Operation Blind Date Page 13

  She sounded like a woman glad of the distraction. Or maybe that was just his own guilt speaking.

  The sound of tires on gravel proved the dog right. Quinn’s big, dark blue SUV came out of the trees and pulled up beside them. Cutter raced over, danced with eager anticipation outside the passenger door until Hayley emerged and he greeted her joyously. Then he darted to Quinn, who leaned down to scratch his right ear thoroughly, earning a sigh of happiness.

  “Thanks for guarding, boy,” Quinn said.

  Cutter yipped then sat, looking up expectantly. Like a marine waiting for orders, Teague thought.

  “Stand down,” Quinn said. “Relax.”

  With another short, expressive bark, Cutter stood, wheeled around and trotted back to Laney. For a moment he just stood there, looking up at her.

  “I’m all right now,” she said, stroking his head. “Thank you, my furry friend.”

  The dog looked at Teague then, and no matter how ridiculous it seemed, he would have sworn there was approval in the dog’s steady gaze. And it warmed him.

  Okay, you’re over the edge. Basking in the approval of a dog?

  Well, not just a dog. Cutter. That made it different.

  “You were a wizard or something in another life, weren’t you?” he muttered as he scratched that right ear.

  Cutter gave a soft woof, then trotted toward the green building. Teague straightened, saw Laney looking at him. Saw she was smiling, probably at his silly words. He knew they were silly, but sometimes...

  More importantly, they’d made her smile. That was worth something. In fact, right now it was worth a lot.

  “What’s Dunbar going to do with Pinch?” Teague asked as, once inside, they settled around the meeting table. Quinn had stayed to talk to the man after he and Laney had gone.

  “The kid was just a dupe, that’s pretty obvious. He’s going to turn him over to his parents. And when they arrive to get him, he’ll run the photo by them, just in case.”

  Teague nodded.

  “Laney? Can we see your phone?” Hayley asked, so gently Teague knew she’d somehow sensed Laney’s emotional state.

  “Of course.”

  She pulled it out of her purse, a worn leather satchel Teague knew held, among many other things, dog treats. And yet Cutter had shown no interest in them, not since this had begun. No treats while you’re working, Teague thought with an inward smile. Cutter’s code. He didn’t doubt for a minute the dog had one. And that he was working. He had been since Laney had started crying in the grooming room of her shop.

  “We want to compare the texts you got right after Amber vanished to the ones when we now know Pinch started sending them,” Hayley said.

  Laney nodded, but with a furrowed brow. “But we don’t really know if she sent any of them.”

  “No,” Quinn agreed. “So why don’t you go back to that last one you’re certain came from her, and we’ll work forward from there.”

  She’d shown them that point in the long string of texts before, but willingly went back to it again. “I’m glad I didn’t clear these out,” she said as she called it up and set the phone down and slid it across the table to Hayley and Quinn. “I know this was her, because we talked about it the next day.”

  Teague remembered the text had been something about a hard-to-please client.

  “Do you know the name of that client?” Teague asked.

  Laney shook her head. “She just called them Their Highnesses. I know they were semilocal. Greater Seattle area, anyway.”

  “We’ll get Ty on that,” Quinn said. “Give him a chance to break in his new toys before he heads back. Which reminds me, he just found some evidence that North Country’s in trouble. Maybe even headed for bankruptcy.”

  “Figures,” Teague muttered.

  “If Edward knew that,” Laney began.

  “He could be desperate,” Quinn finished for her.

  “Or maybe he’s been stealing from them, too, and is afraid he’s going to be found out in a bankruptcy audit,” Teague said.

  “Also possible,” Quinn said. He turned back to the phone and the text messages. “Now, which one first sounded off to you?”

  “There were a couple that were...not odd, but very short. Amber’s not a succinct sort of person. She tends to ramble a bit. But she will do short if she’s jammed for time, so I can’t say it doesn’t happen. So the first one that was really off was the one about Pepper.”

  “The dog. Which was actually a cat,” Teague said.

  “Yes.”

  “Other than the obvious mistakes, did it sound like Amber?” Hayley asked. “Meaning the phrasing, the abbreviations, the emoticons?”

  Laney nodded. “It did. It was only the content that threw me.”

  Teague exchanged a glance with Quinn.

  “So it could have been her,” Hayley said. “Trying to send a message.”

  “To maybe the only person who would immediately know something was wrong with it,” Teague said.

  Laney shivered visibly. Teague reached over and laid a hand over hers. Her fingers curled, clasping his, as if she welcomed the contact. It had been automatic, this need to again comfort, and only after he’d done it did he realize how it might look from across the table.

  But then there was little room for such concerns. The same jolt at the contact shot through him again, as if he’d grabbed a live wire. Which, in a way, he had. But he hadn’t been able to resist; the pull was as certain as a magnet’s.

  Cutter woofed from his spot at their feet, as if he’d somehow felt the electric charge that had surged between them.

  He searched her face, looked for some clue, but she was looking down at their hands and he couldn’t read her. But she didn’t let go, didn’t pull back. He had to be satisfied with that, for the moment.

  And for the moment, he’d damned well better shove the images that shot through his mind at the word satisfied back into their cave.

  The warning bells rang again. But they were even more distant this time.

  Chapter 19

  “It’s really true.”

  Laney knew her voice sounded tiny, shaken, but it was how she felt. Even knowing Foxworth would continue the search as promised didn’t help just now.

  “Something’s wrong, yes,” Teague said, never taking his eyes off the road. Probably didn’t want to look at her, for fear she’d be crying. Again. It was a wonder he hadn’t turned and run that first day in the shop. If he hadn’t been there for Cutter, maybe he would have.

  It was odd. Almost unfair. She rarely cried. When things went wrong, or got tough, she usually just dug in and kept going. Determined, her father said. Stubborn, her mother said.

  “Whatever that thought was, hang on to it.”

  Teague’s words echoed in the car. Had she thought he wasn’t watching her? He hadn’t turned his head, so if he’d caught a shift in her expression he must have peripheral vision as wide as the sky.

  “My parents,” she said. “My father always said I was determined. My mother called it stubborn.”

  “Stubborn is good.”

  “Stubborn is good?”

  “Sometimes it’s the only thing that gets you through.”

  She didn’t miss the implication that there were tougher times ahead. And her words weren’t a question. “You’re saying I’m going to need it.”

  “I think you already know that.”

  She only nodded, because she could think of nothing to say.

  She directed him around to the back where the outside entrance to her small apartment was. She avoided looking at the window of the shop with the Closed sign hanging somewhat forlornly in the center of the door glass. She had managed her two already scheduled appointments but hadn’t made any new ones. She knew sh
e was risking damaging the business, but—

  “Let us do what we do, Laney. You need to be here, take care of business,” Teague said. Laney’s head snapped around as he practically read her mind. It wasn’t the first time, but it was no less unnerving.

  “I’d be afraid I couldn’t concentrate. I don’t want to hurt an animal because I’m not focused.”

  “You didn’t hurt Cutter.”

  “Only because he’s the most patient dog I’ve ever groomed.”

  “Cutter? Patient?” Teague sounded laughingly disbelieving.

  “He is,” she insisted. “He’s perfect for me, every time. Even when he’s blowing coat and it takes an extra hour, he’s incredibly patient.”

  “You’ll have to teach us the trick,” he said as he pulled his car in behind hers; there wasn’t room to park beside it. “He runs out of patience with us all the time, and when he does, everybody knows it.”

  His tone was so rueful she had to smile. It felt strange, and she realized how grim she’d become in the last few days.

  “Maybe it’s because I do what he wants.”

  Teague chuckled. “Well, that could be it. We’re probably slower on the uptake. I think he gets impatient because we can’t read his mind the way he seems to read ours.”

  The fact that he sounded amused but accepting of Cutter’s unusual talents made her smile again.

  Yes, she had been unrelentingly grim of late, she admitted to herself as they got out of the car and walked the short distance to her door.

  “I don’t usually cry a lot.”

  She wasn’t sure why she’d felt compelled to say it, to explain to him that the teary-eyed woman he’d first met wasn’t the usual her. Nor did she want to analyze the compulsion just now. She tried to concentrate instead on getting her door unlocked and open. It was inordinately hard for some reason, the key slipping from her fingers, then seeming to not fit the lock.

  “You have reason,” Teague said as he reached out and took the key from her and slid it into the lock without fuss. And she just stood there and let him.

  The door swung open on its own, as it always did. For a moment she just stood there. It seemed impossible to step inside, where nothing had changed, where there was no sign of the chaos that was churning around inside her. How could it be so impervious, so unaffected by her life being turned upside down? It didn’t seem right, there should be some sign.

  “Yes,” she said, “I do have reason. Amber’s my best friend, and I miss her so much. I miss talking to her.” Her mouth twisted slightly. “Venting to her. I suppose guys don’t do that to their friends?”

  “Sure we do, only we call it unloading and there’s usually alcohol involved,” Teague said. “It’s a necessary function that keeps us from going airborne now and then.”

  It so perfectly described how she’d been feeling that she nearly laughed herself. Which again reminded her how far she’d been from feeling anything pleasant since Amber had disappeared.

  “That’s it, exactly,” she said. And then, before she really thought about it, she said, “Will you come in? I can make coffee.”

  He hesitated. Long enough that she felt embarrassed at having made the offer.

  “Don’t feel you have to. I’m not going to shatter if you leave me alone.”

  “I never thought you would. Stubborn,” he reminded her.

  “I was holding up all right before you and Foxworth came along. Despite the crying.”

  He nodded. “Funny, isn’t it, how help sometimes makes us weaker?”

  “Weaker?”

  “I wasn’t saying you’re weak,” he said hastily.

  “I know.”

  What was funny, Laney thought, was how she was so certain he wasn’t casting any aspersion on her with that. He wasn’t calling her weak, because he wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t. In fact, she had the distinct feeling he was speaking more of his own experience than her situation.

  But it made him step inside and close the door behind him, even if it was only so he could explain.

  “I just meant if you’re in a rough spot, and you hold it together, then if you finally do get help, all of a sudden you can’t do it anymore.”

  Yes, he was talking from personal experience, Laney thought as she took the keys back from him and put them on the small table by the door, placed there for that purpose. She wondered again what horrors he had seen, had been through. What he’d been through with his sister vanishing and his parents’ resulting blame and destruction was bad enough. But then his best friend dying like that. That was an image she shied violently away from; it hit far too close to the bone for her just now.

  But she guessed there were probably more. She knew there had to be more. Horrors of war and all that.

  “Maybe,” she said, “it’s just that you’re too tired after holding it together, if it takes all you’ve got. You have to let down when you can, when there’s finally help.”

  He looked at her for a moment, and she thought she saw a trace of surprise in his eyes before he nodded. Had he not expected her to understand? Or had he just not thought about it like that?

  “Maybe.”

  He sounded almost grateful, and it hit her that he had been worried she had really taken offense at the thought of being called weak. And she thought it was nothing less than a miracle that he was as sane and normal as he was. It spoke to a strength she wasn’t sure she herself had, no matter what her folks said. Here she was, so rattled by this, when he’d been through much, much worse and was still functioning. Was, in fact, helping others. That said a great deal about who this man was. No wonder she was so attracted to him, she thought, admitting it in so many words for the first time, albeit silently.

  And that admission brought with it the answer to her own earlier question about why she’d been so set on him realizing she wasn’t just some weepy woman who was so weak all she could do when confronted with a problem was continually cry. She had wanted him to see her as more than just the woman Foxworth was helping.

  When she set the mug of coffee on the eating bar in front of him, the sharp sound of it felt like punctuation to a new determination.

  “No more crying, I promise,” she said. “It’s useless.”

  “Crying is fine as a release. Sometimes I envy women because it’s easier for them. And I get it when they say they feel better after.” He took a sip, nodded as if in approval of the taste, and set the mug down before adding, “But as a long-term strategy, yeah, it sucks.”

  Laney stared at him for a long moment. “You,” she finally said, “are almost as good at this comfort thing as Cutter is.”

  She didn’t know if it was the sense of what she’d said or the unfussy way she’d said it that made him laugh, but she’d take it either way.

  “Not something I’m often accused of. I usually have no idea what to do or say.”

  “You did back at Foxworth,” she said, then wondered why on earth she’d brought that up. If that flooding warmth she’d felt when he’d put his arms around her, if that shocking zap she’d felt when he’d touched her hand later in the office only went one way, then she was opening the door to some pretty serious humiliation here.

  “I know you were only trying to make me feel better, not so alone, I know that that’s all it was, don’t worry, I won’t misinterpret, I mean I didn’t think you were—”

  “That’s how it started.”

  His flat statement cut off her ridiculous spate of words. She usually didn’t chatter mindlessly, either; that was more Amber’s department.

  And then the sense of his welcome interruption hit her. “Started?”

  “I know it was out of line, and I apol—”

  “Don’t.” She cut him off as he had her. “Don’t apologize.”

  For a long, silent moment s
he just looked at him. Her common sense warred with need, a need unlike anything she’d felt before. As if the few men before him were just practice, and finally she was feeling the real thing. She told herself it was that she was so off-kilter, so worried, and he was strong and solid and everything she wasn’t just now. That was what pulled her to him so powerfully. She needed his strength, his calm, that was all.

  “I needed exactly what you gave,” she said, certain she’d resolved to simply thank him and move on. What came out next was totally different. “But I wanted more.”

  “Laney—”

  “I’m not one to live dangerously. I’m the cautious one.”

  “Then stay that way,” he said, and there was no mistaking the warning in his voice.

  “That was before I met you.”

  “Don’t stir this fire, Laney.”

  Her heart leaped at his words. Did he mean there was a fire to stir, that he felt it, too, this electric connection? Was that what he’d meant when he said he’d started out only wanting to comfort? That it had changed, for him as well as for her, into something much different? Much...more?

  “I know this is— I know I’m a job, a client.”

  “Ethics,” he said, his voice tight. “Quinn’s big on that.”

  She hadn’t quite thought of that. That he could get in trouble if they crossed whatever line Quinn set for dealing with clients. It was like stepping into a cold shower. Or back from the edge of a precipice from which there was no return. Where nothing else had succeeded in tamping down this strange new feeling, the thought of getting him in trouble with his boss did.

  The emotional trouble she could have gotten herself into didn’t seem to matter at all.

  Chapter 20

  “It could have been me.”

  Laney’s quiet words drew him out of his brooding contemplation of his nearly empty coffee mug. He wondered if he was really resisting taking that last sip because once the mug was empty, he had no reason to stay and every reason to go.