When Night Falls (20 page)

“G-go,” Jessica rasped, lifting a hand to his face. Her wrist was bruised, but an incredible combination of courage and compassion glowed in her eyes. “Find your daughter.”

“I—”

The sound of shouting killed his words. “Don’t come near me!” He heard Kirby Long yelling. “So help me God, you try it, and I waste the girl.”

Liam was on his feet and running out the door before he could breathe. The sight awaiting him stopped him cold.

Emily.

Detective Kirby Long stood in the doorway to the kitchen, Liam’s daughter securely in front of his body. Her long, dark hair was tangled and her beautiful blue eyes wide with defiance, but she didn’t seem to be hurt. Yet. Long had his gun out, pointed it threateningly. A muzzled Molly jumped against his back. Commander McKnight was nowhere in sight.

“Let her go,” Liam said through clenched teeth.

“Long, buddy,” one of the detectives said. “Hold up here. This ain’t the answer.”

“It’s too late,” Long snarled. He no longer looked suave, as he had only ten minutes before. He was sweating, his hair mussed, his gaze that of a wounded, trapped grizzly. “You and I both know there’s no other way out of here.”

Liam inched forward. “I’m the one you want,” he said, drinking in the sight of his child. “Let Emmie go, and take me.”

“Dad!” she cried. “No!”

“Kirby.”

The sound of Jessica’s hoarse voice jolted through Liam. He slid her a glance as she moved to stand by his side and realized he’d never seen a more courageous sight. The corners of her mouth were still bleeding, her hair was plastered to her pale skin, but the light of a warrior glittered in her amber eyes. He’d never loved her more.

“Don’t make this worse than it already is,” she said. “Let Emily go.”

“Worse than it already is?” Long waved his gun erratically. “This son of a bitch took everything I ever wanted. Took it. Used it. Destroyed it. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him take my freedom, as well.”

Liam took another step toward Kirby. “Heather walked out on us both.”

Jessica sucked in a sharp breath. “Heather? What are you talking about?”

“I didn’t kill her,” Liam said. He was vaguely aware of the two detectives flanking him, their guns ready.

McKnight had yet to surface. The older man hadn’t believed him, Liam realized. And he’d paid the price, too.

“I would never hurt the mother of my child,” Liam added.

Long’s mouth twisted into a sneer as he took a step into the kitchen. “I loved her first. I loved her always. But you took her from me, gave her the child I was supposed to. You got everything, and I got nothing.”

“My God,” Jessica whispered. “All this time, it was her. The woman you loved. The woman you lost.”

“And now it’s time to pay,” he snarled.

Jessica had been right all along—Emily’s disappearance was linked to Heather’s.

“It’s been seventeen years,” Liam said. Then, for emphasis, he used the nickname he’d seen in Jessica’s notes, the one Carson Manning had used to refer to the boy he’d handpicked for Heather to marry. Seventeen years had passed since he’d thought about the punk Heather had once warned wanted to hurt Liam. Badly. It took seeing the initials to make the connection. “Kale.” K.L. Kirby Long.

“Took you long enough, ace. But hey, I’m a patient man. I knew this day would come. I knew if I waited long enough, if I was in the right position, the day would come when I could show you how it feels to lose.”

Tears flooded Emily’s eyes. There was no way Liam was letting Kirby take her out of the house. He’d lay down his life first.

Jessica took a step forward. She held one hand out, exposing her badly bruised wrist. “Kirby—”

“No!” Everything went down so fast, Kirby lay crumpled in a heap on the floor before Liam knew what was happening.

“Emily!” Liam charged across the room and swooped his daughter into his arms. She collapsed against him, holding him as tightly as he held her. Relief swamped him. The dread he’d been living with since the night he’d come home to find her gone dissolved into a relief so pure, so profound, it swamped him.

But then he looked toward the kitchen where a lone woman stood. The woman who’d slammed the lamp down on Long’s head. The woman staring at him in absolute terror.

The woman who’d walked out on him seventeen years before. “My God. Heather.”

Chapter 15

«
^
»

T
he woman with the faded blond hair went sheet-white. “Liam.”

Shock drilled through him. Disbelief. For seventeen years he’d tried to find this woman, and now here she stood, staring at him with wide, terrified eyes. Kirby Long lay crumpled at her feet, one of the detectives securing him in cuffs.

“It was you!” he realized, stunned. Sick. Jessica had suggested it, but he’d never thought… “You put Long up to this. You took my daughter—”

“No!” she cried, blinking rapidly. Her voice was barely there, clearly frightened. “No.”

His hold on a sobbing Emily tightened. He ran his hands along her back, through her tangled hair, but never took his eyes off her mother. “After all this time. You thought you could waltz back and take my daughter from me? The daughter you left behind?”

“What the hell is going on in here?” Commander McKnight staggered into the living room. There was blood on his temple.

“Commander!” Jessica and one of the detectives rushed to him. “Are you all right, sir?”

He looked a little dazed, his wound clearly the result of a pistol butt. “What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” Liam growled, looking at Heather. She remained standing on the dirty linoleum in Long’s kitchen, gray sweats hanging on her rail-thin body. “This is the woman who put Long up to everything.”

“No,” she denied. “That’s not how it happened.”

“She used her old boyfriend to do her dirty work. She—”

“No!” Emily struggled out of his arms and gazed at him. Her eyes were wide and red-rimmed. “It wasn’t like that, Dad. She wasn’t part of it. She took care of me.”

“Emily, sweetheart, you’ve been through a terrible ordeal—”

“But so has she!” his daughter cried. “He turned on her—”

“I would never hurt her,” Heather cried, wrapping her arms around her waist. “Never.”

He looked at her, but rather than seeing the lost soul who’d caught his eye so long ago, he saw a woman whom time had not treated well. She’d never been vibrant, more like a delicate flower than anything else. She looked faded, a daisy at the end of a long drought.

“Then what do you call abandonment?” he asked harshly. “That’s not hurt?”

She shook her head. “I did what I thought was best. For everyone, but most especially Emily.”

“Best? You call running away best?”

“I was trying to avoid a disaster before it was too late,” she said sadly. “We didn’t love each other. We could barely tolerate each other. I saw the way you looked at me. I saw the realization in your eyes that you’d strapped your life to someone you didn’t want, didn’t need.”

“I’m not talking about me,” Liam corrected. “I’m talking about your daughter.”

Tears spilled over her lashes. “It broke my heart to leave her, but you know as well as I did that I was in no position to be a mother to her. I didn’t know who I was. I … I wasn’t ready. There was no way I could be the kind of mother Emily needed.” She extended her hands in pleading. “But you … you were born to be a father. I knew you’d move mountains for her. I knew the two of you would be so much better off without me. I knew you’d find someone else, someone able to be the kind of mother Emmie deserved, and live happily ever after.”

Incredulity blasted through him. “I could have gone to prison, damn it!”

“I didn’t know that! I had no idea they’d think you did something to me.”

“You knew your father. You knew how he doted on you, controlled you. You thought he’d just settle for no explanation?”

She pushed the hair from her face. “I … I didn’t think he’d turn on you.”

“You didn’t think, period! You should have called someone, let someone know you were okay.”

“Then my father would have brought me back, and everyone’s lives would have been worse. He would have tried to force us to marry, and we both know what a disaster that would have been. We would have destroyed each other, and Emily in the process.”

“There was a manhunt,” Jessica said. She’d returned to stand by Liam’s side.

“I didn’t know that,” Heather told her. “I went to Mexico. Stayed there. News of a missing girl didn’t reach the small village where I was, and I eventually married a local. I just wanted to start over, start new.”

God help him, he almost believed her. Heather had never been strong like Jessica. She’d grown up smothered by a domineering father, had just started to spread her wings when she and Liam fell into bed and created Emily. “So you ran away.”

Regret flooded her eyes. “I can say I’m sorry a thousand times, but it won’t be enough. I can’t undo the past. I know that. God knows, I’ve tried to pretend the past didn’t exist. I knew I had no right to come back. I knew I had no right to intrude upon the life the two of you had built. But deep in my heart, I could never forget.”

Liam looked at this woman he’d cared for but never loved. Once, he’d responded to her neediness, as though playing protector to her had allowed him to pretend his needs didn’t exist. Until Jessica.

“Why now?” he asked, needing to fit the pieces together. “Why come back now? Emily is almost all grown up.”

“I … I almost died. There was a car wreck. Rico, my husband, he was killed instantly. And I realized how fleeting life is. How precious. And I could no longer live with the choices I’d made. The mistakes. I had to find out if there was room in my daughter’s life for me. That’s why I called Kale.”

Kale.
The name from the distant past burned. K.L. Kirby Long. “What the hell does Long have to do with meeting Emily? I’m her father.”

Heather glanced at the cuffed but still unconscious man on the hardwood floor. The man who’d taken his daughter, then bound Jessica’s hands and feet

The urge to inflict bodily harm had never been so strong.

“He loved me,” Heather said brokenly. “He loved me from the time we were children, through high school, even after I started seeing you, he loved me. He promised to always be there for me.”

“So you convinced him to kidnap my daughter?”

“No!”

“It wasn’t like that, Dad!” Emily protested.

Surprised, he looked at the pleading in his daughter’s eyes. “He locked her up, too,” she said. “Said he couldn’t risk her going soft on him. Couldn’t risk her calling you.”

“I called him more to test the waters than anything else—he was safe,” Heather said, before Liam could question Emily. “He was so warm when I called, even paid for me to come to Dallas, told me you’d turned into a dangerous, vindictive man, but that he’d pave the way for a reunion with Emily. That’s all he told me. I had no idea exactly what he had in mind until the morning he showed up with Emily. I was shocked. Told him he couldn’t do this, that this wasn’t what I wanted, but he said it was the only way I’d ever get my daughter away from you.”

“My God,” Jessica whispered.

“I didn’t know, Liam. I swear. I didn’t know the hatred ran that deep. I didn’t know he’d spent seventeen years believing you killed me. I didn’t know he became a cop to make sure he was in a position to make you pay.”

“What did he hope to gain by kidnapping Emily?” Jessica asked.

Liam could only imagine the shock and betrayal she must be feeling, as well.

Heather glanced at Kirby, then at Jessica. Sadness swam in her eyes. “Me. He said he was giving me the one thing Liam never would. My daughter.”

“And making Liam suffer in the process,” Jessica whispered. “Putting him through the same hell he went through when you turned up missing.”

The term
full circle
had never carried so much meaning.

“I know what I’ve done is unforgivable,” Heather whispered, “and I’ll be sorry every day for the rest of my life. But I was young and confused, lost. Desperate. I thought I was doing the best for everyone.”

Emily struggled from Liam’s arms. “That’s not true.”

A stricken look tightened Heather’s features. “Emily…”

“It’s not unforgivable,” the teenager clarified. “Maybe if you’d just shown up one day, I wouldn’t have believed you, but…”

“But what, Emmie?” Liam asked.

Wisdom and maturity shone in her eyes. “I was alone at first, but then he threw her in the room with me. I could tell she was scared, but she told me over and over everything would be okay. That you would find us.”

“She told you who she was?”

“She didn’t have to. She looks just like Grandma.” Emily glanced at her mother. “It was hard to be angry at her when I could tell she was more concerned about me than herself.”

Heather looked toward Liam. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt either of you. That’s what I was trying to avoid.”

He sucked in a sharp breath. “We were kids,” he said, and realized he believed her. He also realized the hatred he’d once felt for this woman was gone. In truth, he felt only relief to have his daughter safe, not what he knew he should be feeling—the sweet taste of vindication.

He knew they couldn’t go on as if the past had never happened, but with time, wounds would heal. They’d all suffered enough. “I’m not interested in reliving the past.”

“Ma’am,” one of the detectives said to Heather. “We need you to come downtown with us. We’ve got a lot of questions for you.”

She smiled through her tears. “Yes, of course.”

The detective looked at Liam. “You and your daughter, too, Mr. Armstrong.”

“I want her checked out by a doctor.”

“Ambulance is on the way.”

Liam pulled Emily into his arms, held her against his chest. His little girl. Safe. In his arms. At last.

* * *

Shock and disbelief merged with relief to cut straight through Jess. Kirby. No wonder he’d always been vague when she questioned him about the love he’d lost. She’d always known he had an edge to him, a chip on his shoulder, but she’d never realized the hatred that seethed inside him. The hatred her father had inadvertently nurtured.

Jess wrapped her arms around her rib cage and watched Liam hold his daughter. She wouldn’t cry. She absolutely would not cry. But, God, how the tears burned the backs of her eyes.

Emily was tall, but she looked small in Liam’s arms, almost like a little girl. He held her fiercely, his whole body curled to protect hers, like she was the most precious gift in the world. Which, of course, she was. His eyes were clenched shut, his jaw set.

The dog Molly barked and licked frantically. Someone had taken off the muzzle.

Deep inside, Jess started to bleed. She wanted to go to father and daughter, wrap her arms around man and child and join in the reunion, but knew she had no place there. Her role in Liam’s life had come to an end.

“Let me look at you,” he said in a voice more tender than Jess had ever heard. He pulled back and brushed the long, tangled hair from Emily’s cheeks, then gently framed her face in his big hands. “This is a lot to take in. Are you okay?”

Emily’s blue eyes filled with another flood of tears. “I didn’t know if he’d hurt you, Dad. I was scared that maybe—”

“Shh,” he said, pulling her back for another hug. “Everything’s okay now.”

And it was.

Jess looked away from the painfully tender scene and headed outside. The sun was setting, putting on a spectacular show of pink and red swirls. She dug deep to find the expression of a cop in control, not a woman whose heart was breaking.

“Jessie?” Commander McKnight intercepted her before she made it halfway down the walk. “You okay?”

She forced a smile. “I’m not the one whose temple is bleeding.”

McKnight frowned. “He got me good. I only took my eye off him for one second, and he was off.”

“I should have
figured
it out sooner.” She ground the words out. “I knew Kirby resented Liam, but I didn’t realize it went beyond the bounds of the law.”

“How could you have? He was your partner. You trusted him, and he used that against you. He knew how you thought, used that to stay one step ahead. You didn’t know there was a connection between Kirby and the past, did you?”

“I was so close,” she said. So close to uncovering the truth. Just a few more hours… “If I’d just reviewed Dad’s files earlier, I’m willing to bet there’s an interview with Kirby, and I would have known there was a link. None of this—”

“Don’t beat yourself up over something none of us saw.”

“This explains so much, though!” And it did. Long’s duplicity explained the oddities that had eaten at her from day one of this case. “Why Emily’s disappearance looked like a runaway at first. Why Liam found Adam Braxton before we did. Why that first note went to my house, not Liam’s. Kirby set us all up, kept everyone off balance. He threw suspicion in so many directions, no one looked in the right place.”

“I have to admit, when Armstrong called, I thought he was out of his mind.”

“Liam called?”

“Found the notes from your interview with Carson Manning on your desk, saw a note from Kirby signed with his initials.”

“K.L.,” Jess repeated, stunned. She remembered Carson Manning using the name. “Kale.”