A Trick of the Light Read online

  “You always stop by the house like that?”

  “No.” Dylan lowered his head. “Never.”

  “Why this morning?”

  “I … I realized I need to spend more time with my son.”

  “Uh-huh.” Yochem jotted something down. “Did you see him before you left for work?”

  “No. I head to work before anyone else is up.”

  “You don’t have breakfast with your family?”

  “No. It’s … awkward.”

  “You and your wife fight a lot?”

  “No, nothing like that. We just don’t … talk much.”

  It was too hard to keep a conversation going.

  What do you have planned for the day, Wanda?

  Nothing.

  Why don’t you take Teddy to the park? He’d probably enjoy being around kids, and maybe you could meet other stay-at-home mothers.

  Maybe.

  You could get some sun; you look like you never leave the house.

  Why, so I can look pampered and spoiled? So people think you’re so good to me, all I have to do is lie around in the sun?

  I am good to you. And you could lie in the sun all day if you wanted.

  She’d push her chair away with a screeching sound across the tile and stomp off muttering to herself. He hated when she got like that. He did take care of his family.

  Had he ever really loved her? Or had his feelings turned cold over the years? Hell, maybe he’d always been cold. He’d never looked at her and known he’d die for her. He’d never held her and not wanted to let go. Even when they had shared a bed, he’d never spent the night wrapped around her.

  Sometimes the thought of going home had made his throat feel tight. He kept doing one more thing before leaving. Or he’d pull out the Lego set he’d ostensibly bought for Teddy and start building something. He’d escaped in Legos as a child. But it hadn’t been an escape now. Or had it?

  “Too messy for you?” Yochem asked, making Dylan realize he’d started rearranging the array of pencils and pens lying on the cluttered desk.

  “Sorry.” Didn’t they say bad habits returned under stress? When he was a kid, he’d kept his room in perfect order because it was the only aspect of his life he had any control over.

  “You ever abuse the kid? Am I going to find anything when I run a check on you?”

  Dylan shot to his feet. “Why the hell are you running a check on me when my son is out there somewhere? Why aren’t you calling in every cop you have in this station to find him? What about the FBI? CIA?”

  “Sit down, Mr. McKain. First of all, I’m running this operation, not you. Secondly, we’re going to be checking on you, your housekeeper, and everyone who has anything to do with the kid. Most missing children are taken by a parent or someone close to them. That’s the fact, like it or not.”

  Dylan remained standing. “That means you’re looking at me as a suspect.”

  “We’re looking at everyone until they’re eliminated. It’s nothing personal, it’s just the way it is. Something terrible happens, and we gotta walk the line between feeling sorry for the person closest to the victim and suspecting him. If you think it’s tough, put yourself in my place. Now, if we can continue …” He waited until Dylan slowly dropped back into his chair.

  “Do you really think you’re in a worse position than a parent who can’t find his child?” Dylan asked.

  Yochem seemed to run his words through his mind. “It’s a saying, and not the right one for the situation.” That was as close as the man could get to an apology. “All right, Mrs. McKain left the house at seven, and she was back by eleven. That’s four hours she had. If she was planning to run with him, she probably just tucked him away somewhere safe until she could get back to him. She couldn’t have gotten far unless she had help. Who could have helped her? Friends? Family? Could she have been seeing anyone?”

  “Was she having an affair, no, I doubt it. She doesn’t have any friends, and her only family is her mother who’s in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s.”

  “Which one?”

  “Woodsworth. I’ll talk to her —”

  “We’ll talk with her. We’ll circulate Teddy’s picture, canvas the area. Somebody had to see something. I know you want to help, but the best thing you can do is sit tight and think about any place she might have stashed him. You probably know the place, somewhere she mentioned in passing.”

  Dylan pulled a business card from his gold case and wrote his cell number on it. “I want news of anything, even a rumor.”

  “You’ll go nuts if we call you with every lead. We’re going to get maybe hundreds, and most, if not all of them, are going to be zippo. We’re going to need to search your house, see if we can find anything that’ll point us in the right direction.”

  “Fine. I’ll let my housekeeper know you have free reign.” He started to rise, then halted. “The woman Wanda hit …”

  “Chloe Samms?”

  “Yeah. When she … came back, she said, ‘Where’s Teddy?’ It probably doesn’t mean anything …”

  “We’ll check into it, see if there’s any connection.”

  Dylan walked out into the sunny afternoon and stopped. For the first time in his life, he didn’t know what to do. Wanda was dead. It was unreal that she was gone, that he’d never see her again. He loosened his tie; the damned thing was choking him. He walked to his black Mercedes, pausing to look at his reflection on the tinted window. On the outside he still looked together, successful, and in control. Inside he’d cracked into a hundred pieces.

  He couldn’t go to work. Everyone would be asking questions. Jodie would start crying, and he wasn’t good at handling tears. As sweet and generous as his assistant was, she tended to mother him. He didn’t need a mother; one had been more than enough.

  He got into his car and drove. Inside he felt hollow. Something would click. He’d remember a comment Wanda had made or someplace she liked to go.

  The hospital was the last place she would have hidden Teddy. Yet, there Dylan was, pulling into the parking lot and walking to the emergency room waiting area.

  Six women were huddled together crying. A part of him wanted to cry too, but guilt, sorrow and fear had him too tangled up inside. He walked to the check-in desk.

  “I need to know how Chloe Samms is doing.”

  All six women got up as one and walked over to him. A blond woman with a leopard-spotted bow in her blond hair said through a teary voice, “You know our Chloe?” A miniature dachshund popped out of the zebra-striped bag slung over her shoulder.

  “My wife was the one who hit her. I wanted to see how she was doing.”

  “I’m Chloe’s aunt, Stella. This is my sister, that would make her Chloe’s other aunt, Lena,” she said, gesturing to a tall woman with upswept red hair.

  “I’m her grandma, Marilee,” a petite, old … older lady said, nudging her way upfront. “You’re always forgetting me.”

  “I didn’t forget you, Mama, I just hadn’t gotten to you yet. You always jump in before I can.”

  “Well, maybe you should introduce me first then. Show some respect for an old lady. Yeah,” she said to Dylan, “you can call me an old lady — I’ve outgrown ‘older’.”

  Had the woman read his mind? “About Chloe …” Dylan said.

  “Chloe! Our sweet Chloe. We raised her from a little girl, didn’t we, Lena? Nothing ever happened to her. When we sensed something, we warned her. We promised her mama’s spirit we’d take care of her, love her as our own.”

  “And we did,” Marilee said.

  Lena said, “Remember how she used to cry whenever we pulled up the crab traps or caught fish? And that first time we caught her taking the bait fish out of the well and setting them free? We explained they were meant for bait, and she nodded like she understood and all, and then she set the buggers free on the sly.”

  “I raised her too, don’t forget,” said Marilee. “Made her favorite get-well soup whenever she ailed.”
>
  “She hates pickle soup, Mama,” Stella whispered.

  “Does not! She smiles and thanks me every time I bring some over.”

  “About Chloe …” Dylan said again.

  “It’s all my fault,” a petite lady in a black jumpsuit said. “I should have warned her better.”

  “Aw, Gisella, how could you have known? You had a feeling, nothing specific.”

  Gisella nodded, dabbing her eyes. “You know how they can be sometimes? Nothing concrete.”

  “Excuse me,” Dylan said. “But how is she?”

  “They brought her back from the dead,” Lena said in a deep, throaty voice. “Did you know that?”

  “Yes. I … I was there.” It was all a blur of sounds and images now.

  Before he could get any of his questions answered, they all moved in on him and demanded answers of their own.

  “How did it happen?”

  The dachshund made a yipping sound, and Stella said, “Rascal wants to know whose fault it was.”

  “You know how our Chloe can get lost in her own world, she gets that la-tee-da face of hers. Maybe she didn’t see the car coming.”

  “Maybe she was trying to save some lizard from getting run over.”

  “Did the police make any arrests?”

  He reigned in his impatience and answered them, explaining without getting into too much detail.

  They wanted details.

  “How fast was your wife going?”

  “Why was she running from you?”

  “Have you found your son?”

  Dylan took a breath. “Listen, I just came to find out —”

  “Ladies, you can see Chloe now,” a nurse said. “Two at a time, please, and just for a few minutes.”

  All six crowded forward, a tangle of colors and arms, until the two aunts took control and walked forward. Marilee snagged Lena’s arm and pulled her back, stepping forward with surprising agility. Not to be bested, Lena slipped up beside them. The nurse simply shook her head and led them away. Wise woman.

  Gisella had dark, curly hair and one of those little-girl faces. She walked right up to him, and even though she was at least a foot and a half shorter, her studied perusal made him uneasy.

  “You know, Dylan McKain, you have a lot of repressed emotions inside. You need to free them. In doing so, you’ll free yourself.” She waved her hand in front of his stomach, tsk-tsking. “Your second chakra is a mess.”

  He caught himself glancing down. “I don’t have a … chakra. Or repressed emotions. I just want to know how Chloe is doing.”

  She stared into his eyes, and he felt the urge to close them and keep her out. “You got plenty of repressed emotions: anger, guilt — that’s a biggie. Some sexual anxiety as well. That’s where the second chakra comes in. Our seven chakras are centers of force where we receive and transmit life energies, you know.”

  He leaned closer to her, gritting his teeth. “Can you see frustration?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, not backing away an inch. “If you’d like, I can read your feet. They’ll tell me more. Maybe we can get to the root of the problem.”

  “I don’t have a problem with my root.” He blinked, realizing what he’d said. “I just want to know how Chloe is.”

  Loud sobbing preceded the two aunts and the grandmother as they returned. The knot in his stomach doubled.

  “How is she?” Gisella asked, already crying.

  “She’s so banged up,” Marilee wailed. “Bruised, a gash on her lip, a scrape on her cheek, those beautiful curls all matted with blood. Girls, she has her boo-boo face on.”

  “Oh, no, the boo-boo face!” Gisella said.

  “What’s a boo-boo face?” Dylan asked.

  Stella said, “Ever since she was a girl, we named her faces. Her expressions,” she clarified at Dylan’s puzzled look. “The cookie jar face, when she’s been caught doing something. The bulldozer face when she’s stubborn and determined.”

  Lena said, “They won’t let anyone else see her now. The nurse said we were too much, making her cry and all. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow when they release her.”

  Dylan couldn’t wait until tomorrow. He had to find out if she knew anything about Teddy and to see for himself that she was all right.

  “She’s okay, well, as much as can be expected,” Lena said, finally answering Dylan’s original question. “Shaken up, of course. The impact shocked her heart into stopping, poor thing. The man who gave her CPR saved her life. She didn’t have any internal injuries, thank you, God. They’re gonna keep her here for the night, they said, to make sure she’s all right and all.”

  “Who saved her life?” Marilee asked. “We ought to do something for him.”

  Lena looked over at Dylan, then away. “The medics didn’t get his name in all the confusion.”

  Dylan said, “I want to help out with the medical bills, give her some money to get by while she recovers.”

  Lena wrapped long, leathery fingers around his arm. Her deep blue eyes crinkled with warmth. “That’s just so sweet of you, hon, but it’s not necessary ‘tall. Chloe’s got medical coverage, and we’re here to help her get by.” She looked at the rest of the women. “Somebody’s got to get good with figures around here, though.”

  “Figures?”

  “She’s an accountant. The only left-brained one in the bunch, but we love her anyway. Got her own little business on 951, full of plants, you can hardly look anywhere without seeing green. Our girl’s going to be all right. Give me your name and number, hon, and we’ll give you a little jingle and let you know how she’s doing. Ooh, an architect.” Lena fingered his business card, then tucked it into her bra. “That unusual mix of logic and creativity. We’ll tell Chloe you stopped by. She’ll appreciate that, I’m sure.”

  Without giving himself time to think about it, he walked through the doorway that led to the emergency room. The many cubicles were separated by blue cloth curtains.

  “We’re going to move you into a regular room for the night,” a woman’s voice said. “Just rest for a while; we’ll come back and get you settled in.”

  “Thank you,” a soft, female voice said.

  Somehow he knew it was Chloe. His chest tightened as he stepped back while the nurse passed.

  Chloe looked pale, and her mouth was drawn tight in what he hoped wasn’t pain. The scrape across her cheek and cut on her lip were shiny with salve. She opened eyes still damp from tears and looked at him.

  “You,” she said.

  He turned around to see if she meant someone standing behind him. Nobody was there. He took a step closer, feeling less certain than he had a few seconds earlier.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Dylan McKain.”

  “I’m Chloe Samms —” She rolled her eyes. “Well, you must know that.” She lifted her nose and inhaled. “You’re the one, aren’t you?”

  “The one?” The one who’d nearly gotten her killed.

  The smile that lit those light blue eyes jumpstarted his heart. “You saved my life.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Chloe sat up in her bed. Ow, ow, ow. Don’t give away the pain and screw up the moment. The man standing next to her reached out to steady the tubes and wires attached to her body. He had a long face, with a strong jawline and wide-set eyes. She never went for classically handsome, and classically handsome never went for her either. Maybe it was because he’d saved her life, but she felt an enormous pull toward him anyway. That woodsy cologne she remembered blended with faded sweat.

  His intense brown eyes were troubled. She couldn’t understand why, not when he’d done something wonderful. She’d come back to life and seen him standing nearby. She’d known that his mouth had been on hers, that his breath had brought her back, and that his hands had pumped her heart into action again.

  “Don’t you remember?” she asked, watching him trying to put some puzzle together.

  His focus shifted inward. “It all happened so fast.
My wife … you lying there … someone said you were dead. Then I walked over and …” He looked at her, his expression dumbstruck. “I did. I wasn’t thinking, wasn’t even aware. I took a CPR class when my son was born, but I’ve never used it. Until now.”

  Wife. Well, of course he’d be married, a guy like him. And what did it matter anyway? She leaned forward and took his hands. “Thank you. I mean, that seems so inadequate, you saved my life.” She shook her head. “Can I hug you?”

  “There’s something you should know …” he was saying, but leaned forward and let her slip her arms around him.

  His body was strong and hard. She closed her eyes and savored the singular pleasure of being held by a man. Her ribs ached, her body felt bruised, but the way he held her was better than any medicine. She felt his large hands splayed across her back, holding her close against him. Despite that, she sensed his awkwardness at the situation. Before she was ready to let him go, he backed away.

  “Can I do something for you?” she asked, knowing there was nothing she could do to repay him. “I’ll take care of your accounting needs for the rest of your life. I’ll tutor your children in math. Anything.”

  He rubbed his jaw, not meeting her gaze. “You should know that it was my wife Wanda who hit you.”

  “Oh. I didn’t see what happened to the driver. It all happened so fast.” She fiddled with the edge of the thin sheet, feeling the terror all over again. Her hands were black from the asphalt, knuckles scraped, and nails broken. “Is your wife all right?”

  He looked away, pain and disbelief on his features. “She died at the scene.”

  “Oh … I am so sorry.”

  He swallowed hard before meeting her gaze. “I am too.” He cocked his head. “You mean that, don’t you? About being sorry?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “But she nearly killed you.”

  “She didn’t hit me on purpose.”

  He looked at her as though she were some strange specimen. She mentally replayed the conversation. Nope, nothing strange.

  “No, she didn’t,” he said. “It was my fault.”

  She rubbed her forehead. It was sore, and she winced. “I’m not sure what you mean.”