Kathleen Creighton - Kincaid’s Dangerous Game

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The sixth book in the Taken series, 2009

Dear Reader,

If you’ve read my books before, you may have noticed a certain continuing theme. The romance is always first, of course, and then the suspense…but at the bottom of it all, what my books are really about is family. It isn’t hard to figure out why. My own family is so precious to me and has played such an important part in shaping who I am.

When it comes to family, as Kincaid might say, we don’t get to choose the hand we’re dealt. But for better or worse, our families make us who we are.

And so we come to the last chapter in the series THE TAKEN. Need I tell you this is the book in which Cory’s shattered family is finally reunited? I hope you’ve enjoyed this series as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it and sharing my deep and abiding love of family with you.

With warmest wishes,

Kathleen Creighton

Part 1

In a house on the shores of a small lake, somewhere in South Carolina

“Pounding…that’s always the first thing. Someone-my father-is banging on the door. Banging…pounding…with his fists, feet, I don’t know. Trying to break it down.”

“And where are you?”

“I’m in a bedroom, I think. I don’t remember which one. I have the little ones with me. It’s my job to look after them when my father is having one of his…spells. I have to keep them out of his way. Keep them safe. I’ve taken them into the bedroom and I’ve locked the door. Except…I don’t trust the lock, so I’ve wedged a chair under the handle, like my mom showed me. Only now I’m afraid…terrified even that won’t be enough. I can hear the wood splintering…breaking. I know it will only take a few more blows and he’ll be through. My mother is screaming…crying. I hold on to the little ones. I have my arms around them, and they’re all trembling. The twins, the little girls, are sobbing and crying, ‘Mama, Mama…’ but the boys just cry quietly.

“I hear sirens…more sirens, getting louder and louder until it seems they’re coming right into the room, and there’s lots of people shouting. Then all of a sudden the pounding stops. There’s a moment-several minutes-when all I hear is the little ones whimpering…and then, there’s a loud bang, so loud we all jump. We hold each other tighter, and there’s another bang, and then there’s just confusion-voices shouting…footsteps running…glass breaking…the little ones crying…and I think I might be crying, too.”

Cory discovered he was crying, but he also knew it was all right. He was all right. Sam, his wife, was holding him tightly, cradling his head against her breasts, and her hands were gentle as they wiped the tears from his face.

“I’m going to find them, Sam. My brothers and sisters. I have to find them.”

Samantha felt warm moisture seep between her lashes. “Of course you do.” She lifted her head and took her husband’s face between her hands and smiled fiercely at him through her tears. “We’ll find them together, Pearse,” she whispered. “We’ll find them. I promise you we will.”

Part 2

In a diner in a small town in the Texas Hill Country

“I never thought it would happen,” Cory said to Holt Kincaid over steak and eggs at the diner. “Not to Tony. He’s always been…well, let’s just say, he’s somewhat of a lady’s man. I didn’t think he’d ever find…”

“The one?” Holt lifted one eyebrow. “Who’s to say there’s a one for everybody? Maybe some people just don’t have one to find.”

“Like you, for instance?” Cory’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he picked up his coffee cup. “What’s your story, Holt? I sense there is one-probably a helluva one, too.”

Holt smiled sardonically but didn’t reply.

After a moment Cory said, “So. What about my other sister? You said her name’s Brenna, right? Where is she and when can I meet her?”

Holt let out a breath and pushed his plate away. It was the moment he’d been dreading. “That’s gonna be a problem.”

“Why? What problem? You said the twins were adopted together, grew up in the same family. Surely they’ve stayed in touch. Brooke must know-”

“I wish that were true.” Holt picked up his coffee and blew on it, stalling for time. But there was no way around it. It looked like he was going to have to be the one to break the news that would devastate the man sitting across from him. Never mind that he’d found three of his lost siblings-two brothers and now one of his sisters. The task wouldn’t be complete until he’d found the last one as well.

“Mr. Pearson, I’m sorry to have to tell you, but Brenna ran away from home when she was just fourteen. Brooke hasn’t seen or heard from her since.” He spread his hands in utter defeat. “I have absolutely no clue where she is. Or even where to start looking.”

Holt Kincaid was no stranger to insomnia. He’d been afflicted with bouts of it since childhood, and had learned long ago not to fight it. Consequently, he’d grown accustomed to whiling away the long late-night or early-morning hours catching up on paperwork, going over notes from whatever case he was working on, knowing that what he didn’t pursue would come to him on its own, eventually.

Not this time.

The only case he was working at the moment-the only one that mattered, anyway-was at a dead standstill. The paperwork had been done. He’d been over his notes a hundred times. There was nothing more to be gleaned from them.

Over the course of his career as a private investigator specializing in missing persons cases-the cold ones in particular-he’d had to admit defeat only once. That one failure was the case responsible for a lot of the insomnia he’d suffered for most of his life, and the idea that he might have to add this one to the roster of his regrets weighed heavily on his mind. Sleep wouldn’t come to him this night, no matter how coyly he played her flirting game.

Laurel Canyon was quiet now. There’d been sirens earlier, prompting him, as a longtime resident, to pause and sniff the air for the smell of smoke. But the cause this time-a traffic-stopping fender bender on the boulevard-had been cleared up hours ago. An onshore breeze rustled the leaves of the giant eucalyptus trees that soared above his deck, but in a friendly way, last week’s Santa Anas being only a bad memory now. Late-October rains had laid the threat of brush fires low for the time being.

Holt had come to be a resident of the notorious Santa Monica Mountain community by happenstance rather than choice, but over the years it had grown on him. He’d found it suited him, with its shady past, the steep and narrow winding dead-end streets and pervasive aura of mystery. The huge old eucalyptus trees and rickety stairways and ivy-covered walls guarded its secrets well. As he guarded his own.

He’d also come to embrace the canyon’s laid-back, live-and-let-live attitude, a holdover from the sixties when it had been the center of L.A.’s rock music scene. Now as then, in Laurel Canyon the expression “goin’ with the flow” wasn’t just a hippie slogan, but a way of life.

It had become his way of life: Go with the flow…don’t get emotionally involved…go about your business and don’t waste energy railing against things beyond your control.

Yeah. That was my mistake with this case. I got too close. Made it personal.

As with the first and still his greatest failure, he’d let himself get too fogged in by emotions to see where the answers lay hidden.

Face it, Kincaid. Maybe there just aren’t any answers. Not in this life, anyway.

Unbidden, as if a stubborn imp in his subconsciousness had again touched Replay, the case and the events of the past year unfolded slowly in his mind, playing out against the murmur of breezes through eucalyptus trees and the intermittent shush of a passing car.

He’d taken on Cory Pearson’s case for two good reasons: First, because it presented a new kind of challenge. Typically, he’d be searching for a birth parent, a child given up for adoption, an abducted child long ago given up for dead by everyone except loved ones still praying for answers. But this was a man searching for four younger brothers and sisters. The children had been taken from him when they were very young by a well-meaning social services agency after their Vietnam vet father had shot his wife and then himself during a violent episode of PTSD. The four younger ones had been adopted by two different families while the oldest brother fought his way through a dismal series of foster homes and juvenile detention facilities, only to be denied access to his siblings’ whereabouts when he finally reached adulthood.

A sad story, for sure, but one to which Holt had felt confident he could give a happy ending. These kids had vanished into the system. Systems kept records. And Holt was very good at getting old systems and old records to give up their secrets. That was his second reason for taking on the case of Cory Pearson’s lost siblings: He’d expected success.

Holt didn’t take on hopeless cases. He already had one of those, and it was more than enough.

Things had gone about as expected, at first. After months of tedious detective work, he’d finally gotten a line on the oldest boy, now working as a homicide detective in Portland, Oregon. The timing hadn’t been great. Cory had dropped into his brother’s life in the middle of a case involving a serial killer and had very nearly been mistaken for the killer himself. Thanks to a drop-dead gorgeous blond psychic who’d been helping out with the investigation, everything had turned out fine in the end, and the psychic-or empath, as she preferred to call herself-had recently become Cory Pearson’s sister-in-law.