Still The One (Family Stone #4 Jack) (Family Stone Romantic Suspense) (5 page)

No kissing.
He licked his lips and shoved the memories aside. Instead he strode over to her and stood in front of her until she looked up and removed the earbuds. “Yes?”

“What about family?”

Bliss wrapped the wires around the small iPod mini meticulously as she took her time answering. “Her parents were heartbroken when she disappeared. They went back to their home town in Mexico. Her father was killed a year later, caught in the wrong place during a drug war battle. Her mother...isn’t well.”

“Is the mother coming back to the States?”

“We’re trying to get her here but it doesn’t look good? Why?”

“So there’s no one else that would be vulnerable to Fernandez and possibly in danger?”

“Not so far as I know. A close friend, or a mentor might be in danger if Fernandez thought that he could get to Maria by pulling them in and using them as leverage.” Bliss was analytical and almost emotionally detached. “But let’s face it, she hasn’t been around for eight years. I doubt anyone thinks of her any more as anything other than a tragic memory.”

There was a distinct lack of emotion in both her tone and her face, which pissed Jack off. She was the one who lost her. Maria was the client. Didn’t she feel the slightest bit responsible? Jack was practically climbing the walls with the lack of progress on finding Maria and she’d only been his client for about twelve hours.

But then he realized Bliss’s lack of emotion hid a profound sadness. And he wanted to ask…who didn’t miss you?

Jack couldn’t dwell on that right now. He had to get his head back into this mission. He thought about Bliss’s assessment of who could be a target. He knew someone who missed Maria. Someone who’d remodeled her entire life after her friend disappeared. A cold fear spread through Jack.

“Fuck.”

“What’s wrong?”

“My assistant, Ava, was Maria’s best friend.” Jack informed her.

“That’s awfully coincidental,” Bliss said suspiciously. Jack didn’t understand the edge of animosity beneath her very flat monotone.

“How do you mean?”

“Your assistant is connected to the missing witness.” Bliss said calmly, “How did you become a part of this search again?”

“I owed Judge Adams a favor. That’s why he called me and because he knew that Fernandez is a large political force in my area. He’s also aware of the relationship between Ava and Maria.”

“Again, coincidental.”

“Not really.” Jack shook his head. “I hired her because of her experiences, her empathy and her need to atone. She has the perfect mindset for GHR.”

“Ah yes, the philanthropic arm of your business.” Bliss crossed her arms over her chest. “What about Stone Consulting? Is she perfect for that business too? Because the quiet word on the street is that Stone Consulting can get sensitive intel and has a knack for jobs that require...discretion.”

Jack wondered how she knew that but now wasn’t the time to talk about his other business. “That’s not relevant.”

“It is if you’re working for Fernandez.”

“What?” Jack couldn’t even figure how she could make that accusation. “Jesus. I’m not working for Fernandez.”

“It had to be asked.”

“You have balls,” Jack muttered. “I’ll give you that.”

“I don’t need you to give me anything,” Bliss snarled.

Except an explanation apparently. “Judge Adams called in a favor and asked me to help out since he knows about my connection to this case.” Jack was annoyed that he even had to explain himself. His temper simmered at the suggestion that he was dirty. When had he ever given her the impression that he would turn out that way? Staying angry, rather than succumbing to poignant memories and old regrets, wasn’t going to be a problem. Calming down might.

“Could your assistant, Ava, somehow tip Fernandez off?”

“Not a chance. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going, or what I was working on.” Jack took a deep breath. “Let’s focus on the issue at hand. Ava is a link.”

“Eight years ago, Jack.” Bliss waved her fingers. “Honestly, she wasn’t in a position of power then and she isn’t now either.”

“I would still like to warn Ava to be on the lookout for anything unusual.”

“Absolutely not.” Bliss was adamant. “The first rule of successful relocation with a new identity is no contact with your former life. The key to hiding is to completely change your way of life. So take that to the next level for protecting Maria. You need to pretend Ava never knew Maria. You cannot take the risk that if you bring up Maria that Ava won’t mention it to someone. Because someone, somewhere might be listening.”

“But—”

“Right now, Fernandez has a prisoner that’s escaped but absolutely no leads on where she went.”

“How did she get to Adams-Larsen?”

“She is blessed with unbelievable luck.”

“Except for that whole being imprisoned for eight years,” Jack snarked.

“Fine. But when she escaped, she scrambled through a canyon and went to the nearest house. Turns out the owner is a former U.S. Marshal.” Bliss chewed on the pen tip. “Although he’d never done a stint in Wit Sec, he had friends who are still in the service. So he knew exactly what to do.”

“So why didn’t she stay with the marshals?”

“Marshals protect federal witnesses. There’s no trial, or even technical threat against her yet. The case against Fernandez doesn’t exist yet. So she isn’t eligible for protection right now. Once she testifies against Fernandez, she can go into the witness protection if she wishes.”

Right, so her life can be taken away again. How many times was this poor girl going to be ripped away from everything she’d ever known? Jack shook off that worry. Right now he needed information.

And Bliss still didn’t answer his question on how Maria ended up in DC at Adams-Larsen. “So how did she get to you?”

“Both Jill and Marsh are former marshals,” Bliss said. “Luckily, the neighbor’s contact knew about the other side of Adams-Larsen’s business.”

“So it really was a series of lucky events that brought Maria Torres to you?” Jack mused. “I guess her luck is changing.”

“A series of unbelievably lucky events.” Bliss frowned. “So why did she run?”

Five

They got to the isolated farm house an hour and a half after they landed at the Perry Municipal Airport outside Des Moines. The dark night was unbroken only by one large spotlight strung up at the top of a single bare post. It illuminated the front yard and the steps leading up to the rickety old porch.

Jack withdrew his weapon from his belt holster as they cautiously approached the weathered structure. Peeling paint revealed patches of bare, worn wood and a tangle of brush surrounded the base of the house.

Crickets chirped, frogs croaked in the immense silence. No cars traveled the deserted two lane road, and the howl of a coyote pack haunted the waning moonlit night. The stars sparkled in the still sky. Frost crystallized on the bare grass. Winter was edging in the barren farm town.

From the road the house looked deserted, half overgrown with brambles and old bushes that hadn’t been trimmed for years. One of the shutters had lost a hinge and hung crooked against the peeling wood siding, but a shiny new industrial lock gleamed through the dark shadows of the unlit porch.

“It’s straight out of a horror flick,” Jack commented mildly.

“It’s isolated and unregistered. The land belongs to a trust, so it’s almost impossible to trace.”

Jack tilted his head to the side and indicated that Bliss move behind him. She rolled her eyes but before she could argue, he knocked on the door, the bang loud in the quiet air.

Bliss huffed out an annoyed breath, stepped around him, and smoothly inserted the key into the well-oiled lock. She turned the knob and stepped into the darkened foyer before Jack could stop her.

“Maria?” Bliss called out. Just in case she had gone back to the house. But there was no answer, no sound at all but the hum of the refrigerator and the distinct smell of something rotting.

Jack grabbed Bliss by the bicep and held on tightly. “Wait.”

He braced for what they might find and flipped on the light switch in the entry. But what greeted them was...nothing. There wasn’t a thing out of place. A simple sofa, coffee table, and television were the only items in the stark living room.

They stalked cautiously into the kitchen, empty except for a plain square table and two beat up wood chairs. A package of hamburger meat sat forgotten on the chipped Formica countertop—likely the source of the rotting smell—a dirty coffee cup rested in the scratched stainless steel sink, and an empty metal sauce pan sat on the old burner. The faded floral curtains over the window sink were pulled shut casting the room in darkness except for a sliver of moonlight.

But that was it.

The rest of the house was pristine.

In the bedroom, the double bed had been made with the covers pulled precisely tight and the comforter smoothed. In the bathroom, a few cosmetics littered the tiny faux-marble vanity top. And shampoo and conditioner sat like little soldiers on the lip of the worn ceramic tub.

In the closet, a variety of clothes, simple cotton dresses and sweat pants and sweatshirts hung carefully straight, some with the tags still on them. Even in the battered dresser, underwear and socks were folded and put away neatly. But she was still gone.

For a second, Bliss’s shoulders slumped. “She really is gone.”

“Bright side. No signs of forced entry, no signs that she was attacked, or abducted.”

Bliss glanced around the bedroom one more time. “Looks like she left without taking anything with her. Except what she was wearing.”

“However the hamburger on the counter suggests she took off impulsively.”

“And didn’t know she wouldn’t be back?” Bliss straightened her shoulders.

“Hard to tell.” Jack said, “But even if she thought that Fernandez had found her, she wasn’t harmed here. And based on your video surveillance she withdrew money and bought goods without being under duress.”

Bliss tightened her mouth as she surveyed the old, rundown farmhouse one more time.

“These are all good signs.” Jack felt compelled to try to cheer her up.

“Yeah, but I didn’t figure on her running.” Bliss fingered the bottle of perfume on the old vanity. “At all.”

Jack was quiet. He didn’t know this new Bliss. And he wasn’t sure what he could say to help. If anything. With a sense of dread, he asked, “You want to talk about it?”

“About what?” She crossed her arms over her chest in a classic defensive body language.

“The fact that you have psychological knowledge of what someone who is in protection would feel, what they would do.”

“Years of working with them,” she tossed out far too quickly.

Jack was surprised at the stab of disappointment he felt when she didn’t even pretend to give a truthful answer. Which was stupid. What was the end game of knowing more about her? Nothing. There was no end game. He just needed to get through this assignment, find Maria Torres, then they could go back to their separate coasts.

And he could go back to...whatever.

“Let’s clean up the kitchen and we’ll find a place to crash for the night.” His tone was abrupt, chilly.

“We can’t leave for Monterey now?”

Jack shared her impatience but they needed to follow FAA protocol. Not to mention the fact that their pilot was over a hundred miles away. “Shane needs a mandated rest before getting in the air again. Plus, he went to visit a buddy the opposite direction from here. He’ll be at the airport and ready to go first thing in the morning. We can get an early start tomorrow.”

“Actually, since we aren’t tied to a commercial schedule, we should check out the places that Maria visited and see if anyone else has been asking about her.” Bliss sighed. “So we’ll need to wait until the stores open tomorrow anyway.”

They headed downstairs to the kitchen. Jack scooped the package of ground beef into the garbage and then tied the bag up and lifted it out of the plastic can from underneath the sink. “I’ll take this out to the dumpster.”

Bliss followed behind Jack and locked the door while he headed around the back of the house.

Jack lifted the lid on the small battered dumpster and started to toss the bag. But the flutter of a newspaper caught his eye. No recycling out here. There were no other bags of garbage inside. And he wondered why the paper would already be in the dumpster. Why would Maria have gone to the trouble to throw the paper away in there?

He leaned into the stinky, metal container and grabbed the paper. He didn’t even have it halfway out when the headline caught his eye. Jack let the lid slam shut and hustled to the car.

Bliss was already in the driver’s seat.

“I think I found why she ran.”

He held up the paper. The headline read:
Fernandez a Shoe In for Top Labor Job
.

***

Who could have predicted that the Holiday Arts and Crafts Fair would be such a draw that all the hotel rooms in the surrounding eighty miles would be booked?

Bliss cursed all those crafty people out there. They were turning her life into a nightmare. She’d thought she’d at least have the night to regroup after spending the last seven hours in her former lover’s company. Instead they were forced to share a room. And they were lucky they’d found this one. For a while it had been looking like they were going to be sleeping in their rental car.

They had needed to pay cash, which also limited their sleeping options. They were lucky they found this dump. The wallpaper adorned with tractors and wheat fields in earth tones and bronze metallics, the starburst clock on the wall, and the brown shag carpeting were about twenty years out of date. But it did have two beds for which she was grateful.

She needed a damn break.

The toilet flushed in the miniscule hotel bathroom and Bliss slid under the rough, cheap cotton sheets before Jack came out of the bathroom.

Bliss was trying hard to ignore the fact that was she was in a hotel room with Jack Stone. He’d been the yardstick for every other man she’d been intimate with, and now with him so close again, she wondered, was it just ‘first love’ memories?