Stonebrook Cottage (17 page)

He softened. "Go on. Walk to the cottage on your own. I'll take care of it. Everyone's extra-cautious after what happened to Mike, that's all."

"I know." Some of the energy went out of her anger. "Please make sure the troopers know it's not them. I trust them completely—"

"They know, Allyson. It's not a problem."

Her gait faltered as she thought about how long Hatch had been at her side, smoothing the way for her, taking care of things. "God, Hatch, what would I do without you?"

"You'd manage. You're a survivor—you're like my mother in that way."

She smiled. "I ought to smack you for that."

But he wasn't smiling, and she realized how different they were—he in his slacks and jacket, she in her jeans and UConn basketball shirt. Hatch had found very little comfort in having Henry and Lillian turn up at Stonebrook Cottage with their godmother. "If there's anything I can do, you've only to call," he said.

She thanked him, then set off across a stretch of soft, sloping lawn, almost running when she came to the retaining wall and spotted Pete. She'd seen his truck in the driveway but had pushed all thought of him to the back of her mind. She had to stay focused on her children.

He stood up from his wheelbarrow, dust on his muscled thighs, everything about him scuffed and worn and hardworking. He had tawny hair, the darkest, bluest eyes. Her breath caught whenever she saw him and had, secretly, for years—why was she the last person to know he had fallen for her? She was the blond, blue-eyed doctor's daughter from New Haven who'd married a Stockwell twenty years older than she was, and now all she wanted, everything she craved, was a man four years younger than she was, who had a minor but undeniable criminal record and had never graduated college much less gone to law school.

"Hey, Allyson," he said.

Pete didn't seem to notice how unsettled she felt to see him. Sweat glistened on his tanned arms and face, a black bandanna was tied over the top of his head. His jeans hung low on his hips.

Your blue-collar, ex-con lover.

The burning sensation in her stomach worsened. Why had she insisted on keeping their affair secret in the first place? The caller would have no room to maneuver if she hadn't.

"I saw your truck but didn't realize you were down here," she said, sounding ridiculously formal even to herself.

"Just finishing up this wall for Madeleine." His eyes narrowed, probing her with a sudden seriousness. Most people underestimated him, Allyson thought. They never saw this side of him. She remembered this same kind of mature gravity when he'd saved her and the kids on the Fourth of July. "I heard about Henry and Lillian. They okay?"

Allyson nodded. "I'm on my way to see them now."

"Word's getting out—"

"It's bound to, but I hope the media won't pounce on this one. Henry and Lillian are only eleven and twelve—it'd be unfair to plaster their names all over the news."

"People'll want to know why they didn't have 24/7 protection."

"Because they didn't—and don't—need it unless there's a specific reason. There wasn't one." Her voice quaked, and she fought sudden tears. "I have to go."

Pete leaned against a long-handled shovel. "What about you? Are you okay?"

"Yes," she said without thinking. "I wish—" She choked back tears, lowered her voice. "I wish you could go with me, but that's not…you can't."

He lifted his shovel and drove it into the ground as if she hadn't spoken. Pete was a man, Allyson knew, who heard what he wanted to hear. "Tell those rascals I can put them to work if they get bored and want to skip town again."

She hesitated, watching him as he refocused on his work, and she knew he was giving her this chance to escape. He wouldn't press her about their relationship, not now—but he had to be wondering. And he had a right to know where he stood. Here it was, two weeks since she'd become governor, and she still didn't know what to do about Pete Jericho. She just knew that her body and soul ached for him. As she left him to his work, she felt a stab of loneliness, worse, even, than in the first months after Lawrence died—maybe because it was so unnecessary, a self-inflicted pain.

She climbed over the stone wall and strode out across the field, through tall grass and black-eyed Su-sans, and finally into the woods, onto an old, overgrown logging road. It was flanked by stone walls and a light, young forest, birches swaying in the gentle breeze. She followed it down a hill, to a stream that was low and muddy this time of year. She jumped across it, landing in a squishy patch of wet moss and mud. The mosquitoes found her.

Off in the woods, a woodpecker banged at a tree, and it occurred to Allyson that she was alone. Alone, unfettered, on her way to see her children and one of her closest friends. She smiled at the normalcy of the moment.

Eleven

S
am nursed his third cup of black coffee that morning and listened to Kara on the phone, explaining herself to her big brother. She'd scowled at Sam a couple of times and motioned for him to go into the living room, but he stayed put at his spot at the kitchen table. He doubted she had the oomph to move. She'd pitched her cookies at the crack of dawn. He'd heard her and had offered his assistance, and she'd told him to go to hell.

Except for the shakes, she seemed okay now. She'd had two bowls of oatmeal for breakfast.

The coffee must have been sitting on the shelf, opened, for a year. It was lousy.

Kara had assured Jack she was no longer in possession of his .45, but took the opportunity to remind him that she did, indeed, know how to shoot. Also that she was a lawyer. Thirty-four. On her own since she was eighteen. Perfectly capable of making decisions without his input.

At a guess, Jack was as persuaded as Sam was, which was hardly at all, because Kara was missing the point. People in their right minds didn't act the way she had since the Stockwell kids had turned up missing. That meant either she
wasn't
in her right mind or she hadn't told them even close to everything. Sam was betting on the latter. She was like her brother in that regard. The two of them were hard-headed and utterly sane, but also close-mouthed and very protective of those they loved. There was no question that Kara loved Henry and Lillian Stockwell, heirs to the Stockwell fortune, the minor children of the governor of Connecticut, the two towheads who'd gasped when they met Sam and asked him if he planned to arrest them.

Kara handed the phone across the table. "Jack wants to talk to you." She stood in the kitchen, arms folded under her breasts. She had on stretchy black yoga pants and an oversize white shirt with three-quarter-length sleeves that seemed to emphasize the shape of her wrists and the length of her fingers.

"You talked to Susanna," Sam said into the phone.

"She's still holding back something."

If there was a god, she was. Sam had no desire to explain the night he'd had two weeks ago with Jack's sister, not while brother Jack was still steamed about the gun and the plane and worried about why the Stockwell kids had turned up at her house. Susanna would withhold what she suspected—knew—about Sam and her sister-in-law from Jack—not to spare anyone but because she'd consider it beyond the scope of Jack's legitimate interests. In other words, it was none of his business who his sister slept with.

"You have my gun?" Jack asked.

"I do."

"Allyson Stockwell's on her way to collect her kids?"

"She should be here any minute."

He didn't seem satisfied. "Kara give you that attor-ney-client bullshit?"

"Still is."

"I can be on a plane today if you need me up there."

"With a little luck, we'll be back in San Antonio ourselves tonight," Sam said.

Jack grunted. "Don't count on it. Keep her safe, okay?"

"Done."

He disconnected, and when Kara cursed under her breath, Sam took another sip of coffee, unsympathetic to her aggravation with her brother. "If you'd called him when you found those kids at your house, if you all'd taken a commercial flight up here and arrived unarmed—"

She didn't let him finish. "We'd have been met at the airport by a swarm of state troopers. They'd have found out we were on that flight. And if I'd called you last night, I'd never had made it out of Texas with them."

"Fair point."

She snatched up her cell phone. "I made a promise to Henry and Lillian, and I've kept it."

"Most people don't keep promises they make to kids that age."

"I do."

She stormed outside, the screen door banging shut behind her. Sam dumped the last of his coffee in the sink. She was probably extra testy because of throwing up. He followed her out, enjoying the mild air. He supposed it was on the warm side by New England standards.

He sat in an unpainted Adirondack chair in the shade of a red maple in the backyard and watched her get out an old hibachi and set it on a rickety wooden table. She made several trips back inside for a dishpan of steaming water, a sponge, a wire brush, paper towels, rubber gloves. She attacked the hibachi with the wire brush, going after an accumulation of black gunk. Sam offered to help. She told him no.

"Why don't you go back to Texas?" She didn't look up from her hacking and scraping. "The criminals might take over if you're gone too long."

He stretched out his legs, not letting her provoke him. "I just finished an investigation on the border. I have paperwork to do but nothing that can't keep. My lieutenant knows where I am." His lieutenant being her brother.

"Susanna shouldn't have sent you."

"I'd have come even if she hadn't asked me to." Ordered him was more like it, but that wasn't what had gotten him here. Kara was in some kind of trouble, or the kids were and she was being dragged in with them. He needed to be here.

Kara dipped her brush in the hot, soapy water. "You wouldn't have found me without her help."

He said nothing. He'd have found her.

The brush wasn't working, and she got annoyed and tossed it into the water with too much force, splashing her expensive watch and her white shirt. "Do you see why I stayed up here as long as I did?" She unrolled three or four paper towels and dried herself off. "No room to breathe in Texas. A big state like that, but two kids show up at my door, and next thing I've got two Texas Rangers on my case—"

"Those two kids happen to be the runaway minors of a New England governor."

"They're
kids.
"

"Precisely." Sam crossed his ankles, enjoying the shade. "You'd have all the room you want to breathe if you didn't provoke people. You made off in Jack's plane. You stole his gun. You put his wife in the position of having either to lie for you or betray you—"

"I have a responsibility to Henry and Lillian that supersedes any minor irritations or inconveniences I might cause you and my family." She glanced at him, and he thought he heard her voice catch. "What else would you have had me do?"

She obviously didn't intend for him to answer, but he did, anyway. "Invite me in for popcorn and let me talk to those kids."

"Oh. I see. Ranger Temple to the rescue. They'd cooperate with you, a perfect stranger—"

"It's what you should have done and you know it."

He thought for a second she'd throw her wet paper towels at him, but she didn't, just stuffed them into her hands and wadded them up into a tight ball. "My role here is different from yours. I'm their godmother and an attorney, their mother's friend. I have to take all that into consideration. Plus," she added, turning back to her hibachi, "I know more about what's going on than you do."

With her back turned, he noticed the shape of her hips, the breadth of her shoulders. She was slim and strong, and suddenly there was no question in his mind he'd make love to her again. It was inevitable. He said quietly, "I know what it's like to have a conflict between professional obligations and personal interests."

"I have a moral obligation to Henry and Lillian as well as a professional one. I love them without condition."

"No such thing."

She glanced back at him. "That's cynical." She dipped her wad of paper towels into the soapy water and squeezed them onto the black gunk. "I'll be fine if you go back to Texas. I don't need you here."

"You don't need anyone, do you, Miss Kara?"

She didn't answer. He could see the stiffness in her spine, the tension in her leg muscles. When she shifted back to her dishpan, he caught her expression, faintly irritated, worried, not about to give him or anyone else an inch. Maybe a little scared, but she'd try hard not to let him see her fear.

"I'm on your side," Sam said.

"You threatened to arrest me."

"With just cause. It doesn't mean I'm not on your side."

She sighed at him. "Sam, you're not on
anyone's
side. It's not in your nature. You're the original lone wolf."

Lone wolf. He hadn't heard that one in a while. He rose to his feet, taller than she was but not by much. "Why were you throwing up this morning?"

"Food poisoning." She hadn't missed a beat, but fished out her wire brush and attacked the hibachi with renewed vigor. "I'm fine now. It might just have been nerves."