Tempt Me If You Can Page 15

  “I hired a lawyer and petitioned the state for custody. The courtroom was a zoo that day.”

  “I hobbled in on my crutches with Nem on one side of me, our lawyer on the other, and the whole town of Medicine Gore behind us,” Mikey explained, grinning from ear to ear. “About ten social workers and state lawyers descended on me like vultures, asking me questions and calling for Nem’s arrest.”

  Emma expected the coffee mug Ben was gripping to shatter.

  “Judge Bracket just kept pounding his gavel and shouting for order,” Mikey said.

  “Were you arrested?” Ben asked, looking at her.

  “On what charge? No one could prove I did anything wrong.”

  “That’s not the best part,” Mikey interjected. “Judge Bracket tried for over two hours to make sense of the whole mess. He wanted to know where my mother was, and we told him we didn’t know. So then he wanted to know where my father was. Again, we told him we didn’t know.”

  “Then Mikey told Bracket that if he couldn’t stay with me, he would run away and disappear, just like his parents. By the time he was done with his little speech to the judge, there wasn’t a dry eye in the courtroom.”

  Ben sat up straighter. “But the state would have looked for me before they awarded you custody.”

  Emma shook her head. “On the birth certificate, Kelly put that the father was unknown.”

  “You knew who the father was.”

  “Yes,” she admitted. She turned her teacup in her hands as she looked him square in the face. “But I wasn’t about to tell them. I would have lost Mikey.”

  Ben looked at his son, his face softening as he blew out a frustrated breath. “I see. And you weren’t quite ready to find me yet, either.”

  “I was scared,” the boy admitted. “Nem was all I had. I didn’t want to go live with a stranger.”

  Ben looked back at Emma. “Most of the town knew about me; you said Mike’s parentage wasn’t a secret. No one said anything?”

  “You weren’t exactly well thought of. They didn’t want to give a little boy over to a man they thought was a murderer.”

  Which reminded her—somebody had wanted to get Ben back here recently. “Hang on a second,” she said, getting up from the table. “I have some stationery I want you to look at.” She ran into her bedroom.

  “Here it is,” she said as she returned to the kitchen, setting the stationery she had stolen from Wayne on the table.

  “What is it?” Ben asked, picking up the paper.

  “Was the letter you received written on this stationery.”

  “It’s nothing like the stationery I received. This is more like typing paper. My letter was written on ivory linen card stock. Where did you get this?” he asked, setting it back on the table.

  Emma picked up her tea. “I stole that from Wayne’s desk yesterday. I thought he might be bitter enough to write you, hoping to stir up trouble.”

  “You broke into his house?”

  “He boards at Greta’s, and she asked me to take his laundry up to his room. So while I was there, I … just …” She threw up her hands. “I thought Wayne might have sent the letter!”

  Ben’s face was unreadable. “I don’t like this,” he finally said.

  “I didn’t get caught. And it’s only a piece of paper.”

  “No. I don’t like that we don’t know who sent me the note. Nor do I like the fact that someone out there has suddenly decided to meddle in our lives.”

  Emma looked over at Mikey. “Any ideas?”

  “No. Everyone’s known for years who my father is, so I don’t know why anyone would suddenly decide to contact him now.”

  Emma shrugged. “It’s probably just some busybody in town.” She stood and gathered the teacups. “We’ll find out who sent it eventually. Where is the letter anyway? It might help if we saw it.”

  “It’s in New York. I left it with a detective agency, but I’ll bring it back when I return. Emma, what are these numbers on Poulin’s stationery?”

  She turned from the sink and found Ben studying the paper. “Oh. Those are some coordinates I found hidden under his desk blotter. I can’t say why I copied them, other than that they made me curious.”

  Ben’s face darkened. “You snooped through his whole room?”

  “I was looking for the letters he claimed Kelly had written him.”

  “This is northwest of here, Nem,” Mikey said, studying the paper he had taken from Ben. “What did he have these written on? A map?”

  “No,” she said, moving to look over his shoulder. “They were on a scrap of paper that was old and yellowed. Like I said, I just wondered why he had kept them.”

  Ben grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her full on the mouth. Then he hauled Mikey up from his chair and gave him a hug that would have felled a lesser man. “I’ll be back Tuesday morning. I expect to find you both here, with no broken bones or near misses. Be good and I’ll bring you back something from New York.” Those dictates given, he opened the door and left. Emma and Mikey looked at each other, then started laughing.

  “Did you see that, Nem? There really was moss sticking to his jacket.” Mikey ambled out behind his father. “I doubt even a good scrubbing could get it off.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Okay. Here are the choices,” Emma said as she entered the shed. “We can stack firewood, winterize the boats, and wash the plane and my truck, or we can go check out Wayne’s coordinates.”

  Mikey looked up from the generator he was servicing. “I vote for the last one.”

  “Good. You go dig up the topographies for that area and find the handheld GPS. I’ll pack us a lunch.”

  “We flying or driving?”

  “Flying,” Emma answered over her shoulder as she left. “You need another lesson in tight water landing. You came in much too hot at Smokey Bog.”

  Emma had two packs loaded and in the plane by the time Mikey arrived with his own day-trip gear. He had a roll of maps, the GPS, his shotgun, and Homer, their newest homing pigeon. Shaking her head, Emma took Homer’s cage and set it on top of the packs in the backseat of the plane so the bird could see out the window. She climbed into the passenger seat and handed Mikey his headphones as he settled in beside her.

  “That’s cheating, Nem. He can watch the terrain and learn his way back.”

  “But think of the thrill for him. He can tell his buddies he actually flew over a hundred miles an hour.”

  “You spoil those birds.”

  “No worse than I spoil you,” she shot back, pulling out the checklist and handing it to him. “Like doing the preflight inspection for you. All systems are go. Let’s take this bird into the sky.”

  “If Dad finds out about this, there’ll be trouble,” he warned, checking the instruments and starting the plane.

  “Then we’ll make sure he doesn’t find out. Give me the maps and get us airborne, Boy Wonder. We’ll be back before Ben calls.”

  “You think he’ll call?”

  Emma just snorted and opened the maps.

  With the confidence of someone who knew he had a guardian angel sitting on his shoulder, Mikey taxied out to the middle of the bay. “Smile and wave to Crazy Larry, Nem,” he told her through the headsets.

  “I don’t see him.”

  “He’s in his picture window, looking at us through binoculars.”

  Emma picked up her own field glasses and looked toward the shore. Sure enough, there was Larry, eagle-eyeing them like the nosy pain in the neck he was. She felt like shooting him an unladylike gesture, but decided not to aggravate the situation. She smiled and waved instead, and watched as his jaw went slack and he instinctively waved back.

  The old coot had rained holy terror down on them when Mikey had splintered his docks. The FAA had arrived and threatened to take her license away. And they would have, if not for Michael blatantly lying that he’d taken the plane without her knowledge. Even Sheriff Ramsey had been called to the scene. But having f
lown with Emma and Mikey when the boy had been at the controls, and knowing her influence with Greta, Ramsey had somehow ended up losing the paperwork.

  Living in a small town sure did have advantages.

  “Where do you want to land?” he asked, once they were airborne and heading northwest.

  Emma punched Wayne’s coordinates into the loran on the dash. “Let’s fly to the spot and look around first, then find a pond nearby,” she said, studying the map.

  “What do you think we’ll find?”

  “I haven’t a clue, Mikey. This could be a wild-goose chase, for all I know. It may simply be a spot Wayne needs to cruise for future cutting for the mill.”

  “You said the paper looked old.”

  “It did. That’s what made me curious, I guess.” She looked at him, but only saw her reflection in his mirrored glasses when he looked back at her. “You want to return and stack wood instead?”

  He grinned. “No. It still beats working. And I’m up for a lesson from my favorite aunt any day of the week.”

  “Your only aunt. And the best darn instructor you’ll ever hope to have. Why haven’t you taken Ben up for a ride yet?”

  “I offered. He said he’s still recovering from his last plane ride.”

  “What do you honestly think of him? Does he measure up to your expectations?”

  Mikey scanned the horizon and checked their progress down below. “Actually he does—and then some. I like him. He’s intelligent and interesting and he’s got a sense of humor. But I think he’s a little … well, overwhelmed by … everything.”

  “That’s one way of putting it. I don’t think he knows what to do with either of us.”

  “But he is trying,” he told her with all the sincerity of a loyal son. “But you know what I find the neatest?”

  “What?”

  “There’s a lot more to him than he lets on. He supposedly got lost getting here, but I don’t believe it. I think he was stalling because he was nervous about meeting me. But then there’s this other side of him. It’s not something anyone can see; it’s more like a feeling I have. I don’t think he’s someone you want to cross paths with when he’s truly mad. You might think he’s a rolling stone, Nem, but I think he’s solid granite. And if there’s a fight to be fought, I’d want to be beside him, not opposite him.”

  Emma had to agree. There was much more to Benjamin Sinclair than he let on. There was a hard side. Maybe even a lethal side.

  There definitely was a controlled side.

  She remembered the morning they had awoken in the forest, and the gun he had pulled at the threat of danger. The same gun he hadn’t drawn while four men beat him senseless, because he hadn’t wanted things to escalate to the point of no return.

  That required a strength most men lacked.

  The day Galen Simms had attacked her, she’d gotten a glimpse of Ben coming near the edge of violence. But even then, it had been a controlled deadliness.

  “You may be right, Mikey. I would bet Medicine Creek Camps that we’ve only seen the civilized surface of Ben. And like you, I don’t ever want to be opposite him when that veneer comes off.”

  “Then you had better marry the man, Nem. For both our sakes.”

  “He told you!”

  He grinned over at her. “I’m his greatest ally.”

  “Well, Mr. Ally, we’re here,” Emma snapped, refusing to discuss the subject. “Bank left and let’s see what’s down there.”

  Nothing was down there. Nothing but old-growth forest for miles and miles. They circled three times before Emma decided they’d have to put down and walk to the spot. She pointed out a marginal-sized pond and Mikey expertly circled the area, deciding how he wanted to land. Like the proficient natural bush pilot he was, he picked a spot and set the Cessna down with plenty of room to spare.

  “Grab the GPS and Homer,” she said as she reached behind them for the packs. “I would say we’ve got about a mile to go.”

  It turned out to be more like two, since they had to sidetrack around a deep gully. Using her handheld global positioning device, Emma was able to lock in the position and walk until the system said they were standing on the spot.

  “There’s nothing here,” Mikey said. “Just trees.”

  Emma frowned. He was right; there was nothing but forest for hundreds of acres in all directions.

  “I know I copied the coordinates down right. I double-checked.” She laughed. “I dislike that man so much, I conjured up a mystery that doesn’t exist.”

  “It still beats stacking wood.”

  “Not really. At least we would’ve had something to show for our efforts.”

  “Let’s spread out and widen the circle,” he suggested, setting Homer down and dropping his backpack beside the bird. “Maybe Wayne found the site of an old logging camp from the last century. Or a rusting Lombard. There’s supposed to be several of those old steam engines rotting away out here.”

  “Maybe this was an old meeting spot for him and Kelly.” Emma dropped her pack beside Mikey’s.

  The boy shook his head. “Naw, it’s too far out. They would have found a closer place.”

  Emma stared at him. “I was kidding, Mikey. And how can you talk about your mother as if she … she … well, as if she were just another woman?”

  He put his hands on his hips and stared back, looking defiant and angry and lost all at the same time. “She stopped being my mother the day she left.” His face sharp with anger and his chin held high, he continued. “For that matter, she never was much of a mother before she left. All my childhood memories are of you. Kelly was just a woman who lived with us.”

  “That’s not true, Mikey. Your mother loved you the best she could.” She wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him. “She was just so lost inside, Michael. When Dad died, and she found herself pregnant, she never fully recovered. Being weak is not a crime, Mikey. It’s human. And you have to love her no matter her shortcomings.”

  She sighed when she felt his unsteady arms wrap around her. “She was advised to put you up for adoption, but she didn’t. As much as she was capable of, Kelly loved you. She just didn’t know what to do with you once you arrived.”

  “You didn’t seem to have any problem dealing with me.”

  She pushed away with a scowl. “Ha. I had more problems with you than I can count. I’ve spent the last fifteen years trying to keep one step ahead of you.”

  Michael let his arms fall to his sides as he looked around. “Does this place give you the creeps, Nem?” he asked softly.

  Emma felt a sudden chill go down her spine at his words. She rubbed her arms and looked around. “Yes,” she whispered. “Now that you mention it.”

  “I feel as though we’re being watched,” he said, stepping closer.

  Emma attempted to shrug off the feeling. “It’s probably just a bobcat. You know how they like to sneak around. I’ve been stalked by them several times while out hiking.”

  “That woodpile’s looking pretty good, all of a sudden. How about we head back?”

  Emma mentally shook herself. This was the forest they knew and loved, not the setting of a Stephen King novel. She walked over to Homer and took him out of his cage. “Not until we give this little guy a head start for home.”

  Mikey pulled a message canister from his pocket. “What do we want the note to say?”

  “‘The last one home is a rotten egg’?”

  Mikey smiled as he wrote. “How about ‘The last one home has to cook dinner’?”

  Emma wrinkled her nose. “Or be dinner? Homer can’t cook.”

  Michael stuffed the message in the canister and carefully secured it to Homer. “But he could pick up a few crickets on the way.”

  Emma rolled her eyes and released the bird. “Watch him, Mikey. You could take flying lessons from that little guy,” she said as they watched the bird rise into the sky. He circled once, then twice, and landed on a branch fifty yards away.

  “Well, that�
��s a brilliant homing pigeon,” Mikey said. “He’s just sitting there, watching us.”

  “He’s young. He doesn’t know he’s suppose to hurry along yet.”

  Mikey snorted. “He wants to ride back in the plane. Do you suppose the flight here messed up his internal compass?”

  “Maybe he’s just enjoying his freedom,” Emma suggested, raising her hand to shade her eyes as she squinted up at the tree. “Or maybe he’s enjoying the view.”

  “Or maybe we will have him for dinner,” Mikey said.

  Emma handed him his pack. “Come on, Daniel Boone. Let’s look around and then get airborne ourselves. Those clouds look like another storm is headed in.”

  Mikey followed her line of vision as he hefted his pack onto his back. “There’s supposed to be a cold front moving down tonight.”

  “It’s early this year.”

  “We’re ready for it. There’s only two boats left to be put up. And snow will make good tracking for the hunters.”

  “Speaking of hunters, where’s Pitiful gone off to? I haven’t seen him all week,” Emma asked, hefting her pack onto her back. “I hope he’s okay.”

  “No one in their right mind would shoot that moose, Nem. He’s no trophy with that missing antler, and no one would dare eat his meat. They’d be afraid of catching mad moose disease or something.”

  Emma fished out the GPS and turned it on, then studied the screen as the satellites lined up and gave her a reading. “I don’t get it. Why would Wayne have kept these coordinates? His desk had no clutter, no scraps of paper anywhere else. Everything was organized and efficient. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe this is where he buried all the bodies,” Mikey suggested, raising his hands and pretending to choke someone. “He’s probably a serial killer. He’s certainly weird enough.”

  Emma shut off the GPS and slid it back in her pocket. “He is a little … different,” she conceded. “But just because you don’t like the man is no reason to brand him a psycho.”

  “This coming from the woman who ransacked his room looking for nonexistent letters, and who is now trying to find out what he’s got hidden out here in the middle of nowhere.”