Her Sister (Search For Love series) Page 4

Now, he'd finally picked up his phone and she was going to make sure he knew what had happened. "I'm not selling anything. Your son is dating my daughter."

  The silence that followed was rife with all the questions he wasn't asking. He finally settled on, "Is there a problem?"

  "Yes, there is. Your son is eighteen. Correct?"

  "Yes, he is." Hansen sounded wary.

  "My daughter, Shara, is sixteen. When I came home early on Monday, she'd cut classes and they were having sex in her bedroom. I walked in on them."

  "Maybe you should have knocked," he wisecracked.

  Clare counted to fifteen. She knew people often said strange things when they were surprised or upset. She didn't know which Mr. Hansen was. She didn't care. All she cared about was protecting her daughter—the daughter who still wasn't speaking to her.

  "As I said, Mr. Hansen, your son's eighteen, my daughter's sixteen. What he was doing to her was grounds for statutory rape."

  "Hey! Wait a minute. They're two teenagers having some fun."

  "Unprotected fun." Unfortunately she hadn't been able to get Shara an appointment with her gynecologist for another two weeks.

  "What was your name again? I didn't catch it on the machine."

  "My name is Clare Thaddeus. Your son isn't a good influence on Shara and I'd like you to talk to him."

  "You work at the hospital, don't you? Brad pointed you out to me last month. He'd had an accident on his bike and needed X-rays."

  "I don't remember seeing him there—"

  "Oh, you didn't take care of him. You came running through looking for a patient."

  She didn't know what any of this had to do with anything. Certainly not Shara. "Mr. Hansen—"

  He interrupted her again. "Call me Mark."

  "All right. Mark. Do you think you could have a talk with Brad? I really believe he's too old for her. At the least, he needs to respect the rules she lives under. I don't want her cutting classes to be with him." She didn't want Shara spending time with Brad Hansen at all, but she couldn't just come right out and say that, could she?

  "I think we should talk about this. Are you busy this weekend? We could catch a bite to eat somewhere."

  Her hesitation was obvious.

  "Look, Clare, Brad's not a bad kid and I'm sure your daughter isn't, either."

  "Of course, she's not!"

  "Right. Well, maybe we could give each other a little support. Think about meeting me somewhere this weekend. You have my number."

  "Will you talk to Brad? "

  "We had the birds and bees talk a long time ago," he said tersely. "What else would you like me to tell him?"

  "Tell him Shara is off limits."

  She hung up. Her instincts told her speaking to Mark Hansen longer or meeting him somewhere would serve no earthly purpose.

  ****

  "Soda water do it for you?" Frank Grey, a law school buddy of Max's from Dickinson, slipped onto the stool next to him at a Tex-Mex bar in Dallas, Texas, Thursday at lunchtime.

  "Soda water has to do it," Max said agreeably, greeting his old friend.

  "Then why did you want to meet here? We could have picked any restaurant."

  "I hear the chili verde and the tortillas are the best in the state. Besides, every once in a while I have to remind myself how stupid I was twenty-whatever years ago. It helps to keep me on track now."

  He extended his hand to Frank and they shook. "You look good." Max hadn't seen Frank for five years. "I think more hair dropped from the top of your head to your face, though."

  Frank's beard had grown fuller and a little longer as the hair on top of his head had thinned. But in a tan suit and a brown-striped tie, his cream shirt not having lost all its starch, he was a pretty good specimen after having lived over half a century.

  Frank shrugged. "Ellie seems to like it. After thirty years, I still try to keep her happy." Shifting on the stool, he faced Max more squarely. "You said on the phone you got to town on Tuesday. You also sounded frustrated. What can I do?"

  Frank's corporate law practice had nothing to do with the kinds of cases Max now tackled in the arena of juvenile law. But Max often tapped into lawyer friends across the country when he was testifying before Congress, helping representatives write new legislation, keeping tabs on the child abduction network and organizations for missing children. Frank had donated generously to a couple of Max's causes and helped him with contacts in Texas.

  "I don't think there's anything you can do." Max had filled in Frank on the phone with everything Grove and the FBI had told him. "Just keep your ear to the network. I know you hear things. When I met with the FBI here yesterday, the agent was understanding and empathetic. But he didn't have new information. Apparently their office in Pittsburgh has been working closely with Grove. He found all this but they're putting their resources behind him. I thought since Brown's journal was unearthed in Texas, I could find out other details here. But either no one knows any more or they're just not telling because it's an ongoing investigation. You know how that goes. I even had an appointment with the Dallas D.A. yesterday, but he's as closemouthed as the rest of them."

  "Their secrecy might have more to do with the families of the girls listed in Brown's book than with Brown himself. After all, he's on death row. What more can they do to him except execute him?"

  "Yeah. What more can they do to him?" Max knew his fury and bitterness were in his voice, but there was nothing he could do about that. Both had settled in his gut and become old friends.

  "Is the soda water really going to get you through this?" Frank's steady brown eyes wanted to know the truth.

  "You mean waiting to find out whether my daughter's dead or alive?"

  "That and dredging it all up again."

  By all, Max knew exactly what Frank meant. Besides the abduction, there had been the disintegration of his life—the disintegration of his marriage and his family as he'd known it. He'd been powerless to stop it. He didn't cope well with being powerless. Never had, never would. That's why he'd come to Dallas while Amanda sat in her antique shop waiting for the call she hoped would come. Those were the kind of differences that had torn them apart. She'd chosen antiques. He'd chosen child advocacy.

  "How's Amanda?" Frank asked quietly as if he'd read Max's thought process.

  At that moment the bartender strolled up the bar from the group he'd been serving at the other end and nodded to Frank. Frank glanced at Max with an unspoken question—If he ordered liquor, would it bother his friend?

  "Order whatever you want," Max insisted. Not long after he'd joined AA, he'd learned how to be around booze and other people drinking it. It was never a cakewalk, but he'd become detached from it. He'd just made everything else in his life matter more.

  Frank opted for the easy way out. "Just give me whatever's on tap."

  The bartender, with a spring of youth in his step, gave him a thumbs up sign and went to fetch the beer.

  Frank's gaze met Max's and Max knew he'd have to answer his friend's question about his ex-wife. "Amanda and I don't talk much. She's all emotion right now. I can't deal with that."

  "She's not the one who fell apart when Lynnie was abducted."

  "I didn't fall apart," Max snapped. "I just reached for a different kind of comfort than she did."

  The truth was, his wife had wanted to reach for him when he'd been unavailable, wrapped up in searching, neck-deep in fear and panic. She'd turned to her friend, Natalie, and anyone else who could sympathize. He'd turned to no one. When it had been clear they weren't going to find Lynnie or her abductor, he'd drowned himself, not only in the alcohol, but in the fury...in the anger...in the regret.

  "If I know Amanda..." Max said with a shake of his head. "...she's filling her head with dreams about a happy reunion. Even if Grove and the FBI find Lynnie, I doubt if there's going to be a happy outcome. If that had been possible, Lynnie would have found her way back to us. Since she didn't, I don't even want to think about what that monster did
to her."

  His hand was tight around his glass. The whiteness of his knuckles made an impact, and he released his grip. It wasn't as if he didn't know what happened to children who were abused. He dealt with it all the time. And the results weren't pretty. They were affected for the rest of their lives. Cases didn't have to be extreme for that to happen. And in Lynnie's case... He closed his eyes but that didn't erase the images that had burned a place for themselves in his nightmares.

  "I wouldn't want to be you," Frank muttered sincerely.

  The bartender slid his mug in front of him and the foam sloshed onto the bar. "If we could go back to Dickinson and do it all again—"

  It was strange, but thinking about his law-school years at Dickinson didn't evoke scrapbook pictures of study-groups and campus life but rather memories of Amanda—how she'd worked beside him...waited up for him...kept a tight budget with him...loved him. And thinking about those years took him back further to a place he hadn't been in a long time—her dad's farm.

  The coiled tension inside his chest released just a little. Those summer days on the farm.

  He'd been working at the Fogelsmith farm for a month, staying away from Amanda, telling himself he had a career and a future to tend to. Everyone knew law school, like med school, didn't bode well for any kind of relationship. He'd been looking forward to college, dating lots of girls, not just one, adding notches to his belt, which if he had to admit it, wasn't very notched at eighteen. With studies, sports, scholarships in his sights and working part time, who had time for women? Or getting laid?

  Amanda had been different from most of the girls who usually turned his head, or at least got his hormones revved up. For one thing she'd been skinny, with not many curves. For another, he'd never particularly liked redheads. Not that he'd made a study of it. But girls he'd taken to the homecoming dance, Christmas bash, or the odd party had been brunettes. Amanda had been in a few of his classes and she was quite intelligent. In class she was the one who knew all the answers when a teacher called on her. She obviously studied hard. Yet he never saw her around much before and after school. He realized why once he'd started working on her dad's farm.

  Amanda's chores took up her out-of-school spare time. She loved animals, especially the kittens in the barn. And she helped her mom cook, too. That's why he never saw her in the library in the morning comparing her homework with her other classmates. That's why she didn't attend sports events. Amanda had always been her own person. As long as she was doing what she thought was right, nothing else mattered. He'd liked that about her back then. Now it usually annoyed him.

  No other girl he'd known had ridden on a flatbed wagon in back of a tractor helping her dad or walked through the three-foot high tobacco field with him and her father, topping off the leaves, breaking off the flowers, pulling the suckers to make the leaves larger, thicker and darker.

  There had been something almost intimate between them while they'd walked through the tobacco plants, their fingers reaching for the same flower now and then, their eyes locking, the sun beating down on them. Amanda had tied her hair back with a blue paisley handkerchief. It was obvious her fair skin sunburned easily, and she'd told him her mother made her put some kind of cream on before she went out. He could still remember the sweet smell of it, along with the tobacco, sunburned weeds, the scent of dried earth.

  They'd come in from the field late that July afternoon. While he'd gone to the barn to help with the animals, Amanda had run toward the house, her scarf torn free, her red hair fiery in the afternoon sun. And he'd just stood there, a kid with a hard on, knowing Amanda Fogelsmith sent a shiver through his body that wouldn't quit, even in ninety-five degree heat. He slipped back in time to that night with no reluctance at all.

  It was almost 6 p.m. when Amanda came around the corner at the barn and caught him washing off the day's grime and sweat at the water spigot. The temperature hadn't dropped a degree. The barn had been stifling and he'd just needed to let the cold water cool him down before he went home to stuffy rooms, cigarette smoke and the vacant sense of despair that always hung there.

  He heard the soft "oh," before he saw her, lifting his head from the spigot, not attempting to wipe away the water dripping down his face. She was a dream that was too good to be true in a white peasant blouse with flowers embroidered on the front and jeans that showed off her long legs. Her hair looked loose and soft and flyaway, like she'd just washed it, and he could smell the scent of something like orange blossoms. She always smelled so sweet.

  She made a point of keeping her eyes on his. "Mama said you're welcome to stay for supper. It was a long day."

  He swept his hand over his face and felt like an idiot, dripping in front of her. "I'm not fit company." He motioned to the T-shirt he'd balled and thrown on the ground next to the spigot.

  Her gaze wavered then, dropped to his chest, came back up to his eyes. "My dad probably has a shirt he can lend you. That is if you want to stay. Meatloaf with mashed potatoes and green beans, if you're wondering. I think Mama baked a cherry pie, too."

  He almost laughed. If her company wasn't enough, she was trying to entice him with her mother's food because she wanted him to stay. He could see that, as plainly as he knew he shouldn't.

  He couldn't keep the huskiness from his voice as he asked, "And what happens if I stay, Amanda?"

  She pretended she didn't know what he meant and shrugged. "You get a great meal. My parents said—" She stopped.

  "Your parents said I probably wouldn't get one at home?"

  "No, I didn't mean—"

  "Yes, you did. Yes, they did. And they're right. My dad's drunk most of the time and doesn't care whether we eat or not."

  He took a few steps closer to her, not sure whether he wanted to intimidate her or make temptation escalate so he couldn't resist it. "You didn't answer my question. What happens if I stay?" He brushed her hair behind her ear and it was just as soft as he imagined it would be.

  "I don't know," she managed breathlessly.

  He was breathless, too, just looking at her, definitely from touching her. "I don't need a steady girl. I have plans."

  Her shoulders squared and her chin came up. "I have plans, too. I want to be a teacher. I think you're awfully full of yourself to think I'd want you as a steady."

  His grin was slow in coming, but it came, as he wrapped his arm around her and pulled that pristine peasant blouse right up against his chest. "Let's just see if we should even consider steady or not."

  There had been no finesse in that first kiss. It had been filled with raw, teenage hunger. In short of a minute her hands had been on him, his hands had found her bottom in her jeans and the world had turned into a different place when they were done.

  That had been the beginning of him and Amanda. So very different from the end.

  When Frank thumped his empty beer mug down onto the bar, he broke Max's fall into the past. "How about some of that chili you mentioned. I'm ready to burn a hole in my gut. How about you?"

  Max wondered if the spicy food could possibly exacerbate the acid that had started burning there from the moment he'd gotten Grove's phone call. "Chili sounds good. That and the cornbread should hold me until I get home. I sure won't get any food on the plane."

  "What time do you leave?"

  "I'm flying out at five. I just wish I had something to take back with me...something more than the knowledge that Lynnie was one of Luther Brown's victims and there are probably too many more to count."

  "You've got to hang onto the hope that she's still alive."

  Max was hanging onto that hope. But even if Lynnie was still alive, that didn't mean he'd get his daughter back.

  That was the worst fear of all—that his daughter could be so changed he'd see nothing but distance in her eyes.

  ****

  Shara lifted her bedroom window Friday afternoon and heard the SUV next door start up in the driveway. Damn. That meant their neighbor had been home. Had he seen her sneak int
o the house? His carport faced their carport.

  What were the chances? One in a million. Her mother would never know she cut classes again. She was getting really good at lying, making up stories that were close to the truth so she didn't screw up.

  The October breeze still carried the hint of summer as it puffed the blue-and-white striped curtains away from the window. Shara looked around her room that her mother had decorated for her. They'd bought along the curtains from the small apartment where they used to live. Why was it her mother still treated her like she was ten. So did her grandparents, for that matter.

  All the adults in her life were preoccupied with her missing aunt. Her mom never talked about her. There were pictures of Aunt Lynnie as a little girl at Gram's place. If they found her now—

  That would be just too weird!

  Shara thought about going to the refrigerator for something to eat. But she just wasn't hungry, hadn't been for about a week, which was fine with her. It wouldn't hurt her to lose a few pounds.

  Picking up the phone on her nightstand, she sank down onto her bed. She'd been trying to call or see Brad ever since her mom had ordered him out Monday. But he wasn't returning her calls and she kept missing him at school. She'd gone over to his house before she'd come home. She'd had to take a bus and that had taken forever. But he hadn't been there.

  So now all she could do was try to call again. Her mouth went dry so she took a few swigs of a bottle of water that she always carried with her. She'd walked from his house home and that had been about a half a mile. The bottom of her feet burned in her sneakers. She didn't want him to believe she was chasing him, yet she loved him, didn't she? Didn't he love her? He'd had sex with her. He'd liked it. He couldn't do that without feeling a lot for her, could he?

  This time when she dialed, he answered!

  "Hey, Shara." He'd obviously seen her number on his Caller ID.

  She wished her mom would buy her a cell phone, but these days her mom wouldn't be doing her any favors. "Hey, Brad. I haven't seen you around or heard from you for a while."

  "I took a few mental health days. You at school?"