Blood Ties (36 page)

"You're certain this isn't a trap to-"

"No, honey. It's no trap. Lucas jumped the fence,
but he used to work for them. Someone killed him,
and they need to know who and why."

She sat down on the deck and let her legs hang over
the side. "It scares me. It all scares me. I'm not sleeping well at night."

"You think I don't know that?" He groaned and ruffled her hair. "I'll be fine. We'll be fine. And maybe, if
we're lucky, they'll have some idea where Lucas put
the boy."

"If there is a boy."

"I think there is, and I don't think either of us will
sleep well again until we find him and bring him
home." He looked at her meaningfully. "You're all
right with that?"

"Yes. Hell, yes. I feel terrible about what happened.
I keep wondering if I should have promised Lucas
more money."

Daniel shook his head. "And if you had and he still
hadn't produced the child? What then? You would have
gone the rest of your life believing you'd killed him."

"When? When do you have to go?"

"Now. Right away. But I won't leave you here alone.
I've been thinking, this might be a good time for you
to fly out to California to see your father."

Her Tawes-blue eyes narrowed. "Fly out to California. Without you? You've lost your mind."

"No, I haven't. It would free me up to help Buck
with this investigation."

"You're not a police officer."

"No, I'm not. But I am very good at collecting information. It's what I was trained to do. And good detective work is usually sifting through paperwork. If I
don't have to worry about protecting you day and
night, it would ease my mind."

"How long?" She looked thoughtful. "It's true my father isn't getting any younger. But school starts the
first week of September."

"Then go for two weeks."

"I don't know if I could stand two weeks in my stepmother's house."

"So, stay with your dad a week, and spend the second week doing whatever you like. Get away from all
this stress. Shop. Rent a car and sightsee. Don't you
have a girlfriend out there?"

"Yes, but-"

"Please, Bailey. Do this for me. You know Will is
worried sick about you. He spends the nights circling
the house with his shotgun. I don't know when he
sleeps."

"I'll think about it."

"No, I want you to get on the Internet and buy a
first-class ticket this afternoon."

"First-class? Do you know what first-class tickets cost?
When you just lost half a million dollars?"

He sighed. "Not exactly."

"What do you mean, not exactly? Puzzle, stop!" she
scolded the corgi. "Come here, and stop that fool
barking." She pursed her lips. "And if I went to California for two weeks, what would I do with Puzzle?"

"Emma. Emma promised to watch her."

"So you told Emma before you asked me?"

He shrugged. "I knew you'd use Puzzle as an excuse."

"So what does not exactly mean?"

"I checked my Cayman Islands account this morning."

"And?"

"The money I gave to Lucas-the money I wired to
his Swiss-"

"I know what money you mean. What about it?"

"It's back."

"It can't be. There must be some mistake. You said-"

"I said it was gone, and it was. But now it's back."
What he didn't tell her was that more than the half
million had been deposited to his account. The total
now stood at $3,700,028. American.

"How? Why?" she demanded.

"I don't know, Bailey. I don't know how or why it got
there in the first place, only what Lucas told me, and
that's dubious. In any case, I can afford to buy you a
first-class ticket. Round trip."

"Two weeks," she bargained. "And I'm not making
the reservations until you're safely back on Tawes."

"Deal," he said, offering his hand. "So long as you
throw in some hot sex in the shower and a back massage to boot."

"Buck!" Eight days later, Abbie, her face flushed and
eyes spitting fire, confronted him in his office. "Why
have you been asking questions about my father's financial affairs?"

Buck laid the pen he'd been doodling with on the
desk and rose to his feet. He met her obvious ire with
quiet strength. "Did you know he's the beneficiary of a
million-dollar insurance policy on your mother?"

"First you insinuate that Daddy wanted to be rid of
her, and nowyou think he killed her for the insurance?"

"I never said that, Abbie." He reached out to touch
her, but she moved away.

"The insurance was meant to protect me, to guarantee my education, and my future, if anything happened
to either of them. If you know that he was the beneficiary, then you must have discovered that Anati held an
identical policy on him. And she was the beneficiary.
Not to mention the policies were taken out years ago."

"I'm only doing my job."

"That's an excuse. You know what my dad thinks?
He believes you're asking questions to find out how
much I'm worth."

"Do you think that?"

"I don't know what I believe. I told you that this was happening too fast between us. I never wanted a serious-"

"And you believe I did? If I didn't love her-if I
wasn't nuts over her-why would I tie myself to a
spoiled, egotistical brat who intends to spend half her
life jetting back and forth to Greece?"

"Spoiled brat?" She was trembling now, her hands
balled into fists at her sides. "I thought we'd get
around to that sooner or later. I'm sorry if my father
isn't a penniless reservation Indian. But he didn't get
where he is financially by luck. He's worked hard for
what he has, and he deserves it."

Buck seized her shoulders and held her. "Listen to
what you're saying. You asked me to try to find out
who murdered your mother and why. That's what I'm
doing."

She struggled to jerk free, but he held her. "Not by
investigating my father. Daddy didn't kill her. He
loved her."

Buck looked into her eyes. "The old saying is that
love and hate aren't far apart. Emotions can get out of
control. People do bad things to their loved ones,
things they don't mean to do."

"He wants me to go back to Oklahoma with him. Tomorrow. Daddy's been away from home too long."

"He wants you off Tawes and away from me."

"Apparently, he's a good judge of character, maybe
better than I am."

"Are you going?"

"I don't know. I haven't decided yet."

"God, but you're a sight when you're all fired up."
He leaned close and kissed her. At first, she struggled,
but then she put her arms around him and kissed him
back with as much passion as he'd expressed. Need
flashed under his skin. They hadn't made love since
the night on the boat, and it had been too long. "I love
you, Abbie," he said hoarsely.

She drew in a ragged breath and moistened her bottom lip with her tongue. "I hate you."

"I'll take that as an affirmative."

"I'm serious, Buck." Her dark Indian eyes smoldered with resentment. "You're wrong to suspect my
father. You don't know him."

"You're right. I don't. But I'd be a poor cop if I let
my feelings for you keep me from investigating every
lead ... which is all my questioning is."

He picked up a thick folder from the desk behind
him. "I was going to look for you. This just came in. You were right when you said that skull wasn't a Native
American child. The medical examiner's office identified it and the other partial remains found in the same
pit as African-American. Three individuals-a child,
probably male, approximately seven years old, and a
male and female adult."

"How long ago were they buried there?" she asked,
thumbing through the papers.

"Putting an exact age on bones in that condition
will take a while. My source at the medical examiner's
office says they guess twenty-five to thirty-five years."

"That recent?"

Buck nodded. "That recent. The child had a fractured femur, but the other two showed signs of violent
death. The male's skull, radius, and ribs were shattered, and what bones remain had cut marks consistent with a thick blade, maybe an ax. There was less of
the female to process, but she had broken bones as
well as a fractured skull."

"From what I saw, the bodies had been dumped in,
not laid out in a normal burial pattern," Abbie said.
"In other words-"

"They were murdered, and their bodies hidden in
the last place anyone would look."

"Which means that our killer may have murdered
my mother to stop her from excavating that grave
site." She leaned over the desk and scanned the death
report. "So Reverend Catlin's death is linked to
Anati's."

"And to Sean Gilbert's. The stone ax that was used
to bludgeon your mother to death had traces of Sean's
blood on it."

"But who? Who killed them and why?" She raised
her head to look at him. "You can't think my father is
guilty. These people died three decades ago."

"Exactly. Which I would have explained, if you had let me." He slipped his arms around her waist. "I told
you I was one of the good guys, didn't l?"

She pushed his hands away. "Can you please concentrate on the murders? How hard is it to identify
these people? There can't be five hundred people on
Tawes, and twenty-five years ago, there were probably
less."

"More, actually. But you're assuming that our victims lived on the island. Someone might have murdered them elsewhere and dumped them here."

"But the killer must have been someone familiar
with the burial ground. It's not likely to be the results
of a Philly drug deal gone bad."

"So now I start asking questions. People on this island have long memories. If a couple and a child went
missing, someone will remember."

"Can I help?" she offered.

"Certain you want to? It's time-consuming work."

"Field work," she said. "I was trained to do it by one
of the best, my mother. And if she taught me anything
about science, it's that you take good notes and no detail is unimportant."

"You're not going to Oklahoma?"

"One of these days, but not yet."

Buck had been to see him today, asking questions
about the bodies Dr. Knight's daughter had uncovered. He admitted he'd known them, had to, because
one of his neighbors might have seen him with the
boy, might remember.

It was bad, as bad as he'd been afraid it would be.
He'd thought they'd be safe there, had been certain
they would. But Matthew wouldn't stay away from the
burial ground, and had brought in the doctor and her
daughter.

He'd failed.

All these years he'd protected the graves. He'd been
so proud of himself. After he'd taken care of the
preacher, he'd slept soundly at night. But no more.
Now his hands sweated and he saw the faces of his special friends ... heard them calling out to him ... begging him not to fail them. He knew what he had to do
to make it right.

He had to finish it.

He had to make Dr. Knight's daughter pay for what
she'd done.

Maybe then he could sleep. Maybe then they'd understand that he hadn't meant to fail them, that it
wasn't his fault.

She had to be taught a lesson.

"You have no idea why Mr. McCready wants to see
you?" Abbie asked as she and Buck approached Forest's front porch. "He didn't mention me. I don't
know why I couldn't have remained at Emma's. I still
haven't finished the paper I'm writing-"

"Spare me, woman. You talk as much as you eat."
Buck hugged her. "We still have a killer on the loose.
Daniel sent Bailey off to California, where he knew
she'd be safe. I'm not leaving you alone at Emma's or
anywhere else, not until I find who's responsible for
these murders."

Abbie rolled her eyes.

"I care too much about you, darlin'."

She didn't want to admit it, but secretly she was glad
Buck hadn't left her tonight. Working at the site as she
had been since Matthew was murdered, walking
through the marsh-even with Buck's brothers, or
Will, or George to guard her-suddenly gave her the
creeps.

She wasn't easily frightened, but as each day passed,
she felt more at risk. She wasn't sleeping well, not even when she lay in Buck's arms after they'd made love.
Strange dreams troubled her, and twice she'd heard
an owl hoot in the daytime.

She wondered if she wouldn't do better to go back
to Philly and get an early start on the school year. She
wondered, but she hadn't done it. She didn't know
how she felt about Buck, or if what her father had suggested was true. And how in the hell was she supposed
to finish her studies if her personal life was in such
turmoil?

"I hardly think anyone's going to break into the
house to get me."

"They might," Buck said. "I'm not giving them the
opportunity."

He was wearing his pistol. Having him beside her,
big and strong and confident, eased Abbie's fears. She
didn't want to think about what her life would be like
if she decided to go on without him.