CHAPTER 8
“Care to tell me why you have such an interest in these particular case files?” With all the appearance of a man who looked like he was taking up residence, Davis settled into the recliner Lisa had dragged in from the living room earlier in the week.
Gage was so preoccupied with that almost kiss his words didn’t register at first.
Where the hell had he stored his brain during that little interlude? He certainly hadn’t been thinking about the ramifications of starting something with her, that was for sure.
If he had possessed one ounce of common sense, he would have hurried back to his room the moment she finished washing his hair. He didn’t need to know all that personal history about her, about her diabetes and her father’s rejection and her worries of not being able to care for her daughters if her disease progressed.
That was the problem with getting to know someone. Once you learned private details like that about people, it was almost impossible to treat them like polite strangers.
Now he was afraid he had lost any chance to be able to continue viewing Lisa Connors with the cool distance he had carefully maintained this past week.
“McKinnon? Hello?”
He blinked away thoughts of her and turned his attention to Davis. “What was that?”
“The files. What’s your interest in these particular cases?”
He glanced at the small stack his partner had placed on the table next to his laptop. “Why not? What else do I have to do but sit here all day and track down cold cases?”
“These aren’t just cold, they’re in a deep-freeze, man. Six unsolved kidnappings of young girls that happened twenty to twenty-five years ago. Are you thinking they might be linked?”
Gage scanned the folders, copies of files he had been slowly earmarking as long as he’d been with the FBI. “I’m just playing a hunch. There are certain similarities between them.”
But plenty of disparities, too, he had to admit.
“What connection did you see? I’ll admit I didn’t go through every single page, I just looked at the case summaries. The only thing that jumped out at me was that they all happened in a four-state region—Idaho, Montana, Utah and Nevada.”
“They have a few other links. All were taken in the afternoon from either their own yards or from a park close to their homes. And all the girls were blond, between the ages of three and twelve.”
He pictured Charley, blond curls gleaming in the sun and her dimples winking at everyone she met.
“That’s a wide age span if you’re looking to profile a pedophile. Usually they favor a more specific age range.”
He hated even considering the idea that his sweet baby sister might have ended up in the hands of somebody sick and twisted like that, but he had long ago accepted the odds were good that was exactly the kind of person who had taken her.
“I’m not looking to do anything other than study some old case files and see if I can find any fresh leads.”
“Why these particular cases?”
“Their families deserve to know what happened to them. It’s never too late for justice.”
Davis cocked his head, and Gage had a feeling the man wasn’t fooled. He should have realized Davis wouldn’t settle for some superficial explanation. The other agent was a brilliant investigator with a reputation that rivaled Gage’s own for stubborn determination. They had been roommates at Quantico and Gage figured the other man probably knew him better than anyone else alive.
He had few friends, so he tended to treasure the ones he had. Cale Davis was among the best.
“Any relation?” the agent finally asked.
He couldn’t pretend ignorance. Not with Davis. He should have known the other agent would pick up on the last name on the tab of one of the files and manage to connect the dots. It was right there in black marker. Charlotte McKinnon. All that he had left of her was this slim manila folder full of a motley, pitifully slim assortment of facts.
“My sister.”
He hoped that would be the end of it, but Davis met his abrupt statement with a glare. “How long have we known each other?”
“I don’t know. A dozen years, maybe.”
“And not once in all that time have you ever bothered to mention you even had a sister or any of the rest of this.” He gestured to the case files with a jerky movement, and to his surprise, Gage realized the other man wasn’t merely annoyed, he was angry.
“What would be the point?”
“Well, for one thing, it explains a whole hell of a lot about you.”
“Like what? Why I’m such a son of a bitch most of the time?”
Cale grinned. “That, too.”
Just as quickly as it flashed over his features, the grin disappeared and he sobered. “Maybe it helps explain why you do what you do. The Crimes Against Children assignment you fought so hard to get and won’t let anybody take away. Why you make sure you’re assigned to all the cases involving missing kids. The whole ‘bloodhound’ nickname, why you work like a dog until your cases are put to bed.”
Gage shifted, uncomfortable with the whole discussion. So he had become a crusader of sorts at finding missing and abused children. What difference did that make when he was no closer to finding the one child who meant the most to him?
“You should have told me, McKinnon.”
“Why?”
“Maybe I could have helped somehow. I’m assuming you’ve been working the case on your own time. If I know anything about the bloodhound, you’ve probably been working it on the side as long as you’ve been with the Bureau, am I right?”
“Yeah.” Gage thought about the fruitless leads he’d followed up over the years, the clues that always led him exactly nowhere. The idea of sharing the investigation seemed foreign. This was a burden he carried alone and it was tough to think about sharing it.
“Made any progress?”
He thought of the leads he’d accumulated, a pitifully slim collection despite years of digging. Davis was right. Charlotte’s case was stuck in a deep, dark freeze.
“Not much. I’ve mostly been going back over what’s in the file to see if anything was missed by the original task force. A couple months ago I followed up on a possible sighting reported in Texas a few months after Charlotte disappeared. I reinterviewed the eyewitness, a convenience store clerk who reported twenty years ago that she thought she saw a girl resembling Charley come into her store with a woman.”
“She remember anything new?”
“She’s pushing eighty now and barely remembers the names of her own grandkids. Says the little girl had the same curly blond hair as the kid on the milk carton she saw and she remembered a lisp and a broken front tooth, something she never told the original investigators.”
“I’m assuming your sister lisped.”
“Yeah. And she broke a tooth just the day before she was kidnapped when she was trying to ride my kid brother’s bike.”
“Did she remember anything new about the woman?”
“No. According to the original report, she says the woman was in her midthirties and acted like she was drunk or stoned. That’s why she remembered them in the first place, because the woman tried to walk out of the store with a gallon of milk hidden under her shirt. Before the clerk could call the police, the woman ran out of the store, dragging the kid with her.”
Cale settled back in the recliner. Gage had worked with him enough to know the wheels in his head were spinning as he tried to work out connections in the case. “So what are you thinking might link that and these other five kidnappings?”
“I don’t know. Probably nothing. Like I said, I’m just trying to play all the possibilities. Study every angle.” It would probably be fruitless, just like every other lead he tried to follow in Charley’s disappearance. But at least he felt like he was doing something. He hated the paralyzing helplessness of inaction.
“I wish you’d told me,” Davis said again. “But I suppose it’s not much of a surprise that you preferred to keep it to yourself, knowing what I do about you.”
They spent the next few moments discussing the case files and bouncing theories off each other. Gage had to admit he was grateful for Davis’s sharp insight. The other agent made several good suggestions about the direction he could take his unofficial inquiries.
He was busy writing them down when a knock sounded at his bedroom door. A moment later Lisa stuck her head inside.
“Sorry to interrupt but I wondered if Agent Davis planned to stay for dinner. I can easily fix enough for two.”
“No, ma’am.”
Gage wasn’t sure why the charming smile Davis gave her annoyed him so much.
“Thanks, anyway,” he went on, “but I’ve got dinner plans.”
“Hot date?” Gage asked, a bite to his voice.
“Oh, yeah. You know that receptionist for the law firm on the second floor?”
“No.”
Cale rolled his eyes. “You’re the only male with a heartbeat in the entire building who hasn’t noticed her, then. Italian. Long, curly dark hair, lush lips, big, soulful brown eyes.”
“Sorry. Doesn’t ring any bells.”
“And you call yourself an FBI agent.” He grinned at Lisa again. “It baffles me how the man can be such a genius at his job but still be completely oblivious to the rest of the world. Or the female half of it, anyway.”
Lisa’s gaze flashed to his and he could see the memory of the kiss they had almost shared in her eyes.
He wondered what Davis would say if he told him he noticed plenty of things about at least one female in his life. That she nurtured everyone she came in contact with. That she smelled like spring. That her eyes made him think of walking through a mountain meadow full of wild-flowers.
An appealing blush spread over her features. Something else he’d noticed about her before, that she certainly colored up easier than most brunettes he knew. But maybe Lisa Connors had unusually sensitive skin.
For all his astuteness, Cale seemed oblivious to the undercurrents ebbing and flowing through the room. He rose from the chair. “Anyway, thanks again for the dinner invitation but I really should be heading back to the city. Wouldn’t want to keep Teresa waiting.”
“Thank you for dropping off the files,” Gage said.
“Not a problem.” Davis turned serious again. “Hey, let me know if you need somebody to run interviews out in the field on any of these cases until you’re up to it again. I’d be willing to help any way I could. I hope you know that.”
Gage only nodded, touched by the sincerity of the offer. He never would have believed it, but he was actually glad the other man now knew about Charlotte.
Uncomfortable with the depth of his emotion, he was relieved when Lisa offered to show Davis out. The two of them walked from the room, leaving him alone with the frozen remains of his sister’s case.
* * *
Sometimes memory lane could be a dark and lonely road.
Allie leaned against the brass headboard of her bed and gazed at the pictures in the single photo album she had allowed herself to pack along that frenzied night when she and the girls fled their Philadelphia home. Forcing herself to choose only one to take with them had been agonizing but she had to hope whoever might eventually go through their things at the brownstone would save the pictures.
This was all she had left of Jaime. A few photographs, an old shirt she still liked to sleep in and her memories. And the girls. She couldn’t forget her girls. They were a precious piece of him, a gift that reminded her daily of the loving marriage they had enjoyed so briefly.
She turned the page then smiled at the images there. On one side was a picture of Jaime sleeping with a tiny Anna curled up on his chest. The other showed a smiling Jaime during the trip they’d taken to Florida just a few weeks before his accident. He and Gaby were building a sandcastle, heads bent close together, and the sun gilded their dark hair.
She remembered that day vividly—the cry of the gulls overhead, the waves brushing the shore, the scent of sand and sea and sunscreen and her own fierce happiness.
She traced his dark, lean features. The pain and loss were still there but somehow tonight they didn’t seem as intense as usual, more like a quiet, hollow sadness than the howling, raging anguish she had known right after he was killed. It was all part of the grieving process, she knew. Hearts eventually begin to heal, sorrow to fade.
She didn’t want to heal, though. It seemed so much more safe to stay in the secure, isolated harbor of her pain.
Allie sighed and traced Jaime’s features again. She supposed she didn’t need a degree in psychology to figure out why she had pulled this photo album out of the drawer, tonight of all nights. If she had any question, all she had to do was look for the answer out the fluttering curtains at the window toward the house next door. She only had to remember those breathless moments when Gage McKinnon had nearly kissed her.
She was scared. Plain and simple. Terrified of the needs and wants beginning to stir to life within her like the colorful splash of crocuses breaking through snow.
She had thought herself frozen forever after Jaime’s death, had believed that all her desires had been trapped for eternity on some barren, lonely tundra somewhere. That had been fine. She had wanted it that way. But now her unwilling attraction to Gage was forcing her back into warmth, like the sweet breath of spring blowing through all the corners of her life, thawing her frozen edges.
When she thought he would kiss her back in the kitchen earlier, her blood had churned through her, thick and slow, waking all those dormant needs. How could she possibly put them back to sleep now?
What other choice did she have, though? Gage McKinnon was not the man to help her feel alive again. He was surly and bad-tempered and aloof. Besides that, he was an FBI agent! The last man on the planet she should be thinking about in any kind of romantic way.
All the rationalizations in the world couldn’t change the chemistry between them. He was attracted to her and she, heaven help her, shared that attraction.
So what was she supposed to do about it? Just go on ignoring that sizzle under her skin, pretend that her heartbeat didn’t race whenever she was in the room with him, that her body didn’t instinctively sway toward him whenever she was close to him?
She would have to. Either that or quit.
Before she could follow up on that line of thought, through the open window she heard a loud crash coming from next door.
She froze for a moment, then thrust the scrapbook away and rushed to the window. A light burned in Gage’s room but she could see no movement through the blinds.
Had he fallen? He must have—what else would have made such a horrendous commotion?
For an instant she hovered at the window, torn about what to do. Her instincts snapped at her to get her butt in gear and go see what had happened. But she knew how ferociously proud and independent he was, how he hated needing her help.
“Gage?” she called softly. “Is everything okay?”
He didn’t answer and she mentally consigned his pride to the devil. She couldn’t stay here, not if he was hurt.
Her heart pounding, she rushed next door, heedless of the wet slap of grass against her bare feet, then the cool rough bricks of his sidewalk.
After unlocking his door, she paused inside. “Gage?” she called. “Where are you? Is everything okay?”
Silence met her call for several seconds, then he answered in an aggravated voice. “Go away. I’m fine.”
Despite his cross tone, she thought she could hear pain threading through his voice. Ignoring his command, she headed through the living room toward the light she saw burning in the kitchen.
In the doorway she gasped to find him sprawled in front of the open refrigerator, the wheelchair on its side next to him. The half gallon of milk she’d bought earlier in the day was on the floor beside him, now half-empty. The rest of it puddled on the floor and soaked his T-shirt.
She realized at a glance what must have happened. It looked as if he had wheeled himself into the kitchen for a snack and had reached too far into the refrigerator and lost his balance, tipping the chair and ending up on the floor.
She rushed to him and righted the wheelchair.
“Don’t you have anything better to do with your time than lurk outside my door in the middle of the night waiting to barge in where you’re not needed?”
“Apparently not,” she murmured, biting back a sharper reply when she saw the lines of pain etched around his mouth.
“I can do this,” he snapped when she reached down to help him back into the wheelchair.
He was likely frustrated and hurting, she thought, and forced herself to step back and hold the chair steady while he hefted himself with his arms back inside.
“I could have done it alone eventually. I just couldn’t reach the brake to set it, and the damn chair kept slipping away from me.”
“Did you reinjure anything?”
“I don’t think so.”
Just his colossal masculine pride, she would wager. She tried to keep that in mind while she unobtrusively did a visual check of his casts. She couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “Be sure you tell me if you experience any unusual swelling or pain, okay?”
“Sure. Good night.”
She sighed at the clear dismissal in his tone. He obviously wanted her gone, but she wasn’t quite ready to leave him until she was sure he hadn’t aggravated his injuries. “Is there something I can get for you out of the fridge while I’m here?”
Though he looked for a moment as if he would stubbornly refuse any further help, after a moment he answered. “I was reaching for a piece of that cherry pie you made the other day.”
“Let me get you a dry shirt to change into and then I’ll cut a slice for you.”
In the laundry room off the kitchen, she found a pile of folded T-shirts neatly stacked on the dryer where she’d left them, since she hadn’t wanted to bother Gage while the other FBI agent had been there by returning them to the drawers in his bedroom. The one on top was a soft navy-blue cotton shirt with FBI emblazoned on the front in white letters.
She grabbed it and returned to the kitchen, then had to stop in the doorway, swallowing hard. He had taken off the damp shirt and now sat with his chair pulled to the kitchen table, completely bare-chested.
Oh, mercy.
Hard, tight muscles rippled in every direction, without an ounce of fat in sight. How could his shoulders be so impossibly broad? They filled the wheelchair with no room to spare.
Her pulse fluttered and the blood seemed to rush from her head. Exasperated at herself—at the reaction she didn’t want to feel but couldn’t seem to control—she tossed the shirt at him.
“There you go. Clean and dry.”
She picked up the wet shirt where he’d left it on the counter and carried it back into the laundry room. While there, she gave herself a stern lecture about keeping her hormones in check.
It almost worked. At least by the time she returned to the kitchen again—where all those delicious muscles were now safely covered up, she saw with relief—she was almost certain she could carry on a halfway coherent conversation.
“Would you like ice cream with your pie?”
“No. Pie is fine. Thanks.”
She sliced a piece and heated it in the microwave for a few seconds then poured him a glass of milk. She set them in front of him, then took a seat next to him at the table.
“Looks like there’s plenty for two if you’d like a piece.”
“Better not. I’ve had more than my share of sweets today.”
He took a sip of milk. “You must have built up incredible willpower over the years.”
“Not really. It’s all about learning how to stay away from things you know aren’t good for you.”
Or people. So what was she doing sitting alone in Gage McKinnon’s kitchen with him when she knew perfectly well he was worse for her system than eating that entire pie by herself.
“Look, I’m sorry for snapping at you before,” he said after a moment. “Believe it or not, I really do appreciate you coming over. If you hadn’t, I probably would have been on the floor for a while before I managed to make it back up.”
She knew the admission was hard for him so she didn’t say anything.
“How did you know something was wrong, anyway?” he asked. “You don’t have some secret baby monitor set up somewhere that I don’t know about, do you?”
“No, but that’s not a bad idea,” she said with a laugh. “Actually, my bedroom window was open. I was awake and heard the crash through the open windows over here. I’m glad you weren’t seriously hurt.”
He made a wry face. “Couldn’t sleep, huh?”
She hoped he had no inkling why she had still been up at this hour, that she couldn’t forget that moment when they had nearly kissed. She’d been too busy thinking about him to get any rest.
Heat soaked her cheeks and she prayed fervently that he wouldn’t notice. “Um, no. Neither could you, I guess.”
“It’s tough to find a comfortable position flat on my back. I’m more of a side sleeper.”
“Maybe we can talk to the physical therapist or your orthopedist. We might be able to rig something up with pillows or something so you can lie on your side.”
Before he could answer, she noticed something she’d overlooked earlier. “Oh! Your hand is bleeding. Why didn’t you tell me?”
His fingers curled over his palm. “It’s no big deal. Just a scratch. I think I might have caught it on the fridge shelf on my way down.”
“You should have said something. We need to clean that up and put some disinfectant on it.”
“I can do it.”
She made a face. “But will you? That’s the question. It will only take a moment for me to get some first-aid supplies.”
She hurried to the bathroom and found disinfectant, antibiotic cream and bandages in the medicine chest. Back in the kitchen, she pulled her chair close to him and took his hand in hers, trying not to notice the warm strength of his fingers in hers.
“It might hurt a little,” she warned.
His laugh sounded gruff. “With all my other aches and pains right now, I probably won’t notice a thing.”
Still, he winced a little when she wiped the wound clean. “Sorry,” she murmured and slowly blew on it to ease the sting.
“I’ll live.” His voice had a rough, husky note she hadn’t noticed earlier. She glanced up and found him watching her, his eyes a murky gray. Something about the expression in those gray depths sent her pulse racing, her stomach fluttering.
Heat sparked between them like dry lightning, and the room suddenly felt airless. His gaze fastened on her mouth and she hitched in a breath. He wanted to kiss her again and, oh, how she wanted to let him!
She wasn’t consciously aware of leaning toward him, of tugging his hand to pull him closer, but she must have because she found herself nearly in his lap. He growled an oath and an instant later his mouth found hers.
A hint of cherries lingered on his lips, tart and sweet and delicious, and she craved it suddenly, wanted to relish every taste.
A part of her mind warned her this was a colossal mistake, but she ignored it, lost in the wonder of reawakened desire. Later she would have time for regrets but for now she simply wanted to feel.