Cradle Of Secrets Page 6

  There had been more than a few women in his life over the years. Some had been more of a challenge than others. But living overseas and constantly going wheels up on a black op made it difficult to have any kind of lasting relationship. The idea of waiting her life away, not knowing where her man is or if he’s even coming home, hadn’t been too appealing to most of the women he’d dated.

  He couldn’t say he blamed them. Still, he was thirty-seven years old and still without a family of his own.

  Most of the time, that didn’t bother Dylan. He’d had a full life in the military. Whenever he thought of his life, he had no regrets. It was fulfilling, serving God and his country.

  But lately, mostly since he’d come home and seen how preoccupied Cash had been, he’d begun to wonder if he’d traded in the good part of life. He hadn’t been ready for a family, couldn’t imagine fitting a wife and kids into his crazy schedule. But raising a family in a loving, Christian home, as his parents had done, had always been in the back of his mind. One of those “someday” things—but “someday” had kind of snuck up on him.

  He tried to shrug it off as he pulled the plug and watched the soapy water drain. Some of the women he’d dated in college had been married for years now. A few even had kids who were starting high school.

  He blew out a quick breath. “High school,” he muttered, and grabbed a paper towel to wipe the water that had gotten all over the counter.

  Where had the time gone? It didn’t seem like fourteen years since he’d graduated college. Twelve years in the military seemed like a blink of an eye now. He could remember every soldier he’d ever worked with on a mission. He’d needed to. They’d had to depend on each other, whether they liked each other or not.

  As for the women in his life, well, that was a bit blurry. Although it had never bothered Dylan before, it wasn’t sitting so well with him now. He was suddenly wondering just when he’d become the kind of guy to take a woman’s affection for granted.

  He could blame his fitful night of sleep on a lot of things. Worry over what had happened to Cash was on the top of the list. Being in different surroundings would have been a good excuse, but it made no sense, given his life in the military.

  And then there was Tammie Gardner. He still couldn’t believe she’d actually stayed at the mansion last night. She was crazy! It didn’t matter that she was practically a mirror image of Serena. She didn’t know those people. Anything could have happened.

  It wasn’t Dylan’s place to tell Tammie what she should and shouldn’t do, and he had a good-enough picture of the woman to know she probably wouldn’t appreciate him doing it. But it hadn’t kept him from worrying about her last night, even though he’d only met her less than twenty-four hours ago.

  And yet, even after such a short period of time, he couldn’t get Tammie out of his mind.

  He shook his head as if to shake her memory from his mind and sat on the bed, pulling his boots in front of him to put them on. He slipped both his feet inside and began lacing the first boot.

  “Twilight zone,” he muttered as he worked. “I could plead insanity, too. This town is a good enough excuse for that.”

  He finished getting dressed, pulling on a favorite T-shirt that his mom always threatened to throw out because it was so old.

  He was debating about whether to eat some breakfast before heading over to the Davco mansion or wait and invite Tammie out to join him when he heard a car pull into the spot next to his Jeep.

  Curious, Dylan pushed aside the faded curtains on the small window to see if it was Julius. To his surprise, he was met with a smile and a wave. The person sitting in the front seat of the car had a nicer smile than the campground owner; he wasn’t quite sure he liked the effect that smile had on his gut.

  Pushing the camper door open, he stepped outside just as Tammie got out of the car and shut the door. She looked around, and then her gaze fell on him.

  “What happened?” he asked, stepping out onto the gravel driveway of the campsite.

  She looked at him, seeming puzzled. “Nothing. What makes you think something has happened?”

  He glanced at the sky. “I don’t have my watch on, but I can guess it’s pretty early. There had to be something that drove you from the house to come and seek me out. Especially since just yesterday you tried to run me down with your car.”

  She gave a sheepish grin. “I did do that, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  Tammie nodded. “Well, stranger things have happened.”

  “Such as?”

  Her brows furrowed. “Boy, you just get right down to things, don’t you? Not even a mention of coffee—which, by the way, I haven’t had and am dying for right now. In case you forgot, I’m still on Oregon time.”

  With a shrug, he said, “No coffee, I’m afraid. I didn’t have a chance to pick up anything for the kitchen yesterday.”

  She gave a mock pout and snapped her fingers in disappointment.

  He added, “We can get some at the campground store, or just run down to the café for breakfast. Take your pick.”

  Tammie lifted her eyes to him and held her gaze. “There was a man in the yard last night.”

  “A man? Outside the house?”

  “Yes.”

  He laughed humorlessly. “And you say I cut to the chase. We went from coffee to a man in the backyard?”

  She sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. “I haven’t had coffee yet. My mind is a little fuzzy.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “I don’t really know. It looked like he was digging.”

  “In the dirt?”

  With a roll of her eyes, she said, “Where else?”

  “Did anyone else hear or see him? Any of the other people in the house?”

  “They should have heard him. He was making enough noise for me to hear him from the second floor. But Serena had had a nightmare, and they were so busy with her, they probably didn’t notice.”

  His brow creased. “Did the man try to come near the house?”

  “Not the house. But he did go into a shed out back.”

  Dylan nodded. He’d never gone out back. He’d never even made it past the front door before yesterday. But with all the trees surrounding the property, and the desolate country roads that led up to the mansion, it would be easy for someone to get in and out of the yard unseen.

  Tammie was leaning against her car, her arms folded across her chest and her head bent slightly.

  He cleared his throat. “Did you say anything to anyone?”

  Another roll of the eyes. “Do you think I would have gotten a straight answer if I had?”

  “Point taken. But still, if someone is searching the grounds in the middle of the night, whoever it is might get bold enough to try to get into the house.”

  Looking alarmed, Tammie stood straight and unfolded her arms.

  He answered the unspoken question written on her face. “That mansion is like a fortress, but people have been known to break into buildings with even the tightest security systems.”

  “I wonder if that had happened before,” she said, her eyes shifting to one side, as if she were thinking of something.

  He waited, and when her eyes met his again, she said, “Aurore told me to lock my bedroom door last night.”

  “Strange.”

  “I thought so, too. The only people I could think to worry about last night were Susan and Aurore. That is, until I saw the man in the garden.”

  Dylan looked more closely at Tammie then, saw the droop of her posture, the dark lines under her blue eyes, which were puffy, as if she hadn’t had much sleep.

  Well, at least he hadn’t been the only one.

  “There’s time enough to ask them about it later,” he said. “Why don’t you take a load off while I pick up some things from the campground store? We can throw together some breakfast here. Carol, the waitress at the diner, is a sweet girl, but she has big ears. She can retell a conversation verbati
m to the other waitresses the moment her customers walk out the door.”

  Tammie laughed. “I see your point. Besides, given the fact that Serena is practically my double, I’d rather the whole world not come to the conclusion that I’m her.”

  “If they haven’t already,” Dylan added.

  FIVE

  Tammie sat at the picnic table at the campsite while Dylan walked to the campground store. She was still on West Coast time, and the hour she’d gotten out of bed this morning was totally illegal, as far as her body’s clock was concerned. But it hadn’t made much sense to stay in a bed that wasn’t even hers, when she couldn’t sleep.

  The house had been quiet when she left. Serena had still been in bed. If Aurore was around, she hadn’t seen her. As Tammie came down the stairs, she’d seen Susan carrying a load of freshly laundered towels, but she didn’t think Susan had seen her.

  Not that it mattered. She wasn’t hiding from anyone. But she had given a moment’s thought to whether or not they’d let her back in the door when she returned. It wasn’t as if she had a key.

  Tammie was half in a daze, her fist propped under her chin and her elbow resting on the table, when she heard whistling. She turned to see Dylan walking up the dirt trail, carrying two paper bags brimming with groceries. Tammie lifted herself from the position she’d been sitting in and met him halfway down the trail to retrieve one of the bags.

  “Thanks,” he said with a smile.

  “Are you always this chipper in the morning?”

  He glanced at the sky. “No, not always. But I figure there’s a blue sky and a bright sun hanging over me. The birds were singing as my eyes opened, and kids were playing in the park across from the store. That makes it a good day. If you’ve seen as many foreign lands as I have, witnessed the carnage that can go on in the world, you learn to take these things as a gift from God and praise Him for allowing you to bear witness to it.”

  Tammie smiled, almost ashamed that her mood had remained glum and she hadn’t taken notice of the day like Dylan had.

  “You’re right.” She bounced the bag in her arms. “What do you have in here, anyway—textbooks? It’s so heavy!”

  “I just about grabbed everything I could get my hands on. I’m a bit hungry,” he said, shrugging. “I skipped dinner last night.”

  “Ah. My mother always said to never go shopping on an empty stomach.” She stopped short at the memory. But Dylan didn’t seem to notice how the mention of her mother affected her.

  He opened the camper door and stepped inside, holding the door for her to follow. “Omelets okay with you?” he asked.

  “Perfect. Need help cooking?”

  “Why, are you a good cook?”

  She chuckled. “Passable. But no one has ever complained.”

  “That’s good enough for me.”

  The camper was an older model, with a bedroom in the far end and a tight living room and kitchen area. At least it afforded enough elbow room that two people didn’t have to bump into each other every time they turned around.

  Tammie opened the cabinet above the stove and found an assortment of plastic dishes and cups in a variety of colors. She pulled out the four-cup coffeemaker and set it on the counter.

  “I hope you bought a lot of coffee. We’re going to need a refill on this.”

  Dylan chuckled and lit the pilot light on the burner. As he began whipping eggs and pouring them into a buttered pan, Tammie filled the coffeemaker and looked for the largest mugs she could find.

  Questions that had been rolling around in her head the night before started to become clearer again as the smell of coffee filled her senses.

  “What happened to your brother?” she finally asked.

  Dylan stirred the eggs, seeming to weigh his words as he thought. It made Tammie wonder all the more about what a former Marine turned Chicago cop was doing in this small Massachusetts town. What could have happened to Cash to bring him out here?

  “You don’t know my brother,” he finally said.

  “So tell me about him.”

  He shook his head. “You won’t understand what I’m trying to say.” His voice was low, betraying a worry that Tammie was sure he felt every day. If someone she loved went missing, she didn’t know how she’d handle it.

  “What’s the problem?”

  He stopped stirring the eggs, turned off the burner and grabbed the plates Tammie had put down next to the stove. “It’s not that easy to explain the kind of man Cash is. Without that, I’ll end up sounding like I’m defending him. He doesn’t need defending. There are those who’d just as soon hang him as look at what I see in him.”

  Startled, she turned directly to him. “Hang him?”

  He stopped short, pausing with the pan over a half-filled plate of eggs, then resumed. “That’s just a figure of speech. But trust me, sometimes it feels like a lynching. You see, despite Cash never being in the military, he had a way about him that always reminded me of a code. Honor and respect are at his core.”

  “Both are traits to admire.”

  “Yes. Even though he’s always been good at taking care of himself, I’m afraid he let his judgment of others slip.”

  She lowered her eyes and then raised them back to him. “You mean with Serena.”

  “Among others. If you don’t know him like I know him, it’s easy to come to the same conclusion as everyone else.”

  “I’m not like everyone else.”

  “I believe that about you.” And then he looked at her directly and smiled.

  Tammie fought hard to keep from showing her surprise. Bill always challenged her thinking. Told her she was being ridiculous where her suspicions were concerned. It was refreshing to hear someone say he believed her.

  “Tell me about Cash.”

  “He’s a good man, Tammie. I’m not saying he didn’t get into his share of mischief when he was a kid. We both riled up our parents pretty often with our pranks, and my mom attributes all her grays to us.” He flashed a quick grin.

  “That’s just kid stuff. I’ll bet most mothers of boys will say the same thing.”

  “Exactly. But there are some people in the DEA that are trying to paint Cash in a bad way.”

  “He was in the Drug Enforcement Administration?”

  Dylan nodded. “What they’re saying just doesn’t add up to the man I know.”

  She smiled. “It does sound like you’re defending him. You don’t have to do that.”

  Dropping the empty pan into the sink, he picked up the plates of scrambled eggs. “Well, there are a whole lot of people judging him. Or they would be, if they could find him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let me back up. Sonny—that’s my kid sister, Sonia—had written to me when I was overseas that something funny was going on with Cash. She couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was and for a long time I just thought she was exaggerating. I mean, she was a kid, just finished high school. I thought it was just drama.”

  She took a paper plate and stacked the buttered toast she’d prepared while Dylan talked. She put it on the table, and poured the black coffee. She motioned to indicate the milk in her hand.

  “A little bit, thanks,” he replied.

  After stirring the coffees, she brought them to the table and sat down opposite him.

  “He never said anything to you about what was going on?”

  “Not a word. Not to Sonny, my parents or me. It’s hard to read between the lines in letters. So Sonny made it plain one day, sending me a letter that just said I needed to come home. Now.

  “The timing was right. I was getting ready to reenlist for another four years. Had the paperwork all filled out, just not submitted to my CO. I decided to come stateside instead. It wasn’t until I got here that I saw how right Sonny was.”

  Tammie was struck by how openly Dylan talked about his family. It was clear that he held them all in great regard and that they cared for each other. It was refreshing. Too often, she’d me
t men who preferred to strike out on their own. Family life became a token visit once a year, during the holidays.

  She’d grown up as an only child. While Tammie had many friends she was close to, she’d missed the kind of relationship one could have with a sibling, and she wondered if that would have helped with the loneliness she felt after her parents’ deaths.

  “If he didn’t say anything, how did you know?”

  Dylan’s face changed. She tried to read his expression, but he showed his pain for only a brief moment and then it was gone.

  “He wouldn’t look me in the eye.”

  When she didn’t say anything, he shook his head and went on. “You have to understand, we’re brothers. No matter what, Cash and I had never kept secrets from each other. We were partners in crime growing up.”

  He seemed to wince at his own words, as if he’d realized what he’d said, and he paused for a moment. His voice was low when he continued.

  “From the time we were able to walk, we shared everything. We roomed together, from the cradle all the way through college, until I went into the Marines. You learn things about a person when you’re lying in the dark like that. You’re not afraid to say things when you think no one is looking at you, judging you.” He pointed to her eggs. “You should eat before that gets cold.”

  Tammie had been so engrossed in the conversation that she hadn’t even touched her breakfast. She picked up her fork, but just pushed the food around on the plate.

  “Do you have any sisters or brothers?”

  Tammie thought of Serena. “I didn’t grow up with any siblings.” Just saying the words pierced her heart. What family she knew was dead. Except…

  She wouldn’t go there. There was no evidence, other than what she’d seen at the Davco mansion. Looking like Serena and her mother didn’t make them immediate family. For all she knew, Serena was a distant relative. She couldn’t get her hopes up that Serena was her sister.

  Dylan nodded. “Family is important. It has a way of keeping you steady. When you grow up with a brother or a sister, you just know things about them that aren’t expressed in words. Something was up with Cash, something he didn’t want anyone to know. And Serena Davco is at the core of it.”