One Good Man(28)
This was where he came to unwind, to forget what he came up against the rest of the time. Living here would make it hard to do either. Then again, he’d never thought of living here with her. Or of raising a family…“A bit isolated, don’t you think?”
“That’s what makes it so perfect.” She sat forward again, tucked her crossed legs beneath her, looked all around. “You’d have to clear more of the property. Add on to the cabin at some point. Put in a barn and corral for horses. Section off a spot for a vegetable garden.”
The horses he could see. The larger cabin, too. He’d want dogs. Five at least. But a garden? “Have you ever tried to grow anything in what passes for soil out here?”
“Raised beds, then. A greenhouse, even. With a separate area for flowers. God, I could spend hours—” And just like that, she cut herself off, reaching up to press her palm to her forehead as if pushing her thoughts back inside.
Was she embarrassed to be caught dreaming? Or was it that she was dreaming about his place, and he assumed by extension, him? Was there more to her dream than a vegetable greenhouse and horses? He thought back to what she’d said…
Ah, a place to start looking for answers. He moved closer, sitting beside her on the end of the dock, his navy board shorts making puddles that spread toward her. “What about the isolation makes it perfect, Jamie?”
She stared down at the water where Kell could see the tiny tetra schooling. “The quiet. The privacy. Swimming in your underwear and not worrying about an audience.”
He smiled at that. “I would think quiet and privacy were both abundant in Weldon.”
“Not enough that I can swim in my underwear.”
“You don’t have a pool,” he told her, knowing this wasn’t about what she wore swimming at all. “What’s going on, Jamie? Tell me what you’re thinking.”
She blew out a puff of breath, closed her eyes, shook her head. “It’s so stupid—”
“It’s not stupid.”
“You haven’t heard it yet.”
“Only because you haven’t said it. I’m waiting. I’m listening—”
“I’m thinking that if I’d lived someplace like this all these years, he wouldn’t have found me.”
He could tell by the way she’d blurted it that she was tired of holding it in as much as she was embarrassed by entertaining the thought. But they both knew if the suspect was determined, he would’ve found her even if she’d been hiding in the desert in Tunisia.
What he needed to do now was make her see that it was okay for her to be scared.
“The home you and your mother made in Weldon? Best thing you could have done. Warren worked his ass off looking for a way to circumvent the rules and regs of witness protection, but there was no pending trial, no suspect for you to testify against…”
Kell shook his head, remembering the mornings he’d come into the office to find that his mentor had never gone home. “Well, he tried. And he was glad to see you and Kate safely settled as the Danbys.”
“He helped us a lot. With the red tape of changing our names. I know my mother asked his opinion on the places she was considering before she moved us.” She paused a moment, picked a splinter of wood from the edge of the dock, tossed it into the pond. “Now I wonder why we bothered.”
“You can’t mean that.”
“Sure I can. We were never safe. Not if he was living nearby and watching. Even if he wasn’t, he had no trouble finding us—”
“He had help. If he knew about the hypnosis through a leak, then that same leak would have told him where to find you.” Kell’s phone calls this morning while the coffee had brewed were as much about locating the information’s source as its destination.
“Like I said.” She shrugged, got to her feet. “Never safe.”
Kell waited several seconds, then stood, too. He didn’t want to burst her bubble, but…“You wouldn’t have been any safer here.”
“I could have seen him coming.”
Because of the wide-open spaces? Maybe if the clearing around the cabin and pond was expanded like she’d suggested he do. As it was, getting close to the cabin without being seen would not be that hard. The thought had Kell lifting his head, looking around. He’d taken every possible precaution on the trip—
Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch! He’d told no one but Norm Greenley where he and Jamie would be. That didn’t mean it would take a rocket scientist to think to look here. He talked about his property often. His name was on the deed, and a search of tax records would give anyone looking the exact location.
Shit and double shit. If he’d been using the head on his shoulders instead of introducing Jamie to the one in his pants, he would’ve realized he could put an end to this thing today. All he had to do was get Greenley to let slip the location where he’d stashed Jamie.
Once the information was out in the open, the leak in the Midland office—assuming that’s what had happened—would feed the details to the killer. When the bastard showed up, Kell and his army would be waiting.
He reached for her elbow, turned her toward him. “Hey, we need to get you out of the sun before you crisp. And as much fun as I’m having here, I need to check in with my team.”
She pulled away, lifted her hand to shade her eyes. “Did you talk to them earlier?”
He nodded, and started walking in reverse, motioning for her to come with him. “While making coffee, yeah.”
“And nothing?” she asked, following. “No sign of the car?”
“Not yet,” he said. But all that was about to change.
18
ONCE BACK AT THE CABIN, Jamie left Kell to his laptop and phone—both connected to civilization through satellite links—and headed for the shower. It was the size of a stamp in the telephone-booth bathroom. She bumped her elbows on the enclosure’s walls when raising her arms to scrub her hair. If Kell ever added onto the cabin, he’d have to do something about this space…
God, why was she even going there? She couldn’t believe she’d talked to him as if they were a couple discussing remodeling plans. She’d even talked about raising a family here. She hadn’t mentioned the two of them, but he had to know that’s what she’d been thinking.The worst part was, she didn’t know why she’d been thinking about kids when she’d decided long ago having a family was not in her future. No, the worst part was that she did.
Kell would make the most wonderful father. She could see him roughhousing and romping and wrestling with sons and daughters, teaching them right from wrong, helping them with their reading, writing and ’rithmetic.
He was just that kind of guy. He made her think of home and hearth, of family. Her childhood had been fairly all-American, her parents high-school sweethearts, doting and in love. When her father left, it hadn’t been about his relationship with her mother falling apart.
No, he hadn’t been strong enough to face what Jamie—Stephanie—had been through. He couldn’t deal with what she’d seen, what she’d suffered. The one time in her life she’d needed him more than any other, and he’d walked, incapable of finding the internal strength to be her rock. Pathetic. She hadn’t seen him since.
She couldn’t imagine Kell doing that. Ever. It was there in everything he did. The responsibility he took. The concern he showed. The way he talked about his brothers with such fondness, about his parents with such respect. His intelligence, his sense of humor, she loved it all.
She loved him.
She sank to her haunches, burying her face in her hands. Water pelted her back, stinging. Yes, she’d known him but a handful of days. Tomorrow would be a week. He’d come to her rescue. But this wasn’t that. She swore it wasn’t that. She was not infatuated with the man who had saved her.
She was in love with the man who’d walked into the clinic, a gun at his hip and a glint in his eye. The man who was everything she wanted in a partner, one she’d thought her circumstances would deny her. Kell had laid her worries to rest, telling her he wasn’t scared, he wasn’t running away. And he’d said it as a man, not as a Texas Ranger.
It had to be enough for now. And it was, she thought, making herself leave the enclosure before he came looking to see if she’d dissolved down the drain. She was not going to push him, or pry to see what she could get him to divulge of his feelings. At least not until they were beyond this nightmare and could see the light of day.
Once dressed, she headed for the kitchen that was really just an alcove off the main room and part of the dining area. Kell sat at the table there, his jeans again caught up in the tops of his boots, though he now wore a chambray shirt, the sleeves rolled up his forearms, the khaki setting off the color the sun had left on his skin.
When he realized she had stopped to stare, he looked up. And he smiled, with his mouth, with his eyes, with what looked like his heart. “Ready to eat?”
She nodded, swallowed. Her voice had to be here somewhere. “I’ll fix something. You’ve got work.”
“There are staples in the cupboard, and the fresh stuff isn’t fancy.”