Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Tessa didn’t know what Caleb was doing in her house. Sure, he was a federal agent, but what did that mean? Did he have information she didn’t about her father going missing?
Tessa didn’t even know if her father was missing. Right now he was only several hours late coming home from town. Usually he called if something delayed him, but she hadn’t heard anything, and he wasn’t picking up the phone no matter how many times she called.
The whole thing was unusual on its own. Add someone breaking into the house and things were downright strange.
She turned to Pops, who said, “I’m going to walk around outside. See if I can see anything.”
“Thanks.” She wandered through the house, finding Caleb in her father’s study.
This was a place she came if she needed a quiet spot and he was out, the couch in the corner the favorite place for each of them to sit and think.
From that spot she could see the sunrise every morning.
One day she was going to turn the back of the house into a four season porch, but that hadn’t happened yet.
Caleb stood behind the desk facing the wall. He swung out the painting hanging there and revealed a safe inset into the wall.
“What is that?”
He glanced back over his shoulder. “Looks like a safe to me.”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “What I’m saying is I’ve never seen that before.”
And she cleaned this room, the same as she cleaned the rest of the house.
She’d never found a safe, or any hidden anything.
She took care of it all but it wasn’t like she took down hanging pictures—she just dusted the top of them once in a while.
She’d only have seen the safe if the picture ever fell off the wall.
Tessa sighed to herself. Her father would have a sort of sad existence if she ever moved out and left him to his own devices.
Lord, please don’t let anything have happened to him. I don’t even know what the last thing I said to him was. Probably some kind of distracted goodbye at best.
Caleb didn’t seem to notice her emotional rollercoaster. “Makes sense if someone was looking for something that it might have been hidden in the safest place in the house.”
“Does it look like it was broken into?” Tessa crossed the room and sat on the edge of the desk feeling a thousand pound weight of worry settle on her shoulders.
He turned the dial one way, then the other, put his ear to the door and listened.
She looked around. “Where is he? He was supposed to come home after he went to town this morning and he isn’t here.”
It was so unlike her father to be AWOL. She needed to see him—to know he was safe. Sure, she was repeating herself but the spiral of thoughts continued to drag at her, pulling her down.
Where was he?
Caleb lifted his head away from the safe door. “You’ve lived here your whole life. You’re telling me you’ve never seen this safe before?”
That sounded like something a cop on TV would say. “Am I a suspect? Because I can show you the doorbell footage of the person who broke in my house and you can see that this had nothing to do with me. I was at your house at the time.”
The edge of the smile curled his lips. “And you didn’t call the police yet?”
“You seemed to think I shouldn’t do that yet, so I haven’t.” But she would.
Why his line of questioning was making her defensive, she wasn’t entirely sure.
Except that maybe he was good at his job.
She could appreciate that was a positive thing because crime everywhere should be investigated and justice should be found.
The world needed solid cops who stood on integrity.
But that didn’t mean she wanted any of that business in her house.
He turned and moved the dial some more. “Any idea what the combination might be?”
“Why don’t you step out of the way, and I’ll give it a try.”
He turned to her and she saw some suspicion on his face.
“It doesn’t mean I’m lying about having never seen it before. Maybe I’m just good at guessing.” How this was going to help her figure out where her father was, she had no idea. But it was worth a try—presuming it had something to do with whoever broke in. “Like my mother’s date of birth.”
Easy enough to remember. She turned the dial one way, then the other. She tried not to think what it would mean that her father had chosen his wife’s details as his safe combination. A nice sentiment, but the grief that rushed up in her was another well of despair that wanted to drag her down.
Most days she had to keep from thinking about her mother, except those ethereal memories of twirling together outside or the white dress she wore one Easter.
What secrets was he keeping from her?
Maybe the safe had church financial records in it.
Or notes from counseling sessions. That would make sense.
But she knew where he kept those things, and why hide them?
This could be a fire safe, and it had keepsakes in it—but the fire safe was in her closet, and her father had given her the photos and trinkets from her mother’s life. Had he kept some for himself?
“It didn’t work.”
“Any other combinations you can try?”
“We’re invading a man’s privacy now. This might have nothing to do with him being late coming home.” She winced. “And a break in. But whatever they were looking for, clearly they didn’t find it. Maybe it should remain a secret.”
“Whatever the other combination is that you thought of, just try it.”
Apparently, he had seen right through her. More memories of her mother’s life, and death, rose to the surface in her mind.
Tessa turned back to the safe, her eyes burning. She dialed the three numbers that made up the date of her mother’s death. A day her father honored more than any other day.
The safe clicked.
“If he didn’t mean for you to see what was inside, you would never have been able to guess the combination.”
She blinked back tears. “Or I just know my father better than anyone.”
Tessa stumbled back from the safe and sank onto the edge of the desk. Memories from that day swelled up from where she kept them buried. Her mother on the hospital bed in the front room, Tessa peering up on her tiptoes to see her. The beeping of machines.
And then nothing but silence, because she was gone.
Tessa squeezed her eyes shut.
“I need your permission to look in the safe.”
The low rumble of his voice drew her from the depths of her grief. Tessa opened her eyes and through the shimmer of tears she saw him step closer to her. Caleb touched her shoulder. “You okay?”
“I’ll be okay when we figure out where my father is.”
His eyes flared. Maybe it was because she had said “we.” She didn’t know. Even standing so close with a single man was so far out of her usual behavior that she wasn’t sure what to do about his nearness. Was it normal for her heart to feel like it was fluttering in her chest?
She wanted to compare Caleb Rourke to any other guy she knew from church, or from town. But the truth was he was nothing like any other guy she’d ever met.
Even back in high school he’d been in another league altogether—him and his brother Noah. Not that she would feel this way if it was Noah standing behind her. It had always been Caleb, even when they were kids she’d had a major crush on him.
The man standing in front of her right now wasn’t the Caleb she had known. This man was someone entirely different.
And she wasn’t sure if she could risk getting to know him.
“I’m going to look inside.” He turned to the safe and pulled the door open, revealing a single white card envelope the size of a piece of paper. Something delivered by courier.
“I remember when that showed up on the doorstep.” He handed it to her, and she looked at the address. “Dad got real weird about me not opening it.” Her father usually didn’t care if she opened bills or other mail.
“It’s all that’s in here, apart from that shoebox at the back.”
She shook her head. “What would he need to put in a safe?” As she asked the question aloud, she drew out a couple of papers. A full size photo in black and white and what looked like an invoice.
Caleb snatched the photo from her hands and looked at it. A hardness landed in his expression. His jaw flexed, and he stared at the image as if he could set it on fire with his gaze.
“What is it?”
“This is the man I’ve been hunting for months. Maybe even years.” He turned the image and showed her the grainy photo of an older white man with a suit and light colored hair. “Why does your father have a picture of him?”
She read the text on the invoice, but the addresses weren’t for people or businesses she recognized. The locations were nowhere near here. And who needed that much aluminum anyway? “I don’t understand any of this.”
She handed him the invoice, because if it was connected to the photo then he probably needed it. For his investigation. Which her father had information about. Tessa shook her head. Seriously, none of this made one lick of sense.
She reached into the safe and pulled out the shoebox, opening the lid on the desk so that she could go through it. “These are letters.” All of them small envelopes addressed to Ian Rourke. No return address. “Why does my father have letters for your grandfather?”
“Those are private.” Pops stood at the doorway. He strode over and took the shoebox, but not before Caleb pulled out an envelope.
He snatched the paper out and unfolded it. “Thank you for sending the photos of the boys’ baseball team this season. Wish we could have seen them play.” His head whipped up. “They’re alive?”
She glanced between the two men. “Who? Who is alive?”
The tension was back in Caleb. “My parents.”
Pops said, “We’re here to look for Tessa’s father. Not to drag up ancient history that needs to be left to lie where it was buried.”
“This is—”
Pops looked at her. “Do you have one of those apps where you can track your dad’s phone?”
He’d completely cut across what Caleb had been saying.
Disregarding his grandson almost entirely and turning to her.
Maybe he was just worried about her father and what might have happened to him.
Or Pops didn’t want to admit that he’d been keeping a secret from Caleb and his brother for years.
If the number of letters in the shoebox was any indication, the communication had been going for some time.
Maybe even years.
And Pops had given her father the box for safekeeping.
She was glad for the two men that they trusted each other that much. But how could Pops have never told Caleb that he was getting letters from his parents? What kind of secret made him feel like he couldn’t tell them their parents were alive?
“Tess?” Pops got her attention.
She jogged herself out of her thoughts and had to go into the kitchen to find her cell phone. Of course, the phone settings would tell her where to find her father. They were on the same plan and shared their locations with each other.
She’d just never had to use it to track him before.
The dot loaded with his location. Highway 14, miles from here in the middle of nowhere. What on earth was he doing out there? The dot didn’t move, so he wasn’t driving.
“You have him?” Caleb stood beside her.
She showed him the screen. “I’m sorry this didn’t turn out at all like you thought.”
He still had that dark, Winter Soldier look on his face. Though, he’d tied his wet hair back behind his head. “Pops has a lot of explaining to do. But the shoebox of letters doesn’t do anything to explain the delivery your father received, the photo and that invoice. Or the break in.”
“You’re really investigating the man in that photo?”
“I was,” Caleb said. “Until he tried to kill me a few weeks ago. Nearly succeeded.”
The burns on his arm. “I’m glad he didn’t succeed.”
“Are you going to go there and make sure your father’s okay? Maybe he got in an accident.” Caleb probably wanted to get the rest of the stuff from the safe back home so he could investigate or whatever.
“I need to go there and see for myself if he’s okay.” Tessa grabbed her keys and her purse from the counter, dropping her cell phone in her bag. Maybe she shouldn’t be driving, since she could only repeat back what he’d said.
“I’ll go with you.”
Out front of the house, an engine turned over.
She reached the front door in time to see Pops driving down the lane in his truck.
“Are you serious?” Caleb put his hands on his hips. “I was going to tell him I’m going with you, but he left without me.”
She didn’t get a chance to say anything before he disappeared back toward the study. A few moments later he came back. “He took the shoebox.”
“What about the envelope?”
Caleb shook his head. “Now I’m stuck here.”
“It’s close enough you could walk home.”
“True.” Caleb looked at the white envelope in his hand. “I’ll go with you to make sure your father’s okay. Just in case.”
“Just in case of what?”
He shrugged. “Let’s worry about that when there’s something to worry about.”
Tessa was afraid that even with just the envelope and the shoebox…
There was plenty to worry about.