I watched as Raegan slowly sat down at the table and then rubbed her hand over the bandage above her eye. I was pretty sure I spotted her pressing down roughly and when she winced, she took a few more breaths. What I wasn’t sure was what the hell was going on and whether or not I should be bracing myself for an impending storm.
“Why do I get the feeling you’re placing some kind of blame on me?” she asked.
“Well, you were hired to take care of my child, and well... here I am four years later meeting her again. Take care not take. There’s a difference.”
“Lane! Cut that shit out,” Charlie scolded.
She physically recoiled from my words, and as much as I hated doing that to anyone, I just couldn’t help it. This was my daughter we were talking about and I’d missed years of her life, thanks in part to the woman seated in front of me.
“Mr. Parker, you think...” She paused and popped her knuckles fretfully. “You’re telling me that you never stopped for one moment to think that maybe, just maybe, Braden and I were abducted too? All this time you thought I had something to do with this...” She waved her hands erratically, indicating the kids, the police station... the entire situation. “Are you out of your mind!?”
“I didn’t think you were involved at first. And I never would have accused you until I found video footage of you talking to Mrs. Camilla Flores. You were speaking to her on a park bench the day before the kidnapping,” I ground out.
She visibly flinched when I said Mrs. Flores’ name, but then she caught herself and said, “Mr. Parker, where is Ash? She’s much easier to talk to. Why isn’t she here?” She looked at Kate in my arms when she spoke of her mother.
Charlie shifted nervously on his feet and turned his back toward us to “read” paperwork. Coward. I would have loved to avoid this awful conversation at all costs, but I had to tell her at some point.
“Ash passed away last year.”
She must have been expecting me to say something like that. She had to have. That was the only way I could explain the almost instant sob that ripped through her chest. Her misery almost brought me back to that time. I almost allowed her to bring me down with her, but I quickly locked down my defenses and kept the emotions at bay.
“How?” she squeaked.
“Car accident. She and her boyfriend were intoxicated. They were both ejected from the car.” I spoke to her as if I were reading the police report. For a moment, I could almost feel the papers shaking in my hands again.
Her eyes cleared for an instant and she glared at me, probably because of my cold manner. “Ash had a... boyfriend?”
“We got divorced, Raegan. We could barely look at one another after...” I glanced down at the beauty in my arms and was struck by an overwhelming sadness that Ash couldn’t see her right now. She would have groaned about Kate getting her nose, but I had always thought her nose was adorable. She would have loved that Kate still had my hair color. And she would have laughed at how outgoing Kate was—we’d always wondered what her personality would be like.
“So, no, Ash won’t be joining us. It’s just Kate and me now. I’m not a cop anymore either, so I think my new job will allow me to be at home more often with her.” I was rambling and I quickly zipped my lips. She didn’t need to know anything about me.
I brought my arm up to brush some stray hairs out of my daughter’s face, but my shoulder pulled painfully. For the first time since Kate had kissed it, I remembered the wound. The pain had been nonexistent, or more likely I had been too wrapped up in her to notice.
Speaking of pain, I wanted to get back to what caused all of this in the first place, but based on Raegan’s reaction, my theory now seemed less and less solid. There was only one way to find out. “Were you and Mrs. Flores friends? Did you have this planned out for awhile?”
“You know what, Mr. Parker? I’m glad you’re not a cop anymore because you sure as hell are a terrible one!” she seethed back.
“Terrible? I’m the one that found the camera footage! We would have never known where to even begin searching for you guys. I think that’s the sign of a pretty damn good cop.”
“Yes, but blaming me because of some park camera recording is not! I’ll bet that footage didn’t even have sound!” When my eyes shifted away from her for only a moment, she jumped on it. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
“There wasn’t any audio, but I know what I saw.”
“You saw NOTHING!” she yelled.
“I saw enough to lead me to Flores.”
“Lead you to him?!” Her voice had almost reached a frightening level, and I was impressed that both kids were still sound asleep. “If you knew where he was, where the hell were you? WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU? Where were you when I had to beg for Kate’s life because they wanted to toss her?” I flinched at her words. “Yeah, toss her like she was trash, because they didn’t want a girl. Where were you when I had to rock two crying babies all by myself, night after night? Where were you when I had to get slashes because I wouldn’t let the men take Kate wherever the hell they wanted to take her?”
“Stop!” I shouted and then sank back, berating myself for raising my voice, especially with Kate in my arms. “I’m not ready to hear all of this right now,” I said, forcing a calm I didn’t feel into my voice.
“I wasn’t ready to live it either,” responded quietly. “You,” she pointed at me, then over to Charlie and out the door, presumably at the other officers. She rose out of her chair and continued, “Did nothing. I took care of them. I took the punishments for them. I got us out of there. Don’t talk to me about this being my fault.”
Charlie and I stared open-mouthed at the five-foot-five, painfully beautiful woman who stood across the table from us. I wasn’t sure what to say, and I had a feeling Charlie was just as dumbfounded. Whatever I was expecting to fly out of that saucy little mouth, that had not been it—none of it.
“I’d like to go to that hotel now, Officer Charlie,” she stated while slowly sitting back down again with her hands splayed across the wood table.
Charlie looked at her, but he couldn’t quite seem to snap out of his stupor. Finally, he cleared his throat and tried to resemble a professional. “Uh, yeah. I’m just waiting on Chief to get here first.”
“NO,” she began just as Chief marched in the door, looking as if he’d been woken from a deep sleep.
“Chief, I’m glad you could make it,” Charlie stated professionally.
“Chief.” I nodded my head toward the gruff older man that stood in the doorway.
“Knock it off, Lane, and call me Dad. You don’t work for me anymore, son,” my dad barked at me.
I hadn’t seen my parents since Ash’s funeral. I knew how bad it was of me to cut them out, but they just reminded me too much of Kate. Of pain and loneliness and all that I had lost. I mainly left New York so I could look for Kate on the West Coast, but I also left to escape the memories and the pitying looks from everyone I knew.
When my dad finally got a good look at me, I saw the instant he realized what—or rather, who—I had in my hands. His face visibly softened and he quietly walked toward us. I swiveled in my chair away from the table and faced him as he knelt down in front of his granddaughter.
“Your mother needs to be here,” he whispered, hovering over her. He looked as if he didn’t know where or how to touch her.
“Ma can see her tomorrow. They’ve been here all night, Dad. I think it’s time they slept in a bed.”
“She’s so beautiful...” he said, sighing reverently.
“She is, isn’t she?”
He pulled out the chair next to me and sat down without moving any further away from her. His hair had become much grayer than the last time I’d seen him, and his face seemed to wrinkle more as he got older. But he was still my dad, the same one who threw baseballs to me for hours every evening after school and used to constantly drill me so I could be successful in the police academy. As much as I knew he loved me, I think that he loved Kate on a whole other level. It killed my parents when she went missing.
“Look, son. I don’t know what I just walked in on, but Doyle has caught me up to speed on everything Raegan told him on the trip out here.”
I quickly looked over to Charlie, who had a smug look on his face. “You knew everything she was going to say?” I asked, and he nodded his head. I grumbled, “And you just let me lay into her like that?”
“You deserved what you got back,” he stated casually.
I looked over at Raegan, who had moved back to the chairs where Braden was sleeping. She wouldn’t look at me while she ran her fingers through his hair, and I began to let my mind consider the fact that maybe I had been wrong all these years. I mean, could she truly be guilty of such a crime when she seemed genuinely crushed that Ash had passed away?
Dad lowered his voice so only I could hear, “Son, this little girl only knows those two people over there,” he said, pointing toward Raegan and Braden.
I interrupted, “No, Dad, somehow she knows me. She lets me hold her and she talks to me as if we’ve known each other all along.”
“I see that she appears quite comfortable with you and I couldn’t be happier. But that’s not going to comfort her all the time. Raegan has raised her, kept her safe, and loved her. Don’t force that separation too quickly.”
“You don’t think Raegan had anything to do with all of this?” I tried to keep my voice as quiet as possible.
“Son, look at her. I mean, actually look at her. Do you honestly feel like she would be capable of something like that?”
I stared at her hunched figure and watched her eyes droop slightly from exhaustion. She’d never once looked frantically around the room or sneered at police like the criminals I had seen in the past. She only seemed to care about the kids and their well-being.
I sighed loudly and looked down at Kate in my arms and then over to Raegan, who was still concentrating on her son. Could I be enough for Kate alone? It was supposed to be a learn-as-they-grow type of thing, not a jump-into-it-four-years-later type of thing.
“I have no idea what I’m doing… Ash used to tell me what to do.”
“Let Raegan teach you,” he offered softly. “Remember the girl that used to help you and Ash tremendously? The one who used to get up with Kate in the middle of the night while she was trying to care for her own son, just so you two could sleep. If she didn’t stay the night with you guys, she was there bright and early every morning, ready to handle two babies…all to help you.”
“Dad, we were paying her,” I smarted.
“Oh yeah, below minimum wage. Trust me, she wasn’t living a profligate lifestyle, by any means. Quit making her the bad guy, son.”
I leaned my head forward over Kate and squeezed my temples firmly. I just couldn’t seem to get the idea out of my head that Raegan had something to do with it. Maybe it was just the parent in me that needed answers. But how could she have had a conversation with Flores’ wife one day, and the next day Flores stole my baby right out of my own home?
“Look…” Dad patted my shoulder and I winced at the treacherous blow. At least that was what my shoulder thought of it. “What the hell happened? You know what, you’re here, you’re alive, just tell me tomorrow. I’m tired.” He spoke louder so everyone could hear now. “I got you guys adjoining rooms at the Marriott close to the bridge. You can work out your sleeping arrangements between the four of you.”
Raegan smiled weakly and stood on feeble and tired legs. “Thank you, Mr. Parker.”
Dad made his way for the door and looked back at me, saying, “Oh, and son? This hotel ain’t cheap. Work out your situation and find a more permanent location. You know you still have your apartment. Your mother’s been dusting it every week since you left it.”
“Got it, Dad,” I said, quickly shutting down that conversation.
“Raegan, dear,” my dad said, looking across the room at her. “I’m not sure how all of this will be handled. I know we’ll need to do psych evals on all three of you, probably even Lane. There will be a lot of annoying questions. Just be patient, please, and I’ll try my damndest to rush the process along. From there, we can help you find a place to live.”
She swallowed harshly and nodded her head while looking away. I swore I saw a wet gleam in her eyes before she could completely turn from my sight. I stood with Kate wilting over my shoulder, still lightly snoozing. Raegan scooped up a backpack, but before she could link her arms through the straps, I reached out and grabbed it from her. She whipped her head around quickly, and I found myself on the receiving end of a death glare from two beautiful, bright green eyes.
“I’ll carry your things,” I said lightly. “You’ve got your hands full with him.” She slowly released the straps of the bag and I draped it over my forearm. “Is this it?” She nodded her head and I laughed, “Between the three of you, there’s only one little backpack?”
She bent over and struggled to pick up Braden without waking him. Raegan was petite, and it looked like Braden would be taller than her before she knew it. When he was finally snuggled in close to her neck, she straightened and headed for the door.
“Yes, that’s our only bag. Next time I plan an escape, I’ll remember to pack more.”
Although normally I would have smiled at her saucy mouth, her words sliced through me like a rusty, jagged knife. I began to wonder what she meant by escape and was once again reminded how little I actually knew about what brought us to this moment.