Missing in Blue Mesa Read online

  The other Rangers headed to their vehicles, and he made his way to Michelle’s tent. “Hello?” he called at the door.

  “Come in.”

  He lifted the flap and stepped inside. For a primitive dwelling, the women had made it as comfortable as possible, with rugs on the floor and colorful blankets draped over the cots and camp chairs. A suitcase lay open on Michelle’s cot, and she was folding clothes into it. At his approach, she turned to him, the longing in her eyes so raw it made his throat tighten, hurting for her. “I don’t have any news for you yet,” he said. “But we didn’t find any signs of violence.” Which didn’t mean there hadn’t been any, but he wanted to offer her what comfort he could.

  She looked down at the suitcase and picked up a tiny shirt. “I was just packing a few things—my clothes, but Hunter’s, too. I’ll have to come back later for the crib and other stuff. He’ll need them when you find him.”

  When you find him. He hoped he could live up to that trust. “You can’t stay here,” he said.

  “No. I have a little money saved. I’ll get a cheap motel room in town.” She closed the suitcase and zipped it shut. Her hair fell forward, revealing the pale skin at the back of her neck. He had to fight the urge to bend down and inhale the scent of her there, to run his fingers over the soft flesh. She was such an enticing combination of satin and steel—so strong and yet so vulnerable. “Could I come to Ranger Headquarters during the day—just to be close if anything does happen?” she asked. “I don’t think I could bear sitting in a motel room all day, not knowing what was going on.”

  “Of course,” he said. “But you don’t need the motel room. I have a safe place for you to stay.”

  Her eyebrows pulled closer together and her lips thinned. “Where?”

  “I live in a duplex near the national park. The other half is empty right now. The property is owned by the federal government. You can stay there. You’ll be safe and close—and Metwater will never think to look for you there.”

  Her expression relaxed. “I’d like that. Thank you.”

  He picked up her suitcase. “Let’s go. We’ll send for the rest of your stuff later.”

  “All this gentlemanly behavior is going to go to my head,” she said. “I’m not used to it.”

  They left the tent and started across the fire ring. They had only taken a few steps when Metwater stepped out of his motor home. “Starfall!”

  Ethan was probably the only one to notice her flinch at the sound of Metwater’s voice. The hard expression on her face gave nothing away as she turned toward him. “I don’t have anything else to say to you,” she said.

  “But I have something to say to you.” His long strides quickly closed the gap between them. He held out his hand. “Give me the keys to the car.”

  She lifted her chin and looked him in the eye. “What car?”

  “The one you’ve been driving. It belongs to me.”

  “It does not! I never signed your stupid agreement to hand over all my worldly goods.”

  “No. I’ll have to speak to Asteria about that oversight.”

  “She didn’t have anything to do with it,” Michelle said. “I simply never turned them in.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He smiled, a look that might have charmed under other circumstances. “Greg signed the papers—the car was in his name.”

  “No.” She shook her head, curls dancing. “That car is mine. Greg gave it to me when he left. It’s the only thing he ever did give me, the bum.”

  “It wasn’t his to give,” Metwater said. “He had already relinquished the title to me. I can show you the paperwork, if you don’t believe me.”

  “You’re going to take her car?” Ethan asked. “Why?”

  Metwater shifted his gaze to Ethan, the sneer still firmly in place. “Because it isn’t her car. The Family is a cooperative group. When a new member joins, she signs over all her possessions for the use of the group. We believe in negating the self for the good of the whole.”

  “You said the car belonged to you, not the group,” Ethan said.

  “I am the guardian of my family’s possessions.”

  “It’s just another scam,” Michelle said. “Everyone else may not see through it, but I do.”

  Metwater looked at her again. “You should be careful what you say,” he said. “Especially in front of a police officer.” He turned to Ethan. “If you look into her background, Officer, I think you’ll find she’s far from innocent.”

  “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Michelle said. She opened her purse and pulled out the car keys. “Take it. It’s not worth anything, anyway.” She hurled the keys into the dirt at his feet and turned away. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Metwater called after her. “Or have you already forgotten Madeline Perry?”

  Michelle faltered and swayed. Before Ethan had time to react, Metwater delivered his parting shot. “This isn’t the first child you were responsible for who disappeared, is it?”

  Chapter Six

  When Michelle started moving again, she ran. Ethan glared at Metwater, then hurried after her. He found her waiting by the passenger door of his cruiser. He unlocked it and she climbed in. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

  He stowed her suitcase in the back, then slid into the driver’s seat. He waited for her to explain Metwater’s accusation—to tell him who Madeline Perry was. But she only stared out the side window, fists clenched, back stiff. If he tried to question her now, it would only come across like an interrogation. He would have to wait until she was ready.

  By the time he parked the cruiser at the curb in front of the duplex, her refusal to speak made the air seem heavier and harder to breathe. He retrieved her suitcase from the back and led the way up the walk. She followed a few steps behind him.

  He unlocked the door and opened it. “It’s furnished, so you should have everything you need,” he said. “We keep the kitchen and bathroom stocked with the basics, in case any visiting officials need to use it.”

  She took the suitcase from his fingers and moved past him, inside. His resolve broke and he blurted, “Do you want to tell me what Metwater was talking about?”

  She turned to face him, her eyes empty, her expression bleak. “You’re a cop,” she said as she started to close the door. “You figure it out.”

  He stood on the stoop, staring at the closed door for several seconds, debating whether to beat on the wood and demand to settle this now, or wait until morning when he hoped she would have cooled off.

  He settled for walking next door to his half of the house and going straight to his computer. A search with the keywords Michelle Munson and Madeline Perry turned up more than one hundred hits. He hunched forward to read the first one, a decade-old article from the Chicago Tribune.

  “A confidential source in the district attorney’s office has identified the chief suspect in six-year-old Madeline Perry’s disappearance as her sixteen-year-old babysitter. Though the source declined to divulge the name of the suspect, against whom charges are expected to be brought shortly, the original report of Madeline’s disappearance was made by sixteen-year-old Michelle Munson, who is identified in the original police report as the child’s babysitter. Miss Munson is the foster child of Phillip and Georgia Little, next-door neighbors to the Perrys. Others in the neighborhood describe Miss Munson as ‘a very troubled young woman.’”

  * * *

  ETHAN READ MORE newspaper articles, which described the disappearance of six-year-old Madeline from her parents’ backyard on a Tuesday afternoon in June. The babysitter, Michelle Munson, reported that she had gone inside to prepare a snack for Madeline, who was swinging on her play set, and when she returned ten minutes later, the child was gone. She searched the area for half an hour before calling the police. />
  Story after story painted Michelle as a child who had been abandoned by her mother at around age ten, who had lived in a series of foster homes since that time, and had reportedly spent time in a juvenile detention center after being caught shoplifting. She had reportedly been very jealous of Madeline’s home and possessions, often commenting on how nice the child’s clothes were and how she wished she could live in a house like hers with parents like hers. The implication in most of the articles was that Michelle had killed Madeline and hidden the body in an attempt to take her place in the Perry household.

  A fuzzy black-and-white photograph that accompanied one article showed a slight girl with a mass of dark curls, dressed in an ill-fitting jumpsuit, being escorted into court by two uniformed guards.

  Ethan read faster, searching for an article that reported on the trial and its results. He found nothing about the trial, but a front-page story from November of that year reported what the paper termed “a startling development.” Madeline Perry had been found alive and well in Mexico City, living with her mother, who had divorced her father two years’ prior and lost custody of the girl in a heated court battle. Madeline and her mother both confirmed that Michelle Munson had nothing to do with Madeline’s disappearance. Instead, her mother had been watching the house for days, waiting for her chance to grab her daughter and run.

  Ethan sat back in his chair, drained. For almost six months sixteen-year-old Michelle had lived in hell, accused of the most horrible crime—killing a child—with no family, no friends, no one on her side. In the end, she was exonerated, but by then she had lost everything. He could find nothing about what had happened to her after Madeline was found. Certainly none of the papers printed apologies, and as far as he could determine, no one stepped forward to help the girl.

  Anger, raw and searing, filled him. How could someone have let this happen? No wonder Michelle had built such a tough shell around herself—she had had to in order to survive.

  And why was Metwater bringing it up now? Did he really think this story was going to make Ethan less sympathetic toward Michelle? Was the fact that she had been falsely accused before supposed to lead the Rangers to believe she was guilty now?

  He thought of her now, separated from him only by a wall, but perhaps more alone than she had ever been. Her child was missing and she had no one to lean on. No one to comfort her.

  Except him. He wouldn’t let her go through this alone—not when she had suffered so much already.

  He went next door and knocked. When she didn’t answer, he knocked again.

  “Go away,” she called through the door.

  “No.”

  He waited, scarcely daring to breathe. He had raised his hand to knock again when the door opened. She was pale, her eyes swollen and red-rimmed. “What do you want?” she asked.

  “I know about Madeline Perry,” he said. “I read the news articles online. I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

  “I don’t need your pity.” She started to close the door again, but he shot his hand out, stopping her.

  “I’m not pitying you,” he said. “I’m angry that you had to go through that.”

  She studied his face as if weighing the sincerity of his words. “If you’re angry, I guess that makes two of us,” she said.

  “Does that mean you’ll let me in?” he asked.

  She took hold of the front of his shirt and pulled his face down to hers, her lips pressed to his in an urgent kiss that sent heat crackling through him. Before he even had time to respond, she drew away again. “Yes,” she said, and tugged him inside.

  * * *

  MICHELLE’S LIFE HAD become a nightmare from which she couldn’t wake. She was being carried along in a flood, out of control. That a man who was a cop—a profession that had never been kind to her—would be the one steady thing she could hold on to didn’t make sense to her. But nothing made sense these days.

  A hard life had taught her that the only way to cope when the worst you could imagine had happened was to focus on right now—you got through this moment, and then the next, and then the next. Anticipating the future was too frightening, and dwelling on the past too sad.

  Right now, in this moment, she was with the one person who believed in her. She wanted to hang on to the moment, to prolong it as long as possible. As soon as the door shut behind him, she pulled Ethan to her once more and kissed him again. She arched her back and pressed her body to his, reveling in the hard plane of his chest and the firm hold of his hands as he angled his mouth against hers and returned the kiss.

  Ethan’s tongue swept across her lips, a sensual invitation to deepen the contact. She opened to him, wanting to be closer, to learn his secrets and perhaps to share a few of her own. She caressed his back, the muscles shifting at her touch, then brought her hands around to his chest, to fumble at the buttons of his shirt.

  He captured her hand in his and broke the kiss. “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice husky, his eyes glazed with passion.

  “I’m taking off your clothes,” she said, undoing another button. “Feel free to help.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.

  “No? You kissed me as if you thought it was a very good idea.”

  “You’re a crime victim. I’m supposed to be looking out for you, not taking advantage of you.”

  She turned her attention from the buttons to his face. “That is so touchingly noble and ethical, Officer Do-Right,” she said. “But do I look like a woman who’s being taken advantage of?”

  He ran his tongue over his bottom lip. Did he have any idea how sexy he looked, all noble and indecisive? She placed one finger on that same bottom lip. “Answer the question, Officer.”

  “You look like a strong, sexy woman who knows what she wants,” he said.

  “Good answer. And what I want right now is you.”

  He didn’t waste any more time talking, but gathered her into his arms and kissed her until she was breathless. No more Mr. Indecision, he led her toward the bedroom, which held a chair, dresser and most important for their purposes—a made-up queen-size bed. Eyes locked to hers, he removed his utility belt and draped it over the back of the chair, then finished undoing the buttons on his shirt and removed it to reveal a muscular chest lightly dusted with brown hair. Her breath caught at the sight, and her knees felt wobbly.

  He took her in his arms again. “You’re sure this is what you want?” he asked.

  “I need this,” she said. “I need to not think about things, to just be with someone who isn’t judging me or expecting anything from me.”

  “I’m not judging or expecting.” He stroked her hair back from her face. “I just want to be with you.”

  She grabbed the hem of her shirt and tugged it over her head, then pushed down her skirt, leaving her standing before him in her panties and bra. She wasn’t worried about what he might see—she had earned every stretch mark and blemish honestly, and she knew enough about sex by now to understand that the physical was only a small part of what made an encounter good.

  In any case, the smile on his face, and the way he caressed her hips and kissed the valley of her cleavage, let her know he liked what he saw. She pulled him toward the bed and they fell together on it, already entwined, learning the shape and feel of each other. All his earlier hesitancy was gone—he matched her move for move, teasing her and thrilling her, replacing her pain and sadness, at least momentarily, with an awareness of her body and the pleasure it could both give and receive.

  He patted her hip and kissed the tip of her nose. “I have to take care of one thing,” he said. “Be right back.”

  He rose and went into the bathroom. She propped herself up on one elbow and enjoyed the view of him, naked, walking away from her. This was one cop who definitely kept in shape.

  He returned quickly, a foil packet in one
hand. She collapsed back on the pillows, surprised into laughter. “When you told me the place was furnished, I didn’t think you meant everything.”

  He unwrapped the condom and rolled it on. “Officers on temporary assignment or special guests sometimes stay here, so we try to keep it stocked with whatever we think they might need.”

  “Guess you take that motto to protect and serve seriously,” she teased.

  “Oh, yeah.” He knelt over her, parting her legs with one knee. “Though sometimes it’s more of a pleasure than a duty.”

  She slid her hands up his arms to thread her fingers through the hair at the back of his head. “I’m ready to be served, Officer.”

  He slid into her and began to move, and she lost the power of speech. Forget her plan to keep him waiting and call the shots—his skilled mouth and hands and sex had her surrendering to him, losing herself to sensation and passion. He leaned down and kissed her closed eyelids, and whispered in her ear. “You don’t have to do anything,” he said. “Just let go.”

  His voice, deep and hypnotic, and the words he spoke, so full of tenderness and caring, acted as a soothing balm to her frayed nerves and frantic mind. She did as he said and let go, floating on waves of sensation, climbing higher toward a breathless release that made her cry out with joy.

  His own cries soon joined hers as his climax shuddered through them both. She clung to him as he slid out of her and settled beside her, his head on her breast. She stroked his hair, her eyes still closed, clinging to that brief moment of bliss.

  “That was...intense,” he said after a long moment.

  “Mmm-hmm.” She snuggled closer, and he wrapped his arms around her. She wanted to ride this wave of pleasure right into sleep—to shut worry and fear out for a little while longer.

  But her brain wasn’t going to allow it. As the afterglow faded, the reality of what was happening to her rushed back with the impact of a sucker punch. She rolled over to face Ethan. “How did Metwater find out about Madeline?” she asked.