Chapter 17
All the way to Kate’s estate, Thad withdrew more and more. Lucy watched it like a flower closing at the end of a hot day. Servants helped them unload the Jeep. Inside, Sophie ran to her room, excited about having two dollhouses to play with. She’d be busy for hours.
“There you are.” Kate glided into the entry with a big smile and clever, observant eyes. She hugged Thad, leaning back for a close look, and then Lucy. “Well? How’d it go?”
“Great,” she said.
“Sophie enjoyed it,” Thad added.
“What about the two of you?” Kate hadn’t missed how stiff they both sounded.
“The storm kept us in the house for a couple of days, but we managed,” Lucy said when Thad’s brow lowered as he looked at his mother.
“Hey, you’re back,” Darcy interrupted at just the right moment. He greeted Thad and Lucy, and then to Thad said, “I need to talk to you.”
He must have found out more about the man who’d chased him.
“You’re free to talk in front of all of us,” Kate said.
Darcy’s gaze passed over Lucy before he started in. He must have been surprised Thad had told her. Maybe he thought they’d grown closer.
“Andrew Lindeman is an ordinary guy. Shocked me when I got the background information. Mechanic at a small garage. Wife and two kids. Except he hasn’t shown up for work in weeks and his wife left him recently. Apparently, he hasn’t been home and she doesn’t know where he’s been going or staying. Acting very strange.”
Mechanic-turned-henchman. Lucy agreed, that was strange.
“Why did he follow you and give you a warning?” Thad asked.
“Good question, and one I can’t answer. Nothing in his background suggests he’s a criminal. Has no record. Until he left his job and wife, he was a dependable worker and husband. The wife’s pretty upset over it.”
“When did you talk to her?” Thad asked.
“Yesterday.”
“You’re supposed to be watching my mother.”
“Oh, Thad, I have countless agents swarming this place,” Kate admonished. “I told him to go.”
“Of course you did,” Thad said cynically.
“I wasn’t gone long. And I had to talk to some people to learn about this guy,” Darcy said.
“And as you can see, I’m fine.” Kate opened her arms to indicate her healing form.
“Why would an ordinary guy go after you in relation to Kate’s shooting?” Lucy asked, more to herself. “Is he a political fanatic?”
“I found nothing in his background to indicate that,” Darcy said.
“He’s an average family man one day and an extremist the next,” Kate said, voicing her thoughts much as Lucy had.
“Your theory about an organization behind all of this must be right, Thad,” Lucy said.
While Darcy nodded his agreement, Kate looked off to the side as she pondered that. It was bad enough one shooter had gone after her, but a group?
“And they’ll obviously go to any length to see that they succeed,” Darcy said, and then murmured to Kate, “Sorry.”
She held up a hand. “No, it’s the truth. We have to find a way to stop them.”
Thad’s austere face revealed his determination to do just that.
“I have officers looking for Lindeman,” Darcy said. “He seems to have disappeared. Found his car abandoned in a parking lot of an abandoned warehouse.”
Another dead end.
“Do you think he was killed? It was so easy for you to find him,” Lucy said.
“Yeah, all I had to do was run his plates.”
“They know you looked in to him,” Thad said.
“My guess is the chief is the one keeping them informed, whoever ‘they’ are. I assume he never got back to you on Sophie’s kidnapping...?”
“No.”
“I checked Layne’s phone records on my own and isolated a number from Lindeman’s mechanic shop.”
That helped prove Lindeman had been the one to arrange the kidnapping, but Lindeman was now missing. And if Lindeman had been killed, they’d lost a solid lead. The only lead they had unless Jaden talked.
* * *
Thad sat with Darcy down in the media room at his mother’s estate. His feet were up on the reclined theater chair, Darcy a mirror image beside him. They each had their own bowl of popcorn. The Carolina Hurricanes–Buffalo Sabres hockey game played, the giant screen and surround sound making it feel as though they were there live. For the first time in as long as he could remember, Thad wasn’t in the mood for sports. He couldn’t stop thinking about Lucy.
“What’s going on with you?” Darcy asked from beside him. “The Sabres just scored and you didn’t even notice.”
“Nothing.”
“You’ve been moping all week.”
Thad ate a handful of popcorn. Moping. Brooding. Bothered. Yeah. He’d rather be excited about the game, but the nagging sense that he was making a big mistake wouldn’t leave him alone.
“Did you and Lucy hit it off in Carova?”
Thad had to hand it to Darcy for letting this much time go by before asking that. Thad didn’t have a reply. “Hit it off” didn’t come close to what he felt.
“You’d be yourself if you didn’t,” Darcy continued. “But now you feel something and you’re freaking out.”
Thad sent him an unappreciative look. Like Lucy, Darcy knew him too well. Darcy, he’d expect. Lucy? How had she picked him apart so fast?
Some people find it that way. Had they hit it off so well that they knew each other already? Were they so much alike that it came naturally? Or had she simply focused on his commitment issue?
“Just because your parents screwed things up doesn’t mean you will,” Darcy said.
Thad sent him another look.
“Seriously, Thad. You’re a good friend. I don’t want to see you pass up something that’s worth more than you’re allowing. Let it go, man.”
Thad didn’t engage. He was too torn over the whole thing with Lucy. Making love at the Carova beach house. Sophie. All of it.
“Avery and I are getting married.”
The shock of that announcement rippled through Thad as he turned to look at his best friend’s profile. “When?”
“This May. It’s going to be small. Just a few of our friends and family.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure about anything in my entire life.”
Stunned, Thad believed him.
“I’d like you to be the best man.”
Darcy was marrying a woman he’d just met. “Yeah. Of course.”
“Don’t you feel the same about Lucy?”
Yes, an inner voice responded. But Thad stopped it from going any further.
That’s when he realized he did stop his feelings for Lucy. What would happen if he didn’t? Wasn’t that what Lucy had asked him to do? It was her ultimatum. She’d refuse any intimacy with him unless he stopped laying the law down with regard to marriage.
“You do,” Darcy said for him. “I can tell.” When Thad would have protested, Darcy cut him off. “I know you. You love her.”
He didn’t want to love her.
“If you throw it away, you’ll never forget her, and you’ll never find anyone like her. If you’re really sure you’ll never get married, you’ll get exactly what you ask for if you let Lucy go.”
The truth of that reverberated inside him. What if he was making a mistake letting Lucy go? Was he letting her go?
No. Something powerful inside him rebelled against that. And yet...
“It scares you,” Darcy said. “You’re afraid. I get that. But there comes a point when you have to leap forward and take a chance.”
“I need time to think about it.”
“Don’t take too much time. Lucy won’t wait for long.” Putting his bowl of popcorn aside, Darcy stood. “I should get home to Avery. She’s getting off work right now.”
Thad stood, too, and then followed him upstairs. Seeing him out the door, he heard voices in the kitchen and went there. His mother and Lucy were still up and they were deep into a serious conversation.
“You’re well enough to take care of yourself,” Lucy said. “You don’t need me anymore.”
Was she going to leave? The swell of regret gripped Thad. No. She couldn’t leave yet.
“Perhaps. And there couldn’t have been anyone more capable than you, Lucy, but I’d like you to stay regardless. You’re safer here.”
“I was never in danger. Cam wasn’t involved in the shooting.”
“Lucy. We don’t know what the shooter will do or who is working with him. You could be vulnerable.”
“I don’t see how.”
“You mean something to Thad. You could be used against him.”
“I don’t mean enough. He’s barely spoken to me over the past few days. I think it would be better for both of us if I just left. I need to get on with my life. Go back to work at Duke...”
Her voice trailed off, but what she would have said next hung in the air.
“Find a man,” his mother said.
Lucy sighed.
“Give it a little more time,” Kate said. “At least until after Trey’s wedding.”
His older brother’s marriage was coming up next week, at the end of March.
“I don’t know if I can.” Lucy sounded sad, her voice low and without energy.
Thad turned away from the door and leaned his back against the wall, letting his head fall back. He had avoided her since they’d come back from the Outer Banks. So full of confusion, he didn’t hear Lucy and his mother leave the kitchen. Lucy was the first to appear through the doorway. He lifted his head. His mother stopped behind Lucy, both surprised to find him there, both knowing he’d heard what had been said.
“I’m going to bed.” His mother left them alone.
Thad straightened from the wall and faced Lucy, at a loss for what to say.
“I should go to bed, too.” Lucy started to walk away.
Without knowing why, he took hold of her arm and stopped her, gently bringing her back to him.
“My mother’s right. You should stay.”
She eased out of his grasp. “Why?”
For him. But he couldn’t say that, so he didn’t say anything.
Disappointment dulled her usually bright green eyes. “Did it mean nothing to you?”
“No. It did.” She had to know Carova had meant something. It meant too much. “I just...”
“Feel safer running away.”
Many thoughts bombarded him, all of which he should verbalize so that she understood him. If only he could organize them all and start with one.
“Lucy...” He reached for her, wishing she wouldn’t put so much pressure on him.
She stepped back. She’d made her requirements clear. She was asking him to be open to whatever the future brought. But he couldn’t do that. Although she claimed not to expect marriage, he knew that she did. If not with him, then someone. The idea of her with another man gathered in a tight ball in the pit of his stomach. But then, so did the idea of getting married.
Watching him, Lucy’s lips quivered subtly. He thought she would cry. She turned away before he could be sure. He didn’t go after her. If he did, he’d comfort her, reassure her, and where would that lead? Down an unknown road with bends and curves he’d rather not travel.
* * *
Wiping the tear that tickled down her cheek, Lucy saw Kate peeking out her bedroom door. She waved Lucy to come inside. Wondering what she was up to, Lucy went into Kate’s spacious master suite.
“You poor thing.” Kate shut the door.
“I’m moving home in the morning.”
“No. I was about to tell you something when we ran into Thad.” She took Lucy’s hand and led her to the sitting area before the windows, a lamp on the table between softly lighting the room.
Lucy sat down, tired and sad.
“I know he loves you, Lucy.”
Love? “Oh, I don’t—”
“I know my son. He’s in love with you. Why do you think he’s been avoiding you?”
“He’s afraid I’ll drag him to the altar.”
“He’s afraid that’s exactly what he wants. He’ll come to his senses eventually. But I have an idea that might speed up his decision process.”
Lucy lifted her brow. Politicians could be wily, but what did Kate have in mind?