Never Too Late. RaeAnne Thayne

what?”

      “Whoever did this to us! I’m filled with rage toward the person who kidnapped me, who took me away from a sane, normal, happy family and dragged me into…”

      Her expression closed up and he wondered about her childhood after she was taken from her family, about what she might have been through to put that bleak look in her eyes. “Into a world far removed from the safe, happy life I likely would have known as Charlotte McKinnon.”

      Someone had kidnapped her more than two decades before. He hadn’t been so self-absorbed that he didn’t know all about that. Who was it? he suddenly wondered. And had they paid for the crime that had devastated the lives of so many people?

      For the first time since his release—hell, since the shock of his arrest three years ago—he found himself concerned about someone else’s problems, found himself actually interested enough to want to solve the mystery.

      He wasn’t sure he wanted to care, but he had been a cop too long to turn it off completely.

      “Any idea who kidnapped you?”

      “Until six weeks ago I thought my mother was a woman named Brenda Golightly. She’s all I can remember until I was taken away from her and put into foster care when I was seven.”

      “And you think she was the one?”

      “She must have been. My earliest memories are of her—driving beside her along a lonely stretch of highway. Sleeping in some dingy motel somewhere. Eating peanut-butter sandwiches and washing them down with warm soda. She’s the one listed on all my records as my mother. I have a birth certificate and everything. I don’t know how she did it but my name was Katie Golightly until I changed it at eighteen to Kate Spencer.”

      At least she had a name. He could work with a name. “Any idea where she is?”

      “We don’t exactly exchange Christmas cards. Brenda was a prostitute and a junkie, stoned more often than she was sober. After I was taken from her, she used to write or phone me once in a while but by the time I was in high school, she seemed to have lost interest—the letters and calls had trickled down to maybe once every couple of years. I was glad she didn’t seem to want much to do with me. It was easier that way.”

      She paused, and again he wondered what dark images she was seeing in her memory.

      “Anyway,” Kate went on, “I haven’t heard from her in nine years, since I left for college, but last I knew she was living in Miami somewhere.”

      He could drive to Florida in two days if he pushed it. The thought sneaked into his mind and Hunter drew in a sharp breath. Now who was the crazy one, contemplating a drive across the country on what was probably a fool’s errand?

      On the other hand, he didn’t have anything else to do right now. He was restless and edgy and a road trip might be just the thing to help him figure out what to do with himself.

      “Either she kidnapped me herself,” Kate went on, “or she had to know who did it. I only want to know why. Why me?”

      He studied her there in the moonlight, this small, beautiful woman with shadows in her eyes. He could help her. Like she said, he’d been a damn good detective once. Maybe he could be again. He had considered going into private-investigator work, the logical second career for a burned-out cop. This could be a way to test if he had the temperament for it.

      One of them at least ought to be able to put some ghosts aside and move on. With a sneaking suspicion that he was going to have some serious regrets later about ever opening his mouth, he took the plunge.

      “You want to know why you were taken,” he finally said. “Why don’t I find this Brenda Golightly and ask her?”

      Chapter 2

      Kate stared at him. He looked perfectly rational, his eyes dark and intense as he stood there in the cold night air with the soft snow sifting down around him like powdered sugar. But looks could be deceiving, she thought.

      “Didn’t you hear what I said? She’s probably in Florida! The last address I had was Dade County.”

      “Sunshine sounds nice right about now.”

      No wonder, she thought. Since his release, sunny days had been few and far between in Utah. The state had seen a wet, cold fall—a boon for the ski resorts but probably not so enjoyable for someone who had been incarcerated for more than two years.

      She had to admit, though she had grown to love the Utah mountains, the first place she would head if she had just been released from prison would be somewhere with an ocean view. Somewhere she could bask in the sun and lick salt from the air and dig her toes into warm sand.

      But how could she ask him to travel across the country for her on little more than a whim?

      “I haven’t heard from Brenda in nearly a decade,” she said. “She might not even be in Florida anymore. Heavens, for all I know, the woman could be dead.”

      “Then I’ll find out where she’s gone. Or at least where she’s buried.”

      He said the words with complete confidence. She would have thought it an idle boast if he hadn’t been such an outstanding detective. But if Hunter Bradshaw put his mind and energy into finding someone, he would. He had been dogged about his job, completely focused on it.

      She had so many unanswered questions. Since finding out she had been kidnapped, her mind seemed to be racing on an endless loop of them.

      Why had she been taken? Not for ransom, certainly, since the McKinnons said no one ever contacted them. And why her? What about Kate had made her a target of the kidnapping?

      If Brenda had taken her, why had she then just surrendered Kate to the foster-care system, keeping only enough contact to ensure that no one could adopt her?

      Finding the answers to those pressing questions was tantalizing. But the idea of Hunter Bradshaw offering to help her baffled her.

      She was nothing to him, only the roommate of his younger sister. She couldn’t even say she was a friend. Before his arrest and imprisonment, he had always been distantly polite to her but never more than that. She had even wondered if he disliked her because he seemed to go out of his way to avoid situations where they might be alone.

      Yet here he was offering to chase after her past.

      “Why would you do this for me?” she asked.

      “Why not?” Hunter asked. In the dim light, his eyes wore an inscrutable expression. “You deserve to know the truth. I know how frustrating unanswered questions can be, just as I know what it’s like to be punished for someone else’s sins. I’d like to help you find out why.”

      She wasn’t sure why—perhaps something in those shadows in his eyes—but she sensed another reason, something deeper. “What else?”

      Hunter turned away from her to lean his forearms on the deck railing and gaze out at the shadowy mountains.

      “Because I can.” His voice was low and without inflection but suddenly his offer of assistance made perfect sense. It had nothing to do with her at all, she realized, but with him and his new freedom.

      He had spent nearly three years of his life behind bars, where his choices had been severely limited. Others told him what he could eat, where he could go, even how he could dress. What a heady sense of control he must find in the idea that he could pick up and drive across the country on a whim!

      “I see,” she murmured.

      He slanted a look at her. “Do you?”

      “You know, you could take a trip wherever you want without having the burden of tracking down a drug addict and a prostitute who could be anywhere.”

      “I’ve been at loose ends since my release. I could use a distraction. This is a good one.”

      “It might take