Unbreak My Heart (16 page)

What she wanted to do was important. She couldn't forget that. If she did get discouraged, she'd think of this lost, hungry boy, and she wouldn't give up. Not until she'd done what she set out to do.

Allie felt so much better. Committed. Determined. Powerful, even. She'd never felt powerful in her entire life. But she could do this. She could help this boy and others like him.

"So," he said, when he finished eating, "you lived here when you were little?"

"Yes. The house belonged to my parents."

"Why'd you leave?"

"I don't know," she said softly. "Tell me something, Casey. It hasn't been that long ago since you were nine. What do you remember about being that age?"

"I dunno."

"Help me out. My memories are so vague. I wonder sometimes if that's normal. What do you remember?"

He looked uneasy, but started to talk. "We lived in Mobile. I played basketball. Got into trouble at school for talkin' too much and not payin' attention. Stuff like that. Why? What do you remember?"

"This house. My parents. My sister—"

"You had a sister?"

She nodded. "Her name was Megan."

"Did you guys... get along? Or fight? Or what?"

Allie thought about it. "I suppose we got along all right. She was seven years older than I was, so she probably thought I was an awful pest, tagging along behind her, wanting to do everything she did. Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

He shook his head back and forth, looking wary again.

Tomorrow she was going to find out where her friend Casey lived and why no one had bothered to feed him today. For now, she wanted to keep him here, to see what else she could find out about him, and having him help her around the house seemed like the best way to do that.

"Okay," she said, "if you still want to work for me, let's talk terms."

* * *

Allie decided to work on some much-needed maintenance in the yard while she had Casey's help. They put in six grueling hours, hardly making a dent in the job. Casey was indeed strong and a good worker. Allie paid him five dollars an hour, fed him once again, and then reluctantly let him go. She wanted to give him more than thirty dollars, but he argued that was a fair wage, and he promised to come back the next morning. She watched him cut through a neighbor's yard and disappear, wished she had the shelter up and running, so she could offer him a place to stay and so much more. For now, she had to be content with some food and a bit of money.

When she came inside, hot and achy, she spotted the FedEx letter on the table where she'd left it earlier. Opening it, she flipped through the police reports, then found a letter from Greg.

He said the records hadn't provided much new information, except for the name of the highway patrolman who investigated Megan's accident. That would be Greg's starting point. He was going to find the trooper, ask if he remembered anything that didn't make it into the written report, if he knew of anything suspicious about the accident.

Allie glanced through the reports, finding them frustratingly brief and vague. Curiously, she found no mention of Stephen's role in her sister's disappearance, no mention of him being under suspicion in connection with her disappearance. She wondered if that was courtesy of his family name alone. Allie didn't think Stephen actually hurt her sister. But the omission made her wonder what else had been left out of the official report.

Allie called Greg in Macon and told him what she'd found out from Stephen.

"Whittaker?" Greg said.

"Yes. His family lived next door to us. They still do, in fact."

"What does he do?"

"He owns a construction and real estate management company. His family's lived here forever. His father's a judge."

"Any relation to Richard Whittaker IV?"

"He has a brother named Rich who's in his late thirties. Why?"

"Richard Whittaker IV is the current governor of Kentucky, Allie. If this is the family I'm thinking of, one of his uncles is a U.S. Senator."

"Oh," she said. Stephen owned a sleek, fast Thoroughbred and his brother, whom she barely remembered, was the governor.

Greg laughed. "They lived right next door to you?"

"Yes."

"You grew up around money. Do you want me to check this guy out? Do you think he had something to do with your sister's disappearance?"

Allie thought about it. Did she trust Stephen Whittaker? Did she want someone digging through his past with her sister?

"I can do it," Greg said. "If that's what you want...."

"No," she decided. "You're already in Macon. If you don't find out anything there, you could come here then."

And start asking questions about Stephen? Allie didn't know. She'd worry about that later, she decided, if they hit a dead-end in Georgia.

"Okay," Greg agreed. "Let's talk about what I found. I talked to the trooper this morning. He remembered the accident. He said when kids die, he always remembers. It's pretty much what the paper said—a bad thunderstorm. The creek wasn't normally that deep, but it was flooded that day and the current was strong. Your sister was driving what turned out to be a stolen car without a license. He assumed she was driving too fast on a slick, winding road—not unusual for kids. They're inexperienced drivers. They don't make allowances for things like slippery roads. They don't know how easily things can go wrong. It happens, Allie."

"Megan was a good swimmer," she remembered. "It seems like she would have been able to get out."

"You don't know what kind of shape she was in when the car hit the water. She may have been dazed, confused. She may have panicked. She may have had trouble getting the door open or the window. The water would have been cold. She would have had all that fighting against her."

"Oh. Okay." She sighed heavily. "So that's it?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. I'm here. I thought I might as well keep at it. They had a lot of accidents and downed trees that day. It took awhile before the trooper got there, but he remembers that one of the first people on the scene that night was a doctor who lived here in town. I talked to him a few minutes ago."

"And?"

"I didn't get anything concrete, and honestly, I don't know where to go with it from here. But I'd swear the man had something to hide."

"A doctor? Why?"

"I don't know. I asked a couple of people around town about him, and they all say the man's practically a saint. Does a lot of volunteer work at a clinic here in town, does a lot with his church. I didn't find anybody who had anything bad to say about him. Yet."

"So why would he lie to you about Megan's accident?"

"It's a good question, isn't it?" Greg said. "The trooper said there were three other people on the scene that night, two young men and a girl. He didn't remember their names. Not surprising—it's been fifteen years. He's not sure if he can find any paperwork on it or not, but he's going to check. If the doctor knew the other three, he didn't tell me their names."

"Three people?" she said. "Surely we can find at least one of them. One who can tell us something."

"I'll do my best, Allie. In the meantime, be careful. I don't like the way this feels."

"What do you think happened?" she asked.

"I don't know. I'm a suspicious man. That's just how I think. That's how people pay me to think. You be careful, and I'll call you tomorrow."

Allie put down the phone and shivered, thinking it was just her luck—to find another person who knew something about what happened to her sister who didn't want to talk about it.

She thought about Greg's warning, about Stephen's.

Feeling listless and out of sorts, she let herself gaze longingly at Stephen's house. She remembered how angry she'd been at him earlier, how betrayed she'd felt. Even so, she still wondered what he was doing. If he'd never told her about him and Megan today, it would have been so easy to slip through the backyards and onto his back porch. He'd smile and open the door and invite her in, keep her company, maybe take her in his arms. The night noises would lose their power to frighten her. Everything would. But she couldn't go there. She couldn't. And she could handle this on her own. She'd handled everything her whole life on her own.

Instead Allie wandered outside into her backyard. It was nice out here, she realized. It was incredibly quiet, and if she wasn't so uneasy about simply being here, it might even be peaceful.

Then she heard a rustling sound from a clump of bushes at the right side of the yard and froze. Gathering her courage, she went to the edge of the bushes and started pulling them apart, to find nothing but one, scrawny-looking, scared kitten, its back arched menacingly, its tail sticking up in the air.

Allie laughed. At herself and the outraged look of the kitten. It didn't look very old.

"Poor baby," she crooned.

She hurried inside, dug through the cabinets, and found a dusty can of tuna. The kitten had come to the middle of the yard by the time she returned. Allie set the bowl in the grass. The kitten ate hungrily, then eyed her with a tad less suspicion.

"Still hungry?" Allie was happy to be able to feed another hungry mouth. Or maybe she'd just do anything for some company right now. "You have to come inside if you want more."

She took the empty bowl inside, the kitten on her heels. She made makeshift arrangements for the cat that night, promising to do better tomorrow.

In the family room, curled up on the sofa with the kitten, the radio playing softly in the background, the afghan wrapped around her, she felt almost comfortable and not quite so alone as she finally drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 8

Allie slept fairly well that night with the kitten curled up beside her. She got up early, drove into town, and rushed through the grocery store, stocking up on supplies. She had a cat to feed, and, she hoped, a teenage boy. Pulling into her driveway fifteen minutes later, she found Casey sitting on the front step, the kitten batting at his untied shoelaces.

He smiled shyly. •

She beamed at him, happy for his company. "Hi. Ready to go to work?"

"Sure." He shrugged.

"I see you met my kitten," Allie said.

"It's yours?"

"We kind of claimed each other. If she's willing to stay, I'm going to keep her."

"Cool," he said.

"Help me carry in the groceries?" she said, putting a box of lunch meat, milk, soft drinks, and chips into his arms. "I got some empty boxes, too. I think I'm too sore to work in the yard today, so we can get started inside."

They hauled everything in. Allie claimed she was starving and fixed scrambled eggs and bacon, enough for four people, she thought, until she watched Casey eat with unabashed gusto. He caught her staring at him, flushed, and pushed his plate away.

"Sorry," he said.

"Why?"

He shrugged, looking bewildered and very young. "Did I do something wrong?"

"No. I'm just not used to feeding a teenage boy. I'm amazed at how much one can eat."

"I'm sorry," he said, looking guilty. "I—"

"It's okay, Casey. Eat as much as you like. I don't mind. In fact, I like having the company. I don't usually bother to cook if it's just me."

"You don't have to feed me," he said defensively.

"I told you, I like the company, and I figure if I feed you, I get to work it off you later."

He was sitting beside her at the breakfast bar, his face in three-quarter profile as he stared at her, all defiance and youthful pride. Once again, something about him seemed so familiar. He had sandy-colored hair, beautiful brown eyes, elaborately thick, full lashes—the kind a girl would kill for. An image teased at her brain, like a flash from a camera—blindingly evident one minute, gone the next.

What was it about him? He didn't seem like a runaway. Not like a kid who'd been on the streets for any length of time. Allie knew what they looked like. There was a hardness in their eyes, and they seldom offered their trust to anyone who wasn't another teenager on the run, too.

"Where did you say you lived?"

"A couple blocks over." He cocked his head to the left, the opposite of the direction he'd indicated the day before. "Why?"

"No reason."

She thought of what he'd told her about where he lived and his mother.
Patricia Adams.
Allie wondered if there was such a woman. Her gut instinct said he was all alone, and for that reason, she felt a kinship with him. This time fifteen years ago, her own sister had been on the run somewhere, cold maybe, hungry, alone. She wondered if anyone had fed Megan. If anyone had taken care of her.

"So," he said. "Where do you want to start?"

"I thought we'd sort through the attic," she said, thinking of the advantage of his muscles again and his tireless energy. He could haul boxes down the two flights of stairs much easier than she could. And she wouldn't have to be up there alone. She could work from the top and the bottom of the house toward the middle.

"Attic?" He looked wary.

"You don't want to?"

"No. I just... It looks like it's going to be a nice day and all."