Love Inspired Suspense April 2015 #2 (6 page)

She was a fraud, pretending to be a mother. Doubt, grief, fear, desperation, love.

Mama
.

The loss rang through her again, like the clash of cymbals. She knew she would never stop missing her sister, and each gain of June's would remind her of what she'd lost. Every new word should be LeeAnn's to treasure; each ink mark on the doorjamb to measure another inch grown belonged to LeeAnn.

What would LeeAnn have done in the present circumstance? Fought Tucker with every breath, every last ounce of her courage; anything to save her daughter.

Junie, I will not let Tucker take you
. The resolve hardened like marble in her heart. She wasn't a detective, or a parole officer, or a cop, but she had the only credential that mattered more. God had made her a mother, and that trumped everything else.

I will find him, baby, and he will never put his evil hands on you
.

Doubt surged afresh. What could she do that the police couldn't? She had to be crazy.

“Just crazy enough,” she whispered under her breath. “Love you, too, Junie Jo.”

SIX

M
ick was surprised when Keeley knocked on the window of his pickup truck in the police station parking lot. Reggie had finished up a half hour before and gone back to the cabin. Mick was also done being grilled by Uttley. He'd learned little except that the Fred at
Bird's Away Magazine
had not sent the text and that Uttley liked Mick even less than he had earlier.

Mick leaned over and opened the door for Keeley. She climbed in.

“You're waiting around to follow me home, aren't you?” she demanded.

Another question that didn't need an answer, but he nodded to be polite.

“This is crazy. I just explained to John that you're following me everywhere, and I do not need his protection or yours.”

Not that the scrawny doctor-boy could help out much, Mick thought. “I told him that I'd be keeping you under watch until Tucker's caught.”

She blew out a breath. “Fine. I'm not very skilled at shaking off tails, as they say in the movies, so I just thought I'd tell you right up front I'm not going home just yet. I'm going to the Pick and Pack.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Urgent need for groceries?”

“No,” she said, her voice hummed with a fierce current of determination.

The silence lengthened between them until she sighed. “I'm thinking you're going to know if I lie. I'm a terrible liar. My mother always knew when I was lying. She said my eyes turned silver. Are they silver now?”

He allowed a smile. “No, but maybe that's because you haven't started in on the lying part yet.”

She sighed. “I can't be with June until Tucker is in jail.”

He waited.

She stared him full in the face. “You don't talk much, do you?”

“Never had much to say.”

“Okay, well, I am going to find him and make sure he is arrested. No one is going to take away my child, do you understand that?”

Mick found he was holding his breath at the sheer ludicrous magnificence of what he'd just heard. It tickled something inside him, whirling around like a feather. “Yes, I do.”

“Good. Please don't tell me I'm silly or crazy for trying it and most of all, don't tell me to leave it to the police.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway, I am going to the Pick and Pack to find out who that person was who bought the bag full of snack cakes because it seems like that might be a lead.”

“You figure they'll tell you?”

“I have a source.”

Her chin was up, mouth in a determined line that made her look all of about eighteen. He hid a smile. “Fair enough. I'll try not to cramp your style by following too close.”

“You're not going to try to talk me out of it, or order me to go home?”

“No, ma'am. Not my place, and you told me bossing wasn't polite.”

“Well, it isn't.” She sighed, brushing a speck of something off the dashboard. “Look. I'm sort of a direct type, so I'm just going to say it. I know you feel guilty about my sister's murder. You blame yourself. I did, too, for a while, and maybe part of me still does judging by the way I blasted you at Aunt Viv's, but Tucker is the one who killed her. You don't need to trail around as my personal bodyguard. This isn't your responsibility anymore.”

He shifted a fraction on the seat. “I appreciate that.”

“And I'd really rather that you didn't. I've got police all over the place, and they don't seem to like you or Mr. Donaldson very much.” She took a breath. “You make things harder for me.”

“Can't leave.”

She cocked her head, a strand of hair falling across her cheek. “Why not?”

Mick looked away at the ribbons of cloud floating across the moon. “I used to have this sense, back in Iraq, a sort of twinge that started up in my gut. Sometimes it was as if I could feel the bad guys coming.” He slid his gaze back to her. “Got that feeling now. Can't walk away.”

“I don't want to be cruel, but your sixth sense didn't kick in about Tucker.”

He wondered if she knew that it was a knife he had twisted deep in his own gut many times over. A breeze toyed with the collar of her jacket.

“You're going to follow me anyway, aren't you?”

He nodded.

“Fine. I'm to going to get some bags of flour while I'm at the Pick and Pack,” she said over her shoulder as she got out of the car. “They've got a sale, and I think best when I bake bread, and if I'm going to find Tucker before he finds me, I'm going to need to do a lot of thinking.”

Her small silhouette looked slight against the darkness. In a moment, she'd revved the motor and taken off. As he followed, he tried to understand Keeley Stevens. Could the woman think she would be able to find Tucker and have him arrested all by herself with no skills, no training, nothing but a passion to succeed? He smiled in the darkness and thought of his mother. She approached every situation with confidence, never imagining that failure was an option. His father still had the crooked pots from her ceramics phase.

He recalled the day the dog had torn apart Cowboy Pete, his favorite toy. His mother had gamely rounded up a sewing kit, and though she'd never put thread to needle, she reconstructed Cowboy Pete's body. His missing eye was another matter, solved when she'd found a bead from one of her necklaces and glued it in the hapless cowboy's empty socket. Cowboy Pete had never quite looked the same. Funny how Mick counted that raggedy mess of a toy as one of the finest possessions he'd ever owned.

He wondered if Mr. Moo Moo's eye was still safe in Keeley's pocket.

The drive to the Pick and Pack was easy, and they made the trip in less than fifteen minutes due to Keeley's blistering pace. A sprinkling of rain began to fall. The parking lot was fairly empty, only a few cars and a lone attendant rounding up shopping carts. No sign of a motorcycle, but he didn't fool himself. Tucker had managed to find out where Keeley lived and tracked her into the woods, then lured her to a rooftop. He could be anywhere. He jogged from his truck to catch up to her as they entered the grocery store.

Keeley seemed to have a plan. She marched straight up to the long-haired teen at the register. The kid gave her a frightened double take. “What do you want?”

“What do people usually want at a grocery store, Stephano?” she said, sweetly. “I'm here for groceries, flour, to be specific, but you're going to give me a piece of information, too, because you're a helpful kind of guy.”

He chewed his lip. “What kind of information?”

“Somebody came in last night, just before midnight. That's your shift, isn't it?”

He grunted, which Mick could not identify as affirmative or negative. Would it kill this generation to say “yes, sir” and “yes, ma'am”?

“So during your shift, somebody came in and bought a whole bag of nothing but snack cakes. You know the kind with the yellow cake and white creamy stuff inside?”

He lifted a careless shoulder. “I don't remember.”

“I think you do, and what's more,” she said as she pointed to the security camera, “I think you could let me see a peek at that security tape, couldn't you?”

“No way. I'd get fired,” he said, sending a quick look around the store, probably to be sure his supervisor wasn't watching.

Keeley leaned in, looking like a falcon going for the rabbit. “You'd get in worse trouble if I told your parents that you spray painted my shed.” She held up a palm. “You can deny it if you want to, but I've got a sweet camera with a zoom lens and boy, did I get a great shot of you two at work.”

The kid turned a greenish tint. He scanned the store again. “My boss is taking a nap in the back. You can go in the security room quick. No more than five minutes, hear me?”

Keeley nodded and sauntered away.

Mick gave the kid a grin. “Good man knows when he's beaten, son. I'd give up the spray painting if I were you.”

He heard Stephano swearing softly. Chuckling, Mick joined Keeley, who had already plucked the tape from the day before from the shelf and stuck it in the machine, pressing the fast-forward button with an impatient finger.

“That was impressive back there,” Mick said. “Why didn't you show his parents the photo earlier?”

She laughed. “I was a stinker of a teen once, too. I was grounded for an entire summer my sophomore year.”

“What did you do?”

“You don't have a high-enough security clearance to know that.”

He smiled.

She pointed to the time unspooling under the black-and-white video. “We're coming up on it now.”

He leaned close, her hair tickling his chin, the strands softer than the down of a baby bird. A lady appeared on the screen, tall with long dark hair loose around her shoulders, maybe in her late twenties. Her mouth was thin lipped, eyes dark and she wore a T-shirt a couple of sizes too big. She said something to Stephano and he answered back, which caused the woman to smile while he rang up her purchase, a dozen snack cakes and two bottles of water. Keeley paused the video and Mick used his cell phone to take a picture of the screen.

Mick heard the sound of heavy feet approaching. “Company.” He quickly ejected the tape and returned it to the shelf. They made it through the door just as a man appeared around the corner.

The whip-thin manager in a rumpled white shirt and tie jerked in alarm. “What are you doing back here?”

Mick propelled Keeley around him out the door. “Wrong turn.”

Stephano appeared, weight shifting from foot to foot. “I told you, the bathroom's on that side of the store.” He jerked a thumb, swallowing so hard Mick could see his Adam's apple bob up and down.

The manager frowned and started to speak when a plaintive voice called from the checkout line. “Can someone help me? I need to buy these diapers, and...”

There was a crash. “Oh, sorry,” the voice called.

Stephano groaned. “I think her kid just knocked over the soup-can display. Took me an hour to set that thing up.” He turned back to the register, and his supervisor followed.

Mick puffed out a breath. “Soup-can kid has impeccable timing.”

“Sure does. We had just enough time to get a picture. I'm going to press Stephano and see if he can tell me what they talked about.”

He took her elbow. “I think the next time we show up at the checkout line, we'd better have a bag of flour.”

* * *

Biting back impatience, Keeley led the way to the baking aisle and selected the flour. She held two bags of flour and, though she did not ask him to, Mick grabbed the other two.

“That's a lot of flour,” he said.

“I bake a lot of bread.” She also grabbed a box of raisins that was marked down. It felt odd to have a man escorting her through the checkout, strangely domestic, as if they were some normal couple out running an errand. No one would suspect the fear that swirled around her and the guilt that enveloped him. Still, it made her feel the tiniest bit better to know that she wasn't alone, at least momentarily, in this crazy escapade that made her stomach tie itself in knots. Undoubtedly she would be better off without Mick around, but that couldn't be helped at the moment.

It's all for Junie
, she told herself.
You can do anything for Junie
.

They waited patiently for their turn at the register. The manager flicked them suspicious glances as he restacked the cans of soup.

“You talked with the snack-cake woman,” Keeley said through a smile. “What did you say?”

“Can't remember,” Stephano grunted, shoving the bags of flour into paper sacks.

Mick spoke softly. “If you can't remember for us, I'm sure you could recall it for the cops. My guess is they already know your name, don't they, Stephano?”

“Okay, okay,” he whispered. “She was pretty, a little bit flirty so I asked her name.”

“And?” Keeley said.

“Ginny,” he whispered. “That's all I know. Then she left and I never saw her again.”

Ginny. They had a name and a face. It wasn't enough, not even close, but it was a start, and Keeley felt some small triumph in it.

As he gathered up the grocery sacks, Mick leaned forward and spoke to Stephano. “Pull up your pants, son, and buy a belt, for crying out loud.”

Keeley managed to repress a giggle.

At her house he carried the bags of flour inside and deposited them on the kitchen table. She lugged out her ancient bread machine and set to work mixing flour, yeast, water and salt. The familiar movements soothed her, the soft clicks and whirrs of the blade mixing the ingredients after she plugged it in. It still amazed her that with only a few ingredients and the help of her machine, Keeley Stevens, worst cook in America, could produce a passable loaf of bread.

Mick watched, thumbs hooked in his pockets, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He eyed the corner of the machine, which she had repaired with duct tape after it wobbled its way off the kitchen counter a week before.

“I didn't know how else to fix it,” she said in answer to his unasked question.

“No criticism here. I fixed a leak in our rowboat with some duct tape one time.”

She closed the lid and put the machine in the sink. “So it doesn't walk off the counter. In another three hours, we'll have bread.”

“We? I, uh, I thought maybe you wanted me to go.”

She brushed off her hands and sat at the kitchen table. “It occurred to me on the drive over that I don't know how to proceed.”

“We're not talking about bread anymore, right?” he said.

“The investigation. Now that I've got a name and photo, what should I do next?”

“My first pass would be to call Reggie and see what he can find out.”

“I thought you were angry with him.”

“He did a bonehead thing, but he's still my partner in all of this.”

She gestured to the chair opposite. He sat and made the call, putting it on speakerphone.