In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (4 page)

“I
have
done something, haven’t I?” He stood. “Whatever it was, it can’t be so bad you’re afraid to come near me.”

Annie bit her lip. Taking a deep breath, she let it out in a rush of words.

“You were a policeman in Florida, weren’t you?”

He stared at her, knew she’d found the trunk in the attic, and felt a sudden blazing, jarring pain of betrayal.

“I should’ve locked the damned trunk,” he snapped, getting up from the bed. He ran his hands through his hair. “But I didn’t think you’d go snooping...”

“I wasn’t snooping,” she defended. Her face turned crimson at his sneer. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“If I’d wanted you to see what was in that trunk, I’d have showed you,” he growled.

“Maybe you did and that’s why you didn’t lock it.” Her eyes narrowed. “Maybe you wanted me to know.”

“I sure as hell did not.” His face turned hard. “What I did before I met you is none of your damned business! If I’d
wanted
you to know, woman, I’d have told you.” After spinning on his heel, he stomped from the room.

“Gabe, wait!” Annie followed him. “Let’s talk about this.” She came to a skidding stop, almost colliding with him when her husband turned and faced her. She flinched at the expression on his face and the fury in his voice.

“No!” he thundered, leaning over her to glare into her face. “It’s none of your business.” He reached out a hard hand to shake her. “And I have no intention of
ever
talking about it with you!”

“But why? What happened to you?”

“Nothing,” he shouted, shoving her away. His eyes were livid with rage, his face tight and uncompromising. Turning his back on her, he walked to the small room he used as an office and slammed the door behind him.

Annie heard the snick of the lock falling into place.

He kissed her
goodbye, softly touched her cheek, told her he loved her.

“I love you, too, Gabe,” Annie told him, her love in her eyes.

Gabe smiled. “I know, darlin’.” He ran his thumb over her lips. “See you tonight. Hope you get to feeling better.”

“I’ll try,” she answered.

She watched him pull out of the driveway, heading for the supermarket and his Tuesday morning cup of coffee with Kyle Vittetoe. She looked at her watch. It was just a little after six. She closed the front door, locked it, and walked to the phone.

For three days Annie had debated over making the call. The fight she and Gabe had participated in was still fresh in her mind, the hurt still a probing finger on an open wound. Her concern for her husband was exceeded only by the callous way in which he had come to apologize the next morning after spending the night in their guest room.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you, but I don’t want to talk about Pensacola, Annie. What happened before I met you has nothing to do with us.”

“It does if you can’t let it go,” she had stubbornly reminded him. “If what happened to Kyle Vittetoe happened to you...”

“Nothing—” He had stressed behind clenched teeth. “—happened to me, Annie.” He shrugged with indifference. “I was a sociology major in college, babe. I was just interested in the aspects of what had happened to those officers.”

“Because you were one, too?” She searched his eyes and saw a flicker of tight annoyance flame. Did he forget there were other things in that trunk? Things that only a cop would have?

“No, I was not a policeman. If you just
have
to know what it was I did down there, I was a social worker for the HRS. It was my enviable task to try and squeeze child support from bastards who didn’t want to support their families.” He had glared at her. “Are you satisfied now? I was just a glorified collection agent!” His face had hardened. “Not exactly putting my degree to good use, would you say?”

The matter had dropped, but Annie had not been satisfied. For one, his eyes had avoided hers, his hands had been trembling, and she could not see any reason why he had wanted to keep his former occupation hidden. It made no sense.

“There’s more to it than what you’ve said,” she whispered as she picked up the telephone book and thumbed through the pages until she found the area code map. Running her finger down to Florida’s Panhandle, she found what she was looking for. She laid down the book, picked up the phone and punched in 1-904-555-1212.

“Directory Assistance for what city?” came a deeply accented male voice.

“Pensacola.”

“Yes?”

“I’d like the listing for the Pensacola Police Department, please.”

“One moment.” There was a slight delay. “Here’s your number.”

Annie grabbed a pencil as the metallic, hollow voice droned the number. Scribbling down the number, Annie noticed her hands shaking. When she’d finished, she laid down the pencil and stood staring at what she had written. Making up her mind as the number was repeated, she pressed the cut-off button and dialed. It seemed to take forever before the phone was picked up on the other end.

“Pensacola Police, Sargent Dixon speaking.”

Annie froze, wanting to slam down the receiver. The policeman repeated his greeting, this time with a threatening hint of annoyance.

“Ah, yes,” she found herself saying. “I... I, uh...” Her lips felt numb, frozen. Finally taking a deep breath, her request came out in a rush. “I’m trying to locate an officer who used to work there. James? Gabe James?”

“Who’s this, please?” the policeman asked. His voice was gruff, but not unfriendly. It sounded a little surprised.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” She could feel her face burning. “My name is Annie, Annie Cummings. I’m an old friend of his from Iowa, and the last place I heard he was working was for you guys.” The lie seemed to scald her tongue as she spoke.

“I see. James, you say?” There was a guarded hesitation as Annie heard papers rattling in the background.

“Yes, James. Gabriel James.”

A long pause at the other end. Finally, “I’ve been on the force nearly twenty years, ma’am, and I don’t ever remember an Officer James. Are you sure he wasn’t with the Escambia County Sheriff’s Department?”

Annie bit her lip. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about that.” Her eyes searched the room. Maybe he
had
been with the sheriff’s department. “Ah, could you give me that number, please?”

“Sure. It’s...”

Copying down the number and calling the Escambia County Sheriff’s department had proven a dead-end as well. The lady at the Sheriff’s department had given her the numbers of three nearby law enforcement offices, but Annie had no better luck with them. Frustrated, and with a nagging feeling of having overlooked something tight in her belly, she waited until nine o’clock knowing Pensacola was in the same time zone, and then made two other calls: one to Directory Assistance; the other to the
Pensacola News Journal.

“Good morning, Pensacola News Journal.”

“Yes, I’m Annie Cummings and I’m doing a book on crimes committed against police officers all over the country.” Again the lie seemed too natural for Annie’s liking. “Is there someone there who might be able to help me with some research?”

“Mrs. Johannsen might. She’s got the police beat. Let me connect you.”

Annie waited, her breath held until a thick, no-nonsense, masculine-sounding voice came on the line.

“Johannsen.”

“Ah, yes. My name is...”

Waiting for the
call back from the newspaper was like anticipating a visit to the dentist. Annie found her palms sweating, her mouth dry. She tried to do some housework, but gave up in the end, realizing she was simply doing busy-work that was beginning to tell on her nerves. By the time the phone rang, she was close to having a screaming fit.

“Hello,” she spat into the receiver.

“Ms. Cummings?” That same, overly-gruff voice was on the other end.

“Yes. Yes, this is she.” She found herself pressing the receiver painfully close to her ear.

“Johannsen, here. I had one of the interns search through the morgue for what you wanted. I came up with about ten incidents in the last five years. I’ll mail them to you...”

“Could you fax them? I mean, I can give you a fax number if you can.” Annie put some whining respect into her voice. “You understand how it is with editors. Deadlines are a bitch, aren’t they?”

There was a heavy, put-upon sigh and when she answered, Ms. Johannsen’s voice was tight. “Oh, I suppose so. What’s the fax number?”

Annie gave her the number. “I really appreciate this. I—”

“Yeah, yeah,” came the disinterested reply.

“I won’t take up any more of your time,” Annie promised and was about to thank the woman again when the line went dead. Staring at the receiver, Annie shook her head. “Rude bitch.”

Leland Kassinger
was the General Agent in southeastern Iowa for the Knights of Columbus insurance company. Not only was he Annie and Gabe’s agent, he was also their friend. He’d been trying to get Gabe to join the Knights for several months, but Gabe had been procrastinating, not at all sure he wanted to join. But Lee was persistent, smiling in his hangdog way, expounding the pleasures of joining the fraternal brotherhood and was slowly wearing down Gabe’s resistance.

“Knights of Columbus Insurance,” came the pleasant reply to Annie’s call at ten minutes past ten.

“Hey, Lee. It’s Annie James.”

“Hi, there! How you doing?”

“Fine. Listen, I’ve got a favor to ask.”

“Shoot.”

Annie could picture the short, bearded man on the other end of the line. No doubt he’d have his black hair parted just so, his pipe clutched between his teeth. His puppy dog brown eyes would be shining, alert, hoping Annie had talked Gabe into joining. There was always a smile on Kassinger’s face, a hearty laugh wanting to explode. He was the kind of man who encouraged you to trust him, and who would never, ever betray that trust.

“I’ve got some information coming in from Florida, and I gave them your fax number. Is that all right?”

“You know it is, honey. When’s it suppose to get here?”

Annie hesitated. She hadn’t had the chance to ask. “I...uh...I don’t know exactly.”

“Well, I’ve got some appointments over in Marshalltown in about an hour, and I was just about to leave. If you’d like, I’ll leave the key with Dolph next door and he can let you in to get the fax if you think it’ll be here today. Otherwise, I’ll bring it out to you whenever it comes.”

A stark white bolt of dread entered Annie’s gut. “No,” she was quick to say. “It’s...well...it’s a surprise for Gabe. I don’t want him to know about it.”

“Say no more, honey. I’ll keep it under my hat. Well, gotta go. Have a good ‘un!”

If there was one thing Leland didn’t like, it was talking on the phone. The man actually hated it. The sooner he was off and out selling, the better he liked it.

“Thanks, Lee.”

“Don’t mention it.” The line snicked closed.

Getting dressed, getting to Newton to Lee’s office, took no more time than Annie would allow. She found herself literally quivering with anticipation as she waited for Dolph Stodenmeyer to open Lee’s door for her.

“When you’re through, just push in the lock, Annie.” Dolph smiled at her. “And don’t walk off with the furniture.”

She answered his warm, open smile with a nervous twitch of her lips. She could barely wait to close the door behind him and lock it. Hurrying to the fax machine, she stared at it, willing the information to come.

Gabe leaned back
in his chair, shot his long legs out in front of him and brooded. Four times he’d called his house, and four times there had been no answer. He’d tried the school, just in case Annie had felt like going in after all.

“Annie isn’t here, Gabe,” the school secretary had informed him. “She called in sick. You must’ve left real early this morning.”

He’d tried their doctor’s office.

“No, she hasn’t called in for an appointment. Maybe she’s got this darn stomach virus that’s been going around.”

He’d called her best friend, Helen Bryant, but there had been no answer there either. Only Helen’s quirky message that if you were tall, dark and handsome to leave your phone number; otherwise just leave a message and she’d think about getting back to you.

Sitting in the break room, his mind seething with questions, Gabe had a nagging feeling that something wasn’t right. He was tempted to go home to check on her. A part of him was worried she had become very ill, but another part of him fretted Annie was probing into his past. And it was that worry that had him chewing his lower lip.

When she had floored him with the question about Florida, he had almost blurted out the truth. But there would have been more explanations if he had—explanations he wasn’t ready to give; explanations he knew would make things even worse and possibly even end their marriage.

Not only had he changed his name when he’d left Florida, he’d gone from state to state, city to city, job to job—at last count, over two dozen. He’d colored his hair for awhile, trading in the lush brown locks for a straw-colored blond he’d hated and shorn almost to his scalp. He’d even hidden his bright brown eyes behind blue contact lenses for nearly two years.