Childfinders, Inc.: An Uncommon Hero
Childfinders, Inc.: An Uncommon Hero
Marie Ferrarella
“Ms. Ferrarella…holds reader interest at fever pitch.”
—Romantic Times Magazine
Any way Ben looked at it, the woman he’d just left behind didn’t strike him as someone who would break the law even in a minor way, much less kidnap a child.
Yet she’d stolen someone else’s name and created a fictitious life around it.
And then there was the boy, the boy who called her Mommy with no hesitation whatsoever, as if he’d always done so.
What was Ben supposed to believe?
Was he letting his feelings for Gina color his judgment or refine it? At this point, he wasn’t sure of anything.
Except that he wanted to make love with her in the worst way….
Dear Reader,
Welcome to my latest installment of ChildFinders, Inc. Since I’m an overprotective mother, it’s always been my recurring nightmare that I’ve “misplaced” my children who, when they were younger, enjoyed hiding in department store clothes racks and the like just long enough to give me a heart attack. Losing your kids is a very real fear that most mothers live with. The newspapers, sadly, are full of kidnapping stories that are not resolved happily. I thought it might be nice to create a safe haven where one could go and have potentially heinous situations brought to a happy ending. The people at ChildFinders, Inc. never met a case they couldn’t solve.
Each time I finish writing a ChildFinders, Inc. book I think to myself, “That’s it. I’ve exhausted all the possibilities for this kind of a case.” And then, after a while, I get this itch to do one more, to find just another twist so that the story is interesting enough to demand its own space, its own book. And so it was with Ben’s story. Ben Underwood appeared in the first ChildFinders, Inc. story as a policeman on the force, newly divorced and feeling his way around. He sparked my interest, and I threaded him through the second and third stories. By the time I was into my fourth story, dealing with Chad Andreini, Ben was part of the agency and comfortable with his single life. But he was a family man at heart, and I just had to find him a family worthy of the kind of caring man Ben actually was. I think I succeeded when I put him on this newest case. I hope you agree. Once again, I thank you for revisiting me, and from the bottom of my heart I wish you love.
Childfinders, Inc.: An Uncommon Hero
Marie Ferrarella
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To
S. Cloud Hsueh, Ph.D.
For guidance and warmth
over and above
the call of duty
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Prologue
She wasn’t going to cry, she wasn’t.
There was no time to waste on tears. No time for anything. Only the hasty gathering of the very most important things. The things she couldn’t leave behind along with everything else.
With the rest of her life.
She should have seen this coming, Gloria upbraided herself, tossing essentials into the suitcase that lay open on her bed. It wasn’t as if this had suddenly materialized out of the blue. There had been signs. Signs she’d refused to acknowledge because things like this only happened in the movies. Or to people she read about in the newspaper. They didn’t happen to people she knew. They didn’t happen to her.
Except that now they were.
She glanced over at the small boy lying in the center of her bed, curled up right next to the suitcase. Poor baby, he’d dozed off and on the entire time she’d dressed him, waking just enough to ask her if he was having a dream. She’d told him yes.
It was better this way. She wouldn’t have to field the tearful questions until later.
Maybe later, she could come up with answers that he could accept. Right now, she couldn’t even come up with any that she could accept.
Regardless, she knew she had to hurry. If Stephen came looking for her here before she could get away, it would be too late.
She flipped the suitcase lid closed, pushing down on the locks. She prayed she knew what she was doing.
It was time to go.
Chapter 1
“You can name your own price, just find my son.”
Ben Underwood studied the well-dressed man sitting in front of his desk. There was a time when the words name your own price would have been extremely tempting to him. A time, a little more than a decade ago, when he had stood at the crossroads of his life, wondering whether or not to take the easy road, the road his cousin and best friend, Vinnie, was taking. Or to take the road that, for the most part, followed a straight-and-narrow path.
It had been more of a mental wrestling match than he would have liked to admit now, but finally, Ben, in deference to his conscience and his mother and three sisters, had chosen the latter road. Only to “un-choose” it when he and the Bedford Police Department had come to a parting of the ways because of his untamable, independent methods. He’d gone from the department straight to ChildFinders, Inc. without so much as a breather and without looking back. He’d never regretted it.
It had been a very long time since money had had any sort of allure for him beyond providing for the basic creature comforts. Principles counted for so much more and were, in the end, longer-lasting.
Besides, Ben thought, he had a tendency to let money pass through his hands if he had it. He’d always been an easy touch.
He figured he’d better set this newest client, a man who seemed to fill up the room with his presence and who Megan Andreini, one of the agency’s partners, would have undoubtedly referred to as a silver fox, straight.
“The fee depends on the length of time and expense it takes to locate your son, Mr. McNair.” Ben smiled, comfortingly, he hoped. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel for these people who came into his office, quite the contrary. He just had never managed to master expressing his feelings satisfactorily. It was easier just tucking them away. “It’s not determined by your net worth.”
The last part wasn’t strictly true, but not in any way that Stephen McNair could appreciate, Ben thought. On occasion, the agency took on cases pro bono. Cade Townsend, the original founder of the agency, didn’t believe that lack of funds was any reason not to try to reunite a family with their missing child. Cade had been on the raw end of that situation, and knew the anguish of looking for a child who’d been kidnapped.
But there was no point in mentioning any of that to their newest client. McNair wasn’t here to discuss the agency’s policies, or its history. He had come here for the same reason everyone came to ChildFinders, Inc.—to find his missing child. In McNair’s case, it was a six-year-old blond-haired boy named Andrew.
Stephen McNair looked somewhat displeased at being lumped in with the general populace. Ben had a hunch the man had gotten accustomed to being able to buy anything he wanted, people and time included. If it were that easy, Ben mused, his son would have been back to him in minutes.
McNair’s eyes narrowed a fraction. Ben felt himself being sized up. He couldn’t say he liked it any. Given the circumstances, Ben decided McNair was entitled to some slack.
“Surely I’m permitted to throw a bonus into the agreement?”
“So we’ll work a little faster?” Ben guessed, trying hard not to take offense.
McNair smiled triumphantly. “Exactly.”
Ben shifted his lanky frame in his chair. He wasn’t here to pass judgment. It was a given that the people who came into these offices were usually at their worst. It wasn’t his place to like or dislike any of them. For the most part, he had to admit he felt for them and liked them. He didn’t care for McNair. But that didn’t matter one way or another. It was finding the boy that counted.
He couldn’t help wondering if the boy would grow up to be like his father.
The man sitting before him in the six-hundred-dollar suit was about ten years older than Ben and gave new meaning to the word polished. The card McNair had made a point of presenting to him even before they had shaken hands identified him as Stephen W. McNair, president and CEO of IndieCorp, a fast-rising company that was, if he remembered correctly, on the cusp of a colossal merger with Mercury Electronics. The talk was that between the two giants, the semiconductor market was just about covered.
Ben rocked back in his chair, studying McNair in silence for a moment, questions occurring to him. A man like McNair could easily have a hundred agencies at his beck and call, including the FBI. Considering that kidnapping was every parent’s nightmare and had become a reality for McNair, Ben couldn’t help wondering what the man was doing here. Granted, ChildFinders had a heretofore unbelievable track record for solving kidnapping cases. For every closed case, there had been a happy ending. Not many places could boast a record like that. But the FBI had more manpower.
Ben leaned forward. “If you don’t mind my asking, why haven’t you gone to the police?”
There was a flash of annoyance in Stephen McNair’s piercing blue eyes, but it was gone so quickly, Ben thought he might have imagined it. McNair looked the soul of cooperation as he answered, “Perhaps you’re aware of the merger Indie is about to make with Mercury?”
Ben had found he learned a great deal when he pretended to be ignorant of things. “I don’t keep up with the financial section of the newspaper, Mr. McNair. In my line of work, there’s not much time for things that aren’t directly relevant to the cases I’m working on.”
A slight frown twitched McNair’s lips before he proceeded to enlighten Ben. “Yes, well, my company is at a crucial stage of its development right now. We’re to merge with Mercury Electronics. Any hint of scandal and the entire negotiations could be placed in jeopardy.”
“I don’t know the kind of people you’re dealing with, Mr. McNair, but I don’t think they’d consider the kidnapping of a child as scandalous.”
In response, Stephen McNair merely shook his head. “It’s not the kidnapping they’d consider scandalous, it’s the circumstances surrounding it.”
Now they were getting somewhere, Ben thought. He took out the tape recorder that was part of each office’s furnishings and placed it on the desk beside him.
“Tell me about the circumstances.” He pressed the red button down on the recorder and the tape began to whir softly.
McNair froze. He glared at the small rectangle on the desk as if it were an offending lower life-form. “Turn that off.” The three terse words were not a request. They were an order.
Despite his affable demeanor, Ben didn’t respond well to being ordered around. That had been one of the reasons he and the Bedford Police Department hadn’t remained on intimate terms. He made no move to comply with McNair’s order. “Sorry, company policy.”
“I said turn it off.” Rather than wait, McNair leaned over and switched off the recorder himself. He met Ben’s barely veiled annoyed look with a passionate verbal volley. “I won’t be recorded. I—” He lowered his voice as he searched for the right words. “This is very delicate, Mr. Underwood. Haven’t you ever been in a delicate situation you didn’t want broadcast?”
“This doesn’t get broadcast, Mr. McNair.” He indicated the tape recorder. “The only reason the initial interview is taped is to help us go over the case. Sometimes things are said that are forgotten later. Other times, playing the tape back might inadvertently remind you of a detail or event you forgot to mention.”
McNair remained unmovable. “I have a photographic memory, Mr. Underwood. I assure you I do not forget anything.” He paused, then added a bit more softly, “Except, perhaps, discretion.” His eyes met Ben’s. “But I am paying dearly for my error now.”
Ben made a judgment call. He left the tape recorder off. Curiosity had gotten the better of him. His mother had always warned him it would be his undoing.
“All right, we’ll leave it off for the time being. Now, do you have any idea who might have kidnapped your son?”
“Any idea who kidnapped my son?” McNair parroted the question incredulously. “Of course I have an idea who kidnapped my son. I know exactly who’s responsible. Gloria Prescott kidnapped my son.”
“Gloria Prescott,” Ben repeated, and McNair nodded adamantly. It was a toss-up whether to ask first who the woman was or why she would abduct his son. Ben went with the more important of the two. “And do you have any idea why she would kidnap your son?”
McNair passed his hand slowly over his face, a man struggling with his secrets, buying himself a tiny fragment of time in which to compose himself and frame his answer.
“She kidnapped Andrew to get back at me. She is—was,” McNair said, correcting himself, “Andrew’s nanny.” Just for an instant, his eyes grew soft, as if he were visualizing her. “She’s quite a stunning young woman.” The laugh that followed was self-mocking. “Too young for me, really.”
Mentally, Ben filled in the blanks. He had heard it often enough before. Older man, younger woman. The combination rarely yielded satisfactory results. According to his mother, that was why his own father had left. In pursuit of youth. In this case, youth had a name. Claudia Gershon. Ben had a half brother named Jason who was half his age. For his father, things had worked out. Obviously, for McNair it hadn’t.
“Go on,” he encouraged when McNair continued to remain silent.
The older man shrugged. “You’ve heard it before, I’m sure. Older man trying to hang on to his youth, beautiful young woman bringing it to him in a gift-wrapped box.” There was a faraway look in his eyes as he spoke.
The man had gotten it bad, Ben thought. He thought of his own mother. “And how did Mrs. McNair feel about you hanging on to your youth? Or Gloria’s,” he amended wryly.
McNair’s eyes went flat as he regarded him. “She didn’t feel anything.”
“And why is that?” Ben was playing devil’s advocate, but there was something a little too pat about the man sitting before him. He seemed a little too held together. Ben was used to people coming unraveled under the pressure of the crisis they were enduring. This man looked annoyed, nothing more. Fathers didn’t look annoyed or inconvenienced when their sons were taken—they looked angry. Distraught, capable of mayhem themselves. On occasion, they looked lost. But not annoyed.
He wanted to get to the bottom of Stephen McNair.
“Because there is no Mrs. McNair.” The annoyance deepened as McNair moved to the edge of his seat. “Look, I’m going to be perfectly frank with you. I’m rather new at this father business. Andrew is the result of a liaison I had with a young woman seven years ago. One of those flash-and-fire things. The whole thing lasted perhaps three weeks, perhaps less. I hadn’t heard from her since. She died nine months ago, leaving me a letter and the boy. Both came to me via her lawyer. I had some lab tests done, DNA, that sort of thing, and the results were conclusive. Andrew was mine. Naturally, I saw him as my responsibility.”
“Naturally.”
McNair stopped, narrowing his eyes. “Are you mocking me?”
Ben straightened, all business. His remark had been a slip. “I’m not here to mock, Mr. McNair, or to sit in judgment. My only function is to help. I’m sorry if I gave you any other impression.” He was going to have to work on his poker face, Ben thought.
“Look, I’m sorry if I don’t live up to your expectations of the grieving father. It’s not easy for me to show my emotions. But make no mistake about it, I am worried about my son and I want him back.”
Ben nodded. “You were saying about Gloria…”
Scrubbing a well-manicured hand over his face, McNair sighed and continued. “I was completely besotted with her for several months.”
Besotted. Now, there was a word he didn’t run into every day, Ben thought. But somehow, coming from McNair, it seemed to fit the narrative. “What happened after several months?”
“I came to my senses. Realized that a man in my position—responsible for the livelihood of so many people—couldn’t continue behaving like some smitten adolescent. I tried to let her down as gently as possible, make her see reason.” McNair looked at Ben to see if he understood the awkward position he’d been in. “Unfortunately, Gloria didn’t choose to be reasonable about it. I don’t think she really cared about me as much as she did about the money. I think she thought I was going to marry her.”
“And you weren’t.” Ben waited for him to continue.
He shook his head. “She wasn’t wife material.” His expression became superior. “Gloria became very possessive, flying into jealous rages when she thought that I was seeing someone else.”
Ben was undecided whether the man thought himself to be a much-abused saint, or was only trying to present himself as one. “And were you?”
“No.” The response was indignant. “And whether I was seeing someone or not is not the point.”
“No, but everything is a piece of this puzzle. In the interest of brevity, why don’t you shorten the story for the time being. Why did Gloria suddenly kidnap your son? Why now, rather than last month or next week?”
“Because I officially broke off our relationship in no uncertain terms last Thursday.”
“Thursday,” Ben echoed.
“I see why you might need a recorder,” McNair commented impatiently. “Yes, Thursday. I told her I couldn’t have a woman stalking my every move no matter how beautiful she was.”
Ben toyed with the carved paperweight one of his sisters had made for him when she was twelve as he played with logistics in his head. “What did she do with Andrew while she was stalking you?”
The question took McNair aback for a moment before he responded. “She had him with her.” He continued with his narrative, impatient to be done with it. “Of course, I took total responsibility for the affair even though she was the one who seduced me, and I offered her quite a sizable severance package to tide her over until she found another position. After all, I wasn’t heartless.”
Ben wondered if Stephen McNair actually saw himself as benevolent and blame-free. “But that didn’t fly with her.”
“No, it didn’t ‘fly.’” McNair wrapped his tongue around the word disdainfully. “When I came home two nights ago from a business trip to Washington, D.C., I found that Gloria was gone and she’d taken Andrew with her.”
“Did she leave a note?”
The question caught McNair off guard. “No.”
“Then you just assumed she’d kidnapped Andrew.”
“She was gone, he was gone, her clothes were gone. I came to the logical conclusion.” He paused as if debating something, or hunting through the photographic memory he’d boasted of. “And she’d threatened me earlier.”
“Threatened?” Ben said, instantly alert. “What kind of a threat?”
“She said she’d take Andrew away where I could never find him if I didn’t marry her. That she was going to make me pay for what I ‘did’ to her.”
He supposed if the woman was being completely irrational, she might forget to write a note, although in his experience, writing a note would have added to the drama. Perhaps twisted the knife in a little harder. A woman making a dramatic statement wasn’t apt to overlook writing a note.
But this woman hadn’t. The minor point bothered Ben.
Something else was bothering him, too. Ben looked at the other man. “And you waited almost five days before reporting this to anyone?”
It was an outright challenge and Ben half expected McNair to explode. Instead, the man looked contrite. “I was hoping that she was just angry. That she’d return him. I wanted to spare her being arrested if it was at all possible. I still do. You might have trouble understanding this because you’re still young and not in my position, but I find I still have some residual feelings regarding Gloria.”
For the first time, Stephen McNair seemed human to Ben. “Have you gotten in contact with her friends?”
The gesture was short, indicating a degree of helplessness that McNair looked unaccustomed to acknowledging.
“She’s not from around here. As far as I know, she has no friends in the area. None that she ever went out with or even mentioned. For the most part, she stayed on the estate. She was very devoted to me and to Andrew.”
Ben noted the order McNair had used. To me and to Andrew. But then, as the man said, he was new at being a father and hadn’t had the luxury of experience to fall back on.
Sometimes all the experience and time in the world didn’t help change the overall picture, Ben thought. His father had walked out on not only his mother, but on him, when he was thirteen. Being a father of four children hadn’t made Jake Underwood any less the center of his own universe.
Still, whatever the order used, the word devoted had certain connotations. Ben was counting on them. “So you’re pretty certain that she wouldn’t hurt Andrew?”
There wasn’t even a moment’s hesitation. “Yes, I’m reasonably certain that she wouldn’t do anything crazy like that. As I said, she’s just doing this to get back at me.”
“Are you sure there wasn’t some sort of note?” Ben prodded. “Conditions she wanted met before she returned your son?”
Maybe, for his own reasons, McNair was lying about there not being a note. It did seem highly unlikely that, given the circumstances, Gloria Prescott would allow this opportunity to slip by. Kidnappings happened for a variety of reasons, the least of which was revenge. But if this was for revenge, it was running atypical to form.
“No.” Exasperation peppered McNair’s voice. “I suspect she was too angry to write anything. Besides, I already know her conditions. She’d want to take up where we’d left off. She wanted me to marry her.”
In his experience, grasping people tended to want money, Ben thought. Or at least power. Silence was not the order of the day. He wondered again if there was something McNair was holding back. “And she hasn’t attempted to get in contact with you?” Ben asked.
“No,” McNair snapped. He took a deep breath, composing himself. With shaky fingers he dug into his pocket and took out a half-empty pack of cigarettes. “My one vice,” he explained, holding the pack up. “Other than falling for beautiful women. Do you mind?”
Ben was surprised that the man even bothered to ask. McNair struck him as someone who did as he pleased. Ben inclined his head, taking out a small ceramic ashtray from his side drawer and placing it on the desk. He didn’t smoke, but he understood the need.
“Thanks.” McNair lit up and inhaled. His eyes closed for a moment, as if he were having a spiritual experience. When he opened them again, he looked calmer, more capable of continuing. “If Gloria had left a note, I would have been taking care of this myself.” He glanced toward the closed door. “Is Townsend around? Maybe he…?”
It obviously rankled McNair to deal with anyone who wasn’t the top man. “Cade’s out of town on a case. The caseload is pretty heavy. Right now, I appear to be all you have at your disposal.”
McNair wouldn’t have been where he was if he wasn’t good at damage control. A smile nothing short of charming creased his lips. “Sorry, didn’t mean to fly off the handle that way earlier. I can usually keep my temper under wraps, it’s just that this is all completely new to me. Being a father, being a kidnap victim…”
“Strictly speaking, Andrew’s the kidnap victim, but don’t feel bad, this kind of thing usually is new to everyone. Now, if you’ll make yourself comfortable, I still have a few more questions to ask you.” Ben saw the slight frown on McNair’s face reemerge. “I’ll try to make this as painless for you as possible.”
McNair looked at his watch before answering. Ben saw the flash of a Rolex. Nothing but the best, he thought.
“All right,” Stephen agreed. “But I have to be back at a meeting in an hour.”
He’d never run into a kidnap victim’s father who’d set a time limit before. Took all kinds, Ben supposed. “You’ll be back sooner than that.”
As Ben got out his pad, he wondered just when Stephen McNair had found the time to even father a child.
She frowned slightly as she settled in. She wasn’t used to lying and this was certainly lying. Big time. It was going to take a great deal of practice and care on her part. One misstep and people were going to begin suspecting that something wasn’t right.
And once suspicions were aroused…
She didn’t want to go there. There was far too much at stake for her to dwell on the consequences. There was no point in thinking about losing everything, it would only paralyze her.
For a moment, she paused in the doorway, looking into the small room the little boy had taken as his own. It was remarkable how resilient he was. She could stand to learn a thing or two from him about rolling with the punches and bouncing back.
He’d thrown off the covers again. Quietly, she crept into the room, careful not to make any noise that might wake him.
Very softly, she draped the comforter around his small body. Pressing a kiss to her fingertips, she passed it ever so lightly against his cheek. He meant everything to her.
“Sweet dreams, sweet prince,” she whispered before withdrawing.
She kept the door slightly ajar so she could hear him calling if he needed her. He was having those nightmares again.
She slipped into bed. It was early, but she was tired. Lately, she’d been so drained. But then, she had reason enough to be. Before she fell asleep, as she did every night now, she thanked God for a new chance. A new chance to finally, perhaps, find peace and make her life work.
Work for her and for the little boy she loved.
About to leave, Ben saw a pencil-thin ray of light slipping out from beneath the door of Eliza’s office. Savannah had mentioned that the woman had just wrapped up the case she’d been working on.
Rapping once on her door, Ben opened it and peeked in. Eliza was looking through one of the files that were spread out all over her desk and glanced in his direction. Her smile was warmth itself.
“I didn’t think there’d be anyone still in the office. Don’t you have a home to go to?” Ben asked.
“I could say the same to you,” she replied.
He leaned against the doorjamb. “Caught a new case this afternoon.” He peered at the agency’s newest partner. “You feeling all right?”
“Not enough sleep lately,” she confessed with a shrug. “I’ve been having dreams lately.”
“Dreams, or dreams?” he asked.
They both knew what he meant by the emphasis. One of her “seeing” dreams. The ones that crept up out of the dark and wouldn’t give her peace until she solved the puzzle they came from. The ones she’d been blessed, or plagued with, depending on the point of view, since she’d turned twelve. “The latter.”
He looked at her with eyes that silently communicated his sympathy. “Know what it’s about yet?”
She shook her head. All she knew was that there was a child somewhere who needed her. But where and who and why, she hadn’t a clue and it was tormenting her.
“No, but I will. Eventually.” Eliza changed the topic. “So, you didn’t answer me. What are you still doing here?”
He noticed that she hadn’t given him an answer, either, but he let it pass. “Gathering some background information. I’m going to be out of town for a couple of days. Let the others know when they come in tomorrow, will you?”
“Sure thing.” She swung her chair around to face him. “Going somewhere good?”
He laughed. “Depends on what you think of Saratoga.”
Interest highlighted her delicate face. She assumed he was talking about the tiny town up north from Bedford, California. “Why Saratoga?”
“Our main kidnapping suspect has a relative there. Only living one I can come up with at the moment. A widowed great-aunt named—” he grinned “—Sugarland Malone. Not sure if she knows where the suspect is, but it’s worth a shot.” Even if the great-aunt did know, she might not be willing to disclose the information, Ben thought. Blood was thicker than water and he was an outsider.
Eliza smiled. It didn’t take a clairvoyant to guess what was on his mind. “If anyone can get the lady to loosen her tongue, you can.”
He wondered how much of that was flattery and how much was intuition. Eliza was a genuine psychic, one whom the police had brought in on more than a few of their unsolvable cases. He’d been as skeptical of her as anyone when he’d first met Eliza, but she’d eventually made a believer out of him. “You give me too much credit.”
Her smile deepened, the shy edge fading. “No, I don’t.”
Amused, he cocked his head. “Your psychic intuition, I take it?”
She shook her head. “More like female intuition. Some things are just self-evident.” Like a man who could charm the feathers off a bird, she thought with a smile. She doubted if he knew just how persuasive those dark blue eyes of his really were. “I’ll tell the others—and good hunting.”
“Thanks.”
That was the word for it, all right, he thought as he closed the door behind him. Hunting.
Chapter 2
The jarring noise pushed its way into his consciousness.
It was the phone, Ben realized as his brain surfaced out of a dreamless sleep. The phone was ringing. Groping for the receiver, he tried to locate and focus in on his clock.
Four-thirty.
In the morning?
He scrubbed his hand over his face, trying to pull himself together. “Hello, you’d better be an obscene phone call to make this worth my while.”
“I’ve already offered to make it worth your while, Underwood.”
The voice—cool and official—jarred loose a memory. “Mr. McNair?” Ben looked at the clock again. A hint of annoyance entered his voice. He’d come home and done further background work for his intended trip today. He’d slept for less than three hours and he liked his rest. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
The voice on the other end of the phone grew cooler. “I always know what time it is. I’m on my way to a meeting in Seattle and will be back by this evening. What I don’t know is if you’ve made any progress yet.” Ben sat up, annoyed now. Who the hell made phone calls at four-thirty in the morning? If he’d had any doubts about the man being a control freak, this cinched it.
“Some,” Ben replied in answer to McNair’s question.
“You’ve found her?” Excitement echoed in the receiver against Ben’s ear.
Ben sighed, pulling up the comforter. Outside, the January rain was beating against his window. Telling him to go back to sleep. “No, but I might have located a relative.”
“Where?”
The question echoed like a command for disclosure. Maybe it was because he was half asleep, but the tone rubbed him the wrong way. Instincts surfaced, making him just the slightest bit wary. McNair, polished CEO though he might be, was in this case a loose cannon. Loose cannons had a way of going off at precisely the worst time. Ben wasn’t about to take the chance of having things blown apart by an overzealous parent.
“Let me check it out and I’ll let you know.”
The answer irritated McNair. “I’m not paying you to play games, Underwood.”
Ben cut him yet a little more slack, though it galled him to do so. Stress did strange things to people, he reminded himself. Maybe, under ordinary circumstances, Stephen McNair was a completely likable person, although Ben sincerely doubted it.
In any event, rules had to be set and boundaries defined. “No, Mr. McNair, you’re paying me to find your son and I intend to do that. But it’ll have to be my way. Again, that’s what you’re paying me for.”
He heard the man bite off a retort he couldn’t make out, then say in a guarded voice, “You’ll call as soon as you have anything?”
“I’ll call,” Ben promised, just as he had yesterday as McNair left the office. The man had tried to bully him into making reports at regular intervals. That might have been standard procedure at McNair’s company, but that wasn’t the way he operated and Ben had made his position perfectly clear. Or so he thought.
“Speaking of calling, how did you get my home number?” It was unlisted, and although he’d given out his number on occasion to more than one distraught parent, something had prevented Ben from offering it to McNair. Self-preservation, most likely.
“I have ways.” There was a smug note in the other man’s voice. And then he reiterated his earlier point. “I would appreciate you checking in with me regularly.”
Maybe the agency should refine its screening process, Ben thought, growing closer to the end of his patience. At the moment, the agency took on all comers. Maybe it was time for Cade to rethink that when he got back from the case he was working on.
“There’s nothing regular about my line of work. I’ll call when there’s something to call about. Goodbye, Mr. McNair.”
Ben let the receiver fall back into the cradle, then slid back down on the bed. Less than five minutes of tossing and turning made him acknowledge that he was too irritated to go back to sleep.
Muttering under his breath, Ben got up to take a shower. The last time he’d been up on the wrong side of four-thirty, it’d been to get ready for his paper route before going to school. The nuns at St. Mary’s, aware of his mother’s financial situation, had said paying part of his own tuition at the parochial school would make a man out of him.
He didn’t feel very manly right now. Just tired.
With a sigh, he turned on the hot water and stepped into the shower. There was no sense wasting time.
The drive up Interstate 5 from Bedford to Saratoga would have been scenic had it not been for the early morning fog that hung about the winding road. He was a careful driver by nature. It wasn’t often, though, that he worried about the road and the hazards caused by careless drivers.
But a fog this thick made him aware of every inch of road. And the possibility of his own quickly snuffed-out mortality.
Ben slowed his vehicle down to a crawl.
He supposed he could have gone later, but the word itself held a foreboding threat within it. Later was too close to never when it came to kidnappings. It was always best to follow every lead as soon as it occurred. Later might be too late.
He didn’t ever intend to be too late. So far, he’d been lucky. He’d never had to face a parent and say those gut-wrenching, eternally tormenting words that would forever cut them off from hope. He’d found every child he’d set out to locate. Which was what made his job at ChildFinders so much more rewarding than the time he’d spent in the homicide division on the police force.
The coffee nestled in his cup holder had grown cold and stagnant by the time the fog had lifted, and he felt confident enough to risk taking one hand off the wheel to take a drink. By then, he was fifteen miles out of Saratoga.
The small town created an immediate impression the moment he entered it. Saratoga looked as if it should have been the subject of a fairy tale. Or, at the very least, a Frank Capra movie. There was a picturesque, storybook quality about it. The climate was cooler up here, and what had been rain in Bedford had transformed into light flurries in Saratoga.
The light layer of fresh snow on the trees and ground made Ben think of a Currier and Ives painting.
The woman he was looking for lived ten miles on the other side of Saratoga.
“I do so like getting visitors,” the small, cherubic woman said, smiling at Ben. “Have another cookie.” She pushed the near-full plate toward him. “I just wind up eating them myself half the time.” Her eyes twinkled and she gave the illusion of lucidity as she smiled at her girth. “But I suspect you’ve already guessed that.”
The wan afternoon sun had finally withdrawn from the parlor they were in, after losing a hopeless battle for space within a room crammed full of knickknacks and memorabilia. It was a room where an old woman sat, surrounded by things that reminded her that she had once been young, with the world at her feet. Too heavyset to be called elfin, she still had that way about her. She was charming, and maybe, at some other time, Ben wouldn’t have minded spending an afternoon talking to her about nothing.
But he didn’t have time. Because of McNair’s admitted reticence, too much had already elapsed. The longer it took him to find Andrew McNair, the harder it would become.
“No.” The lie came easily to him. It harmed nothing to pretend that she was not heavy. The woman’s smile became wider. “No, I hadn’t guessed.” Picking up another one of the cookies she was pushing on him, he took a bite. The cookies, laced liberally with macadamia nuts, were quite possibly the best he’d ever had. Andrea would have killed for these, he thought, chocolate chip cookies being a particular weakness for his middle sister. “And much as I’d like to load up on these, Mrs. Malone—”
“Oh, please, everyone calls me Sugar. I forget exactly why. Sugarland isn’t my given name, you know.”
“I rather suspected that,” he said, smiling. “But as to the reason I’m here—”
“Oh, yes, your reason.” Her smile faded a little. “And once you tell me, you’ll be gone, won’t you?”
He’d met her less than twenty minutes ago. Knocking on her door, he’d been surprised when she’d ushered him in like a long-lost friend. Asking for his name had been an after-thought. It had left him wondering if there was anyone who looked in on the old woman from time to time to make sure she hadn’t given up the deed to the old Victorian house, or its surrounding fields. He hoped that the foreman who managed her field hands was a decent sort.
“I’m afraid—”
Sugar waved away the excuse magnanimously. “That’s all right, Gloria was the same way, flitting in and out before I could so much as blink twice. I expect it’s the same with all young people.”
“Gloria.” He hadn’t expected it to be this easy. Ben maintained a poker face as he asked, “Then she’s been here?”
“Why, yes. Here and gone.” Sugar brushed away the crumbs that had collected on her ample bosom. “But you were going to tell me something.”
Was she really as vague as she let on, or was it all an elaborate act? She seemed genuine enough, but Ben kept his eyes on the woman’s face, watching for a telltale shift in expression as he said, “As a matter of fact, I’m looking for your grand-niece.”
“Why?” It wasn’t a challenge. Curiosity filtered into her eyes.
He began to give Sugar the story he’d rehearsed on his way up here. “I represent Jacob Marley’s estate—”
“Jacob Marley….” She closed her eyes, rolling the name over in her mind. Then, opening them again, she shook her head. “I don’t believe I know the man.”
“No, ma’am, probably not.” Especially since he’d borrowed the name from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ben thought. “But he’s left Gloria a sizable amount of money—”
Sugar clapped her hands together in simple, childish delight. “How wonderful. The poor dear could so use the money. I couldn’t give her very much when she came. She promised to pay me back, but I told her I wouldn’t hear of it. I’m the only family she has, you know.”
“Yes, I do.” Ben tried to press on before the woman became distracted again. “We have no forwarding address for her—”
Fluffy, cloudlike white hair bobbed up and down as Sugar nodded in agreement.
“That’s because she’s not where she used to be.” She leaned forward, her voice dropping for a moment. “Can’t be, you know. Too bad, it made her sad to leave.”
This had to be what Alice felt like, trying to carry on a conversation with the creatures inhabiting Wonderland, Ben thought. Still, he was making some progress. “Do you know where she is now?”
“Not really.” Sugar paused to nibble thoughtfully on one of her cookies. “But she said something about San Francisco. That’s where she went to school, you know. Bright, bright girl.” She sighed as that memory, too, slipped away from her. “Worked in a bookstore during those years. Practically ran the place. Don’t know when she ever slept. The manager liked her, I could tell. Never acted on it, though.” Suddenly realizing that her visitor was no longer chewing, she pushed the plate a little closer still. “Another cookie?” This time, the plate practically landed in his lap.
“Would you happen to know the name of the bookstore?” Gloria had to work, he thought. Maybe she’d touched base with the owner of the store, asking for a job. It was a long shot to say the least, but long shots had a way of paying off if you were persistent enough. Besides, it was a starting point. San Francisco was a big city to wander around in aimlessly.
“Why, as a matter of fact I do.” Proudly, she recited the name of a popular chain that was currently sweeping the country, replacing older, independent stores. “It’s located at Taylor and Turk. Or is it Turk and Taylor? I never know which way to say that.” She looked pleased with herself for remembering the location. “I went there a few times myself. The bookstore,” she clarified, almost more for her benefit than for his.
It was time to go, Ben thought. He could see she was about to push another cookie on him. “One last question. Did Gloria have a little boy with her?”
Sugar blinked, staring at him as if he had just asked her if the sky was blue on a sunny day. “Well, of course she did. Why wouldn’t she? She was moving, you know.”
“Yes, so I gathered.” On his feet, he extended his hand to her. “Well, you’ve been a great help.”
Sugar took the compliment as her due. “That’s what Gloria said. But I couldn’t help enough. Not her. Here.” She slipped three large cookies into his pocket. “For later. You might get hungry.”
He left feeling somewhat guilty about deceiving a woman who seemed bent on helping everyone who crossed her path.
The sun grazed off the window as she passed, catching her attention. Raising her eyes, surprise drenched her when she saw the reflection.
Idiot.
It still startled her, at unguarded moments, to see the different face looking back at her. To realize that the woman with the short, dark hair and blue eyes was not someone else, but her. In her mind’s eye, she was still a blonde, still green-eyed. Yet now she was a woman with a life that held promise instead of one who had come full circle, returning to what she’d once felt was the beginning of the road.
Not the end, just a breather. She had to remember that.
With effort, she shook herself free of the morose mood. It wasn’t like her. No matter what, she’d always looked on the positive side. Stopping, she tucked a book back into place on the shelf.
There was more reason than ever to focus on the positive side. There wasn’t just herself to think of. Her son needed her.
Her son.
She looked at her watch. The last customer she’d helped had taken more time than she’d judged. If she was going to be at the school in time to pick Andrew—no, Jesse, she upbraided herself. If she was going to be in time to pick Jesse up, she was going to have to get going. Now.
“I’m taking my break now, Jon,” she called out to the burly man nursing a cup of espresso at the information counter.
The bald-headed man gave a half nod in acknowledgment to her announcement and went back to perusing a copy of one of the books UPS had dropped off this morning.
She smiled to herself. Some things never changed. Jon Peterson was lost to the world when he had his nose stuck in a good mystery. He’d been that way during the four years she’d worked here while she’d attended college. Heaven help anyone if they approached him with a question. Like as not, Jon was apt to send them into the self-help section even if they asked for a cookbook.
She blessed Jon for the umpteenth time since she’d arrived more than three weeks ago. If not for him and his calming influence, she could very well have come unglued that first night in San Francisco. If he had been away on one of his many minivacations that he’d always loved to take…well, she didn’t want to think about it.
Trying to get to the front doors, she found her path blocked by a well-built man in his early twenties wearing a pricey sheepskin jacket and a cheap smile. He made no effort to move out of her way.
“Since you’re free, why don’t I buy you a cup of coffee to go along with that break?”
She’d been uncomfortably aware that the man had been sizing her up for at least the last fifteen minutes, meandering closely behind her as she stocked new books on the shelves. She’d caught him looking at her at least three times, attempting to make eye contact. She’d looked away each time. He gave her the shivers. Not the good kind.
Maybe it was her situation that made her so edgy, so suspect of every man who looked her way. Maybe she was being unduly sensitive and the man was just trying to strike up a conversation, nothing more.
But whatever he was attempting to do, she had no time for it. As it was, if she didn’t hurry, she was going to be late.
Since he was a potential customer, she strove to remain polite. “No, thank you, I have an errand to run.” Sidestepping him, she tried to get by.
One quick movement and he was in front of her again, blocking her path. He was not a man who was about to take no for an answer. “You work here, don’t you?”
She glanced toward Jon, but his nose was buried in the book. None of the other people who worked in the store were within eye-contact range. She raised her head defiantly as she looked back at the man.
“Yes.”
His eyes washing over her, he was obviously taken with what he saw. “Well then, whatever happened to that old saying, the customer is always right?”
“That depends on what the customer wants.”
A smile split his handsome face, failing to reach his eyes. “Guess.”
If she called out to Jon, she’d cause a scene. The last thing she wanted was a scene. Just peaceful anonymity. “I’m afraid I don’t have the time right now.” She tried to move past him again, but the man swayed, blocking her every move. “I need to be somewhere else,” she said.
He put up his hand against a shelf, cutting her off from making an exit. “Yes, with me.”
Suddenly, he found himself being spun around and looking up at a stranger who was several inches taller than he was.
“The lady said no. What part of ‘no’ didn’t you understand?” Ben asked.
Cold fury contorted the man’s handsome features. It was evident he wasn’t accustomed to being turned down, or opposed. “This doesn’t concern you.”
Ben’s hand tightened around his arm. He gave the man no reason to doubt he meant business. “Lack of manners always concerns me. Now, apologize to the lady and let her pass.”
She’d always loved westerns as a child. The rugged hero in the white hat coming to the aid of the wronged, put-upon but feisty heroine. Time and again, she’d eat up the stories even though they were always the same. Only the faces and names changed.
And now she had her very own cowboy riding to her rescue.
Annoyed but smart enough to know when he was outmatched, the man glared sullenly at her. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Ben slowly nodded his head, as if evaluating the words. “A little lacking in poetry, but it’ll do.” Releasing his hold on the man’s arm, Ben held his hand up. “You can go. Now.”
Embarrassed, the man stalked out.
Ben shook his head, watching to make sure he left before turning back to the sultry-looking woman. He had no doubt she had more than her share of run-ins like that. Women with faces and figures as beautiful as hers generally did. “I apologize for my species. Just because we all walk upright doesn’t make us all civilized.”
The laugh that bubbled up in her throat was just a little nervous. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure—” he glanced down at the small, square name tag “—Gina Wassel.” He raised his eyes to hers. “And now, would you mind pointing me in the direction of the manager?”
She would have liked to stay and ask him if she could help, but the jerk who had tried to put the moves on her had eaten up her margin of time. She should have already been on her way.
“He’s right over there.” She pointed toward Jon. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Ben nodded, stepping aside. “You have an errand to run.”
“Emphasis on run,” she said, tossing the words over her shoulder as she hurried out.
He allowed himself exactly half a second to take in the view. The woman looked just as good going as she did coming.
But he wasn’t there to pass judgment on form. He was tracking a kidnapper.
With that in mind, Ben made his way over to the man the woman named Gina had pointed out to him.
Chapter 3
Jon Peterson slowly stroked his small goatee as he stared at the reprinted photograph of a woman with a little boy that Ben had handed him.
Longer than was necessary, in Ben’s estimation. Gloria Prescott had either come in and applied for a job in the last few days, or she hadn’t. Granted, the photograph wasn’t a very good one, but it was the only one McNair had had of either Gloria, or his son. Ben could see not having photographs of the nanny, but it was difficult for him to understand why McNair had no available photographs of his son. He supposed that the man’s excuse, that he wasn’t the kind to take pictures, held some water. But he bet that McNair had plenty of photographs of himself around.
Blurred photograph or not, Peterson knew what Gloria looked like. According to her great-aunt, she’d worked here for four years. The man was either stalling for dramatic effect, or was debating something. Not knowing him made it next to impossible for Ben to tell.
When the bookstore manager finally raised his eyes to his, Ben had the impression that he was being scrutinized far more closely than the photograph had been.
“Nope, sorry, can’t help you.” Placing the photograph on the counter, Jon pushed it back toward him. He paused as if thinking. “Haven’t seen Gloria in, what? I guess about four, five years now.” The small, dark eyes gave no indication of what was going on in his mind as they looked at Ben. “Maybe even longer.”
“Then she didn’t come here looking for a job,” Ben reiterated.
The meeting apparently over, Peterson drew his book back to him and lowered his head, effectively blocking out any noise and any unwanted inquiries.
“That would have meant I’d seen her, wouldn’t it? Sorry, she’s not here. Wish she was. Best damn employee I ever had here. She actually wanted to work, not like some of the others.” He turned a page in his book. Because Ben wasn’t leaving, Peterson raised his eyes to look at him again. This time, his displeasure was not that difficult to discern. “Anything else I can do for you?”
Ben had come across more sociable pit bulls. He slipped the photograph back into his pocket. “Would you happen to know where Gloria might have gone if she’d returned to San Francisco?”
“Nope. Never meddle.” Peterson returned to his mystery, making it painfully obvious that he considered Ben an annoying obstacle to his reading pleasure. “Keeping your nose out of other people’s lives is the secret to a long, healthy one of your own.” Bent over his book, Peterson spared him one more pointed glance. “Know what I mean?”
“Yeah.” He knew exactly what the older man meant. Get lost. Ben took one last look around the store. He’d already walked up and down the aisles methodically, not once but twice. That was how he’d happened to notice the college preppie putting the moves on the salesclerk. Not that he could actually blame him. The woman had been a looker in a classy sort of way. “Thanks for your help.”
Engrossed in the book he was reading, the store manager grunted his acknowledgment.
There was nothing for Ben to do but retreat to his car.
Rather than drive off immediately, Ben put in a quick call to Savannah and came up empty there as well.
“If Gloria Prescott’s in San Francisco, Ben, she’s not using her charge cards,” she told him.
“No paper trail of any kind?”
“Not unless she’s leaving bread crumbs behind her on her way to the forest,” Savannah quipped. “The canvassing down here’s coming up dry, too. Rusty’s been showing the photograph around in the area and he said to tell you that nobody’s seen Gloria or the boy. I’m sorry, Ben.”
“Not your fault,” he murmured before hanging up.
Putting his cell phone back in his pocket, Ben stared at the bookstore across the street, not really seeing it. He doubted that driving back to Saratoga to ask Sugar any more questions would yield any further insight into finding Gloria.
That only left one other person to talk to.
The expression on Stephen McNair’s face was far from welcoming when his secretary admitted Ben into his office. The man’s countenance made Ben think of Zeus, presiding over Mount Olympus and bringing Mercury to task for failing to deliver the message he’d been anticipating. Ben had a hunch that even the man’s furniture had been chosen with an eye toward intimidating anyone entering the office. Massive, opulent and expensive. The man certainly didn’t assume his present position in life graciously.
Sitting as straight as a spear in his gray, imported leather office chair, McNair gripped the armrests as he scowled at him.
“Shut the door.”
The tone rankled Ben, but he closed the door behind him. This was supposed to be private, anyway. The instant the door met the jamb, McNair was on his feet.
“Why are you coming to see me here?”
Definitely not a Mr. Congeniality candidate, Ben thought. In his book it would have had to have taken one hell of a greedy woman to have slept with this man for monetary gain. But then, it took all kinds, and he had yet to figure out just what “kind” his quarry was. Aside from cookies, her aunt had filled him in with stories of Gloria as well, all told with an abundance of affection and filial pride. Given the woman’s state, though, he figured he had to take a great deal with a grain of salt.
“Because I didn’t want to waste time making an appointment.”
About to say something, McNair changed his tone. “Did you find her?”
Again, “her,” not “him.” “If you don’t mind my saying so, Mr. McNair, you seem to be a great deal more interested in my finding Gloria Prescott than you are in my finding your son.”
“Of course I’m interested in you finding Gloria. She has what belongs to me and no one, no one gets away with that. Now, did you find her or didn’t you?”
“Not yet.” Ben wanted to add that he wasn’t a magician, but let the remark slide. It would only lead to an escalation of tempers.
“Then I repeat, what are you doing here in my office?”
Ben was beginning to feel really sorry for the little boy he was looking for. He had a feeling that McNair was probably just as cold and abrasive with the son he never actually wanted as he was with someone who was “displeasing” him. “I need more information.”
Exasperation creased the remarkably unlined brow. “I already told you everything I could think of.”
There had to be something, some tiny piece that would lead Ben to clues that would help him find the boy. He’d seen it happen often enough. The trick was finding that one scrap that eventually opened up everything. Maybe the answers he was looking for were in Gloria’s recent past. “Where did Gloria work before she came to you?”
The annoyance on McNair’s face deepened. “I don’t remember.”
He was being evasive, Ben thought, and wondered why. In any event, there was an easy-enough solution. “Check your references.”
With an angry huff, McNair turned away. There was tension in the back Ben found himself looking at. “I don’t know where they are.”
He would have thought that McNair knew how to lay his hands on almost anything that remotely concerned him. “What about the agency that sent her? Can you remember its name?”
McNair swung around. “What does where she worked before have to do with finding her now?”
It was on the tip of Ben’s tongue to say that he didn’t appreciate having his methods questioned, but he thought better of it. He hadn’t come here to argue, but to search for a lead. The sooner McNair gave him what he wanted, the sooner he could get going.
“There might be some sort of connection we’ve overlooked.” McNair looked unconvinced. “No one we’ve questioned in the area has seen her, and her only relative sent me in the wrong direction.”
“Relative?” He said the word as if he hadn’t thought that Gloria had any, Ben noted. “Well, go back to him or her and get the truth.”
“It’s a her,” Ben told him. “And I think the sky’s a different color in her world than it is in the world the rest of us reside in.”
“You mean she’s crazy?” Surprise imprinted the distinguished features.
“No, just somewhat off. Eccentric.” Ben had no idea why he suddenly felt protective of a woman he hardly knew. Maybe it was McNair’s manner. He pressed on. “What I need right now is someone else who knew her, someone who might have a decent idea where Gloria might have gone with your son.”
McNair blew out a breath as he scrubbed his hand over his face. Searching his memory. Or debating over something that he’d felt better about keeping obscure. Ben couldn’t tell.
Finally, McNair said, “I think she used to work in a social security office.”
Something to go on, Ben thought. “Locally?”
“I think so.” The scowl returned. “Look, I’m doing all the work here.”
Ben was already at the door, more than eager to leave. “We’ll arrange for a discount.” He didn’t bother sublimating the sarcasm.
It wasn’t wasted on McNair. His expression bordered on malevolence. “Damn straight you will. And don’t forget, I want to be kept posted,” he called after Ben.
“As soon as I find out anything, you’ll be the first to know.”
No one was more eager than he was to wrap this all up, Ben thought.
There was only one social security building in the county. Even if Gloria hadn’t worked in this particular one, Ben figured that with a little coaxing applied to the right people, he could find out which office she had worked in.
He didn’t need to coax.
The section supervisor, Anna Philbert, a robustly built woman in her forties who had once been an Olympic shot-put alternate if he was to believe the certificate that hung on the cubicle wall directly behind her, instantly recognized the photograph he showed her.
“Oh, sure, Gloria worked here.” She looked at the photograph again before handing it back to him. “Is anything wrong?”
He didn’t think the story he’d given Gloria’s great-aunt sounded sufficiently credible in the government building, so he had created another one on his way over.
“She’s missing and her fiancé’s very worried about her.”
“Missing? You mean kidnapped?” Anna asked, genuinely horrified. A beringed hand fluttered to her ample bosom. “Gloria? You’re kidding.” She shook her head in pure disbelief even as she clearly reveled in the drama of the situation. “The poor thing. She was the sweetest person in the world.”
Apparently Gloria’s fan club was growing. Why would someone regarded as “the sweetest person in the world” kidnap a child no matter how upset and angry she was? It didn’t make sense to him.
“It might not be a kidnapping,” he said quickly. “It just might be a case of cold feet.” He deliberately exchanged a conspiratorial look with the woman, drawing her further into his camp. “Tell me, if Gloria did want to get away, would you have any idea where she might go?”
As much as she looked as if she wanted to help him, Anna was forced to shake her head. “No, but I really wasn’t very close to her.” She thought a moment. “You might have better luck talking to Carla Wassel.”
“Wassel?” An image of the woman at the bookstore came to him. If he closed his eyes, he could see the name tag she’d worn against her shapely breast. It wasn’t all that common a name. He wondered if the women were somehow related. Maybe he’d finally stumbled onto a connection. “Is she in?”
Rising from behind her desk, Anna peered over the tops of the maze of cubicles.
“She’s right over there.” Anna pointed to the far end of the corridor, to a desk on the extreme right. “She and Gloria were pretty tight while Gloria was here.”
“Thank you.” He started to leave. “Oh, by the way, when did Gloria leave her job?”
“About nine months ago.” Anna smiled affectionately. “She always called this her day job, though you wouldn’t have known by the way she worked. I wished I had ten of her.”
Day job. That meant she was trying to make a go of something else. But what? It obviously wasn’t being a nanny. Could she have plotted to kidnap Andrew all along in order to get a stake of some sort? It sounded like a shot in the dark, but he’d come across wilder theories that had turned out to be true.
He probed a little further into the woman’s testimonial. “What do you mean? She put in a lot of overtime?”
“Oh, no, she never worked overtime. Couldn’t. She kept regular hours, but she gave a hundred twenty-five percent when she was here. I tried to talk her into staying, but she was adamant. Now or never, she said.”
Now or never. What was that supposed to mean? The nine-month time frame coincided with when she came to work for McNair. Had she seen the CEO as her ticket to better things?
He was holding two different puzzle pieces in his hand. So far, he’d gotten two unofficial testimonials. Both of which painted the image of a woman who believed in giving her employer everything she felt was due him or her. Giving, not taking. People like that didn’t just wake up one morning and steal their employer’s child.
Or did they?
Thanking Anna for her help, he made his way through the maze to Carla Wassel’s cubicle. He could feel Anna’s eyes following him.
Because there was no door, he rapped once on the side of the cubicle to get the woman’s attention. “Ms. Wassel?”
A dark-haired woman with striking bright blue eyes turned from her computer screen to look up at him. The smile tinged in curiosity came a beat afterward.
Ben could see the resemblance instantly. Not so much the hair, although both the woman he’d met in the bookstore and Carla Wassel were brunettes who wore their hair short, but in the eyes. A man didn’t readily forget eyes like that. They had the exact same shade of blue. Like bits of cobalt.
“Yes?”
“I’m Ben Underwood.” He indicated the chair within her cubicle. “Mind if I sit down?” Still curious, she gestured for him to take a seat. “I’m trying to locate a friend of yours. Gloria Prescott.”
“Gloria?” Her eyes widened. “Why? Has something happened to her?”
Ben stopped before reaching for Gloria’s photograph. He saw no reason for her to get as upset as she did. “What makes you ask that?”
Carla flushed, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, ever since my sister died, I’m afraid I overreact to things. The first thing I think of is…” Her voice trailed off as she let the end of her thought go. “Never mind.” She waved away the rest of her sentence. “Why are you trying to find Gloria?”
For simplicity, and because there was a chance he might have to return for more information, Ben gave Carla the same story he’d given her supervisor.
“Her fiancé’s trying to find her. They were supposed to go away together to Hawaii last week and Gloria never showed up. Personally,” he said, leaning in a little closer, “I think it might be cold feet, but we have to investigate these things.”
Caution entered her voice. “Are you a policeman?”
For a second he debated going that route. But the closer he remained to the truth, the easier it was to remember details. “A private one.”
Carla took the information in stride. “I don’t think I can help you. I haven’t been in touch with Gloria since shortly after she left the office.” She raised her shoulder in a semihelpless movement. “I meant to, but you know how that goes. I suppose I wasn’t much fun to be around at the time. But I’m better now.”
“Nice to hear.” He tried to sound sympathetic. Another dead end, he thought. But there was still the coincidence of the names. No stone unturned. “How do you spell your last name?”
Carla’s dark eyebrows drew together over a Roman nose. “W-a-s-s-e-l, why?”
He jotted it down in the small notepad he carried. Tucking it back into his pocket, his fingers came in contact with the cookies Aunt Sugar had slipped in. He had to remember to take them out.
“Just for the record,” he assured her. “Do you have any relatives in San Francisco?”
The answer required no extensive deliberation. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”
It was probably a meaningless coincidence, but he’d learned never to ignore or omit anything that seemed the slightest bit unusual. He’d gone to the bookstore where Gloria had once worked only to run into a woman with her best friend’s last name. There could be a connection. At the very least, the woman in San Francisco might know Gloria.
“I ran into someone with the exact same last name as yours just yesterday. You have to admit, it’s not exactly in the same realm as Smith or Jones.”
Curious, Carla asked gamely, “Maybe we are related. What was his name?”
“Her,” he corrected the woman. “Gina Wassel.”
Carla turned pale and grabbed the edge of her desk. Ben saw her eyes roll toward the back of her head, and for a second he thought he was going to have to catch her to keep her from sliding off her chair, onto the floor.
He grabbed her arms. “Take a deep breath,” he ordered. “Again.” He waited until she exhaled slowly. “Are you all right?”
When she looked at him, there was an accusation in her eyes. “Is this some kind of a cruel joke?”
He had no idea what she was talking about, but he’d obviously stumbled onto something. “Not that I’m aware of,” he said slowly.
“Gina’s my sister. Was my sister,” she corrected herself. The pain was obvious. “She’s been gone for ten months. Wait.” Agitated, blinking back tears that were threatening to overwhelm her, Carla dug into the purse she kept under her desk. “Here, here’s her picture.” She shoved her wallet at him and showed him a photograph of herself and her sister standing in front of an old house. A beat later he realized that it was the Victorian-looking house he’d gone to yesterday. “That’s Gina.” She indicated the slender young woman on the right.
“Who took this picture?”
“Gloria. We went to visit her aunt on her seventieth birthday.”
The resemblance between the woman in the photograph and the one he’d met yesterday was unmistakable. They could have been the same person. Folding the wallet closed, he handed it back to Carla.
“Ms. Wassel,” he began as gently as he could, “I have to ask—”
Carla cut him off. She couldn’t bear to hear the words. “I was driving the car when the camper side-swiped us. Gina was killed instantly.” Her breathing was ragged as she spoke. “It was Gloria who helped me through that, who let me sleep on her sofa and kept me sane.” Without looking, she dropped the wallet back into her purse. “If she hadn’t been around, I probably would have killed myself.” Her eyes held his for a moment. “If Gloria’s in some sort of danger, you’ve got to find her.”
Ben had a feeling he already had.
There were huge, gaping holes in the puzzle he found himself working. “You have access to all sorts of information here, don’t you?”
Carla’s expression told him she wasn’t sure where he was going with this, or what she should answer. “Depending on your level of clearance, yes.”
“Such as social security numbers.”
She laughed nervously, still uncertain. “Well, of course. We’re a social security office.”
“Does that mean social security numbers that are no longer in use?” This would have been the perfect place for Gloria to forge a new identity.
“Yes.” The single word emerged slowly.
He had a feeling he was on the right track. “Ms. Wassel, I know this might sound rather strange to you, but would you be able to give me your sister’s social security number?”
“Yes, but I already told you, Gina’s dead.” Carla began to access a program for him, then stopped and looked at him. “You think Gloria’s using Gina’s social security number.”
“Yes.”
It didn’t make any sense. “But why?”
To hide from Stephen McNair until he agreed to her terms. But he couldn’t tell the woman that. She wouldn’t give him the social security number he needed, and right now, he didn’t know if Savannah had access to inactive files.
“I won’t be able to answer any questions until I have all the facts,” he told her.
Confusion furrowed her brow as she looked at the keys, undecided. “If Gloria’s in some sort of trouble, maybe I shouldn’t be helping you.”
His voice was quiet and authoritative. “If Gloria’s in some sort of trouble, I might be the only one who can help her.”
Carla sat looking at him for a long moment, then began typing.
The electronic doors opened and closed.
The chill that ran up her back was immediate, drenching her with an icy wave. Though she was in one of the aisles, her eyes darted toward the front.
How long before that reaction would leave her? Before she could hear the doors opening and not be compelled to look, holding her breath and praying. It wasn’t natural to feel this way, as if she were doomed to cross and recross a tightrope stretched over a bottomless pit with slippery shoes.
He wouldn’t track her here, she insisted silently. He didn’t know enough about her to know about this place. And even if he did and was still looking for her, she wasn’t really here. Not the way he knew her.
She was safe.
The breath she’d been holding escaped as recognition came. Gina’s mouth curved. The man who had gotten between her and that pushy jerk the day before yesterday had returned.
What was he was doing back? When she’d left, he’d asked her to point Jon out, or rather, the store manager. That meant Jon and the stranger didn’t know each other, so it wasn’t personal. Jon hadn’t mentioned anything to her, but then, he’d been in a real rush to leave after taking that call from his brother.
He told her he had to take some time off and left her in charge, just like that.
Funny how you could work with someone for so long and not know anything about him. She’d spent all four college years working in the store, and in all that time, Jon had never mentioned even having a family. He’d been closemouthed as far as things like that went.
Pot calling the kettle black. She certainly wasn’t in a position to throw rocks right now, she mused. Jon didn’t know all that much about her, either. Nor had he asked anything, not even when she’d suddenly appeared out of the blue three weeks ago, asking for her old job back. All he’d said was sure, then added an addendum: If she needed him, he was around. To prove it, he’d gotten her in contact with a friend of his who was trying to sublet his condo. She had a job and a home within one day, thanks to Jon. He was one in a million.
He hadn’t even made any comment about her changed appearance when she came in the first day. Just asked her what name she wanted to go under. Nothing more.
Gina suspected that World War Three could probably break out right in front of the bookstore and as long as it didn’t intrude within the doors, Jon would remain oblivious to it.
Lucky for her.
Pushing the book she was holding back into its space, she walked up to the man who had just entered and smiled at him. “I see you’re back. Come to see if I needed rescuing again?”
He’d taken measure of her as he’d walked in and still wondered if there was some sort of mistake. But it was too much of a coincidence for him to shrug off. What he needed was to find a way to find out her social security number. That might be more difficult than he’d anticipated if the store manager had agreed to pay her off the books.
“Oh, you strike me as someone who can take care of herself. If I hadn’t intervened yesterday, you probably would have decked him.”
He had a dimple, she realized. And a sense of humor. She found that an extremely sexy trait. “My boxing gloves are in the shop,” she said wryly. “Jon’s not here if you came to see him.”
“Jon?”
“The store manager.” Obviously the name meant nothing to him. “I’m sorry, I’m just taking a stab at why you’re here.”
He wondered what she would say if he answered her truthfully. If he told her that he was looking for Gloria Prescott and the little boy she’d abducted. Probably nothing. At close quarters, the woman looked cool enough to be able to pull it off. If she was Gloria.
“To do some research, actually.”
Savannah had managed to access Gloria Prescott’s transcript at the University of San Francisco for him. He’d discovered that while her degree was in the field of studio arts, specifically sculpting, she’d minored in American history. He’d guessed that the preponderance of courses on Native Americans meant her interest lay there. The drive up from Bedford had given him ample time to come up with a scenario.
He looked around. “Do you have a Native American section? I’m working on a project and I’m kind of stuck. I need all the input I can get.”
Ben saw interest enter her eyes. “Native American? What kind of a project is it?”
He pretended to hesitate. “You’d probably laugh.”
That made her smile. “No, I wouldn’t, try me.”
He’d chosen his story carefully. “It’s a screenplay—you probably hear that all the time. Everybody and his brother is writing one, or knows someone who’s writing one.”
Her smile was nothing short of encouraging. If this was Gloria, he could easily see why McNair had lost his head. Whether she was blonde or brunette, there was something about the woman’s smile that got to a man, made him want to puff up his chest and do something extraordinary to make her take notice.
“I don’t,” she told him.
He caught her off guard by putting out his hand. “Ben Underwood. Now you know me, so you know someone who’s writing one.”
The smile turned into a soft laugh that wafted around him like the first breeze of spring, full of promise at what was to be.
“All right, Ben Underwood, what’s your screenplay about?”
“The Battle of Wounded Knee.” Other than Custer’s last stand at Little Big Horn, it was the only Indian battle that he was vaguely aware of.
She caught her lower lip between her teeth, holding back a laugh.
“You’re not going to believe this, but I minored in Native American studies at UCSF.”
“You’re kidding.” He looked properly impressed. “Damn, but this is my lucky day. Maybe you can help fill in the gaps for me.”
“Maybe,” she echoed, her mouth curving.
He did his best not to notice how inviting that looked.
Chapter 4
So far, so good, Ben thought, returning her smile. He’d managed to establish a beachhead, however small. But he was a long way from winning the battle yet.
What he needed was to gain her trust so he could get to the bottom of what was going on. As of right now, he still wasn’t a hundred percent certain that he had the right woman. All he had to go on was the slightly out-of-focus photograph McNair had given him and a likeness of Gloria Prescott that Savannah had lifted from the DMV records she’d accessed. The only similarity between that and the woman he was looking at was they looked to be approximately the same age.
Ben summoned what latent acting talents he had and infused his voice with what he hoped was the right amount of enthusiasm. One of his best friends was a would-be screenwriter. Ben did his best to imitate the way he’d heard Nick talk when he was going on about his project of the moment.
“You know, this is almost like fate, meeting you.”
He touched her shoulder lightly as he spoke, initiating contact, but making certain that it couldn’t be misconstrued as anything remotely sexual. If the other day was any indication, she probably had more than her share of that, but he’d noted that the slightest bit of physical contact between people instantly brought them to a more familiar plane. He did his best to walk the fine line.
“Listen, I’ve got an idea.” Ben dropped his hand, as if suddenly aware of what he was doing. He saw a hint of a smile on Gina’s face and congratulated himself on his instincts. “I know you’re working right now, but maybe we could grab a bite to eat later when you knock off and—”
Having displayed what he thought was just the right amount of eagerness, he stopped, as if realizing how his words had to sound to her.
“I know you’re probably thinking that this is a come-on, but it’s really not. I really do need your help. I want to be accurate about this and I’m willing to pay you for your time.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Not much, I’m afraid—unless you’re willing to take percentage points in my script.”
Though she was trying to maintain her distance, Gina had to admit that this eager screenwriter did sound cute, stumbling over his words. She hoped he was better on paper. But she did appreciate that he realized she might be getting the wrong impression about his offer. Not many men would have picked up on that.
From the look of him, Ben Underwood seemed like the last word in manliness. Someone Aunt Sugar would have referred to as “a man’s man—and a lady’s heart-throb.” Yet he was unapologetically sensitive to her feelings. After what she’d been through, he seemed more like a figment of her imagination than a real person.
Still, she had to turn him down.
“I can’t tonight, I’ve got to close up.” She was surprised at the regret she felt. Gina chalked it up to loneliness. “But I think I can manage tomorrow night after work, if that’s all right.” She could see he looked disappointed. “Unless you’re in a hurry.”
Ben noticed one of the other clerks looking their way and turned just slightly so that his body blocked her view of the other man. He didn’t want her getting distracted while he made his pitch.
“I am—I’m getting close to my deadline.” He paused, thinking that it was a lucky thing he’d decided to get a motel room close by. “But tomorrow night will be great,” he added genially.
Intrigued, she cocked her head. “Deadline?”
The shrug was self-deprecating, with just enough boyishness thrown in to captivate her. Mischievous as a boy, he’d spent his childhood pleading his case to a tough audience. Looking sincere had become an art form. Dominican nuns ordinarily brooked no nonsense.
“I gave myself a deadline. If I didn’t make it as a screenwriter within five years, I was going to stop fooling myself and go into the family business. I’ve got six months left.”
She surprised him by whistling softly. His eyes lingered on her puckered lips.
“That’s cutting it pretty close.” She moved to the right, out of the way of a customer who was browsing through the section where they were standing. Perforce, she moved closer to Ben. “What’s the family business?”
He silently apologized to Nick, whose life he was plagiarizing. “Furniture-making.”
Gina studied him. She could definitely see this handsome stranger doing that. Wearing a leather apron over worn jeans and a checkered work shirt that was rolled up at the sleeves. Goggles perched atop his thick, black hair, the smell of freshly sawed wood about him. You’re getting carried away, she warned herself. “Are you any good at it?”
Humor glinted in his eyes as he laughed, thinking of Nick. Every time Nick attempted to make something, it was inevitably reduced to a pile of splinters and wood chips. He had no idea why Nick’s father was so adamant about his joining the business.
“I would be if the family had a sideline making and selling toothpicks. My creativity lies in other directions, but if I can’t make a go of it, my father insists I come into the business. Maybe as a sales rep.”
He made it sound like a life sentence with no possibility of parole. She found herself warming to him. “We’ll see what we can do. I’m not free tonight,” she repeated, “but I can point you toward an excellent book to get you started.”
“Sounds great.”
She led him to the American history section. One of the shelves was labeled Native American Studies. Eight years ago, it had been her personal baby, the one section she’d convinced Jon to set up. Now that she was back, she intended to keep on top of it religiously, making sure any new, relevant books were ordered while old standards were kept in stock.
She noticed two books were out of alphabetical order. Switching them to the right place, Gina selected one title and handed it to him. “This should be very helpful.”
“Thanks.” He nodded toward the small table that was off to the side. There were several throughout the store, besides the ones at the coffee shop in the center of the store. “Mind if I…?”
Reading sections of a book before you bought it had become an accepted custom. “Help yourself. That’s why the tables and chairs are here.”
Ben made himself comfortable and opened the book to the first page. This was going to be slower going than he would have liked, he thought, but he felt he had no option. He needed something more to go on than just a glaring coincidence before he brought McNair in or the police down on the bookstore clerk. What if, by some strange twist of fate, he was wrong? Truth had been known to be stranger than fiction.
And if he was right, if this woman was Gloria Prescott and she was impersonating a dead woman, he needed to find out where she was keeping Andrew. His proceeding cautiously could mean the difference between life or death.
Mixed into all this was the question that was beginning to hound him. How could someone whom everyone he’d spoken with so far thought was a saint, have done something so heinous as to kidnap a child, no matter what her motive? If this woman with the winning smile and the killer figure was Gloria Prescott, she was either a consummate actress who had managed to fool her co-workers, her friend and her aunt, or something just wasn’t right.
Any way he looked at it, he had a puzzle whose pieces weren’t fitting together.
With a sigh, Ben lowered his eyes to his book and returned to playing his role.
Darkness pressed its face against the bookstore’s large bay windows, peering in forlornly. It was a few minutes shy of nine o’clock, and except for Gina, he was the last one in the store. He’d spent the last few hours watching her interact with people, trying to form an opinion. Trying, also, to be objective and not swayed by the fact that she moved with the grace of a spring breeze, or that when she smiled or laughed, everyone around her seemed to light up. Him included.
He’d also wound up reading the book she had recommended. Even though his mind wasn’t really on it, he had to admit that parts of it had managed to catch his attention and seep in. Maybe he’d mention the subject matter to Nick when he got home. Most success stories began as accidents. Who knew, this might be Nick’s long-awaited accident.
Glancing at his watch, he verified the time. Nine. That meant she’d be closing up and going home soon. Maybe he could change her mind about tonight. The sooner he gained her confidence, the sooner he could get to the bottom of this.
He rose to his feet, feeling stiff. He’d stayed in one position too long. The wound he had gotten when he was shot in the line of duty, protecting his partner, whispered its presence along his body. He rotated his shoulders, trying to work out the discomfort.
Gina was at the register. Ben made his way over to her and placed the book on the counter between them, then took out his wallet.
“You’re right, it’s an excellent book.” Handing her a twenty, he watched her ring the sale up. The last of the day. “Maybe we could go get that dinner now and discuss it.”
She was tempted, she realized in surprise. What’s more, it felt good to be tempted. She’d thought that perhaps, all things considered, she would never entertain that sensation again. But tempted or not, there was no way she could say yes, not tonight. Betty, her teenage baby-sitter, could only stay until nine-thirty. Jesse was asleep and she wasn’t about to wake him. Besides, she doubted that this would-be screenwriter, sensitive or not, would welcome a six-year-old’s company at dinner.
Handing him his change, she slipped the book into a bag with the store’s logo on it. “I’m afraid I can’t. There’re…complications.”
He played it as if she wasn’t the suspect he’d been sent to track. “Husband?”
“No.” She held up her left hand to substantiate her answer.
“Boyfriend?”
This time, Gina smiled as she shook her head, thinking him sweet and wondering if she was a fool for thinking it. “No.”
Ben raised his brows in a supposed last-ditch, far-out guess. “Strict parents?”
She laughed. “No. Just…complications.”
Gina wondered how her son would take to being referred to as a complication. In reality, he was the most uncomplicated, most wonderful part of her life. But arranging her schedule around him, picking him up at school and making sure he was safe at all times, did lead to a great many complications.
“If you come by the store tomorrow,” she told him, hoping that he would, “I’ll let you know about dinner.”
“Why don’t you just give me your home phone number and I’ll call you?” He made the suggestion as casually as he could.
He seemed like a nice person, but she’d made a costly error in judgment before. It was better to be safe than sorry. “Coming by the shop would be easier.”
“Here, let me give you my cell phone number just in case you need to get in touch with me.” He wrote it down on a slip of paper and handed it to her. Folding it, she slipped it into her pocket. “You’ve aroused my curiosity, you know.” Ben realized his mistake the instant the teasing remark left his lips. A wary look had entered her eyes. He immediately went into damage control. “Will I have to guess anyone’s name, climb up a ladder made of golden hair or slay a dragon before I earn the pleasure of your company and get access to your knowledge?”
Ben silently breathed a sigh of relief as he saw her smile again. “No, nothing like that, I promise.” Taking out the day’s cash, she put it into a metal strongbox, then slipped a cover over the cash register.
The cop in him had him glancing toward the front door. This wasn’t known to be the most savory location in San Francisco. “Should you be here by yourself doing that?”
The note of concern caught her off guard. So did the warmth stirring in response. “I’ve done this before. The front door locks automatically at nine. I’m going to have to use a key to let you out.”
“Why don’t I wait until you’re finished and walk you to your car?” He wasn’t certain if it was the man he was pretending to be or the man he was who made the offer.
There was a part of her that yearned for just that. To have someone walk her to her car, to offer her his protection by mutual agreement. But there was a part, a much larger part, that had become very leery of protectiveness because it could so easily turn into possessiveness. And that led to dark places.
So, very politely but firmly, she turned him down. “Thank you, but there’s no need for that.” Gina cut him off before he could offer a protest. “And Jon would be upset if I let someone remain in the store when I put the money into the safe.” Slipping the strongbox beneath the counter, she came out from behind it and deliberately led the way to the front doors. Unlocking them, she pushed one open and held it for him. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Ben.”
“Count on it.”
Walking to his car, he thought of following Gina when she left the bookstore. But it was harder tailing someone at night than in the light of day, and if for some reason she spotted him, it would definitely spook her. He didn’t want to undo the groundwork he’d just spent the last few hours laying down. He was going to have to wait. Tomorrow night, he’d find a way to get himself invited back to her place. Once he knew where she lived, he could return and nose around while she was at work.
Chapter 5
Despite the fact that it had been busy ever since they’d opened their doors this morning, Gina’s eyes darted toward the electronic doors when she head the tiny buzzer sound, announcing the entrance of a new customer. It was a woman in her late forties. The rise in adrenaline leveled off.
This was stupid.
She had a great many more important things on her mind than a good-looking man supposedly writing a screenplay about the massacre at Wounded Knee. A very good-looking man, her mind amended automatically and entirely against her will.
“Next, please,” she called to the orderly line of people who stood behind the deep purple plush ropes strung up solely to keep them in their place.
A heavyset man with an armload of books walked up, depositing them on the counter. Tilted, the books scattered every which way, mostly sprawling out on her side of the counter, some falling beneath. Offering a vague, sympathetic smile at the flustered man, Gina gathered the books up.
For all she knew, Gina thought as she began ringing up the sale for the hapless customer, Ben’s story about needing to do research for his screenplay could have all been just an elaborate pickup line. When she’d turned him down for dinner, not once but twice, that might have been the end of it.
Gina scanned two more books quickly, punching in the total, telling herself it was just as well that he hadn’t returned.
No, it hadn’t been just about a pickup, she thought, still carrying on the internal debate. He’d sounded sincere. She knew it. Besides, he’d come to her rescue the first time she’d met him and he hadn’t tried to come on to her then. Sure he was sexy, but he didn’t seem to be deceitful. Maybe he was exactly what he seemed, an earnest dreamer pursuing his dream. An earnest, sweet, good-looking dreamer.
Ben Underwood might be a dreamer, but she couldn’t be, Gina reminded herself, slipping all the books she’d just rung up into a shopping bag and then handing it to the man with a vague smile.
“Have a nice day,” she told him. She was in no position to daydream like normal people. She wasn’t normal people. Not right now, at any rate. She was a woman on the run and she had to remember that.
Maybe not, a small voice whispered within her. Maybe the running was finally over. Maybe the man who’d robbed her of so many nights’ sleep had decided she was too much trouble to pursue any further and had given up looking for her. Maybe she was finally safe.
Safe.
God, but she’d never realized how overwhelmingly seductive the four-letter word could be. Safe. Safe to go about her life doing everyday things, safe not to be constantly looking over her shoulder, wondering, worrying. Safe not to see shapes hidden in the shadows, afraid that she was being followed.
The front door buzzer sounded. She lost her place in counting out the next customer’s change.
“Sorry,” she murmured, beginning again.
The man buying the massive cookbook looked at her as if she were incapable of counting beyond five. “Maybe I should have given you a charge card.”
The slightly condescending tone and tolerant expression on his patrician face made her want to whip out her college diploma to show him that she was quite capable of conducting monetary transactions of any amount.
A lot of good that would do, she realized ruefully. The name on the diploma didn’t match the one on her name tag.
“Please come again,” she murmured as cheerfully as she could muster.
The man mumbled something in response that was lost on her as she found herself looking up into eyes that were almost Wedgwood blue. Ben had come up on her blind side and was now leaning against the counter, blocking the next customer.
“Hi, are we still on?”
Was it possible for him to look better today than he had yesterday? Or was that just the self-imposed drought in her life that was making her suddenly thirsty? Thirsty for the companionship of a personable man who wanted nothing more from her than just her mind.
“On?” she echoed.
The customer took her books to the clerk at the next register, giving Gina an envious look. It wasn’t lost on Gina.
“For tonight,” Ben prompted. He didn’t appear annoyed that she seemed to have momentarily forgotten. “You said that you couldn’t go out after work last night, but that you probably could tonight.” He looked at her hopefully. Or was that just her imagination?
She’d talked to Betty, who had checked with her mother last night. Since tonight was a Friday night and Betty hadn’t hit the dating circuit yet—her mother referred to Betty as a late bloomer—Gina was assured of a sitter for Jesse.
Now all that remained was taking that final leap from self-proclaimed female hermit to socializing woman. Easier contemplated than done.
For most of her life, she’d loved company, loved going out. She’d always been a people person, until she’d had her trust betrayed at a college fraternity party. McNair had resurrected the leeriness that had come to define and delineate her life for months after her rape, making her hold all men suspect. Looking for ulterior motives.
She hated being that way, and yet…
“Oh, right.” Gina beckoned forward the next customer who was about to bypass her. “I can take you here,” she told the woman, then looked at Ben. “Um, I’m not so sure that I can, after all. There’s the store, we don’t lock up until ten tonight—” As she scanned the book, the numbers popped up on the register.
“Don’t they let you go out for dinner?” Ben dead-panned.
“I’ll lock up for you tonight, Gina,” a deep voice on her other side rumbled.
She glanced toward the other register, not surprised to see the slightly superior look gracing the face of the tall, thin, prematurely balding young man. The man with the improbable name of Joe Valentine had regarded her as an interloper when Jon had given her responsibility of the store over him. Joe had been working at the bookstore a total of two and a half years and considered himself not just a clerk, but Jon’s assistant. Gina had changed all that and he made no secret of the fact that he didn’t care for it.
“After all, it’s not like I haven’t done it before,” Joe said smugly.
There went her last excuse, she thought, secretly glad of it. She liked being divested of excuses, because part of her really wanted to see Ben again, under any pretext. Pretexts made her feel that it was all right. “Thanks, Joe, as long as you don’t mind.”
“Hey, where else am I going to go?”
“It looks like it’s all settled, then,” Ben said to her. “Unless you don’t want to.” He knew if he left it open like that, she wouldn’t feel he was trying to pressure her into anything.
Oh, she wanted to, all right. Maybe a little too much. “It’s not that—”
“Something else?”
The cop in him rose to the fore. He peered at her, keeping his voice casual, wondering if her resistance involved Andrew in some way. Was she keeping the boy someplace accessible? Was there someone else involved? Was this not just about revenge, the way McNair thought, but a child kidnapping ring with Andrew the latest victim?
It was a horrible thought, but one that was far from new. Ben knew that Cade’s own son had been kidnapped for just that reason. It had taken Cade three years to find the boy again. Darin Townsend was the reason ChildFinders, Inc. existed.
She almost said something about Jesse and being reluctant to leave him, but at the last minute decided not to. She was undoubtedly being overly paranoid, but there was no harm in keeping her private life private. No harm and maybe a great deal of good.
“No, nothing else.”
Score one for the home team. “Well then it looks like it’s settled. How about Wellington’s?” Ben asked.
She was familiar with the restaurant. It was a place she’d treated herself to once a month while she’d been attending college. The food was wonderful and the ambience even better. It was a place she could easily see him in, but not for the type of thing she’d thought he had in mind. Suspicions whispered in her ear again.
“Isn’t that a little fancy? I thought you just wanted to grab a bite to eat and talk about research.”
His smile disarmed her before he said a word.
“Who says the bite has to be in a fast-food place? Or that we have to chew fast?”
He saw the protest forming on her lips, saw the indecision in her eyes. He was winning her over, but he had to talk quickly to sustain his advantage. Getting her to a friendly, neutral place that might seduce her defenses was all part and parcel of his plan to get her comfortable enough to talk to him. The more she talked, the more likely she’d be to let something slip.
“Think of it as partial payment for your time,” he told her.
She couldn’t help smiling. “Script points and dinner?”
“Right. And anything else you can think of, too.”
Her eyes narrowed. Was this just an elaborate come-on after all? She didn’t want to believe it, yet… “Such as?”
“I’m very handy with my hands.”
Her heart sank. It was a come-on. “I’m afraid I really don’t—”
He stopped her before she said something he was going to regret. “That didn’t come out right. What I mean is that I can fix things around the house. Cracking plaster, doors that stick, things like that.”
The small condo she had sublet from Jon’s friend could more than use a face-lift, but not from someone she didn’t know. She knew the danger of opening her door and her life to someone.
“I don’t need anything fixed,” she assured him.
“All right,” he replied philosophically, “then it’ll just be dinner and research.”
“Dinner and research,” she echoed.
A line was beginning to form at the register again. Joe was looking toward them with a less than friendly expression on his face. Ben began to talk quickly before Gina saw the clerk and retreated to help him. “What time would you like me to pick you up?”
It would keep things simpler if he didn’t know where she lived. “Since this is dinner and research, why don’t I just meet you at the restaurant?”
He picked up on her reluctance to share her address. The scale tipped against her again. “You really are an independent woman, aren’t you?”
The grin that curved her mouth nearly unraveled him. It was completely guileless and captivating. “Whenever possible.” Hearing Joe clear his throat, she realized that she’d somehow managed to drift away from the register. She began moving back toward the registers. “Now then, I’m afraid I’ve got to get back to work.”
He wasn’t finished yet. There was one more thing he needed from her. Her prints. Ben glanced toward the section she had directed him toward yesterday. “Um, I was wondering if you could recommend any other books for me from the store?”
She thought a moment, shaking her head. “I think we covered that last time.” Surprise flittered over her features. “You didn’t finish the one you bought yesterday already, did you?”
He nodded. “Stayed up all night. I thought if there was something else—”
“All right, let’s see.” Because he seemed so eager, she went to check the books listed by subject on the computer. Going over the inventory, she stopped at a particular title. “Well, there is one more that might help—”
All he needed was one. Because the books were accessible to the public, the idea of getting her prints from the one he’d already bought hadn’t occurred to him until after he’d handled it extensively. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake again. “Take me to it.”
She couldn’t help smiling. “You really are eager about this, aren’t you?”
He said what he knew she needed to hear, even though there was a part of him that was starting to feel uncomfortable with the duplicity. “So eager I can taste it.”
Telling Joe she would be right back, she brought Ben over to the American history section and, after a moment, found the book she was looking for. It was out of place. “This one doesn’t go into depth on the battle, but it does give you a pretty good background on the tribal life and the people.” Turning from the shelf, she started to hand the book to him.
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Marie Ferrarella
“Ms. Ferrarella…holds reader interest at fever pitch.”
—Romantic Times Magazine
Any way Ben looked at it, the woman he’d just left behind didn’t strike him as someone who would break the law even in a minor way, much less kidnap a child.
Yet she’d stolen someone else’s name and created a fictitious life around it.
And then there was the boy, the boy who called her Mommy with no hesitation whatsoever, as if he’d always done so.
What was Ben supposed to believe?
Was he letting his feelings for Gina color his judgment or refine it? At this point, he wasn’t sure of anything.
Except that he wanted to make love with her in the worst way….
Dear Reader,
Welcome to my latest installment of ChildFinders, Inc. Since I’m an overprotective mother, it’s always been my recurring nightmare that I’ve “misplaced” my children who, when they were younger, enjoyed hiding in department store clothes racks and the like just long enough to give me a heart attack. Losing your kids is a very real fear that most mothers live with. The newspapers, sadly, are full of kidnapping stories that are not resolved happily. I thought it might be nice to create a safe haven where one could go and have potentially heinous situations brought to a happy ending. The people at ChildFinders, Inc. never met a case they couldn’t solve.
Each time I finish writing a ChildFinders, Inc. book I think to myself, “That’s it. I’ve exhausted all the possibilities for this kind of a case.” And then, after a while, I get this itch to do one more, to find just another twist so that the story is interesting enough to demand its own space, its own book. And so it was with Ben’s story. Ben Underwood appeared in the first ChildFinders, Inc. story as a policeman on the force, newly divorced and feeling his way around. He sparked my interest, and I threaded him through the second and third stories. By the time I was into my fourth story, dealing with Chad Andreini, Ben was part of the agency and comfortable with his single life. But he was a family man at heart, and I just had to find him a family worthy of the kind of caring man Ben actually was. I think I succeeded when I put him on this newest case. I hope you agree. Once again, I thank you for revisiting me, and from the bottom of my heart I wish you love.
Childfinders, Inc.: An Uncommon Hero
Marie Ferrarella
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To
S. Cloud Hsueh, Ph.D.
For guidance and warmth
over and above
the call of duty
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Prologue
She wasn’t going to cry, she wasn’t.
There was no time to waste on tears. No time for anything. Only the hasty gathering of the very most important things. The things she couldn’t leave behind along with everything else.
With the rest of her life.
She should have seen this coming, Gloria upbraided herself, tossing essentials into the suitcase that lay open on her bed. It wasn’t as if this had suddenly materialized out of the blue. There had been signs. Signs she’d refused to acknowledge because things like this only happened in the movies. Or to people she read about in the newspaper. They didn’t happen to people she knew. They didn’t happen to her.
Except that now they were.
She glanced over at the small boy lying in the center of her bed, curled up right next to the suitcase. Poor baby, he’d dozed off and on the entire time she’d dressed him, waking just enough to ask her if he was having a dream. She’d told him yes.
It was better this way. She wouldn’t have to field the tearful questions until later.
Maybe later, she could come up with answers that he could accept. Right now, she couldn’t even come up with any that she could accept.
Regardless, she knew she had to hurry. If Stephen came looking for her here before she could get away, it would be too late.
She flipped the suitcase lid closed, pushing down on the locks. She prayed she knew what she was doing.
It was time to go.
Chapter 1
“You can name your own price, just find my son.”
Ben Underwood studied the well-dressed man sitting in front of his desk. There was a time when the words name your own price would have been extremely tempting to him. A time, a little more than a decade ago, when he had stood at the crossroads of his life, wondering whether or not to take the easy road, the road his cousin and best friend, Vinnie, was taking. Or to take the road that, for the most part, followed a straight-and-narrow path.
It had been more of a mental wrestling match than he would have liked to admit now, but finally, Ben, in deference to his conscience and his mother and three sisters, had chosen the latter road. Only to “un-choose” it when he and the Bedford Police Department had come to a parting of the ways because of his untamable, independent methods. He’d gone from the department straight to ChildFinders, Inc. without so much as a breather and without looking back. He’d never regretted it.
It had been a very long time since money had had any sort of allure for him beyond providing for the basic creature comforts. Principles counted for so much more and were, in the end, longer-lasting.
Besides, Ben thought, he had a tendency to let money pass through his hands if he had it. He’d always been an easy touch.
He figured he’d better set this newest client, a man who seemed to fill up the room with his presence and who Megan Andreini, one of the agency’s partners, would have undoubtedly referred to as a silver fox, straight.
“The fee depends on the length of time and expense it takes to locate your son, Mr. McNair.” Ben smiled, comfortingly, he hoped. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel for these people who came into his office, quite the contrary. He just had never managed to master expressing his feelings satisfactorily. It was easier just tucking them away. “It’s not determined by your net worth.”
The last part wasn’t strictly true, but not in any way that Stephen McNair could appreciate, Ben thought. On occasion, the agency took on cases pro bono. Cade Townsend, the original founder of the agency, didn’t believe that lack of funds was any reason not to try to reunite a family with their missing child. Cade had been on the raw end of that situation, and knew the anguish of looking for a child who’d been kidnapped.
But there was no point in mentioning any of that to their newest client. McNair wasn’t here to discuss the agency’s policies, or its history. He had come here for the same reason everyone came to ChildFinders, Inc.—to find his missing child. In McNair’s case, it was a six-year-old blond-haired boy named Andrew.
Stephen McNair looked somewhat displeased at being lumped in with the general populace. Ben had a hunch the man had gotten accustomed to being able to buy anything he wanted, people and time included. If it were that easy, Ben mused, his son would have been back to him in minutes.
McNair’s eyes narrowed a fraction. Ben felt himself being sized up. He couldn’t say he liked it any. Given the circumstances, Ben decided McNair was entitled to some slack.
“Surely I’m permitted to throw a bonus into the agreement?”
“So we’ll work a little faster?” Ben guessed, trying hard not to take offense.
McNair smiled triumphantly. “Exactly.”
Ben shifted his lanky frame in his chair. He wasn’t here to pass judgment. It was a given that the people who came into these offices were usually at their worst. It wasn’t his place to like or dislike any of them. For the most part, he had to admit he felt for them and liked them. He didn’t care for McNair. But that didn’t matter one way or another. It was finding the boy that counted.
He couldn’t help wondering if the boy would grow up to be like his father.
The man sitting before him in the six-hundred-dollar suit was about ten years older than Ben and gave new meaning to the word polished. The card McNair had made a point of presenting to him even before they had shaken hands identified him as Stephen W. McNair, president and CEO of IndieCorp, a fast-rising company that was, if he remembered correctly, on the cusp of a colossal merger with Mercury Electronics. The talk was that between the two giants, the semiconductor market was just about covered.
Ben rocked back in his chair, studying McNair in silence for a moment, questions occurring to him. A man like McNair could easily have a hundred agencies at his beck and call, including the FBI. Considering that kidnapping was every parent’s nightmare and had become a reality for McNair, Ben couldn’t help wondering what the man was doing here. Granted, ChildFinders had a heretofore unbelievable track record for solving kidnapping cases. For every closed case, there had been a happy ending. Not many places could boast a record like that. But the FBI had more manpower.
Ben leaned forward. “If you don’t mind my asking, why haven’t you gone to the police?”
There was a flash of annoyance in Stephen McNair’s piercing blue eyes, but it was gone so quickly, Ben thought he might have imagined it. McNair looked the soul of cooperation as he answered, “Perhaps you’re aware of the merger Indie is about to make with Mercury?”
Ben had found he learned a great deal when he pretended to be ignorant of things. “I don’t keep up with the financial section of the newspaper, Mr. McNair. In my line of work, there’s not much time for things that aren’t directly relevant to the cases I’m working on.”
A slight frown twitched McNair’s lips before he proceeded to enlighten Ben. “Yes, well, my company is at a crucial stage of its development right now. We’re to merge with Mercury Electronics. Any hint of scandal and the entire negotiations could be placed in jeopardy.”
“I don’t know the kind of people you’re dealing with, Mr. McNair, but I don’t think they’d consider the kidnapping of a child as scandalous.”
In response, Stephen McNair merely shook his head. “It’s not the kidnapping they’d consider scandalous, it’s the circumstances surrounding it.”
Now they were getting somewhere, Ben thought. He took out the tape recorder that was part of each office’s furnishings and placed it on the desk beside him.
“Tell me about the circumstances.” He pressed the red button down on the recorder and the tape began to whir softly.
McNair froze. He glared at the small rectangle on the desk as if it were an offending lower life-form. “Turn that off.” The three terse words were not a request. They were an order.
Despite his affable demeanor, Ben didn’t respond well to being ordered around. That had been one of the reasons he and the Bedford Police Department hadn’t remained on intimate terms. He made no move to comply with McNair’s order. “Sorry, company policy.”
“I said turn it off.” Rather than wait, McNair leaned over and switched off the recorder himself. He met Ben’s barely veiled annoyed look with a passionate verbal volley. “I won’t be recorded. I—” He lowered his voice as he searched for the right words. “This is very delicate, Mr. Underwood. Haven’t you ever been in a delicate situation you didn’t want broadcast?”
“This doesn’t get broadcast, Mr. McNair.” He indicated the tape recorder. “The only reason the initial interview is taped is to help us go over the case. Sometimes things are said that are forgotten later. Other times, playing the tape back might inadvertently remind you of a detail or event you forgot to mention.”
McNair remained unmovable. “I have a photographic memory, Mr. Underwood. I assure you I do not forget anything.” He paused, then added a bit more softly, “Except, perhaps, discretion.” His eyes met Ben’s. “But I am paying dearly for my error now.”
Ben made a judgment call. He left the tape recorder off. Curiosity had gotten the better of him. His mother had always warned him it would be his undoing.
“All right, we’ll leave it off for the time being. Now, do you have any idea who might have kidnapped your son?”
“Any idea who kidnapped my son?” McNair parroted the question incredulously. “Of course I have an idea who kidnapped my son. I know exactly who’s responsible. Gloria Prescott kidnapped my son.”
“Gloria Prescott,” Ben repeated, and McNair nodded adamantly. It was a toss-up whether to ask first who the woman was or why she would abduct his son. Ben went with the more important of the two. “And do you have any idea why she would kidnap your son?”
McNair passed his hand slowly over his face, a man struggling with his secrets, buying himself a tiny fragment of time in which to compose himself and frame his answer.
“She kidnapped Andrew to get back at me. She is—was,” McNair said, correcting himself, “Andrew’s nanny.” Just for an instant, his eyes grew soft, as if he were visualizing her. “She’s quite a stunning young woman.” The laugh that followed was self-mocking. “Too young for me, really.”
Mentally, Ben filled in the blanks. He had heard it often enough before. Older man, younger woman. The combination rarely yielded satisfactory results. According to his mother, that was why his own father had left. In pursuit of youth. In this case, youth had a name. Claudia Gershon. Ben had a half brother named Jason who was half his age. For his father, things had worked out. Obviously, for McNair it hadn’t.
“Go on,” he encouraged when McNair continued to remain silent.
The older man shrugged. “You’ve heard it before, I’m sure. Older man trying to hang on to his youth, beautiful young woman bringing it to him in a gift-wrapped box.” There was a faraway look in his eyes as he spoke.
The man had gotten it bad, Ben thought. He thought of his own mother. “And how did Mrs. McNair feel about you hanging on to your youth? Or Gloria’s,” he amended wryly.
McNair’s eyes went flat as he regarded him. “She didn’t feel anything.”
“And why is that?” Ben was playing devil’s advocate, but there was something a little too pat about the man sitting before him. He seemed a little too held together. Ben was used to people coming unraveled under the pressure of the crisis they were enduring. This man looked annoyed, nothing more. Fathers didn’t look annoyed or inconvenienced when their sons were taken—they looked angry. Distraught, capable of mayhem themselves. On occasion, they looked lost. But not annoyed.
He wanted to get to the bottom of Stephen McNair.
“Because there is no Mrs. McNair.” The annoyance deepened as McNair moved to the edge of his seat. “Look, I’m going to be perfectly frank with you. I’m rather new at this father business. Andrew is the result of a liaison I had with a young woman seven years ago. One of those flash-and-fire things. The whole thing lasted perhaps three weeks, perhaps less. I hadn’t heard from her since. She died nine months ago, leaving me a letter and the boy. Both came to me via her lawyer. I had some lab tests done, DNA, that sort of thing, and the results were conclusive. Andrew was mine. Naturally, I saw him as my responsibility.”
“Naturally.”
McNair stopped, narrowing his eyes. “Are you mocking me?”
Ben straightened, all business. His remark had been a slip. “I’m not here to mock, Mr. McNair, or to sit in judgment. My only function is to help. I’m sorry if I gave you any other impression.” He was going to have to work on his poker face, Ben thought.
“Look, I’m sorry if I don’t live up to your expectations of the grieving father. It’s not easy for me to show my emotions. But make no mistake about it, I am worried about my son and I want him back.”
Ben nodded. “You were saying about Gloria…”
Scrubbing a well-manicured hand over his face, McNair sighed and continued. “I was completely besotted with her for several months.”
Besotted. Now, there was a word he didn’t run into every day, Ben thought. But somehow, coming from McNair, it seemed to fit the narrative. “What happened after several months?”
“I came to my senses. Realized that a man in my position—responsible for the livelihood of so many people—couldn’t continue behaving like some smitten adolescent. I tried to let her down as gently as possible, make her see reason.” McNair looked at Ben to see if he understood the awkward position he’d been in. “Unfortunately, Gloria didn’t choose to be reasonable about it. I don’t think she really cared about me as much as she did about the money. I think she thought I was going to marry her.”
“And you weren’t.” Ben waited for him to continue.
He shook his head. “She wasn’t wife material.” His expression became superior. “Gloria became very possessive, flying into jealous rages when she thought that I was seeing someone else.”
Ben was undecided whether the man thought himself to be a much-abused saint, or was only trying to present himself as one. “And were you?”
“No.” The response was indignant. “And whether I was seeing someone or not is not the point.”
“No, but everything is a piece of this puzzle. In the interest of brevity, why don’t you shorten the story for the time being. Why did Gloria suddenly kidnap your son? Why now, rather than last month or next week?”
“Because I officially broke off our relationship in no uncertain terms last Thursday.”
“Thursday,” Ben echoed.
“I see why you might need a recorder,” McNair commented impatiently. “Yes, Thursday. I told her I couldn’t have a woman stalking my every move no matter how beautiful she was.”
Ben toyed with the carved paperweight one of his sisters had made for him when she was twelve as he played with logistics in his head. “What did she do with Andrew while she was stalking you?”
The question took McNair aback for a moment before he responded. “She had him with her.” He continued with his narrative, impatient to be done with it. “Of course, I took total responsibility for the affair even though she was the one who seduced me, and I offered her quite a sizable severance package to tide her over until she found another position. After all, I wasn’t heartless.”
Ben wondered if Stephen McNair actually saw himself as benevolent and blame-free. “But that didn’t fly with her.”
“No, it didn’t ‘fly.’” McNair wrapped his tongue around the word disdainfully. “When I came home two nights ago from a business trip to Washington, D.C., I found that Gloria was gone and she’d taken Andrew with her.”
“Did she leave a note?”
The question caught McNair off guard. “No.”
“Then you just assumed she’d kidnapped Andrew.”
“She was gone, he was gone, her clothes were gone. I came to the logical conclusion.” He paused as if debating something, or hunting through the photographic memory he’d boasted of. “And she’d threatened me earlier.”
“Threatened?” Ben said, instantly alert. “What kind of a threat?”
“She said she’d take Andrew away where I could never find him if I didn’t marry her. That she was going to make me pay for what I ‘did’ to her.”
He supposed if the woman was being completely irrational, she might forget to write a note, although in his experience, writing a note would have added to the drama. Perhaps twisted the knife in a little harder. A woman making a dramatic statement wasn’t apt to overlook writing a note.
But this woman hadn’t. The minor point bothered Ben.
Something else was bothering him, too. Ben looked at the other man. “And you waited almost five days before reporting this to anyone?”
It was an outright challenge and Ben half expected McNair to explode. Instead, the man looked contrite. “I was hoping that she was just angry. That she’d return him. I wanted to spare her being arrested if it was at all possible. I still do. You might have trouble understanding this because you’re still young and not in my position, but I find I still have some residual feelings regarding Gloria.”
For the first time, Stephen McNair seemed human to Ben. “Have you gotten in contact with her friends?”
The gesture was short, indicating a degree of helplessness that McNair looked unaccustomed to acknowledging.
“She’s not from around here. As far as I know, she has no friends in the area. None that she ever went out with or even mentioned. For the most part, she stayed on the estate. She was very devoted to me and to Andrew.”
Ben noted the order McNair had used. To me and to Andrew. But then, as the man said, he was new at being a father and hadn’t had the luxury of experience to fall back on.
Sometimes all the experience and time in the world didn’t help change the overall picture, Ben thought. His father had walked out on not only his mother, but on him, when he was thirteen. Being a father of four children hadn’t made Jake Underwood any less the center of his own universe.
Still, whatever the order used, the word devoted had certain connotations. Ben was counting on them. “So you’re pretty certain that she wouldn’t hurt Andrew?”
There wasn’t even a moment’s hesitation. “Yes, I’m reasonably certain that she wouldn’t do anything crazy like that. As I said, she’s just doing this to get back at me.”
“Are you sure there wasn’t some sort of note?” Ben prodded. “Conditions she wanted met before she returned your son?”
Maybe, for his own reasons, McNair was lying about there not being a note. It did seem highly unlikely that, given the circumstances, Gloria Prescott would allow this opportunity to slip by. Kidnappings happened for a variety of reasons, the least of which was revenge. But if this was for revenge, it was running atypical to form.
“No.” Exasperation peppered McNair’s voice. “I suspect she was too angry to write anything. Besides, I already know her conditions. She’d want to take up where we’d left off. She wanted me to marry her.”
In his experience, grasping people tended to want money, Ben thought. Or at least power. Silence was not the order of the day. He wondered again if there was something McNair was holding back. “And she hasn’t attempted to get in contact with you?” Ben asked.
“No,” McNair snapped. He took a deep breath, composing himself. With shaky fingers he dug into his pocket and took out a half-empty pack of cigarettes. “My one vice,” he explained, holding the pack up. “Other than falling for beautiful women. Do you mind?”
Ben was surprised that the man even bothered to ask. McNair struck him as someone who did as he pleased. Ben inclined his head, taking out a small ceramic ashtray from his side drawer and placing it on the desk. He didn’t smoke, but he understood the need.
“Thanks.” McNair lit up and inhaled. His eyes closed for a moment, as if he were having a spiritual experience. When he opened them again, he looked calmer, more capable of continuing. “If Gloria had left a note, I would have been taking care of this myself.” He glanced toward the closed door. “Is Townsend around? Maybe he…?”
It obviously rankled McNair to deal with anyone who wasn’t the top man. “Cade’s out of town on a case. The caseload is pretty heavy. Right now, I appear to be all you have at your disposal.”
McNair wouldn’t have been where he was if he wasn’t good at damage control. A smile nothing short of charming creased his lips. “Sorry, didn’t mean to fly off the handle that way earlier. I can usually keep my temper under wraps, it’s just that this is all completely new to me. Being a father, being a kidnap victim…”
“Strictly speaking, Andrew’s the kidnap victim, but don’t feel bad, this kind of thing usually is new to everyone. Now, if you’ll make yourself comfortable, I still have a few more questions to ask you.” Ben saw the slight frown on McNair’s face reemerge. “I’ll try to make this as painless for you as possible.”
McNair looked at his watch before answering. Ben saw the flash of a Rolex. Nothing but the best, he thought.
“All right,” Stephen agreed. “But I have to be back at a meeting in an hour.”
He’d never run into a kidnap victim’s father who’d set a time limit before. Took all kinds, Ben supposed. “You’ll be back sooner than that.”
As Ben got out his pad, he wondered just when Stephen McNair had found the time to even father a child.
She frowned slightly as she settled in. She wasn’t used to lying and this was certainly lying. Big time. It was going to take a great deal of practice and care on her part. One misstep and people were going to begin suspecting that something wasn’t right.
And once suspicions were aroused…
She didn’t want to go there. There was far too much at stake for her to dwell on the consequences. There was no point in thinking about losing everything, it would only paralyze her.
For a moment, she paused in the doorway, looking into the small room the little boy had taken as his own. It was remarkable how resilient he was. She could stand to learn a thing or two from him about rolling with the punches and bouncing back.
He’d thrown off the covers again. Quietly, she crept into the room, careful not to make any noise that might wake him.
Very softly, she draped the comforter around his small body. Pressing a kiss to her fingertips, she passed it ever so lightly against his cheek. He meant everything to her.
“Sweet dreams, sweet prince,” she whispered before withdrawing.
She kept the door slightly ajar so she could hear him calling if he needed her. He was having those nightmares again.
She slipped into bed. It was early, but she was tired. Lately, she’d been so drained. But then, she had reason enough to be. Before she fell asleep, as she did every night now, she thanked God for a new chance. A new chance to finally, perhaps, find peace and make her life work.
Work for her and for the little boy she loved.
About to leave, Ben saw a pencil-thin ray of light slipping out from beneath the door of Eliza’s office. Savannah had mentioned that the woman had just wrapped up the case she’d been working on.
Rapping once on her door, Ben opened it and peeked in. Eliza was looking through one of the files that were spread out all over her desk and glanced in his direction. Her smile was warmth itself.
“I didn’t think there’d be anyone still in the office. Don’t you have a home to go to?” Ben asked.
“I could say the same to you,” she replied.
He leaned against the doorjamb. “Caught a new case this afternoon.” He peered at the agency’s newest partner. “You feeling all right?”
“Not enough sleep lately,” she confessed with a shrug. “I’ve been having dreams lately.”
“Dreams, or dreams?” he asked.
They both knew what he meant by the emphasis. One of her “seeing” dreams. The ones that crept up out of the dark and wouldn’t give her peace until she solved the puzzle they came from. The ones she’d been blessed, or plagued with, depending on the point of view, since she’d turned twelve. “The latter.”
He looked at her with eyes that silently communicated his sympathy. “Know what it’s about yet?”
She shook her head. All she knew was that there was a child somewhere who needed her. But where and who and why, she hadn’t a clue and it was tormenting her.
“No, but I will. Eventually.” Eliza changed the topic. “So, you didn’t answer me. What are you still doing here?”
He noticed that she hadn’t given him an answer, either, but he let it pass. “Gathering some background information. I’m going to be out of town for a couple of days. Let the others know when they come in tomorrow, will you?”
“Sure thing.” She swung her chair around to face him. “Going somewhere good?”
He laughed. “Depends on what you think of Saratoga.”
Interest highlighted her delicate face. She assumed he was talking about the tiny town up north from Bedford, California. “Why Saratoga?”
“Our main kidnapping suspect has a relative there. Only living one I can come up with at the moment. A widowed great-aunt named—” he grinned “—Sugarland Malone. Not sure if she knows where the suspect is, but it’s worth a shot.” Even if the great-aunt did know, she might not be willing to disclose the information, Ben thought. Blood was thicker than water and he was an outsider.
Eliza smiled. It didn’t take a clairvoyant to guess what was on his mind. “If anyone can get the lady to loosen her tongue, you can.”
He wondered how much of that was flattery and how much was intuition. Eliza was a genuine psychic, one whom the police had brought in on more than a few of their unsolvable cases. He’d been as skeptical of her as anyone when he’d first met Eliza, but she’d eventually made a believer out of him. “You give me too much credit.”
Her smile deepened, the shy edge fading. “No, I don’t.”
Amused, he cocked his head. “Your psychic intuition, I take it?”
She shook her head. “More like female intuition. Some things are just self-evident.” Like a man who could charm the feathers off a bird, she thought with a smile. She doubted if he knew just how persuasive those dark blue eyes of his really were. “I’ll tell the others—and good hunting.”
“Thanks.”
That was the word for it, all right, he thought as he closed the door behind him. Hunting.
Chapter 2
The jarring noise pushed its way into his consciousness.
It was the phone, Ben realized as his brain surfaced out of a dreamless sleep. The phone was ringing. Groping for the receiver, he tried to locate and focus in on his clock.
Four-thirty.
In the morning?
He scrubbed his hand over his face, trying to pull himself together. “Hello, you’d better be an obscene phone call to make this worth my while.”
“I’ve already offered to make it worth your while, Underwood.”
The voice—cool and official—jarred loose a memory. “Mr. McNair?” Ben looked at the clock again. A hint of annoyance entered his voice. He’d come home and done further background work for his intended trip today. He’d slept for less than three hours and he liked his rest. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
The voice on the other end of the phone grew cooler. “I always know what time it is. I’m on my way to a meeting in Seattle and will be back by this evening. What I don’t know is if you’ve made any progress yet.” Ben sat up, annoyed now. Who the hell made phone calls at four-thirty in the morning? If he’d had any doubts about the man being a control freak, this cinched it.
“Some,” Ben replied in answer to McNair’s question.
“You’ve found her?” Excitement echoed in the receiver against Ben’s ear.
Ben sighed, pulling up the comforter. Outside, the January rain was beating against his window. Telling him to go back to sleep. “No, but I might have located a relative.”
“Where?”
The question echoed like a command for disclosure. Maybe it was because he was half asleep, but the tone rubbed him the wrong way. Instincts surfaced, making him just the slightest bit wary. McNair, polished CEO though he might be, was in this case a loose cannon. Loose cannons had a way of going off at precisely the worst time. Ben wasn’t about to take the chance of having things blown apart by an overzealous parent.
“Let me check it out and I’ll let you know.”
The answer irritated McNair. “I’m not paying you to play games, Underwood.”
Ben cut him yet a little more slack, though it galled him to do so. Stress did strange things to people, he reminded himself. Maybe, under ordinary circumstances, Stephen McNair was a completely likable person, although Ben sincerely doubted it.
In any event, rules had to be set and boundaries defined. “No, Mr. McNair, you’re paying me to find your son and I intend to do that. But it’ll have to be my way. Again, that’s what you’re paying me for.”
He heard the man bite off a retort he couldn’t make out, then say in a guarded voice, “You’ll call as soon as you have anything?”
“I’ll call,” Ben promised, just as he had yesterday as McNair left the office. The man had tried to bully him into making reports at regular intervals. That might have been standard procedure at McNair’s company, but that wasn’t the way he operated and Ben had made his position perfectly clear. Or so he thought.
“Speaking of calling, how did you get my home number?” It was unlisted, and although he’d given out his number on occasion to more than one distraught parent, something had prevented Ben from offering it to McNair. Self-preservation, most likely.
“I have ways.” There was a smug note in the other man’s voice. And then he reiterated his earlier point. “I would appreciate you checking in with me regularly.”
Maybe the agency should refine its screening process, Ben thought, growing closer to the end of his patience. At the moment, the agency took on all comers. Maybe it was time for Cade to rethink that when he got back from the case he was working on.
“There’s nothing regular about my line of work. I’ll call when there’s something to call about. Goodbye, Mr. McNair.”
Ben let the receiver fall back into the cradle, then slid back down on the bed. Less than five minutes of tossing and turning made him acknowledge that he was too irritated to go back to sleep.
Muttering under his breath, Ben got up to take a shower. The last time he’d been up on the wrong side of four-thirty, it’d been to get ready for his paper route before going to school. The nuns at St. Mary’s, aware of his mother’s financial situation, had said paying part of his own tuition at the parochial school would make a man out of him.
He didn’t feel very manly right now. Just tired.
With a sigh, he turned on the hot water and stepped into the shower. There was no sense wasting time.
The drive up Interstate 5 from Bedford to Saratoga would have been scenic had it not been for the early morning fog that hung about the winding road. He was a careful driver by nature. It wasn’t often, though, that he worried about the road and the hazards caused by careless drivers.
But a fog this thick made him aware of every inch of road. And the possibility of his own quickly snuffed-out mortality.
Ben slowed his vehicle down to a crawl.
He supposed he could have gone later, but the word itself held a foreboding threat within it. Later was too close to never when it came to kidnappings. It was always best to follow every lead as soon as it occurred. Later might be too late.
He didn’t ever intend to be too late. So far, he’d been lucky. He’d never had to face a parent and say those gut-wrenching, eternally tormenting words that would forever cut them off from hope. He’d found every child he’d set out to locate. Which was what made his job at ChildFinders so much more rewarding than the time he’d spent in the homicide division on the police force.
The coffee nestled in his cup holder had grown cold and stagnant by the time the fog had lifted, and he felt confident enough to risk taking one hand off the wheel to take a drink. By then, he was fifteen miles out of Saratoga.
The small town created an immediate impression the moment he entered it. Saratoga looked as if it should have been the subject of a fairy tale. Or, at the very least, a Frank Capra movie. There was a picturesque, storybook quality about it. The climate was cooler up here, and what had been rain in Bedford had transformed into light flurries in Saratoga.
The light layer of fresh snow on the trees and ground made Ben think of a Currier and Ives painting.
The woman he was looking for lived ten miles on the other side of Saratoga.
“I do so like getting visitors,” the small, cherubic woman said, smiling at Ben. “Have another cookie.” She pushed the near-full plate toward him. “I just wind up eating them myself half the time.” Her eyes twinkled and she gave the illusion of lucidity as she smiled at her girth. “But I suspect you’ve already guessed that.”
The wan afternoon sun had finally withdrawn from the parlor they were in, after losing a hopeless battle for space within a room crammed full of knickknacks and memorabilia. It was a room where an old woman sat, surrounded by things that reminded her that she had once been young, with the world at her feet. Too heavyset to be called elfin, she still had that way about her. She was charming, and maybe, at some other time, Ben wouldn’t have minded spending an afternoon talking to her about nothing.
But he didn’t have time. Because of McNair’s admitted reticence, too much had already elapsed. The longer it took him to find Andrew McNair, the harder it would become.
“No.” The lie came easily to him. It harmed nothing to pretend that she was not heavy. The woman’s smile became wider. “No, I hadn’t guessed.” Picking up another one of the cookies she was pushing on him, he took a bite. The cookies, laced liberally with macadamia nuts, were quite possibly the best he’d ever had. Andrea would have killed for these, he thought, chocolate chip cookies being a particular weakness for his middle sister. “And much as I’d like to load up on these, Mrs. Malone—”
“Oh, please, everyone calls me Sugar. I forget exactly why. Sugarland isn’t my given name, you know.”
“I rather suspected that,” he said, smiling. “But as to the reason I’m here—”
“Oh, yes, your reason.” Her smile faded a little. “And once you tell me, you’ll be gone, won’t you?”
He’d met her less than twenty minutes ago. Knocking on her door, he’d been surprised when she’d ushered him in like a long-lost friend. Asking for his name had been an after-thought. It had left him wondering if there was anyone who looked in on the old woman from time to time to make sure she hadn’t given up the deed to the old Victorian house, or its surrounding fields. He hoped that the foreman who managed her field hands was a decent sort.
“I’m afraid—”
Sugar waved away the excuse magnanimously. “That’s all right, Gloria was the same way, flitting in and out before I could so much as blink twice. I expect it’s the same with all young people.”
“Gloria.” He hadn’t expected it to be this easy. Ben maintained a poker face as he asked, “Then she’s been here?”
“Why, yes. Here and gone.” Sugar brushed away the crumbs that had collected on her ample bosom. “But you were going to tell me something.”
Was she really as vague as she let on, or was it all an elaborate act? She seemed genuine enough, but Ben kept his eyes on the woman’s face, watching for a telltale shift in expression as he said, “As a matter of fact, I’m looking for your grand-niece.”
“Why?” It wasn’t a challenge. Curiosity filtered into her eyes.
He began to give Sugar the story he’d rehearsed on his way up here. “I represent Jacob Marley’s estate—”
“Jacob Marley….” She closed her eyes, rolling the name over in her mind. Then, opening them again, she shook her head. “I don’t believe I know the man.”
“No, ma’am, probably not.” Especially since he’d borrowed the name from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ben thought. “But he’s left Gloria a sizable amount of money—”
Sugar clapped her hands together in simple, childish delight. “How wonderful. The poor dear could so use the money. I couldn’t give her very much when she came. She promised to pay me back, but I told her I wouldn’t hear of it. I’m the only family she has, you know.”
“Yes, I do.” Ben tried to press on before the woman became distracted again. “We have no forwarding address for her—”
Fluffy, cloudlike white hair bobbed up and down as Sugar nodded in agreement.
“That’s because she’s not where she used to be.” She leaned forward, her voice dropping for a moment. “Can’t be, you know. Too bad, it made her sad to leave.”
This had to be what Alice felt like, trying to carry on a conversation with the creatures inhabiting Wonderland, Ben thought. Still, he was making some progress. “Do you know where she is now?”
“Not really.” Sugar paused to nibble thoughtfully on one of her cookies. “But she said something about San Francisco. That’s where she went to school, you know. Bright, bright girl.” She sighed as that memory, too, slipped away from her. “Worked in a bookstore during those years. Practically ran the place. Don’t know when she ever slept. The manager liked her, I could tell. Never acted on it, though.” Suddenly realizing that her visitor was no longer chewing, she pushed the plate a little closer still. “Another cookie?” This time, the plate practically landed in his lap.
“Would you happen to know the name of the bookstore?” Gloria had to work, he thought. Maybe she’d touched base with the owner of the store, asking for a job. It was a long shot to say the least, but long shots had a way of paying off if you were persistent enough. Besides, it was a starting point. San Francisco was a big city to wander around in aimlessly.
“Why, as a matter of fact I do.” Proudly, she recited the name of a popular chain that was currently sweeping the country, replacing older, independent stores. “It’s located at Taylor and Turk. Or is it Turk and Taylor? I never know which way to say that.” She looked pleased with herself for remembering the location. “I went there a few times myself. The bookstore,” she clarified, almost more for her benefit than for his.
It was time to go, Ben thought. He could see she was about to push another cookie on him. “One last question. Did Gloria have a little boy with her?”
Sugar blinked, staring at him as if he had just asked her if the sky was blue on a sunny day. “Well, of course she did. Why wouldn’t she? She was moving, you know.”
“Yes, so I gathered.” On his feet, he extended his hand to her. “Well, you’ve been a great help.”
Sugar took the compliment as her due. “That’s what Gloria said. But I couldn’t help enough. Not her. Here.” She slipped three large cookies into his pocket. “For later. You might get hungry.”
He left feeling somewhat guilty about deceiving a woman who seemed bent on helping everyone who crossed her path.
The sun grazed off the window as she passed, catching her attention. Raising her eyes, surprise drenched her when she saw the reflection.
Idiot.
It still startled her, at unguarded moments, to see the different face looking back at her. To realize that the woman with the short, dark hair and blue eyes was not someone else, but her. In her mind’s eye, she was still a blonde, still green-eyed. Yet now she was a woman with a life that held promise instead of one who had come full circle, returning to what she’d once felt was the beginning of the road.
Not the end, just a breather. She had to remember that.
With effort, she shook herself free of the morose mood. It wasn’t like her. No matter what, she’d always looked on the positive side. Stopping, she tucked a book back into place on the shelf.
There was more reason than ever to focus on the positive side. There wasn’t just herself to think of. Her son needed her.
Her son.
She looked at her watch. The last customer she’d helped had taken more time than she’d judged. If she was going to be at the school in time to pick Andrew—no, Jesse, she upbraided herself. If she was going to be in time to pick Jesse up, she was going to have to get going. Now.
“I’m taking my break now, Jon,” she called out to the burly man nursing a cup of espresso at the information counter.
The bald-headed man gave a half nod in acknowledgment to her announcement and went back to perusing a copy of one of the books UPS had dropped off this morning.
She smiled to herself. Some things never changed. Jon Peterson was lost to the world when he had his nose stuck in a good mystery. He’d been that way during the four years she’d worked here while she’d attended college. Heaven help anyone if they approached him with a question. Like as not, Jon was apt to send them into the self-help section even if they asked for a cookbook.
She blessed Jon for the umpteenth time since she’d arrived more than three weeks ago. If not for him and his calming influence, she could very well have come unglued that first night in San Francisco. If he had been away on one of his many minivacations that he’d always loved to take…well, she didn’t want to think about it.
Trying to get to the front doors, she found her path blocked by a well-built man in his early twenties wearing a pricey sheepskin jacket and a cheap smile. He made no effort to move out of her way.
“Since you’re free, why don’t I buy you a cup of coffee to go along with that break?”
She’d been uncomfortably aware that the man had been sizing her up for at least the last fifteen minutes, meandering closely behind her as she stocked new books on the shelves. She’d caught him looking at her at least three times, attempting to make eye contact. She’d looked away each time. He gave her the shivers. Not the good kind.
Maybe it was her situation that made her so edgy, so suspect of every man who looked her way. Maybe she was being unduly sensitive and the man was just trying to strike up a conversation, nothing more.
But whatever he was attempting to do, she had no time for it. As it was, if she didn’t hurry, she was going to be late.
Since he was a potential customer, she strove to remain polite. “No, thank you, I have an errand to run.” Sidestepping him, she tried to get by.
One quick movement and he was in front of her again, blocking her path. He was not a man who was about to take no for an answer. “You work here, don’t you?”
She glanced toward Jon, but his nose was buried in the book. None of the other people who worked in the store were within eye-contact range. She raised her head defiantly as she looked back at the man.
“Yes.”
His eyes washing over her, he was obviously taken with what he saw. “Well then, whatever happened to that old saying, the customer is always right?”
“That depends on what the customer wants.”
A smile split his handsome face, failing to reach his eyes. “Guess.”
If she called out to Jon, she’d cause a scene. The last thing she wanted was a scene. Just peaceful anonymity. “I’m afraid I don’t have the time right now.” She tried to move past him again, but the man swayed, blocking her every move. “I need to be somewhere else,” she said.
He put up his hand against a shelf, cutting her off from making an exit. “Yes, with me.”
Suddenly, he found himself being spun around and looking up at a stranger who was several inches taller than he was.
“The lady said no. What part of ‘no’ didn’t you understand?” Ben asked.
Cold fury contorted the man’s handsome features. It was evident he wasn’t accustomed to being turned down, or opposed. “This doesn’t concern you.”
Ben’s hand tightened around his arm. He gave the man no reason to doubt he meant business. “Lack of manners always concerns me. Now, apologize to the lady and let her pass.”
She’d always loved westerns as a child. The rugged hero in the white hat coming to the aid of the wronged, put-upon but feisty heroine. Time and again, she’d eat up the stories even though they were always the same. Only the faces and names changed.
And now she had her very own cowboy riding to her rescue.
Annoyed but smart enough to know when he was outmatched, the man glared sullenly at her. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Ben slowly nodded his head, as if evaluating the words. “A little lacking in poetry, but it’ll do.” Releasing his hold on the man’s arm, Ben held his hand up. “You can go. Now.”
Embarrassed, the man stalked out.
Ben shook his head, watching to make sure he left before turning back to the sultry-looking woman. He had no doubt she had more than her share of run-ins like that. Women with faces and figures as beautiful as hers generally did. “I apologize for my species. Just because we all walk upright doesn’t make us all civilized.”
The laugh that bubbled up in her throat was just a little nervous. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure—” he glanced down at the small, square name tag “—Gina Wassel.” He raised his eyes to hers. “And now, would you mind pointing me in the direction of the manager?”
She would have liked to stay and ask him if she could help, but the jerk who had tried to put the moves on her had eaten up her margin of time. She should have already been on her way.
“He’s right over there.” She pointed toward Jon. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Ben nodded, stepping aside. “You have an errand to run.”
“Emphasis on run,” she said, tossing the words over her shoulder as she hurried out.
He allowed himself exactly half a second to take in the view. The woman looked just as good going as she did coming.
But he wasn’t there to pass judgment on form. He was tracking a kidnapper.
With that in mind, Ben made his way over to the man the woman named Gina had pointed out to him.
Chapter 3
Jon Peterson slowly stroked his small goatee as he stared at the reprinted photograph of a woman with a little boy that Ben had handed him.
Longer than was necessary, in Ben’s estimation. Gloria Prescott had either come in and applied for a job in the last few days, or she hadn’t. Granted, the photograph wasn’t a very good one, but it was the only one McNair had had of either Gloria, or his son. Ben could see not having photographs of the nanny, but it was difficult for him to understand why McNair had no available photographs of his son. He supposed that the man’s excuse, that he wasn’t the kind to take pictures, held some water. But he bet that McNair had plenty of photographs of himself around.
Blurred photograph or not, Peterson knew what Gloria looked like. According to her great-aunt, she’d worked here for four years. The man was either stalling for dramatic effect, or was debating something. Not knowing him made it next to impossible for Ben to tell.
When the bookstore manager finally raised his eyes to his, Ben had the impression that he was being scrutinized far more closely than the photograph had been.
“Nope, sorry, can’t help you.” Placing the photograph on the counter, Jon pushed it back toward him. He paused as if thinking. “Haven’t seen Gloria in, what? I guess about four, five years now.” The small, dark eyes gave no indication of what was going on in his mind as they looked at Ben. “Maybe even longer.”
“Then she didn’t come here looking for a job,” Ben reiterated.
The meeting apparently over, Peterson drew his book back to him and lowered his head, effectively blocking out any noise and any unwanted inquiries.
“That would have meant I’d seen her, wouldn’t it? Sorry, she’s not here. Wish she was. Best damn employee I ever had here. She actually wanted to work, not like some of the others.” He turned a page in his book. Because Ben wasn’t leaving, Peterson raised his eyes to look at him again. This time, his displeasure was not that difficult to discern. “Anything else I can do for you?”
Ben had come across more sociable pit bulls. He slipped the photograph back into his pocket. “Would you happen to know where Gloria might have gone if she’d returned to San Francisco?”
“Nope. Never meddle.” Peterson returned to his mystery, making it painfully obvious that he considered Ben an annoying obstacle to his reading pleasure. “Keeping your nose out of other people’s lives is the secret to a long, healthy one of your own.” Bent over his book, Peterson spared him one more pointed glance. “Know what I mean?”
“Yeah.” He knew exactly what the older man meant. Get lost. Ben took one last look around the store. He’d already walked up and down the aisles methodically, not once but twice. That was how he’d happened to notice the college preppie putting the moves on the salesclerk. Not that he could actually blame him. The woman had been a looker in a classy sort of way. “Thanks for your help.”
Engrossed in the book he was reading, the store manager grunted his acknowledgment.
There was nothing for Ben to do but retreat to his car.
Rather than drive off immediately, Ben put in a quick call to Savannah and came up empty there as well.
“If Gloria Prescott’s in San Francisco, Ben, she’s not using her charge cards,” she told him.
“No paper trail of any kind?”
“Not unless she’s leaving bread crumbs behind her on her way to the forest,” Savannah quipped. “The canvassing down here’s coming up dry, too. Rusty’s been showing the photograph around in the area and he said to tell you that nobody’s seen Gloria or the boy. I’m sorry, Ben.”
“Not your fault,” he murmured before hanging up.
Putting his cell phone back in his pocket, Ben stared at the bookstore across the street, not really seeing it. He doubted that driving back to Saratoga to ask Sugar any more questions would yield any further insight into finding Gloria.
That only left one other person to talk to.
The expression on Stephen McNair’s face was far from welcoming when his secretary admitted Ben into his office. The man’s countenance made Ben think of Zeus, presiding over Mount Olympus and bringing Mercury to task for failing to deliver the message he’d been anticipating. Ben had a hunch that even the man’s furniture had been chosen with an eye toward intimidating anyone entering the office. Massive, opulent and expensive. The man certainly didn’t assume his present position in life graciously.
Sitting as straight as a spear in his gray, imported leather office chair, McNair gripped the armrests as he scowled at him.
“Shut the door.”
The tone rankled Ben, but he closed the door behind him. This was supposed to be private, anyway. The instant the door met the jamb, McNair was on his feet.
“Why are you coming to see me here?”
Definitely not a Mr. Congeniality candidate, Ben thought. In his book it would have had to have taken one hell of a greedy woman to have slept with this man for monetary gain. But then, it took all kinds, and he had yet to figure out just what “kind” his quarry was. Aside from cookies, her aunt had filled him in with stories of Gloria as well, all told with an abundance of affection and filial pride. Given the woman’s state, though, he figured he had to take a great deal with a grain of salt.
“Because I didn’t want to waste time making an appointment.”
About to say something, McNair changed his tone. “Did you find her?”
Again, “her,” not “him.” “If you don’t mind my saying so, Mr. McNair, you seem to be a great deal more interested in my finding Gloria Prescott than you are in my finding your son.”
“Of course I’m interested in you finding Gloria. She has what belongs to me and no one, no one gets away with that. Now, did you find her or didn’t you?”
“Not yet.” Ben wanted to add that he wasn’t a magician, but let the remark slide. It would only lead to an escalation of tempers.
“Then I repeat, what are you doing here in my office?”
Ben was beginning to feel really sorry for the little boy he was looking for. He had a feeling that McNair was probably just as cold and abrasive with the son he never actually wanted as he was with someone who was “displeasing” him. “I need more information.”
Exasperation creased the remarkably unlined brow. “I already told you everything I could think of.”
There had to be something, some tiny piece that would lead Ben to clues that would help him find the boy. He’d seen it happen often enough. The trick was finding that one scrap that eventually opened up everything. Maybe the answers he was looking for were in Gloria’s recent past. “Where did Gloria work before she came to you?”
The annoyance on McNair’s face deepened. “I don’t remember.”
He was being evasive, Ben thought, and wondered why. In any event, there was an easy-enough solution. “Check your references.”
With an angry huff, McNair turned away. There was tension in the back Ben found himself looking at. “I don’t know where they are.”
He would have thought that McNair knew how to lay his hands on almost anything that remotely concerned him. “What about the agency that sent her? Can you remember its name?”
McNair swung around. “What does where she worked before have to do with finding her now?”
It was on the tip of Ben’s tongue to say that he didn’t appreciate having his methods questioned, but he thought better of it. He hadn’t come here to argue, but to search for a lead. The sooner McNair gave him what he wanted, the sooner he could get going.
“There might be some sort of connection we’ve overlooked.” McNair looked unconvinced. “No one we’ve questioned in the area has seen her, and her only relative sent me in the wrong direction.”
“Relative?” He said the word as if he hadn’t thought that Gloria had any, Ben noted. “Well, go back to him or her and get the truth.”
“It’s a her,” Ben told him. “And I think the sky’s a different color in her world than it is in the world the rest of us reside in.”
“You mean she’s crazy?” Surprise imprinted the distinguished features.
“No, just somewhat off. Eccentric.” Ben had no idea why he suddenly felt protective of a woman he hardly knew. Maybe it was McNair’s manner. He pressed on. “What I need right now is someone else who knew her, someone who might have a decent idea where Gloria might have gone with your son.”
McNair blew out a breath as he scrubbed his hand over his face. Searching his memory. Or debating over something that he’d felt better about keeping obscure. Ben couldn’t tell.
Finally, McNair said, “I think she used to work in a social security office.”
Something to go on, Ben thought. “Locally?”
“I think so.” The scowl returned. “Look, I’m doing all the work here.”
Ben was already at the door, more than eager to leave. “We’ll arrange for a discount.” He didn’t bother sublimating the sarcasm.
It wasn’t wasted on McNair. His expression bordered on malevolence. “Damn straight you will. And don’t forget, I want to be kept posted,” he called after Ben.
“As soon as I find out anything, you’ll be the first to know.”
No one was more eager than he was to wrap this all up, Ben thought.
There was only one social security building in the county. Even if Gloria hadn’t worked in this particular one, Ben figured that with a little coaxing applied to the right people, he could find out which office she had worked in.
He didn’t need to coax.
The section supervisor, Anna Philbert, a robustly built woman in her forties who had once been an Olympic shot-put alternate if he was to believe the certificate that hung on the cubicle wall directly behind her, instantly recognized the photograph he showed her.
“Oh, sure, Gloria worked here.” She looked at the photograph again before handing it back to him. “Is anything wrong?”
He didn’t think the story he’d given Gloria’s great-aunt sounded sufficiently credible in the government building, so he had created another one on his way over.
“She’s missing and her fiancé’s very worried about her.”
“Missing? You mean kidnapped?” Anna asked, genuinely horrified. A beringed hand fluttered to her ample bosom. “Gloria? You’re kidding.” She shook her head in pure disbelief even as she clearly reveled in the drama of the situation. “The poor thing. She was the sweetest person in the world.”
Apparently Gloria’s fan club was growing. Why would someone regarded as “the sweetest person in the world” kidnap a child no matter how upset and angry she was? It didn’t make sense to him.
“It might not be a kidnapping,” he said quickly. “It just might be a case of cold feet.” He deliberately exchanged a conspiratorial look with the woman, drawing her further into his camp. “Tell me, if Gloria did want to get away, would you have any idea where she might go?”
As much as she looked as if she wanted to help him, Anna was forced to shake her head. “No, but I really wasn’t very close to her.” She thought a moment. “You might have better luck talking to Carla Wassel.”
“Wassel?” An image of the woman at the bookstore came to him. If he closed his eyes, he could see the name tag she’d worn against her shapely breast. It wasn’t all that common a name. He wondered if the women were somehow related. Maybe he’d finally stumbled onto a connection. “Is she in?”
Rising from behind her desk, Anna peered over the tops of the maze of cubicles.
“She’s right over there.” Anna pointed to the far end of the corridor, to a desk on the extreme right. “She and Gloria were pretty tight while Gloria was here.”
“Thank you.” He started to leave. “Oh, by the way, when did Gloria leave her job?”
“About nine months ago.” Anna smiled affectionately. “She always called this her day job, though you wouldn’t have known by the way she worked. I wished I had ten of her.”
Day job. That meant she was trying to make a go of something else. But what? It obviously wasn’t being a nanny. Could she have plotted to kidnap Andrew all along in order to get a stake of some sort? It sounded like a shot in the dark, but he’d come across wilder theories that had turned out to be true.
He probed a little further into the woman’s testimonial. “What do you mean? She put in a lot of overtime?”
“Oh, no, she never worked overtime. Couldn’t. She kept regular hours, but she gave a hundred twenty-five percent when she was here. I tried to talk her into staying, but she was adamant. Now or never, she said.”
Now or never. What was that supposed to mean? The nine-month time frame coincided with when she came to work for McNair. Had she seen the CEO as her ticket to better things?
He was holding two different puzzle pieces in his hand. So far, he’d gotten two unofficial testimonials. Both of which painted the image of a woman who believed in giving her employer everything she felt was due him or her. Giving, not taking. People like that didn’t just wake up one morning and steal their employer’s child.
Or did they?
Thanking Anna for her help, he made his way through the maze to Carla Wassel’s cubicle. He could feel Anna’s eyes following him.
Because there was no door, he rapped once on the side of the cubicle to get the woman’s attention. “Ms. Wassel?”
A dark-haired woman with striking bright blue eyes turned from her computer screen to look up at him. The smile tinged in curiosity came a beat afterward.
Ben could see the resemblance instantly. Not so much the hair, although both the woman he’d met in the bookstore and Carla Wassel were brunettes who wore their hair short, but in the eyes. A man didn’t readily forget eyes like that. They had the exact same shade of blue. Like bits of cobalt.
“Yes?”
“I’m Ben Underwood.” He indicated the chair within her cubicle. “Mind if I sit down?” Still curious, she gestured for him to take a seat. “I’m trying to locate a friend of yours. Gloria Prescott.”
“Gloria?” Her eyes widened. “Why? Has something happened to her?”
Ben stopped before reaching for Gloria’s photograph. He saw no reason for her to get as upset as she did. “What makes you ask that?”
Carla flushed, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, ever since my sister died, I’m afraid I overreact to things. The first thing I think of is…” Her voice trailed off as she let the end of her thought go. “Never mind.” She waved away the rest of her sentence. “Why are you trying to find Gloria?”
For simplicity, and because there was a chance he might have to return for more information, Ben gave Carla the same story he’d given her supervisor.
“Her fiancé’s trying to find her. They were supposed to go away together to Hawaii last week and Gloria never showed up. Personally,” he said, leaning in a little closer, “I think it might be cold feet, but we have to investigate these things.”
Caution entered her voice. “Are you a policeman?”
For a second he debated going that route. But the closer he remained to the truth, the easier it was to remember details. “A private one.”
Carla took the information in stride. “I don’t think I can help you. I haven’t been in touch with Gloria since shortly after she left the office.” She raised her shoulder in a semihelpless movement. “I meant to, but you know how that goes. I suppose I wasn’t much fun to be around at the time. But I’m better now.”
“Nice to hear.” He tried to sound sympathetic. Another dead end, he thought. But there was still the coincidence of the names. No stone unturned. “How do you spell your last name?”
Carla’s dark eyebrows drew together over a Roman nose. “W-a-s-s-e-l, why?”
He jotted it down in the small notepad he carried. Tucking it back into his pocket, his fingers came in contact with the cookies Aunt Sugar had slipped in. He had to remember to take them out.
“Just for the record,” he assured her. “Do you have any relatives in San Francisco?”
The answer required no extensive deliberation. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”
It was probably a meaningless coincidence, but he’d learned never to ignore or omit anything that seemed the slightest bit unusual. He’d gone to the bookstore where Gloria had once worked only to run into a woman with her best friend’s last name. There could be a connection. At the very least, the woman in San Francisco might know Gloria.
“I ran into someone with the exact same last name as yours just yesterday. You have to admit, it’s not exactly in the same realm as Smith or Jones.”
Curious, Carla asked gamely, “Maybe we are related. What was his name?”
“Her,” he corrected the woman. “Gina Wassel.”
Carla turned pale and grabbed the edge of her desk. Ben saw her eyes roll toward the back of her head, and for a second he thought he was going to have to catch her to keep her from sliding off her chair, onto the floor.
He grabbed her arms. “Take a deep breath,” he ordered. “Again.” He waited until she exhaled slowly. “Are you all right?”
When she looked at him, there was an accusation in her eyes. “Is this some kind of a cruel joke?”
He had no idea what she was talking about, but he’d obviously stumbled onto something. “Not that I’m aware of,” he said slowly.
“Gina’s my sister. Was my sister,” she corrected herself. The pain was obvious. “She’s been gone for ten months. Wait.” Agitated, blinking back tears that were threatening to overwhelm her, Carla dug into the purse she kept under her desk. “Here, here’s her picture.” She shoved her wallet at him and showed him a photograph of herself and her sister standing in front of an old house. A beat later he realized that it was the Victorian-looking house he’d gone to yesterday. “That’s Gina.” She indicated the slender young woman on the right.
“Who took this picture?”
“Gloria. We went to visit her aunt on her seventieth birthday.”
The resemblance between the woman in the photograph and the one he’d met yesterday was unmistakable. They could have been the same person. Folding the wallet closed, he handed it back to Carla.
“Ms. Wassel,” he began as gently as he could, “I have to ask—”
Carla cut him off. She couldn’t bear to hear the words. “I was driving the car when the camper side-swiped us. Gina was killed instantly.” Her breathing was ragged as she spoke. “It was Gloria who helped me through that, who let me sleep on her sofa and kept me sane.” Without looking, she dropped the wallet back into her purse. “If she hadn’t been around, I probably would have killed myself.” Her eyes held his for a moment. “If Gloria’s in some sort of danger, you’ve got to find her.”
Ben had a feeling he already had.
There were huge, gaping holes in the puzzle he found himself working. “You have access to all sorts of information here, don’t you?”
Carla’s expression told him she wasn’t sure where he was going with this, or what she should answer. “Depending on your level of clearance, yes.”
“Such as social security numbers.”
She laughed nervously, still uncertain. “Well, of course. We’re a social security office.”
“Does that mean social security numbers that are no longer in use?” This would have been the perfect place for Gloria to forge a new identity.
“Yes.” The single word emerged slowly.
He had a feeling he was on the right track. “Ms. Wassel, I know this might sound rather strange to you, but would you be able to give me your sister’s social security number?”
“Yes, but I already told you, Gina’s dead.” Carla began to access a program for him, then stopped and looked at him. “You think Gloria’s using Gina’s social security number.”
“Yes.”
It didn’t make any sense. “But why?”
To hide from Stephen McNair until he agreed to her terms. But he couldn’t tell the woman that. She wouldn’t give him the social security number he needed, and right now, he didn’t know if Savannah had access to inactive files.
“I won’t be able to answer any questions until I have all the facts,” he told her.
Confusion furrowed her brow as she looked at the keys, undecided. “If Gloria’s in some sort of trouble, maybe I shouldn’t be helping you.”
His voice was quiet and authoritative. “If Gloria’s in some sort of trouble, I might be the only one who can help her.”
Carla sat looking at him for a long moment, then began typing.
The electronic doors opened and closed.
The chill that ran up her back was immediate, drenching her with an icy wave. Though she was in one of the aisles, her eyes darted toward the front.
How long before that reaction would leave her? Before she could hear the doors opening and not be compelled to look, holding her breath and praying. It wasn’t natural to feel this way, as if she were doomed to cross and recross a tightrope stretched over a bottomless pit with slippery shoes.
He wouldn’t track her here, she insisted silently. He didn’t know enough about her to know about this place. And even if he did and was still looking for her, she wasn’t really here. Not the way he knew her.
She was safe.
The breath she’d been holding escaped as recognition came. Gina’s mouth curved. The man who had gotten between her and that pushy jerk the day before yesterday had returned.
What was he was doing back? When she’d left, he’d asked her to point Jon out, or rather, the store manager. That meant Jon and the stranger didn’t know each other, so it wasn’t personal. Jon hadn’t mentioned anything to her, but then, he’d been in a real rush to leave after taking that call from his brother.
He told her he had to take some time off and left her in charge, just like that.
Funny how you could work with someone for so long and not know anything about him. She’d spent all four college years working in the store, and in all that time, Jon had never mentioned even having a family. He’d been closemouthed as far as things like that went.
Pot calling the kettle black. She certainly wasn’t in a position to throw rocks right now, she mused. Jon didn’t know all that much about her, either. Nor had he asked anything, not even when she’d suddenly appeared out of the blue three weeks ago, asking for her old job back. All he’d said was sure, then added an addendum: If she needed him, he was around. To prove it, he’d gotten her in contact with a friend of his who was trying to sublet his condo. She had a job and a home within one day, thanks to Jon. He was one in a million.
He hadn’t even made any comment about her changed appearance when she came in the first day. Just asked her what name she wanted to go under. Nothing more.
Gina suspected that World War Three could probably break out right in front of the bookstore and as long as it didn’t intrude within the doors, Jon would remain oblivious to it.
Lucky for her.
Pushing the book she was holding back into its space, she walked up to the man who had just entered and smiled at him. “I see you’re back. Come to see if I needed rescuing again?”
He’d taken measure of her as he’d walked in and still wondered if there was some sort of mistake. But it was too much of a coincidence for him to shrug off. What he needed was to find a way to find out her social security number. That might be more difficult than he’d anticipated if the store manager had agreed to pay her off the books.
“Oh, you strike me as someone who can take care of herself. If I hadn’t intervened yesterday, you probably would have decked him.”
He had a dimple, she realized. And a sense of humor. She found that an extremely sexy trait. “My boxing gloves are in the shop,” she said wryly. “Jon’s not here if you came to see him.”
“Jon?”
“The store manager.” Obviously the name meant nothing to him. “I’m sorry, I’m just taking a stab at why you’re here.”
He wondered what she would say if he answered her truthfully. If he told her that he was looking for Gloria Prescott and the little boy she’d abducted. Probably nothing. At close quarters, the woman looked cool enough to be able to pull it off. If she was Gloria.
“To do some research, actually.”
Savannah had managed to access Gloria Prescott’s transcript at the University of San Francisco for him. He’d discovered that while her degree was in the field of studio arts, specifically sculpting, she’d minored in American history. He’d guessed that the preponderance of courses on Native Americans meant her interest lay there. The drive up from Bedford had given him ample time to come up with a scenario.
He looked around. “Do you have a Native American section? I’m working on a project and I’m kind of stuck. I need all the input I can get.”
Ben saw interest enter her eyes. “Native American? What kind of a project is it?”
He pretended to hesitate. “You’d probably laugh.”
That made her smile. “No, I wouldn’t, try me.”
He’d chosen his story carefully. “It’s a screenplay—you probably hear that all the time. Everybody and his brother is writing one, or knows someone who’s writing one.”
Her smile was nothing short of encouraging. If this was Gloria, he could easily see why McNair had lost his head. Whether she was blonde or brunette, there was something about the woman’s smile that got to a man, made him want to puff up his chest and do something extraordinary to make her take notice.
“I don’t,” she told him.
He caught her off guard by putting out his hand. “Ben Underwood. Now you know me, so you know someone who’s writing one.”
The smile turned into a soft laugh that wafted around him like the first breeze of spring, full of promise at what was to be.
“All right, Ben Underwood, what’s your screenplay about?”
“The Battle of Wounded Knee.” Other than Custer’s last stand at Little Big Horn, it was the only Indian battle that he was vaguely aware of.
She caught her lower lip between her teeth, holding back a laugh.
“You’re not going to believe this, but I minored in Native American studies at UCSF.”
“You’re kidding.” He looked properly impressed. “Damn, but this is my lucky day. Maybe you can help fill in the gaps for me.”
“Maybe,” she echoed, her mouth curving.
He did his best not to notice how inviting that looked.
Chapter 4
So far, so good, Ben thought, returning her smile. He’d managed to establish a beachhead, however small. But he was a long way from winning the battle yet.
What he needed was to gain her trust so he could get to the bottom of what was going on. As of right now, he still wasn’t a hundred percent certain that he had the right woman. All he had to go on was the slightly out-of-focus photograph McNair had given him and a likeness of Gloria Prescott that Savannah had lifted from the DMV records she’d accessed. The only similarity between that and the woman he was looking at was they looked to be approximately the same age.
Ben summoned what latent acting talents he had and infused his voice with what he hoped was the right amount of enthusiasm. One of his best friends was a would-be screenwriter. Ben did his best to imitate the way he’d heard Nick talk when he was going on about his project of the moment.
“You know, this is almost like fate, meeting you.”
He touched her shoulder lightly as he spoke, initiating contact, but making certain that it couldn’t be misconstrued as anything remotely sexual. If the other day was any indication, she probably had more than her share of that, but he’d noted that the slightest bit of physical contact between people instantly brought them to a more familiar plane. He did his best to walk the fine line.
“Listen, I’ve got an idea.” Ben dropped his hand, as if suddenly aware of what he was doing. He saw a hint of a smile on Gina’s face and congratulated himself on his instincts. “I know you’re working right now, but maybe we could grab a bite to eat later when you knock off and—”
Having displayed what he thought was just the right amount of eagerness, he stopped, as if realizing how his words had to sound to her.
“I know you’re probably thinking that this is a come-on, but it’s really not. I really do need your help. I want to be accurate about this and I’m willing to pay you for your time.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Not much, I’m afraid—unless you’re willing to take percentage points in my script.”
Though she was trying to maintain her distance, Gina had to admit that this eager screenwriter did sound cute, stumbling over his words. She hoped he was better on paper. But she did appreciate that he realized she might be getting the wrong impression about his offer. Not many men would have picked up on that.
From the look of him, Ben Underwood seemed like the last word in manliness. Someone Aunt Sugar would have referred to as “a man’s man—and a lady’s heart-throb.” Yet he was unapologetically sensitive to her feelings. After what she’d been through, he seemed more like a figment of her imagination than a real person.
Still, she had to turn him down.
“I can’t tonight, I’ve got to close up.” She was surprised at the regret she felt. Gina chalked it up to loneliness. “But I think I can manage tomorrow night after work, if that’s all right.” She could see he looked disappointed. “Unless you’re in a hurry.”
Ben noticed one of the other clerks looking their way and turned just slightly so that his body blocked her view of the other man. He didn’t want her getting distracted while he made his pitch.
“I am—I’m getting close to my deadline.” He paused, thinking that it was a lucky thing he’d decided to get a motel room close by. “But tomorrow night will be great,” he added genially.
Intrigued, she cocked her head. “Deadline?”
The shrug was self-deprecating, with just enough boyishness thrown in to captivate her. Mischievous as a boy, he’d spent his childhood pleading his case to a tough audience. Looking sincere had become an art form. Dominican nuns ordinarily brooked no nonsense.
“I gave myself a deadline. If I didn’t make it as a screenwriter within five years, I was going to stop fooling myself and go into the family business. I’ve got six months left.”
She surprised him by whistling softly. His eyes lingered on her puckered lips.
“That’s cutting it pretty close.” She moved to the right, out of the way of a customer who was browsing through the section where they were standing. Perforce, she moved closer to Ben. “What’s the family business?”
He silently apologized to Nick, whose life he was plagiarizing. “Furniture-making.”
Gina studied him. She could definitely see this handsome stranger doing that. Wearing a leather apron over worn jeans and a checkered work shirt that was rolled up at the sleeves. Goggles perched atop his thick, black hair, the smell of freshly sawed wood about him. You’re getting carried away, she warned herself. “Are you any good at it?”
Humor glinted in his eyes as he laughed, thinking of Nick. Every time Nick attempted to make something, it was inevitably reduced to a pile of splinters and wood chips. He had no idea why Nick’s father was so adamant about his joining the business.
“I would be if the family had a sideline making and selling toothpicks. My creativity lies in other directions, but if I can’t make a go of it, my father insists I come into the business. Maybe as a sales rep.”
He made it sound like a life sentence with no possibility of parole. She found herself warming to him. “We’ll see what we can do. I’m not free tonight,” she repeated, “but I can point you toward an excellent book to get you started.”
“Sounds great.”
She led him to the American history section. One of the shelves was labeled Native American Studies. Eight years ago, it had been her personal baby, the one section she’d convinced Jon to set up. Now that she was back, she intended to keep on top of it religiously, making sure any new, relevant books were ordered while old standards were kept in stock.
She noticed two books were out of alphabetical order. Switching them to the right place, Gina selected one title and handed it to him. “This should be very helpful.”
“Thanks.” He nodded toward the small table that was off to the side. There were several throughout the store, besides the ones at the coffee shop in the center of the store. “Mind if I…?”
Reading sections of a book before you bought it had become an accepted custom. “Help yourself. That’s why the tables and chairs are here.”
Ben made himself comfortable and opened the book to the first page. This was going to be slower going than he would have liked, he thought, but he felt he had no option. He needed something more to go on than just a glaring coincidence before he brought McNair in or the police down on the bookstore clerk. What if, by some strange twist of fate, he was wrong? Truth had been known to be stranger than fiction.
And if he was right, if this woman was Gloria Prescott and she was impersonating a dead woman, he needed to find out where she was keeping Andrew. His proceeding cautiously could mean the difference between life or death.
Mixed into all this was the question that was beginning to hound him. How could someone whom everyone he’d spoken with so far thought was a saint, have done something so heinous as to kidnap a child, no matter what her motive? If this woman with the winning smile and the killer figure was Gloria Prescott, she was either a consummate actress who had managed to fool her co-workers, her friend and her aunt, or something just wasn’t right.
Any way he looked at it, he had a puzzle whose pieces weren’t fitting together.
With a sigh, Ben lowered his eyes to his book and returned to playing his role.
Darkness pressed its face against the bookstore’s large bay windows, peering in forlornly. It was a few minutes shy of nine o’clock, and except for Gina, he was the last one in the store. He’d spent the last few hours watching her interact with people, trying to form an opinion. Trying, also, to be objective and not swayed by the fact that she moved with the grace of a spring breeze, or that when she smiled or laughed, everyone around her seemed to light up. Him included.
He’d also wound up reading the book she had recommended. Even though his mind wasn’t really on it, he had to admit that parts of it had managed to catch his attention and seep in. Maybe he’d mention the subject matter to Nick when he got home. Most success stories began as accidents. Who knew, this might be Nick’s long-awaited accident.
Glancing at his watch, he verified the time. Nine. That meant she’d be closing up and going home soon. Maybe he could change her mind about tonight. The sooner he gained her confidence, the sooner he could get to the bottom of this.
He rose to his feet, feeling stiff. He’d stayed in one position too long. The wound he had gotten when he was shot in the line of duty, protecting his partner, whispered its presence along his body. He rotated his shoulders, trying to work out the discomfort.
Gina was at the register. Ben made his way over to her and placed the book on the counter between them, then took out his wallet.
“You’re right, it’s an excellent book.” Handing her a twenty, he watched her ring the sale up. The last of the day. “Maybe we could go get that dinner now and discuss it.”
She was tempted, she realized in surprise. What’s more, it felt good to be tempted. She’d thought that perhaps, all things considered, she would never entertain that sensation again. But tempted or not, there was no way she could say yes, not tonight. Betty, her teenage baby-sitter, could only stay until nine-thirty. Jesse was asleep and she wasn’t about to wake him. Besides, she doubted that this would-be screenwriter, sensitive or not, would welcome a six-year-old’s company at dinner.
Handing him his change, she slipped the book into a bag with the store’s logo on it. “I’m afraid I can’t. There’re…complications.”
He played it as if she wasn’t the suspect he’d been sent to track. “Husband?”
“No.” She held up her left hand to substantiate her answer.
“Boyfriend?”
This time, Gina smiled as she shook her head, thinking him sweet and wondering if she was a fool for thinking it. “No.”
Ben raised his brows in a supposed last-ditch, far-out guess. “Strict parents?”
She laughed. “No. Just…complications.”
Gina wondered how her son would take to being referred to as a complication. In reality, he was the most uncomplicated, most wonderful part of her life. But arranging her schedule around him, picking him up at school and making sure he was safe at all times, did lead to a great many complications.
“If you come by the store tomorrow,” she told him, hoping that he would, “I’ll let you know about dinner.”
“Why don’t you just give me your home phone number and I’ll call you?” He made the suggestion as casually as he could.
He seemed like a nice person, but she’d made a costly error in judgment before. It was better to be safe than sorry. “Coming by the shop would be easier.”
“Here, let me give you my cell phone number just in case you need to get in touch with me.” He wrote it down on a slip of paper and handed it to her. Folding it, she slipped it into her pocket. “You’ve aroused my curiosity, you know.” Ben realized his mistake the instant the teasing remark left his lips. A wary look had entered her eyes. He immediately went into damage control. “Will I have to guess anyone’s name, climb up a ladder made of golden hair or slay a dragon before I earn the pleasure of your company and get access to your knowledge?”
Ben silently breathed a sigh of relief as he saw her smile again. “No, nothing like that, I promise.” Taking out the day’s cash, she put it into a metal strongbox, then slipped a cover over the cash register.
The cop in him had him glancing toward the front door. This wasn’t known to be the most savory location in San Francisco. “Should you be here by yourself doing that?”
The note of concern caught her off guard. So did the warmth stirring in response. “I’ve done this before. The front door locks automatically at nine. I’m going to have to use a key to let you out.”
“Why don’t I wait until you’re finished and walk you to your car?” He wasn’t certain if it was the man he was pretending to be or the man he was who made the offer.
There was a part of her that yearned for just that. To have someone walk her to her car, to offer her his protection by mutual agreement. But there was a part, a much larger part, that had become very leery of protectiveness because it could so easily turn into possessiveness. And that led to dark places.
So, very politely but firmly, she turned him down. “Thank you, but there’s no need for that.” Gina cut him off before he could offer a protest. “And Jon would be upset if I let someone remain in the store when I put the money into the safe.” Slipping the strongbox beneath the counter, she came out from behind it and deliberately led the way to the front doors. Unlocking them, she pushed one open and held it for him. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Ben.”
“Count on it.”
Walking to his car, he thought of following Gina when she left the bookstore. But it was harder tailing someone at night than in the light of day, and if for some reason she spotted him, it would definitely spook her. He didn’t want to undo the groundwork he’d just spent the last few hours laying down. He was going to have to wait. Tomorrow night, he’d find a way to get himself invited back to her place. Once he knew where she lived, he could return and nose around while she was at work.
Chapter 5
Despite the fact that it had been busy ever since they’d opened their doors this morning, Gina’s eyes darted toward the electronic doors when she head the tiny buzzer sound, announcing the entrance of a new customer. It was a woman in her late forties. The rise in adrenaline leveled off.
This was stupid.
She had a great many more important things on her mind than a good-looking man supposedly writing a screenplay about the massacre at Wounded Knee. A very good-looking man, her mind amended automatically and entirely against her will.
“Next, please,” she called to the orderly line of people who stood behind the deep purple plush ropes strung up solely to keep them in their place.
A heavyset man with an armload of books walked up, depositing them on the counter. Tilted, the books scattered every which way, mostly sprawling out on her side of the counter, some falling beneath. Offering a vague, sympathetic smile at the flustered man, Gina gathered the books up.
For all she knew, Gina thought as she began ringing up the sale for the hapless customer, Ben’s story about needing to do research for his screenplay could have all been just an elaborate pickup line. When she’d turned him down for dinner, not once but twice, that might have been the end of it.
Gina scanned two more books quickly, punching in the total, telling herself it was just as well that he hadn’t returned.
No, it hadn’t been just about a pickup, she thought, still carrying on the internal debate. He’d sounded sincere. She knew it. Besides, he’d come to her rescue the first time she’d met him and he hadn’t tried to come on to her then. Sure he was sexy, but he didn’t seem to be deceitful. Maybe he was exactly what he seemed, an earnest dreamer pursuing his dream. An earnest, sweet, good-looking dreamer.
Ben Underwood might be a dreamer, but she couldn’t be, Gina reminded herself, slipping all the books she’d just rung up into a shopping bag and then handing it to the man with a vague smile.
“Have a nice day,” she told him. She was in no position to daydream like normal people. She wasn’t normal people. Not right now, at any rate. She was a woman on the run and she had to remember that.
Maybe not, a small voice whispered within her. Maybe the running was finally over. Maybe the man who’d robbed her of so many nights’ sleep had decided she was too much trouble to pursue any further and had given up looking for her. Maybe she was finally safe.
Safe.
God, but she’d never realized how overwhelmingly seductive the four-letter word could be. Safe. Safe to go about her life doing everyday things, safe not to be constantly looking over her shoulder, wondering, worrying. Safe not to see shapes hidden in the shadows, afraid that she was being followed.
The front door buzzer sounded. She lost her place in counting out the next customer’s change.
“Sorry,” she murmured, beginning again.
The man buying the massive cookbook looked at her as if she were incapable of counting beyond five. “Maybe I should have given you a charge card.”
The slightly condescending tone and tolerant expression on his patrician face made her want to whip out her college diploma to show him that she was quite capable of conducting monetary transactions of any amount.
A lot of good that would do, she realized ruefully. The name on the diploma didn’t match the one on her name tag.
“Please come again,” she murmured as cheerfully as she could muster.
The man mumbled something in response that was lost on her as she found herself looking up into eyes that were almost Wedgwood blue. Ben had come up on her blind side and was now leaning against the counter, blocking the next customer.
“Hi, are we still on?”
Was it possible for him to look better today than he had yesterday? Or was that just the self-imposed drought in her life that was making her suddenly thirsty? Thirsty for the companionship of a personable man who wanted nothing more from her than just her mind.
“On?” she echoed.
The customer took her books to the clerk at the next register, giving Gina an envious look. It wasn’t lost on Gina.
“For tonight,” Ben prompted. He didn’t appear annoyed that she seemed to have momentarily forgotten. “You said that you couldn’t go out after work last night, but that you probably could tonight.” He looked at her hopefully. Or was that just her imagination?
She’d talked to Betty, who had checked with her mother last night. Since tonight was a Friday night and Betty hadn’t hit the dating circuit yet—her mother referred to Betty as a late bloomer—Gina was assured of a sitter for Jesse.
Now all that remained was taking that final leap from self-proclaimed female hermit to socializing woman. Easier contemplated than done.
For most of her life, she’d loved company, loved going out. She’d always been a people person, until she’d had her trust betrayed at a college fraternity party. McNair had resurrected the leeriness that had come to define and delineate her life for months after her rape, making her hold all men suspect. Looking for ulterior motives.
She hated being that way, and yet…
“Oh, right.” Gina beckoned forward the next customer who was about to bypass her. “I can take you here,” she told the woman, then looked at Ben. “Um, I’m not so sure that I can, after all. There’s the store, we don’t lock up until ten tonight—” As she scanned the book, the numbers popped up on the register.
“Don’t they let you go out for dinner?” Ben dead-panned.
“I’ll lock up for you tonight, Gina,” a deep voice on her other side rumbled.
She glanced toward the other register, not surprised to see the slightly superior look gracing the face of the tall, thin, prematurely balding young man. The man with the improbable name of Joe Valentine had regarded her as an interloper when Jon had given her responsibility of the store over him. Joe had been working at the bookstore a total of two and a half years and considered himself not just a clerk, but Jon’s assistant. Gina had changed all that and he made no secret of the fact that he didn’t care for it.
“After all, it’s not like I haven’t done it before,” Joe said smugly.
There went her last excuse, she thought, secretly glad of it. She liked being divested of excuses, because part of her really wanted to see Ben again, under any pretext. Pretexts made her feel that it was all right. “Thanks, Joe, as long as you don’t mind.”
“Hey, where else am I going to go?”
“It looks like it’s all settled, then,” Ben said to her. “Unless you don’t want to.” He knew if he left it open like that, she wouldn’t feel he was trying to pressure her into anything.
Oh, she wanted to, all right. Maybe a little too much. “It’s not that—”
“Something else?”
The cop in him rose to the fore. He peered at her, keeping his voice casual, wondering if her resistance involved Andrew in some way. Was she keeping the boy someplace accessible? Was there someone else involved? Was this not just about revenge, the way McNair thought, but a child kidnapping ring with Andrew the latest victim?
It was a horrible thought, but one that was far from new. Ben knew that Cade’s own son had been kidnapped for just that reason. It had taken Cade three years to find the boy again. Darin Townsend was the reason ChildFinders, Inc. existed.
She almost said something about Jesse and being reluctant to leave him, but at the last minute decided not to. She was undoubtedly being overly paranoid, but there was no harm in keeping her private life private. No harm and maybe a great deal of good.
“No, nothing else.”
Score one for the home team. “Well then it looks like it’s settled. How about Wellington’s?” Ben asked.
She was familiar with the restaurant. It was a place she’d treated herself to once a month while she’d been attending college. The food was wonderful and the ambience even better. It was a place she could easily see him in, but not for the type of thing she’d thought he had in mind. Suspicions whispered in her ear again.
“Isn’t that a little fancy? I thought you just wanted to grab a bite to eat and talk about research.”
His smile disarmed her before he said a word.
“Who says the bite has to be in a fast-food place? Or that we have to chew fast?”
He saw the protest forming on her lips, saw the indecision in her eyes. He was winning her over, but he had to talk quickly to sustain his advantage. Getting her to a friendly, neutral place that might seduce her defenses was all part and parcel of his plan to get her comfortable enough to talk to him. The more she talked, the more likely she’d be to let something slip.
“Think of it as partial payment for your time,” he told her.
She couldn’t help smiling. “Script points and dinner?”
“Right. And anything else you can think of, too.”
Her eyes narrowed. Was this just an elaborate come-on after all? She didn’t want to believe it, yet… “Such as?”
“I’m very handy with my hands.”
Her heart sank. It was a come-on. “I’m afraid I really don’t—”
He stopped her before she said something he was going to regret. “That didn’t come out right. What I mean is that I can fix things around the house. Cracking plaster, doors that stick, things like that.”
The small condo she had sublet from Jon’s friend could more than use a face-lift, but not from someone she didn’t know. She knew the danger of opening her door and her life to someone.
“I don’t need anything fixed,” she assured him.
“All right,” he replied philosophically, “then it’ll just be dinner and research.”
“Dinner and research,” she echoed.
A line was beginning to form at the register again. Joe was looking toward them with a less than friendly expression on his face. Ben began to talk quickly before Gina saw the clerk and retreated to help him. “What time would you like me to pick you up?”
It would keep things simpler if he didn’t know where she lived. “Since this is dinner and research, why don’t I just meet you at the restaurant?”
He picked up on her reluctance to share her address. The scale tipped against her again. “You really are an independent woman, aren’t you?”
The grin that curved her mouth nearly unraveled him. It was completely guileless and captivating. “Whenever possible.” Hearing Joe clear his throat, she realized that she’d somehow managed to drift away from the register. She began moving back toward the registers. “Now then, I’m afraid I’ve got to get back to work.”
He wasn’t finished yet. There was one more thing he needed from her. Her prints. Ben glanced toward the section she had directed him toward yesterday. “Um, I was wondering if you could recommend any other books for me from the store?”
She thought a moment, shaking her head. “I think we covered that last time.” Surprise flittered over her features. “You didn’t finish the one you bought yesterday already, did you?”
He nodded. “Stayed up all night. I thought if there was something else—”
“All right, let’s see.” Because he seemed so eager, she went to check the books listed by subject on the computer. Going over the inventory, she stopped at a particular title. “Well, there is one more that might help—”
All he needed was one. Because the books were accessible to the public, the idea of getting her prints from the one he’d already bought hadn’t occurred to him until after he’d handled it extensively. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake again. “Take me to it.”
She couldn’t help smiling. “You really are eager about this, aren’t you?”
He said what he knew she needed to hear, even though there was a part of him that was starting to feel uncomfortable with the duplicity. “So eager I can taste it.”
Telling Joe she would be right back, she brought Ben over to the American history section and, after a moment, found the book she was looking for. It was out of place. “This one doesn’t go into depth on the battle, but it does give you a pretty good background on the tribal life and the people.” Turning from the shelf, she started to hand the book to him.
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Marie Ferrarella
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Childfinders, Inc.: An Uncommon Hero, электронная книга автора Marie Ferrarella на английском языке, в жанре современные любовные романы