One Night In Reno (7 page)

Mr. Meat and Potatoes was used to eating a lot better than they were. 

He liked his fruits and vegetables, too.  And didn’t overindulge his sweet tooth, but someday soon she was going to learn how to make an apple pie.  

After lunch, Josh ran outside to play with his new friends from next door.

Garrett owned both halves of the duplex and allowed another single mom and her three children to live there at a reduced rent in exchange for some light housekeeping.  Jenny assumed Maria was the other damsel in distress Tess had referred to.   

Jenny was just thrilled to know a housekeeper would drop in once a week.  Maria was probably thrilled to live next door to a handyman who wasn’t a creep.

Not all landlords were like Barry.

Some men simply had good hearts.

“What are you smiling about?” Garrett asked. 

“You really think this is going to work?”  They stood on opposite sides of the twin box springs and upended mattress.  He wanted her to hold it steady while he centered his back to the mattress.  “It looks heavy.”

“It is.”  He spread his arms and grabbed both sides and then bent at the waist taking the weight of the mattress across his broad back.  He turned in a slow half circle to face the bed.  Backed out from underneath and gave the mattress one final shove toward the headboard. She'd never seen anyone flip and turn a mattress in one move. 

“You've done this before.”

“I’ve had more than one girlfriend.”  He collapsed on the bed with an exhausted sigh.
             

Jenny stood over him with her hands to her hips.  She’d worked him hard this week and he wasn’t getting much quality sleep on the couch.  Still she didn’t want to think about him in this bed with other women. 

He glanced over at her.  “We can get you a pillow top mattress if it makes you feel better.”

“We could buy two twin mattresses instead,” she suggested, lying down beside him.  “The box spring already comes as two twins.  It’d be just like a hotel.”

“You want me to sleep in here with you.”  He vetoed that option with a chuckle.  “No.”

“I suppose that is a little 1950s.”

“We’ll figure it out,” he said.  “For now, I don’t mind sleeping on the couch.”

“But you shouldn’t have to.”  She propped herself up on an elbow.  “I always wanted a Murphy Bed built into the wall.  There’s plenty of wall space in the living room.”

“I suppose that’s a possibility.”  He frowned at her solution.  Maybe he didn’t want to solve their problem with separate beds.  

Maybe neither of them did.

“I need a nap while you think about it.”  She curled into his side.

He hesitated, but then wrapped his arm around her.  There was an unspoken question in his hesitation.  She answered by snuggling closer.  “Or we could solve this problem with a kiss.”

Garrett lifted his head the same time Jenny lifted hers.  At first, she thought he wasn’t going to kiss her, and then he brushed the hair from her cheek.

“What are you guys doing?”  Josh crawled right between them.

“Taking a nap,” Garrett said without embarrassment. 

“I want to take nap.”

“Since when?”  Jenny asked.

“Since now.”  Josh shut his eyes with a big grin on his not so innocent face.  Buster settled against his chest.  Garrett wrapped his arm around the three of them and Jenny fell asleep with a smile on her
lips.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“
Garrett, wake up.”  Jenny nudged him awake.  The panic in her voice disturbing dreams of summer scented skin and tangled bed sheets.  “I can’t find Josh.”

He blinked against the setting sun and sat up.  They must have been out a couple hours.  He confirmed it with his cell phone.  “Did you check next door?”

“Maria and her kids are at her mother’s.  I called and Josh didn’t finagle an invitation.  She would have asked us first.”

“Where’s Buster?”

“Do you think she could have gotten out of the yard and he went looking for her?”  Jenny paced a frantic circle.  “We have to go looking for them.”

“Hold on.  We’ll find them.”  Garrett opened an app on his phone for the GPS he’d attached to the dog’s collar.  In case Jen had decided to runaway that first night, he wanted to be able to track her.  Though he’d had an ulterior motive at the time, he was glad of it now.

Buster was definitely not in the house or yard.  She was half way to San Bernardino traveling north on I-15 at a high rate of speed.  “Call 911, now!”

Jenny stood there in a moment of shell shock before pulling out her new cell phone.  “We think our
son has been kidnapped,” Jenny said into the phone.  She gave the operator a few details and answered questions about Josh’s description.

Garrett went to the hall closet and retrieved his handgun from the lock box.

She covered the phone.  “You bugged the dog and didn’t tell me.  You keep a gun in the house and didn’t tell me—”

He offered her a look that was half promise, half apology.  “We’ll talk about it later.”  He loaded his weapon and tucked it to the small of his back. 

Jenny followed him to the Bronco.  “They want us to wait at the house.”

“Not going to happen.”  He got behind the wheel.

She repeated his words to the operator as she climbed in beside him.  “No, I’m not being kidnapped.  No, I don’t have a description of the vehicle.”  She offered a description of Barry instead.

Garrett stuck his phone to the dash and switched to hands free.  He hit speed dial as he backed out of the driveway.  “Tess, I need you, now,” he said to her voice mail.  “I think Kahn has Josh.  I’ve sent you a locator app.  The password is the same as my email.  Call us back on Jen’s phone.”  He rattled off the number.

Jenny covered her phone.  “She has your email password?”

Married a week and already arguing like an old married couple--a couple whose child was missing.  Not on his watch. 

Guilt pounded the ache in his chest.  He’d been napping on his watch.

After hanging up, he switched back to the locator app and kept one eye on it as he drove well above the posted speed limits.  Jenny relayed the information to the 911 operator.

“Hold, please,” she said to the operator.  “It’s Tess on the other line.”

“Put her on speaker.”

“Garrett?”  Tess shouted above the whump, whump, whump of chopper blades.

“We’re about fifteen minutes behind and closing.  The signal appears just outside Fallbrook, headed toward Temecula.  Do you copy?”

“Copy.  Where’s the tracking device located?” she asked.  No doubt to get a feel for the reliability of the source.  “Is it on the vehicle, the boy… an object.” 

“Dog collar.”

Tess sucked in her breath.  No doubt thinking the same thing that had crossed his mind.  This could all just be a wild goose chase.  They had no way of knowing if the boy and the dog were together.  “I’m thinking he used Buster to lure Josh into his vehicle.”  And hoping the kidnapper hadn’t separated boy from dog and dog collar. 

For all Garrett knew the collar had been tossed into the back of a truck headed north, while the kidnapper had taken Josh south of the border.  He didn’t dare share his uncertainties with Jenny right now.  All they had to hold onto was hope.  

“Got it!” Tess said.  "I’m in a helicopter headed your way.  State and local authorities are on it, an Amber Alert has been issued—”

“We’re coming up on an alert right now.”

Jenny’s head swiveled as they drove past a lighted traffic sign used to warn drivers of impending situations.  “Oh, God.  This is really happening.” 

“He may have seen the alert,” Garrett said.  “He’s turning off the Interstate onto Highway 79, headed east."  No sooner had Garrett relayed the information than the chopper appeared overhead--searchlight on as dusk turned to twilight.  Sirens blared as cruisers and unmarked cars sped past them. 

Garrett fell in behind the last cruiser in line and floored it.

“Stand down, Itch,” Tess said still on the speakerphone with Jenny.  “We’ve got this.” 

“He’s turning left down a Rural Route.” 

“Highway Patrol wants you off his tail.”

“Okay.  Hang on,” he said to Jenny.  Driving the gas peddle into the floorboard, Garrett whipped around the lagging cop car and fell in line behind the next vehicle.

“Damn it, Itch.”  Tess said before Jenny dropped the call.  And the 911 operator.

“Faster,” Jenny said.

The tail end of the Bronco spun wide as Garrett followed the convoy down a dirt road.  Blinded by the dust kicked up in the chase, an unmarked car wound up in a ditch.  Garrett swerved to avoid slamming into it as they bounced along the rutted road.  The line of cars slowed only marginally for the conditions. 

Keeping a close eye on the taillights in front of him, Garrett raced ahead of two more vehicles before grinding to a halt behind the line of stopped cars as officers headed out on foot.  Garrett and Jenny scrambled from the Bronco.

Three uniformed officers were giving chase, followed by two plain clothes agents in reflective NCIS windbreakers, while a fourth uniformed officer—female--stood next to a truck with its doors flung wide.  They could hear Buster barking and when they got near enough, they could see a small boy standing in the headlights.

“Josh!  Jenny raced toward her son.  “Thank God, you’re all right.  What were you thinking, getting in a truck with Barry?”

“He said he found Buster and just wanted to give her back...”  The rest of his story was lost in tears.

Jenny pulled her son tight.  “It’s all right, it’s all right now.”

The helicopter’s searchlight kept the fleeing suspect in sight.

Garrett noted the kidnappers path and that of the officers chasing him through the cornfield.  He cut through the field at a direct angle that would intersect.  The guy didn’t even know what hit him until he was tackled to the ground.  Garrett got in a few less than satisfactory punches before they were pulled apart.

#

Jenny watched anxiously as special agents walked Barry to an unmarked car.  Even though her former employer was handcuffed, she shivered at the way he looked at her with wild eyes.  How could she have been such a poor judge of character? 

She glanced over to the cornfield where Garrett stood talking to Tess.  He pulled the other woman into a hug and Jenny looked away.  “Get in the car,” she said to Josh.  There’d be plenty of time for poking and prodding and questions later.  Right now she just wanted to go home. 

And she only wanted to go there if it really was their home.

“Ready to go?”  Garrett opened her car door. 

“I’m not sure.”  She answered honestly.  When he turned toward the light, she noticed the bruise beneath his eye.  She brushed the side of his face near the swelling and winced for him.  “Does it hurt?”

“Nah.”  He blew off her concern.  “What did you mean you’re not sure?”
                  

“What happens when we don’t need rescuing anymore?  Because I’m thinking Josh and I are going to be okay from here on out.”

He looked down at his scuffed boot and then at her.  “You’ve never needed me, Jenny.  I’m the one who needs you and Josh, and even Buster, in my life.  Walk away from me if you want, but not today, tomorrow, or a year from now without giving us a chance.  You might not believe in luck enough to drop a nickel in a slot machine and take your chances, but I know it was my lucky day when I met you.”

“You think I don’t believe in luck?” Jenny reached into her pocket and pulled out a penny.  “Then why have I been carrying this around since the moment I met you?  And this.”  She reached into her other pocket for the twenty-dollar
bill.  “I know you dropped this on purpose.”
              “Never said I didn’t hedge my bets.”

“This,” she snapped the twenty in front of his face, “is the start of our mattress fund.  The sooner you buy me that new mattress the sooner you’ll move off the couch.”  She stuffed the bill into his front pocket, and then stumbled into him when he pulled her close.  “My hand is still in your pocket.”

“I noticed.”  His deep throaty chuckle sent a shiver all the way through her.  “I believe we were about to solve our argument with a kiss.”

“Who’s arguing?”  Jenny said close to his lips.  “I’m falling in love with you, Garrett.”

“I’m standing right here to catch you.  I love you, Jenny.” 

She’d waited seven days
for their first married kiss, but it was so worth the wait.  The ground beneath her feet shifted.  As Garrett deepened the kiss, Jenny realized he’d picked her up and put her in the car. 

“Can we go home now?”  Josh asked.

“Yes, we’re going home.”  Where more kisses were waiting.  “And Garrett is going to install alarms on all the doors and windows."

“Yes, Ma’am.”

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