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Yeah. He understood, and the deputy and sheriff who’d shown up in response to Chance’s call were as professional as any law enforcement officer Malone had ever met. He’d have been able to appreciate that, if he hadn’t been standing around twiddling his thumbs for an hour.

He glanced at his phone. No text from Boone. His connecting flight must have departed on time. Good news for Boone and for Jubilee. Agent Spellings had left a message after she’d heard from the local PD, and she’d assured Malone that they had Jubilee in protective custody. No one was going to get an opportunity to kidnap her. That was great.

What would have been greater would be the FBI bringing Jarrod Williams in for questioning.

That was currently out of the question. According to Spellings, there wasn’t enough probable cause. Could be that was true, but Malone had been doing a little research while he was waiting for the local PD to finish. Jarrod Williams was a big deal in Las Vegas. He owned enough property to be a millionaire several times over. He had several businesses and investments and was currently making a bid for state senate.

A guy like that would have a lot to lose if he went to jail. He’d have a lot to lose if people found out he was an abuser.

“You’re deep in thought,” Quinn said. She’d made herself comfortable on an old porch swing that hung from rusted chains. The thing looked as though it would fall if a feather landed on it, but the chains hadn’t quit yet.

“What did your sister say about Jarrod?” he asked.

“That’s what you were thinking about? Jarrod?” She rested her chin on her bent knees, the swing creaking as it moved. There were freckles on her nose and cheeks and her eyes seemed darker gray in the late-morning light. Slate rather than dove.

Pretty, but he wasn’t sure why he was noticing.

His job required he spend time with all different kinds of people. Men. Women. Children. Ugly. Attractive. Mean. Nice. Bitter. Sweet. He’d never cared one way or another about those things. His job was to find the missing and to bring them home, and that’s what he did.

Running the race but not noticing the scenery.
He wanted to thank Chance for putting the thought in his head, because now he couldn’t shake it.

“That and other things,” he responded, stepping onto the porch and moving toward her.

She scooted over, patting the bench seat. “There’s room.”

“I’m not worried about room. I’m worried about weight limit.”

She laughed, but there was tension in her face, tightness in her narrow shoulders. “My sister didn’t say much about her husband. She said he was mean, that he had connections. That he could get her tossed into jail if he wanted to. Or have her silenced.”

“Did she tell you he was running for senate?”

“She said he was rich, and that she liked the money and wealth and things marrying him brought. She also said...” She frowned, pinching the bridge of her nose, her eyes closing briefly. “I can’t believe I forgot this.”

“What?”

“She said something really odd when she was talking about Jarrod. She said, ‘He was nice, handsome and generous. There wasn’t any way I could resist that, and then when I met Jubilee, I was hooked for good.’ Something like that anyway. It struck me for about three seconds, but I was so shocked to see her on my doorstep, I guess I didn’t hold on to it very long.”

“So, you think that Jarrod had Jubilee when he and Tabitha met?” The possibility intrigued Malone. Tabitha’s description made Jarrod sound like someone who liked to be in control, someone who would insist that he be paid the utmost respect. He didn’t sound like someone who would go out of his way to commit a crime that wouldn’t benefit him. And what good would kidnapping Jubilee have done?

“I don’t know. That’s the way it sounds, though. Don’t you think?”

“I think we need to talk to your sister
and
her husband.”

“My sister is missing, and Las Vegas is a long way from here.”

“We’re going to find your sister, and I don’t need to go to Las Vegas to talk to her husband. Stella is very good at getting information we need. I’ll put her on it.”

She nodded, standing and stretching, a ring on her right hand glinting in the sun. It caught his attention, the narrow gold band enough like a wedding ring for him to wonder if it was one.

Not his business, but his mouth opened anyway, and he was asking before he could stop himself. “Is that your wedding ring?”

She frowned, twisting the band. “Yes. People kept telling me to take it off, and move on, but I couldn’t bring myself to not wear it, so I shifted it onto my right hand. I know it seems silly, but—”

“Why do you say that?”

“What?” She met his eyes, and he found himself caught in her gaze, noticing a dozen things that he hadn’t seen before. The blue flecks in her eyes. The thickness of her lashes, and the way they brushed her cheeks when she blinked. The smoothness of her skin and the golden strands that seemed woven through her hair.

“That it seems silly to wear the ring.”

“Because Cory has been gone for three years, and our marriage ended when he died.”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t still love him.”

She shrugged, twirling the ring once and then letting her hand drop. “No one tells you how to move on when someone you love dies or how to stop being the caregiver when the hospital bed that’s sitting in your living room is finally empty.”

“Was he sick for long?” he asked, imaging that empty bed in the empty room, imaging just how hard that would have been to face alone.

“In the grand scheme of our marriage? An eternity, but it was really only a year. He had brain cancer, and it took everything from him, and then it took everything from me.” Her cheeks went bright pink, and she frowned. “That sounds really melodramatic.”

“I don’t think so. I think it sounds like how you feel.”

“How I felt. Things are back on track now, but I’m still not ready to take off the ring. Not yet, and I don’t even really know why.”

He thought he did.

He thought that maybe she couldn’t quite let go of the dreams she’d had when she’d said her vows, that she didn’t really want the good times she’d shared with her husband to be over.

He could understand that. He could also understand how difficult it would be to let go of forever, to know that a lifetime with someone had only amounted to a few short years.

“You know what I think, Quinn?” he asked, and she frowned.

“Do I want to?”

“Maybe. I think you should wear that ring for as long as you want to. I think you should never feel anything but happy to do it. You’re honoring the memory of what you had with your husband. There’s nothing wrong with that. Now, how about we find Chance? He’s trying to talk the sheriff into letting us leave.”

“I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to.”

“Have you looked around recently?” He gestured to the black field, the blackened exterior of her Jeep, the smoldering barn. Fire crews had put out the fire quickly, but not before property had been destroyed. “There’s been a lot of damage done here today.”

“We didn’t do it.”

“No, but they want to make sure that’s the case. If they let us go and find out we were part of this, it will make their office look pretty foolish.”

“What about the guy you handcuffed? Shouldn’t he be their prime suspect?”

“His name is Anthony Gray. A small-time thug who is already wanted on a couple of outstanding warrants. He’s already been booked for arson. The sheriff said he’s singing like a jaybird, but he’s not saying much more than he already told us.”

“What he told us makes me really suspicious of my sister’s husband. Who else would hire someone to kidnap Jubilee?”

“Good question,” he responded, helping her down nearly rotted wood steps. “Let’s go see what Chance has dug up.”

“If he’s dug up anything.”

“Trust me. Chance can find out just about anything about anyone.”

And Malone was eager to hear what he had to say about Jarrod. Quinn was right. Tabitha’s husband was the only one who would have any motive for kidnapping Jubilee. Did he want the little girl back?

Or did he want to use her as a pawn to get to Tabitha?

They needed to find out, because until they understood his motive, they couldn’t predict his next move.

SEVEN

T
here was something about Malone, something that Quinn couldn’t deny or ignore. It made her want to tell him things she hadn’t ever told anyone else. Things about Cory and their life together. About the way it had felt to lose him, to have to move on without the person she’d planned to move forward with. Things she’d never talked about because she didn’t think anyone else could understand.

Heartache was such a private thing.

Grief was a journey a person could only ever take alone.

At least, that’s what she’d always thought. In that first year after Cory’s death, she’d had friends and church—people bringing meals and offering prayer and encouraging her to get out, live life. Eventually, people moved on and expected her to move on, too.

Malone seemed different.

He seemed to understand the depth of her heartache. Maybe that came from living his own sorrows. She’d seen him touch his scar, and she’d known there was a story. One he wasn’t ready to tell.

She glanced his way, saw that he was studying her, his dark eyes skimming her hair and her face, her soot-stained shirt and her filthy sneakers.

“What? Do I have soot on my face?” she asked, rubbing her palm down her cheek.

He shook his head. “Just thinking.”

“About?”

“Running races without looking at the scenery.

“Is that code for something?”

“Maybe.” He smiled, guiding her across the yard and to the SUV, his hand warm on the curve of her waist.

Chance was leaning against the vehicle, his phone to his ear, his gaze on Stella and August. They were head-to-head, looking at something on August’s phone. Neither seemed to notice that she and Malone had returned.

Interesting.

August had dated someone seriously a few years back, but she’d wanted him to give up his job, live a more predictable and safe life. He’d refused. Of course. To August, his job was everything. It consumed him, made him difficult to reach and, sometimes, difficult to talk to. There were long stretches of time when Quinn didn’t hear from him, when her phone calls went unanswered and her texts got ignored. Once, it had gone on so long, she’d hopped in her car and driven to his place. He’d been home, bleary-eyed from whatever job he’d just returned from. She’d made him dinner, stuck around for two nights and listened to him play sad tunes on his guitar. Finally, he’d snapped out of whatever place he’d been in. He’d cheered up, taken her out on a long hike and regaled her with amusing stories about his life. He’d seemed like his old self and she’d left knowing he was going to be all right.

She still worried about him. Seeing him with Stella gave her hope that he might find someone he could connect with, someone he could share his other stories with—the darker ones, the ones that he didn’t want to tell Quinn.

Stella finally looked up, smiling as she tucked a strand of bright red hair behind her ear. She had a bandage wrapped around her palm, the gauze crisp white. August had fresh bandages as well, his sleeve cut away, his shoulder padded by gauze and tape.

“Did your first-aid kit survive the fire?” Quinn asked Stella.

“Nah. I borrowed one from the police. Who, I might add, are taking their sweet time clearing us to leave.”

“That’s okay,” Chance said, shoving his phone into his pocket. “Some of us put the time to good use.”

“Some of us,” Stella retorted, “aren’t workhorses.”

There was an undercurrent between the two, some unspoken feelings that pulsed through the air every time they looked in each other’s eyes. Had they been a couple? If so, they didn’t seem to have ended things well.

“Workhorses get things done, and they find out interesting facts.”

“Like?” Malone asked.

“Jarrod Williams used to be affiliated with a cult that got shut down for running drugs and guns into the US from Mexico. At the time, he went by the name Jerry Cornwall. Guess he decided to change it once he left. I sent the information to Boone. If it’s the same cult his ex was in, we may have a link between Jarrod and Jubilee that precedes Jubilee’s relationship with Tabitha.”

“Which means that Tabitha didn’t kidnap Jubilee?” Quinn had doubted her sister’s ability to do such a thing, and this seemed to support that doubt.

“At this point, I’m not sure what it means. It’s possible your sister and Jarrod met in the cult and reconnected a couple of years later. It’s also possible that Jarrod was in the cult, met Jubilee’s mother and somehow ended up with the kid. I’ve passed the information to law enforcement. They’re digging deeper.”

“It seems to me,” Malone said, “that the police have probable cause to bring Williams in for questioning.”

“Probable cause for what crime?” Chance sighed, raking his fingers through thick chestnut hair. “If Boone’s ex handed the kid over, Williams has been raising her like his own because he was asked to. The FBI plans to question him when he returns from overseas, but—”

“Are they sure he’s out of country?” Stella cut in.

“He boarded a plane in Las Vegas, landed in Baltimore and boarded a flight for London a few hours later. That’s all verified. He’s expected to return Wednesday.”

“He’s got plenty of money. It seems to me,” Malone said, “that he could have had someone take his place on the outward-bound flight to London. All he had to do was pay someone to buy a ticket, have them go through security and meet near the gate. They exchange boarding passes and the stand-in boards the flight.”

“That’s a lot of effort to get back at his wife,” August pointed out. “Especially when he could have hired someone to take care of things while he was gone, made sure his alibi was airtight. If the FBI is suspicious enough, they can pull security footage to verify his presence on the plane. There are cameras all over the airports.”

Malone shrugged, his broad shoulders pulling the fabric of his T-shirt taut. “It might not be about getting back at his wife. We’ve been focused on the kid, the things Tabitha supposedly stole. But Jarrod Williams isn’t who he’s pretending to be. The fact that he’s changed his name at least once, been involved in an organization that was breaking the law, is a good indication that he has things to hide. What if Tabitha knew some of those things? What if she ran because she was afraid?”