Little Bird (The Tangled Series) (6 page)

Lee stood in front of Cara’s closed apartment door, staring blankly at it. He’d knocked and now he waited. Of course, she wasn’t going to answer but he didn’t feel quite ready to try the key in his hand just yet.

The end of their marriage hadn’t been so much a divorce as it had been an amputation. The limb had been diseased for so long there was no slow or gentle way to cure the sickness. When the end finally came, the only option was surgical. It was fast and final, more than a little brutal. Even though it was for the best, there was still the occasional phantom pain. Unfortunately, Lee was wrestling with one of those phantom pains just now.

Lee didn’t miss their marriage and he didn’t miss Cara. By the time the end came, there hadn’t been anything worth missing in a very long time. No, his phantom pain was missing the man, the boy, he used to be before he knew what he was capable of doing to someone he was supposed to love. That’s what their marriage had really cost him—any delusion he might have had that he was a decent guy. Somehow, going into her apartment felt like having to confront that fact all over again and he really fucking hated the way that made him feel.

“Hey, can I help you?”

Lee looked up, startled to see an elderly woman standing in the hallway watching him suspiciously. Right, of course. He’d been staring at Cara’s door like a damn idiot for who knows how long. If that didn’t look suspicious, he didn’t know what did. “Uh, sorry, I was just looking for Cara. You know her?”

“Of course I do. Who the fuck are you?”

Whoa. The old lady was cursing at him, which was more than a little unexpected since she looked like your average sweet little grandma type. “I’m her ex-husband, Lee.”

“Oh, you’re the cheating fuckhead. What do you want with her now?”

Lee flushed, gritting his teeth. Jesus, he knew he’d been an asshole but did Cara really have to tell everyone about it? And what was with this woman’s mouth? Not that he was a prude, he cussed as much as anyone, but hearing it from her was just weird. With a shake of his head he held up his hand, dangling the key they’d found in the box last night and hoping like hell their guess it was for her apartment was correct. The last thing he needed was one of her neighbors calling the cops on him. “I have a key, she gave it to me. I think she’s in trouble and I think she needs help. Have you seen her recently?”

“Not since Sunday.” The woman narrowed her eyes, obviously still trying to decide what to make of him. “She visits her folks on Sundays and she hasn’t been back since.”

“Is that normal?” Lee was putting every effort into looking calm and non-threatening but his patience was wearing thin. This was his own damn fault. If he’d just tried the key first thing instead of standing there like a fool, he wouldn’t be stuck having this conversation now.

“No. Not usually. She stays with her folks every now and then but not this long and not without letting me know. She’s real good to me. My kids don’t come around much and she looks out for me.” Affection and appreciation were evident in the woman’s expression. “I try to do the same for her.”

“Besides me, have you seen anyone else hanging around her apartment lately?”

“No.” The woman shook her head.

“Okay, well, I’m going to go in, all right?” Lee shook the key in his hand. “I just want to check on things.”

“Okay.” The woman edged closer to him, obviously still not trusting him and intending to keep an eye on him.

With a sigh, Lee turned back to the door and slipped the key in the lock. Holding his breath, he turned the key and felt a surge of relief when the lock clicked free. Ignoring the woman, who stood just behind him, he swung the door open and felt his stomach sink, his relief evaporating instantly. Cara had never been a great housekeeper and seemed to actually prefer a little bit of disorganized clutter in her life, but the mess in her apartment now was worse than that. In fact, it was worse than what his own house had looked like after he’d interrupted the intruders ransacking it.

“Oh, my.”

Lee glanced over his shoulder at the old woman hovering behind him and stated the obvious. “Someone’s been here. I’m going to go in and have a look around.”

“I’m coming with you.” The woman took a step forward, running square into his back when he didn’t move.

“No, you wait here. I’ll just be a minute.” He was fairly sure whoever had searched the apartment was long gone. Hell, they’d probably come here long before they ever came to his house. Regardless, he’d feel better if she waited outside.

For a minute, he thought she was going to argue but she didn’t, instead nodding her head and taking a step back. Lee nodded at her and went in, leaving the door open behind him.

The apartment door opened into the living room and Lee took a brief look around as he stepped inside. The place had been so thoroughly searched even the furniture had been moved and the floor was strewn with Cara’s belongings. At first glance there didn’t seem to be anything of interest in the living room. He wanted to get the lay of the land and see if anything immediately jumped out at him before he started to search through the mess more carefully, so he moved on to the kitchen.

Just like the living room, the kitchen had been turned upside down in a search but the first thing he noticed was a book lying open on the counter. As he stepped closer, looking down at it, his blood ran cold when the first word that jumped out from the scribbled pages was his own name. It was a diary. He quickly read the short entry on the open page.

I’m not sure who I can trust. No one, that’s who. But I’m going to make sure Lee has access to everything. The bastard might not be able to keep his dick in his pants but he wouldn’t screw me over in this. If nothing else he’ll understand how important it is and I have to tell someone. He’s my only option anyway. He won’t like it but he’s just going to have to deal.

Lee checked the date on the page. It had been written right around the same time she brought him that stupid box. Well, at least this explained why the thugs came to his house.

Leafing through the rest of the book, Lee laughed. It was bullshit; it was all bullshit. Most of the other entries in the diary were copied from books. At a brief glance he recognized passages from
To Kill a Mockingbird
,
The Catcher in the Rye
, and what he guessed was some romance novel. All written in first person so at a cursory glance it looked like something that belonged in a journal. That entry about him, conveniently dog-eared with the ribbon bookmark holding the page, was the only real entry. Were the intruders really so stupid they hadn’t recognized that? Cara had intentionally led them straight to him and they’d taken the bait—hook, line, and sinker.

Lee looked around the kitchen and didn’t see anything else worth noting, so he headed down the hallway. Sticking his head in the bathroom, he didn’t see anything interesting and moved on to her bedroom, more than a little reluctantly. Her clothes had all been taken from the closet, strewn about the room, and the dresser and bedside tables emptied on the floor. There didn’t seem to be anything worthwhile here, either.

It was when he left the bedroom that he noticed all the family pictures hanging on the wall in the hallway. There were pictures of Cara’s parents, her sisters, her nieces and nephews, a few of her friends. But it was the picture of his own parents hanging prominently in the center of the wall that brought him up short. What. The. Fuck. Cara hadn’t even liked his parents. His Dad had died shortly before he and Cara divorced, and his Mom had died less than a year later. Why, after all this time, would Cara have a picture of them hanging up? Unless she’d meant it for him. She’d left him a key to her apartment, she must have known or hoped he would come here. What better way to get his attention than a picture of his parents? Lee reached up and grabbed the frame, pulling it from the wall and heading for the kitchen.

Laying the frame face down on the counter, he popped open the back. Reading the note scribbled on the back of the photograph in Cara’s rushed cursive, Lee found himself laughing for the second time since he’d entered Cara’s apartment.

Middleburg Bank, you idiot! Have you called Mike yet?

Clever girl. He could have done without being called an idiot but then again, she wasn’t really wrong this time. He and Cara had kept a safe deposit box at Middleburg Bank with their passports, birth certificates, and other important documents in it. When they divorced, he’d taken his things out of the box but he’d never thought to actually ask Cara if she’d closed it or taken his name off of it. It appeared she hadn’t closed it and he could only hope she’d left his name on it, too, otherwise he wasn’t sure how he’d get a look inside. If the box were with a larger bank, in a larger community, he’d take Savannah with him and see if she could sweet talk her way into getting in the safe deposit box by pretending to be Cara. But there was no chance of something like that working in Middleburg where people would know and remember his ex-wife.

Digging around on the counter Lee found a piece of paper and a pen and scribbled his phone number on it. Taking one last look around the apartment to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, Lee gathered up the diary and the picture of his parents before heading back to rejoin Cara’s neighbor.

After locking the door behind him, Lee turned to face the old woman who was anxiously shifting her weight from one foot to the other while she waited for him to say something. She was far less argumentative now and nodded when Lee pressed the paper with his number into her hand and told her to call him if she saw anyone else hanging around Cara’s place or thought of anything that might help him find Cara.

His next stop was the bank and he was relieved to discover Cara had in fact left his name on the safe deposit box, but he found its contents more perplexing than helpful. There was only a manila envelope with a bunch of pictures in it and another note from Cara indicating he should keep them safe.

Flipping through the pictures, Lee realized they were all taken outside the same building, which looked like a warehouse and had a Treasury Department sign next to the door. All the pictures were of couples coming and going from the building. There were three different men featured in the photographs but the women with them varied and the same woman was rarely pictured twice. He had no idea what any of this meant, but Lee frowned when he recognized one of the men in several of the photographs was Charles Hartwell, a United States Senator from Texas.

Lee stared at the photographs, wondering what he should do next. His first instinct was to take them with him and show them to Savannah and Mike, but Cara wanted them kept safe. Taking them back to his house, which had already been searched once, probably wasn’t the best idea. Pulling out his cell phone, Lee used it to take pictures of the photographs before returning them to the safe deposit box and leaving.

Back in his Jeep, Lee was pulling out of the parking lot and turning for home when he changed his mind, deciding to run a few other errands before heading back. It was a pretty decent excuse to avoid Savannah just a while longer. The one thought that had been nagging at the back of his mind all day was how much he wanted to get back so he could see her again and he had pretty mixed feelings about that.

Fucking her this morning had surely been a mistake. A goddamn amazing mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. Aside from the information he’d gleaned about Cara’s situation from his visit to her apartment, the trip also served to remind him he wasn’t meant for a woman like Savannah. As much as he’d enjoyed the sex he didn’t want to hurt her, and Mike was right, that was exactly what would happen. Lee wasn’t looking for a relationship and Savannah had relationship written all over her. He should have stuck with his initial plan, which had been not to lay a finger on her unless she asked. Oh, sure, she asked him to fuck her this morning and she’d meant it, too, but she’d have never done it if he hadn’t bullied her into it. When she realized he wasn’t interested in settling down again, he was pretty sure she’d be wishing she could take it all back and he felt pretty miserable about that. He’d been very careful to avoid emotional entanglements at all cost and he’d fucked that up today.

He should tell her it had been a mistake. He could explain it had nothing to do with her. It was just a bad idea since they were supposed to be working together. Even that would hurt her feelings, he figured, but it was better to deal with it now and hurt her feelings a little bit than let it drag on and have the whole thing blow up in his face in epic proportions. That was the best way to clean up this little mess and, yet, he knew himself, he knew he wouldn’t do it.

He’d fuck her again because he didn’t have the self-control to stop himself, even if it was the right thing to do. He wasn’t even going to try and lie to himself about that. Hell, he was hard just thinking about getting home and seeing her again, which was straight up stupid. If he wanted to get laid it would take him less than ten minutes, on a good day less than five, to scroll through his contact list and find a ready and willing partner. So why the hell was it she was all he could think about?

Lee shook his head, trying to push thoughts of Savannah away, as he pulled into the post office. The more he thought about her, the more he wanted her and he poured all his concentration into making it fucking stop. It was wasted effort. Every second he wasn’t actively focusing his thoughts on something else she’d slip right back in again, taunting him with the memory of the way she’d felt and the sounds she’d made when they fucked.

Savannah sat at the kitchen table, Cara’s credit report spread out in front of her. She’d raided Lee’s refrigerator before returning to the rental and was drinking a beer as she tried to concentrate on the papers in front of her.

It was almost five thirty and Lee had been gone most of the day. She still hadn’t heard from him and she was starting to worry. What if he’d interrupted the thugs at Cara’s apartment and he was in trouble? And she didn’t even know where Cara’s apartment was so there wasn’t much she could do.

Savannah leaned back in her chair and sighed. She’d been reviewing the things Mike had sent her and so far wasn’t having much luck. Cara’s bank statements showed nothing of interest. Her paycheck had been automatically deposited the previous Friday, but there had been no other deposits or withdrawals since. Over the last several months, there were several large withdrawals of five hundred dollars or more, the last one about two weeks ago, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. From the looks of things Cara made pretty good money, so it wouldn’t be surprising if she spent lots of cash on a fancier-than-average lifestyle.