Wanted Woman Page 10

  “Looks like the lock on the top drawer of the file cabinet has been broken,” Frances noted.

  The drawer was open as if Maggie had been interrupted again. The drawer was also empty but he could see where possibly one file folder had been. The rest of the drawer was covered in fine dust. It seemed odd that Wade would keep this drawer locked and yet it had held so little. “Any idea what was kept in here?”

  She shook her head. “Only Mrs. Dennison could tell you that.”

  Mrs. Dennison. He glanced around. Nothing else seemed to have been disturbed. What had Maggie been looking for? He could only guess. More information on Angela Dennison.

  And what had the second intruder been after?

  Maggie Randolph.

  “Thanks for your help,” he told Frances as she locked up after him. She was like a breath of fresh air compared to the last production manager. “Good luck with your new job.”

  Jesse had hoped he wouldn’t have to see Daisy Dennison again. Twice in one day was way too much. But he climbed on his bike, deciding to get it over with tonight.

  The Dennison mansion was a couple of miles from the decoy factory. As he turned onto the road that led to the house, he saw that all the lights were on, including the porch lamp. Daisy had obviously been expecting him. She answered the door herself after only one ring.

  “Did you catch the thief?” She had a drink in her hand and she looked as if it wasn’t her first.

  “You mind if I come in?”

  She looked contrite, stepped back and waved him inside. “What can I have Zinnia bring you to drink?”

  “Nothing for me.”

  She seemed disappointed and he wondered if she got lonely in this big house with Desiree usually off getting into trouble. He wondered how Daisy would take the news if he was right about Maggie.

  “As far as I can tell the only thing taken might have been a file from a locked cabinet in Wade’s office,” he told her.

  Daisy looked down at her glass, then held it to her lips and took a drink.

  “What was in that file?” he asked, seeing that she knew something about that locked filing cabinet drawer.

  Turning her back on him she walked into the living room. “Wade’s…personal papers,” she said over her shoulder.

  Anger drove him deeper into the house. The place smelled of scotch and some too-sweet scented candle. He felt nauseous. “Let’s not play games, okay? The newspaper was also broken into tonight. The burglar took only one thing. A file containing stories about Angela’s kidnapping.”

  Daisy froze.

  He could almost feel the tension emanating from her. “So I’ll ask you again, what was in that file?”

  When she spoke all the steel had gone out of her. “Why can’t people just leave my family alone?”

  He could think of several answers to that question starting with the family’s bad behavior but he had a feeling the question was rhetorical. And he’d already shared his feelings with her earlier today. He doubted she’d put up with another lecture.

  “Please,” she said turning to look at him. “Sit down.” As if on cue, the German housekeeper appeared with a tall glass of lemonade he hadn’t asked for and another drink for her mistress.

  Jesse took the chair Daisy offered him and the lemonade. It was better than his. “Great lemonade,” he said to Zinnia’s retreating back. She gave no sign that she’d heard him.

  “She doesn’t speak much English,” Daisy said.

  He nodded, figuring Zinnia spoke more than probably Daisy realized. He wondered what it took to live in the same house with these people let alone serve them the way Zinnia did. He shuddered to think.

  “I’m not sure what was in the file,” she said after a moment. “I know that he kept the correspondence with private investigators during the many years we searched for Angela. False leads, dead ends. I guess Wade didn’t want me to see it. He had the only key and the cabinet was always locked.”

  “Whatever secrets were in there, they’re going to come out,” he warned. “If there is anything you want to tell me…”

  Daisy put down her unfinished drink and didn’t pick up the new one. Her eyes were shiny with booze and possibly regret as she looked up at him as if she’d been somewhere else. “The DNA tests were in there,” she said her voice barely a whisper.

  “What DNA tests?”

  “The one Wade took to prove that he was that woman’s father. Hers was in there, too.” Her voice was barely a whisper. The woman in question was the product of an affair Wade Dennison had had almost thirty years ago with the nanny.

  So now Maggie had the DNA test results.

  Daisy met his gaze. “You look more like your father than even Mitch does.” She was crying as she started to reach for the intercom to buzz the housekeeper. “Zinnia will show you out.”

  “I can find my own way.”

  ONCE ON THE ROAD into town, Jesse opened up the bike and let it run. The night air was cold and damp. He watched the ribbon of dark road disappear under his front tire and felt that old pull.

  But it wasn’t as strong as it had once been. Instead, his mind quickly shifted to Maggie Randolph as he reached the edge of town—and how to find her.

  The Duck-In Bar was closing as he cruised through town on his way home. He was tired and was hoping for a few hours of sleep before he went looking for Maggie.

  But as he passed the bar, he saw Desiree opening the passenger side of her red sports car. The top was up but he’d gotten a glimpse of the man behind the wheel.

  He swore and flipped a U-turn in the middle of the street and went back.

  Desiree turned at the sound of the bike, then smiled when she saw who it was and waited, holding the door open, not getting in just yet. Her gaze met his as if in defiance and she glanced toward the guy behind the wheel, no doubt wanting to make sure Jesse had seen who her date was. Bruno, the guy who’d been hanging out with Betty.

  Jesse pulled alongside the car where Desiree was standing with the passenger door open. She seemed pleased that she’d gotten a reaction out of him. His contempt for her antics must have shown. Did his guilt show, as well? He couldn’t help but think she was as confused as he was about their relationship and that of their parents.

  “I was just at your house,” he said. “Someone broke into Dennison Ducks. Your mother isn’t doing too well.”

  The smile flickered and died. “Is Mom—”

  “She’s fine. Upset, obviously. Scared.”

  Desiree had paled. He could see that even under the glow of the Duck-In neon. She closed the passenger door and started around the car to the driver’s side. She opened the door and motioned without a word for Bruno to get out.

  “Hey, I thought we were going to party?” Bruno said.

  “Out,” she said. “Now.”

  He looked from her to Jesse, then slowly slid from the seat with obvious disappointment.

  Desiree climbed in and, slamming the door, started the car.

  “Don’t speed,” Jesse yelled over the powerful engine, his words lost as Desiree threw the car into Reverse and, tires squealing, headed home.

  Jesse stared after her, figuring he’d at least saved her from Bruno for tonight anyway. He turned his gaze on the man. Bruno was still standing in the bar parking lot, his eyes hard with anger and booze. He was big, with wide shoulders and a blockhead on a thick corded neck.

  From the looks of things, his nose had been broken more than once. Jesse suspected he was a bar brawler, someone who liked to fight and throw his weight around. He also had a good ten years on Jesse.

  As Bruno advanced on him, Jesse stepped off the bike and pulled out his badge, shaking his head as he held it up. Jesse had done a little fighting himself in the old days. But while the thought of kicking the crap out of Bruno had its appeal, he wasn’t in the mood tonight.

  “You don’t want any of this,” Jesse said.

  Bruno stopped, seemed to give it some thought, then turned and sauntered down
the street toward the faint glow of neon at the opposite end of the street. Betty’s Café.

  Jesse pocketed his badge, swung his leg over the bike and started the engine. His body was wired, ready for a fight and it took him a while to calm down.

  He roared through town and out onto the open highway letting the darkness engulf him, the air and the night soothed him a little. Still, part of him wanted to take the easy way out, just keep going and not look back. In the old days, Jesse would have been long gone. No goodbyes.

  But that was the old Jesse. The Jesse who hadn’t settled down, built his own cabin, met a woman who he couldn’t quit thinking about, right or wrong.

  He turned onto the jeep trail that led to his cabin and drove up through the trees and blackness. He parked his bike in the garage, closed the door and stood for a moment just looking at the cabin with a sense of pride—and awe. Home. He’d never needed it as much as he did tonight. He thought of Maggie standing here last night looking up at it.

  Inside the cabin, he headed straight for his studio, shrugging out of his uniform and donning a pair of paint-covered cutoffs. He opened the windows to let in the night air, then turned toward his easel.

  For a while, he just stared at the blank canvas, then picked up a brush and began to paint, trying not to think about anything. Especially his conversation with his father. Or the Dennisons. Or Bruno.

  Mostly he wanted to forget just for a little while that he was now a cop. The cop in Timber Falls. Or that it was his job to find Maggie and arrest her.

  After a moment, he lost himself in his work, in the feel of brush bristles in the paint, the paint on the canvas. The ability had been there for as long as he could remember, first drawing as a boy when he could make something appear on paper with just a pencil. Magic. That’s how he thought of it. As if it came from somewhere else, certainly not from him.

  A shape started to emerge on the canvas, almost startling him as he realized what he had painted. He stepped back and stared at the partial face and the expression he had captured. Maggie Randolph. Eyes the same rich brown as her hair. Smiling.

  He tried to remember if he’d seen her smile like that in the short period of time he’d been around her. No. And yet he knew that when she really smiled she would look exactly like she did in the painting. The smile lighting her face from within. Radiant. Breathtaking.

  He put down his brush. What the hell was he doing? This woman could be a murderer on top of everything else.

  He glanced at his watch—almost 3:00 a.m. Too late or early for anything but sleep. Unless you were a man who couldn’t sleep and you knew that somewhere close by there was a woman…

  He quickly cleaned his brush, then went down to his bedroom. He put his uniform back on and strapped on the state issued hip holster, before sliding the gun into place, not wanting to think about needing it. Worse, using it.

  Then he headed for his truck. Maggie Randolph wasn’t through with Timber Falls. He felt it in his gut. That meant she had to be hiding somewhere nearby. She’d had a tent and sleeping bag strapped on her bike. But neither had been there when he’d chased her earlier.

  He considered the direction she’d taken when she’d hit the highway, just before he’d lost her. Away from where she was camped. He’d bet on that.

  So he headed south, feeling like he knew this woman. She hadn’t been off his mind for twenty-four hours. He’d been tracking her, putting together tiny fact after tiny fact about her, discovering more and more that intrigued him. And worried him.

  He knew how she would think because he would have thought the same way were he in trouble…and he’d certainly been there. He’d been face-to-face with the woman only a short time and yet he felt as if he had been waiting all his life for her.

  Given who her father might be, that scared him more than he wanted to admit. Fate couldn’t be that cruel.

  The highway was empty, the night dark. This area of the country was littered with campgrounds, small intimate campgrounds that were completely deserted this time of year. Many of them closed. Because the forest was so dense, she would pick an empty campground to hide in.

  The campsite would be as far from the road as possible. There were so many and with no one around, she would feel safe. No, not safe enough. She’d pick a campground that wasn’t open thinking no one would look for her there.

  Then she’d hide at the densest part of the rain forest. And like a nocturnal animal, she would sleep during the day and do whatever had brought her to Timber Falls under the cloak of darkness.

  But after her exploits tonight, she would be holed up by now, trying to get some sleep. She would think she was still safe, that no one would come looking for her at this hour.

  No one except a man who couldn’t sleep. A man possessed.

  Chapter Ten

  It was just breaking day by the time Jesse found her. He spotted a single tire track in a muddy spot at the edge of the pavement a quarter mile past the locked gate of a closed campground.

  He kept going down the road without slowing, then parked the truck and walked back, hoping for the element of surprise.

  Following the track, he wove his way through the dark woods, the sky above him a palette of pastels. As the bike track drew him deeper into the dark woods, he could hear the sound of the MacKenzie River, smell the water mingling with the scent of cedar.

  This was the first morning in months that it hadn’t rained—at least not yet. A sure sign that spring was coming.

  The sky lightened over the tops of the trees as he walked. She’d hidden well. No one would look back in here for her. No one but Jesse Tanner who’d been raised here and knew all the good hiding places from back when he was running from the law instead of enforcing it.

  As he moved cautiously through the empty campground, it dawned on him that she might not be alone. That maybe the production manager at the plant had been wrong and that Maggie had been with the man.

  No, his gut instinct told him she was traveling solo. Whatever mission she was on, she was on it alone. She wouldn’t have dragged anyone into this. The man Frances Sanders had seen had to have been chasing Maggie, just like it had seemed. Who, he wondered, was after her? And why?

  Jesse was at the farthest point from the highway when he spotted the dark colored tent through the trees. It blended in nicely with the terrain. He wondered if she’d planned it that way. He didn’t see the bike anywhere around. Maybe she hadn’t returned yet.

  Cautiously he moved closer, the rush of the river next to the tent masking his footfalls.

  Other than the river, the day seemed unusually quiet as if holding its breath—just as he was doing as he neared the tent.

  It was a two-man tent. The flap on one end was open and he could see that the space inside was empty. That seemed odd. He felt a stab of worry cut through him. She wouldn’t have left the closure unzipped unless—

  He caught sight of her bike out of the corner of his eyes. It was partially hidden in the vegetation a half dozen yards behind the tent near the river.

  She was here. Somewhere. Had she seen him approach? Was she hiding? More like waiting to attack him when he got too close?

  He moved cautiously toward the bike. If she was planning a quick escape, she wouldn’t want to be far from her mode of transportation.

  That’s when he saw her. Just a flash of flesh through the trees. He swore under his breath as he saw that she was standing buck naked in a pool of river water, her back to him.

  The water pooled around her waist as she sudsed her hair, working quickly in what had to be freezing cold water. Nothing could get him in the river this time of year, he thought with grudging admiration. She was tougher than he was.

  He stepped closer feeling the pull of her. She had taken over his life the past twenty-four hours. And now he had her in his sights.

  Her back was lean and strong. Her shoulders in perfect proportion with her hips and height. Her skin seemed to glow in the first light of day, glistening fr
om the droplets of water on her skin and soapsuds, only the hint of creamy white breasts at her sides, and he wished that he could paint her just like that. A water sprite at dawn.

  He looked away, reminding himself that if he was right about this woman she was off-limits to him. He’d found her but she might always be as elusive to him as she’d been for the past twenty-four hours. The mere thought struck him like a blow.

  That’s when he spotted her clothing hanging from a tree limb at the edge of the river. He moved toward the clothing as she dipped below the surface of the water, coming up almost immediately.

  Eyes closed, she flipped her long dark hair back over her shoulder. It fell in a wet wave, plastering itself to her back. She let out a soft sound, shivered and hugged herself against the cold, one arm over her breasts as she turned, the other hand outstretched reaching for her clothes.

  Her fingers touched the now empty limb, felt around, then froze. Her eyes flew open.

  MAGGIE SENSED his presence just an instant before she realized her clothing was gone from the tree. She blinked water from her eyes and saw him standing on the rocky shore just inches from her and he had her clothes.

  She stifled a cry of surprise and alarm and hugged herself from the cold, hoping he didn’t see how scared she was.

  He held the clothes out to her and she realized he was trying not to look at her nakedness. He’d probably already seen everything there was to see but she was still surprised and touched by his chivalrous behavior.

  She wondered how long he’d been standing there watching her. He was wearing his sheriff’s deputy uniform, his expression solemn. There was no doubt he was here in an official capacity. Where was Blackmore? Waiting up on the road?

  “Hello, Deputy Tanner.” Her words sounded much calmer than she felt. Her mind was racing. He’d found her? How?

  She studied Jesse Tanner’s face feeling emotions that surprised—and worried—her. He was a deputy of the law. He would turn her over to Detective Blackmore. He would have to.