Yuletide Fugitive Threat

TWO

Thirty minutes later Mia sat across the kitchen table from Lucas and stared down at the plate in front of her. “This is delicious. I haven’t had an omelet in a long time, and you always made the best,” she said.

He nodded and finished chewing his last bite before he spoke. “I still like to cook, but I don’t advertise it to any of the guys in my biker club. I don’t think I could take the jokes they’d make about me in the kitchen.”

She laughed and arched an eyebrow. “So you’re still riding a motorcycle?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. It gives me something to do when I’m off work, which isn’t very often.”

“I suppose your mother is still as concerned about your dangerous hobby as ever,” she said as she scooped another bite onto her fork. “By the way, how are your parents? I always liked them.”

She sensed a sudden chill in the friendly atmosphere and sat back in her chair. “Is something wrong, Lucas?”

He raised his head and stared at her, his eyes dark and foreboding. “If I’m going to take your case, I think we need to get something straight right off.”

She laced her fingers together in her lap and gripped them tightly. “A-all r-right. What is it?”

He leaned forward, a frown creasing his forehead. “I think it would be better if we don’t mention our past relationship. There’s no need to revisit ancient history, whether it’s talking about what I used to cook, my parents or whatever. This is strictly business. You’re hiring me to do a job for you. I’ll do it, and you’ll pay me when it’s over. Can you agree to that?”

She struggled to keep her voice steady as she answered him. “I can, but if you’re going to take my case, then there’s something I need to tell you.”

He tilted his head to one side and eyed her suspiciously. “What is it?”

“I know your services don’t come cheap, and I will pay you. It just may take some time. Kyle’s lawyer is in the process of untangling all his business dealings. I’ve been allowed to stay in the house for a while. Although it’s the last place I want to be, I don’t have anywhere else to go until the estate is settled. I have very little money. I thought you should know.”

Lucas stared at her for a moment before he set his coffee cup down and leaned toward her. “I can understand about the will not being settled. But what about your money?”

Her eyes grew wide. “What money?”

“That you make from your job.”

“I don’t have a job. I’ve never had one.”

His mouth gaped open, and he blinked his eyes. “All you ever wanted to do was to own a dance studio and teach children ballet. You studied for years. What happened?”

Her stomach was beginning to roil at all his questions, and she jumped to her feet and grabbed her plate. She walked to the garbage disposal and shoveled her leftover food into the sink before she turned back around. “I thought this was going to be strictly business,” she retorted. “Do you need to know to solve the case? The studio never happened—end of story.”

He stepped closer to her. “Fine, then. What about your father? If you don’t have enough money to live on until the estate is settled, couldn’t he help you?”

She shook her head but didn’t turn around to face him. “My father died three years ago. He and Kyle got along great.” Much better than she had ever gotten along with her distant, disapproving father. “So much so that he made Kyle the executor of his estate. My lawyer told me I’ll be able to get that inheritance back, but it’s going to take a while.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know about your father. But what about friends? Could they help you?”

Mia clenched her fists and gritted her teeth before she whirled and faced Lucas. “No! Don’t you understand? I’m not like you, Lucas. I don’t have a family that cares what happens to me, and I don’t have friends who want to help me.” Tears welled in her eyes. “When I was racking my brain trying to think who I could go to for help, you were the only one who came to mind. A college boyfriend that I hadn’t seen in seven years. You probably haven’t given me a thought in years, and yet you were the only one I felt like I could turn to for help.”

She covered her face with her hands and began to sob. After a few moments, Lucas reached out and patted her arm. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

He reached for her napkin and stuck it in her hand. She began to wipe the tears from her face and shake her head. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have gone to pieces like that, but I’ve been so scared ever since those phone calls started. I knew you were my only hope of getting anything done. Will you please help me, Lucas?”

The look on his face told her he still wasn’t pleased about the prospect. “I’ll take the job of tracking Tony Chapman. After all, that’s what we’re in business for, bringing in fugitives from justice. But I can’t guarantee how long it will take me.”

Mia wiped her eyes again. “It can’t be soon enough for me. I want to try and get on with my life.”

“I hope it won’t take long either. But for now, I need some information from you. Why don’t we take our coffee in the living room, and you can fill me in on all the details about Kyle?”

She blew her nose and smiled through her tears. “Okay.”

They walked back to the living room and settled on the sofa, their cups in their hands. Mia pulled her knees up and curled into the corner of the sofa, so she could sit facing him. He reached for a notebook that was lying on the coffee table, flipped it open and pulled a pen out. “Now, tell me about Kyle’s job.”

She wrapped her hand around the mug and thought for a moment before she answered. “Kyle went to work at Shackleford Imports right after we were married. They sell antiques and antiquities in their showroom, as well as working with clients on arranging special purchases. Kyle was the import/export manager. It was his job to oversee the paperwork and the monetary transactions on all the international acquisitions, as well as working with customs agents on all items coming into or leaving the country. He also handled special clients for the company.”

Lucas wrote as she talked and didn’t look up as he asked his next question. “It sounds like an important job. I assume he was paid well.”

“He was. I don’t really know how much—he handled all our finances—but he told me once it was in the six figures.”

Lucas gave a low whistle. “The owner must have thought he did a good job to pay that well.”

Mia shrugged. “I suppose so. Mr. Shackleford has been ill for the past year and a half, and Kyle was basically running the business.”

“Did the other employees like him?”

“I don’t know.”

He glanced up at her answer and then directed his gaze back to his note-taking. “And why is that?”

“Because I never got to know any of them very well.”

Lucas slowly raised his head to stare at her, a frown wrinkling his forehead. “Shackleford’s is well-known in the city. There are stories in the paper all the time about events they’re having to show a new acquisition or the opening of some exhibit they’ve come up with. He worked there for seven years, Mia. Didn’t you go with him to any of the events?”

She shook her head. “A few times when we first married, but that soon ended. He thought I couldn’t hold my own in conversation with the intellectual people who frequented the events. So he quit taking me.”

He opened his mouth to speak but then seemed to think better of it. He cleared his throat and looked back down at the notebook. “The police arrested Tony Chapman for Kyle’s murder. Did you know him?”

“No, I’d never heard of him, until he was arrested. Then a few days later I was notified he had made bail. And soon after that, he disappeared. Except he started calling me all the time.”

“And you have no idea what it is he thinks Kyle has hidden from him?”

She shook her head and frowned. “I can’t imagine what it is. Kyle never talked to me about his business dealings in any kind of detail. Everything he told me was very general. I don’t even know if he and Tony had business dealings. I’m beginning to wonder if it wasn’t something illegal. And if there was a falling-out with them, and that’s why Tony killed him.”

Lucas nodded. “That’s a logical explanation, but I don’t guess we’ll know for sure until I can find Tony.” He paused a moment and then looked at her again. “There are lots of unanswered questions about this whole case.”

“I know.”

“One of them is, how did Tony know you had come to see me today? When I answered the phone, he called me by name—he knew you were with me. Did you see a car following you when you drove here? Or did one drive by after you parked in front of my house?”

She shook her head and yawned. “No. I checked all the way. And when I left the diner, I took a lot of back streets to get here. It was so late, the streets were empty—I’d have noticed if someone was following me. There was no one behind me, and no one drove by after I arrived here.”

Lucas closed the notebook and reached for her coffee cup. “Would you like a refill?”

“That would be nice.”

He laid the notebook on the coffee table and walked from the room. Mia scooted down on the couch, stretched her legs out and snuggled into the soft cushions. The stress of the past few weeks had left her tense and wary, but for some reason she felt safer now than she had in years.

She’d made the right decision. If anyone could help her, Lucas could, and he’d seemed understanding about her lack of funds at the present time. She had no illusions about how he felt about her. He still hated her. She could see it in his eyes. But he was willing to help her, and that was all she needed. Someone she trusted who could put a stop to the terror in her life.

With a sigh she closed her eyes and drifted into a deep sleep.

* * *

Lucas walked back into the living room and stopped at the door. A soft snore came from Mia’s prone figure sprawled on the couch. She had to be dead on her feet after the night she’d had. He set the cup of coffee down and reached for an afghan draped across a chair next to the sofa.

As he covered her with the colorful blanket, he thought of his mother and the hours she’d spent crocheting this beautiful afghan and how thrilled she’d been when she saw how he liked it. He spread it over Mia’s body and pulled it up around her shoulders.

Then he stepped back and stared down at her. He still couldn’t believe she was here. Asleep on his sofa. And just as attractive as she’d been when they were in college.

He shook his head and took a step back. No use thinking that way. What was between them had died seven years ago when she chose Kyle instead of him. And nothing was going to change that.

He turned around and strode again to the kitchen, where he began to put the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher. As he worked, he recalled all the things Mia had said while they were eating. Some things didn’t make sense.

Mia had always been vivacious and energetic and enjoyed being with people. How had she ended up with no friends? Less surprising was that she had no family. When they’d been dating, her father was all the family she had, and their relationship had always been tense.

It hadn’t taken him long when they were in college to find out how her father controlled her life, from what she wore to the friends she had. Her one attempt at rebelling against her father’s authority had been when she’d told him she was going to marry Lucas. But that resolve hadn’t lasted very long. She and Lucas had had a fight over the fact that he wanted to wait until he’d finished his SEAL training before marrying her. Lucas had thought that they’d be able to work things out once he got back from basic training...but by then, she’d already married another man—one who had her father’s stamp of approval.

Lucas closed the dishwasher, sat down at the kitchen table and pulled out his cell phone. He punched in the number for Scottie Murray, the computer whiz they used at the agency, and waited for him to answer. Lucas had no idea how Scottie could find even the deepest buried items on the internet with little effort. But then again, he didn’t ask. It was better if he didn’t know some of Scottie’s secrets.

Scottie connected on the third ring. “Hello.”

“Scottie, Lucas Knight here.”

“Hey, man. What’s up?”

“I have a new client. I need you to do some digging for me.”

“Sure. What do you want?”

“I want you to find me everything you can on a man named Kyle Lockhart and his wife, Mia. Lockhart was murdered about a month ago, and I need a full background search on him. Let me know the minute you find out anything.”

“Okay, dude. You got it. I’ll get to work right away.”

Lucas disconnected the call and sat at the table, thinking for a few minutes. If there was more to Mia’s story than what she was telling him, Scottie would find it. He glanced at the clock on the wall: 8:00 a.m. Scottie might not call back for several hours. That gave him time to take care of other things.

He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Adam’s number. It went to voice mail right away. Without giving details, he left a short message that he wouldn’t be able to go to Nashville and would explain later. Then he headed to the shower.

An hour later he walked back into the living room to check on Mia. She still lay there sound asleep but had pulled the cover up around her neck more. He watched her even breathing for a moment, before he turned and walked back to the kitchen.

He’d just entered the room when his phone rang. He pulled the phone from his pocket and smiled at Scottie’s name on the screen.

“Hey, Scottie. Did you find something for me?”

“Yeah, I did. And some of it’s very interesting. This Lockhart guy was quite a character. I have everything in a file that I just emailed to you. There’s probably more, but I thought this would give you something to study while I keep digging into his life.”

“Thanks, Scottie. Let me know when you have more.”

As he disconnected the call, Lucas strode toward his office to turn on his computer. Within seconds he had opened his email and found the file Scottie had sent.

Carefully, he began to read through the pages contained in the report. The first ones dealt with Kyle’s job at the import business. There was a job description, some evaluations filled out by the owner and some letters of commendation from community leaders.

Those were followed by newspaper articles reporting Kyle’s important acquisitions and pictures of him at events, a wineglass in his hand, and surrounded by beautiful women, smiling for the cameras. As Lucas studied picture after picture, he discovered the same woman was in each one. The captions underneath identified her as Christine Abbott, heiress to her family’s hotel chain.

Was it coincidence that Christine was in all the photos? He doubted it, but that was something Lucas could pursue later.

He scrolled to the next page of the file. His eyes grew wide as a police report came into view. Lucas leaned closer to the computer screen and read, his stomach churning as he realized what he was looking at. A report of Kyle Lockhart’s arrest, six months before his death, for domestic abuse.

Lucas’s fingers shook as he read the account. Teenagers having a party on the shore of the lake near Mia’s house had called the police to report hearing screams. The police had arrived to find Mia Lockhart severely injured. She had been transported to a hospital where it was determined she had a broken arm and several broken ribs, along with cuts and bruises over most of her face.

Lucas scrolled down further and gasped aloud when a picture of a bruised and battered Mia appeared on the screen. He clamped his hand over his mouth to keep from crying out as he read that Mia had refused to press charges.

Before he knew what he was doing, he had dialed Scottie’s number. He answered on the first ring.

“Scottie, did you see the picture of Lockhart’s wife?”

“Yeah, man. I saw it. But that’s just one of many.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“The investigating cop is a guy I know, so I called him and asked him about Lockhart. He said that everybody at the precinct knew Mia Lockhart was a victim of repeated domestic abuse. They tried to get her to press charges every time he put her in the hospital, but she never would. My friend said that’s the way victims are. Their abuser convinces them that they deserve what they’re getting. Most of them have nowhere else to go, so they stay. It’s sad, isn’t it?”

Lucas’s breath hitched in his throat. “Yeah. Real sad. Thanks, Scottie.”

For a few minutes after disconnecting the call Lucas sat still and thought about what he’d discovered. No wonder Mia had no one to turn to. She’d been the victim of the one person who was supposed to take care of her.

He stood and walked back into the living room where she still lay sleeping. She moaned and clenched her fingers around the top of the afghan as she pulled it tighter around her neck. “No,” she murmured as her body twitched. “I’m sorry.”

He had no idea what she was dreaming, but he knew for a certainty now that her life had been a nightmare. And when her husband was killed, she’d ended up in a new nightmare, threatened and eventually assaulted by the man who’d murdered Kyle. She had come to him for help, and he would do everything he could to find the man who’d terrorized her for the past few weeks.

As for Kyle Lockhart, there was nothing Lucas could do about him now. But just maybe he could bring some closure to Mia for what she had experienced at her husband’s hands. If he could do that, maybe he, too, could at last put some closure to the most painful period of his life.

* * *

Mia slowly opened her eyes and stretched her arms over her head. She didn’t know when she’d slept so soundly. Her fingers brushed against the soft yarn at her neck, and she looked down at the afghan covering her from her shoulders to her toes. She trailed her fingers down the crocheted diagonal lines of muted shades of green, brown and gray that blended in with the earthy tones of Lucas’s house. Her eyes flew open wide at the thought of his name.

Lucas! She was in his house. Asleep on his sofa.

“Are you finally awake?”

His voice came from the direction to her left. She bolted upright on the sofa and jerked her head around to stare at him. The sun shone through the window behind him and cast shadows across the chair where he sat. He had his ankle propped on the opposite leg and sat there staring at her, the expression on his face unreadable.

She clutched the afghan tighter around her neck and swallowed. “Lucas. You scared me.”

His hands clenched around the arms of the chair, but he didn’t rise. “Did I? I’m sorry. I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to wake up.”

She swiveled her body around until her feet were on the floor, and she sat facing him. “I guess I was more tired than I thought. I’m sorry if I inconvenienced you by sleeping here. What time is it?”

“It’s close to three o’clock. You must have been really tired.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “I’m so sorry, Lucas. I hope I didn’t keep you from going to work.”

“I have an office here. I had some paperwork I took care of, so it was no problem.”

She pushed to her feet and busied herself folding the afghan. “I’ll get out of here. Thank you for everything today. I’ll give you my cell phone number so you can contact me when you have any news about Tony Chapman.”

She reached to put the afghan on the back of the sofa, but she froze at the sharp words he uttered. “And where are you going?”

His voice had a hoarse rasp to it. Was that anger she heard? Or was she so used to hearing Kyle’s harsh tone that she looked for it in everyone she encountered? She bit her lip and laid the afghan down before she turned to face him. “I don’t know yet, but I’ll let you know when I get settled, maybe in a hotel.”

“I thought you didn’t have any money.”

She frowned. What was with the interrogation? She swallowed hard and tried to remain calm. “I have a little. I think I can afford a cheap motel.”

He pushed to his feet and took a step toward her. He stuck his hands in his pockets and stared at her without blinking. “I have a few questions before you leave.”

“Okay.”

He advanced, and she inched backward until her legs bumped the sofa, and she sank onto it. Lucas took a deep breath as he towered over her. “I need to know more about Kyle, so I can figure out what might have made someone want to kill him. You said he isolated you from friends, he wouldn’t let you work, and in the past few years, he never took you with him to business events. Other than that, how did he treat you?”

Her fingers shook, and she laced them together to hold them still. “H-he was my husband. H-he treated me like I was his wife.”

Lucas’s steel blue eyes bored into hers, and she dropped her gaze. “And what does that mean? Was he kind? Did he make you happy? Did he love you?”

Her face burned from his intense gaze, and she cast a furtive glance down at her hands. “Lucas, I don’t see what this has to do with finding the man who killed him.”

With a sigh, he sat on the sofa next to her. When she peeked over at him, she saw him staring down at his feet for a moment before he reached over, pulled one of her hands loose from the other and wrapped his fingers around hers. She started to draw away from him, but he tightened his grip. She opened her mouth to protest, but the sad look in his eyes stopped her. “It’s all right, Mia,” he said, his gentle tone piercing the barricades around her heart. “I know what kind of love he gave you. So tell me the truth.”

For a moment she couldn’t respond. Her mouth trembled as she realized that for years, there’d been nobody she could tell. Now a man who had been kinder to her than any other in her entire life was asking for the truth. She couldn’t refuse, but when she opened her mouth to speak, the words wouldn’t come. A keening wail drifted from her throat, and she closed her eyes as the tears began to stream down her face. She took a deep breath.