The Truth About Comfort Cove

Her heart rate was double-timing, and not just because of the man sharing the front seat with her. She was on to something. She knew it.

Ramsey’s intent stare told her he felt it, too.

“When the baseball thing didn’t work out, he’s on a super downer, losing all hope of ever getting out of the poor man’s life because he thought his only chance at a degree was the baseball scholarship. He wouldn’t go into debt to pay for college, and he thinks he’ll never get ahead legitimately without the degree, so he returns to Comfort Cove. He gets the job as a delivery man, which provides him with an easy means for kidnapping and transporting children, and then he sells them.”

“If not all to Gladys, then to someone else.”

“I’ll see if I can get a warrant for Colton’s current bank records. Chances are there won’t be any dated back twentyfive years.”

“Still, a victim of scarcity mentality is often a hoarder, and if we’re right about Colton, if he has money that can’t be explained, we’ll be one step closer.”

“And then I need to have another meeting with Jack. I have to make him talk to me.”

“And we should speak with Gladys, too. Maybe she’ll remember something once she knows that we’ve made the connection and are going to find out what went on.”

She opened the car door, feeling a little panicky. Excitement over the case transferred to excitement over Ramsey. He opened his car door, too, but didn’t get out. Lucy looked over. He was watching her.

Jack. Claire. The cases.

“What we have here makes sense,” she blurted. “But we have no proof. Other than that hair ribbon which ties Claire to Gladys’s house but doesn’t tie Jack to Claire or to Gladys.”

Ramsey held up the folder they’d been working on over dinner. “We’ve got six professors, five of whom are men and not possible girlfriends, but who may know if Colton was involved with a teacher other than one of his own. And one, the female English professor, is still there and is of an age to have been in a relationship with him. We’ll go see her in the morning before our meeting with Wakerby. Then we call the other five. And we’ll find out everything they know about Jack Colton. Maybe someone saw this guy with Gladys, or someone who knows Gladys, or someone who adopted a baby or wanted a baby or…”

They were out of the car. Lucy unlocked the back of the Rendezvous. Ramsey lifted the hatch and pulled out his carryon-size suitcase and garment bag.

He’d have personal items in there. Like underwear. Because he’d be stepping out of his in her house.

She was sick. Really sick.

And now it was time to take him—and his luggage—inside.

T he first thing Ramsey did when Lucy left him alone at the door of the spare bedroom of her home was close it. Firmly behind him. He didn’t look around. Didn’t take in his surroundings, didn’t note the location of every piece of furniture, every window and door and hinge and lock. He went straight for the bathroom.

He saw the towels on the rack in his peripheral vision. She’d mentioned something about having put them out. Not taking the time to dig into his bag for his toiletries, he pulled off his gun, setting it on the counter just outside the shower, turned on the cold water, stripped off his clothes and stepped into the spray.

It had probably been rude to excuse himself from her company the second they got home. It would have been far worse to accept her offer of a hot-chocolate nightcap and further conversation in the intimacy of her living room with his body hard in response to her closeness.

Tonight, Lucy Hayes’s spare bedroom was a hotel room. One that was convenient for her to chauffeur to and from. No more. No less.

He was not her personal guest. Didn’t want to be her personal guest.

And she was not one of his casual, one-night stands.

Looking down at himself under the stinging spray, Ramsey wondered how long it was going to take to convince his body of that fact.

H e’d packed sweats and a T-shirt for sleeping. With his laptop on his chest, Ramsey lay on top of the rose coverlet on the queen-size bed, settled in for the night. Best that he not climb in between the soft sheets. Not tease his libido with images of Lucy Hayes making the bed, or lying on the sheets.

Best that he not give her more work by having to wash sheets and remake a bed when he was gone.

One o’clock in the morning and he wasn’t sleeping, anyway. There’d been two other abductions in Massachusetts on delivery truck routes not long before Claire Sanderson had been taken. Both toddlers. Neither had ever been found. Jack had been cleared of any suspicion in those abductions—they weren’t on his route, and during the first one, he hadn’t even been driving a truck yet.

But maybe there was some other connection. Jack could have come back from Cincinnati, armed with Gladys’s information and a plan. He could have originally started as the middleman between the delivery truck drivers and Gladys, and then determined that he could make more money by cutting out the portion he had to pay to the delivery-truck man by handling that part of the job himself. Every piece of that puzzle fit.

Now all he needed to do was prove it.

And find out what had happened to those three children.

He searched the three routes, marking all the similarities he could find, right down to fast-food places from the same chains. It was only two in the morning.