There’s a turnoff a few feet back.” He gestured with his head in the direction she’d just come.
Her eyes lifted to the rearview mirror. She hadn’t seen another road, but then she’d only been looking for a place wide enough to turn the patrol car. Obviously, he knew this area better than she did. Well enough to know where to conceal his truck.
She dismissed that flicker of doubt, remembering the sincerity in his voice when he’d talked about Raine. “It’s going to be dark soon.”
There didn’t seem to be any reason for him to stay out here, but he didn’t appear to be headed to his truck. Was it possible he was feeling the effects of that climb?
Impulsively, she acted on that thought. “If you want to get in, I can back up to wherever you’re parked.”
His eyes lifted to briefly consider the road behind her before they came back to meet hers. “I may look around. Since I’m here. I didn’t see this area on any of the search grids.”
She hadn’t either, so that part made sense. Except what did he think he was going to be able to see in the dark?
“It’s gonna be hard to see up here pretty soon,” she reminded him with a smile.
The one he gave in response emphasized the shape of his mouth, its bottom lip fuller than she’d noticed before. She was shocked at the flutter of desire in her lower body.
“I like the dark.”
The unease generated by that statement negated the attraction she’d just felt. And it wasn’t as easy to dismiss as had been his familiarity with this locale. After all, Dean said he’d spent summers here growing up.
“Okay, then. Just be careful. I don’t think we have the manpower to mount another search and rescue.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He touched the roof of the car as if in dismissal and then turned to walk toward the path they’d just descended.
Eden eased her foot off the brake, directing her car down the narrow track. When she raised her eyes again to the rearview mirror, Jake Underwood had already disappeared into the forest.
Chapter Five
The peal of the phone pulled her out of a sleep so deep she was drugged by it. It took a moment for her to realize what the sound was. Another to find the receiver in the pitch-darkness of her bedroom.
“Hello?”
“You probably ought to come on in to the office.” Dean’s voice lacked its customary thread of good humor.
“They found her.”
“No. Sorry. Nothing like that.”
“Then what?”
“Folks are stirred up about the Underwood thing. I just think you might want to be here.”
The Underwood thing. Despite the events of last night, it took a second for her to realize what her deputy chief was talking about.
“How the hell did they find out?”
“It’s Waverly, Eden. How do you think?”
Calling her by her first name was a sign of Dean’s agitation. He hadn’t done that since the day her daddy had pinned the chief’s badge on her uniform shirt.
“If somebody in the department talked, they’re done. I don’t care who it is.”
“Yeah, well, you can fire ’em later. Right now, you need to get your butt out of bed and come down here.”
“They’re at the station?” She glanced at the alarm clock, surprised to find it was only a little past nine—less than an hour after she’d fallen into bed. No wonder she felt drugged.
“Demanding we bring him in. When we don’t, it’s gonna get ugly.”
“Damn it. When I get my hands on whoever—”
“Like I said, Chief, later.”
“You talk to them. They’ll believe you before they will me.”
The sudden silence left her wondering what she was missing. Had Dean already tried that? Or…was it possible he thought they were right? “Dean?”
“Yeah. I’ll tell ’em what the Feds told us, but they’re gonna want to talk to you.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Just keep them calm until then.”
“Keep ’em calm? You’re making a hell of an assumption.”
“Just hold on until I get there.”
IT DIDN’T TAKE long for Eden to realize Dean hadn’t exaggerated. A dozen men crowded into the confines of the conference room where Winton had taken Jake Underwood. Although Dean was trying to keep order, they were clearly past the point of being reasoned with.
“What’s going on here?” she shouted over the hubbub as she took her place beside him. It quieted them, if only momentarily.
“You protecting Underwood. That’s what’s going on.”
Eden didn’t see who’d said that, but the chorus of agreement indicated it didn’t matter. They were apparently of one accord.
“The agents from the MBI—”
“If somebody’s crazy, they may believe what they’re saying enough to fool a machine,” the same voice called out. “That ain’t to say the bastard didn’t take her.”
She hadn’t expected the results of the lie-detector test to be completely negated by Underwood’s wounds. She was beginning to appreciate what Dean had been dealing with.
“He says he saw her,” Lincoln Greene said from the front. “That he knows where she is. That doesn’t alarm you?”
Greene was the owner of the local hardware store. And not known as a hothead. There was no denying that he was hot right now.
“Major Underwood has flashbacks. We believe that—”
“Yeah, a flashback to when he took her. You asked him where the place is that he saw? You ask him that, Chief?”
“Actually, I talked to Major Underwood this afternoon.” This time she raised her voice to continue speaking over the resulting mutter. “I can assure you that neither this department nor the Federal agents assigned to this case believe he has anything to do with the kidnapping.”
“Then why’d you meet with him?” Greene demanded.
A chorus of “yeah’s” followed. She held up her hand, palm forward. “We both ended up at the same location while searching for Raine. I can promise you that Major Underwood is as concerned about that little girl as any of us. He was out looking for her. Just as all of you have been.”
The couple of seconds of silence that followed that reminder was enough to make her believe she’d talked some sense into them. At least, until Reilly Dawson piped up.
“You sure he wasn’t just revisiting the scene of the crime like they say murderers do? You look for blood around there, Chief?”
“Since we have no reason to believe Raine Nolan is dead,” Eden said evenly, “I wasn’t there to look for blood. I was out there to look for a child. A living child. So was Major Underwood.”
“That ain’t what the news is saying.” Dave Porter was a shade-tree mechanic, one good enough to service the department’s cars as well as most of the watercraft in the area. “They’re saying that, after all this time, chances are good she’s dead. They’re saying y’all are just looking for her body now.”
“Well, they’re wrong,” Eden said. “We’re still looking for Raine. And that’s exactly what you should be using all this