A Gift of Time (Tassamara) (19 page)

“You can’t stop him,” Travis said with disdain.

“What’s he going to do, point a gun at me?” Natalya retorted.

“Ha.” The boy scowled, but didn’t raise his weapon. “Lawyers, more like. Social workers. Judges. They’ll say no proof, need evidence, best place for you, man’s got rights. End of the road, kid.” Bitterness etched his voice and the lines drawing down his mouth.

Natalya blinked at him, her breath stopping.

This boy was in the system.

That was the only explanation.

Carla had said she thought she recognized Kenzi. But Kenzi couldn’t be a foster child—she would have been reported missing. They would have identified her. It made no sense. She looked from one boy to the other and then back at Kenzi again. It made no sense, but there were others. The names he mentioned—Jamie, Mary. At least one injured, maybe badly.

If she delayed them until the police got here, would they be able to convince the boys to say where the others were? Not Travis, he wouldn’t talk any more than Kenzi would. But Mitchell? He might not know. And the man they were talking about must be the face in her painting, but who was he? Was he dangerous? A shiver ran down her spine, giving her an answer of sorts.

“All right,” she said slowly. If the children were related, Zane ought to be able to find the ones who were hidden when he got home. But there were no guarantees with Zane’s gift. Well, not many—he’d always been able to find any of his own relatives, no matter how distant they were.

“All right?” Travis’s eyebrows shot up. “Not trying to convince you, lady, just her,” he said, shaking his head.

“Put the gun away.” Natalya tightened her hands on Kenzi’s shoulders. “We’ll both come with you.” Kenzi looked up at her, eyes wide, and Natalya gave her a smile she hoped looked reassuring.

Travis stepped back, his expression not quite horrified. “No way, lady.”

“Doctor. Not lady, doctor,” Natalya corrected him. She smiled, feeling an adrenaline surge replace the chill that had come over her. She was clearly insane. Colin was going to be furious. “Kenzi was white and shaking after healing a minor laceration. She’s obviously got a special gift, but if your friend is badly injured, you might need something more.” She spread her hands wide. “That’s me.”

Kenzi reached up and clutched Natalya’s open hand. Natalya tightened her fingers around the little girl, as Kenzi nodded at the boy who called himself her brother, her smile lighting up her face like the rising sun.

Travis sighed. He ran the fingers of his free hand across his short, close-cropped dark hair, seeming to think.

“Car,” Mitchell said abruptly.

“Police?” Travis’s hand tightened on his gun.

Mitchell shook his head. Natalya tried to follow his gaze, to see what he was seeing, but the angle of the house was wrong. From her position on the porch, she could see the lake, the oak trees shading her yard, and patches of grass and shrubs, but nothing of the front of the house or the road.

“All right, we go.” Travis shook his head in apparent disgust, stuffing the gun into the back of his pants. “Come on, lady doctor. I’ll figure out what to do with you after we get Jamie fixed up.”

Fuck.

Colin studied the blood on the porch. Spatter by the door, a trail across the painted wood planks, a puddle on the steps, a bloody dishtowel discarded in the grass.

He was trying to stay detached, professional, but he would have liked to put his fist through the wall. Or through someone’s face.

“You okay?” Akira’s quiet murmur interrupted him. Startled out of his thoughts, Colin glanced in her direction. She nodded toward his hands and Colin realized he was opening and closing his fingers compulsively.

He stopped himself and forced a grim smile. He should order Akira away. Civilians and crime scenes were a bad combo. But he didn’t. “Yeah. Pissed off, that’s all.”

The corner of her mouth lifted although her dark eyes stayed serious. “I know what you mean. This is… worrying.”

“Does Rose know anything?”

Akira shook her head as if she’d already asked. “She’s been, um, vociferous since we got here.”

Colin rolled his eyes. She wasn’t the only one. The moment he’d realized Nat was no longer on the phone, he’d scrambled into action. He sent out a priority one, code three alert to his dispatcher, while Akira contacted General Direction’s security team.

After a frantic trek to get to Nat’s house, aided by Shelby, the ranger who’d been on her way to investigate the marijuana patch, they’d arrived to find Colin’s deputies smugly arresting the GD security guards. Vociferous wasn’t the word. His deputies’ ears would be burning for a good long time.

Akira studied the blood on the floor. “What do you think happened here?”

“I think your future sister-in-law was an idiot,” Colin replied with some bitterness. Akira’s eyebrows arched upward and Colin felt himself flushing. “Sorry,” he muttered, spreading his fingers wide in apology, “that was totally unprofessional of me.”

Akira’s smile was real this time. “I won’t tell her you said so. But why do you think so?”

Colin gestured at the scene in front of them. “Nat said it was a kid and his grandpa at her door. Maybe, maybe not. But look what happened here. The window was smashed from the outside. The glass falls into the house. The perp reaches in…” Stepping carefully to avoid the blood, he got closer to the door and pointed out the blood on the shards of glass left in the door. “…and he cuts himself on the glass. Not the hallmark of a criminal mastermind.”

“That’s a lot of blood,” Akira replied. She glanced away. Colin couldn’t tell if she was uncomfortable with the sight or listening to Rose until she added, “Rose wants to know if it’s enough to have killed him.”

Colin shook his head. “I don’t think so, but we’ll have to get a crime scene tech out here to say for sure. Still, I’d say he hit an artery.” Colin turned and nodded toward the dishtowel in the yard. “And Nat, instead of staying on the damn phone and getting me to send an ambulance, comes out here to help him with the bleeding.”

“You think that’s her towel?”

Colin was sure of it. The yellow under the deep red and brown bloodstains matched the sunny walls of Nat’s kitchen.

“Maybe he grabbed it from inside,” Akira suggested. “Or his partner did.”

Colin’s deputies had already searched the interior of the house, finding no sign of Nat, Kenzi, or evidence of a struggle. “Not him.” Colin shook his head. “He would have left traces. There’s no blood in there. As for his partner, maybe, but with Nat standing right there? No, they stayed outside and Nat came out with a towel. Why would she do that when she felt threatened?”

“The Hippocratic oath,” Akira said. “Gotta help the injured.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Colin agreed. “Still, all the signs read that this was not a professional abduction. These weren’t kidnappers targeting Nat for a pay-off. We won’t get a ransom demand.” Colin probably shouldn’t be talking to Akira so honestly, but after their day spent hiking, she felt like an old friend.

“You don’t say that like it’s a good thing.” Her eyes were worried.

“No.” Colin stuffed his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Rose told us the ghost she met said someone wanted Kenzi dead. But if that was the goal, we should have arrived to an uglier scene.” The thought made his stomach churn.

“God.” Akira shuddered. “That’s a horrible image.”

“Understatement,” Colin muttered.

“But it didn’t happen.” Akira sounded uncertain, as if she wanted to reassure him but couldn’t trust the truth of her words.

“No,” Colin said simply, not wanting to share his darker thoughts.

Nat’s gift didn’t keep people safe, even when it worked. She’d sounded calm on the phone, but she would have left a message or picked up her cell again if she could have. She would have known he would worry. That her family would worry.

He didn’t understand the scene at the house. Nat’s behavior confused the hell out of him. Why had she gone outside? Why weren’t there signs of a struggle? How would she have simply let someone take Kenzi? He had his deputies and the GD security team out canvassing the area and searching the nearby woods, but if Nat had taken Kenzi and hidden, why hadn’t she returned when she heard the sirens?

He stepped off the porch and crouched next to the towel, examining it without touching it. As Akira had said, there was a lot of blood. Without moving, he began scouting Nat’s grass, eyes scouring the blades for traces of color. “Huh,” he said thoughtfully. “Where’s the blood trail?”

“I don’t see one,” Akira said after several seconds.

“Me neither.” Colin straightened, glancing at the porch again. He rubbed his chin, eyes narrowing as he thought.

“Tell me,” Akira asked. “What are you seeing?”

“This wasn’t a quick mop-up and run. They took the time to stop the bleeding. More than a couple of minutes.”

“So?”

“The timing doesn’t add up. I was off the phone with her for a minute to call it in, no more than that. As soon as I realized she wasn’t on the line, we had people on the way.”

He was going to stay annoyed about the slow response from his deputies for a good long time, but even though they’d let the GD security guards beat them here, they’d arrived within fifteen minutes of his second call.

“And?”

“But the road’s two miles long, no turns off, no other route out of here. Even if my guys were late, the guys from GD should have passed their car. No way around that.”

“But they didn’t?” Akira asked. “Could they have missed it?”

Colin shook his head. “They’re pros. All of them would have been alert to a departing vehicle. And none of them saw anything.” He’d checked within minutes of his arrival. If they’d gotten a description, they could have used the Amber alert system for Kenzi. Without more information, though, an alert would be close to useless.

“I called Zane,” Akira told him. “He’s catching the next flight home. He’ll find her.”

“Did he—” Colin paused. He’d met too many fake psychics to trust them automatically, but he knew Zane and he knew how Zane’s gift worked. Zane could find anything—except for the dead.

“He’s too far away. He couldn’t get a read on her.” Akira bit her lip, worrying it nervously. “Do you think…” She let her words trail off.

“I don’t know,” Colin answered. “But we can’t wait for Zane. I need to run this investigation like any other abduction. We’ll get roadblocks on the main roads. Dogs out here to track the direction they headed. Alert the media, the FBI.” After the last time they’d been in town, Colin hated the thought of bringing the Feds in, but he didn’t have the resources or the manpower to run an operation as big as this one ought to be. A lump in his throat—could it be fear?—felt tight and hard.

“If there’s anything I can do…” Akira offered with a wan smile, but then her smile brightened. “Or more practically, anything General Directions can do. Max is on his way here, but I know he’d want me to make that offer.”

“I’ll take him up on it,” Colin answered, already planning how to use the extra manpower. But his eyes narrowed as he saw the way Akira was rubbing her side. This stress, on top of hours of hiking, was probably not the healthiest activity for a pregnant woman. “Why don’t you go sit in the car?” he suggested. “Rest for a while. I’m going to search the house again, see if there’s anything my guys missed.”

Akira nodded. But before Colin could turn away, Akira put a hand on his arm, stopping him. Colin waited, despite his impatience to get started.

“You and Nat,” Akira finally said, eyes searching Colin’s face. “It’s been a long time. And it didn’t end real well.”

“I love her,” Colin interrupted her. “I’ve always loved her. And I am not going to let anything bad happen to her.”

Akira’s silence spoke louder than words. Colin sighed. That probably wasn’t the answer to the question Akira hadn’t asked. Professionalism and his feelings for Nat didn’t mix well. “What did you want to know?”

A funny little smile was playing on Akira’s mouth as she shook her head, and answered, voice gentle, “No, we’re good. I’ll go wait in the car.”

Colin began his search at the back of the house. Mindful of Nat’s words about Kenzi hiding, he was careful to be more thorough than his deputies might have been. In her bathroom, he pushed towels out of the way to confirm that Kenzi wasn’t hidden in the closet. Nat’s towels were dark green and lush. He ignored the mental flash of what she would look like, stepping out of the shower, wrapped in one of them, her dark hair wet and drops of water still clinging to her skin.

He flipped open the top of the wicker hamper and glanced inside. A sky-blue shirt with skinny straps where shoulders should be lay almost on top. Nat’s. She’d been wearing it the previous day under a deeper blue cotton sweater. It would do for the dogs. He bagged it, not letting his hands brush against the lacy bra sitting next to it or his memories turn to other days, other lacy bras.

In her bedroom, he tried to pay no attention at all to the king-size bed, the fluffy comforter, the sleek cotton sheets. He refused to let himself think about what it would have been like to be with Nat here. But he spotted the box sticking out from underneath. Nat wouldn’t have left it that way. His eyes narrowed as he crouched down. To his disappointment, Kenzi wasn’t under the bed. His deputies wouldn’t have missed her if she was, he knew, but he’d had a moment of hope. Nat’s actions might have made more sense if Kenzi were safe inside the house.

The living room held no hiding places, nor was anything in disarray. Nat’s house was as tidy as his own office. But Colin paused in the doorway to the front bedroom. A dollhouse lay tipped on its side, furnishings scattered on the floor. Apart from the broken glass in the kitchen, it was the only sign of mess. Colin stepped into the room, wondering. Had Kenzi knocked the heavy toy over? Or had Nat? And why?

Nat’s easel stood in the fading light by the window, a canvas propped on it. Colin glanced at it and then blinked in surprise. Photos of Max Latimer tacked to the wall in front of the easel suggested Nat should be painting a portrait of her father. But the charcoal sketch on the canvas didn’t look like Max. His eyes narrowed as he studied it. It was just a simple line drawing. Maybe the likeness would get better as she worked? But no. The eyes were wrong and so was the mouth. The nose—eh, maybe. But the whole structure of the face looked off to him, too angular, too stern.