Home At Last

Although those greetings had dwindled to a halt even before the divorce two years ago. He had wondered whether he should phone Kirsten with condolences when Brad described the new love of his life—a former Miss Scottsdale whose attraction had faded so quickly that she’d never been mentioned again. But he had decided against it.

There wasn’t much he could say beyond, “I never expected that.” Nobody would’ve expected that if they’d known her and Brad back in high school…the way he had, during those years when the three of them shared a long bus ride each day. They’d become a trio of best friends, which had amazed J.D. even as it warmed him—but still, that long-ago friendship was no justification for getting in touch with Kirsten. She’d probably put him out of her mind a long time ago, and he didn’t need her taking up any more space in his awareness.

The way she would if he let himself hear her voice again.

But this phone message was something he couldn’t ignore. She’d asked for him specifically, which meant it couldn’t be a simple coincidence of her needing some police officer. Not that a Tucson homemaker would likely need a Phoenix narcotics detective in any case, especially one with only two weeks left on the job.

She’d left a new phone number, J.D. noticed, looking at the message slip and steeling himself against the impact of seeing her name again. This wasn’t the number he remembered using for Brad on those rare occasions he’d called his friend in Tucson. But it made sense that Kirsten would’ve found a new place…she probably wouldn’t have wanted to stay in the same house she’d shared with her ex-husband.

An ex-husband J.D. would have pummeled for walking out on her, old friendship or not, if only she hadn’t wound up happier without him.

Brad hadn’t said that, of course. But he had said that after trying to talk Kirsten into a reconciliation and being flatly refused, the only conclusion he could come to was that she preferred someone who’d take more of an interest in the kids.

Which Brad, in spite of his comfortable heritage, apparently never had done. Except at their last meeting in January, J.D. recalled, when his friend had waxed eloquent about the glories of family. “I never realized how great my parents were until that plane crash, and now all I’ve got are the kids. But once the boys and Lindsay come visit this summer, I could keep them with me. Show ’em a great time…Las Vegas, skiing at Telluride, sailing off Catalina Island…”

The list of sites sounded almost like an itinerary, J.D. had thought at the time, but after the Super Bowl broadcast he had dismissed it as “bar talk.” While Brad might conceivably be planning to abscond with his kids, the possibility wasn’t worth mentioning to Kirsten. There was no reason, J.D. had managed to convince himself, for phoning a woman he hadn’t seen in eight years.

A decision he’d come to, he admitted, mainly because of the same uneasiness he was feeling right now.

J.D. flattened the message slip against the front of his desk. Drew it across the curved edge to smooth out its surface. Propped it against the phone and gazed at it, trying to imagine how Kirsten looked—as quietly stunning as ever, probably, with those incredible blond tresses and the perfect skin to match—and how she might sound when he called. Did her voice still have that faint lilt, that occasional edge of huskiness when—

Forget it, Ryder.

It was a phone call, nothing more. No reason to sit here gaping at a piece of paper as if it contained all the promise of a desert rainfall. Torn between annoyance at himself—he was a combat veteran, for God’s sake, and acting like a teenager!—and a grim awareness that he couldn’t quite seem to draw a full breath, J.D. punched the number into his phone.

One ring.

Gazing blankly across the cluttered squadroom, he forced himself to breathe in as much air as he could. If he wound up talking to her answering machine, he should at least sound reasonably in control of his own voice.

Two rings.

Kirsten might not even be there. She spent every summer taking the kids to art classes, swimming, gymnastics, the kind of thing “every mom does,” according to Brad. J.D. knew that wasn’t true of every mom, but he’d never argued the point. Even though he now had plenty of casework to cite, he’d spent the past decade letting his friends believe that their all-American lifestyle was the normal one.

Three rings.

“Hello?”

It was Kirsten. Sounding exactly the way he remembered. J.D. gripped the phone tighter and closed his eyes.

“Kirs, it’s J.D. How’re you doing?”

He could have said something smoother than that, he realized with a twinge of embarrassment as soon as he heard himself. But she hadn’t called to evaluate his social skills. All he needed to do was listen to her reunion invitation, explain he was taking off for Chicago in another few weeks, and put her out of his mind.

Again.

“Oh, I’m glad you called!” The warmth in her voice startled him, it sounded so close to what he’d fantasized about during those nights in basic training. But why would she be so excited about hearing from him now? “I’ve been trying to find anyone who might have talked to Brad lately.”

Well, that answered that. “Ah,” J.D. said, crumpling the message slip and aiming it at the wastebasket behind his desk. “Yeah.”

“I know this is going to sound really strange, but…did he by any chance mention any plans with the children? Because they were supposed to be home today, only his cleaning lady said he was taking them on vacation—and I don’t know where they are.”

J.D. closed his eyes, feeling as if he’d just been sucker-punched. So Brad hadn’t just been shooting off his mouth.

And here you didn’t want to call and warn her….

“Oh, God,” he muttered. “I’m sorry, Kirs.”

“Well, so, I was just hoping—I mean, nobody’s heard anything, and—” With every phrase her voice sounded shakier. “The police said they can’t do anything about a custody violation, and I’ve been asking everyone, only it’s like they—they’re just gone—I mean, it’s probably okay, because when I got the mail there was a…a…what, a postcard, only—”

“Kirsten,” he interrupted. “Take a breath.”

There was a momentary silence, then he heard a quick, shuddering gasp. All right, she was listening to him.

“Good,” J.D. said. “Another breath, okay? A big one.” He couldn’t make up for what he’d failed to do, but he could at least keep her from passing out.

A longer breath. “Okay,” she said, sounding slightly more composed. But then he heard the panic slipping back into her voice. “They’re just gone—and I don’t know what to do!”

Neither did he, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. “It’s okay,” he said in his best soothe-the-assault-victim tone. “We’ll get it handled.” Kirsten was right about the police not pursuing civil cases—which always shocked parents who viewed custody violations as a crime—but he’d make damn sure she got whatever assistance he could line up. “You say you got a postcard?”

“From the Space Needle,” she confirmed. “Brad always takes them there when they first get to Seattle, and they always send me one of those big postcards. Except this time, Lindsay and the boys wrote their names and drew pictures like they always do, and Brad added a note—”

“Can you read it to me?” This was the kind of thing a private investigator should handle, J.D. knew, but he couldn’t think of anyone to recommend in Tucson or Seattle. His only other contacts were cops, who couldn’t offer the kind of help she needed—and yet it was his fault she needed help in the first place. If only he’d phoned her in January….

“Let me get it. Just a second.” It took only a little longer than that before she cleared her throat and read, “Never realized till I lost my folks how great it is, having family around. Call if it’s a problem, but I want to give these kids a really fun summer—show them all the places we’ve never been. Don’t worry, I’ll have ’em home for school. Love you, Brad.”

He could hear his buddy’s breezy, carefree tone even through the tremor in Kirsten’s voice. That sounded like Brad, all right—blithely assuming she wouldn’t mind giving up her kids on the one hand, and signing off with “love you” on the other.

That son of a—

But he couldn’t trash the father of Kirsten’s kids, no matter how upset she sounded right now.

“I never would’ve agreed to let them spend the rest of the summer with him!” she cried. “Two weeks, all right, they can eat candy every morning for two weeks, and it’s important for them to spend time with their dad. But the whole summer—when he’s never been all that responsible in the first place—”

“Right,” J.D. acknowledged, forcibly channeling the heated anger into the cold concentration he employed virtually every day of his life. “You’ve already tried calling him?”

“When they weren’t on the plane, I talked to the cleaning lady—only it was too late by then. Brad probably thought it was fine to take them, since I hadn’t said no, but the postcard only came today. And I’d never, ever let him keep Lindsay and Adam and Eric that long!”

At best the Seattle P.D. might send someone over to the house, leave a message, check back a few times…. Kirsten needed more than that. “Let me get someone on this, okay?”

“The police?” She sounded both hopeful and apprehensive. “Will that—I mean, as much as I hate him for doing this, I don’t want Brad to get arrested or anything. It’d be horrible for the children to think their father was— I just want them home.”

It wasn’t all that horrible, seeing your father arrested…although, J.D. reminded himself, Kirsten’s kids had grown up in the same comfortable, happy-ending world she’d always taken for granted. Maybe it would be horrible for people like that.

“I’ll get you a private investigator,” he told her, “someone who can start right away.” He would have to give the P.I. everything he could remember from that conversation during the Super Bowl, when Brad had boasted about all the great things he could do for his kids if Kirsten weren’t so fussy about school attendance. “Find a couple photos of them, okay? And write down everything you know about Brad—where he likes to stay, friends he might call, any credit-card numbers, that kind of thing.”

“I will,” Kirsten promised, sounding somewhat reassured. “J.D., really, I appreciate your help. I was hoping someone could…I mean, I can’t let them go all summer—”

“No, I know.” Brad had always been good company, but the same blithe irresponsibility that made him fun to spend time with was probably a major drawback when it came to looking after kids. “You’d just as soon they didn’t live on candy bars, right?”