Kitabı oku: «Show Me A Hero»

Chapter One

The house was nineteen-point-six miles outside of town.

“Incredible,” Ali Templeton muttered under her breath when she pulled up in front of the dated-looking two-story building that sat on a small knoll in what seemed like the middle of nowhere.

Only nineteen-point-six miles.

She exhaled and pushed open the door of her cruiser, sticking one sturdy boot out onto the frozen red earth. She was on personal time and probably shouldn’t be using the vehicle assigned to her by the department. It would be one more reason for her sergeant to give her grief, but her own little pickup truck was in the shop, and would be remaining there until she could scrabble together the money to pay for the new transmission it needed.

She zipped up her jacket against the whistling wind as she studied the house in front of her. Sgt. Gowler had been annoyed with her ever since she stopped dating his son, so she was used to it by now. What was one more reprimand?

Discovering that Grant Cooper was living just nineteen-point-six miles outside of her very own hometown was either the height of irony, or the proof that she wasn’t much of a cop, just like Sgt. Gowler seemed to think.

Not that she was here for professional reasons.

Not exactly.

Her bangs blew into her face, obscuring her view, and she shoved her sunglasses up onto the top of her head to keep her hair out of her eyes. She should never have impetuously cut the bangs. It was taking forever for them to grow long enough to stay contained in the bun she had to wear because Gowler was a stickler for regulations.

She’d been out to this abandoned ranch once before. Just over a year ago. Then, it had been at the behest of a single mom at her wit’s end over the wild crowd her fifteen-year-old son had fallen in with. Alongside one of the county’s deputy sheriffs, she’d rounded up Trevor and the rest of the kids, boarded up the broken windows that had allowed them access to the vacant house and hauled the kids back home to their parents.

There were still no animals in the fields. But now the sheets of plywood were gone. All the windows were intact. And though there was no sign of any vehicles, there was a thin stream of smoke coming from the chimney that she hoped meant the man she sought was actually inside.

When she went up the weathered porch steps, they creaked ominously, as if they hadn’t borne the weight of a human being in about half a century. Jabbing her gloved finger against the doorbell didn’t elicit any response, so she tugged off the glove, balled her fingers into a fist and pounded loudly on the door. A shelf of snow slid off the roof, landing with a plop next to her feet.

She wasn’t going to take it as a bad sign. The snow could just have easily landed on her head.

She swiped the pile sideways with her boot until it fell off the side of the small porch, and knocked again, a little more gently this time. Even if he didn’t answer the door, she wasn’t going to give up.

Not now that she’d finally found him.

She glanced at her watch. She couldn’t afford to be too long before she reported in, or Gowler really would have a legitimate reason to be all over her case. But she’d just discovered where Grant Cooper was and she wasn’t taking any chances. She knocked on the door again, then glanced over her shoulder, scanning the landscape around the house. It looked even more desolate than it had when she’d rousted the weed-smoking teenagers.

But then again, it was the middle of January. In the middle of Wyoming.

“Come on.” She lifted her hand to knock again, but the door was yanked open from the inside, startling her enough that she fell back a step.

Annoyed with herself, she stiffened her shoulders and looked up into the face of the man who stood there.

Six feet tall. A lean 170. Dark-haired. Dark-browed, dark-bearded. Her brain automatically categorized the details that she’d only seen in a photo in his DMV record.

When she got to the eyes, though?

She felt her brain short-circuit.

Not blue.

Not green.

Aqua.

Entirely heart-stopping, even though they were glaring at her.

“I can’t believe I finally found you,” she blurted.

His lips thinned. “It’s my only one.” He shoved something into her hands. “Now get off my property.” Before she could blink, he slammed the door shut. Right in her face.

She was too stunned to react.

At first.

But annoyance quickly hit and she pounded on the door again, using the spine of the hardback book he’d pushed into her hand. It served one good purpose at least—it made an effective door-knocker.

It didn’t matter to her if he turned out to be as strange as a three-dollar bill. She wasn’t going to just turn around and leave because he hadn’t greeted her with a big smile and howdy-do.

So she banged with the book and pulled out her badge with her other hand. “Mr. Cooper, open the door,” she said loudly. “I’m not going away until we’ve had a chance to speak.” She banged again. “Open up!”

The door was yanked open again. “If Chelsea sent you—”

Ali did the shoving this time and pushed her badge right in front of his face. “I’m Officer Templeton with the Braden Police Department, here on official business.” She was definitely stretching the truth about that, but oh, well. “I don’t know who Chelsea is, nor do I care, unless she has information about the whereabouts of Daisy Miranda.”

Only because she was watching him closely did she catch the glint of surprise in his otherwise glowering expression.

“Are you Grant Cooper?”

He still looked like he wasn’t going to answer and she wiggled her badge a little, even as she tried to make herself as physically imposing as five foot two could ever be.

“Yes,” he admitted through his teeth.

“Then Daisy is your sister.” The woman might be a rolling stone, never staying in one place for more than three or four months at a time, but she seemed to have tried to always maintain some sort of contact with her brother.

Which was the only reason Ali had found him right here at all. She’d literally followed a postcard to the man.

Nineteen-point-six miles. He’d been practically under her nose all this time.

His expression darkened even more. “My sister’s name is Karen Cooper. Not Daisy Miranda.”

But he’d recognized the name. Ali had seen it in his eyes. She wished they had a photo of Daisy. But she didn’t. Just a general description provided by the people who’d known her during her brief stay in Braden. “Medium height. Slender. Red hair, green eyes? Maybe she married?”

His expression revealed his disbelief. “No way.”

“Does she often use an alias? Are there other names she goes by?”

His lips were pressed together.

She let out a little breath of frustration. “If you think your silence will make me give up, you’re wrong, Mr. Cooper. Regardless of what she’s calling herself these days, I’m looking for her. And I intend to find her.”

“You and about a dozen others. If you’re here because my sister owes somebody money, you’re out of luck. You won’t get it from me.”

“This isn’t about money.”

“I don’t care what it’s about.” He tried closing the door again, only to glare at her even harder when he couldn’t because she’d quickly planted her heavy boot in the doorway.

“So you don’t care about her abandoned baby?” Ordinarily, she would have cringed a little at her own bluntness, but these weren’t ordinary circumstances.

This time she didn’t have to look closely to see the shock that crossed his handsome face. He closed his aqua eyes for a second. Then he frowned and moved away from the doorway. But he didn’t try shutting the door.

It was invitation enough for her and she stepped inside.

The interior of the house was only slightly less derelict than it had been when she’d confronted the teenagers. Then, the kids had been sprawled around on sleeping bags and tattered beach chairs. Now, only one piece of furniture remained in the main room—a couch that was presumably new, considering the thick plastic wrapped around it. It was pushed to one side of the square room and sat beneath a foggy-glassed wall mirror. A couple of packing boxes were stacked next to it, along with what appeared to be new, unfinished kitchen cabinets. On the other side of the room were gallon cans of paint along with paint rollers stacked atop a tarp. Clearly he was preparing to paint over the graffiti-covered walls.

The problems she and her sister were having with the Victorian they’d been restoring were owed strictly to the age and decline of the house. He had to deal with an old house plus neglect and outright vandalism.

He disappeared through a door near the paint cans and she followed, setting the thick book on top of one of the boxes as she passed the stack.

He was standing in the middle of the kitchen, seeming to stare at nothing at all.

He made no sign that he even recognized her presence. Chewing the inside of her cheek, she stepped around him to reach the sink against the cabinetless wall. When she’d been here before, the kitchen had had vile yellow cabinets and she wondered if he’d pulled them out in preparation for the new ones, or if it had been vandals.

The white enamel sink was still chipped, but it was no longer filled with cigarette ashes and discarded beer cans. In fact, it looked scrupulously clean. There was a dish drainer sitting on the bottom of the sink and she pulled one of the glasses from it. It was still damp from being recently washed, and she filled it with water.

He hadn’t moved a muscle.

“Mr. Cooper, why don’t you sit down?” She gestured to the round table wedged in the space between an avocado-green refrigerator and a tin-doored pantry cupboard.

He still didn’t move.

His chambray shirtsleeves were rolled up his sinewy forearms and she cautiously touched his elbow through the cloth.

He jerked as if she’d prodded him with an electric rod and glared down at her.

She pushed the water glass toward him until he had no choice but to take it. “Maybe this will help,” she said calmly despite the distraction of his intensely colored eyes. “Would you mind if I sat?”

His eyebrows lowered as she pulled out one of the padded metal chairs without waiting for his answer. She sat on the edge of the yellow vinyl cushion, hoping he would follow suit.

She needed his cooperation. It would be easier to get that if she could get beyond his annoyance and his shock. In her experience, sitting together at someone’s kitchen table was a step in the right direction.

After a brief hesitation, he pulled out a second chair. The metal legs scraped against the black-and-white checkered linoleum floor. He sat, and finally drank down half the water.

Then he set the glass in the middle of the table and sighed. He rested his forearms on the Formica and pressed his fingers together until the tips turned white around his short, neatly clipped fingernails. “I didn’t know she’d had a baby,” he said after a moment. His voice was low. Gruff. “Or that she was in Braden. We—” He broke off and cleared his throat, curling his fingers into fists. “We haven’t spoken in a while.”

Ali very nearly reached out to cover his hands with her own. Instead, she clasped them together in her lap just to be sure she kept them under control. She wanted to ask what his and his sister’s connection was to Braden that they’d both ended up here during entirely different time frames. Braden was simply too small for it to be coincidental. But she held back that particular question for now. “How long is a while?”

His jaw shifted. “A while.” He focused those unsettling eyes on her face. “How do you know this baby you’re talking about is Karen’s?”

She couldn’t fudge the facts about that. “I don’t know for certain that she is,” she admitted. “Only that a child has been abandoned, and the evidence seems to point to her being Karen’s.”

“What evidence?”

An old-fashioned electric clock hung on the wall opposite them, above the stove. It was shaped like a black cat, with a long tail that swung right and left in time with the ticking hands of the clock face on the cat’s belly. “There was an unsigned note left along with the infant. We believe your sister wrote it. Her wording was distinct.”

His eyebrows rose slightly.

“‘Jaxie, please take care of Layla for me.’” Ali recited the brief missive from memory.

Grant sat back in his chair. His expression turned annoyed again. “How does that tell you anything? Except the kid’s name is Layla. You don’t even know for sure that the author of the note is Layla’s mother. You’re just assuming.”

“In the absence of any other information, it’s the only assumption we have to make. Maybe Daisy isn’t—”

“Karen.”

“Karen. Maybe she isn’t the baby’s mother, but she clearly had some involvement with the child or she wouldn’t have written the note.”

“If she wrote the note. Do you even have proof of that? And who the hell is Jaxie?”

She glanced at the clock again. Gowler would take lateness even worse than he would her personal use of a department vehicle. God only knew what he would assign her to next. Janitorial, maybe. It was about the one thing he hadn’t done. Yet. “Maybe I should start at the beginning.”

He gave her a long look that seemed to say “you think?” “Maybe you should.”

She suddenly felt too warm and unzipped her jacket. “An infant was left on the doorstep of a home owned by two brothers in Braden last month. The only identifying item left with the baby was the note. Unsigned, as I said. On common, white paper. No clear fingerprints. But the reference to Jaxie presumably meant Jaxon Swift, who is one of the occupants of the home. Mr. Swift owns a business in Braden and he had an employee for a short while named—” she inclined her head slightly “—Daisy Miranda, who was the only one who ever used that nickname for him. But she left Mr. Swift’s employment more than a year ago and he hasn’t heard from her since.”

“So? The kid is his. Why else leave her for him? What’s the problem?” His eyes looked cynical. “Jaxie doesn’t want to take responsibility?”

“That was our assumption, too, at first. That he was the father, I mean. But DNA tests have already disproved his paternity. He’s not Layla’s father. The business Mr. Swift owns is a bar. Magic Jax. Karen was a cocktail waitress. Their uniforms are, um—”

“Skimpy?”

She hesitated. She’d been known to work as a cocktail waitress at Magic Jax a time or two for extra money. She was taking a few shifts right now to help get her car out of auto-shop jail. “Let’s just say the outfits are closely fitted. Given the timing, it’s unlikely that your sister was even pregnant when she quit working there. There are no records locally about Layla’s birth, but we estimate she’s now about three months old.”

“So where is the baby?”

Ali kept herself from shifting. “The judge in charge of her case has placed her temporarily with a local family while we investigate.”

His lips twisted. “He’s put her in foster care, you mean.”

The term was accurate, but implied a formality and distance that wasn’t the case at all, since it was Ali’s own sister Maddie and her new husband, Lincoln Swift, who were providing the care. “Yes. A very good foster family. Can you give me any information about Karen’s friends? If she was involved with a particular man?”

“No. I didn’t even know she’d been here in Wyoming.”

Ali waited a moment for him to explain further, but he didn’t. And even though she tried to give him her best demanding stare, his gaze didn’t shy away.

She was afraid that she was the one who came away feeling unsteady. She wasn’t used to feeling unnerved by a man. Even an unreasonably handsome one.

Determined to get back on track, she reached into the inner pocket of her jacket and pulled out one of her business cards. They were generic cards for the police department, but she kept a small supply on which she’d added her badge number, email and phone number. “If there’s anything that comes to you, anything at all, please consider calling me.”

He didn’t take the card. “So you can arrest her for abandoning her child?”

She thought about the sweet baby that she herself had rocked and played with and fallen for just like everyone else who’d come into Layla’s orbit. It didn’t really matter what had drawn this man and his nomadic sister to the same place at entirely different times.

What mattered was Layla.

She placed the card on the center of the table as she stood. “So I can find a child’s mother,” she amended quietly.

He didn’t respond. Didn’t reach for the card.

She squelched a sigh. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Cooper.” She turned to leave the kitchen.

“I haven’t talked to Karen in nearly three years,” he said abruptly.

She stopped and looked at him. She couldn’t imagine not speaking with any one of her siblings for three days, much less three years. “That’s a long time.”

“You don’t know Karen.” He stood from the table and escorted her from the barren kitchen back through the nonlivable living room. “She’s flighty. Irresponsible. Manipulative. But she wouldn’t have done this.” He opened the front door and a rush of bitterly cold wind swept inside. “She wouldn’t have dumped off her baby.”

“Not even if she was desperate?”

His lips tightened. “If she was that desperate, she would have let me know.”

“Well...” Ali zipped up her jacket. Fortunately, her departmental SUV had good heating. She stuck out her hand, hoping to show him that she wasn’t his adversary. “If you think of anything at all that might help us find her, please consider calling me.”

He looked vaguely resigned. He briefly clasped her hand, then shoved his fingers in the front pockets of his jeans. “I won’t think of anything.”

She fought the urge to tuck away her own hand, because her palm was most definitely singing. “But if you do—”

“But if I do, I’ll contact you.”

It was the best she could do at the moment. Bringing up the subject of testing his DNA to help identify whether or not Karen, aka Daisy Miranda, was actually Layla’s mother wouldn’t get her anywhere. Not just yet. She didn’t have to possess the kind of brilliant mind that had been bestowed on her siblings to recognize that particular fact. “Thank you.” She barely took two steps out the front door when it closed solidly behind her.

She didn’t look back, but let out a long, silent exhale that clouded visibly around her head as she went down the steps and headed to the SUV. At least she’d learned Daisy’s real name.

Daisy Miranda might have seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

But maybe Karen Cooper hadn’t.

She pulled open the truck door and climbed inside, quickly turning on the ignition and the heat.

Only when she drove away did she finally rub her palm against the side of her pants until the tingling went away.

* * *

Grant Cooper watched the SUV until it was out of sight.

Then he turned on his heel and strode through the disaster zone that was the living room, heading back to the kitchen.

The sight of the book sitting on top of his packing crates stopped him.

He picked up the thick novel. Stared for a moment at the slick black cover featuring an embossed outline of a soldier. The author’s name, T. C. Grant, was spelled out in gold and was as prominent as the title—CCT Final Rules.

He turned and threw the book—hard—across the room.

It bounced against the plaster wall, knocked a can of white paint onto its side and fell with a thud to the floor.

He still felt like punching something.

If not for Karen, he never would have written the damn book he’d just thrown. But what was a little signature forgery, which had locked him into writing a fourth CCT Rules book, compared to abandoning her own child?

He raked his fingers through his hair.

“She wouldn’t do that,” he muttered.

But his eyes caught in the old mirror hanging on the wall. And there was uncertainty in his reflection.

Karen would have had to have been desperate to do it. If he hadn’t barred her from his life three years ago, she’d have come to him.

Just like she’d always come to him, expecting him to clean up the latest mess that she’d landed herself in.

Until that last, unforgiveable act, when she’d signed his name on the publishing contract he’d decided against accepting, he’d always been there for her.

She’d been crashing on his couch at the time, pitching the advantages of the contract as heavily as his publisher had been. It was his fault for leaving the unsigned contract right out on his desk where she’d had easy access to it. His fault for not even realizing the contract had disappeared, until he’d received it back, fully executed and with a handwritten note of “glad to see you came to your senses” attached. That’s what he got for having an ex-wife for his publisher. He’d known immediately what Karen had done, then. Signed his name on the dotted line. Same as she’d used to sign their parents’ names on school report cards.

It was easier to write the book than admit what she’d done. Courtesy of his ex-wife, Karen had walked away with a shopping spree for her part in “convincing” him to take the deal he’d admittedly been waffling over. She’d never known that writing the book had taken everything he had left out of him. Because he’d drawn the line with her by then. No more cleaning up. No more paying off. He didn’t want to hear from her. Didn’t want her phone calls. Her text messages. Her emails. Not even the postcards she always mailed from the places she ended up on her never-ending quest to find her “perfect” life.

Didn’t matter how many times Grant told her there was no such thing. His troubled sister was always on the hunt for it.

She’d even come to Wyoming, where she didn’t have any connections at all except for the one that he had.

And now there was a baby. Supposedly hers.

He looked in the mirror.

It wasn’t his reflection he saw, though. It was his sister’s face when he’d told her to stay out of his life for good.

He looked away from the mirror. Sighed deeply.

“Hell, Karen. What have you done?”