Three Days to Forever (A Mac Faraday Mystery Book 9) Page 13

  “Mac,” Agnes called out, “we need you.”

  Thinking that Joshua was having an attack of some sort, Mac came running down the hall. He threw open the door as Joshua was going out. “What’s going on?”

  “I have to go to the bathroom.” Holding himself up against the wall, Joshua pushed by him to go out into the hall.

  Agnes threw up her arm to point at Joshua. “Help him, Mac!” she ordered.

  Mac turned to Joshua, who had opened the door and was shuffling into the bathroom. “Do you need help?”

  “No, I’ve got this covered.”

  Mac turned back to Agnes. “He’s got it covered.”

  “A lot of help you are,” she grumbled.

  “There are certain things that men insist on doing themselves,” Mac said. “It’s a matter of pride. Think about how you feel about Gnarly shadowing you. Josh is probably feeling the same way. Just let him get some sleep, and he should be ready to go tomorrow.” He went back down the hall to the great room.

  “Go where?” Agnes asked with her hands on her hips.

  “Hopefully back to the hotel.”

  The safe house had three bedrooms, but Mac chose to sleep on the sofa in front of the door. It may have been called a safe house, but it certainly had not been built with the intention of being one. The heavy woods surrounding the house served as a double-edged sword. While they concealed the house from the road a quarter a mile away, and were thick enough to provide some camouflage from the air, they also provided cover for any threats making its way toward the house.

  The great room alone had three doors. Why one room would have three doors, Mac did not know. The front door led into the living room. The back door led to the small porch and the wood pile at the edge of the woods. There was also a side door directly across from the hallway leading back to the bedrooms between the dining area and the living room.

  The two officers and Mac had to watch them all.

  At the insistence of the two officers, Mac allowed himself to finally doze off long enough to worry about how Archie was handling the situation. This week was supposed to be the happiest days of their lives—filled with the excitement of their big wedding day—and here they were, separated by what? Whom?

  The wind whistled outside.

  “That snow is really coming down now,” Mac heard one of the officers say to the other.

  Mac felt a cold paw on his hand. Stirring, he turned his head in the direction of the whine, which was accompanied by claws scratching the top of his hand. Mac opened his eyes slightly. Through the fog of sleepiness, he could make out the tall dark ears trimmed in bronze, the black face, the almond-shaped brown eyes, and the white square covering his black snout.

  Mac blinked until his vision cleared.

  What? Is he … seriously?

  Gnarly whined and pawed at Mac again to ask for help.

  “Agnes?” Mac sat up. “Really? You put a facemask on my dog?”

  Agnes came out of the bedroom to announce, “That filthy beast won’t stop breathing on Josh.”

  Gnarly hung his head.

  Unable to take it, Mac slipped the mask off and tossed it on the floor. In a gesture of thanks, Gnarly climbed up onto the sofa and buried his head under Mac’s arm. “I know. No one appreciates you anymore. I do, buddy.” Laying back down, Mac drifted off to sleep with Gnarly stretched out next to him.

  Listening to Agnes continue her talk of Gnarly being a breeding ground for germs that would kill him, Joshua laid back against the pillows in his bed with a sigh. His thoughts gradually turned to his grandmother, who had passed away two decades before.

  What a feisty woman. She would have liked Cameron.

  “Are you asleep?” Agnes’ whisper next to his ear startled him out of the sleep he had started to drift into.

  “Not anymore.” Recalling how his grandmother used to do the same thing to him when he was sick, a smile came to his lips. “It’s hard getting out of the caretaking mode once you’re dragged into it, isn’t it, Agnes?”

  With a weary sigh, she plopped down into the chair next to his bed. “I think I could adapt to being a lone wolf very easily.”

  “Wanna bet?” He struggled to sit up. Seeing that it was too hard, he dropped back down. “I have five children. Their mother died when Donny was only ten years old.”

  He saw Agnes’ demeanor soften. “They were older than my batch.”

  “Still needed me, full time,” he explained. “So I retired from the navy, moved them all back to the small town where I had grown up and had family for emotional support, and became the county prosecutor.” He sighed. “Now four of them are grown and gone. But it’s hard to quit being the caretaker … it’s like …” His eyes met hers. “If your role in the relationship is not that of caretaker, of the protector, then what role do you have?”

  They stared at each other in silence.

  “My grandmother was one smart cookie,” he said in a light tone. “She raised me after my parents died in a car accident. As soon as I was old enough to make decisions, she insisted on my making them myself—and paying the consequences for my own mistakes. When I went off to the Naval Academy, she welcomed her freedom with open arms. Started bowling, working at the library. She said that she was done taking care of others. Now it was her turn to be taken care of.” A note of sadness came to his tone. “Unfortunately, she died before that could really happen.”

  A shadow moved on the wall behind her. Clutching the gun he had hidden under his blanket, Joshua turned to see Mac’s reflection in the mirror. He was listening in the hallway.

  “I guess,” Joshua said, in a quiet tone, “it’s hard for some people to adjust to taking on new roles after a lifetime of playing a particular one.”

  He saw that Agnes was staring across the room with wide eyes. “Agnes …” Placing his hand on hers, he broke her from her stare. He smiled softly at her. “Can you do me a favor?”

  “What would you like, Joshua?” Her voice sounded choked.

  Joshua jerked his head to the water glass on the bed stand. It was three-fourths full. “Can you get me some fresh water, please?”

  A smile came to her thin wrinkled lips. “Of course, Joshua.”

  David pulled the white comforter that covered the king-sized bed up to his chin and shivered. Donny had the suite’s temperature set at seventy degrees, but David didn’t think it felt that warm. A cold chill washing over him, he concluded that it was a combination of the unsettling howl of the wind outside, sleeping in a strange bed, and adrenaline.

  His nerves on edge, he was sitting straight up in the bed and reaching for his gun on the nightstand when he heard footsteps outside his bedroom door.

  It wasn’t actually his door—he was in Joshua Thornton’s bedroom in the suite that Mac and Archie had reserved for him and Donny. Mac and Archie had reserved suites for every member of the wedding party. In hopes that Cameron would attend with her husband, they had reserved a two-bedroom suite. Donny had his own bedroom.

  Upon arriving at the hotel to stay with Donny, David had taken Joshua’s room. If David had gone by regulations, he would have called children’s services. But, knowing Joshua, David vowed that the circumstances would be easier if Donny was with a friend of his father’s rather than a stranger—even if David had not met Donny until Hector had introduced them in the lobby.

  When David heard the television turn on, he climbed out of the bed, slipped into the hotel bathrobe hanging in the closet, and went out into the sitting room where he found Donny slumped on the sofa with his feet propped up on the coffee table. He was channel surfing.

  “You should try to get some sleep,” David said.

  “Can’t.”

  David sat down in the chair across from him. “Your dad is going to be fine. This time tomorrow, he’ll be back here.”

  Donny glanced over at
him. “You don’t know that.”

  David peered over at the teenager. In many ways, Donny was not an average teenager. He was taller and more muscular than Joshua. David had to remind himself that while he looked like a grown man, he was still a child on the verge of becoming a man. In less than two years, he could be overseas fighting for his country.

  “My dad was an officer in the navy,” Donny said. “I was really young when he retired, but I still remember hearing about the stuff that he’d get into. Even now, as a prosecutor. So I know the score. One day, he’s going to leave home to go do something to help someone, and he’s not going to come back.” He shrugged. “He’ll be gone.” His attempt to cover up his emotion failed. Swallowing, Donny resumed surfing.

  “I know how you feel, Donny,” David said.

  “My dad isn’t like other dads,” Donny said. “When he was in the navy, he prosecuted some heavy-duty dirt bags. We moved to Chester because Dad wanted us kids to have a normal life, but that didn’t happen. My dad busted a preacher moonlighting as a major drug lord. He had committed a whole string of murders going back over fifty years. From then on, Dad was a prosecutor, and if there’s a murder mystery out there, somehow, some way, he gets pulled into it.” He shook his head. “I have a lot of friends, and none of their dads exposed a senator for being a serial rapist.” He concluded, “So don’t tell me you know how I feel, because unless your dad busted killers for a living, you don’t.”

  David leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees. A sly grin crossed his face. “Donny, I do know how you feel, because my dad busted killers for a living. He was Spencer’s Chief of Police for over thirty years.”

  Donny stopped channel surfing. He looked directly at David. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” David said. “I don’t know how many nights he’d get a call and leave home, and I’d know it was something bad, and all I could do was pray that he’d be okay. As a child, I felt helpless and scared. By the time I was your age, I felt like there had to be something that I could or should do to help him—but I had no idea what.”

  “Is your dad …”

  “He passed away several years ago,” David said in a quiet voice before adding, “He didn’t die on the job. He had cancer.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “But my dad did what he loved to do,” David said. “The same as your father, and Mac, and Cameron, and me. We do this type of work because it’s important that people stand up and uphold the law, no matter what the cost—even if that cost may be our lives.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Donny swallowed.

  David reached across for Donny’s hand. “Your dad’s going to be fine. You’re going to be fine. I called your brother Murphy’s CO, and he’s on his way.”

  “Why?” Donny asked.

  “Your father asked that I send for him.”

  Sensing something more, Donny yanked his hand away and shot a glare that demanded the truth be told. “What does the navy have to do with this?”

  “Nothing,” David lied. “It’s just that your dad wanted Murphy to come take care of you.”

  “Cameron is closer than Murphy. Why didn’t you call her?”

  “Cameron is working on a murder case right now,” David said, “but she’ll be here tomorrow morning.”

  Donny wasn’t buying the explanation. Before the teenager could fire off another question, David shifted the conversation in another direction. “I imagine that since your brothers and sisters live away from home, you have more time to spend with your father. What do you two like to do?”

  After a beat during which Donny studied him with narrow eyes that were piercing blue and in contrast to his dark auburn hair, he answered, “Dad likes to fish.”

  “We have some great fishing here on Deep Creek Lake.”

  “We go fishing at Tomlinson Run Park,” Donny said.

  “So you like fishing?”

  “Not really,” Donny said. “But I like going with Dad. The fishing is boring, but what I really like is that we talk about a lot of stuff. I really have him one on one then, and he’ll tell some really great stories.” His expression changed to sad. “Dad’s got lots of stories.”

  “And I bet he’ll have a great story to tell you after this is over,” David assured him.

  “Did your dad take you fishing?”

  “Always,” David said. “He loved to fish. That was his thing.” He offered a weak grin. “I was like you. I wasn’t crazy about the fishing, but I liked going with him. But not all of the conversations were that great. He’d take me fishing when he wanted to talk about something serious and really wanted my attention.”

  “Like what kind of things,” Donny asked, “would he take you fishing to grill you about?”

  “Girls,” David said. “I’ve had a lot of girlfriends.”

  “Lucky you!” Donny said with a wide grin.

  “Not really,” David said. “I’ve gotten into trouble more than once because of my weakness for the wrong type of woman.”

  “Isn’t Chelsea Adams, one of the bridesmaids, your girlfriend?”

  “Yes.”

  “So is she trouble like the women your father warned you about?”

  “No,” David said.

  Donny refused to let up. “Then what type of women did your dad want to talk to you about?”

  David tried to think of how to change the subject.

  Donny continued peering at him with the same probing eyes that his father, a lawyer, used to force the answer to a question.

  “It’s private,” David finally said.

  “Did it have anything to do with Robin Spencer?”

  David looked at Donny, who was gazing back at him with an expression of complete curiosity. Not malevolent, but totally innocent curiosity. “Why would my father talk to me about Robin Spencer?”

  “She was a big famous author,” Donny said. “She had Mac Faraday back when she was a teenager and put him up for adoption. So, since Dad and Cameron became friends with him, I asked who Mac Faraday’s father was or if he had ever met him. They didn’t know. So I decided to go hunting, and I found on one of those gossip websites where this Internet journalist speculated that it was the police chief of Spencer, Maryland, back before he was police chief. He was a couple of years older than Robin Spencer. I mean, like, he was legal age, and she was only sixteen years old when he got her pregnant. The blogger said that it was legally statutory rape. How ironic that he raped Robin Spencer and then became the chief of police.”

  “Dad was not a rapist,” David said in a firm tone.

  “So Mac Faraday is really your brother!” Now Donny was grinning. “That’s so cool.”

  Befuddled by how easily Donny had drawn the family secret from him, David murmured, “I guess so.”

  “And he invited you to be a groomsman at his wedding,” Donny said. “I guess he knows you two are brothers and you two are both okay with it? I mean, obviously, you two are friends.”

  “We would prefer that you don’t go spreading that around, Donny,” David said.

  “Sure, I’ll be cool about it.” Donny sat back on the sofa and tucked his legs under him. “It’s weird, really.”

  “Not really.”

  Once again, Donny’s expression was sad. “Think about it. You grew up with your dad. You went fishing with him. You really spent time with him. And now, you have taken his place as chief of police. I bet he taught you a lot.”

  “Yes, he did.” David wondered where Donny was going.

  “And then, Robin Spencer dies and leaves this huge fortune, everything, to Mac Faraday, your brother, who was put up for adoption as soon as he was born.” Donny cocked his head at him. “Mac Faraday can do and have anything he wants, except one thing.” Donny held up his finger to show David.

  “What?”

  “Spend time with hi
s father, which you got to do. Don’t you see? He got the fame and fortune, but you got his dad. And that’s something he can never buy, no matter how rich he is.” Pleased with himself for his observation, Donny fell back onto the sofa and shook his head. “Makes you wonder who the rich man really is.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Shouldn’t you be breaking out your high heels and dancing down south to Deep Creek Lake?” Lieutenant Dugan almost spilt his coffee when he arrived at the police station to see Detective Cameron Gates at her desk.

  “I don’t wear high heels,” she said with a moan. “Josh’s cousin Tad and his wife are visiting her mother in Florida. They took the baby. When they fly in later on this morning, I’ll go hand over Irving and Admiral and get on the road. I should be there by early afternoon.”

  “Josh’s big ole dog can’t babysit your psycho cat until this afternoon?”

  Cameron flicked her eyes from the computer monitor to her chief and then back again. “I’m usually a better liar, but that is true. Tad and Jan won’t be back until later, but Admiral has become pretty good at keeping Irving in line.”

  Dugan crossed his arms. “What’s up, Gates? Is it this whole wedding thing? Josh will be cool about you waiting back in the room wearing nothing but a smile while he’s doing his groomsman’s thing.”

  Ignoring his comment, she asked, “Did you check out those two FBI guys?”

  “You mean Black and Elder?” Dugan scoffed. “Is that what this is about? You’ve got a stick up your craw because that agent made a pass at you. So now you want to play junkyard dog and keep the Crane case for yourself … even if it means missing out on an all-expenses paid vacation?”

  “Something is not right about those two,” Cameron said.

  “If something is not right, it’s you and your territorial ways, Gates.” Dugan leaned over and placed his hands on her desk. “Yes, I checked them out. I logged into the same FBI database that I always do to confirm their IDs and their badge numbers. It’s a match. They are Special Agents Black and Elder.”