Found Wanting (20 page)

"There are probably others besides him."

"Then we'll deal with them," Rachel said lightly. "They won't know what hit them."

The false bravado brought tears to Alaina's eyes. She couldn't have asked for a better friend.

Rachel cleared her throat. "So ... what should I call you? Alex? Alaina?"

Alaina couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of the quandary, considering the circumstances. "You can call me Al."

Rachel grinned at her. "You're not going to sing, are you? Because if you do, I'm turning around."

Alaina considered breaking into a showstopper. Anything to protect her friend. But it would never be that easy. Rachel wouldn't let it. "You're sure the house is safe?" Alaina asked.

Rachel nodded. "It's been vacant since Aunt Rita died a couple months ago. It's not too much farther. It's in Middleton, just outside Madison."

Alaina longed for Emma, for the life she and Jonah had had with her in Madison.

"My name isn't attached to it in any way," Rachel said. "She left it to my Uncle John, but he's been living abroad for the past two years."

Alaina gingerly massaged the ache in her shoulder. "In Rome."

"So you were listening to me all those times I rambled about my dysfunctional family."

Yes, she had listened, and envied Rachel her quirky but loving relatives. "I've got you hands down on the dysfunctional family," she said.

"Oh, you think so? My cousin Bobby literally ran away to the circus, to be a lion tamer. Last I heard, he's missing a few fingers and the tip of his nose. And my Uncle Louie? Well, he's a she now. Aunt Louise. I'm still not used to it."

"My sister is married to Jonah's father." Alaina instantly regretted the words. That's what happens when you let your guard down, she thought as she glanced over to see Rachel staring at her. "I said that out loud, didn't I?"

"How did that happen?" Rachel asked.

"I opened my mouth, and out it came." She smiled, even though she knew Rachel wouldn't let her joke her way out of this one.

"You know what I mean," Rachel replied, impatient. "If he's such a jerk that you went on the run to keep him away from your kid, how'd he get both you and your sister into bed? I mean, I've never known you to even want to be touched --"

She broke off, and Alaina imagined she could hear the gears grinding in her friend's head. She didn't say anything, not sure she could. Other than a counselor 10 years ago -- who had maintained a cool and professional distance -- she had not told anyone who wasn't her family, not even Emma, that Layton had raped her.

Rachel gripped the steering wheel harder. "That prick," she said, her voice soft and strained.

That was all she said. As it became apparent that a barrage of sensitive questions was not coming, Alaina slowly relaxed, grateful that for once Rachel wasn't eager to dissect her feelings.

Alaina let her eyes close. Almost immediately, an image of Mitch -- kneeling at her feet, his hand gentle on her ankle -- popped into her head. She may have been out of it with pain at the time, but she'd seen the unmistakable change in his dark eyes. Warm, worried. No anger. As if his opinion of her had shifted somehow.

Puzzling over what could have caused the transformation, she sank into sleep.

Chapter 16

Layton Keller had put out a contract on Alaina's life.

Norm Potter, Mitch's former FBI colleague, had just confirmed it as he'd handed Mitch a cup of coffee.

They had left the hospital little more than an hour before to go to the FBI's Chicago office, where Norm had led Mitch to a glass-walled meeting room that was serving as Norm's makeshift workspace. Between them on the conference table, Norm's briefcase was open, folders and papers strewn across the surface of the blond wood.

"Odds aren't good my agents are going to find them quick," Norm said, taking a seat on the other side of the table. "They got too much of a head start."

Mitch scrubbed his hands over his face. Keller had duped him, and he felt like a grade-A, extra large jerk. Except the egg wasn't just on his face, it was dripping all over his entire head. "If that son of a bitch gets his hands on her, I'll never forgive myself."

"How'd you end up working for Keller anyway?" Norm asked.

Mitch sipped coffee and grimaced. "Why is Bureau coffee always shit?"

Norm shrugged. "Far as I know, it's the law."

Mitch drank it anyway, needing the caffeine. He itched to be out in the field, helping to track the women, but Norm had insisted Mitch accompany him to the office to answer more questions. He suspected that Norm would have arrested him if he'd refused.

Mitch set down the cup. "I've been doing employee background checks for two years. He asked me more than a month ago to find his kid and the kid's mother."

"Background checks?" Norm asked. "He's awfully high up in the company to be dealing with the person who does background checks."

"We went over this two hours ago."

"Humor me."

"The security checks were on his top lieutenants, something he wanted handled discreetly," Mitch said. "It wasn't a full-time job."

"So you don't work inside PCware."

"I went to his home a few times, but mostly we talked on the phone."

Norm pursed his lips. "Why'd he send you and not one of his goombahs after Alaina and Jonah?"

"Apparently, I am one of his goombahs," Mitch said with disgust.

"But he didn't ask you to take her out."

"Jesus, no."

"So he just hired you to find them, then sent someone else in to grab the kid and try to kill the mother."

Nodding, Mitch swallowed hard against the guilt. "He played me. He knew exactly which buttons to push."

"How do you mean?"

"Shirley took my kid away from me. Alaina took his kid away from him. He wanted me to equate the two women, and I did." He drew a finger down his sore nose, remembering his rage when she'd hit him. "I wanted to hurt her, like I could never have hurt Shirley, because I was too civilized. But with Alaina, there were no repercussions. I didn't have to be civilized." He felt sick as he recalled how rough he'd been when he'd tackled her and how much he'd frightened her when he'd handcuffed her to the bed the last time. Jesus, he thought, nausea churning in his knot-filled belly. He'd handcuffed her to a bed. "Keller wanted someone who would find her and wouldn't sympathize, someone who he wouldn't have to worry about trying to be a Good Samaritan."

Norm waved a dismissive hand. "You're overanalyzing. Keller needed a damn good investigator, and he got one. It took four of my best agents to track her down in the time it took you to find her on your own."

"I had help," Mitch said under his breath, thinking that Julia was going to want to throttle him when she found out what was going on. Dammit, he should have listened to her. His partner had good instincts, and he'd brushed her off. Another instance in this case where he'd let his idiotic ego dictate his actions rather than common sense. He was listening to those instincts now, and he hoped to hell Norm would be able to provide some answers without copping the usual FBI "I can't tell you that" bullshit.

Mitch cleared his throat. "Don't you think it's odd that we were able to find Alaina and her son in weeks when Keller's had detectives looking for fourteen years? Only one of his men was able to track her down."

A look of confusion crossed Norm's features. "When?"

"I don't know anything about it except Keller told me she killed the guy."

Norm's bafflement seemed to deepen. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Then your people haven't linked her to anything like that? She would have had a different identity then, one I'm not familiar with."

Norm shook his head. "Once we get her prints, we can run them through the system to see if we get any hits. As Alaina Chancellor, she was never arrested and fingerprinted, so her prints aren't on file. But they'd be in the system unidentified if she left them at the crime scene." Snagging a legal pad, he jotted a note, then stared down at it as if he'd just written in a foreign language.

"What is it?" Mitch asked.

"Before now, Keller didn't want Alaina found, so I don't get why one of his people would actually track her down."

Stunned, Mitch stared at his former colleague. "I think I need you to elaborate."

Norm's chair gave a squawk as he leaned back. "When Alaina took off with Jonah, Keller convinced his in-laws that the matter needed to be handled within the family. No law enforcement, no glaring media attention, no embarrassment. He knew how much Paul Chancellor hated bad publicity. Keller said he'd take care of everything and hired a couple private eyes to file bogus reports about their progress, keeping the feds out of it and ensuring that Alaina and her son would never be found."

"But why?" Mitch asked.

"Mainly, the kid would have been some major league competition."

At the dubious arch of Mitch's brow, Norm said, "Paul Chancellor was an old-fashioned guy. He had two daughters, but he wanted a son, bad. Layton Keller comes along, and he's everything a man like Chancellor could possibly want in a son. He's smart, he's handsome, he's interested in the family business." Norm smirked a little. "He likes golf. Chancellor loved his golf. At any rate, a grandson would have compromised Keller's 'only son' status. Plus, consider the fact that the kid's mother is Keller's sister-in-law, and it all gets very messy. He didn't want the kid around to remind anyone of his indiscretion with the sister, and he didn't want to share Chancellor." He stroked his jaw, as if checking for razor stubble. "It's tough to wrap your brain around it, but we did some background on Keller and turned up some interesting stuff."

"Such as?"

The FBI agent shuffled through the piles of papers spread across the table and came up with a manila folder, which he flipped open. "Never knew his father. Raised by his mother until he was ten. She was a real piece of work. Not physically abusive, as far as we can tell, but she messed with his head, constantly telling him what a pain in the ass he was, how he didn't deserve anything she gave him, which wasn't much to begin with. Filled his head with all kinds of crap about how kids are nothing but a drain on a parent's resources." Flipping through the folder, he stopped at a page and read from it. " 'All they do is suck you dry and give you nothing in return. They're worthless parasites.' "

"Damn. Where'd you get this stuff?"

"He spent eight years in the system after his mother abandoned him when he was ten. Just took off one day and didn't come back. He was shuffled from one foster home to another. Apparently, he never clicked with any of the families, and eventually, they stopped trying to place him. Lived in a home for kids until he was eighteen. Got tons of counseling, though it's doubtful it did him any good. That quote I just read came from his last session before he was released from the orphanage."

"Jesus."

"He did incredibly well regardless. Straight-A student. Earned a scholarship to MIT and worked his way through. After graduation, he spent some time at a couple different companies before landing on PCware's doorstep at twenty-eight. Worked his way into the boss' good graces, and next thing you know, he's meeting the big guy's oldest daughter and supposedly falling head over heels."

"He found the family he always wanted," Mitch said.