much she valued her former friend’s advice, she’d sounded like Nick ordering a nightmare-terrified girl to just forget her fears, as if they were not worth a damn. She resented that Jen considered her earthshaking question nonsense.
It seemed as if Jen were shuffling her aside as a friend, but had she also done so as a doctor? Despite Jen’s fervent claims, maybe she did need another doctor’s opinion. But it would have to be fast, because this—unlike what Jen had counseled—couldn’t wait.
4
Nick borrowed Tara’s truck so he and Beamer could take Claire to school. When he returned, he found a hearty breakfast of pancakes and sausage waiting for him. Tara had laid out a bright woven place mat and a matching cloth napkin. A ceramic vase held orange and yellow wildflowers. Tara looked a bit wild, too, beautiful but exhausted and windblown. She’d evidently been outside to pick the flowers. She wore no makeup and her hair was tousled as if she’d just gotten out of bed. Nick shifted his legs under the table. The woman got to him in more ways than one.
“This looks great. I didn’t mean to oversleep,” he told her.
“You were able to spend some time with Claire before school, and that’s what mattered. I’m sure you’re jet-lagged. Is the Hide-A-Bed okay?”
Biting back a tease that he’d rather have her bed, he dug into the pile of pancakes. “That foldaway mattress is not half hard enough for what I’m used to. I’m going to have to bring in some dirt and rocks to approximate what I’ve been sleeping on. It’s even weird to be sitting at a table to eat.”
She poured him a glass of orange juice and set it beside his coffee. She seemed to keep her distance, not physically but emotionally. Polite but careful. Kind but distracted. Lack of sleep, or worry he was going to take Claire and Beamer and leave the area, he decided. He hoped she’d didn’t lump him with the kind of guys who took their kids and ran. It did get to him that Claire had just started second grade and liked her teacher and had friends in her class. But she’d learn to settle into a new situation if she had to. Whatever he decided was the reasonable thing to do, Claire would have to go along.
Beamer shifted his position on the floor, tipped his head and perked up one ear, as if interested in their conversation. Tara was washing dishes at the sink, banging things around pretty good. Yeah, she was upset about something.
“Great pancakes. So, how did you get into your line of work?” he asked, spearing a sausage link. He hoped not only to get to know her better, but to discuss something harmless. “Not many P.I.s specialize in tracing kids who are snatched by their dads.”
“Or their mothers’ boyfriends, as the case may be,” she added. “Three reasons, I guess. First of all, I’ve always loved puzzles…finding something hidden in a picture, like in those old Highlights for Children magazine years ago. Riddles, cryptograms, Sudoku, you name it. But more importantly, my uncle snatched my nine-year-old cousin, Linc, who was my age and to whom I was pretty close. When we were about fourteen, I suppose Linc really started to question or challenge his dad about their situation. My uncle just dropped Linc back at my aunt’s house, then disappeared again. But Linc was completely changed—out of control, defensive, nasty. He even felt his mother had betrayed him. He ran away when he was seventeen, and my aunt had no way of knowing what happened. We still don’t know if he’s dead or alive,” she said, her voice snagging.
Well, he thought, wrong topic choice again. He stood with his dirty plate and went closer to put it on the counter. “Tough memories. Sorry I stirred them up.”
“No, it’s fine. I—That’s not the only reason I started Finders Keepers. I went on to get my degree in social work from the University of Colorado. Well, you knew that, of course, since Alex and I roomed together. I specialized in family relations and human development.”
Damn, but he noted that tears glazed her eyes again. Was Claire’s guardian this unstable? He hoped he wasn’t making her uncomfortable. From the first he’d felt as instinctively protective of her as he did toward Claire.
“I worked with cases of abuse and neglect,” she went on, going back to washing dishes with a vengeance. She had a dishwasher right there, but maybe she needed something to do with her pent-up energy. “I placed kids in foster care and tried to get families reunified whenever possible, especially kids put back with their biological parents.”
“However draining the work was, you must have felt you were doing good—like you are now with Finders Keepers and with Claire.”
“I saw some pretty bad situations,” she said, nodding, “so I hated the job almost as much as I loved it. I tended to get so involved with my cases that I always took my work home with me. When I stumbled on a couple of cases that involved ex-husbands snatching their own kids and saw how tragic that was for the left-behinds—professional lingo for the mothers of the kids—I started my own specialty firm.”
“Have you ever retrieved snatched kids for their fathers when their mothers took off with them?”
“You know, I haven’t, but I would if the case seemed right. It’s just that word about my services has spread among women, I guess.”
“Did you get a lot of family support for all this?”
“Not really. When I became engaged, my fiancé didn’t think that profession was appropriate for a Lohan wife, so I really had to stand firm with him.”
Beamer jumped to his feet and growled. They both turned to look at the dog as he went to the double sliding glass doors and stood alert. With Beamer, that meant a stiff stance, intense expression and another long, low growl.
“Someone must be coming up the road,” Nick said, and walked toward the sliding doors to the deck. He looked through the glass in one direction, then the other. “I didn’t hear a vehicle and don’t see one either.”
“Elk come into the yard about this time but, as I said, he barks at them, and doesn’t usually growl. There’s been a fox around here lately, too.”
“I don’t see a darn thing, but Beamer’s looking up into the tree line.”
He walked back into the kitchen and leaned over the sink next to Tara to look out and up through the window in front of her toward the thick clumps of pines and aspens above the house. He thought he saw a glint of bright blue in the early slant of sun. A blue jay? Or could Claire’s night fear have been prophetic? Maybe she’d seen a hunter or hiker up there and translated it into a bad dream about Clay. It was hunting season, after all, deer and elk for archery, and wild turkeys and blue grouse for muzzle-loading rifles. Years ago, they’d had trouble with careless hunters too near these isolated houses.
“I’m planning to go over to a friend’s house today and get my truck out of his garage,” Nick told her, “but I think I’ll take Beamer for a walk first. He’s obviously eager to track whatever creature’s up there. Be back in a few minutes. You do keep all the doors locked, don’t you?”
“Always. Just habit from some of the bad scenarios I’ve heard about through my cases, though I know your mom seldom locked the doors.”
“Be back soon,” he repeated, and took Beamer’s thirty-foot lead and working collar off the peg on the wall. Beamer immediately stood at attention. He’d always been eager to work, but then, he’d always been able to sense danger, too.
After Tara locked up behind Nick, she went to her office and
