Night’s Landing

Twenty-Four

Rob was sitting up in bed, picking at a plate of hospital food, when Juliet arrived. She was relieved to see him in a private room. She didn’t like being around sick people. The doctors and nurses had him up walking as much as possible, but he was still weak-and he still had his marshal guards. They weren’t going anywhere, not with the investigation still ongoing, his sister receiving threatening letters and Rob unable to pick up a gun much less fire one.

That he couldn’t defend himself didn’t sit well with him. “I can’t wait to get out of here. What’s going on that nobody else will tell me?”

“Nothing,” Juliet said. “You’re a hundred percent in the loop.”

He snorted. “Right. Liar.”

“Joe Collins is covering all the angles, even the cranks.” His unsettling visit to her apartment last night was still fresh in her mind. “I think deep down he believes Hector’s our guy. Even if he had a handicap, he could have pulled off those two shots. People saw him-”

“Is that what you believe? That Hector Sanchez was the shooter and he overdosed celebrating his handiwork?”

Juliet sighed. One of Rob’s doctors had cornered her in the hall and warned her not to discuss the shooting with him. But, if she was the one bandaged up and stuck in the hospital, she’d want every damn detail she could get. She’d do all she could to get out of there so she could go catch the shooter herself. Rob was laid-back, but he wasn’t that laid-back.

“I suppose someone could have set him up, made sure people saw him to draw attention away from the real shooter, then paid him off with a drug overdose. Collins isn’t saying-”

Rob tried to give her the high sign, but it was too late. “Do I hear my name being taken in vain?” the FBI agent asked behind her.

Juliet spun around. “Rob was just asking a normal question. Damn.” She grinned at him. “You FBI types are sneaky.”

“We prefer ‘stealthy.’”

He had a good-natured manner, but Juliet sensed his underlying seriousness.

“How’re you doing today, Deputy?” he asked Rob.

“Not bad. They’ve got me eating regular food. I’m starving.”

“That’s got to be a good sign. Your doctors tell me you’re making an amazing recovery. All that triathlon training must be helping.” He shook his head and patted his gut. “Me, I wouldn’t have made it out of the park.”

“I almost didn’t,” Rob said softly.

“Don’t be thinking like that. Deputy Longstreet? A word?”

Rob immediately looked suspicious and Juliet didn’t blame him. She ran one hand through her hair. “Here or-”

“Out in the hall, if you don’t mind.”

“What’s up?” Rob asked.

“Nothing for you to worry about,” the FBI agent said. “I’ll be back in a minute to talk to you.”

It was clear Rob objected, but there was nothing he could do.

Collins led Juliet into the unoccupied waiting room and shut the door. He shoved his hands into his pants pockets, rattling loose change, a gravity overcoming him that she hadn’t seen in him before, even in the first hours after the shooting. “The Dunnemores didn’t make it onto their plane in Amsterdam.”

“What do you mean, didn’t make it? Did something happen to them or did they just miss their flight?”

“We don’t know. They refused an escort. They’re a stubborn lot, the whole damn family.” He sighed through his teeth. “I’m putting someone on them. I don’t give a good goddamn if they don’t like it-” He broke off with another angry, frustrated sigh. “As soon as we find them.”

“Are you going to tell Rob?”

“No. He’s the reason I just put you in the loop on this one.”

Juliet saw his awkwardness and realized what he was getting at. “Oh, great,” she said without enthusiasm. “I get to tell him. Are you shoving it off onto Nate to tell the sister?”

Collins nodded with at least a small measure of guilt.

“Can we give it some time?” Juliet asked. “Wait and see if the parents show up?”

He poured himself a cup of stale coffee. “If you were in Rob Dunnemore’s position, would you want us dancing around the truth, or would you want to know straight out what was going on with your folks?”

She knew she didn’t need to answer.

Joe Collins stared at his grayish coffee. Juliet wondered what else he knew. What he wasn’t telling her. Today he had the look of a man preoccupied with unraveling what was increasingly not looking like a simple case of a drugged-out snitch going bad. Whatever was going on was more complicated-and possibly even more dangerous.

Juliet took a breath. “I’ll go tell him.”

Nate’s arm throbbed. A wonder he hadn’t killed himself making love to Sarah last night. He watched her stirring her tea punch with a cinnamon stick. He’d had two sips and decided it was too sweet for his taste. They were alone on the property, out on the porch waiting for word from her parents. Ethan Brooker had taken the truck and gone to town, and Conroy Fontaine wasn’t at the back door looking to discuss old southern recipes, currying favor with Sarah to get access to the president.

Nate assumed the FBI agents looking into the anonymous letter were checking out both the gardener and the journalist, but he’d made a few calls himself. So far, nothing back. He assumed Collins and his guys were doing the same.

The tea punch, Sarah had told him tonelessly, was another of her Granny Dunnemore’s recipes.

Nate supposed he should feel like a heel for taking advantage of her last night, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know if it was the shooting, the bullet wound or the river and the roses and azaleas around him-or if maybe he really was falling for her-but all he could think about was making love to her again. And then again.

Not a good situation. Probably he should call Longstreet and tell her to get her butt down here.

He sighed. “Maybe it would be better if we put an official security detail-”

“No,” she said. “Thank you, but no. And you don’t have to stay.”

He knew a part of her wasn’t on the porch with him. She’d already gone upstairs and dug out her passport to head to Amsterdam and hunt for her parents herself. If Nate hadn’t been there, she might already be on a plane. Impulsive. He’d seen some of that in her brother when he’d charged into the park to look at the damn tulips, but not on the job.

She broke her cinnamon stick into little pieces and lined them up on the porch rail. “Do you feel New York ’s your home, or Cold Ridge?”

“I don’t think about it.”

“Ah. I was warned you’re pretty much a workaholic.” She glanced at him. “And something of a rake.”

“A rake? That’s an old-fashioned term.”

“I’m drinking tea punch in my grandmother’s rocking chair. I’m in an old-fashioned mood.”

“Did you miss this place when you were in Scotland?”

“It’s home.” She leaned forward, rearranging her pieces of cinnamon stick. “I missed walking in the fields and woods, boating on the river-just sitting out here listening to the crickets. But I haven’t lived here since college.”

“I cleared out of Cold Ridge after high school. I didn’t even go home for summers in college. Not to stay, anyway.” He tried more of the punch, just to see if he liked it any better, but no, it was too sweet. “I have a good relationship with my family. I just had things I wanted to do that I couldn’t at home.”

“Do you hike the ridge?”

From her tone, he guessed she was remembering that his parents had died on the ridge. “Every year since I was seven. My uncle took my sisters and me up in the beginning, before we could go on our own. He didn’t want us being afraid of it. It looms over the valley where we lived.”

“He never considered moving you out of there?”

“Gus?” Nate smiled, shaking his head. “He’d just gotten back from Vietnam. He wasn’t going anywhere.”

“My grandfather died when my father was young, but he had Granny. I’ve had both my parents for so long.”

“You still do,” he said quietly.

She didn’t answer.

“Every few years, I hike Cold Ridge on the day my parents died.” He didn’t know why he was telling her this but didn’t make himself stop. “It was in November-the weather’s always cold. Sometimes there’s snow, ice, freezing rain. They were prepared. If they hadn’t fallen, or if the forecast had held, it might have been different.”

Sarah seemed to rally with the distraction. “There’ve been a lot of advances in meteorology since then.”

“The forecast still can be tricky. Cold Ridge has its own mini-weather system. It can be warm and sunny in the valley, and snowing on the ridge.” He smiled at her suddenly. “I didn’t mean to go on like that. I can picture you eking information out of the Poe sisters, getting them to tell you all their stories, all their secrets.”

She tried to return his smile. “We’re good at stories and secrets here in Night’s Landing.”

But her lightness didn’t quite work, and Nate changed the subject. “I should have taken you out for a candlelight dinner before hitting on you in the kitchen.”

That at least brought some color to her cheeks. “We can pretend we stuck candles in the prune cake.”

“We got the cart before the horse.” But he decided to abandon that subject, too. “More tea, or would you just like another cinnamon stick to break apart?”

Her smile was underlined with tension, fear, and Nate knew she had to be questioning whether the man she’d spotted in Central Park had something to do with her missing parents. She didn’t want to believe it was the same man who’d approached her at the museum in Amsterdam, but he’d watched the doubt creep in.

Nate put up his feet and tried to concentrate on some bird chirping in the rosebushes. But he kept seeing Rob grinning over the damn tulips in Central Park, then jerking with the impact of the bullet and grabbing his upper abdomen as blood seeped between his fingers. The blood got worse. The pain. The fear. The certainty he would die. Nate had seen it in Rob’s gray eyes, the same as his sister’s gray eyes.

“Nate?”

With a deliberate effort, he pulled himself out of the image before it could repeat itself again. It would wake him up in the night. At least he’d had the sense not to try to spend the night with Sarah. He was attracted to her. No question. But he couldn’t say for sure whether or not their lovemaking in the kitchen hadn’t just been to keep the images at bay. His, hers.

He inhaled through his nose, focusing on his breathing. “Sorry. My mind was wandering.”

Sarah nodded. “I understand. You have a lot to think about.”

“We both do. You okay?”

But the phone rang before she could answer. She started to pounce on the extension on the porch, but Nate got there first in case it was bad news and he needed to serve as a filter. “Dunnemore residence.”

“You must be Deputy Winter.” The voice was soft and female with a pleasant southern accent. “Hello, I’m Betsy Dunnemore. Is my daughter there?”

“Right here, Mrs. Dunnemore.”

Sarah gasped in relief, and Nate handed over the phone. He wanted to stay-he was tempted to listen in on an extension in the house-but he made himself get to his feet and walk down to the river, letting mother and daughter talk.