In the Enemy's Arms

Maybe GayAnne was wrong. Maybe she had a flair for the dramatic that Cate had missed seeing on her last visit. Maybe…

Susanna had run the shelter from this office, while the rest of the place housed the staff. Usually that in cluded Trent and three or four volunteers from the States. GayAnne had been there the longest, since Cate’s first visit. The others came from the college Susanna had attended or one of the churches back home that helped fund the mission, and they stayed anywhere from a week to six months. In addition, a couple of local women worked there, too.

Like the rest of the house, the office had an abandoned look: a half-eaten cookie on a saucer, a cup of coffee long gone cold. As if Susanna had merely taken a break and would be back any moment now. Her desk was covered with papers, but Cate had never seen it otherwise. The bulletin board hanging above it didn’t have a scrap of empty space available, and the chairs were piled with stacks of things to be filed—again, normal. Susanna was a hands-on person; she tolerated paperwork because it was an evil necessity.

A second, smaller desk on the other side was almost compulsively neat—not because Trent was, by nature, a neat person but because he opted for the easiest way out and, in this case, that was filing as he went along. The corkboard next to his desk held a calendar, with her arrival and departure dates circled in red, and a half-dozen photographs thumbtacked on randomly. They hadn’t changed since her last visit: three of Susanna, two of his parents and brothers and one of himself with Justin Seavers, his best friend from college. Two damn good-looking men, and together they weren’t worth a damn.

She eased the picture from under its tack, as was her habit, and studied it. The first time, Trent had cocked one brow and she’d shrugged. Just wondering where he hides his horns and pitchfork. The second time, alone in the office, she’d wondered if anyone had ever taken as quick a dislike to her as Justin had. She wasn’t ac customed to scorn at first sight. Usually, she had to do something significant to piss someone off that badly.

The photo had been taken within the last few years, on a boat somewhere off the coast of Cozumel. Both Trent and Justin wore dive skins pulled down to their waists. Though they were roughly the same size, they looked as different as night and day. Trent was dark— hair, eyes, skin; a gift from his Italian mother—and Justin was light—blond hair, café au lait skin and coffee-dark eyes. Though one came from Georgia, the other from Alabama, their lives had been pretty much the same from birth: privileged. The Seaverses had even more money than the Calloways; Justin’s sense of entitlement had been even greater than Trent’s.

Justin’s dislike for Cate had been even stronger than that.

Her cheeks heated, and the knot in her gut eased enough to summon her usual derision for Justin. He’d hated that she wasn’t just another of Trent’s passing diversions. He hadn’t wanted to lose his partying buddy—which he hadn’t—and he’d thought she didn’t deserve Trent. He’d told her so at the rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding.

Cate hadn’t seen him since the following day, and she hoped she never would again.

Still clutching the photo, she turned and looked around the office once more. Maybe she should call the police, or Trent’s parents. Maybe she should get out of the house and get the authorities in there before any evidence that might exist was destroyed.

Tell the police what? her little voice scoffed. That her irresponsible ex-husband had forgotten she was supposed to arrive today? That his very responsible girlfriend had actually left the house rather than wait for Cate to make her way there? As for evidence, didn’t that imply a crime? Was there anything in this room to suggest something had happened?

Her eyes couldn’t see it, but her gut felt…something.

Gradually she became aware of a textural difference beneath her fingertips. Turning the photo over, she found a small Post-it note affixed to the picture, the precise writing in Trent’s hand.

C: If anything happens, call him. He’ll know what to do.

Call Justin Seavers? Yeah, right. The only times she’d ever called him, she’d been looking for her fiancé/husband when he hadn’t returned from a night out with the boys. He’d always been at Justin’s place, too hung over to talk to her, Justin had said in that superior tone. He’d told her to go on about her business, that Trent would come home when he was ready. Smug bastard.

And Trent wanted her to turn to him now? What could one lazy, irresponsible trust-fund baby do to help another?

Then she read the note again. If anything happens… Finding the shelter empty and silent certainly qualified as anything.

He’ll know what to do. Maybe Trent had confided in him. Maybe Justin could at least tell her something to report to the police. Maybe he knew where Trent and Susanna were and why everyone else had left.

Gritting her teeth, she stuck the photo back on the bulletin board, opened the lower-left drawer on Trent’s desk and pulled out a leather-bound address book. Trent relied on his smartphone for a lot, but he also liked pa-per-and-ink records. She found the entry she needed, then punched the numbers into her cell with tiny, vicious pokes.

The phone rang once in her ear, followed by a sound from outside the office. Moving the cell away, she took a hesitant step toward the door and listened hard. Music came faintly from somewhere inside the house, and it was moving closer.

Her palms went damp, and her heart stuttered to a stop before breaking into a gallop.

Oh, God, someone else was inside the house!

The ringtone was an Eric Clapton song, about a man on the run, trying to avoid getting swept away by a river of tears. Of course, a woman was his downfall; so often they were, though Justin Seavers had had better luck at avoiding that fate than most guys he knew.

There was no special meaning to the ringtone, though. He’d known Cate would call; the song had been on his phone; it was a thoughtless choice. It didn’t mean he’d ever cared—would ever care—enough to run from Cate, and it sure as hell didn’t mean she could save him. He wasn’t of the opinion that he actually needed saving, at least not anymore.

He silenced the phone as he reached the hall, then stepped through the office doorway. She was standing there, posture rigid, fingers clenched tightly around her cell phone. She was ten inches shorter than him, enough to make him feel like the big, strong protector or, more likely, the overlarge clumsy oaf.

When she recognized him, relief flashed across her face, quickly replaced with the cool, disdainful look she usually reserved just for him. “You,” she breathed, letting the tension, or most of it, ease from her body.

Justin leaned against the doorjamb, one ankle crossing the other. “What’s up, doc?”

Straightening her spine, she managed to appear an inch or so taller. “Where’s Trent? Susanna? Why did all the volunteers leave? What’s going on here?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? Trent said—”

“When did you talk to him?”

She blinked, unaccustomed to being interrupted. She might be delicate in size and stature and, according to Trent, sweeter than sugar most of the time, but she was probably the most book-smart person Justin had ever known, and she was accustomed to being in charge. People didn’t interrupt Dr. Cate Calloway, head of emergency medicine at the Copper Lake Hospital and part-time instructor of trauma management at her alma mater.

“A week ago. Maybe ten days. I called to let him know I’d shipped some supplies and to see if they needed anything else.”

“How did he seem?”

She blinked again. “Like Trent. He was on another call. He said if Susanna thought of something, she’d give me a call. If not, they’d see me today.”

“And neither of them called you?”

The effort to stop from rolling her eyes was visible in the tension in her jaw. “No. Otherwise, I would have said that was the last time I talked to him—” She drew a breath. “What are you doing here?”

He shrugged again. Annoying her had always come easily to him. All he had to do was breathe. Hippocratic oath or not, he was pretty sure if someone hauled him into her E.R. on the verge of death, she’d be tempted to shove him over.

“I thought I’d see how the diving is this fall.”

“Then why aren’t you on a boat out in the ocean?”

“My dive buddy’s taken some time off. What’s in the boxes out there?”

“Medical supplies, toiletries, books, clothes.”

“Any drugs?”

The disdain increased fractionally. “Antibiotics, antihistamines, some nonnarcotic pain relievers. Nothing special. Why are you really here? Trent said if anything happened—” She raised her hand when he started to interrupt again. “He wrote in a note that if anything happened, I should call you, and now here you are. How convenient. Why you? Why not the police, his parents, the foundation?”

Ignoring her questions, he finally moved away from the door and into the room. It seemed to shrink by half, putting him closer to her than he’d been in a very long time. “What note?”

The corners of her mouth pinching, she took the few steps to the bulletin board and pulled off the photo from a dive trip three years ago. He barely glanced at it but turned it over to read the note on the back. Looking up again, he cocked his brow. “You two arranged a secret message system involving this photo of me?”

Her mouth pinched even more, as if she’d sucked the sourest of limes. “Of course not. He just knew…I usually…pick up the picture at least once…when I’m here.” Her face tinged with a blush, and she was not an attractive blusher.

Everything else about her, though…straight brown hair, blunt cut, in a braid today, blue eyes, a mouth to match the sweet nature he’d been told she possessed, great legs, nice body. He’d think she had chosen beach-casual for travel, in brown shorts that showed no curves, a tan tank top that clung to every curve and flat sandals with straps, but she always dressed for comfort. Trent joked that was why she’d gone into medicine in the first place. What could be cozier than wearing scrubs all the time?

He fingered the picture before peeling off the Post-it and crumpling it. “So my picture interests you.”

She snorted. “Puzzles would be a better word. I look at it and wonder how two men with all the advantages money can buy can grow up to become…well, you and Trent.”