“Was she really that kind of person? You knew her.”
“I’ve learned the hard way I didn’t know her at all.”
She used some commands to bring up the pictures on the screen. Her hands were shaking so hard she missed a key and had to backtrack. Claire’s laughter floated in from the other room.
“Nick,” she said, not taking her eyes from the screen as photos popped up in neat rows, one after another, “I don’t want Claire anywhere near me until this is settled—because she might get hurt, if they really come after me. And, she can’t lose you, too, after she’s lost so many. But, whatever it takes, I have to get to the bottom of this.”
Standing behind her chair, he grasped both her shoulders. “She won’t lose either of us, but we are going to stick together. I am not going to let them harm you the way they did Rick and Marcie. The high-living Lohans are starting to remind me of the lower-than-scum Taliban, laying ambushes or shooting at us from caves where we can’t see them. The Lohans don’t get their own hands dirty but hire others to do it, then eliminate them when they know too much.”
“Finally, you see them for what they are!” she said, leaning her head back against his hard chest and grasping his hands on her shoulders.
“I just didn’t want to believe it could be this serious.” He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “I figured, when I got home from that hellhole of war with deceptions and death, innocent kids and women being hurt, nothing could be that bad—but in a way, it is.”
She hunched forward to stare at the screen again, blinking back tears to keep it from blurring. At least a hundred, postage-sized photos must be on this CD, some of many people—yes, the entire Lohan clan, she thought, squinting to see who was who. Some were of Thane’s family: him with Susanne, then with all three of their children. She knew how Laird had seethed over his brother’s brood. Laird was the firstborn, with no children, while his brother was building a dynasty.
She scrolled down to ones that must be of Laird and beautiful, blond Jen, and yes—yes—a child in blue on Laird’s lap! She gasped and pointed at a small picture on the screen. Nick swore under his breath.
Trying to decide which picture to enlarge, she double-clicked the first one of Laird’s trio.
It opened full-blown, immense in its impact. Elegant, dark-haired, handsome Laird, his chiseled features tilted slightly by a smug smile. Jen, so blond, glowing, leaning into him, looking like a million—no, like a billion—dollars. And a golden-haired toddler, all in blue, evidently a son.
“Damn them!” Nick whispered, leaning closer. “You’re right!”
His hands tightened on her shoulders. At first, she couldn’t speak. Alternately leaning over her keyboard, then sitting back, she enlarged picture after picture of Laird and Jen with their baby in varied poses. As usual, in Lohan style, each one was formally posed. With each photo, Tara felt a fresh stab of longing and grief.
The child was darling, of course. She had to admit that. Wide-eyed, almost cherubic, with curly, bright blond hair and blue-green eyes. He had Jen’s hair and pale skin coloring, but with the slope of Laird’s head and his ears set tight to his head. As if she had been there, Tara could sense the little boy had had trouble sitting still. He wanted to squirm out of their grasp, get down and toddle about, check out the clicking camera at close range. He wanted to free the little fist Laird was holding, maybe so he could suck his thumb. She could almost feel what he was thinking and feeling.
For the beautiful—living—child, Laird had decided it was worth moving to Seattle, worth a hasty divorce and quick marriage, and evidently worth burying another baby and consigning her to oblivion. But what was killing Tara was that this boy must have been similar in age to her Sarah. One lived, one died. For this precious baby’s sake, she should leave Laird and Jen alone, but she could not.
“Once,” she said aloud, startled at the sound of her own voice, “I thought I could not be more hurt than by his leaving me when I was so ill, despite the fact I could honestly say good riddance to a bad marriage. But then the idea that he might have kept me comatose so he could court Jen hurt more. Next, that he hadn’t told me of our child, then, that he had just made her disappear when she died. But now, it’s worse than that.”
“Sweetheart, you’ve had so many losses, and I can understand how you feel—I can share that much. Let me go check on Claire, get her busy with something so we can talk.”
“And plan. I have to plan. Yes, go take care of Claire.”
She closed out the array of photos and went online to an expensive, client-only database to locate Laird’s address. She could not stomach doing this before; it made her almost nauseous now. The site gave her both his home and business address. They were in Medina, Washington, a suburb east of Seattle on Lake Washington. She learned from several sites that it was a very well-to-do area, as she would have expected. Microsoft’s Bill Gates was a neighbor.
Aware that Nick was back with her, she went to Google Maps and selected satellite views. Then, when a partially wooded lakefront area came in view—Laird’s estate clearly marked—she zoomed in on it.
The house was clearly sprawling, with a U-shaped driveway in front and a free-form deck and patio in back. On the spacious rear lawn leading to the lake, besides an L-shaped, fenced-in swimming pool, was what appeared to be a child’s small, round inflatable pool and a large play set with slides and swings. That’s right, she thought. The baby in the pictures would be over a year older now, not a toddler anymore.
The front, landscaped lawn led to a curved street. The houses all appeared to be gated, some even fenced in from the lake. Tara reversed the zoom to get a wider view, then pulled the camera back again.
“It’s huge,” she told Nick, pointing as he leaned closer. “A gated front, but maybe not fenced-in back on the la—”
“You’re not planning to go there in person, not directly to the house.” His voice was commanding, not questioning.
“I’m going to phone Carla Manning in Seattle, tell her I’m coming and that I want to ask for her legal advice. Then, somehow, with or without her, I’m going to question Laird and Jen.”
She went back to the closest zoom of the area and hit the print button. She stood, turning to face Nick while the printer hissed the aerial view onto paper. “I think you and Claire should head east and take that job,” she said, trying to sound calm and strong. “God willing, I’ll see you after—”
“No! I meant it when I said that we are not splitting up. If you have to do this, we’ll put Claire somewhere safe, maybe with Charlee and her mother, and I’ll go with you.”
“You can’t. You can’t keep putting off Fort Bragg. I’m starting to think Jordan has been matchmaking for us through the army officers, hoping you’ll get me out of their way.”
She startled at the way she’d put that. Her own words echoed in her head and heart: Jordan has been matchmaking for us…hoping you’ll get me out of their way…
Nick. Faithful, fearless Nick, always near. Often knowing what she was thinking, what she was going to do next. She’d come to trust him so much. No, the Lohans could not have hired him, like they evidently had Rick and Marcie. Tara told herself that she was just getting crazier, more paranoid, seeing a Lohan behind every tree. She was coming to rely on Nick, to love him. But that was, no doubt, just what the Lohans wanted.
Could she trust him, or should she refuse to let him come with her to Seattle? She’d already proved she was terrible at knowing whom to believe, but with Nick it was different—wasn’t it? He wanted money to open a tracker dog training school. Had he really decided to stay around here because he wanted to help her, was maybe falling for her? Why hadn’t he jumped at that offer from a private donor the moment he heard it—unless he had the promise of more money for doing something else?
“Nick, I don’t know where Claire would be safe if the Lohan powers-that-be decide to go after her to control me. I’ve seen too many kids snatched by too many people. We can’
t really hide her, so I think you’ve got to take her with you and head out to—”
“No way. I’m not leaving you alone, here or in Seattle. All right then, how about this? I call my Fort Bragg contacts to say I’m coming east with all three of us—driving and making a bit of an educational trip of it for Claire. In case we’re still being watched around here, we pretend to pack some boxes, load them in my truck and head east just out of Denver, then turn around and head northwest for Seattle.”
“But you’d be burning your bridges with them, then.”
“If they’re on the Lohans’ payroll, fine. If not, I’ll explain when I get a chance. If they want me as badly as they should, to train more dogs—even though I lost two of my human trackers…”
Tara was surprised to see Nick tear up, but she loved him the more for it. She stared straight into his eyes. The impact of the man always stunned her. So did she believe that he was her protector and not a danger? Laird had fooled her. Jen, too. But it was now or never to lean on this man. Yes, she needed him, trusted him and loved him.
“Thank you!” she cried, and threw herself into his arms. “Yes, we need to keep Claire with us. That might work. It will give us a couple of days to get things done in Seattle while we’re supposedly heading cross-country to North Carolina.”
“I’ll set it up then.”
She hugged him harder. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. After I settle things with the Lohans, I’ll really go to Fort Bragg with you and Claire, if you want. The only thing is,” she said, stepping back from his embrace, “I don’t know if I can bear to send Jen to jail or get even with Laird now—not since I’ve seen that little boy of theirs. A child without its mother, father, too…”
Tara gasped when she realized Claire had come into the room.
“I see you been crying,” the child said, looking wise beyond her years. “Were you talking about me, ’cause my parents are gone? Or about your little Sarah ’cause she’s dead and doesn’t have you either? Is someone else’s dad going to jail?”
“Let’s all sit down together,” Tara said, pulling Claire into an embrace which Nick completed by putting his arm around both of them. “We have some things to talk about.”
After what Nick called their “family meeting” ended, Tara fixed dinner, and Nick went to call Fort Bragg.
Tara felt bad that they hadn’t told Claire much more than that they were taking a week’s trip to get to North Carolina. They were afraid to admit their real destination, because she might let Seattle slip to someone when saying goodbye, and they were beyond trusting anybody. Despite Claire’s sadness to leave her friends, she was so relieved that Tara was going that she accepted it. And, Nick had told her, they weren’t selling the house, because they would come back after he got the school going for trackers like Beamer. “And Beamer,” Claire had said, “is happy riding in the truck, so he will like the trip okay.”
A loud knock resounded on the front door. Before Tara could get out of the kitchen or Nick come up from the basement, Claire cried, “Bet it’s Charlee and her mom! They’re gonna be sad when I tell them!” She opened the front door.
Tara yelled, “No!” but too late. It wasn’t Charlee and Heather at the door. Jordan Lohan stood there, casually attired, looking furious.
“Claire,” Tara said, running to her and pulling the girl back, “go tell Uncle Nick we have a guest. Now.”
“Is she here?” Jordan demanded, stepping inside and looking around. Tara assumed he had come alone. His big sedan was parked in the driveway.
“Is who here?” Tara asked.
“Don’t play dumb with me. Veronica’s missing. Thursday night, she evidently walked out of the clinic grounds, just the way you walked in, and we’ve looked everywhere else. You helped her, didn’t you?”
“No, but if she had asked me, I would have. Don’t you recall, you pried us apart as quickly as you could the night I saw her in the chapel? We barely had time to hug each other, let alone lay some sort of plan. Do you—do you think she’s all right?”
“I know no one else she would come to,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard her. “If she’s not here, have you helped her get somewhere else?”
“Jordan, I find all this absolutely impossible to believe. Why would she run away from a great husband like you, who let her pursue what mattered to her, like her dream of playing the organ professionally? Why would she try to escape from the wonderful way she’s always been treated at the clinic? So well taken care of, just the way I was there….”
She wanted to scream all her suspicions and accusations at him, but that would mean she’d never get to Laird. He’d stop her. He’d warn Laird. He’d demand Sarah’s ashes back. No, she had to pretext this as she never had before, but she was right on the edge of losing control.
“You always were ungrateful!” Jordan said, his voice rising. “A beautiful but spoiled and self-centered woman, after all the family did for you. You had Laird’s love, and you weren’t happy.”
“Tara!” Nick said, coming up behind her. “To what,” he said, facing Jordan squarely, “do we owe this honor?”
“My wife’s missing from the clinic.”
“Could it be,” Nick said, “that she’s run off with one of her attending doctors? Maybe she’ll get a quick divorce and head for the hills.”
“You son of a b—” Jordan clipped out, then cut himself off, evidently when Nick stepped forward and flexed his fists at his sides. Jordan took a big step back, outside the threshold.
Tara had to stop Nick before he blurted out too much. How stupid she’d been to think he could possibly be involved with the Lohans. No way this confrontation could have been staged. Money could buy almost anything, but that didn’t include Nick. He didn’t need some local political pull or funds to get his dream of training dogs or having his own tracking business someday.
Though he now stood outside, Jordan stared around Nick at Tara and said, “If Veronica’s left in some sort of misguided protest, I blame your influence.”
“Really? I’d say you were the one who did even more than just influence her. You as good as corralled and branded her, so if she’s turned into another terrible maverick like me, God bless her!”
She stepped forward around Nick and slammed the door in Jordan’s face.
By Monday morning, they had closed up the house, sent in a hold on their mail, told the neighbors they were moving to North Carolina, written an explanatory letter to Claire’s school and packed Nick’s truck with mostly empty cartons. Tara had phoned Carla Manning, who had insisted she had room for the three of them and that a visit—even in sad circumstances—was long overdue. And yes, she’d do anything legal she could to help.
They drove east into the rising sun on the outerbelt until they hit Route 6 E. Then Nick pulled off into a huge service station near the airport, which was full of cars in front and trucks getting diesel out behind. He got a fill-up, then drove behind the station where the monster trucks were idling.
“Okay, mirror,” he said, and Tara handed him her big mirror with a handle she’d jammed in her purse.
“What’s he doing?” Claire asked, and even Beamer peered out at Nick as if he thought he was crazy.
“He just wants to check under the truck to make sure it’s ready to take the trip,” Tara said. They’d decided not to tell her that they had checked the vehicle several times to be sure there wasn’t some sort of homing device on it. They had finally both become not paranoid but practical.
“Touchdown!” she heard Nick call out. He stood up to lean in the window and grin at them. Tara saw he had a small black box in his hand, attached to some sort of large magnet. “Excuse me, ladies, while I just go wash my hands and chat up a trucker or two,” he said, handing the mirror to Tara. They watched as he strolled back to the diesel gas pumps where trucks, both in-state and out, waited while their drivers chatted or paid their bills.
“He’s talking to people,” Claire reported, twisting around to
look out the back window, “but he hasn’t washed his hands.”
Nick was learning to pretext, Tara thought. She could help Nick train tracker dogs someday, and he could help her pretext, if and when she ever got back to Finders Keepers.
He soon returned, looking smug. “I have a surprise for each of you,” he told them as he got in and started the engine. “Tara, your surprise is that Jordan is getting a dose of his own medicine, because the device I found on the bottom of my truck is now on a sixteen-wheeler that’s en route to Virginia—close enough to North Carolina. And, Claire,” he said, interrupting what was an obvious spate of questions from the girl, “your surprise is that we are going to Seattle, Washington, instead of to North Carolina, at least for right now. It’s a lot closer. They have a neat aquarium you can visit.”
“But I told Charlee and her mom North Carolina for our trip. And that’s what it said in the note to my teacher! Is this a surprise envelope, and we’re all running away so you guys can get married?”
“You mean elope?” Nick asked with a chuckle, then started to hem and haw his way out of his predicament.
Tara bit her lower lip so she wouldn’t cry. Laird and Jen had run away to Seattle and had gotten married. Now, finally, she was running after both of them. They were welcome to each other—but they had a lot to answer for.
22
Early Tuesday morning, after taking turns driving all night, Tara and Nick made it to Carla Manning’s neighborhood in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue, only about three miles from Laird’s neighborhood of Medina. While Nick drove, Tara had studied local maps with her flashlight until she thought her eyes would cross. Claire had been asleep for hours, curled up on the narrow backseat while Beamer sprawled on the truck floor beneath her, gently snoring.