away as they searched for a way out of an ambush. He’d been practically blown to bits before they were able to save him. Several of the men with him hadn’t been so lucky but he’d managed to save more than were lost.

Then he returned home, destined to a life of mental illness with no identity and no family to care for him. Until a strange woman showed up at the hospital saying he was her lost husband. She’d given up on him and married again, only to find him alive. He’d been declared dead at home, and on the battlefield. She escorted him away and he wasn’t seen again for years. He showed up at the mental hospital years later. It took months for them to realize his wife had died and he was alone and disoriented. They’d searched for family with no luck.

Then he walked out and no one bothered to attempt to find him. According to the magazine, he had simply disappeared.

“You found him.”

Bob nodded. “Yep. Those carvings on the trees? It was how Carol’s mom would search for him. The poor woman couldn’t leave him alone for more than a few hours or he’d start walking and trying to find her. They started this game. One of them would put
Find me
on first one tree, then another in order to leave a trail. When the other would finally locate the missing spouse, she’d put
Found you
. After a while he’d stick with the trees and not run away. Eventually he carved other things into the trees. You probably saw them.”

Amanda’s throat had closed up but she nodded.
Love me? Love you
.

Oh God.

Jackson’s breath brushed warmly against her ear. “Are you okay?”

Water streamed down her cheeks. She nodded, then changed it to a head shake. No, she wasn’t okay. Her heart ached for a man who’d lost so much.

The teapot, ancient as the house, whistled. “You guys want some coffee? I don’t have tea but most people prefer coffee in the morning anyway.”

Jackson clutched Amanda tightly. “We’d better go, sir. Listen, with my dad ill, I need to talk to you about a contract he was working on before he went into the hospital. Do you know about it?”

Bob nodded. “Yes. The archeological study.”

“That’s right. We can’t close on this contract until we have that cleaned up. Do you know what it’s about?”

Bob nodded. “It’s about Jacob. Everything is about Jacob. And Caroline, of course.”

“We have to go see my dad.” Jackson was missing something. “I think he didn’t want this deal to go through.”

Amanda’s face had dried and she looked exhausted but still beautiful as ever. She nodded.

Jackson thought he had it figured out. The archeological thing didn’t make sense but stalling on the property so the family could enjoy their last days with their war hero grandfather made sense. Why force the man out of his home and uproot his stability after such a hard-fought battle to obtain said stability? The man deserved more. He deserved to live in a real home with his entire family around him. His wife, his children, his grandchildren, and a thousand pets. Unfortunately he had lost much of that so this was the next best thing.

On the porch Amanda futilely attempted to neaten herself. These past few weeks with her had intensified every miniscule bit of affection Jackson had. Before, she’d stayed at arm’s length, keeping her emotions sanely intact. He liked her emotional insanity better. She tossed her head back and flapped her hands in an effort to blow-dry her tear-stained face.

So fricking cute.

“What’s the big deal in waiting?” She stepped off the porch and he followed.

“According to David, the client has several contracts that are backed up until this deal is done. They stand to lose money if things don’t move.”

He waved at the two men and stepped over the sleeping dog. A lot of good that mutt would do if an intruder showed.

The hound lifted his head and Amanda ran her hand over the dog’s ears as she passed. “Why don’t they just go somewhere else? It’s not like there isn’t a lot of other land available.”

That was what he wondered too. “I know. I don’t get it. That’s why I need to talk to Dad. You don’t mind if we go by there on the way back?”

She tripped over a stump. “You mean to your parents’ house?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh, I, should probably go do some laundry or something.”

Jackson laughed and turned to peer into her eyes. “You’re afraid of them. Admit it. You made an ass of yourself at dinner that night and you thought you’d never have to face them again.”