Operation Reunion

“Their father told me the first part. The last part I saw for myself. Chad used Kayla from the day he realized she was smarter than he was. I don’t know how many school papers he conned her into writing for him, even though she was two years younger. Or how many times he convinced her to lie for him, cover for him, with their parents. A couple of times she even took the blame for something he did when he was skating too close to the edge with their father.”

“How long did that go on?”

“Until I was able to convince her she wasn’t doing him any favors.”

Again Quinn studied him for a moment. “You’ve always had her best interests at heart.”

It didn’t seem to be a question, but it reminded Dane he should be worrying about those best interests now. “Who are you? And what’s all this crap about helping Kayla find Chad?”

“It’s what we do.”

“Find missing persons? You some kind of private investigator? Because she’s been there, and she got taken. I proved that and convinced her to give up on them,” he ended with a pointed glare at Quinn.

He didn’t mention the large insurance policy their parents had had, with Kayla and Chad as sole beneficiaries. It wasn’t a huge fortune, but it was enough to tempt unscrupulous types. Hayley Cole seemed innocent enough, but there was an edge about this man that made him wonder. He just hoped Kayla hadn’t been foolish enough to say anything about the money. He didn’t think she would; she might be foolishly obsessed, but she was far from a fool, and she’d learned her lesson after that P.I. ripped her off.

Of course, he also didn’t know how much of that money was left after ten years of pouring it into her endless search.

“No, we’re not private investigators,” Quinn said. “We don’t work for just anybody. Only people we believe in.”

“And you do it for free? Right.” He’d slipped from skepticism into outright sarcasm, but Dane didn’t care. He might be through with Kayla, but that didn’t mean he didn’t care at all; he couldn’t turn it off like a faucet.

“That’s why we’re very particular about what we take on.” The man’s mouth quirked wryly. “Unless it’s somebody Cutter brings to us.”

Dane blinked. “The dog?”

Quinn sighed. “It’s a long story. But the bottom line is, he’s better than a lie detector.”

The whimsy of that, coming from a man like Quinn Fox-worth, almost made Dane smile. But his own reaction made him even more wary; he knew predators often used animals to lull their targets into trusting them. They didn’t seem the type, but did the type ever really seem like the type? He shook his head before his thoughts got even more muddled.

“I think your canine lie detector misfired on this one,” he said.

“Kayla mentioned you and Chad didn’t get along. Were there other reasons?”

Dane’s jaw tightened. “Nothing that has anything to do with this. Why should I believe anything you say?”

Quinn looked at him thoughtfully. He pulled out a business card and handed it to him. “I’m not going to give you answers you’ll question. Find your own answers. Do that homework.”

“You can count on it,” Dane said, letting more than a hint of warning into his voice. “And you stay away from Kayla until I do.”

Chapter 4

Dane leaned back in his chair, staring at the computer monitor, tapping his pen on the note pad at his side. The top page was full of scribbled notes; his search had been easier than he’d expected. And quicker. It had only taken him a couple of hours to become convinced.

He’d ignored most of the stuff on the website for the Fox-worth Foundation. Anybody, as he knew better than most, could put together a website and put anything they wanted on it. It was a sad fact that if it looked genuine enough, far too many people took it at face value. The Foxworth site gave away very little information, however, as if anybody who went looking for it had to already know what they did.

But he’d noted the areas across the country that had contact numbers for them and then called local authorities in those places. Many had never heard of the foundation and some had heard of them but not had any contact with them, but a few had dealt with them directly, and it was those he concentrated on.

The results were impressive, to say the least. More than one cop or D.A. he spoke to admitted they’d been wary at first, or even irritated that Foxworth was treading their turf, but because most of the cases were cold anyway, they’d decided to let it play out, figuring the amateurs wouldn’t be able to do much anyway.

“Boy, were we wrong,” one detective told him. “They wrapped up a rape and murder case we’d had to move on from years ago. And they didn’t care about taking credit for it either, which smoothed some ruffled feathers around here.”

And that seemed to be the theme from the official side. And there were enough stories like that to make him begin to believe the Foxworth Foundation might be for real. So he’d gone on to track down stories about those cases and then find some of the people involved, the people who had turned to Foxworth for help.

The stories there were even more impressive, and the praise imparted was heartfelt and moving. Not only for the success rate, but for the kind of things they took on. From reuniting long separated family members to helping a troubled teenager find the right path, from giving a lost soul a new lease on life to giving a grieving family a reason they could bear for someone’s suicide.

And then there was the stolen locket. It was the only memento an adopted child had had of her real mother, and it seemed Foxworth had set upon finding that as wholeheartedly as they had what some would consider more important cases.

He shook his head and sat upright. What he should be focusing on, he told himself, was the fact that on more than one occasion, Foxworth had been instrumental in proving the innocence of people suspected of crimes. Nothing quite as grim as Kayla’s parents’ murders, but still….

Maybe they could. They seemed to be very good at what they did, and he couldn’t deny he liked the idea of what they did.

He picked up the business card and looked at it for a moment. He thought of the stories he’d heard, how many people had said simply, “Someone gave me their card and told me they could help.”

He picked up the phone again. This time he dialed the number on the card. To his surprise, Quinn Foxworth himself answered.

“It’s a policy we have,” the man explained. “Each card has our own number on it. We like to maintain consistency of contact.”

“Don’t you get a lot of spam calls that way?”

“Some. Better that than make somebody who’s feeling helpless jump through the hoops of a big phone menu system.”

He heard sounds in the background, some equipment running and the familiar harsh honk of a heron passing overhead; Quinn was obviously outside.

“What if you can’t answer right then?” he asked.

“Then it rolls over to our head office. But a live person will always answer.”

“That’s in St. Louis?”

“Been doing that homework, I see.”

“Yes. Detective Saunders in Phoenix says hello, by the way, and Mrs. Louis sends her love.”

Quinn laughed. “I thought you might be thorough.”

“Yes.”

He heard the sound of a door and the background noises ended. Dane wondered where Quinn was, where he’d stepped inside.

“So have you decided we’re who we say we are and do what we say we do?” Quinn asked.

“Let’s just say I’m open to the idea.”

“Fair enough. And I’m ready to believe that you had nothing to do with Kayla’s murders.”

Dane went still. “What?”

“Your alibi was solid.”

“Yes, it was.” He’d been with five other kids and a teacher at a college prep study session at the time of death, and he’d never left or been out of sight. He had been home barely fifteen minutes when Kayla’s horrific screams from next door had sent him racing over there. “What the hell are you doing investigating me?”

“We’re working for Kayla. We’ll do whatever it takes to get her the answers she wants.”

“Even if it means wasting time on innocent people?”

“If Kayla’s right, that means the real guilty person is still out there.”

Dane couldn’t argue with that. It was something he thought about often, even if Kayla didn’t seem to.

And it was the size of that “if” that always threw him.

“Ready to tell me why you and Chad Tucker didn’t get along?”

“Hasn’t Kayla already told you?”

“I’d like your version.”

“Why?”

“We don’t build the kind of success rate we have by only listening to one side.”

“Fair enough,” Dane said. “I didn’t like him. Part of it was that in school I was one of the nerdier kids, and Chad was one of the cool guys.”

“You don’t look like much of a nerd.”

“That’s because Kayla challenged me to change that.”

“Challenged you?”

“She said we couldn’t change the fact that people judged on appearance and bought into stereotypes—except by breaking that stereotype. So I started running, lifting weights to get into shape. Found I liked it, and it cleared my head for the tech stuff. And she was right. People looked at me differently, tolerated the…geek in me because that wasn’t all I was.”

“So she’s as wise as she seems.”

“Wiser. She was fourteen at the time. Still just the girl next door, who felt like the little sister I never had.”

“But she already had a big brother.”

“Yeah,” Dane said, his tone sour. “And Chad didn’t like me either.”

“Not surprising, if you saw through him.”

Quinn really was open to the idea that Chad might not be the good guy Kayla insisted he was, Dane thought. So he’d meant it when he’d said they weren’t taking her viewpoint as the only one. Encouraged by that, he went on.

“When Kayla turned sixteen and her folks let her date, Chad kept trying to set Kayla up with his best friend, Troy Reid. I’d started to look at her differently then, and he wanted to get her away from me. Her folks went along with him—they adored Troy, he was the catch of the whole town, and they thought I was too…something. Her mom, especially.”

“But it didn’t work. Kayla stayed with you.”

“She’s incredibly…loyal.”

He stumbled over the word, remembering how he’d thrown the word at her the day he’d finally walked away.

“Were there other reasons Chad didn’t like you?”

Dane had the uncomfortable feeling Quinn already knew. What was that they told lawyers, about never asking a question you don’t already know the answer to? Hell, maybe this Quinn was a lawyer, for all he knew.

“He got into some trouble, a couple of times, right after they moved here.”

“Stole a bike, joyriding in a senior citizen’s car, breaking into a convenience store for cigarettes?”

So he did know. Dane filed that away to remember when dealing with this man.

“The bike was mine.”

“And you reported it.”

“My folks did. I didn’t care all that much by then—I’d started to drive, but it was a really good bike. And I remembered Chad asking how much it was worth.”

“And you told the police that?”

“Yes. And they tracked it down, found who he’d sold it to.” Dane jammed his fingers through his hair. “Even then he blamed somebody else. Said Rod Warren, a local punk, had put him up to it. But Chad was no angel, no matter what Kayla thinks.”

“Do you think he could have killed them?”

Dane sighed. How long had he been wrestling with that thought? How many times had be been on the verge of telling Kayla just that, only stopping himself because he couldn’t bear to see her face if he turned on her. Because that’s how she’d see it, he was sure.

In the end, he gave Quinn the answer that had always been his bottom line, even as he realized it stemmed more from his love for his own parents and an inability to relate to the idea of parental murder, than a real belief in Chad’s innocence.

“He had no reason to. They were good people. They loved him.”

“The police seem pretty certain. He was their only real suspect.”

“I know. After he ran, I don’t think they ever really focused on anyone else.”

“They’re a small department, overloaded, and they labeled the case cold fairly quickly. Not their fault—they just don’t have the manpower.”

“Kayla keeps pushing them, but…”

“They’re down to wanted posters and flyers and the occasional search of criminal databases, probably spurred by her pushing.”

“And everything is still focused on Chad.”

“Yes.”

“But Kayla’s right about the fact that there’s an innocent explanation for all the evidence,” Dane said, feeling the need to be fair despite it all. “They found cigarette butts with his DNA outside, but he always snuck out there to smoke. His fingerprints were on the den window, but that’s how he always snuck out.”

“All true.”

“But he ran,” Dane said, coming down to the final, damning fact.

“Never a good sign.” Quinn sounded completely neutral, like a man who truly hadn’t made up his mind. “If it wasn’t Chad, who do you think it could have been?”

He had spent literally years batting that one around in his mind. “The only one who ever seemed likely to me was Rod. He tried to hang with Chad, but Troy was too straight-arrow to like him, so that got in the way. For that matter, I always wondered why Troy hung with Chad—they were so different.”

“Why did Rod seem likely?”

“He scared Kayla once when she tried to stop him from some kind of twisted experiment with setting butterflies on fire. He…touched her.”

Quinn was silent for a moment. “And did he ever again?”

“No. He did not even go near her. Ever.”

“I see,” Quinn said with what sounded like amusement and understanding. “So, is this Rod still around?”

“Yeah. And he’s been in trouble a few times. Breaking into houses and stealing cash.”

“Sounds promising. Did the police look at him?”

“They did,” he admitted. “But he gave them an alibi they believed.”

Quinn didn’t miss the inference. “But you didn’t?”

“The alibi was that he was with another kid. One he used to harass. Unmercifully. Really harsh stuff. But the kid swore Rod was with him. The cops bought it, figured the kid had no reason not to but every reason to finger Rod if he could.”

“But?”

“After that, the harassment stopped.”

“So you think he made a deal with the kid?”

Dane shrugged. “Couldn’t prove it, but it seemed…coincidental, to say the least.”

“We’ll check him out,” Quinn said.

“What the hell can you do that the cops can’t?”

“We have resources. And sources. Time. The manpower. And we have an open mind about Chad’s guilt.”

“What if you come to believe he’s guilty?”

“Then we’ll tell Kayla just that. Gently but honestly. Hayley’s good at that.”

A memory of the couple as they’d stood together this morning in the park shot through his mind. Quinn had constantly been touching Hayley, and vice versa. Little brushes, a touch on the arm, brushing back an errant strand of hair. Even when they were clearly focused on something else, they were still touching, even if it was as simple as standing so close their arms touched. Not quite joined at the hip, but close.

Dane recognized it because he and Kayla were the same way.

Pain jabbed through him, knotting his gut. He and Kayla had been the same way.

“Can you really do this? Can you put an end to this one way or another?”

He didn’t care that he sounded angry. And he knew quite well he wasn’t asking the real question. Asking that would sound more pitiful than he was willing to sound before a man like Quinn Foxworth.

“We can. And we have people who will help Kayla deal with whatever we find.”

His confidence was bracing. Dane had spent so long being unable to do anything, about Kayla or her obsession, that he’d slid into unfamiliar territory—hopelessness.

If what he’d learned today was true, these people were the best and brightest at what they did. If they couldn’t find Chad, maybe Kayla would finally admit it was over, maybe she would finally move on.

Maybe he’d moved his things a bit too soon. He tried not to let hope rise too far. But it was one last shot, the last chance for them, and he couldn’t say no.

Chapter 5

Kayla tried to tamp down her excitement as she hurriedly made her bank deposit. She wouldn’t have stopped at all if her mortgage payment wasn’t set to go out in three days. But Hayley was gracious about the errand, waiting in her car, and as soon as Kayla was done here, they’d be on their way to what Hayley called the Foxworth building.

After a friendly goodbye to the teller, who happened to be her neighbor’s niece, Kayla stuffed her deposit receipt into her purse as she groped for her keys and the fob that would unlock her car door. At the same time, she tried to shoulder the heavy glass door of the bank open.

The door suddenly swung open. “Hey, pretty lady,” a familiar voice said, “let me get that for you.”

She looked up into the face of Chad’s best friend.

“Hi, Troy.” Troy Reid gave her a wide smile as he held the door for her. “How are you?” she asked.

Troy had been part of the fabric of her life ever since they’d moved here and he and Chad had become fast friends. Her parents had both liked him, and she suspected they’d secretly hoped some of his charm and friendly manner—and his politeness with adults—would rub off on her brother.

He shrugged. “Things are pretty grim here. I’m thinking of leaving soon.”

Kayla felt a surge of empathy. “I understand.”

“I admire you, Kayla. It takes courage to stay in the place that has so many ugly memories.”

“I’m in a different house, different neighborhood. That helps. But this is home for me. You always wanted to get out of here.”

“And I did, for a while,” he said with a wry smile.

“Did I ever tell you how wonderful I thought it was that you came back to take care of your mom after your dad died?”

“Yes,” he said, then with a smile added, “but you could tell me again.”

“It was.”

She meant it. It wasn’t just guilt that made her say it; she hadn’t made it to Troy’s dad’s funeral. It had been less than a month after the murders, and she just hadn’t been able to face it. Troy understood, had been more than kind about it—something she’d always appreciated.

“But not wonderful enough to pry you away from Dane.”

She was sure, after all this time, the irritation in his voice was feigned. His laugh a split-second later proved it. And Dane was not a subject she wanted to discuss just now.

“So, you’ll be leaving again now?” she asked hurriedly. “Nothing really holding you, if you want to leave, I mean, with both your folks gone.”

Well, that was tactful, she thought. Teach her to dodge without thinking.

“And my best friend,” Troy said. “Don’t forget that.”

Kayla blinked. As if she could forget. But until it had come together like this, she hadn’t quite realized just how many losses Troy had suffered. As many, in fact, as she had, albeit not in such an ugly way.

“You know, I still don’t believe it,” he said. “I know what the police think, and he ran and all, but I still can’t believe Chad really did it.”

The words, from someone who knew Chad almost as well as she did, were balm to her battered spirit.

“Thank you,” she said fervently.

He studied her for a moment. Then, gently, he asked, “You still don’t believe it either, do you?”

“No. No, I don’t. Chad couldn’t. Wouldn’t.”

“I agree.” He sighed. “I’d have been trying to prove it myself, if it hadn’t been for my dad, then my mom getting sick.”

“I know you would,” she said.

“Are you still looking for him?”

She nodded. “And I have some help this time. Some people from the Foxworth Foundation.”

He blinked. “Who are they?”

“They specialize in helping people when no one else will. Especially with what they call lost causes.”

“Never heard of them. Are you sure they’re legit? I wouldn’t want you getting taken.”

You and Dane, she thought. “Thanks for worrying,” she said.

Troy reached out and touched her shoulder comfortingly. “If there’s anything I can do,” he said.

“They may want to talk to you, since you were Chad’s best friend.”

“Send them around. I’ll be happy to talk to them.”

“Thank you, Troy.”

She felt much better now, she thought when Troy had gotten into his car and gone. He had that knack. And knowing she wasn’t the only believer in Chad’s innocence helped.

If only Dane felt the same way.

“You really don’t know where your brother is?”

Kayla looked at the woman across the table from her. Hayley shook her head. “No. But Walker is just a born wanderer, I’m afraid. I know he loves me, and I love him, but he just has this need to see what’s over the next mountain. And eventually, he always calls.” She smiled then. “But now it feels like I have a ton of siblings. Everybody at Foxworth seems to think I need looking out for.”

Kayla couldn’t help smiling at her tone of mock grievance. “Is that good or bad?”

“Mostly good.”

“You don’t seem like you’d need a lot of protecting.”

“I don’t,” Hayley said. “But they love Quinn, and he loves me, therefore…”

She ended the simple yet moving statement with a wave of her hand.

“Nice,” Kayla said, trying to quash the now familiar ache that was always threatening to crush her, making it hard to breathe.

“Very. And unexpected.”

Hayley’s cell phone chirped the arrival of a text message. She excused herself to glance at it. Kayla guessed, from the way her mouth curved into a soft smile, that it was from Quinn.

Kayla glanced around, looking for distraction from the pain that was so close to the surface. She’d been surprised when Hayley had directed her so far out; in fact, she had begun to feel a little leery the farther they’d gone. She supposed that was why it was Hayley, because if she’d been riding with Quinn, she would have been a lot more nervous; for all his offering to help he was still a stranger.

At just the time she really began wondering if she’d made an awful mistake, they’d arrived here. They’d left the city limits of Redwood Cove and entered a more rural county area. The three-story green building was somewhat isolated in a clearing hidden by a thick stand of tall evergreens. The color blended with the trees, making it even harder to spot. There were no markings, not even a street number or name.

“Sometimes we make people unhappy with us,” Hayley had explained. “So the less obvious we are, the better.”

Off to one side was what looked to be a large warehouse, and on the far side of that, a flat concrete pad with markings painted on it, and an orange wind sock that had been barely stirring in the minimal breeze. A landing site for a helicopter.

“I would have thought you’d have an office in Seattle,” she had said.

“Quinn picked this one, and he’s not a city boy at heart,” Hayley had answered.

No trace of the city here, Kayla thought now as she sat at the large table. The windows here in the top-floor meeting room were large, giving a full view of the rest of the clearing, the trees that ringed it and the sky above. Which was blue today, a clear early-summer day that made the long gray days of winter seem worth it.

Something moved in one of the trees, a large maple amid the firs. Kayla leaned forward, curious, and her breath caught when she realized it was a bald eagle. No, two of them, she thought, a pair, looking as if they were snuggling together on the sturdy branch.

“And that,” Hayley said, “is one of the reasons Quinn set up on the third floor even though we’re only using half of the first and the second not at all. They come here often.”