Darlene Graham - An Accidental Family

“To silence them? You mean kill them?” He could tell she was struggling to control her fear. He admired that.

“Yes. The boys are in real danger, Rainey.” He took her elbows lightly. “Listen. I’m sending my partner back up to the caves and then I’d like to take the boys into protective custody, but we’ll have to be careful how we do it. I prefer to take you along with them, since you can communicate with Maddy and since Aaron obviously depends on you. We can clear that with the camp supervisor. He’ll keep his mouth shut. He doesn’t want this made public, anyway. Is there someone else we need to contact about your absence? Husband? Boyfriend?”

“No. No one. Well, there is Loretta—my mother— I guess. She’ll worry if she doesn’t hear from me.” Her eyes came up to meet his. “How long will we be gone?”

Mesmerized by those eyes, he shook his head slowly. “I honestly don’t know.” No boyfriend. No husband. How was it that a woman this beautiful was unattached?

“Doesn’t matter.” She looked away. “My job’s my whole life.”

“Okay.” Seth willed himself to focus back on the urgent business. “So all we need is a place to hide. Is there someplace safe where you can take the boys and hold them for a few days? A hospital, a school, a group home—someplace where no one but you and I will know their whereabouts?”

Rainey looked at him as if he had just asked her to sprout wings and fly. “A safe place? No. There is not some handy safe place where I can just disappear with three boys.”

Their gazes locked, and the look in Seth’s steady blue eyes reminded Rainey of the unflinching one her father had always used on her. “I’m taking them into protective custody, and that’s final.”

That’s final? That’s final? Rainey felt her Irish temper simmering up like lava from a volcano. She was the one who was responsible for these children, and no overbearing cop was going to order her around. “Well, I’m responsible for their welfare. And that’s final.”

As quickly as it had hardened, his gaze grew conciliatory. “Look. I don’t like this situation any better than you do. But this is no ordinary set of circumstances.” He wrapped gentle fingers around her upper arm. “Please. You’re going to have to trust me.”

Rainey flicked a glance at Seth Whitman’s hand gripping her flesh, and she swallowed. The night was hot, but his touch felt hotter.

When she tensed, he released her arm.

Something in her had wanted to resist that touch, the way she’d rebelled against her father that last time she’d seen him. Something in her wanted to turn her back on Seth Whitman and say that she didn’t need him or his bossy ways. But something else in her wanted to melt into his arms right then and there and admit that she did need him. And the boys surely did, too. But was this…this abduction the answer? To just spirit the boys away in the middle of the night? There had to be a better way. “Why can’t we go to the authorities with all of this?”

“I’m a cop, Rainey. I am the authorities. And something Dillon said—”

“Oh great. Something Dillon said.”

“Yes. It was significant. You recall he heard them talking about a guy called Howard.”

“Howard? You know who that is?”

His expression became veiled. “Yes. But it’s a very long story. Let’s just say it makes me realize I can’t trust anyone, not now. Right now we need a hiding place.” He steered her back on track. “Tonight. Can you think of any place at all?” he urged her softly.

“No, I can’t. Unless…oh, man.” She considered the idea that had begun to worm its way up a moment ago when she’d started thinking about being banished to Gran’s farm every summer when she was a kid. But then she shook her head. “No. We couldn’t possibly take them up there. They’d go nuts.”

“Where? The sooner we act, the better off the boys will be.”

“This is too crazy!” Rainey raked a hand through her tangled hair. “But what does it matter if I do something crazy now?” she said in a rush, seeming to be arguing more with herself than with Seth. “My job is history. I won’t be able to get any kind of DHS job, not in the entire state, not after this fiasco. No one is going to trust a caseworker that lets her kids wander miles away from camp in the middle of the night, lets them get abducted, no less. I’ll have to start my whole life over in a whole new field, or worse, go back to practicing law.” She released a visible shudder. “And what about the boys?”

“Yes, ma’am. That’s what we have to keep in mind. What about the boys?”

“We can’t just hide with them up there—won’t it mean we’ll be breaking the law?”

“I think I can arrange to make it legal. The local judge is one of my buddies from high school. I can pull some strings, get a piece of paper.”

“You mean make me the boys’ guardian ad litum?”

He quirked an eyebrow at her use of the legal term. “I forgot. You know the law.”

“You can accomplish this tonight?”

“With one phone call.” He was already digging a cell phone out of his pocket. “So, where are we taking them?” He was punching in a number.

“My gran’s house. She lives way back up in the Winding Stair Mountains. Way, way back. Gran’s farm is about as remote as they come. One road in, same road out. A great view in all directions.”

“Perfect.” She heard Seth leave some guy named Max a message, then he held the cell phone out for Rainey. “Call your gran and see if we can hide the boys there, at least for a few days until I can figure out the Slaughters’ next move.”

Rainey shook her head. “Gran doesn’t have a phone.”

His deep-set eyes widened a fraction. “No phone?”

“And no electricity, either.”

“You gotta be kiddin’ me.”

“Nope. But it’s not totally primitive. She has a propane tank out back. A gas-powered generator to run a few lights, a tiny refrigerator, an even tinier TV. But nobody ever goes up there, not even the mailman. She picks up her mail at a post office box down in Wister. The only way to talk to Gran is to drive right up to the door of her cabin. I doubt that thing will even work up there.” She nodded at his cell phone.

Seth made an annoyed face and flipped the phone shut. “Won’t it freak your grandmother out if you show up at her door in the middle of the night with a strange cop and three delinquent boys in tow?”

“Gran? Nah. She raised four sons up on that mountain.”

Rainey paused and looked up at him, sizing him up fully for the first time. She couldn’t figure this guy out. He was all male and undeniably handsome, that was for sure. But he needed an attitude adjustment in the worst way. That or a boot to the behind, as her gran used to say. Was he just another macho, overbearing cop with the guarded emotions and the love ’em and leave ’em attitude that Rainey had detested all her life, or was he some kind of white knight?

And there was something else. She had sensed it when she had told him about Aaron’s past. It was something that put a look so secretive and deep in Seth Whitman’s eyes it was hard to look there for long.

Didn’t matter. Whatever he was and whatever was eating him, Gran could handle it. Rainey had never seen any man her gran couldn’t put in his place. “Nothing could shake up Granny Grace,” she said with a note of challenge. “Not three delinquent little boys. And certainly not a strange cop like you, Seth Whitman.”

THE “ROAD” THAT CLIMBED to Rainey Chapman’s Gran’s house was hardly worthy of such a name. Seth had made it his business to become familiar with every dark, twisting backwoods track in Le Flore County, but he’d never been near the rocky rutted lane that Rainey directed him to, rising to the south off the highway out of Wister. This road was buried deeper in the Winding Stair than even the roughest logging trail.