Whisper of Revenge (A Cape Trouble Novel Book 4) (8 page)

“Last time he asked me out, he told me he didn’t get where
he was by taking no for an answer,” she said, echoing what Daniel had been
thinking.  “He also said we have a lot in common, offering only the best to our
customers.”

“Son of a bitch,” Elias muttered.

Something in the way she moved made Daniel suspect she had
put her hand on Elias’s beneath the table.  He had confirmation when he saw the
way the artist settled.

“You’ve given me a job,” Daniel said.  “In the meantime, be
careful.  Call me if something makes you feel even the slightest bit uneasy.”

Hannah nodded and pushed back her chair, Burton doing the
same.  “Thank you.”  Her wan smile didn’t measure up to her usual beaming
ones.  “I’ll apologize in advance if you’re wasting your time.”

“No need,” he said, rising, too.

After seeing them out and taking the notebook to his
office,  Daniel ran his eyes down the list of men.  He wished the time he’d
spend on background checks
would
be time wasted.  But all he had to do
was remember that Beth Stanford had seen no option but to leave town when the
secret admirer targeted her.  Daniel’s gut said the same guy had fixated on
Hannah, and he wasn’t done.

Especially if he’d seen the way Elias Burton looked at her.

From the minute Hannah turned the sign to open on Saturday
morning, people poured in.  And they kept coming.  Maybe it had to do with the
fog, which often lingered until close to midday but always took tourists by
surprise.  Everyone wanted hot cocoa or coffee, along with fudge or truffles. 
Hannah bet Mist River Coffee and some of the restaurants were doing a booming
business, too.

Hannah would have tried to drum up some additional counter
help, but suspected that by the time she found someone, the fog would have cleared
and the tourists would be hitting the beach instead.  Swamped as she was, she
had to make a conscious effort to check on Ian every ten minutes or so.  He
scared her once when she couldn’t immediately spot him, only to discover he’d
climbed into the playhouse in the children’s section of the bookstore.  The
next time she looked, he sat at the low table putting together a simple puzzle.

“A piece is missing,” he complained.  “See, Mom?  The
tractor?”

“I do see.  I don’t have time to hunt for it right now.  Can
you?  Maybe it’s in the playhouse, or mixed up with books.”

“Yeah!”

Smiling, she returned to the sweets side.  “May I help you?”
she asked a woman who was next in line, holding hands with a boy close to Ian’s
age.  The bell over the door rang.  A big family entered, the kids rushing to
put their noses up to the glass and stare covetously at the goodies.

She didn’t know how much later it was when Ian appeared,
tugging at the hem of her shirt even though she was using tongs to put a
selection of truffles into a box.

“Mom,” he said urgently.  “Jack-Jack is outside barking.  I
can hear him.”

“What?”  Wait, the order was for five coconut truffles, not
six.  She put one back then added five walnut-butterscotch truffles to the
box.  “You know it’s not Jack-Jack.  He’s home with Edna.  How could he be
here?”

“But it’s him!  I know it’s him.”

With a smile, she handed the box to the man waiting and
said, “Alice will ring you up at the cash register.  Thank you for your
patience.”  Then she bent to hiss, “Ian, it’s not Jack-Jack.  If there’s
barking, it’s some other dog.  You can see how busy I am.  I don’t have time to
go out in the alley and prove it to you.”

“But, Mom—!”

Hating the look of betrayal on his freckled face, she
begged, “Please, will you go look at books or draw?”  This behavior was unlike
him, but expecting him to entertain himself for so many hours was probably
unreasonable.  She’d think about options for tomorrow…later.  When she had
time.

His shoulders slumped and he retreated.

“No daycare today, huh?” said an older woman, next in line,
with sympathy.

Hannah smiled, grateful for the understanding.  “No, and I’d
forgotten how busy we get this time of year.  Now, what looks good to you?”

She had no idea how much time had passed when she started to
say, “May I help you?” to thin air.  A lull.  She almost moaned in relief.  And
what kind of businesswoman did that make her?

One who’d wanted a nice, quiet bookshop, Hannah thought in
chagrin.

“I need to check on Ian,” she murmured to Alice, who said,
“Take your time.”

Ian was nowhere to be seen when she stepped into the
bookstore.  In fact, there wasn’t a soul visible among the book stacks.  The
castle again?

“Ian?”

There was no answer.  She peeked inside the carpeted,
two-story structure and found it empty.  Bathroom.  Of course he’d gone to the
bathroom.

The bathroom door stood ajar.  Ian often didn’t close it at
home, either.  Modesty wasn’t a word he yet grasped.  The stock room door was
half open, too.  If he was really bored, he might have gone in there to
explore.

But he was in neither room.  Fear trickled into her
bloodstream even though she knew better.  He was hiding, or—

He wouldn’t have gone out into the alley to look for
Jack-Jack, would he?  If so, he could easily have locked himself out.

Heart pounding, Hannah flung herself at the door and threw
it open.  The fog had long since cleared.  A car passed on the side street.  A
flick of movement drew her gaze, but all she saw was the stray cat dive beneath
a dumpster.

“Ian!  Ian, where are you?”

She kept calling his name as she ran from one end of the
alley to the other, looking behind the two dumpsters, even levering herself up
to peek inside the taller of the two although there was no way Ian could have
climbed in.  She ran up and down a block each way on both side streets, then
raced around to the busier Schooner Street.  People were staring at her, and
she realized she was screaming her little boy’s name.

A passing man stopped.  A stranger, his eyes kind.  “What’s
wrong?  Can I help?”

And she said the terrible words.  “I can’t find my little
boy.”

*****

“Sit down,” Daniel said.  “Please.”

Hannah hadn’t cried.  She was probably too distraught.  “I
need to keep looking—”

“Hannah.”  He didn’t want to tell her, but couldn’t put it
off.  “I was able to see what happened on the security camera footage.”

She blanched.  Her freckles stood out in sharp relief.  She
tried to form a word, but failed.

“The puppy was there.  It was Jack-Jack barking that Ian
heard.”

Hannah was panting.  “How could—?”  

“I think we have to assume he was stolen and brought here to
lure Ian out.”  Hannah’s next-door neighbor, Edna Stanavitch, had called
shortly after Daniel arrived in response to the 911 call.  Her gate had been
open and the puppy gone.  Unfortunately, she had walked around the neighborhood
calling for Jack-Jack before letting Hannah know.

A tremor ran through Hannah.

“A vehicle stopped in the alley.  A man wearing a black
hoodie climbed out with your puppy.  He played with him, got him excited.  The
camera doesn’t show the door, but Ian appears and runs to Jack-Jack.  The man
had left the rear hatch of the vehicle open.  He grabbed Ian and threw him in. 
He stayed bent over him for a minute.  My guess is that he was tying Ian up,
maybe—”  Gagging him.  Not something he wanted to say to this terrified
mother.  “He drove away, swerving to scrape a fender on one of the dumpsters. 
The puppy chased the vehicle out of sight.”

Hannah sat so still now, Daniel doubted she was breathing.

This part, he did have to tell her.  “The vehicle was an
older Land Rover, Hannah.  The license plate was visible.  It was Elias
Burton’s.”

Her stricken stare had him reaching for her hand, squeezing,
hoping a touch reached her, wherever she’d gone.

“The man was very careful to keep his face hidden, but… 
I’ve seen Elias wearing a black hoodie.”

Her teeth chattered.  “No.  No.  No!”  As if her stomach
hurt, she curled forward.

Nothing he did or said could comfort her.  Daniel had called
Sophie, who was on her way.  He needed to find Ian Cline, and quickly.  But
first, he had to find Elias Burton, who appeared not to be at home and who
wasn’t answering his phone.  Daniel had already mobilized every single member
of his own small police force, and the county sheriff’s deputies, too, in the hunt
for the Land Rover and for Burton.  Sitting here with Hannah, Daniel could
listen to the terse communications on his radio, background noise he hoped she
hadn’t noticed.

This was all too familiar, taking him back to the foggy
night when Sophie’s car was found abandoned in the middle of the road, the
driver’s side door open.  When every cop in the county had searched for her. 
And then he’d had to relive the experience when Naomi Kendrick, the chef who
owned Sea Watch Café, was snatched in turn.

Both had been found somewhere at the old Mist River Resort. 
Now owned by a non-profit dedicated to protecting the fragile environment of
old growth forest and sand dunes, the resort was still within the Cape Trouble
city limits despite being on the other side of the river.

If somebody hadn’t already driven out there, they needed to.

*****

A cold wave rushed over Elias’s feet, soaking his jeans
halfway to his knees.  Intensely focused on what he was doing, he didn’t so
much as turn his head.  The tidepool would be submerged within minutes.  His
feet had gone numb half an hour ago when the tide first turned.  He was racing
time to finish the colored pencil drawing that would serve as a blueprint for
the oil painting that was vivid in his mind.  The starfish, so rare now, a
shade of orange tinted with peach he didn’t remember ever seeing before.

He drew quickly, dissatisfied with the color but confident
he could remember why it was wrong.  With each crash of a wave, the water
reached higher.  To his knees now.  Damn it, he didn’t want to lose his easel—

“Burton!”

With a vague awareness someone had been calling his name for
a while, he looked toward the beach just as the incoming surge almost knocked
him off his feet.

Swearing, he grabbed his easel to make sure it didn’t fall,
glared at the tidepool and gave up, tucking the pad beneath his arm and folding
the easel.

Sean Holbeck waited just above the water line.  Elias had
met him in passing, and knew he was a detective with the sheriff’s department. 
The weapon and badge on his belt suggested he was on the job.  He didn’t look
like a man out for a beach ramble.  The sudden chill Elias felt had nothing to
do with the temperature of the ocean water.

“What is it?” he asked, sloshing through the foam eagerly
reclaiming rocks and sand.

“You’re soaked.”

Elias looked down at himself and grunted.  His trousers were
wet up to his balls.  It wouldn’t be a comfortable walk back to his car. 
“You’re not here to throw me a life preserver.”

“No.”  Holbeck’s expression was grim.  “How long have you
been here?”

“It’s Hannah.”  He glared at the cop.  “Tell me.”

“I need you to answer my questions first.”

That rocked him back.  Had the bastard gotten to her?  Was
she injured?  Not dead.  She couldn’t be dead.

“I’ve been in this vicinity since—” he had to think
“—probably eight this morning.”  A glance at the sun put it at around noon now.

“I saw your Land Rover parked at the resort.”

“I park there often.  Is that a problem?”

“Not as far as I know.”  Holbeck’s blue eyes held his with
an intensity that heightened his alarm.  “Elias, did you go back to the car
this morning for any reason?”

“No.  I brought what I needed with me.  Besides the easel,
pad of paper and colored pencil, I have…”  He jerked a chin toward the daypack
resting against a driftwood log, safely above any tide at this time of year. 
Shoes, he’d left just inside the split rail fence where the trail from the
parking lot became sand.

“Do you have your car keys with you?”

“They’re in my pack.  Holbeck, what’s this about?”

“Check for your keys first.”

“Hold this.”  He thrust the wooden easel at the cop and
hurried the distance to the log, barely aware of the heat of the dry sand on
his cold feet.  He unzipped the front pouch and lifted the ring.  “They’re
here.” 

“You carry only two keys?”

Losing patience, Elias said, “I couldn’t find my usual set
of keys a week or so ago.  This is my backup – house and car.  Now, damn it,
tell
me what happened to Hannah
.”

“Her son was abducted.”

Shock held him still for a minute.  That was the last thing
he’d expected.  “Ian?  Someone grabbed Ian?”

“Yes.”  A hard, cop face became even grimmer.  “The
kidnapper drove your Land Rover.  Happened in the alley behind Hannah’s
business.  The guy made no attempt to hide the license plate.  He wore jeans and
a black hoodie.”

Like I do.
  Suddenly cold, Elias understood Sean
Holbeck hadn’t walked a mile and a half down the beach to tell him that Hannah
needed him.  Holbeck had come to arrest him.

“I’m not wearing jeans today.”

“So I see.  Your hoodie?”

“Probably on the back seat of my car.”

“You notice anybody passing who can verify your
whereabouts?”

Desperate to finish this so he could get to Hannah, Elias
said, “A guy with a dog, early on.  A jogger.”  He couldn’t remember when. 
“Midmorning?  Probably some other people.  I don’t pay attention.”

“You’re not painting today.”

“Drawing.”

“How much have you accomplished?”

“Everything in that pad of paper.  I tear them out when I
get home.  Toss most of them, keep a few.”

Holbeck accepted the pad from him and flipped with
excrutiating slowness through the pages.  Elias had done some rough sketches
and three that were more detailed.

Thrusting his fingers into his hair, he yanked.  “You can
stand here if you want, but I need to get back.  Ian means everything to
Hannah.  You can’t imagine—”

“I can.”  Holbeck’s mouth tightened even as he started
walking.  “My wife lost her first husband and young son in a car accident.  It
destroyed her.”

Matching him stride for stride, Elias asked, “What’s being
done to find Ian?”

“Everything we can do.  Finding your Land Rover and you was
a priority.”

“Someone was setting me up.”  It had finally sunk in.

The cop’s sidelong glance was impassive.  “Looks that way.” 
Assuming
you
didn’t grab the kid, was what he meant.

Did Hannah know they were looking for him?  Elias felt as if
his chest was being crushed.  Did she believe him to be capable of something
like this?

Why wouldn’t she?  They didn’t know each other well.  His
reputation as a recluse wouldn’t help.

A lot of things in his life had hurt.  But thinking that
Hannah would look at him with fear and loathing when he walked into the
bookstore…  That might be the worst.

He broke into a jog, Holbeck keeping pace.