CHAPTER 2
“Mama, I don’t want to go to Mrs. Cochran’s house. I don’t like her.”
Allie paused in the middle of buckling Anna into her booster seat and gazed over at Gaby as unease coursed through her. “What do you mean, you don’t like her? Since when? Last week you said you thought she was nice. She pushed you on the swing and let you have Popsicles and played Chutes and Ladders with you.”
Gaby shrugged. “She’s nice sometimes. Not all the time.”
Oh, she did not need this. Everything had been going so well. Her insulin level was more stable than it had been for a long time. Her job cleaning houses, though a far cry from her work as a triage nurse at a busy innercity emergency room back in Philadelphia, gave her a steady income and more importantly, health insurance.
And she’d detected absolutely no sign that anyone had followed her.
The only fly in her particular ointment was her next-door neighbor. She had to admit, she’d suffered more than a few bad moments after learning she’d had the bad luck to move in next to an FBI agent.
After much angst, though, she decided she could risk living here for a few more weeks, just until she could pay off the car repair bill to Ruth’s son. She would just do her best to stay out of his way and pray he would have no reason to connect the drab Lisa Connors to Alicia DeBarillas.
Avoiding the man hadn’t been tough at all since he never seemed to be around.
Other than that stress of living next to Gage McKinnon, things had been going so well. She thought she had found the perfect caregiver for the girls while she was working, someone matronly and loving. Ruth Jensen had suggested an older, widowed neighbor of hers who took in children to earn a little extra money. Dora Cochran had come with other glowing recommendations and the arrangement had been working well, or so Allie had thought.
“What does she do that’s not nice?” she asked carefully.
Gaby’s little brow furrowed as she thought it over. “Yesterday she said I talk too much and told me to shut up. And she told Anna to stop acting like a baby on account of she started to cry after Mrs. Thompson turned off Blue’s Clues so she could watch Oprah.”
The woman wasn’t exactly beating them but she didn’t sound particularly loving either. Allie gave a mental groan. What was she supposed to do? She couldn’t dump her children off at a place where they weren’t comfortable, but she had nowhere else to send them. She hated this. Absolutely hated it.
She had to work; she had no choice. Much of her and Jaime’s savings had gone toward her medical bills and legal fees in the last six months. Though she had received life insurance benefits after his accident, it had all been tied up in the custody battle.
Before she left, Allie had pulled everything liquid out of their accounts, figuring that if she was careful, she and the girls could survive for five or six months on her small nest egg, especially if she could find a job with health insurance to pay for her insulin. But she couldn’t tap into that now. If they had to move on quickly for any reason, she would need that nest egg to fall back on.
She needed her job, but Allie knew she wouldn’t be able to work a moment if she was constantly worrying about her daughters.
“Okay, honey. If you don’t want to go back to Mrs. Cochran’s, you don’t have to. I’ll figure something out.”
Her mind scrambled to come up with some solution. Today she was scheduled to clean four vacation rental properties whose occupants had already checked out. Since they were vacant, she was sure Ruth wouldn’t mind if the girls went along with her, just until she could find someone else to watch them. She would give her a call just to make sure, but she didn’t think the other woman would have a problem with it. She had been more than accommodating so far and had treated her and the girls with a kindness that often brought tears to Allie’s eyes.
“You might be able to come with me today,” she told the girls. “I’ll just need to check with Mrs. Jensen and get some videos and some toys and crayons from inside so you have something to do.”
“Yippee!” Gaby cheered.
“’Ippee!” Anna echoed.
Allie headed back up the steps, then paused and looked over the hedge separating her rental house from its cheerful twin next door. Her neighbor would probably have something to say about a mother who would leave her daughters in the car while she ran back inside her house, even when it was only for a moment.
With a heavy sigh, she jogged back down the steps, opened the car door then unhooked the girls from their boosters. “Come on. You can wait inside while I gather some things.”
She shouldn’t care what some broodingly handsome, interfering FBI agent thought. Besides, the man seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Probably undercover somewhere, she thought, sticking his nose into some other poor woman’s business.
She had seen no signs of him over there since her birthday the week before when he had come knocking at her door, accusing her of being an unfit mother.
He hadn’t really, she reminded herself. She had reacted far out of proportion to what had no doubt been well-intentioned advice. When she’d had time to cool down—and time for her terror to fade—she appreciated his warning and the reminder to be more careful with her daughters.
Later that evening over birthday cake and pizza she had reminded both girls about their family’s safety rules. Don’t ever talk to strangers; don’t ever give your name to a stranger; don’t ever take rides from strangers; report any strangers to an adult. She had to walk the same fine line every parent confronted, between scaring the girls to death and instilling a necessary sense of self-preservation in them.
They seemed to have gotten the message without destroying their natural gregariousness. The night before, Gaby had even started to strike up a conversation with a woman in the grocery line then stopped in midsentence and asked her mother if she knew the other woman or if she was a stranger, and if she was a stranger, could Allie please find out her name so Gaby could finish telling her about the baby kittens she’d seen outside the store?
She supposed she owed Gage McKinnon an apology for reacting so strongly to his advice, even though her own sense of self-preservation warned her she should stay as far away as possible from such a dangerous man.
But how could she apologize to him if he was never home? His late-model SUV hadn’t been parked in the driveway since that morning a week earlier and his windows were tightly closed, even though a warm spell had hit Utah in the last few days. Not only had the windows not been opened but the curtains hadn’t so much as twitched an inch in seven days.
She didn’t want to be curious about his whereabouts but she had to admit she found herself watching out for his tall, muscular frame wherever they went. She didn’t know if that funny flutter in her stomach at the idea of seeing him again stemmed from fear or anticipation.
She wrenched her mind from her dratted neighbor and focused on the girls. “Find a few things to take with us today while I call Ruth, all right?”
She watched them go, Gaby chattering with excitement about all the things she was going to take and Anna trailing dutifully along behind, as usual.
Love for these two sweet children crept up on her and completely took her breath away, as it sometimes did. She would have died if she lost them, literally would have shriveled up and faded away into nothing. They were her heart, her soul, her life. Everything.
She wanted to hate Jaime’s parents for what they had tried to do. At first when she had awakened in the hospital and been served with the paperwork petitioning for custody of the girls because of her condition, she had been both livid and terrified. For a long time her emotions had seesawed between fury and fear as the case had worked its way through the courts.
But now she couldn’t manage to summon much emotion toward them but pity. Joaquin and Irena DeBarillas had failed miserably with their only son, had lost him long before he decided to come to the States to study medicine and had met and married her when he was a resident at the hospital where she worked.
Did they really think they could regain through their granddaughters what they had destroyed with Jaime?
Over her dead body.
She pitied them, knew they were lonely. But she would still be damned before she let them get their hands on her little girls.
Allie dialed Ruth’s office number and waited through eight rings before hanging up. The answering machine must be busted again. She’d learned Ruth had little patience with gadgetry and didn’t check her messages often anyway. She also didn’t carry a cell phone, so now what was Allie supposed to do?
She had to drop by the office on her way to the first property anyway to pick up the master key. If Ruth wasn’t there, she could always leave her a note, she supposed.
She went to prod Gaby and Anna along just as she heard the doorbell. For one crazy instant, she thought it might be her neighbor and her heart began a low, urgent drumming.
It wasn’t Gage McKinnon, she saw as soon as she opened the door, but her employer who stood on the porch, thin and brisk and competent.
“Ruth! I just tried to call you. I’m so glad you stopped by!”
“Oh?”
“Yes.” Suddenly she felt nervy presuming on her employer’s kindness this way. But she also couldn’t bear the thought of sending Anna and Gaby to a place they didn’t feel comfortable, not when their life was in such tumult anyway.
“Um, I’m afraid Dora Cochran is not working out. Would you object if I took the girls with me to the houses I’m cleaning today since they’re all empty? They can be very well behaved and won’t get in my way or slow me down, I promise.”
Ruth looked thoughtful. “I don’t see why not. Actually, that’s one of the reasons I stopped. I wanted to ask if you’re interested in another job, one where you might not need day care for the girls.”
“What kind of job?” she asked warily. She didn’t necessarily enjoy cleaning houses but it paid the rent with a little left over, and Ruth hadn’t asked any questions about her background.
“You told me you’ve had some medical training.”
“Yes.” She would love to find a nursing job but she would have to be licensed to legally work and she didn’t know how to go about that while living under a false name.
“A renter of mine was in an accident last week. He’s coming home from the hospital in a wheelchair the day after tomorrow but won’t be able to get around on his own for a while. He asked me if I knew anybody who could cook and clean for him, run him around to physical therapy, that sort of thing. I thought of you.”
“I’m not a licensed nurse in Utah, Ruth.”
“I know that. A home care nurse will stop by to check on him, so you would only have to be around to help if he needs it. Pay’s a few dollars more an hour than you get now and you could keep the girls with you.”
Excitement pulsed through her. If she were making a few dollars more an hour and didn’t have to pay for day care, she could add even more to her small security cushion. And it would be so wonderful to spend all day with Gaby and Anna.
She was almost afraid to hope things could work out so well and felt a pang of guilt for benefiting from some other person’s misfortune.
“What happened to the poor man?” she asked.
“Job-related injury. He was hit by a truck. Crushed against a concrete wall, really, by a man he was trying to arrest.”
A terrible suspicion slithered to life, and Allie glanced over the hedge again at the cottage next door. “He’s a police officer?” she asked with sudden dread.
“FBI agent,” Ruth said, confirming her worst fears. “You might have met him, since he just lives next door. Gage McKinnon. Tall, dark, good-looking.”
All her spiraling hopes crashed to the ground like a balloon shot by a BB gun. So she hadn’t solved her child-care dilemma after all. She was right back where she started, without a good place for the girls to stay while she worked.
She wanted to weep from the crushing weight of her disappointment. “I’m sorry, Ruth, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass on the job offer, though I truly appreciate you thinking of me. I just don’t think it would work for me after all.”
Her landlady frowned. “Pass? Why, that’s just plain crazy. It’s the perfect situation all the way around. If you wanted, you could even hire a teenager to watch the girls over here at your place and check on them through the day since you’d just be next door. I can give you some names.”
Maybe it would be the perfect situation, if the job involved caring for just an average person. But Gage McKinnon was an FBI agent. She hadn’t worked this hard to keep her children with her—sacrificed everything for them—only to lose them in the end to Jaime’s parents because of an interfering, inquisitive federal agent.
She couldn’t tell that to Ruth so she quickly searched for a believable explanation. “I don’t think Mr. McKinnon and I would suit,” she finally said, unable to keep the regret from her voice. “We met last week shortly after I moved in and, um, had a few words.”
Ruth blinked at that piece of information. After a few moments she nodded. “Your choice, I suppose. Too bad. You’d have been perfect, especially since you’ve been around hurt folks before. I’ll try to find someone else, I guess. Shouldn’t be too hard. One of my other housekeepers would probably do it in a heartbeat. It’s pretty easy money. Much easier than cleaning toilets and making beds all day.”
Now that was a matter of opinion.
Allie thought of Gage McKinnon, all long limbs and lean power. Even if she hadn’t been worried the sharp-eyed FBI agent would find out she was a fugitive, she wasn’t sure she could work so closely with him, not when she couldn’t manage to think straight around the man.
“I’m sorry, Ruth. I do appreciate you thinking of me, but I believe I’ll stick to cleaning toilets and making beds. Speaking of that, are you sure you don’t mind if I take the girls along with me today?”
Ruth shrugged. “Don’t see why not. As long as you’re working on empty vacation rentals it shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll see if I can arrange your schedule this week so you work only vacant units.”
What would she have done without Ruth and her kindness? She couldn’t even bear to think about it. “Thank you.”
Ruth, as usual, shrugged off her gratitude. “So what’s going on with Dora?”
“Nothing, really. The girls can just be particular about what they like. They’ve decided they and Dora don’t suit.”
“I’ll try to think of someone else. Still, it seems to me the solution is right there in front of your nose. McKinnon needs help, you need a different situation for the girls. What better place for them than being with their mama all day while she works?”
Allie opened her mouth to reply, but Ruth cut her off with a shake of her no-nonsense graying head. “Don’t say no. Think about it. He doesn’t come home from the hospital until day after tomorrow. You might change your mind before then.”
She wouldn’t change her mind, Allie thought. She couldn’t afford to, as much as part of her might want to. The stakes were simply too high.
* * *
Gage shifted in the back seat of an FBI Suburban, trying to find the impossible—a comfortable position. Just how the hell was he supposed to get comfortable when he had two thigh-length casts on his legs?
It was only a half hour drive from the University of Utah hospital up Parley’s Canyon to his house in Park City. He could survive for that long. He had to if he wanted to make it back to his place.
No way was he going to recuperate in some rehab facility like the doctors at the university medical center wanted him to do. If he had to be cooped up somewhere for weeks at a time, he wanted it to be in his own space, surrounded by his own stuff. Not in some nursing home that smelled of stale urine and hopelessness.
“Everything okay back there?” Cale Davis, his partner of little more than a month, asked with concern from behind the wheel.
“Yeah.” Gage tried not to wince as the Suburban hit a pothole, sending fiery pain shooting through his legs like twin comets.
“You sure? I can pull over if you need a breather.”
“No. Just keep driving. I’m fine.”
Neither Cale nor the other man in the front seat—Davis’s temporary partner Thompson Lovell—looked convinced by his words but they didn’t argue with him.
“Potter called while we were at the hospital,” Cale said after a moment, referring to their boss William Potter, the special agent in charge of the Salt Lake City office. “Juber was arraigned this morning on attempted-murder charges, assaulting a federal officer and using his vehicle as a deadly weapon. Not to mention all the charges associated with his Internet child porn ring. There’s talk about a guilty plea, at least to the charges involving you. Since a dozen Feds and local cops watched him pin you against that wall, I don’t see what choice he has.”
Gage groaned inwardly—and not only because the Suburban hit another bump in the road. He had no one to blame for his injuries but himself. He had been an idiot and now he was paying for it.
If he hadn’t been distracted, he never would have made the greenie mistake of taking the shortcut between Lyle Juber’s pickup and a cement retaining wall on his way to yank the man out of his vehicle and make the arrest.
His only excuse was that he’d been caught up in the excitement of finally nailing the bastard. The case had been a long and ugly one, begun during his previous assignment in the Bay Area. He had trailed Juber here to Salt Lake City and continued building the case against him. Finally higher-ups determined there was enough evidence to make an arrest.
They’d found him in his hulking old pickup on his way to the grocery store. The guy had reacted like the cornered rat that he was. To the surprise of everyone on the team, he had resisted arrest with a vengeance.
Instead of calmly walking out of his truck with his hands up as he’d been ordered, he shoved the heavy truck into gear, crushing Gage against the wall, then backed into the other officers standing around with guns drawn.
Everybody but Gage had been able to dive out of the way. Because of the way he’d been positioned, Gage had ended up with one femur shattered in four places just above the knee and the other femur had sustained a clean simple fracture.
Juber hadn’t gotten far before the tires of his truck had been blown out and he’d been taken into custody. That was small consolation to Gage, facing several weeks of sick leave and more of rehab.
Not to mention the humiliation of knowing he had screwed up.
He would have plenty of time to obsess over every moment of his mistake. But at least he would be doing it at home, not in some damn gray-walled hospital room.
The doctors thought he needed another week in the hospital but Gage knew he’d be a raving lunatic by then. He hated the nurses waking him every time he managed to drift off to sleep, hated the lack of privacy, hated the pills they shoved down his throat at every opportunity.
He could handle this, he thought as Cale at last pulled in front of his rental unit. He had a home-care nurse coming to check on him and his saint of a landlady said she’d hired someone to help him get around throughout the day.
On the other hand, maybe he’d been a little too optimistic about his own abilities. By the time Thom and Cale helped him out of the Suburban and into the blasted wheelchair he was going to have to use for the next several weeks—until he could bear weight on his less-injured leg and start using crutches—his head was spinning and his gut churned as if he’d just climbed off a killer roller coaster.
He needed a painkiller but he hated the damn things. He closed his eyes in a vain effort to regain his equilibrium while Cale pushed up a temporary ramp that his landlady must have juryrigged into the cottage. He made a mental note to add a little extra to the rent check for all her work on his behalf since he had contacted her about his injuries.
“Do you have the key?” Lovell asked.
Gage thought about it and realized his key ring was probably still at his desk in Salt Lake City. He made a face.
“Guess not.” The agent pulled out a credit card, ready to pick the lock, then tried the knob. It turned easily, putting Gage instantly on alert. Why was the door open?
Lovell opened the door and Davis wheeled him inside the living room. Gage gazed around, disoriented. He had been in the hospital for over a week. Had he maybe forgotten where he lived, given the guys the wrong address somehow?
No, this was his cottage. He recognized his furniture—the leather sofa and recliner he’d brought along from his previous assignment in San Francisco, the oak coffee table he’d made with his own hands the last time he’d visited his father’s cabinet shop in Nevada, the big-screen TV he hardly had time to watch.
This was his cottage but what the hell had happened to it? He wasn’t particularly messy but neither was he obsessive about housework. This place sparkled, without any dust or that closed-up feeling he might have expected after it had sat empty for a week.
There were fresh flowers in a canning jar on the coffee table and the whole place smelled of clean laundry and chicken noodle soup.
He was still trying to figure what dimension Cale and Lovell had wheeled him into when a beautiful woman stepped out of his kitchen like something out of his deepest fantasies.
She was lithe and curvy and wore nothing but an apron.