Dangerous Attraction Romantic Suspense Boxed Set (189 page)

“There! I think that’s the place,” she exclaimed, motioning toward a huge tree across the road to the left.

Ryan pulled the vehicle over to the right shoulder and parked.

“It was a long time ago, but I remember that tree. See, the big cedar with the deep gash a couple of feet up from the ground?” she asked, pointing to it. “I think that’s the tree my parents’ car hit. I want to go see.”

She unfastened her seat belt, opened the door, and slid out before Ryan had the chance to open the door for her. He climbed out, too, and they checked for oncoming cars before darting across the road.

They trudged through the underbrush about twenty feet, reaching the enormous tree. Kate crouched down to touch the damaged area where her parents’ car had crashed into it. Tears flooded her eyes as she looked up at Ryan. A lump grew in her throat, and she could not find the words to express the anguish and sorrow that gripped her.

He put out his hand to help her up, and she gladly took hold of it. He pulled her to her feet and they backed away from the tree. She stood in silence, her emotions bouncing around inside of her like a metal ball in a pinball machine. It took all she had to contain herself and stand still, staring at the place where her mom and dad had died.

When she could no longer curb her tears, she began to weep. Ryan wrapped his arms around her, and she melted into him. He held her close and let her cry. The emotions she had stuffed down for so many years bubbled to the surface. The grief she had kept bottled up came spilling out. She was sure that he could feel the trembling and sobbing of her body against his.

When she was all cried out, Kate stepped back and Ryan let loose of his tender hold. Pulling a couple of napkins out of her pocket, she dried her face. Releasing a long sigh, she felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from her.

She turned back to look at the tree and remember where the lives of her parents had ended. That’s when something caught her eye. She noticed there was a deep blue object hanging on an inside branch of a bush near the fateful tree.

“What’s that?” she questioned, carefully stepping over the rocks and underbrush to reach the shrub, pulling a tattered baseball cap out of it.

“What is it?” Ryan asked.

She turned around and showed him the ball cap.

“It couldn’t be,” she said. “I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.”

“What do you mean?” Ryan asked.

“A dark blue baseball cap,” she said, waving it back and forth.

“Like the one the guy who’s been following you wears?”

“Yeah, Ethan, Suki’s brother, but what are the chances?” She shook her head. “No, it’s most likely nothing. There are thousands of blue ball caps.”

“Do you think there’s any chance he had something to do with your folks’ accident?”

“I never thought so, but now, I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders. “On the other hand, what if this was his hat?”

“We might be able to find out, that is if there are any hairs or epithelia’s still in it. Let’s take it with us,” Ryan suggested. “Maybe the police can run a DNA test and find out if it belonged to Ethan.”

A chill slithered down Kate’s back and she bristled. If Ethan had something to do with her parents’ death, he might be behind Whitney’s disappearance, too.

“It’s probably nothing,” she said, trying to shake the eerie cold feeling.

“Yeah, probably.” Ryan nodded.

“Even though I fought you on it, I do appreciate you bringing me here,” Kate said as she stepped in close to face Ryan, looking up into his gentle eyes. “If you hadn’t, I would not have been able to let those feelings out. I had buried them so deep that I hardly knew they were still there.”

“Then I’m glad we came.” A twinkle lit up Ryan’s eyes as the corners of his mouth turned up into a little smile.

She looked down at the baseball cap in her hand, then back up to him.

“While I know the chances are slim, if this ball cap ends up belonging to Ethan, this could be a big break in finding my sister. I wouldn’t have found it without you.” She pushed herself up on her tiptoes and planted a quick kiss on his lips. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, but how do you figure this ball cap can help find your sister?”

“It might mean Ethan is the one who took Whitney, if we can determine he was involved in the accident that killed my parents.” Kate got more excited the more she thought about it.

“Be careful, Kate. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We don’t even know if this cap belongs to Ethan.”

“I know, but it could.”

“Yes, it could.”

But with thousands of deep blue ball caps in Washington, the chances of this hat belonging to Ethan were remote. It was an odd coincidence, though.

“Why don’t we head back to Seattle?” Ryan suggested. “We can call Will and Raj from the ferry.”

“I wonder if it’s safe for me to go back to the apartment yet,” said Kate.

“We’ll ask when we call.”

She threaded her hand through the crook of his arm before they sprinted across the narrow highway and strolled back to the SUV.

* * *

Kate and Ryan decided to stop at a small coffee shop on the way back to the ferry to pick up a couple of warm drinks for the ride home. As they drove up to the order window, Kate leaned far over toward Ryan to get a better look at the menu on his side, her head leaning against his chest.

“Would you like to sit in my lap?” he joked.

“Sorry, it’s just so hard to see the menu from my seat.”

“Hello, can I help you?” asked the teenage girl who appeared in the window.

“I’d like a soy Chai latté, please,” Kate ordered, craning her neck to read the choices.

“And you, sir?”

“A tall mocha cappuccino,” Ryan replied.

Drinks in hand, within minutes they pulled into line to drive aboard the ferry returning to Seattle. Once on board and parked in place, Ryan turned off the engine, set his drink in the cup holder, and called Patel.

“Hey, Raj. This is Ryan. We’re just checking in. I’m going to put you on speaker so Kate can hear, too.” He clicked the speaker button and held the phone between them.

“Hi, Kate,” came Raj’s greeting.

“Hello.”

“Where are you?”

“We’re on the ferry on our way back from Bainbridge Island. Is there anything we should know?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. We have Suki in custody,” Raj said. “She’s not talking, though. So she’s in a holding cell for now.”

“Do you think you’ll be able get anywhere with her?” Ryan asked.

“Well, we made sure we had a bunch of reporters and camera crews at the police station waiting for us when we brought her in. We’re hoping someone will recognize her when they plaster her face all over the news.”

“That’s a great idea,” Kate said.

“Hey, did you just say you went to Bainbridge Island?” Raj asked.

“Yep, that’s what I said.” Ryan replied. “We had an afternoon to kill, so we hopped on the ferry.”

“Why Bainbridge Island?”

“Kate and I went to visit the place where her folks died in an auto accident a couple of years ago. The funny thing is, though, while we were there we found a navy blue baseball cap at the crash site, just like the one Suki’s brother has been wearing every time we’ve seen him.”

“Hey, this is Mariner baseball country, man. There are tens of thousands of people wearing dark blue baseball caps around here,” Raj remarked.

“True, but this hat doesn’t have a Mariner’s logo on it. Do you think you could convince the guys to have it tested for DNA to see if he was there? ‘Cause if he was, then maybe he was responsible for the accident,” Ryan said.

“And that would mean it wasn’t an accident after all,” Kate added.

“Do you really think that’s a possibility?” the detective asked.

“Well, think about it. If Suki and her brother are responsible for Whitney’s disappearance, which might somehow be related to them blaming Kate for their mother’s death, don’t you think it might be a possibility?”

“Sure, it might be. I guess it couldn’t hurt to have it tested. However, I’ll have to check with Will since it’s a closed case and was ruled an accident. Bring it in and I’ll find out.”

“Also, we wanted to ask if you think it’s safe for Kate to go back to the apartment now?” Ryan looked over at her and caught her gaze.

“I don’t see why not. We have Suki here in custody, and we will for quite a while, but I think you better stay close to Kate in case the brother shows up.”

“All right. We’ll come by with the ball cap before we head over to Whitney’s place.”

“See you then,” Raj said.

Ryan hung up the phone, and reached for his cup of coffee. “Why don’t we get out and stretch our legs?” he suggested, taking a sip.

“Sure. I wouldn’t mind a stroll around the ferry.”

Walking past a set of restrooms, Kate told Ryan she needed to use the facilities.

“I’ll stay out here,” he said. “I need to check in with my office anyway.”

As Kate was in the ladies room, washing her hands at the sink, she couldn’t help but wonder about Whitney. How close are the police to finding my sister? Will they rescue her in time? Or is my sister even still alive?

“Where are you, Whitney?” she whispered, as she dried her hands and looked at her own reflection in the mirror. “If Ethan killed Mom and Dad, he might also kill you.”

He might also kill you.
The words reverberated in her head. In that moment, as she looked into her own face in the mirror, staring into her own eyes, she suddenly realized she should be talking to herself and not Whitney.
He might also kill you.
Like a flash of lightning, the thoughts came to her. Perhaps Ethan was killing the people Kate loved and then he would kill her. Maybe this
was
payback for his mother’s death—that he had been methodically plotting revenge against her for the past ten years. A frosty chill ran up her spine, and she shuddered with goose bumps.

Ryan was leaning against a steel pillar when Kate came out, and he stood up straight when he saw her. She must have been wearing a serious, worried look on her face, as if someone had delivered grave news to her in the restroom.

“What is it? What’s wrong? Did you get a phone call?” Ryan peppered her with questions.

“No, no phone call,” she answered somberly. “Just an epiphany.”

“What do you mean?”

“This might sound weird, but while I was drying my hands I looked at myself in the mirror, thinking about Whitney. All of a sudden, it hit me—maybe Whitney’s disappearance is more about me than her.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It occurred to me that if Ethan caused my parents’ accident, and if he’s involved in Whitney’s disappearance, it has to be because he blames me for his mother’s death.” The thought of it made her sick to her stomach.

“Oh, Kate, no.”

“Could it be that he’s taking the people I love the most before he comes for me?” She looked up at Ryan, searching his face for confirmation of her bizarre leap. “Or am I just crazy?”

Ryan looked unsure how to respond. She couldn’t blame him. Anything was possible, but that was a pretty big leap.

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” he said, taking her hand. “That would take a pretty twisted person.”

“But is it possible?”

“Yes, I guess it’s possible, but we don’t have anything concrete that points to that. Let’s try to be patient, wait to see what the police can get out of Suki.”

“You’re probably right.” She swallowed hard, trying to keep a level head.

“When we get back to Seattle, we’ll take the hat to them. Then, we can swing by my place so I can change out of these clothes.”

“All right,” she agreed. “I’d like to go by the apartment so I can change too.”

“After that, we’ll grab a bite of dinner while we wait to hear something. We can check back in with Raj and Will, if they haven’t called by then. How does that sound?”

“That sounds good.” Her spirit brightened a bit at Ryan’s encouragement and his take-charge attitude. “I guess I just needed a reality check. My imagination is working overtime.”

She wanted to believe that’s all it was—her imagination running wild—but she had heard of worse in the news. “Oh, I forgot to ask, Ryan, everything okay at your office?”

“My assistant said she has everything under control. Did I mention she managed to send Vanessa away in a huff yesterday?”

Kate bristled at the mention of Vanessa. “No, you didn’t. I would like to have seen that.” After seeing her in action at the restaurant the other night, she could imagine it was quite a sight.

“Well, at this point, I’m not giving that woman a second thought. We need to focus on finding Whitney—that’s the most important thing right now.” He put an arm around her shoulders and pressed his lips to her temple.

“I couldn’t agree more.”

The sensation of his warm lips against her skin calmed her. She was grateful not to be going through this ordeal alone, but she couldn’t fully shake the feeling that she might be right about Ethan.

Chapter Fourteen

As the afternoon was winding down and the sun began to set, Ryan and Kate walked into the police station and found Patel waiting for them.

“Here’s the cap, Detective,” Kate said as she handed it over to him. “I know it’s a long shot, but I just have this nagging feeling that it belongs to Ethan Henderson. If he had anything to do with my parents’ deaths, I need to know.”

Raj took the cap and looked over at Ryan, then back at Kate. “You know there’s got to be thousands of these things out there.”

“Yes, I do realize that, Detective. Ryan reminded me this is Mariner country, but if you look at it, you’ll see it doesn’t have any logo on it. The one Ethan wears doesn’t either,” Kate said.

“You have a point there. That does narrow it down some, but even at that…” Raj shrugged. “I still need to get approval to have it tested, and logo or not, it’s still a long shot.”

“I know, I know, but if you can rule it out, then I can move on from this nagging theory. Please?” Kate implored.

“Yeah, I’ll see what I can do.”

“I appreciate that,” Kate said. “Now, to the other thing. I heard you have Suki here in a holding cell. Is that right?”