Found Wanting (4 page)

"About ten minutes. Your clothes were wet, and we needed to get a good look at you to make sure we didn't miss anything."

Slotting the chart at the end of the gurney, he patted her uninjured arm. "We'll have to stabilize that shoulder, but the good news is there's no evidence you hit your head. You might have a couple cracked ribs, so we're going to get some X-rays. All in all, though, I'd say you were a very lucky woman today, Alex."

Chapter 3

Sitting at a stoplight in rush-hour traffic, Mitch rubbed his hands together in an effort to get them warm. He wasn't sure what to do. Technically, he needed to call his boss and tell him what had happened and where she was. But something about it all made him uneasy.

He'd worked for Layton Keller for two years, doing background checks on potential PCware executives. He liked Keller. The man didn't treat him like an employee. He talked to Mitch as one man to another. When Keller had asked him to track down the son who had been kidnapped fourteen years before by his mother, Mitch had been floored.

Keller had chuckled at his look of shock. "Not what you expected, huh?"

"I didn't know ..." Mitch trailed off, unsure how to respond. He felt a sudden affinity with the man. He hadn't seen his own son in three years, and while his ex-wife had not kidnapped the boy, she had made it very difficult to see him. Tyler was four the last time Mitch saw him, just before his ex-wife moved to another state with him. Mitch acknowledged that it was mostly his own fault that he had not seen Tyler in so long. But Shirley had made every visit so arduous, so painful, that Mitch had given up trying. It wasn't something he was proud of.

"I made a mistake," Keller said. "I was young and stupid and easily manipulated. The mother ... this is difficult to say ... but the mother of my son is my wife's sister."

That surprised Mitch, too, and for a moment, his image of Keller shifted. What kind of man slept with two sisters, got one pregnant and still managed to be married to the other? The scenario was incongruous with the man Mitch thought he knew.

Seeming to sense the waver in Mitch's opinion, Keller said quickly, "It happened while Addy and I were engaged. Quite a bit of alcohol was involved." He gave a rueful smile. "We've all had moments like that, haven't we?"

"I suppose," Mitch said, relaxing some. As a young man, he'd had his own alcohol-related bouts of stupidity. For some people, some bouts were worse than others.

"After much apologizing and groveling," Keller went on, "I was damn lucky Addy forgave me. Unfortunately, once the child was born, things got ... ugly. There was a custody fight. I won't go into the details except to say that I won. But my sister-in-law kidnapped him, and I haven't seen my son since."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Keller."

"Please, call me Layton. I feel we've become friends. I trust you, Mitch."

"All right."

"I've kept this business low-key over the years, mainly because ... well, not only would the press have a field day, but it's painful." He paused, sipping from a glass of fizzy water on his desk. "I'd like to continue to keep all of this as low-key as possible."

"I understand."

"The truth is, I've had several private investigators searching over the years." He slid a folder across the glossy surface of the desk toward Mitch. "These are their reports, paltry as they are. My sister-in-law is a shrewd, ruthless woman. The only man who managed to track her down earned a knife in the gut. He's dead."

Mitch grimaced.

"Right," Keller said. "Not the kind of woman around whom you'd want to let down your guard."

"What about the FBI? I assume they've been looking for her, too?"

Keller shifted, just slightly, as if the question made him uneasy. "Actually, no. It's probably difficult for you to understand, given the circumstances, but my father-in-law was an intensely private man."

Mitch nodded. He'd met the late Paul Chancellor once. The exchange hadn't been significant enough for him to get a sense of the man, but he'd heard he was a strict boss with a penchant for micromanaging. Word was that while his passing at the hands of a mugger had been tragic, few PCware employees would miss his overbearing ways.

"When Alaina took off with my son," Keller went on, "my father-in-law insisted that the situation be handled within the family. He didn't want Alaina to be arrested and charged with kidnapping if she was found. Yes, she's a troubled woman, but she's not a danger to society and he couldn't bear for her to go to jail."

Mitch interpreted that to mean Chancellor was such a prig that he hadn't wanted unsavory publicity, and a felon in the family would have been highly objectionable. "You said she killed one of your detectives. In my eyes, that makes her plenty of a danger. Aren't the feds looking for her for that?"

"Well, to be honest, that case is unsolved. Alaina had assumed another identity when it happened, and because her fingerprints had never been on file before then, she was never connected to that."

Mitch nodded, understanding. "And to avoid connecting her, you didn't fess up to employing the man she killed."

"To protect Alaina, yes."

"To protect Alaina," Mitch repeated, one eyebrow arched.

"To protect the family," Keller conceded. "Look, I'm not proud of any of this. It's a scandal of epic proportions if the media ever get wind of it. I'm taking a huge risk sharing this information with you, Mitch." He paused, sipped more water, as if giving Mitch time to think. After putting the glass down, Keller leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers under his chin. "Are you interested in the job?"

Mitch didn't hesitate. He was always up for a challenge, and this one sounded especially enticing. "Sure, I'm interested."

Keller gestured at the folder on the desk. "There's a picture of her in there. It was taken about a year before she took off, so I don't know how much it will help."

As Mitch flipped open the folder, he hoped his boss couldn't read his shock. The girl in the professionally taken photo looked like she couldn't have been more than seventeen, her cheeks rosy, her eyes bright with laughter. She was striking, to be sure, with almost-black hair that fell past her shoulders and eerie gray-green eyes that conveyed a mischievous glint.

"She looks young," Keller said.

Mitch glanced up to find the man watching him carefully, as if gauging his response.

Keller smirked. "Don't let her looks fool you. She's not innocent. If you find her, you'll understand how, as a naïve young man, I could be so weak." He waved a well-manicured hand before Mitch could respond. "I'm not making excuses, of course. I admit it takes two to screw up as royally as Alaina and I did. But the truth is, I want to put all that behind us and move on. I want to give my son the life he deserves, build a relationship with him and be his role model. It's very important to me to have an heir." He paused for a moment, studying Mitch. "I'm a thorough man," he went on. "I don't hire people without checking them out. I know we have something in common."

"My son wasn't kidnapped, Mr. Keller."

"No, but I'm sure you understand my desire to connect with my child, the helplessness I feel because he's been kept from me. That feeling has been heightened since my father-in-law passed away."

"I understand."

Keller nodded. "This is why I want you working for me, Mitch. You get it. And you're damn good at what you do. I respect that."

Mitch knew when he was being stroked and figured that meant Keller had said all he planned to. Rising, he extended his hand. "I'll do what I can to find your heir, Mr. Keller. It might take some time, though."

But it didn't take nearly as much time as Mitch had expected.

Alaina Chancellor had done a fine job of disappearing. An amateur detective might have struggled tracking her down. But she hadn't done anything spectacularly clever. At least, not anything that a professional couldn't have figured out.

Which was why, while observing mother and son from a distance, Mitch began to carefully study the reports from the other detectives. They were pedestrian, some of them not even making sense. It quickly became obvious that none of the investigators had tried very hard to locate Alaina and Jonah. In fact, they'd barely made any effort at all. He couldn't even tell which reports came from the p.i. she'd supposedly killed -- he'd hoped for some clues in that one, seeing as how that man had been the only one to actually find her. But all the reports were the same. Dead ends everywhere.

He could understand how one or two might have milked the job. But four? It made no sense. Especially considering the level of Layton Keller's influence. He no doubt would have handsomely rewarded the detective who delivered his son to him. The man would have been a hero, a media sensation.

Increasingly uneasy, Mitch kept the news to himself that he'd found the mother and son, preferring to think the situation through before making a move. In the meantime, he noted that the boy appeared well-adjusted and happy, lacking the usual sullenness of a teenager. The interaction between mother and son was easy, comfortable, even playful. It was clear that they respected each other, loved each other. The thought of shattering the teen's life nagged at Mitch.

As did Alaina's frantic dash just before the accident. What had she been running from? Or perhaps to? Her adamance that her friend go get Jonah right away had been desperate. Mitch understood a mother being protective -- he felt protective of the kid himself -- but there was another level to it, a fear that seemed almost irrational. And Mitch wasn't about to let anything happen to Jonah on his watch.

It was dark, and rain was still falling by the time he steered his car onto the street where Grant Maxwell lived with his teenage son, Lucas, who seemed to be Jonah's closest friend. Mitch had followed Alaina to the Maxwells' home several times in the past weeks as she had picked up her son or dropped him off. The past two Wednesdays, she had picked him up after her early shift at work. Mitch figured it was a good bet that she had intended for this Wednesday to be no different than the two before it.

Seeing flashing red lights, Mitch parked a block up and took in the two squad cars parked in front of the Maxwells' home. An ambulance, lights blazing, siren screaming, sped by him, away from the house.

Mitch began to sweat.

Chapter 4

Alaina sat on the gurney in a hospital-issue gown, her bare legs dangling, one hand tightly gripping the edge of the mattress, the other cradled gingerly in her lap.

About ten minutes ago, the ER staff had determined her injuries were not life-threatening and moved her to a tiny room by herself to await her turn behind the more critical patients.

Alaina, much of her body feeling bruised, was beginning to regret her refusal of the pain medication. But she would have regretted a fuzzy head more. All in all, she didn't feel as bad as she would have expected after being hit by a car. The vehicle had been stopping, so it hadn't struck her that hard. The worst injury, as far as she could tell, was the dislocated shoulder, which, the doctor had told her, would probably be susceptible to dislocation in the future if she wasn't careful, at least until it had healed. Her ribs had taken some abuse, as well, but none felt broken.

She knew she was lucky. Very lucky. And with Rachel picking up Jonah --

"Hey." Rachel peered around the edge of the door. "You decent?"

Alaina's spirits soared, all pain forgotten. She hadn't expected her friend to return so quickly with Jonah. "Yes, come in." Now, all she had to do was get out of here, and they could get home, collect some belongings and the documentation for the identities she'd been building for the past several years for just such an occasion, and hit the road. Where would they go next?