Kincaid’s Dangerous Game

Chapter 5

Holt was dead certain Billie had no expectation in the world he’d actually be able to find her daughter, that it had only been her desperate attempt to put him off that made her ask such a thing. He was pretty sure he knew, now, what was making her fear a reunion with the sister she’d left all alone to deal with their nightmarish family. He didn’t have to be psychic or even an empath to recognize the flash of panic and guilt in her eyes whenever he’d mentioned her sister. It wasn’t the unknown brothers she dreaded meeting; he doubted that part had even completely sunk in yet. No, he was certain the person Brenna Fallon couldn’t face was Brooke.

Unfortunately for Billie, she didn’t know Holt Kincaid very well. Didn’t know about the resources and the network of contacts he’d established over the course of more than twenty years spent doing the very thing she’d asked him to do: Finding people. Particularly those given up for adoption, or the birth parents of adopted children. It was what he did, and he was good at it. He’d told her that, but evidently she hadn’t believed him.

In any case, since she hadn’t exactly volunteered her home address he was pretty sure she wouldn’t be expecting him to show up at her front door less than a week after their showdown in his hotel room. Much less with her daughter’s name and address in his shirt pocket. But here he was.

She lived in a modest stucco bungalow in a quiet neighborhood not far from the Strip. Built sometime in the nineteen fifties or sixties, he estimated. It was a neighborhood of mature trees and few signs of children, possibly in transition from its elderly original residents to young married couples buying their first home. Most homeowners, including Billie, had opted to forgo the upkeep of traditional lawns in favor of water-saving and maintenance-free gravel, although lining Billie’s front pathway was an assortment of pots and containers filled with a profusion of autumn-blooming flowers and plumes of decorative grasses. A white-painted rail fence separated the front yard from the sidewalk and driveway, and a large tree with narrow gray-green leaves Holt thought might be an olive shaded the front entrance. The November wind rustled the leaves above his head as he made his way among the flowerpots to the front door.

Nice, he thought, and wondered why he was surprised. She did work in a plant nursery, after all.

He was searching in vain for a doorbell and had just lifted his hand to knock when he heard a thump from inside the house. Not loud, not the sound of breakage, but as if someone had dropped something heavy, or possibly slammed a door. Immediately after that came the sound of voices raised in anger.

He threw a quick glance over his shoulder, his hand already going to the weapon strapped in a holster at the small of his back. There was a car-a nondescript gray Dodge sedan-parked in the driveway. He’d noted it, but had assumed it was Billie’s. It hadn’t occurred to him she might have visitors-or more likely a visitor, since one of the voices he was hearing was Billie’s. The other was definitely a man’s.

Given what he knew of Billie’s past, Holt had some bad ideas about what might be happening inside the house. Not wanting to make a possible bad situation worse, he decided against knocking or calling out to her. Instead he flattened himself against the wall beside the front door and leaned cautiously to look through the window. He couldn’t see anyone in the living room, but he could still hear the voices, which seemed to be coming from the back of the house. Keeping his head down and with his gun in his hands, carried low and to one side, he ran swiftly and silently along the side of the house, following a concrete walkway. At the corner of the house he halted and peered around into the backyard. He could see more flower-filled pots and, adjoining a covered concrete patio, a small free-form swimming pool, empty of water.

He could hear the voices clearly now. The man’s voice, high and strained: “You know what they’ll do to me. Are you gonna just let-”

And Billie’s. “Don’t. Don’t you dare put this on me. I can’t help you. Don’t you get it? I can’t.”

“Hey-that’s bull. You won’t. And that’s the kind of thanks I get? You little-”

“Don’t threaten me, Miley.” Her voice was vibrant with anger, and Holt heard a note of fear, too.

Billie Farrell-afraid? That got to him more than anything else. He tightened his grip on his weapon. Drew in a breath and held it, every muscle adrenaline-primed and poised for action.

“You and I are done.” Billie spat the words like bullets, in a voice that did not tremble. “I told you. After that last tournament. I paid you back. I don’t owe you anything.”

“You paid me diddly!” Miley was whining now. “What’d you make, a quarter mil? You give me a lousy twenty-five G’s! What’d you do with the rest of it?”

“It’s none of your business what I did with it. I don’t have it. You got it? I can’t help you. Now, get out of my house. And don’t you ever come here again, you hear me? Stay away from me!”

“Jeez, Billie, all I’m askin’ for-”

“Out…now!”

“This ain’t over! I’m not-” There was a sharp exclamation and some vehement swearing, followed by, “For Chrissake, put that away-are you crazy? I’m going, okay? I’m going. Jeez…”

Footsteps thudded through the house. The front door slammed, and a moment later Holt heard the car start up in the driveway. Slipping his gun back in its holster, he swiftly crossed the patio, gave a warning knock, then thrust open the backdoor.

“Hey, are you okay-” The question died with a sharp intake of breath.

A few feet away, Billie had whirled to confront him, eyes blazing fire. Now she uttered a small, horrified squeak and collapsed back against the kitchen counter, one hand covering her mouth. In the other, Holt noted, she was gripping a rather large knife.

It took him about a second to get to her, and he was swearing vehemently under his breath as he gently took the knife-a serrated bread knife, it appeared-from her unresisting fingers. Then, in a little flurry of motion that could only have been spontaneous, she came into his arms.

What could he do? He dropped the knife onto the countertop and wrapped his arms around her. Which lasted about a second, barely long enough for him to register the fact that she was shaking, and that her hair smelled nice, and that her body felt incredibly good right there, snugged up against his.

She gave a furious gasp and thumped his chest with her fists as she pushed away from him. “Jeez, Kincaid. What are you doing here? Are you friggin’ nuts?” Her voice was shrill and breathless. She glared at him for a moment, then spun away from him, and as she did she caught sight of the knife lying where he’d dropped it on the countertop. She recoiled and jerked back to him, one hand clamped to the top of her head. “I could have-what if I’d-dammit, Kincaid!”

“I’m assuming that was your former partner Miley Todd.” He kept his tone mild, figuring at least one of them ought to try to keep calm.

Her laugh was a sharp bark of anger. “Yeah…the man’s a weasel.” She turned back to the counter, picked up the knife, opened a drawer and dropped the knife into it, then closed it carefully.

Stay calm, Billie. You’ve already given too much away. What’s wrong with you, throwing yourself at him like that? Since when do you need a man protecting you?

Oh, but admit it…it did feel good.

Yeah…too damn good.

She could feel him there, just behind her. Too close. If she turned now she could hardly avoid touching him.

“What did he want?”

“Money-what else?” She closed her eyes and willed him away.

Which seemed to work, because his next question came from a slightly greater distance. A foot or two. Breathing room at least. So why did she now feel off balance and precarious, as if she’d been left teetering on the brink of some great abyss with nothing to hold on to?

“So, what’s his story?”

She had room to turn and face him now, so she did-carefully. He was leaning against the refrigerator, arms folded on his chest, regarding her with that narrow blue gaze of his. She leaned back against the counter and deliberately copied his stance. “You are the nosiest guy I ever met, you know that?”

He smiled. “Goes with the job.”

She hadn’t expected the smile. For some reason and without warning, a tightness gripped her throat. Unable to speak for a moment, she looked at the floor and gave a little sigh of laughter, then caught a breath and lifted her eyes back to his. “What are you doing here, Kincaid? I’m not even gonna ask how you found me.”

Without a word, he reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it to her.

“What’s this?” she demanded as she took it. She unfolded the piece of hotel stationery. On it, neatly printed in block letters, was a couple’s name: Corrine and Michael Bachman. Below that was an address in Reno, Nevada. Below that was a name, circled: Hannah Grace.

Billie couldn’t feel her fingers. She stared down at the paper. The words danced…shimmered…blurred.

She didn’t know what to do.

I won’t cry. I can’t cry. I sure as hell am not going to throw myself into his arms, not again! But I don’t know what to do.

“This is her-my daughter?” Her voice felt scratchy, and sounded unfamiliar.

“That’s her.” His voice was gentle-damn him. It would have been better if he’d been brusque. She could have handled that. Gentleness…not so well.

“Huh.” She shook her head, struggled to find breath. Pulled air in, then let it out. “That easy, huh?”

“If you know where to look.” His hands had a strange, tingly feeling, an urgent need to reach for her…touch her. Hold her. He kept them firmly tucked between his folded arms and body.

“Wow,” she said, and he watched her struggle to find something else to say and finally give it up and just laugh, the kind of laugh that meant anything but amusement. Her throat moved convulsively and his ached in sympathy.

“Can I-” she said, at the same moment he said, “Would you like to see her?”

And even though he knew it was what she wanted more than anything in the world, he saw panic flash in her eyes. “From a distance,” he added gently, and she nodded in a dazed sort of way.

A moment later, though, she did a startled double take and said, “Now?”

“Sure, why not? You have the day off so might as well.”

“How did you-”

“I stopped by the garden center looking for you first. They told me you were off today. And tomorrow, too, right?”

“Yeah…” She looked down at the piece of paper in her hand, fingered it restlessly, as if she didn’t know what to do with it. Then she tossed it onto the countertop. “It’s so far. It would take forever to drive to Reno.”

Holt smiled. “Who said anything about driving?”

Billie stood on the sun-bleached airstrip and watched the red-and-white plane taxi toward them, sending up puffs of dust that went spiraling away in the midday breeze. The plane looked way too small to hold three people. It looked like a child’s toy.

She sucked in a breath, which did nothing to relieve the knots in her stomach.

It’s happening too fast. It’s too much, first Miley shows up, and now this.

Her past was catching up with her. More than that. It seemed suddenly to be looming over her like a gigantic tsunami wave, one breath away from drowning her. She felt dizzy, a little sick. She wanted to lie down somewhere and go unconscious for a while until the world slowed down, or she caught up with it.

She’d had the same feeling before. Too many times before. In the past, her remedy for this feeling would be to run, to just go, get away as far and as fast as she could.

I should have gone. Should have left the day I saw him there in the garden center, picking out plants. I knew he didn’t belong there. I knew he was bad news.

So, why don’t you go now? What’s stopping you? Nobody’s forcing you to get on that ridiculous toy airplane.

The plane coasted to a stop. Beside her, Holt touched her elbow, then went jogging out onto the packed-earth runway. The plane’s single prop slowed and finally stopped, and the door opened and the pilot crawled out onto the wing, then jumped to the ground. He ambled over to meet Holt, and the two men clasped hands, then went in for the brief back-thumping that passes for hugging among guy-friends. Then Holt turned and beckoned to Billie.

She hauled in another breath she didn’t seem to have room for.

Why don’t I go? There’s the answer, right there. I hate it, but it’s there and there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s him-Holt Kincaid. What good would it do me to run? He’d only find me again. I can’t escape the man.

And somewhere way in the back of her mind a voice she didn’t want to listen to was saying, Why would you want to?

“I want you to meet my friend Tony,” Holt said, reaching out to touch her arm, drawing her closer. “He’s the man who’s going to take us to Reno.”

The man’s hand swallowed hers and his smile seemed to light up the already sun-shot day. He reminded her of a Humvee-big and square and formidable, and he made her feel safe.

She nodded and managed a breathless, “Hi,” and his whiskey-colored eyes crinkled with laughter.

“Hey-it’s all good. I promise I’ll get you there and back in one piece.” He clapped his hands together like an enthusiastic child and beamed at her. “Okay. Are you ready? Well, hop in, then.

“You get to ride shotgun,” he told her as he guided her up onto the wing. To Holt he added, “Sorry, buddy-you get to sit on the floor. I took out the passenger seats to make room for my equipment and extra fuel.”

“I guess it’s a good thing it’s not a long flight,” Holt said dryly.

“I’m a photojournalist,” Tony explained to Billie. “So I’ve got lots of stuff. Plus, the places I go don’t always have convenient airfields with fuel pumps.”

“Uh-huh,” Billie said. She had her head inside the plane now, and was trying not to stare at the array of instruments across the front of the cockpit. She glanced back at the two faces smiling encouragement at her from below. “Um…I can sit on the floor. Really. I wouldn’t mind.” Because back there where nobody can see me, maybe I can curl up in a fetal ball and stay there until we land…

The two men chuckled, as if she’d said something funny.

“Never flown in a small plane before, huh?” Tony’s eyes were warm with sympathy. “You’ll be fine-I promise not to do anything crazy. Just buckle up…settle back and enjoy the ride, okay?”

“Okay.” She gave him the smile he seemed to want, but the truth was, she did feel a little better. It was just something about him, the laid-back, effortless charm that made her forget about thirty seconds after meeting him that he had a face resembling a cross between a bouncer in a biker bar and a benevolent pit bull terrier. Whatever it was, she just had the feeling she could trust him.

As she settled into the passenger seat she looked over her shoulder and found Holt’s eyes on her. Something in their watchfulness made a shiver go through her.

What about him? Do I trust him?

Why do I have to ask myself that? I must trust him, or I wouldn’t be making this insane trip with him, would I?

If that’s so, why does he make me feel…off balance? Unsure of myself? Scared?

Yes-scared. The truth was, Holt Kincaid frightened her. She hadn’t thought of it quite like that, until she’d met Tony and realized the difference. Tony was a stranger to her, and yet, he made her feel safe. Rather like having a big brother…

Brother? Wait. No. Could this be…

The thought popped into her head, and just as quickly she rejected it. No, this man had the deep-mahogany skin tones and broad cheekbones that hinted at Native American origins, and besides, Holt had told her her brothers’ names, and none of them had been Tony.

Still…the thought lingered. Brother…I have brothers? Holt says I do. Real ones.

And from the thought, as if from a planted seed, feelings began to grow inside her. Feelings she couldn’t define, because she’d never felt them before. Feelings…like warmth, and…comfort, and whatever the opposite of loneliness was called. Perhaps belonging?

All this went through her mind in the few seconds while she stared into Holt Kincaid’s eyes. Then she drew a shaken breath and turned in the high-backed red velveteen seat and pulled her seat belt across her chest. And as the little airplane’s engines caught and the seat beneath her began to vibrate, as Tony donned headphones and muttered into a radio microphone, inside her chest she quivered with excitement and apprehension and anticipation, and something that felt-impossibly-like joy.

At the same moment, on the floor behind her seat, strapped uncomfortably to the wall of the passenger compartment, Holt was wishing he’d never gotten Billie to take off her sunglasses. Those eyes of hers…he’d never seen anything quite like them. And as the Piper Cherokee shot down the runway and lifted into the cloudless Nevada sky, he knew the hollow feeling in his stomach had nothing to do with the abrupt change in altitude.

No use kidding himself-it wouldn’t change the fact that the unthinkable had happened. He was in grave danger of falling in love with his client’s baby sister. Falling in love with a woman with two names and more complications than anybody he’d ever met. A woman he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to completely understand. How was that even possible?

Not that he knew much about it-falling in love-from personal experience, anyway. It hadn’t ever happened to him before, and he’d come to believe, with pretty much equal parts regret and relief, that it never would.

Right now, with his backside growing numb from its contact with the floor of a vintage Piper Cherokee, he couldn’t even recall exactly when it had happened. Looking back, it almost seemed as if it had been that very first moment, when he’d first caught a glimpse of her face on his TV screen, half hidden behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses, and there’d been that electric shiver across his skin. He’d been carrying her picture around in his pocket for weeks, but the sense of recognition was more than that.

But he doubted that was true. It only seemed like he’d known her, or at least had been looking for her, all his life.

Fanciful stuff, and he was not a fanciful man. Nor did he believe in things like fate and destiny. No, he told himself, this was just biology, a simple matter of chemistry, which was maybe even harder to explain.

With her face pressed against the side-window glass, Billie watched the strangely colorful desert terrain give way to the curving avenues of Reno’s suburbs. She’s down there…somewhere, she thought. Hannah Grace. My daughter.

Why did I ever ask him to find her? What was I thinking?

Why don’t I feel anything?

It was as if her subconscious mind had thrown up a firewall around her emotions. Self-preservation?

But I want to feel something. I should feel something…shouldn’t I? What’s wrong with me? I’m going to see my child. My baby. She was a part of me, and I gave her away. And I can’t feel anything!

She could remember feeling. She remembered that day…remembered the awfulness of it. But it was only a memory of pain, not the feeling of it.

“She had dark hair,” she said, and was vaguely surprised to discover she’d spoken aloud. Tony looked over at her, and his warm-whiskey eyes were hidden behind aviator’s sunglasses. “I remember being surprised by that,” she told him, not really knowing why she did. “That she could have dark hair, you know? Because I don’t.”

“Lots of babies have dark hair when they’re born,” Tony said. “Then it falls out and grows in a whole different color. So you can’t tell anything by that. She could have blond hair now. You never know.”

She gave a laugh that hurt, then drew a shaky breath. After a moment she looked over at him and said, “You sound like you know a lot about babies. Do you have kids?”

He shook his head, but smiled. “Not yet. I’ve just got a whole bunch of sisters with kids-lotsa nieces and nephews. I’m planning to, though.” And his smile seemed to glow with warmth and promises and secret intimacies.

“So you’re married?” Billie asked, wondering why the smile of a man so obviously in love should make her feel wistful.

Tony chuckled, a sound that matched his smile. “Not yet. Planning to be, though.”

She drew another uneven breath and forced a smile. “She must be somebody special,” she murmured, wishing it didn’t sound so trite when she meant it with all her heart.

She wondered why he laughed, then, as if he knew a delicious secret.

The airfield north of Reno was much larger than the dirt airstrip in the desert near Las Vegas. Since it had once been an air force base and now served as home to the air tankers used in fighting forest fires in the nearby Sierra Nevada Mountains, its runways were long, wide and smooth-a factor for which Holt’s backside gave thanks. Tony guided the Cherokee to a flawless landing, then taxied onto the expanse of tarmac where they were to park. Before leaving Las Vegas, Holt had called and arranged for a taxi to meet them, and he could see it waiting for them in the parking lot next to the airport office building.

Tony cut the engine and turned to give Billie a thumbs-up and a smile. “See? Told you I’d get you here.”

Holt managed to get himself straightened out and limbered up enough to open the door and exit the plane first, Tony being occupied with the unknown details involved in concluding a flight and buttoning down his aircraft. While Billie was slowly unbuckling herself from her seat harness, he gingerly stretched his legs and aching back, then turned to give her a hand climbing down, if she needed it.

But she was still crouched in the doorway of the plane, poised as if for a leap off a high diving board, and her face was bleached to the color of desert sand.

“Airsick?” he said gently, even though the gnawing sensation in the pit of his own stomach told him that wasn’t her problem, not by a long shot. He held out his hand to her and added, “You’ll feel better once your feet are on the ground.”

She gave him a withering look as she crept onto the wing, then hopped, with a nimbleness he envied, to the ground. “I’ve changed my mind,” she announced, glaring at a point somewhere off to his right. “This is stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking. Take me home.”

Her teeth were chattering. Holt took the jacket she was carrying folded over one arm and, while she transferred her glare to his face, slipped it around her shoulders. Her eyes seemed too big, too fiery for such a small, pixieish face, as if the heat and turmoil that fed them was trying to consume her from the inside out. He wanted so badly to take her face in his hands, hold it, protect it like some fragile, delicate blossom, soothe the burning with his kisses. He could barely contain himself, she touched him so.

“You’ll be fine,” he said in what he’d meant to be a murmur but sounded instead like a growl. To emphasize his words, he tugged the two sides of her jacket he was holding, giving her a little shake. Her sunglasses slipped out of one of the jacket pockets and fell onto the tarmac. He bent down and picked them up, unfolded and slid them onto her face. It was like closing a door on a roaring furnace.

He couldn’t resist stroking the spikey feathers of her hair behind her ears as he settled the earpieces in place, and his voice held more gravel as he said, “Better now?”

The lenses held steady for a long moment, and then she gave him the ghost of a smile. He let out a silent breath and hooked his arm around her shoulders, and as he did he cast one quick look back at Tony Whitehall, crouched in the doorway of the Piper Cherokee, giving him the thumbs-up sign.

She didn’t speak a word on the twenty-minute ride into Reno, just kept looking out of the window of the cab, keeping her face turned away from him.

When they turned into the residential neighborhood of curving streets and stucco houses of the northwest part of the city, Holt said in tentative encouragement, “Looks nice-nice trees…nice houses.”

She nodded but didn’t reply or look at him.

“Nice place to raise a kid,” he offered, and she didn’t reply to that, either.

He checked his watch, then leaned forward to tap on the cab driver’s shoulder. “This is okay-pull over right here.”

“You sure? The address you gave me is a couple houses farther on down.”

“Yeah, I know. This is fine. Might be a few minutes…keep the meter running.” He’d explained their mission to the cabbie before they’d left the airport, not wanting to alarm him when they might appear to be stalking a child.

“No problem,” the cabbie drawled as he pulled in to the curb and shifted into park. “Long as you’re payin’ me, I got all day.”

Around them the neighborhood was stirring to life. Cars pulled into and out of driveways and came and went along the street. Two boys on bicycles whizzed by the waiting cab; children’s voices mingled with the slap of running footsteps on sidewalks and pavement. Doors slammed.

“School just let out,” Holt murmured. “Shouldn’t be long now.” He was looking over his shoulder, through the back window of the cab, intently watching the children coming along the sidewalk in clusters of twos and threes, sometimes more. The boys were untidy knots of motion, hopping, whirling, punching, pushing, laughing, the girls more sedate, heads together, arms linked, giggling and sharing secrets. Here and there a child walked alone, head bowed over a handheld electronic gadget or cell phone, thumbs busily punching buttons, oblivious to all else.

“There she is,” he said suddenly. He put his hand on Billie’s shoulder and pointed past her, directing her attention out the side window to the three girls now coming into view a block away. “Purple pants, pink jacket-see her?”

Billie’s head moved, a quick up and down. Other than that she seemed to have gone still as stone-except that beneath his hand he could feel her body quivering.

“She’s blond,” he said softly, his lips near her ear. “Like you.”

She nodded again, and this time made a sound, a very small hiccup of laughter.

After that there was stillness, except for the cabbie’s raspy breathing and the ticking of the meter, while they watched the three girls pass by their taxi with only a brief, incurious glance. Two houses farther on, the girl in the pink jacket detached herself from her friends with a wave and a little pirouette and ran up the driveway, her blunt-cut blond hair bouncing on her shoulders, to disappear inside the open garage.

Billie sat motionless. Holt caught the cabdriver’s eye in the rearview mirror and nodded. The car moved away from the curb, moved along the street past the house where the girl in the pink jacket lived and turned the corner.

There was a soft sigh of exhaled breath as Billie turned from the window at last and sat back in the seat. Her head swiveled toward him. “It’s a pretty name-Hannah Grace,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

Her glasses gazed at him, blank, bleak…empty.

“Ah, Billie…” he said, and then was silent. What could he say?

You touch my heart. You make me want to wrap you in my arms and keep you from ever again knowing heartache, loss, despair.

The words would feel awkward and sound silly coming out of his mouth. He wasn’t a poet, a man comfortable with words and feelings.

He put out his arm and was only mildly surprised when she let him pull her close. Her glasses bumped awkwardly against his shoulder, and he reached across with his free hand and removed them. She nestled her face in the hollow of his chest and arm, but he knew by her stillness she wasn’t crying. He wondered what it would take to make this woman cry.