New Year Heroes: The Sheriff's Secretary / Veiled Intentions / Juror No. 7

Aware of minutes ticking off, he finished his shower and left the bathroom to see a clean, freshly pressed uniform laid out on his bed. Marquette was as handy as a pocket in a shirt.

Minutes later, dressed and with a thermos of fresh coffee, courtesy of his housekeeper, he drove toward Phillip Ribideaux’s place. The shower had invigorated him, washing away the exhaustion that had weighed him down as he’d driven from Mariah’s house to his own.

He hoped that, while he was hunting down leads this morning, Mariah was getting some much-needed sleep. There was nothing she could do at the moment to help bring her son home, and being exhausted would only make things worse.

He thought of what Marquette had said about Mariah. He’d known she was a strong woman, but through the long hours of the night he’d seen flashes of intense vulnerability. If she had an Achilles’ heel it was definitely her son.

His hands tightened on the steering wheel as her strange words to him echoed in his head. It must be terrible, to always look for the worst in the people around you. He had the distinct feeling she’d been talking about his relationship with his sister.

But she didn’t really know Jenny. She didn’t know the fear Lucas lived with every day—the fear that his sister would turn into another version of their mother and come to the same kind of tragic end.

Phillip Ribideaux lived in a large, attractive house on the outskirts of town. The twenty-eight-year-old had never worked a day in his life and lived off the generosity of his father, a wealthy developer in the area.

He was a party guy with no work ethic and a sense of privilege that Lucas had seen too often in men who came from money. In fact, Lucas himself and four of his then closest friends might have come to the same end had they not made a pact in college to use their wealth to give back to the community.

Lucas hadn’t been sad to see the relationship between Ribideaux and Jenny end. Jenny deserved better than a man like Ribideaux.

It was just after seven when Lucas knocked on Ribideaux’s front door. Phillip’s sleek sports car was parked out front, but the knock yielded no reply. He rapped again, harder and longer this time.

“All right, all right.” The deep male voice was full of irritation. Phil opened the door and glared at Lucas. It was obvious he’d been awakened by the knocking. His dark hair was mussed, a pillow crease indented his cheek and he wore only a pair of black silk boxers.

“Morning, Phil,” Lucas said. “Can I come in?”

The handsome young man frowned. “Why? What’s going on?” He scratched the center of his chest, then stifled a yawn with the back of his hand.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Couldn’t it wait? Jeez, what time is it?”

“No, it can’t wait,” Lucas replied.

“Talk about what?” He gazed at Lucas belligerently.

“I’d like to come in. Now, you can invite me inside and we can have a nice, friendly chat or I can come back in a little while with a search warrant and the chat won’t be quite so friendly.” Lucas kept his voice pleasant and calm, but narrowed his eyes to let Phil know he was dead serious.

With reluctance Phil opened the door to allow Lucas to enter. “Now you want to tell me what’s going on?” he asked.

Lucas ignored the question and walked through the foyer and into the living room. He stopped in surprise, noting the moving boxes lining the walls and the lack of furniture. He turned back to face Phil. “Going someplace?”

“I’m moving, not that it’s any business of yours,” Phil replied.

“Where to?”

“To an apartment in town. Dad sold this place.” A flash of anger shone from the young man’s eyes. It was there only a moment, then gone. “Look, Sheriff, you want to tell me what this is about? I’ve got a lot of things to do today and I’m not in the mood for you.”

Lucas tamped down a touch of rising anger. “When was the last time you spoke to Jenny?”

Phil visibly relaxed. “Is that what this is about? Your sister? Whatever she told you, it’s probably a lie. I haven’t seen or talked to her for a couple of weeks.”

“So you don’t know anything about her disappearance?”

“Disappearance? Is she missing?”

“Yeah, since last night.” Lucas studied Phil’s features carefully, but it was impossible for him to discern if the man was lying or not. “So, you haven’t seen or heard from her in the last couple of days?”

“Look, your sister’s a nice girl and all that, but she was way too intense for me. We’d only been dating a couple of months and she starts talking about marriage and having kids and the whole traditional route. There’s no way I’m ready for that, especially right now with everything such a mess.”

“Everything such a mess?”

Phil averted his gaze from Lucas. “Private stuff. It has nothing to do with Jenny. I haven’t had anything to do with Jenny for weeks, so if we’re through here, I’ve got things to do.” His gaze still didn’t meet Lucas’s.

Without a search warrant, there was little else Lucas could do here, and no judge in his right mind would give Lucas a warrant to search these premises on Lucas’s hunch that Phil was hiding something.

“Where exactly is the new apartment?” Lucas asked as Phil walked him back to the front door.

“The Lakeside Apartments for the time being. Apartment 211.” Phil grinned, the boyish, charming smile that had managed to get him into the beds of half the young women of Conja Creek. “I’m anxious to get out of this place. Owning a house is way too much responsibility for me.”

Minutes later, as Lucas drove back to Mariah’s place, he made mental notes to himself. It was obvious that Phil Ribideaux’s life was in flux at the moment. Could that have anything to do with Jenny and Billy’s disappearance?

Phil had seemed genuinely surprised to hear that Jenny was missing, but he was a smooth operator and Lucas knew the kid could lie without blinking an eye. And he’d definitely been hiding something. Something private, he’d said.

Tension twisted Lucas’s gut as he drove. It had been almost twenty-four hours since anyone had spoken to Jenny and Billy, and there wasn’t a lead in sight … except for a haunting voice on his cell phone that had promised a game of hide-and-seek.

“Jenny, if you’ve done something stupid, then please have the courage to undo it now,” he murmured aloud. He hated suspecting that his sister had somehow orchestrated all this, but the alternative was far more terrifying.

He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and called Wally, his right-hand man. “Wally, I want you to do a little investigation into Phil Ribideaux. Find out from his friends what’s going on in his life, and I want a tail put on him. Get Louis to do it. I want to know everyplace he goes and everyone he talks to.”

“Got it,” Wally replied. “Anything else?”

“Nothing for now.” Lucas clicked off. He had no idea if Ribideaux had anything to do with this, but he definitely knew something was out of whack in the man’s life.

As he turned the corner that led to Mariah’s house he sucked in a breath. The place looked like a circus. Cars were parked up and down the street, and the local news crew truck was parked in her yard. Mariah definitely hadn’t been sleeping while he’d been gone.

Mayor Richard Welch stood in front of a camera with a reporter, his chest puffed up with self-importance. The man never missed a chance to get his mug in front of the voters.

Unwilling to be part of the mayor’s photo op, Lucas skirted the house to the back door. Ed Maylor met him as he walked inside. “I told her you wouldn’t like this, but she wouldn’t listen to me,” he said.

Lucas clapped the young deputy on the back. “It’s all right. Why don’t you go home, get some sleep. I’ll take care of things here.”

Maylor nodded and left by the back door. As he walked out, Sawyer Bennett entered the kitchen from the living room. Lucas tensed at the sight of his old friend.

“Sawyer.” He nodded in greeting. “You heard?”

“The whole town has heard. You have any leads?”

Lucas shook his head, aware of the tension between himself and the man he’d considered a brother. Regret played deep inside him as he thought of the events that had put a strain on their relationship. Sawyer was one of Lucas’s college buddies as well as a lifelong friend, but their relationship had been tested when Sawyer’s wife had been murdered and Lucas had had to investigate Sawyer for the crime. Thankfully Sawyer had been innocent, but the strain still lingered. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to help. I can put up posters, talk to people, do whatever you need me to do,” Sawyer said. Mariah entered the room, interrupting the conversation.

The hopeful look she sent Lucas broke his heart, because he had nothing to tell her that would make her feel any better. The momentary shine in her eyes dimmed. “Nothing?”

“Not yet. It looks like you’ve been busy while I’ve been gone.”

“I’ve contacted everyone I can think of to get the word out that my son is missing. Somewhere in this town, somebody has to know what happened or at least have a piece of information that can help us find them.” She raised her chin as if expecting a fight from him.

“It was a good idea,” he said, and watched the breath ease out of her. She reached out and took Sawyer’s hand. “Your friend here has been helping me print off posters from the computer. He’s promised to see that they go up all over town.” She released Sawyer’s hand and instead clutched herself around the waist, as if she were physically holding herself together.

“I’m going to head out now.” Sawyer turned his attention back to Lucas. “Anything else I can do?”

“Not that I can think of,” Lucas replied.

“I’ll just get those posters,” Sawyer said to Mariah.

Lucas watched his friend head for the door. “Sawyer?” Sawyer turned back to face him. “Thanks.”

Sawyer flashed him a smile that spoke of old bonds and years of friendship, and Lucas felt himself relax somewhat.

“I thought maybe you’d get some sleep while I was out,” Lucas said to Mariah when Sawyer had left.

“I’ll sleep when Billy is home safe and sound,” she replied.

Although she hadn’t slept, it was obvious she’d showered and changed her clothes. Her shiny hair was neatly pulled back and held with a ponytail holder at the nape of her neck.

In all the time he’d known her, he’d never seen her in anything casual, but she now wore a pair of jeans that hugged her long slender legs and a sleeveless cotton blouse that was the same shade of blue as her eyes.

The casual clothing suited her, made her look less stern and more approachable and stirred a protective urge inside him that he hadn’t felt for a woman in a very long time.

“Most of my neighbors have shown up to put out posters and search,” she said as she moved to the coffeemaker on the countertop. “I did an interview with the local news, and they’re going to show it this evening on the six-o’clock broadcast.”

Their conversation was interrupted as Candy Tanner came into the kitchen. “I thought I heard your voice in here,” she said to Lucas. “I need to talk to you about something.” She shifted from foot to foot and looked as if she’d rather be anywhere else.

“About what?” Lucas looked at the young woman who was one of Jenny’s closest friends. Her gaze shifted away from him, and a new tension rose up inside him. “You know something about what’s going on, Candy?”

“No, not really, but I thought I should tell you that I know Jenny has been seeing Remy Troulous,” she said.

Blood roared in Lucas’s ears as he stared at Candy. “Seeing Remy Troulous? What do you mean? As in dating him?”

“No, I’m sure she wasn’t dating him,” Candy replied as she took a step back from Lucas. “But I know she had a meeting with him about something last week.”

“What in the hell was she doing with Remy Troulous?”

“I don’t know.” Candy took another step backward. “She wouldn’t tell me and she made me promise I wouldn’t tell anyone, but I thought you should know.” She turned and fled the kitchen as if afraid of Lucas’s wrath.

“Who is Remy Troulous?” Mariah asked.

Lucas knew his reply would only add to the terror he knew she already felt for her son. “He’s the head of a gang called the Voodoo Priests. He’s not a good guy, Mariah.”

She stared at him for a long moment. “And it’s possible he has my son.”

FROM THE MOMENT that dawn had broken, Mariah had felt as if she’d entered an alternate universe. But now, as she stared at Lucas, that universe took on a new nightmarish quality.

“The Voodoo Priests?” she repeated faintly. A new horror swept through her. She watched as he pulled his car keys out of his pocket. “Are you going to find this Remy?”

“I’m going to try.”

“Wait, I’m coming with you.”

Lucas’s frown deepened. “I think it would be better if you stayed here.”

His tone held the strong, authoritative note that she’d often heard him use with Jenny, and it sent a ripple of irritation through her. She embraced it, finding it so much easier to handle than the fear that gnawed at her with sharp teeth.

“And I think it would be best if I come with you. If this Remy has Billy, then he’s going to need me, and he’s probably going to need his inhaler.” She heard the anger that scorched her words and she drew a deep breath to gain control. “Billy is just a little boy. He’ll need me.”

He stared at her for a long moment, as if assessing his options, then gave her a curt nod. “Get what you need and let’s get moving.”

She hurried out of the kitchen and toward Billy’s bedroom, her heart pounding with the anxious rhythm it had been beating all night long.

The house no longer felt like her home. People milled about, people she had called in the early-morning hours for help. But there seemed to be nothing anyone could do. It was as if a hole had opened up in the earth and swallowed Billy and Jenny whole.

Remy Troulous. What would a man like that want with Billy and Jenny? If their kidnapping was about a ransom, then why hadn’t she or Lucas received a call demanding money?

She entered Billy’s room and tried not to breathe in the little-boy scent of him that lingered there, knowing that if she dwelled on the smell of her son or the feel of his mouth against her cheek when he kissed her or the sound of his laughter, she’d lose it.

His pajamas were tossed on the bed. She didn’t even know what he was wearing. She didn’t know what he’d picked out to wear on the day he’d been kidnapped. Tears burned in her eyes, but she sucked them back, grabbed his inhaler, then hurried back to find Lucas getting people out of the house.

She pocketed the inhaler as her boss, Richard Welch, approached her. He took her hands in his, his brown eyes radiating true sympathy. “Don’t you worry about anything at the office,” he said. “We’ll manage without you until Billy is home safe and sound.”

Mariah squeezed his hands. The mayor might be a self-absorbed big fish in a little pond most of the time, but the concern that radiated from his eyes at the moment was very real.

“Thank you, Richard. Hopefully he’ll be home soon and things will go back to normal.” Normal? Would anything ever be normal again? she wondered.

Lucas joined them, and Richard dropped Mariah’s hands and turned to face him. “I trust you’ll do everything in your power to find Billy and your sister. After the debacle with Sawyer Bennett and his wife’s murder we don’t need any more bad press.” He frowned. “Murder, and now this kidnapping. Before long, Conja Creek will have a reputation for being a crime pit. We don’t want that to happen. I want this tied up as soon as possible.”

Lucas eyed Richard as if he were a creature from another planet. “Our goals are the same, Mayor.” Lucas’s voice radiated his tension.

“You’ll keep me informed?” Richard asked.

“Of course,” Lucas replied.

“If nothing breaks before tomorrow we’ll set up a press conference to ease the concerns of our citizens,” Richard said.

Lucas nodded, his irritation with the man obvious in his clenched jaw and narrowed gaze. Mariah touched his arm. “We’re wasting time. Shouldn’t we be going?” All she wanted was to find the man who might have her son.

“Absolutely,” Lucas replied.

With Deputy Ben Rankell left at the house to man the phone and encourage people to leave, Lucas and Mariah walked outside. The brilliant sunshine burned her eyes as they headed for his car. The night of worry and no sleep weighed heavily on her shoulders, but she shoved the exhaustion away.

“I’ll never understand how that man managed to get elected,” Lucas said as he started his engine.

“Because underneath all his posturing and grandstanding is a good heart,” she replied. “He cares about Conja Creek.” She didn’t want to talk about Lucas’s issues with the mayor, which as far as she was concerned rose out of the fact that each man attempted to control the other. “Tell me about Remy Troulous,” she said.

Her stomach clenched as she saw his hands tighten on the steering wheel.

“He’s twenty-eight years old and has been in and out of jail a dozen times on different charges, mostly drugs. I’ve long suspected that he and his gang run drugs up from Florida, but I haven’t been able to prove anything.” His frown intensified. “If I wanted to arrange my own kidnapping for one reason or another, Remy or one of his gangbangers is who I would talk to.”

She looked at him without hiding a new irritation that swept through her. “You still really believe that Jenny is responsible for this? You might have raised your sister, but you sure don’t know anything about her.”

“And after two months of living with her, you know it all?”

“I know that the only real problem Jenny has is too much of you.” She hadn’t meant to start a fight, but her emotions were too close to the surface and she’d watched Lucas mentally browbeat Jenny too many times.

“What are you talking about?” He cast her a sharp glance.

What are you doing, Mariah? a little voice whispered inside her head. She realized it wasn’t the time or her place to get into this, that she had enough problems at the moment without berating the very man who was trying to help her find her son. “Never mind. So, where do we find this Remy Troulous?”

He shot her another glance, one that told her he was going to let her words go … for now. “I’m not sure. I know his official address is with his grandmother, but he’s rarely there. Still, that’s where we’ll start.”

As he headed down Main Street, she stared out the side window, a thousand thoughts filling her head. She’d done a television interview and hoped that stations around the area picked it up.

But she also knew that if Frank had had nothing to do with Billy’s disappearance and he saw the interview on television, then he would know for certain where she and Billy had landed after they’d run from Shreveport.

The idea of facing her ex-husband again sent not only icy chills through her but also years of bad memories. And it was those memories, she knew, that had prompted her to attack Lucas about his treatment of Jenny.

She reached into her pocket and touched the inhaler. Billy, her heart cried. Where are you? She’d face a million Franks if it meant getting her son back.

Her heart pounded so fast, so painfully in her chest that she wondered if she were on the verge of a heart attack.

“When we get to Georgia’s place, it would be best if you stayed in the car,” he said, breaking into her despairing thoughts.

There he went again, telling her what was best for her, just like he did his sister all the time. Lucas knows best. He knew what Jenny should eat, what she should wear, where she should get a job—it was no wonder Jenny floundered around, trying to figure out who she was. Lucas had never given her the independence to find out.

She bit her bottom lip, wondering why she was thinking about such things. She supposed her mind was seeking anything to puzzle over other than the horror of her missing son. If she allowed herself to think about Billy for too long, her thoughts took her to dark places and she felt as if she’d lose her mind.

She glanced over at Lucas, who was focused on maneuvering the narrow road. She’d always thought he was a handsome man, with his dark hair and dark eyes. He radiated a strength of purpose, a self-confidence that could be irritating. At the moment, she found it comforting.

He was a smart man, a good sheriff, and he had a vested interest in solving the case. Jenny. No matter what issues she had with the way he treated his sister, she’d never doubted that he loved Jenny.

For the first time, she realized that maybe the reason he wanted to believe that Jenny had orchestrated this was he feared for her if she hadn’t.

“She’s stronger than you think,” she said softly.

He looked at her again, and for just a moment she saw naked emotion shining from his eyes. Fear, anger and guilt, they were all there for a mere second, then gone as if shutters had closed to block out the light.

“I just can’t imagine what she was doing meeting with a man like Troulous.”

“When we find them, you can ask her,” she replied as he pulled up in front of a small shanty.

She didn’t intend to follow his suggestion that she remain in the car. Mariah figured if Remy’s grandmother knew anything about Billy’s kidnapping it wouldn’t hurt to appeal to her, woman to woman.

She waited until Lucas was halfway up the porch, then she left the car and hurried after him. He showed his displeasure with her only in the tightening of his strong jaw as he knocked on the screen door.

Tension welled up inside Mariah, momentarily shoving away her exhaustion. She fought the impulse to grab hold of Lucas’s arm, wondering what even prompted the urge.

A little old woman appeared at the door, her dark eyes suspicious as she saw Lucas. “He ain’t here,” she said without preamble.

“You don’t even know why I’m here, Georgia,” Lucas replied.

“I know when the sheriff shows up on my doorstep it’s because he’s looking for Remy, and Remy ain’t here. I haven’t seen him for a week.” Her words caused Mariah’s heart to sink.

“You know where he might be? Is he bunking with a girlfriend?” Lucas asked.

Georgia shook her head. “Who knows. What’s he done now? Last time I saw him he told me he was trying to get his life together. Told me he was tired of gangbanging and such.” The old woman seemed to shrink in size as misery darkened her eyes. “I should have known not to believe him.”

“Please, Mrs. Troulous, can you think of anyplace we might find him? It’s important. I have a little boy who is missing.”

One of Georgia’s gray eyebrows lifted. “You looking for the wrong person. Remy might be guilty of many things, but he’d never harm a child.”

“I still need to talk to him,” Lucas said. “If you see him before I do, tell him I’m looking for him.”

Georgia nodded, and together Mariah and Lucas returned to his car. “What now?” she asked. “Surely you have an idea where this Remy might be. We’ve got to find him. He’s the only lead we have.”

Lucas started the car engine and puffed out a deep sigh. “I know dozens of places he might be.”

“Then we start at the first place and don’t stop until we find him.” She couldn’t stand the idea of another night passing without Billy being home with her.

The afternoon passed with failure after failure as Lucas checked all the known friends and places where Remy might be. Nobody had seen him—or, at least, nobody would admit to it.

Lucas checked with all his deputies throughout the day, but nobody had anything to report.

At two, Wally called Lucas to tell him that an FBI agent had arrived. Lucas and Mariah drove to the office and met with Michael Kessler, a young, earnest agent who listened to the facts of the case dispassionately, then indicated that he’d be doing his own investigation and would appreciate the support of Lucas and his deputies.