Passion to Protect (8 page)

“Liane,” Em interjected, reaching for her, then pausing to eye the sheriff critically. “Is that true? You blew her off when she called you?”

Looking a decade older than usual, the sheriff shook his head and sighed, his gray eyes suspiciously damp behind his glasses. “Yeah, I guess it’s fair to say I did. I’ve always figured Deke could handle just about anything the backcountry threw at him. I couldn’t believe there was real trouble.”

Liane turned away and rubbed her aching temples. So far she’d refused to allow the doctors to give her more than a quick once-over or do anything that would take her away from her daughter for even a minute.

“I was wrong, Liane,” Sheriff Wallace admitted. “And you have no idea how torn up I am about it. You know Deke is—he was the best friend I have. But there was something I didn’t know then. Something I have to tell you.”

“About Mac, you mean?”

“So you know?” he asked.

“I saw him with my own eyes.”

He nodded, his gaze sliding toward Kenzie. “Is she going to be all right?”

Liane managed a tight nod. “The doctors think so. But they’ll keep her overnight, at least, to monitor any swelling in her airways.”

“The doctors here’re real good,” he hastened to assure her. “But right now, we need to talk. Just the two of us, in private, where we won’t disturb her.”

She stiffened, alarm blasting through her system. “You haven’t come to tell me Cody—that he’s—”

“I swear I don’t have any news other than we’ve got people in the air and on the ground—and best of all, you’ve got Jake Whittaker out there looking for him. If anybody can get your son home safely, I’d put my money on it being him.”

“You aren’t just saying that to make me feel better?”

“I figure nothing can make you feel better right now, short of having both your kids safe in your arms. But there are things we need to talk about, things that can’t wait. So could you come with me for a few minutes, just down the hall here?”

“I can’t.” She squeezed her daughter’s hand.

“Go ahead, Li,” Em said. “I’ll stay with her as long as you need. And I promise, I’ll come find you if anything changes.”

Head aching, Liane gave in and followed Sheriff Wallace down the corridor and around a corner, to a door marked Family Room. Staring at the sign, she froze, remembering another room just like this, where she and her father had been taken years before when her mother had died of her injuries following a one-car accident. Liane hadn’t been much older than Cody when it had happened.

“What’s the matter?” the sheriff asked her.

“This is where they take people to give them the worst kind of news.”

He opened the door and gestured toward a space not much different from a living room, with an overstuffed sofa, a few chairs and a patterned rug. There was even a small TV. “Not right now it isn’t,” he said, his voice grandfatherly. “Right now it’s just a quiet place for us to talk. I promise. Now, why don’t you have a seat? Make yourself comfortable.”

As she sank down on the sofa, she felt an icy flutter in her stomach. She managed a few sips of coffee, but the warm liquid couldn’t touch the coldness spreading through her.

The sheriff took a wingback chair and leaned forward to say, “I need you to tell me everything, starting with what happened with your daddy.”

Her breath hitched. “The rescuers found him?”

His mouth pressed in a somber line, Harry Wallace nodded. For nearly forty years the two men had met for breakfast every Wednesday. It had been a ritual both of them held sacred.

“His body was recovered.” His voice softened. “Now tell me, Liane, what do you know about how he died?”

She shook her head, hot moisture burning her eyes. “Jake—Jake found him, but he did his best to keep me from seeing. All I can say for sure is...there was so much blood, and I couldn’t find my children. I called and I called them, but—”

“Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? Tell me everything that happened after our conversation last night.”

For the next twenty minutes Liane spoke woodenly, as if she were recounting a movie she’d seen last week, a story that had nothing to do with the children who were her life, the father who had been her refuge, and Jake Whittaker, her first love and a man who owed her nothing, yet had risked everything to help her. She knew from past experience that the numbness wouldn’t last, that eventually she would be forced to deal with the rage, the grief, the devastation—that all of it would send her crashing to the bottom of the well she’d spent years crawling out of.

Except that this time she couldn’t imagine finding the strength to climb out on her own.

* * *

Panting with exertion and slick with ash-streaked sweat, Jake fought his way toward Misty’s barking. As he pushed through thick brush, some thorny horror snagged his artificial leg and sent him sprawling, the prosthesis twisting painfully below his natural knee.

As he struggled to reposition the leg and get up, it sank in that he’d been deluding himself, imagining he could rehab and retrain to the point where he could once more lead his team into the backcountry. It was a goal he’d shared with no one, one so daunting that he barely allowed himself to consciously consider the possibility. Up until today, he’d thought he was making progress, getting to the point where he could do the work he had been born for instead of being sentenced to spend the rest of his life consulting Russian dictionaries for his dry-as-dust translations.

But his disappointment at this reality check was nothing compared to the knowledge that his limitations could cost Liane her son’s life.

“Like hell,” Jake grunted as he strained his muscles to push himself upright. Wincing each time he put weight on the bruised stump, he forced his way through a ravine so smoke-charged, he hacked until he saw stars.

If Cody was down here, he realized, he had to be dead already, but when he choked out Misty’s name, her barking led him up the other side and out, where he finally spotted her standing atop a rock. Her head was low and her shaggy gray hair singed in several places, but she wagged her tail and licked at the air when she saw him.

“Cody?” he called, but there was no answer, and he saw no sign of the missing boy. His gut clenched with the thought that the boy might have gotten separated from the dog—or that she’d abandoned his small body, her instinct leading her to the relative safety of this rocky knob.

“Come on, girl. Come here,” he called, voice breaking. But the big shepherd only whined and spun in circles, forcing him to climb.

He had nearly reached her when he spotted what appeared at first to be a pile of rags partly tucked beneath a ledge.

“Cody!” Jake shouted, his eyes stinging as he hobbled over and knelt, ignoring the pain, to shake the boy’s shoulder. “Cody, I’m here now. Everything will be okay.”

Though Cody didn’t respond, his flesh was warm, thank God, and he was breathing.

“We’re getting you out of here,” Jake promised, grimacing as he picked up the eight-year-old...

And wondered how he would ever manage, with the added burden of the boy’s weight, to make it to the ridge.

* * *

“They were supposed to warn me,” Liane insisted. “They promised they would call me if he were ever released—and especially if he escaped. He’s found ways to threaten me from prison. He’s obsessed with the fact that I testified against him—as if I was going to keep my mouth shut after he kicked in a door and shot me. That’s why I finally gave up my job and moved back home last fall.”

The sheriff cleared his throat, his gaze troubled. “Have you changed your number recently?”

She shook her head, then stopped, eyes widening. “I did get rid of my old landline when we came here, but they had my cell, too. Do you think this is my fault? That if I’d updated their records, my father would still be—”

“There’s blame enough to go around,” he admitted with a deep frown. “The Victims Services people faxed my office. But there was a mix-up and the fax got lost. I’m so sorry.”

“You’re
sorry?
” She rose from the sofa, knocking over the cold dregs of her coffee as she glared into his face. “Mac
murdered
my father. And for all I know my son and Jake could both be...”

Though she couldn’t force the word out, her mind screamed it.
Dead!

“God help me, I know, Liane, and I’m not here to make excuses. But it didn’t help that the Nevada people had it wrong, too. They have solid forensic evidence that McCleary was with the others when they killed an elderly homeowner not far from the prison, and they were tracking the use of the victim’s credit cards and cell phone. I’m sure they’ll want your statement—and probably Jake’s and the kids’, too—for confirmation, because everything pointed to the fact that all four men were heading south together, probably for the border.”

She shook her head. “They’re looking in the wrong place if they think Mac went anywhere near Mexico. He’s here—probably still in Elk Creek Canyon. I hope—I hope that murdering lunatic burns to ashes.”

Stifling a moan, she clapped her hand over her mouth, the thought of Mac’s fate an all too visceral reminder that her son was still out there, too. “What if—” she asked, her voice strained with terror, “what if Mac finds Cody before Jake does?”

Harry reached for her, but she turned away from his touch. He sighed, then said, “Jake will keep him safe if anybody can.”

“What if no one can?” She shook her head. “My father couldn’t.
I
couldn’t. What if—”

“Stop, Liane. This isn’t helping.”

She speared him with a desperate look. “
Nothing’s
helping.”

“Maybe not,” he conceded, “but whatever happens, your daughter needs you right now. She needs you to stay strong.”

She nodded, wishing there was someone, anyone, left to tell her how.

“There’s something else you should know,” said the sheriff. “Last night I stopped by the ranch. The power was out from the storm, but everything else looked just fine. Except for the old bunkhouse—the place was torn to pieces.”

“Jake’s place? That doesn’t make sense. Mac’s never even met Jake. I can’t imagine he even knows his name.” Certainly she’d never brought up her old boyfriend to her husband, had barely allowed herself to think of the love she’d left behind. “Besides, how could Mac have broken into Jake’s cabin? He was in the canyon at the same time we were.”

“You’re right. He couldn’t have. Which means that more than likely he’s brought along at least one of his fellow escapees. Somebody must have stayed behind to do the damage.”

“But why wreck
Jake’s
place?” Confusion spun through her mind, but try as she might, she couldn’t pluck the strands of logic from the maelstrom. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Usually, when places are tossed the way this one was, someone’s looking for something. Drugs. Or money.”

“Jake’s no addict. I’d swear to it. And I can’t imagine him having a lot of cash lying around. Besides, if that’s what they were after, why not break into the big house?”

Harry Wallace shrugged. “Could be the alarm deterred ’em. Or maybe they were interrupted.”

“I still don’t understand it.”

Harry’s gaze was deeply troubled. “I can’t explain it, either. But I swear to you, Liane, I’ll figure this out.”

Before she could respond, someone rapped at the door so insistently that they both jumped to their feet. In a moment Em stepped inside, her face flushed.

“Is it Kenzie? Is she all right?” Liane asked.

“She’s fine, just resting. It’s Cody—he’s been found. They’re airlifting him straight here.”

“Oh, thank God. But—” Liane could barely force the questions out, she was so frightened of the answers. “Is he alive? Hurt? And what about Jake?”

Em shook her head. “All I heard is they’re administering first aid on the copter. And first aid means you’re alive, right? They wouldn’t give Cody first aid if he were—”

“Let me go find out,” the sheriff said as he hurried to the door. “I’ll be back as soon as I’ve got something to report.”

Knees shaking too hard to support her, Liane sank back down on the sofa and prayed that whatever news he brought her would be something she could bear.

Chapter 7

J
erking awake, Jake instinctively reached down, his mind catapulted back to the horror of regaining consciousness to find his lower left leg gone. Pain pinched at his right arm. Opening his right eye—the left was swollen shut—he saw that he was connected to an IV hanging just beside his bed. Bed? How had he gotten to the hospital so quickly, and what the hell was strapped over his face?

He thought back, struggling to put together what had happened. His memories were a jumble of fragmented images of fire and smoke and throbbing pain in his knee.

When and how had he been found? Had Micah come after him, digging him out from beneath the tree? And what about his men? Had someone gotten them out safely?

No, that part was all wrong. That had happened last year. Today he had been searching for Liane’s son, for Cody, that unmoving, huddled shape he remembered shaking to no avail. Dead, Jake thought, though the details remained hazy.

And where
was
he? How had he gotten here?

He tried to curse but only coughed. Once he started, he couldn’t stop, so he was grateful when someone—a nurse?—hurried in, elevated his bed and held a glass of water for him.

“Here, let me lift your oxygen mask a minute, so you can take a few sips.”

As she made the adjustment and put the straw to his lips, he turned his head to see her out of his good eye, and took in the unraveling brown braid over her shoulder and the swollen blue eyes. Liane’s eyes, sore from weeping, yet here she was, by his side, helping him despite her losses.

Unable to speak, he sipped the water. As his coughing subsided, a raging thirst rose up, prompting him to drink deeply.

“Not too fast or you’ll be sick,” she cautioned him gently as she pulled the cup away. When she tried to reposition the mask, he pushed her hand aside.

“I’m so sorry,” he croaked, his voice sounding like the scraping of dried twigs over gravel. “So sorry—I tried. But I couldn’t—”

He remembered struggling forward, pushing past endurance, until he’d found... And he’d done it for Liane, the woman he now realized he had never entirely stopped loving. The woman he had failed, just as he’d failed his men.

“Don’t, Jake. Please don’t apologize,” she answered, fresh tears streaming down her face. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. You could have been killed out there.”

“But Cody...”

Her face was smudged and tearstained, and she stank of smoke as badly as he did, but her smile was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. “Don’t you remember? Cody’s going to be fine—because of you. The search and rescue people say you even managed to get Misty back to the ridge before you collapsed. She’s at the vet clinic right now.”

“They’re both—I
found
them?” Even as he asked the question, the jigsaw images snapped together. He remembered, as if from a dream, how Misty’s barking had finally led him to find Cody, how the boy had finally responded to his efforts to revive him.

“And Kenzie? How is...?” He paused to catch his breath. “How’s her asthma?”

“She’s much better now. Em’s with her and Cody. They’re both under observation.” Her voice broke as she bent to wrap her arms around him and touch her lips to his temple. “Thank you so much. It’s horrible enough, facing what happened to my father. But if my kids hadn’t made it, there’s no way I could have—you risked everything to save all our lives, Jake, and I swear to you, I’ll never forget it.”

As she pulled back, he raised his untethered hand to brush away her tears. “I only wish... I’m sorry. So sorry about your dad.”

“They found...they got my father out of there, too.” She pressed her trembling lips together as she fought for control. When she could speak again, she said, “I told the sheriff about seeing
him
out there.”

“Your ex-husband?” he asked carefully.

She nodded, her eyes stricken. “Sheriff Wallace says that Mac escaped.”

“He was in prison?” Jake asked.

“Yes. They sentenced him to twenty years in a penitentiary in Nevada for attempted murder.”

“Whose?”

Shaking her head, she said, “Let’s just say I picked the wrong man, as wrong as you can possibly get.”

“It was you, wasn’t it?” he guessed. “The bastard tried to kill you. Why am I just now hearing about this?”

“He did,” she said. “Fortunately the media doesn’t consider domestic violence cases nearly as interesting as celebrities with roaming hands. And I begged my dad to keep it quiet. I couldn’t stand the thought of being stared at, whispered about and pitied for my mistakes,” she said, “especially since it’s everyone else who’s suffered for my mistake. My children and my father. You.” Gingerly, she touched his cheek, beneath his injured eye.

“There was a fight,” Jake admitted, gritting his teeth as he remembered, “but a face-full of bear spray settled it. Liane, I don’t see how he could’ve possibly gotten out of there alive, blinded the way he was. I gave him the chance to come out with me, but he seemed a lot more interested in taking off my head.”

“If he died out there, I can’t be sorry, not after what he did.”

Jake nodded, his stomach spasming as he remembered the shock of finding Deke’s corpse.

She put down the water and hugged herself. He ached to gather her into his arms and say something to ease her pain. But she turned from him, just out of his reach. And no wonder, when the man she had once fully trusted had repaid her faith with a bullet.

“You’d think a man who’d just broken out of prison—” he reached for the cup again to soothe the sting of his throat “—would have sense enough to stay as far away from you as possible. After all, isn’t that the first place the authorities would come looking?”

“If they had, my father might still be alive.” Shaking her head, she blinked back tears. “I do know the old Mac would have been smart enough to stay miles away from any place he might be recognized. But then, the old Mac never would have hit me, either, much less...”

Jake couldn’t stop himself from asking, “How’d a woman like you ever end up with that loser?”
Why him and not me?

Her gaze drifted away, a blush deepening her color. “You have to understand, he was so different when I met him. He was always so considerate—he seemed to live to make me happy. He moved in fast, maybe too fast, but he kept telling me he’d waited all his life to meet me and he didn’t want to waste a minute.”

“Sounds controlling to me.”

“That’s what Dad kept saying, but I wouldn’t hear it. I was too busy pinching myself, thinking I was dreaming that such a handsome and successful man would want to marry a girl just out of school.”

Her father had told him that she had picked a rich guy. Despite what they’d just gone through, the memory of their history rose like a wall of ice between them, cold and slick and insurmountable. He might always care for her, but he would never forget how it had felt to be told she had to see what else was out there.
Who else,
she might as well have said. “And Mac was older, too, right?”

“Twelve years.” She sighed, then shook her head. “I’d just taken my first job in Vegas, my dream job, or so I thought. It was so exciting, but I was alone there. I didn’t know a soul.”

That was your choice,
he thought, but he restrained himself from speaking.
I would have given anything if you’d reached out to
me
.

Even after she had told him not to wait for her, he had written to let her know that he was still here if she changed her mind. That he would be waiting for her to get her need to travel and explore out of her system.

With his grandmother’s health failing, he’d been forced to stick close to home, taking distance learning and extension courses in his spare time as she practiced Russian with him. He’d never for a moment regretted the years he had spent caring for the sweet
babushka
who’d taken him in after his mom’s death. Her house was the only place he’d ever felt at home.

He’d only regretted that Liane had never offered so much as a glimmer of hope that she intended to return, leaving him to turn to a string of short-term, strictly physical affairs to ease his disappointment. Neither they nor his career had ever eased the hollow ache she’d left.

“If it makes you feel any better,” she said, “I’ll admit it. I was stupid. I got caught up in the fantasy and let him sweep me off my feet. He seemed so charming and sophisticated—everything I thought I wanted.”

He swallowed back his bitterness, reminding himself that he’d been the one to ask her for an explanation.

She shook her head, her blue eyes misting. “At first things seemed so right, but after we married, I began to see how vulnerable he was behind the facade. He was always under so much pressure to perform—these crazy quotas from his boss, new young brokers always snapping at his heels. And he was out at all hours, being wined and dined by financial-products salespeople, all of them users bent on promoting their own agenda.” She closed her eyes, and her voice grew strangely detached. “It sounds crazy now, but I felt sorry for him. I tried and tried to help him, even after I found out about the drugs.”

“Drugs?”

“Cocaine, for certain, and heaven knows what else,” she confirmed. “In the space of a few months his personality changed completely. He started muttering to himself, and sometimes he stayed out all night. Other times he’d pace for hours on end, then scream at the kids for making noise, and me for letting them.”

“Did he hurt the kids?” Anger twisted his insides at the thought.

“Never physically,” she said. “I always managed to distract him.”

“So he took it out on you instead?”

“Not at first. But after his old firm accused him of embezzling over two-and-a-half million dollars, he came completely unglued.”

Jake couldn’t help but ask, “Did he do it?”

“Even now, I don’t know.” She shrugged and shook her head. “He was so adamant in his denials, so freaked over what everyone was saying about him. We had FBI and Securities Exchange Commission agents on our doorstep. I should have left him then, but it felt like my family was under attack, and it
was
a sickness, what those drugs did. I couldn’t kick him when he was down like that.” She hung her head, her color rising. “I just wanted to believe everything would be better,
he
would get clean and get better, and I’d have my husband back again as soon as they figured out it was all a huge mistake.”

Feeling the shame that radiated from her, he instinctively sought to ease it. “It’s only natural to want to circle the wagons in a crisis.”

“They never did find a trace of the money, and later on the whole firm ended up in serious trouble,” she said. “But at that time Mac was paranoid that someone was out to destroy him. After he was fired, he drove away his friends, and then he convinced himself that I was spying on him, reporting his activities to his former boss, the government and heaven knows who else.”

“You should’ve called your father. He would’ve come for you.”
I would have.

But that would be easy to say now, in hindsight. The truth was, after the way she’d left him, he would have been more likely to give her the number of a domestic violence hotline and then hang up. After all, she was the one who had insisted he move on and make his own life.

But even as he thought it, he knew he was lying to himself. If she’d picked up the phone, he would have dropped everything, done anything, to help her. To earn the chance to someday stake his claim.

“Maybe I wasn’t ready to admit Dad was right about my marriage,” she confessed, the words flat and lifeless. Broken. “Or that I’d stayed even after things got physical. I still kept thinking I could help him. I imagined I could save him. Stupid, huh?”

“You’re not a stupid woman, Liane,” Jake said, but her voice overrode his.

“Finally he really hurt me—broke my jaw and swore he’d kill me if I ever left him. He was so out of control, I was scared to death we’d all end up one of those awful stories on the news. So first chance I got, I took the kids and sneaked out.”

“But Cody and Kenzie are his kids, too. How could he—”

“Before he got sick, they were. He was a good father back then, before... But later he accused me...he said I was making Cody afraid of him and Kenzie wasn’t even his—just because she has my blue eyes and his boss had blue eyes, too.”

“He really is nuts.” Jake reached for her hand and squeezed it. “I would never believe for a moment that you’re the cheating kind.”

In fact, she’d been the honest kind back when both of them were eighteen. The kind who’d thought a clean break the fairer option before she went off to college.

It had been the right thing, the moral thing, to do. He understood that suddenly. So why had it taken so many years for him to see it, and to see that he had scared her off with all his foolish talk of starting his own—
their
own—family right out of high school?

“Thank you, Jake,” she said. “And you’re right. I could never respect myself if... I could never...”

Divorced or not, she still hasn’t broken free,
he thought, since he’d never heard about her looking twice at any man since her return home. But considering the hell she’d been through, it was no wonder she retreated whenever a man came near. Even the first man she had ever loved.

Now, with her father gone, he wondered if it was even possible that she could ever learn to trust again? And was he willing to risk his heart again to try to teach her?

* * *

“It
wasn’t
my daddy who hurt Grandpa,” Cody said stubbornly. He thought his voice sounded funny behind the oxygen mask.

His mom was sitting on the bed beside him, holding Kenzie, who had gone all stiff and quiet when Sheriff Wallace started asking questions. A few minutes earlier his mom had told them what Cody knew already. That Grandpa wasn’t just hurt, he wasn’t ever coming back.

Cody closed his eyes, remembering how Grandpa had gotten down from Waco to get rid of a stone that had gotten caught in Arrow’s shoe. Then Kenzie had starting whining about how she had to pee, and Grandpa had lifted them both down from their horses and told him to stand guard for her while she squatted behind a rock.