Eyewitness

Chapter Three

Hot anger raced across her skin and she clenched her hands. “Are you kidding me?”

“Your back window is broken, too.” Shifting Michael in his arms, Kieran crouched in the broken glass as he peered into the gaping window. “Did they take anything?”

With shaking hands, Devon beeped her remote and yanked open the passenger-side door. Bending over, she felt under the seat for her small handbag. “My purse is gone.”

“Did you lose much?”

“Besides my faith in the sanctity of small towns?” She kicked at the pebbles of glass on the ground. “I lost my driver’s license and a little cash. Luckily I didn’t have my whole wallet in there with all my credit cards and other ID.”

“You shouldn’t leave your purse in the car like that.”

She stamped her foot, scattering bits of her car window. “I hid it under the seat. And why did he have to add insult to injury and slash two of my tires?”

“Maybe to slow your pursuit.”

“Yeah, like I’m going to pursue some thief.”

“You have to call the cops.” He pointed to the floor of her car. “Or was your cell phone in your purse?”

She patted the pocket of her shorts. “Right here. If I call the cops and they find you here, you’re going to cause a sensation. Are you ready for that?”

He shrugged. “Where would I go?”

“Go to your folks’ house, and take Michael with you.” She brushed a strand of brown hair from Michael’s forehead. “I don’t want him waking up and finding the cops. I don’t want him to see my car.”

“And I don’t want to leave you here on your own, especially after this.” He jerked his head toward the mess of her car.

“I’ll be fine.” She’d tried but couldn’t quash the tremor in her voice. She didn’t want to stand out on the road waiting for the cops, either. “But if you insist, you can watch me from the corner of Columbella House until the cops come and then I’ll have them drop me off at your parents’ house.”

“Uh, where is my parents’ house, and what if Michael wakes up while you’re gone?”

“I’d rather Michael be a little frightened by someone he’s already talked to than have him see the police again and the condition of this car.”

She told Kieran how to get to his own house and told him where his parents kept the key. Then she called the cops.

Kieran retreated to the edge of Columbella House with Michael secure in his arms. The two of them looked so natural together she almost smiled, even though neither knew the other’s identity.

She’d have to remedy that…and soon.

When one Coral Cove police unit pulled up to the lookout, lights flashing, Devon knew she’d made the right decision to send Michael off with his father. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the two of them slip into the shadows.

A young officer swung out of the patrol car, hand on his holster as if he expected to find the suspect, knife in hand. Of course, the police were probably still on edge after the murders last month, even though the perpetrator had died in that fire at Columbella.

“Devon Reese, is that you?”

“Clark?” She recognized the officer now. He’d been a few years behind her in school. “Wow, you’re a cop now.”

“Yeah, too bad your dad’s not chief anymore.” His cheeks reddened. “Not that I don’t like Chief Evans.”

“I heard Chief Evans might be leaving. That’s what my brother told me anyway, and he’s interested in the job.”

“That’d be great to have another Chief Reese in town.” He aimed his finger at her car. “What happened? I can’t believe any kids are responsible for this. Do you think it could’ve been a tourist? A stranger passing through?”

Her mind flitted to the white van. Is that why the man had been watching Michael? To make sure he had time to steal her purse?

“I don’t know. I saw a silver sedan and a white van parked next to my car when Mi… I went down to the beach.”

“Did you get a plate?”

“No.”

Clark tried to lift some prints from the car, but it didn’t look like he was having much luck. He took down a description of her purse and the cars and told her to get a car alarm installed.

“Do you need a tow?”

“I already called Gary’s shop in town. He’s going to come out and get it. In the meantime, can you drop me off at the Roarkes’ house up the street?”

“Sure. You shouldn’t be hanging around Columbella House, anyway. My girlfriend said she saw lights in the house the other night.”

Kieran’s lights?

“I’m glad that fire didn’t destroy the whole house.”

Clark shook his head. “Maybe it should have. Some around here, including the mayor, want to preserve the house, but I wish the St. Regis twins would just tear it down.”

“It’s not the house’s fault.” She slid into the front seat of the patrol car and snapped her seat belt. “I can’t believe Larry Brunswick, the algebra teacher, turned out to be the killer of all those women.

“It was crazy, and then he tried to marry Michelle Girard in that house until Colin Roarke saved her.”

Clark cruised down Coral Cove Drive and made a

U-turn in front of the Roarkes’ house. “Is that why you’re here?”

“Huh?”

“At the Roarkes’.” He jerked his thumb at the window. “Did Colin forget something?”

“Yeah. Yeah, he forgot something.” His brother.

She thanked Clark and scrambled from the car. She hadn’t wanted Michael to wake up to her damaged car and a policeman in uniform, but she didn’t want him waking up with a stranger, either…even if that stranger was his father.

A lamp burned in the window of the house, but she doubted Kieran had turned it on-too careful for that. Colin must’ve left it on or the lamp was on a timer.

Clark waited at the curb, so she sifted through the dirt in a planter at the side of the porch. Her fingers traced the edge of the key. Kieran must have put it back.

She brushed off the key and inserted it into the deadbolt, waving at Clark. Swinging the door open, she took a step into the small entryway. She held her breath and peeked around the corner into the living room.

Kieran looked up from his newspaper, an old one that had headlines of the fiery death of Larry Brunswick, the Reunion Killer. “Everything go okay?”

She blew out a breath as she spotted Michael, still sleeping and tucked into the love seat in the corner. “Well, the cop didn’t find anything. I told him about the white van.”

“Is your car still there?” He folded the paper in his lap.

“For now. Gary’s Auto is sending out a tow truck tonight. He’ll replace the tires and see if he has a replacement for the window.” She dropped into the chair across from Kieran’s. “Everything go okay here?”

“Your son didn’t wake up and start screaming at the stranger with the eye patch, so yeah.”

Kieran pushed up from his chair and wandered toward Michael. He swept a lock of dark hair from her son’s flushed face. “When are you taking him to see your friend the psychiatrist?”

“Probably tomorrow.” She folded her arms, bunching her fists against her body. “Do you want to come along?”

He took a turn around the room, settling in front of the mantel. He studied each framed photo of him and his brother as if imprinting it on his memory. Reaching out, he traced his parents’ faces with the tip of his finger.

“You remember Colin, don’t you?”

He nodded. “He was with me on the assignment when we were captured. And then he escaped.”

“He can’t forgive himself for that. The fact that he left you behind tore at him.”

“I don’t blame him for escaping.” He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his tight-fitting jeans. “I know he would’ve tried to come back for me with reinforcements, but my captors moved me. The army told me that much.”

“How did you get away, Kieran?” She gripped her hands in front of her, twisting her fingers into knots. Did she really want to know? Did she want to hear how he’d suffered?

He shrugged. “I escaped.”

Had he read the ambivalence in her face? If she was going to help him, reclaim him as her own and Michael’s father, she needed to step up to the plate. “You don’t remember what happened to your eye?”

“Nope.”

“Can you see out of it?”

“Not clearly.”

“Can I have a look at it?”

“Nope.”

She clenched her teeth. Stubborn man. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath through her nose, her nostrils flaring. “Did the army doctors look at it?”

“They did.” He slipped his index finger beneath the string that held the black patch to his head. “They issued me this after cleaning the wound and running some tests.”

“Did the tests show anything? Any sensitivity to light?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t hang around long enough to find out.”

“You just checked yourself out of the hospital and took off?”

“It’s my life.”

“They’ll be coming for you.”

“Let ’em try.”

She blew out an exasperated breath. Had talking to Kieran always been like talking to a wall of steel? She squared her shoulders. “If you want my help, you’re going to have to open up a little more.”

“I think you’re the one who needs to open up.”

Her belly flip-flopped and she shot a glance at Michael still sleeping on the love seat. Had Kieran figured it out?

“I’m an open book. What do you want to know about your life?”

“We knew each other in high school.”

Hadn’t they already gone over this? Her pounding heart shifted into a lower gear and she could breathe again. “Yes, but we didn’t date until later. Like I said before, we’d both come back to Coral Cove-I was going into nursing school and you’d just finished at the language institute and had enlisted with the Green Berets.”

“But that wasn’t my first mission, the one where I was captured.”

“No. We were together through a few of your missions.”

As they chatted, Kieran’s body seemed to relax, one muscle group at a time, until he sank into a chair, his back to the window and the darkening sky. His lean frame, thinner than she’d remembered, slumped against the cushions of the chair.

“Do you recall more now that you’re here in Coral Cove? In this house?” With me?

He steepled his fingers and peered at her over the top of the juncture. “I do. The memories come slowly. That’s why I made my way back here after I escaped…from the hospital. I wanted to remember slowly, gradually.”

“I want to help you remember.”

Kieran seemed to sink farther into the chair, the dusk creeping over his shoulder, masking his face.

“You have your own problems right now. You don’t need me to burden you with more.”

His return had already constituted a problem for her. Something close to anger percolated in her belly. Then she pressed a hand against her stomach. She never in a million years thought she’d consider the return of Kieran-her fiancé, her love, the father of her child-a problem.

She eyed the dark man across from her, his face still, unreadable. If he wouldn’t stay for her help, for her, would he stay for his son?

Flinging her hands in front of her, she tried to dissipate the heavy air between them. “It wouldn’t be a burden, Kieran. You’re halfway to remembering almost everything…halfway to knowing everything about your life.”

“I can’t pick up where we left off.”

His words twisted the knife in her heart, the knife he’d plunged there when he didn’t recognize her on the beach. At this point, would he even want to know he’s a father?

“I’m not expecting us to pick up where we left off, Kieran. It’s been over four years. You’ve changed. I’ve changed.”

“You’ve moved on with your life. You thought I was dead.”

She nodded, afraid to blink and dislodge the tears burning behind her lids. In truth, she hadn’t moved on with her life. She lived and breathed Kieran every day through his son. She hadn’t slept with another man in the entire time after Kieran’s disappearance. She could hardly drag herself out on a date.

“We all thought you were dead. I-I’m relieved and so happy that you survived.”

His lips twisted. “Did I?”

“You’re alive.”

“I am.” He shifted in the chair as if to remind himself. “And you have your whole life ahead of you with your son. Are you married? Divorced?”

Uh-oh.

“No.”

Kieran’s hands curled around the arms of the chair. “You never married Michael’s father?”

“No.”

His body stiffened, the relaxed slouch replaced by planes and angles. “Where is he, Michael’s father?”

“Don’t you know, Kieran?”

“No.” He shot to the edge of his seat, his muscles coiled and ready for flight.

“He’s sitting across from me. You’re Michael’s father.”