More Than Words, Volume 6 Page 4
But that had to change. He hadn’t liked Karen Toller telling him that his time with Miranda was fleeting, that she’d be grown and gone before he knew it. But she was right. And this close brush with tragedy—he shuddered at the thought of how he’d feel if Miranda were the one in Jackie’s shoes right now—made him realize he didn’t want to lose any more precious time with his daughter.
There was one thing he and Miranda had in common. She’d inherited—and he’d encouraged—an interest in art. “How about going to a couple of the museums in Fort Worth?”
She sighed and laid her head back down on his shoulder. “All right.”
He could see her heart wasn’t in it. He didn’t blame her. But with any luck, they’d hear something about Jackie before morning. Toller had made it clear that if they were going to find Jackie, it would have to be sooner rather than later, while she was still here in Dallas, before she was moved out of state. He wanted Miranda home from school so he could help her deal with whatever news—good or bad—they got.
“Your mother would know what to say right now to make you feel better,” he said.
Miranda lifted her head from his shoulder again, looked directly into his eyes and said, “You never want to talk about Mom.”
He felt a raw ache in his throat. “I don’t?”
She shook her head.
He used the callused pad of his thumb to awkwardly wipe away the tears that remained on her cheeks. “Would you like to talk about her?”
“Sometimes.”
“Then we will. I know she’d be proud of what you did today. She’d also tell you that we both love you very much. And that if you ever leave the house again without telling your father where you’re going, you’ll be grounded for a week.”
Miranda managed a crooked grin. “That sounds like Mom, all right.” She leaned her head on his shoulder, and he could feel she was no longer trembling. “I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you, too, honey.” And I promise to keep you safe.
He felt Miranda relaxing in his arms and a short while later he realized she’d fallen asleep. He debated whether to wake her and decided it would be just as easy to carry her up to bed.
So he shifted her in his lap and slid his hands under her knees before standing and heading up the stairs. She was restless in his arms and when he got to the top, he suddenly decided to take her to his bedroom, instead of her own, hitting a switch in the doorway that turned on soft lamps on either side of his bed. He was afraid she’d have nightmares, and he wanted to be right there to comfort her if she did. He bent and eased her down on Amy’s side of the king-size bed, tugging her hands from around his neck.
He sat down beside his daughter, unbuckled her shoes and took them off, followed by her socks. Then he slid her feet under the sheet and pulled up the covers on the unmade bed.
Seth glanced at his watch and saw it had been more than two hours since he’d left the Dallas P.D. with Miranda. Surely there must be some news by now.
He worried about what condition Jackie would be in when she was found. If she was found. He worried about how much Jackie would reveal to his daughter about what had happened to her. He worried about how Miranda would cope with the changes in Jackie that might result from whatever horrors she experienced at the hands of the sex traffickers who’d abducted her.
Assuming she’d been abducted.
Seth realized that every one of them, from Miranda to Lieutenant Toller to himself, had assumed that Jackie had become the victim of sex traffickers. What if the battery in Jackie’s phone had gone dead and that was why she hadn’t texted Miranda? What if she’d simply run away and was afraid to call Miranda before she got where she was going? What if she’d gotten over being mad at her mother and right now she was home safe in her own bed?
That last option, Seth realized, was wishful thinking. He felt sure that Lorraine Kirkland would have called him or the police, or both of them, if Jackie had returned home, if only so she could gloat that she’d been right all along.
He glanced at his watch. It was late, but he needed to know for sure whether Jackie had come home. He pulled his cell phone from its holder on his belt, hit the speed dial for the Kirklands’ phone and waited while it rang. And rang. And rang.
“’Lo?”
“Lorraine, this is Seth. Did Jackie ever come home?”
For a long time there was no answer. At last she said. “I looked in her bed. She’s not there.” She sounded surprised. It seemed she’d already forgotten the call she’d gotten from the police. Was she drunk again? Still?
“Where is she?” Lorraine asked. “Do you know?”
Seth was careful not to let the anger he felt seep into his voice. “No, Lorraine. She’s still missing. But the police and the FBI are looking for her.”
She started to cry. “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean what I said to her.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.” It was hard not to feel sorry for Jackie’s mom. But he couldn’t help thinking that Lorraine’s behavior—her alcoholism—had contributed directly to the disaster that might be looming. “I’m sure the police will call you if there’s any news.”
Seth had a sinking feeling when he hung up the phone. Poor Jackie. Things were going to have to change if—when—she got back home. He wondered what, if anything, he could do to help.
He just hoped Jackie was all right, wherever she was.
As Miranda turned onto her side, Seth thought he heard a soft knock at the front door. Hurrying into the hall, he listened. The sound came again. He bounded down the stairs two at a time and arrived at the front door breathless. He yanked it open and found Karen Toller standing there.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I was expecting a call,” Seth said. “I almost didn’t hear your knock.”
“I didn’t want to ring the doorbell,” she said. “I was afraid of waking you if you were asleep.”
“Miranda’s in bed. I’m not sure I’ll ever sleep soundly again.” He stepped aside and said, “Come in. I assume you have news.” He wondered if it was a cop thing that he couldn’t tell from her expression whether the news she’d come to give him was good or bad.
As she stepped inside he said, “Let me have your coat.”
“I can’t stay.”
“At least have a cup of coffee.”
“All right.” She untied and unbuttoned her trench coat. He slid it off her shoulders and threw it over a nearby chair.
“Come on in the kitchen,” he said. “You can tell me the news while I make coffee.”
“There’s really no need—”
“Please. Humor me. I need to do something with my hands. I’ve been going crazy wondering how all of this is going to play out.”
While he began measuring coffee into the coffeemaker, she sat on one of the hightop chairs at the granite bar that divided the open kitchen from the family room. “All right,” he said, turning to her at last. “Tell me. Did you find her?”
“Yes, we did.”
Seth gave a yelp of joy, came around the bar and before he knew it, had scooped Karen off her stool and swung her in an ecstatic circle. “That’s wonderful! That’s great!”
She put her hands on his shoulders and said, “Put me down, Seth, please.”
The seriousness of her voice warned him that she had bad news to go along with the good. He eased her down his body, suddenly aware of the fact she was a beautiful woman, whose body made his respond in a predictable way.
When her feet were on the floor again, he took her by the shoulders and held her away from him far enough that he could get a good look at her.
Her cheeks were flushed, but her eyes looked wounded and her mouth was downturned.
“Okay,” he said. “Give me the bad news.”
“Jackie was badly beaten.”
He winced. Afraid his face would show the rage and horror he felt, he let go of her and turned back to the coffeepot, even though it didn’t require his attention. He hated to ask for d
etails, but he needed to know, in order to prepare Miranda before she saw her friend. When he thought he had his emotions in hand, he turned back to her and asked, “Was she raped?”
“The doctors say no.”
He released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “That’s good,” he said gruffly. “That’s good.”
“But she’s been badly traumatized,” Karen continued. “She’ll be in the hospital for a couple of days, and then she’s going to need counseling.”
“Did you get the bastards who did this to her?”
She slid back onto one of the stools behind the breakfast bar and said, “We found several girls locked in the motel room with Jackie, but the traffickers weren’t there. Now that we’ve rescued the girls, the traffickers have probably hightailed it to another big city.”
“To go on with their dirty work,” Seth said bitterly.
He noticed she didn’t make excuses for the failure of the police department or the FBI to catch the bad guys. She simply looked at him with sympathy in her dark brown eyes. Her wounded dark brown eyes.
He crossed back around the bar and stood before her. Then, tentatively, he took both her hands in his and pulled her off the stool and onto her feet.
“Hey,” he said softly as he grasped her shoulders comfortingly. “I know you did the best you could. You’ll get them next time.”
For a moment she stood stiffly as he continued to stroke her arms gently. Then she relaxed her body, leaned a bit closer to him and murmured, “You don’t know how badly I needed to have somebody say exactly that.”
He wondered what she would do if he pulled her closer, as he wanted to do.
After a moment or two she gazed up at him and smiled. “This wasn’t what I was expecting when I showed up here tonight.”
He eased back so he could look down into her face and said, “No? What were you expecting?”
“I thought Miranda would be in tears. I thought you’d be frantic with worry.”
“All that happened before you arrived,” Seth admitted. “I finally managed to get her to sleep. I got her shoes and socks off, but she’s still wearing her school uniform. I put her in my bed instead of her own because I was afraid she might have nightmares.”
“Do you want to wake her, so I can reassure her Jackie is safe?” Karen asked.
Seth thought about it for a moment. “I hate to wake her, but she’s still in her clothes….”
“Why don’t I come up and give you a hand? If she does wake up, I can tell her the good news.”
“She’d probably sleep better in pajamas.”
“Show me where her room is, and I’ll find something to put on her. Then I really do have to go.”
“Without a cup of coffee?”
“It would just keep me awake.”
“This way,” he said, heading up the stairs.
CHAPTER SIX
Karen couldn’t believe she’d offered such personal help to a man she’d just met. Or that Seth had accepted her offer.
She found herself upstairs in Miranda’s frilly bedroom, with its canopied bed covered with stuffed animals, looking through Miranda’s chest of drawers for a pair of pajamas.
Seth stood in the doorway watching her. “Top drawer, I think. Miranda does her own laundry these days.”
“She does?” Karen said. “Good for her!”
“She seems to enjoy it, actually. She used to help her mother with the laundry…before she died.”
Karen knew it was skating on thin ice to talk with Seth about his late wife. He might then feel free to ask about her late husband. She hurried to find a matching top and bottom, then closed the drawer, turned and held out her prizes. “Here we go. I can put these on her, if you like.”
Seth smiled. “Hannah Montana. She loves those pj’s.”
The smile had transformed his face into something truly handsome. Karen fought against the attraction that was never far from the surface, then smiled inwardly at the irony of where her offer of help to his daughter was taking her next. “Where’s your bedroom?”
“This way,” he said, leading her down the hall and walking with her to stand beside his sleeping daughter.
Miranda was curled up in a ball under the covers, and Karen debated the wisdom of trying to rearrange her enough to change her clothes. “This may not be a good idea,” she whispered.
“She’s a sound sleeper. Or used to be,” he whispered back. “I’ll wait just outside the door, in case you need me.”
As Karen eased the sheet and blanket from Miranda’s tight grip, the girl awoke. So much for sleeping soundly.
“It’s me, Miranda,” she said as the girl stared at her in confusion. “Lieutenant Toller. Karen,” she added, remembering that sometime during the hours they’d been looking at mug shots, she’d asked the girl to call her by her first name.
Miranda shoved herself upright and clutched the sheets to her chest. “What are you doing here?”
Karen held out the pajamas and said ruefully, “Your father thought you might sleep better in pajamas. I was going to help you change.”
“Oh. Yeah. I would,” she admitted, tugging at the waist of her uniform skirt. “Where’s my dad?” she asked anxiously, looking toward the doorway.
“He’s in the hall. Do you want me to call him in here?”
“Did you find Jackie?”
Karen should have known that would be the first thought on the girl’s mind. She glanced over her shoulder, debating whether to call Seth into the room before she gave his daughter the news about her friend.
Miranda grasped her wrist and said, “Just tell me. I can handle it, whatever it is.”
“All right, but while I’m telling you, I think we should get you changed.”
“Fine,” Miranda agreed. “But please don’t keep me in suspense.”
As Miranda began unbuttoning her school blouse, Karen said, “We found Jackie. She’s safe.”
Miranda’s smile was radiant as she yanked off her blouse and tossed it across the bed, leaving her wearing a strappy undershirt instead of what probably should have been a bra. She suspected Miranda might have been almost at the stage where she needed a bra when her mother died, and now she was probably too shy to shop for one by herself.
But Seth’s daughter had definitely been growing up while he’d been grieving. Karen briefly pondered the wisdom of pointing out the necessity of taking his daughter shopping for a bra. Sooner or later, she decided, he would figure it out for himself. She tried to imagine that shopping trip and found herself smiling.
“Thank goodness Jackie’s okay,” the girl said as she took the pajama top Karen handed her and pulled it down over her head. Her voice was muffled for a moment as she said, “Thank you, Karen. I knew you could do it!” Then her bright green eyes and endless freckles and happy smile appeared again as she shoved her hands into the long sleeves. “How is she? Where is she?”
Those questions were more touchy to answer, but Karen laid a reassuring hand on Miranda’s shoulder and said, “Jackie’s okay, but she had a rough time of it for a while. She’s in the hospital, Miranda.”
When the girl’s face started to crumple, Karen quickly said, “Time to take off your skirt.”
Miranda dutifully unbuttoned and unzipped the pleated skirt and shimmied out of it, leaving her wearing tiny red bikini underwear that seemed wrong for a thirteen-year-old. Especially under a Catholic school uniform.
Miranda reached quickly for the pajama bottoms and pulled them on. She’d apparently noticed Karen’s questioning look, because she said, “They were my mom’s, okay? Don’t tell my dad. He’d have a cat if he knew I stole some of her underwear.”
It was a way of staying close to her mother, Karen realized. “I promise I won’t tell.”
“It’s a good thing I took them when I did, because he got rid of everything else,” the girl said.
“Everything?” Karen asked. “Are you sure he didn’t store some things away for you?”
Karen adjusted the pajama top and said, “Why don’t we call him in here and ask him?”
Miranda shot a look toward the doorway, then whispered, as though her father might be listening, “He doesn’t like to talk about my mom.” After a moment’s thought she added, “But tonight he said we could, if I wanted to.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know if he’s saved some of her things for you, for when you grow up?” Karen realized the discussion of Miranda’s mother was only postponing the inevitable, when the girl would begin to think again about her friend who was in the hospital. But she welcomed the diversion.
“All right,” Miranda said. “Call him.”
Karen turned to the doorway, raised her voice and said, “Seth? Miranda has something she wants to ask you.”
Miranda’s father showed up in the doorway looking anxious, obviously expecting some question about what had happened to Jackie.
“Dad, I was just wondering…”
He took another step into the room, closer to his daughter and said, “What were you wondering, honey?”
“Did you save some of Mom’s things for me?”
He looked stunned. “What?”
“Karen said—Lieutenant Toller said I can call her Karen—Karen said you probably saved some of Mom’s things for me. When I came back from soccer camp everything was gone, and I was just wondering…did you keep her pink bathrobe?”
Seth crossed to the bed and sat down beside his daughter. He tucked an unruly red curl behind her ear and said, “Of course I kept it.”
Miranda’s eyes glowed. “You did? Really? Where is it?”
“I packed it away in a trunk in the attic.”
“Can I have it?”
He gave his daughter a quizzical look, glanced at Karen as if to ask whether she knew what this was all about, then turned back to his daughter and said, “It’s a little big for you right now, don’t you think?”