“I realize you and Daddy Dearest are masters at that, Laird, but all the things you’ve been throwing at me are starting to stick—not to me, to you. The police are in on it since your father’s lackey Marcie Goulder took a header out of the helicopter. Could Jen please take Jordie into the other room?”
Laird sank onto the couch and said, “Jennifer, take the boy into our bedroom and don’t drop him again, or so help me, God…”
“You’re the one who needs help from God, Laird,” Jen said, smacking her glass on the bar and stalking over to scoop Jordie up. “But I doubt if He wants to have anything to do with you, either.”
Tara watched as Jen carried Jordie from the room. She continued to stand so that Nick could still see her, but her gaze was on those wide, green eyes of the little boy. His thumb in his mouth, he was looking at her, too, over Jen’s shoulder, until they disappeared down the hall, and Jen slammed a door.
“All I have to say to you, Tara, is that you’re babbling nonsense!” Laird insisted. “I have no idea what any of this is about. No one’s out to hurt anyone, including you.”
“You may not be directly behind the Whetstone and Goulder deaths, but your father certainly is. Ask him about a boulder that just missed me at Red Rocks when I was meeting your mother there, just before she got stashed incommunicado in the Lohan Clinic again.”
“Calm down. Sit. Please,” he said, patting the seat beside him.
“I’ll stand.”
He leaned away from her, arms stretched along the back of the sofa, one leg crossed over the other knee, obviously trying to look nonchalant and cocksure of himself.
“Tara, I can understand that you’re distraught over the fact I didn’t tell you about our daughter’s death.”
“Or her existence. For which you are fully responsible, since you had Jen tamper with my birth control pills.”
His head jerked a bit. “My, my, you two have been having a heart-to-heart.”
“But you know what?” she demanded, ignoring his sarcasm. “Even though I didn’t want a child, I at least cherish her memory. And if she hadn’t been taken—stolen—from me, I’d have been a great, loving mother. But you already had baby-maker number two lined up, didn’t you? Divorce one, marry the other. Keep me comatose to suit your schedule so I won’t get in your way, just cremate Sarah’s body, stash her ashes in a rural crypt, and don’t even tell her mother or grandmother, let alone legally register her birth or death!”
“Leave my mother out of this! I’m worried sick that she’s gone missing somehow, and Dad says he thinks you know where she is. Get out of my house and leave me and my wife and child alone.”
He’d said those words with control but also with menace. Yet she wasn’t backing off. “Jordie’s chin looks like yours, but I don’t see a resemblance other than that,” she went on, propping her fists on her hips. “Green eyes and hair the color of—”
“Of Jennifer’s,” he interrupted, leaning forward to cross his arms over his knees. “I was only trying to protect you from more grief by keeping silent about Sarah’s death. I’m sure we can come to some sort of suitable financial arrangement for your loss, set you up for life with your P.I. firm, get a dog training school going for your friend so that—”
“How did you know about that? Let me guess. The other Mr. Special Ops, Jordan Lohan, got that intel from the two officers from Fort Bragg or from the politician dangling on his strings.”
His swift move took her unawares. He vaulted off the couch and leaped at her. Seizing her shoulders, he shook her so hard her head snapped back and forth.
“Why can’t you leave well enough alone?” he shouted. “Do you have to ruin everything?”
He threw her to the floor. Her head hit the corner of the bar. Then he stormed away, down the hall, where she heard him open, then close, a door. Low, angry voices came instantly from the bedroom, Jen’s, his. Then Jordie crying. Nick was pounding on the back glass window.
For a moment she’d stayed down, fearing unconsciousness, even the blackness of coma. Though her head hurt, relief raged through her. She was fine: no dark tunnel, no nightmares but the living ones.
Shaking her head to clear it, Tara scrambled to her feet. She fumbled with the back door to let Nick in, with Beamer right behind him. Nick looked more angry than she felt.
“I saw him attack you,” he said, tipping her face up to look into her eyes and examine her face. “Where is he?”
“Probably calling Jordan to have some goons get rid of me once and for all.”
He swore under his breath and started in the direction he’d obviously seen Laird run. “I’m taking him to the police,” he threw back over his shoulder. “Citizen’s arrest for assault, though I may just accidentally be pretty rough about it.”
“Nick, Nick, wait. They’ll charge you for assault then, and they didn’t let you in here. But did you see Jordie? I swear that he looks more like me than he does either Laird or Jen.”
“What are you saying?” he asked, stopping and turning back.
“She’s saying,” came a woman’s voice from the front door Tara had not heard open, “that my son and my husband are guilty of a new kind of child snatching.” Veronica. Veronica here! “I suspected it,” she went on as she came closer, “but couldn’t believe it. Yet with everything that’s happened lately, including the desperate measures someone we both know all too well has gone to, to keep us from so much as talking to each other…”
“Is Jordan here?” Tara cried.
“I came on my own, and that’s why I can say this,” she said, nodding to Nick, then taking Tara’s hands in hers. “Whatever you’ve asked my son and new daughter-in-law about, you’ve probably asked the wrong questions, my dear. What they’re really all hiding is that they had Jen’s dead baby girl cremated and little Jordie—who has your eyes and hair, Tara, underneath that stupid hair dye—was taken from you to be reared as if he were their child. Isn’t that right, Jennifer?”
Nick and Tara turned to see Jen standing in the entrance to the hallway, seemingly stunned, with a huge, red welt blooming on her left cheek. She looked beyond tears.
“Not exactly,” she said, staring at the carpet and wavering on her feet. Nick took her by the elbow and helped her into the room to sit on the sofa. She gripped her hands in her lap and looked from one to the other of them, yet it was as if she saw no one. “Sarah never existed,” she said in a quiet voice. “I—I recently learned I can’t have children. I promised Laird a big family. Jordie was born to Tara that night at the clinic. And in case she—you—ever found out she’d had a child, we staged the rest, Jordan, Laird and I.”
Veronica gasped and sat down on the sofa. Tara grabbed Nick’s arm and held tight. Sarah hadn’t died, because she’d never lived! And here, they’d made her grieve for nothing, tortured her over a dead daughter who was a vile lie! Tara wanted to scream, but she also wanted to shout in triumph. That green-eyed, red-haired little boy was hers!
“Finally, the truth,” Nick said. “But what’s Laird doing in there?” He didn’t wait for an answer and started at a full run down the hall. They heard him pound on a door, shout Laird’s name, rattle the knob, then break in.
“He’s gone,” Jen intoned, wrapping her arms around herself. “Out the sliding glass doors from our bedroom. He slugged me, took Jordie and ran.”
“Ran where?” Veronica asked.
Tara pulled out her phone and hit the instant dial.
“If you’re calling the police, a cell phone won’t work here,” Jen went on, looking up, “but you can use the wall phone. I wouldn’t though. He said to tell you, no cops or else.”
“Or else what?” Tara demanded.
Jen shrugged. “He’s desperate. He won’t be caught. If I were you, I’d stop fighting him because,” she said, fingering the bruise on her cheek, “one way or the other, it isn’t worth it.”
“It is to me,” Tara insisted. “Where has he taken Jordie?”
“He knew he cou
ld be stopped on the regular roads, so he’s gone into the forest.”
“That’s a national park, hundreds of square miles!” Tara cried. “Gone where, exactly?” She bent down to seize Jen by both shoulders.
Jen didn’t try to shake her off, but grabbed Tara’s wrists. She was ice-cold and trembling. “Tara, can’t you just say good riddance, like me? If you do as he says, he won’t hurt Jordie. He adores him, even if he’s yours.”
“He’s gone!” Nick shouted as he ran back into the room. “Gone with the boy. Beamer tracked him down to the road where he must have been parked.”
“Jen says he’s gone into the forest. Where?” Tara asked Jen again. The woman looked as if she were in a trance, a living coma.
“He’s hunted up in there. I don’t know,” she whispered. “There’s only one dirt road from here, but then, who knows?”
“Nick, that cutoff road back by the turn,” Tara said. “It has to be that road. With the truck, maybe we can catch him. Jen, what did he drive?”
“A Humvee we leave here,” she said, her voice a whisper. “I’m supposed to call his father to send a helicopter to some place where they hunted. But I won’t call Jordan, and I bet Veronica won’t, either. He’ll have to find a place his cell works and call him himself. Tara, if you can catch him, he’s all yours.”
“I don’t want Laird. I want Jordie! Veronica, did Jordan say anything about where they hunted, anything at all?”
She shook her head. “I knew they hunted around here—once even overnight, but I never knew where. He did mention a beautiful waterfall somewhere, pounding down on rocks, where you could hide under it. I think he might have said they had the elk they shot airlifted out of there.”
“That’s got to be it! Veronica, if you’d stay here with Jen, Nick and I will get going. I’m not letting Laird take my son and disappear. On Lohan money, they could be missing for years…”
A chill snaked up Tara’s spine. She’d turned down a case where a Syrian father had snatched his son and had taken him back to his homeland, because she had no idea how to begin to trace someone who’d fled abroad.
“Does Laird have a gun with him?” Nick asked, getting in Jen’s face. “Think, Jen. Does he have a gun in the Humvee, or did he take one with him?”
“In the Humvee, I’m not sure. He could. He didn’t run out with one. It wouldn’t even work for me to count his hunting rifles here, not sure how many…”
“Let’s go,” Nick said. “Beamer, heel!”
“Go with my prayers,” Veronica said, and got up from the sofa to hug Tara hard. “I’m ashamed Jordan and Laird are mine, but I’ll stand by you any day. Jennifer,” she said, “did Laird take warm clothes for the baby? What about food?”
“Clothes, but no food unless he had something in the Humvee.”
That was the last thing Tara heard as she and Nick sprinted for the truck with Beamer right behind. Thank heavens they’d gotten gas and had Beamer as their secret weapon. Maybe, even if Laird got out of his vehicle and went on foot, they had a chance.
As Nick pulled into the driveway to turn around, Veronica ran toward them with a bulging plastic sack. Tara rolled down her window.
“Here,” she said, thrusting the sack at Tara. “He never did think of anyone but himself, so that’s food for Jordie and both of you. I’m so sorry. Whatever I can do to help, just—”
“You have already, Veronica!” Tara called out the window as Nick backed up, shifted gears, and they roared away.
“Get Beamer’s lead on him, in case Laird sets out on foot,” Nick said, as if he’d read her mind. They sped down the road, spitting gravel from under the tires. She could tell Nick was in full combat mode now, but then, so was she.
“If—when—I get my son away from him, I’m legally changing his name from Jordan to Daniel, survivor in the lion’s den. No way is that innocent little child going to be named after Jordan Lohan.”
“I can’t believe their gall, playing God with people’s lives.”
“I thank God that Veronica turned up, safe and strong. We’ll find Laird. We have to!”
At the fork in the road, Nick hit the brakes and swerved into the other lane. The back of the truck fishtailed, but he straightened it out and accelerated. No gravel now, just dirt, but they left no dust trail behind them. Too much rain around here. This was like one of those chase scenes she always hated in the movies, Tara thought, as she twisted around to get Beamer’s leash off his collar and the long lead on. Beamer seemed to come to attention as he always did when he was going tracking.
“What if Laird made Jen lie to us?” she asked. “What if he’s gone out on the Loop Road, the highway?”
“I think she was beyond lying for him.”
“Or lying with him. Once he found out she could not have children, he turned on her.”
“I can see tire tracks, but that doesn’t mean anything. Lots of hunters could have been back in here besides Laird and Jordan.”
“Veronica mentioned a waterfall and a stream or river.”
“Like in Colorado, there could be a lot of those around here. There’s snow melt from the Cascades, and this area gets a lot of rain.”
“We don’t have the right map for features in the national forest. Nick, it’s such a huge place.”
Trees blurred by. The woods on both sides seemed to close in on them. Everything was darker, denser, and they were climbing now. Tara could not believe it had come to this.
They passed open ground where a subalpine meadow full of wild, reddish heather had been blasted by an early frost. The coppery corpses stood and nodded in the wind as they passed.
“Since we’re out in the open, should I try to phone the police?” she asked.
“As usual, Laird probably has pull here, and they might just say so what if he’s gone off into the forest with his son. Maybe Veronica will get them, explain things. Just like you, she’s a hell of a woman, not a victim, though I guess it took her longer to decamp.”
Soon the narrow road plunged into deep forest again. “I can’t imagine Laird would ever hurt Jordie,” Tara said, trying to assure herself, “even if the police came, even if he was trapped, even if it was by us. Look!” she cried, pointing through their windshield. “Nick, look, off the side of the road, the Humvee! Could he have run out of gas or hit something?”
“It’s a dead end. See, the road ends there. He obviously knew that, so he must have somewhere else to go. Maybe he has a hunter’s cabin or campsite where he thinks he can wait for his father’s people—the place Veronica mentioned. Maybe he’s got a cell phone on him that works at a particular place, like Big Rock above our place.”
Our place, he had said. What would she do without Nick’s know-how and courage? And his love. Though he hadn’t exactly said so, she was pretty sure he was coming to love her, just as she was him.
“Lock the doors. Stay put with Beamer, in case it’s a trap,” he ordered, and stopped the truck about ten yards behind Laird’s Humvee. “For all we know, he could have a gun.”
“Be careful!”
Nick got out and, on the side of the narrow road away from the Humvee, ran in a half crouch from tree to tree to approach Laird’s vehicle.
This can’t be happening, Tara thought, again. None of it. She had a son, a Lohan son. And now this, Laird desperate, maybe cornered, always dangerous. Her heart thudded. Despite what Nick had said, she got out of the truck, keeping low, leaving only an annoyed, jumpy Beamer in it.
When she crept closer to Laird’s abandoned vehicle, she didn’t see or hear Nick. She started to panic. She wanted to scream his name but knew not to, at least not yet.
She peered in the Humvee. Immaculate inside, but for a child’s book on the backseat floor under Jordie’s empty car seat. No doubt, Laird had pulled away so fast he hadn’t strapped him in. And he must have ditched the Humvee quickly, because he’d left the keys in the ignition. Did he know they would try to follow him? Could he, as Nick had feared, be setting so
me kind of a trap? No, surely even he wouldn’t hurt someone in front of his son.
Tara reached in and took the keys. A stick cracked behind her. She spun around and gasped.
“Oh, Nick, thank God.”
“I told you to stay put. Go get Beamer. Laird’s gone that way,” he said, pointing toward the northwest. “He’s trampled through the ground cover, and his tracks are deep, since he’s carrying the boy.”
“My boy.”
“Then let’s go get him. I’m betting if he had a gun, he would have made a stand here and just gotten rid of us. And bring that sack of food. He probably knows where he’s going, and we don’t.”
“Can Beamer trace him from the smell of the car seat or these keys?” she asked, holding them up.
“Yeah, but I took this from their bedroom, just in case.” He pulled a man’s white sock from his jeans pocket. “He’s got at least a ten-minute head start, so let’s go. For once, he’s not getting out of this. I think about any court in the land will award your son to you if—”
“If what?”
If we can get him back hung in the brisk breeze, unspoken between them. If a tracking dog as old as Beamer, with his feet still healing, can find him in this vast, deep forest.
“Let’s go,” Nick said, his expression determined.
Tara tore to the truck to get Beamer, who was in the front seat with both paws on the dashboard, looking out.
“Yes.” She whispered the words skyward, like a little prayer. “Let’s go.”
25
Nick left a scribbled note on the dashboard of their truck that they were tracking Laird and Tara’s son with a dog, in case Veronica sent the police after them. Tara got both their jackets and checked out the bag of hastily gathered food Veronica had given them. She’d obviously grabbed random things from Jen’s refrigerator or larder: a box of gourmet crackers, a package of deli luncheon meat, two small cans of V8 juice and a small gold sack of Godiva chocolates. Under all that, a half loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter with stripes of grape jelly, which were perhaps Jordie’s favorites.