Cowboy Undercover

“Jodie Brown was a career criminal with a record as long as your arm. Block sent him to prison for drug trafficking twelve years ago. He says that’s the last time he saw him. He figures Jodie was out to take revenge on him by abducting his wife and demanding a ransom. Block denies having anything to do with Jodie since years before when he won the conviction. There is no indication he isn’t telling the truth.”

“What does Jodie Brown say about this?”

“He’s dead. His truck ran into a tree a couple of days after he left your ranch. His blood alcohol was .20. Case closed. Except that there’s a warrant out on Lily but I understand she’s disappeared.”

“If Jeremy Block knew where to find his son, he knows where to find his ex-wife,” Chance said, and despite Hendricks’s insistence that Jeremy Block was Man of the Year material, felt a chill.

“Not ex,” Hendricks said. “There’s been no divorce.”

Chance blinked away that momentary shock. “Charlie said a man took him from the bus stop and drove him to his father’s house. Doesn’t that remind you of what Jodie Brown tried to do? Do you really believe Jeremy Block is telling the truth?”

“I really do,” Hendricks cautioned. “But more importantly, it’s all happening two hundred miles from here. The police in Boise are satisfied with his story so that’s the end of it although I will contact them about the child’s call so they can look into it.”

Chance slammed down the receiver. His father had taken Lily in nine months earlier and not said a word to anyone about her past but there was a good chance he knew something that might help. Chance had to know she was safe and not fighting for her life somewhere. He dialed his father’s cell and when no one answered, his stepmother’s. Both phones went straight to voice mail and he left the same message, an insistent request they call home as soon as possible.

Now what? Where was Lily? How did he find her?

He heard a vehicle outside. Undoubtedly Gerard or Pike had arrived early to help get ready for the Bywater trip. He dashed into the mudroom, glad for the company. He was betting Gerard knew all about Lily’s past from Hendricks. He switched on the floodlights before opening the door and exited the house as a woman stepped out of a red coupe.

The car looked familiar but the small woman standing in the glaring light did not. The three resident dogs had roused themselves from their beds in the horse barn to welcome the newcomer who didn’t seem alarmed by the excited attention of the two shepherds and the part-Labrador retriever milling around her legs. She wore her light brown hair parted in the middle and pulled back. Heavy black glasses dominated a pale face while a long shapeless gray cardigan dominated an equally drab dress that fell all the way to the top of brown cowboy boots.

“Chance?” the woman cried, taking a halting step forward and then stopping.

Chance’s mouth almost dropped open as he recognized Lily’s voice. For the tick of a heartbeat he tried to reconcile the woman before him with the sassy, blonde firecracker who had left here months before, and then he came out of his stupor and stepped toward her. “I just had a call from Charlie,” he said.

“You heard from my baby? When?” Her hands flew up to cover her face and her knees buckled. He reached her before she hit the ground. The dogs yipped with uncertainty.

“I’m okay,” she insisted. “Where is Charlie? Who has him?”

“His father,” Chance said.

“I thought so. Damn.”

He still couldn’t believe she was here and right on the heels of the past thirty minutes of revelations. He was touching her, almost holding her. He’d only done that once before and at that time, he hadn’t known she was still married. And at that time, at least at first, she’d melted into him...

“Come inside,” he said. “I just made coffee.”

“I need to talk to your father.”

“Come inside,” he repeated. “You’re trembling.”

“How did Charlie sound?” she asked as she allowed him to guide her up the stairs.

“Not bad,” Chance said because he couldn’t bear to tell her how frightened the boy had seemed. “I don’t know why he called here looking for you.”

“It’s my fault. I drilled this number into his head last summer when my cell phone died.”

The dogs hung back at the door. Chance led Lily to a stool and she sank down with a shuddering sigh. He found mugs and poured coffee. “I contacted the local police and asked a detective friend for help.”

“The police?” She took off the thick glasses and closed her eyes, squeezing the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. “I wish you hadn’t done that,” she said, looking back at him. Without the glasses, her rich brown eyes came into focus and she looked more the way he remembered her.

“Yeah, I can understand why you’d rather not have to discuss your husband with the cops,” he said. “Did you know there’s a warrant for your arrest?”

“It doesn’t surprise me. It’s probably the first thing Jeremy did when he realized I wasn’t coming back.”

“What’s it for?”

“I’d lay my money on kidnapping my own child.”

“Because of your troubled past?”

She narrowed her eyes and he saw a flash of the old Lily. “I don’t have a troubled past. That’s Jeremy’s story, not mine. Where’s your dad?”

“He’s gone. He won’t be back for a few days. Tell me why you stole off into the night with Charlie. Not the time you did it three months ago when you left here. Before that, when you left Jeremy.”

She shook her head as she undoubtedly picked up the anger his words hadn’t been too successful at disguising. “You don’t need to know.”

“Listen, Lily. Jerk me around all you want but in the end, who else is going to help you? Dad is off in Oregon. There’s a good chance he’s out of signal range. Unless you have legions of friends I don’t know about, maybe we should just level with each other.”

“Don’t start this, Chance. You and I can’t agree on anything. There’s no point in involving you—”

“Involving me?” he snapped. “You come here in the middle of the night dressed like you’re auditioning for the role of the prim librarian in It’s a Wonderful Life. Your son, the best thing you’ve ever done as far as I can see, has been taken by his psycho father and you’re so frightened your eyes are spinning. Trust me, I’m involved.”

“I don’t want you—”

“I know. You made that real clear last summer. I’m not asking you to sleep with me, I’m asking you to let me help Charlie. Now, what do you say?”

She rubbed her forehead and he wondered how long she’d been driving. Where had she gone after she left the ranch? He waited for her to make up her mind, and when it seemed they would sit there in silence forever, he decided to wade in. “Block told the police Jodie Brown was acting on his own to take revenge on him for convicting him twelve years ago. By the way, Jodie died in a traffic accident before the police could question him. The case is closed as far as they’re concerned.

“Furthermore, Block is claiming you had a history of being unstable and that you took your son without giving him a chance to work something out with you.”

“He didn’t want a chance to work things out,” she said. “You don’t understand—”

“Of course I don’t,” Chance said. “You haven’t given me the opportunity to understand because you haven’t said anything. Start with something easy. How was Charlie snatched?”

Her fingers tightened on her mug as she leaned forward. “I had a flat tire yesterday so I was running late to meet him at the bus stop. Everything just seemed to go wrong and it got later and later. I called the school but the bus had already left so I called one of the other mothers and she said she would pick him up when she got her own child. I went to her house but Charlie wasn’t there. She said she’d arrived a minute late and seen him getting into a car with a man but he was smiling so she figured I sent another friend. She described him. It sounded enough like Jeremy—I could guess what was happening.”

“But it wasn’t Jeremy. Charlie told me a man he didn’t know told him he’d take him to see you but he drove to Boise instead.”

“Poor Charlie,” she cried. “He must have been frantic. Why didn’t I have a better plan for days like that one? Why did I live so far away from his school that he had to ride a bus? He hates buses. I should have found a different job closer to his school—”

“Calm down,” Chance said, patting her hand. “Is he in any danger from his father?”

She stared at him for a second. The look in her eyes twisted his heart but he ignored it. Then she finally shook her head. “Not immediate danger, no. Jeremy is in love with the idea of having a son, making a legacy, although the reality of it bores him. He can be violent, but mainly toward me. Near the end the violence was trickling down to Charlie. He’s not suitable to raise a child.”

“I guess that’s what he says about you, too,” Chance observed.

“I know. He’s twenty years older than I am. When you’re adrift and all of nineteen, that kind of attention from a man like him is pretty exciting. He could do anything, or so I thought. He raced cars, he rode horses, he flew a plane—anything. Long story short, I wound up pregnant. He insisted we get married and I thought I’d hit the jackpot. At first I barely noticed the way he didn’t want me associating with my friends or holding down a job. I just thought he wanted to take care of me. My father was an alcoholic. It was...nice...to have a man take charge for a change.”