Kitabı oku: «The Hunt For Hawke's Daughter», sayfa 3
“But if that’s true, why would he want Livie with him? He’s her father, yes, and he cares about her, but she’s never been vital to him.”
“I don’t know. People living secret lives aren’t predictable. And if your husband committed bigamy, and we know he did, then he is living a secret life.”
Karen’s shoulders sagged under the intolerable weight of a situation that was no longer just a strong possibility to her but an absolute conviction. “Dear God, he means to disappear, as he did before, and if Livie vanishes with him—Devlin, what if I never see her again? You have to find her for me!” she appealed to him urgently. “You have to promise—”
“Easy,” he said, placing a steadying hand on her arm.
She could feel the tears of desperation welling in her eyes, could feel herself coming apart. “I can’t bear this!”
It was an understandable reaction when he took her in his arms and rocked her slowly in an effort to soothe her. It felt familiar, and it felt right being held against the solid, secure wall of his chest. As though she belonged there. And even when his arms tightened around her, she didn’t resist. There was nothing wrong in accepting comfort that was offered in a moment of despair. Even if there had been, how could she be unfaithful when she no longer had a husband to be faithful to?
“You were going to ask him for a divorce,” Devlin probed, as if reading her. “That’s what you said, isn’t it?”
“There was nothing left to save,” she murmured.
“No doubts about your decision? No guilt?”
“Before you told me I wasn’t legally married to Michael? Yes, I suppose then I was feeling some of both. But not now when he’s deceived me! Not after he’s taken Livie!”
She realized too late that her fierce admission could easily be misunderstood. That Devlin could define it as a kind of invitation. Whatever the impetus, the innocent embrace turned into something intimate and dangerous.
There was a sensual quality now in the way his splayed hands shifted against her back, his fingers stroking down her spine, then moving around her rib cage and up to the sides of her breasts. Karen felt her flesh sear under his slow caresses. She could hear his breathing quicken with his arousal, could scent his strong, masculine aroma.
A few seconds more and she would be tasting him. His mouth would be on hers, devouring her in one of those deep, prolonged kisses she remembered so vividly from almost four years ago. But it was not his intention that shocked her. It was her longing for it.
The whole thing must have shocked Devlin as well because he suddenly released her, almost shoving her away. They stared at each other, silently sharing the same thought.
This is a mistake. This must not happen again.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Your kid is gone, you’re sick with worry, and I go and—” He raked a hand through his dark hair. “Look,” he said, “this isn’t going to work. There are other P.I.s, and they’re right here in the Twin Cities. I’ll check them out, phone you with a recommendation.”
He started to back away toward the side door to the driveway. Karen knew he was probably right, that it would be safer for both her and Devlin if she used another investigator. Safer for them, perhaps, but not safer for Livie. She needed someone absolutely committed to recovering her daughter. And only Devlin Hawke had a reason for moving heaven and earth to find Livie. Maybe.
It was time to find out if he did. Time to give him the truth, whatever the risk. His hand was reaching for the doorknob when she stopped him.
“Devlin, don’t go! You can’t go!”
He gazed at her, impatient to make his escape. “Karen, this is no good. It’ll only lead to trouble for us if I stay and work with you. You saw that just now. You know it’s true.”
“You have to help me find Livie,” she insisted. “It—it’s your responsibility.”
He frowned at her, his hand now on the knob directly behind him. “And just how do you figure that?”
She didn’t answer him. She didn’t know how to tell him what he needed to hear. He was still frowning at her.
“You’ve been holding something back. What is it?”
As usual, the expression on her face must be giving her away, she thought. And he would be shrewd about reading people’s expressions. As a P.I., he would have to be. He waited, and still she couldn’t bring herself to tell him. She simply didn’t know where to begin a revelation that was so potentially explosive. His shoulders lifting in a little shrug, he turned to go. But she couldn’t let him walk out that door! Desperation inspired her with the opening she sought.
“Devlin, wait! There’s something I have to show you!”
To her relief, his hand fell away from the knob. He even drifted toward her again a few steps. “All right, show me.”
She reached for her purse. “I told you at Dream Makers that I don’t carry a photograph of Michael,” she explained quickly, extracting her wallet and flipping it open. “But I do carry a photo of Livie.”
He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, impatient again. “Karen, if you think showing me a picture of your kid is going to move me to—”
“Just look, will you?”
She came forward to where he stood, extending the open wallet. He took it and glanced down at the photograph inside the clear plastic sleeve while she watched his face, waiting for some sign of awareness. There was none. Not yet.
“Her hair wasn’t curled for the picture,” she said, trying to help him. “It’s naturally wavy, and even darker than it looks here. And her eyes—you can’t tell in this—but her eyes are a dark blue.”
“Uh-huh.”
He wasn’t interested. He hadn’t seen.
“Not like Michael’s blond hair and gray eyes,” she said, striving to encourage his recognition.
This time there was a flicker of suspicion on his face. He looked up, catching her gaze. “How old is your daughter?”
“She’s small for her age. I sometimes wonder if the asthma—”
“How old?” he demanded gruffly.
“Livie just turned three.”
“Which means she was born before you married Michael Ramey two and a half years ago.”
“Michael is her stepfather, Devlin,” she told him softly. “Not her natural father. He adopted her after we were married.”
Devlin’s gaze dropped again to the picture in his hand. He stared at it for a long time, a muscle twitching in his square jaw. And while she waited, she clasped her hands together below her breasts in that familiar pose she unconsciously adopted in moments of intense anxiety.
When she thought she couldn’t endure another second of his silent scrutiny, he lifted his gaze. There was disbelief in his eyes. “It isn’t possible. We took precautions.”
“Yes, and sometimes even the most careful precautions fail.”
“Are you sure that she’s mi—”
“Don’t say it,” she cut him off, her anger stirring, “because there was no one else!” Did he think she was so devious, so unprincipled that she would lie about his being Livie’s birth father just to enlist his help in finding her?
Uttering a savage obscenity, he snapped the wallet shut and slapped it down on the counter beside him. An action which could have been rejection or simply rage. Then he looked at her with those stormy blue eyes, his face rigid with accusation while fear swelled inside her.
She could bear his anger. If he never forgave her, she would understand and accept it. What terrified her was the possibility that he would utterly deny his daughter or, just as bad, surprise her by demanding rights she wasn’t prepared to surrender.
“And just when,” he growled, “were you planning to tell me about her? Or, if I hadn’t turned you down just now, would you have ever told me at all?”
“How could I tell you before now? You made it altogether clear back in Aspen that you wanted no part of fatherhood.”
“After knowing me only a month, how the hell could you be so certain exactly what I wanted or didn’t want?”
“Six weeks,” she corrected him. “We were together for six weeks.”
“Yeah, well, that makes it even worse.”
“It was long enough to realize that the responsibility of parenthood horrified you.”
Like it might have horrified the man who had fathered her, Karen thought. The man who had never been there for her. Had he learned of her existence and rejected her, leaving her mother a single parent? The possibility had haunted Karen her entire life. It was why she had turned to Michael Ramey to provide a father for Livie.
“I wasn’t the one who ran away from Aspen,” Devlin reminded her bitterly. “That was you, Karen. Remember?”
“Yes, I know. And I should have contacted you when I got back here and learned I was pregnant, but…”
“What?”
“Weeks had passed by then. And there’d been nothing but silence. You hadn’t made any effort to reach me, so I could only suppose you didn’t care.”
“And that’s reason enough not to inform me I was going to be a father?”
“No, it wasn’t. I admit that. And it wasn’t morally right to let all this time pass without ever telling you about Livie. But I wanted things to be perfect for her, not her life getting split between Colorado and Minnesota. No complications like that. Just one solid home, one family and one father who cared. It was a mistake, and I’m paying for it now.”
“I’ll tell you another mistake you made,” Devlin informed her, his voice hard and unforgiving. “You went and assumed that, if you told me now about my kid, there’d be no way I could refuse to go out there with you looking for her. You were wrong.”
Karen’s heart dropped like a stone when he abruptly swung around and slammed out of the house.
Chapter Three
Devlin’s rental car was parked out at the curb. A sporty white sedan. Karen could see it through the window of the kitchen door. She watched him as his long legs carried him swiftly to the vehicle. He never looked back, never hesitated as he opened the door and swung himself behind the wheel.
Sick with disappointment, she heard the engine turn over with an angry roar. She waited for the car to speed away down the street, taking him out of her life and away from any responsibility connected with her or Livie. To her surprise, this didn’t happen. Instead, he went on sitting there behind the wheel.
Puzzled, she went to the door and pressed her face against the glass, straining for a better view. It looked like he was whistling as he sat there staring off into space. Actually whistling. What on earth—
A few seconds later, in an attitude of resentment, he slapped the wheel with the palm of his hand, turned off the engine and climbed out of the car. Karen backed away from the door as his tall figure strode toward the house. There was a grim expression in his deep blue eyes when he stormed into the kitchen.
“Will he hurt her?”
Devlin offered no apology, no explanation, just that single gruff demand. But she understood him. He was asking her how serious a threat Michael was to Livie.
“I hope not,” she answered him quietly. “I always trusted him with her. But that was before today, before I learned Michael is someone I don’t know.”
“In other words, you’re not sure.”
“No. How can I be?”
“Then we have to find them,” he said decisively. “We have to get her back.”
Her relief must have been evident, and it had to have worried him because he qualified his intention with a swift, “Don’t make any mistake about this, Karen. Committing myself to recovering her doesn’t mean I plan to get emotionally involved either now or in the future.”
It wasn’t necessary for him to tell her. She could see it on his face. He didn’t want to do this. Didn’t want to help her, wanted nothing whatever to do with his daughter, but his conscience wouldn’t let him walk away.
He couldn’t have been more clear about it, but he must have feared she might not believe him. He was compelled to elaborate on his harsh warning. “I’m not going to turn into a daddy because of this. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll break my neck to see that she’s safe. And I’ll pay child support. No arguments about that. But don’t expect anything else from me, because you won’t get it.”
She was hearing just what she’d wanted to hear. That he would make every effort to recover Livie without any claim on her. Then why did she feel this great sadness? Why did it hurt her that he was so careful to omit any reference to Livie as his daughter, or even call her by name? It was obvious he didn’t want Livie to have any real identity for him, that as long as he kept her that way he could preserve his vital detachment. But why should he feel such a fierce need for that detachment?
As usual, her face must have told him what she was thinking because he added an emphatic, “We’re not going to talk about this either, Karen.”
She had no intention of arguing with him. She didn’t want to risk losing him. Whatever his terms, she would accept them.
“There’s one more condition,” he said.
“Yes?”
“It’ll be necessary for us to work together, but as much as it’s possible, I want this to remain a business arrangement. A friendly, but impersonal, business arrangement.”
What was he afraid of? she wondered. A closeness that might jeopardize some promise he’d made to himself?
“When all this is over,” he went on, “we go our separate ways, you here in the Twin Cities and me back in Denver. Understood?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Good.” Wearing a scowl, he glanced around the kitchen while mopping at his brow with the back of his hand. “And if I’m going to spend any time at all in this house, I have another request.”
“What is it?”
“Get your damn air-conditioning fixed. And in the meantime, let’s get out of here and find someplace reasonably cool while you fill me in on the essentials.”
THE SPOT Devlin chose for their conversation was one of the most pleasant in the Twin Cities. Standing side by side at the railing of a paddle wheel boat that cruised up and down a brief stretch of the Mississippi, with Minneapolis on one shore and St. Paul on the other, they watched the scene slide by.
Twilight was stealing over the river, bringing with it a cool breeze. Lights began to wink in the high-rises massed against the pearly sky. The riverbanks were popular in summer, teeming with couples strolling arm in arm, teenagers in-line skating, families dining at outdoor cafes.
It was a serene setting, almost magical in its mood. And Karen found it deeply frustrating, even painful. There were young children among the crowds, safe in the company of their parents. Watching them, she could think of nothing but Livie who might be anything but secure at this moment.
Why were they here on this silly boat? Why weren’t they searching for Livie? Karen felt a desperate need for action, and Devlin sensed it.
“Easy,” he said in a soothing voice.
And that was another thing. His closeness was disturbing. She was too aware of his warm, intimidating bulk as his shoulder grazed hers. She preferred him as he’d been back at the house, brusque and remote, not trying to comfort her like this.
“I can guess what you’re feeling,” he said, “but we have to talk. I have to have some answers before I can decide where to begin.”
Conceding the necessity for that, Karen relaxed. “What do you need to know?”
“As much as you can tell me about Michael Ramey. Start with how you met him.”
“It was nothing out of the ordinary. We were both taking this evening course on financial investments. He asked me out for coffee one night after class.”
“And you went.”
“Why not? He was very pleasant, attractive. And, like me, he was unattached. He had no family at all, so we had that in common. He said he was just out of a long relationship, but he didn’t like to talk about it.”
“So you started to date.”
“That’s right. Sometimes Livie would go with us. He was very good with her, and that was important to me. It was all very conventional.”
“Including the marriage that followed, huh?”
“I suppose so.”
“What else? What about his hobbies, his interests?”
“His business seemed to take up a lot of his time. He did play golf sometimes.”
“How about friends?”
“There’s no one special.”
“Connections from his past?”
She shook her head.
Devlin pushed away from the rail and turned to gaze at her, his expression accusing. “You don’t know a whole lot about this guy you married and lived with, do you?”
“I knew what counted,” she said defensively. “That he loved Livie and me and that he offered us security.”
She turned away from the look in his eyes and stared out at the lighted shore, listening to the sound of the paddle wheel churning the waters, smelling the aromas of the river. After a moment she stirred restlessly.
“All right,” she admitted, “I was vulnerable, and I suppose that made me blind. Michael was so pleased about the marriage, about getting a wife and a daughter at the same time. I wanted to believe he was everything he seemed to be, because I needed to be—”
“What?”
“Safe,” she whispered.
Which, Karen thought unhappily, is exactly what I went and convinced myself Michael was. Safe, dependable. And because I trusted him, I very foolishly didn’t ask questions. What have you been hiding from me, Michael? What awful secret are you protecting?
Devlin, recognizing her fear, offered a comforting, “Being a bigamist doesn’t necessarily make him dangerous, Karen. Although…”
“What?”
“Why commit bigamy at all? Doesn’t make sense in this situation. I mean, if a guy risks having two wives at once, it’s because he manages somehow to shuttle back and forth between them. But in Ramey’s case he walks away completely from the first wife before he goes on to acquire the second one. Why didn’t he just divorce the first wife and save himself the threat of jail? And if he is going on to a third identity…”
“Why take Livie along? That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it, Devlin? Why have Livie with him when she’d only complicate his new life?”
“Yeah, it always comes back to that, doesn’t it? Which means we have to try to figure out that why, because without it we may never learn the where.” It was Devlin’s turn then to express a sudden restlessness. “Let’s get off this boat. I need to stretch my legs.”
The vessel made regular stops along the river, discharging passengers and picking up new ones. Several moments later, its whistle tooting, it pulled into another landing. Karen and Devlin went ashore and began to stroll along the broad, tree-lined river walk with its busy bars and boutiques.
Devlin was silent as they walked. She assumed he was busy sifting through what little information she had been able to provide, putting it all in some kind of order. Karen knew he was very good at what he did. He had described some of his cases to her back in Colorado. Like everyone else in the family firm, he had a specialty. The other members of the Hawke Detective Agency consulted him in that area whenever necessary, just as he drew on their particular skills. Devlin excelled in finding missing persons. Karen was counting on that talent.
“There’s something here that’s giving me a lot of trouble,” he finally said. “Assuming Ramey is neither a fool nor a lunatic, he must realize that you’ll move heaven and earth to find your kid.”
“Which makes it even harder to understand why he’d go off with her.”
“Unless we look at it from another angle, one that isn’t so straightforward.”
“What does that mean?”
“Suppose he has no intention of keeping Livie with him permanently. Suppose he’s just—for want of a better word—borrowed her for a time. Didn’t you tell me he left most of her clothes behind? That could indicate he was planning to return her. Maybe he meant to have her back before you even knew she was gone, before you had any reason to be alarmed.”
“But I have learned she’s missing, and I am alarmed.”
“Yeah, because you came home ahead of schedule. Just when were you supposed to return from Atlanta?”
“The trade show ends late tomorrow. I was to fly out the next morning, Friday, which was a change from my original plan around Sissy Baldwin and her latest house, but that has no bearing here since—”
“Whoa!” Stopping her, Devlin drew her out of the stream of pedestrian traffic and off to one side of the walk. “Now run that by me again. What original plan?”
She explained it to him. “Dream Makers has this client, Sissy Baldwin. She’s a tiresome woman, but she’s good for business.”
“Rich?”
“So rich that she can afford to indulge her hobby. Sissy collects houses, and she hires us to redesign them. Her newest toy is this historic row house in Savannah. When she learned I was going to be in Atlanta for the trade show this week, she invited me to come down to Savannah on Friday. I was supposed to spend the holiday weekend as her guest discussing possibilities for the house.”
“Through the Fourth on Monday?”
“Yes, and then we’d fly back here on Tuesday. But, Devlin, there’s no point in my telling you all this, because I canceled that visit my first morning in Atlanta. With what I was going through about ending my marriage, there was no way I could spend a weekend with Sissy Baldwin.”
“And what about your husband? Did you inform him that you wouldn’t be staying on through Monday?”
“Yes, certainly. I phoned him at his office right after I called Maud at Dream Makers. Well, I didn’t speak to him directly. He was tied up with a client or something. I told his assistant, Bonnie, and she promised to give him the message.”
“What if he somehow didn’t get that message? What if he still thinks you’ll be in Georgia through the Fourth, and he has all that time to use Livie without you being aware that he’s taken her?”
“Use her? Dear God, for what?”
“I don’t know. It’s only a possibility, maybe a wild one. But in my work you examine all the possibilities, because more often than not, one of them turns out to be right.”
Karen felt her insides tighten all over again with fear. “I don’t know how I’m going to stand this,” she said in a small voice. “It just seems to get worse.”
“I can’t promise you it won’t be rough. Just keep hanging on to the thought that she’s going to be safe and that we are going to get her back.”
Did he earnestly believe that? she wondered. Or was it just his professional way of calming a client?
“Come on,” he urged, “let’s keep moving. Even a useless action is better than none.”
She fell in step beside him again. They continued along the river walk, moving in the direction of the lot where they had left his car. As they walked, he reviewed in a speculative murmur what she had told him on the paddle wheel boat about Michael and her.
“Conventional. That’s the word you used about how the two of you got together, isn’t it? Including the way you dated, even your marriage. All very conventional.”
“You make it sound like it was something deliberate.”
“Maybe it was.”
“To what purpose?”
“Conventional lifestyles draw no attention. I mean, the guy even looks bland in that picture I showed you. Good-looking maybe, but bland all the same. Speaking of which, do you have any current photos of him back at the house?”
Karen shook her head, explaining how the few that existed were destroyed. “Yes, I know,” she said. “It was no accident, was it?”
“Probably not. But you are carrying that picture of Livie in your wallet. Let me have it, please.”
She produced the photograph from her purse and handed it to him. He took it without glancing at it. His gaze was busy in another direction, searching the shops they passed. At this season along the popular river walk nearly all of them were open late.
“What are you looking for, Devlin?”
He didn’t answer her until a moment later. “That,” he said, pointing to a convenience store featuring a small office service open twenty-four hours a day.
Standing beside him at the counter inside, after supplying him with a description of Michael’s car, she watched him as he addressed a fax message to his mother at the home office in Chicago.
“Ma will post the particulars, along with Livie’s photo, on the Internet,” he explained. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Though out of necessity he’d been referring to Livie by name since the boat, she noticed that nowhere in his message to his mother did he make any mention of his paternal connection with her. And when the material had been faxed, he returned the photograph to Karen without further comment. And, again, without looking at his daughter’s likeness. Well, he’d warned her, hadn’t he?
Twilight had faded into a balmy summer evening by the time Devlin delivered her to her front door. He had been silent again on the drive back to Summit Avenue. Deciding their next course of action, she hoped. She meant to know just what that was before they parted for the night.
He didn’t reveal it, however, until she faced him on the stoop, asking an anxious, “What now?”
“You get a good night’s sleep.”
“You don’t really suppose that I can possibly—”
“Try,” he urged, “because there’s nothing more we can do until tomorrow.”
“Then what?”
“We go to your bank when it opens in the morning. Providing, that is, you and your husband have any joint accounts that we can examine.”
“We share a checking account.” She understood Devlin’s intention. If Michael had cleaned out that account, it would be a strong indicator that he wasn’t coming back. “There’s also a safe deposit box. It doesn’t contain any valuables like jewelry, just the usual essential documents.”
“Good. What’s inside a deposit box can sometimes tell you more than any account.”
Or what’s not in it, he might have added. But Karen didn’t want to think about that.
“I’ll say good night then,” he said. But he lingered for another moment on the stoop. There was something obviously nagging at him. He finally made up his mind to address it. “Got something to ask you.”
“What is it?”
“Were you in love with him?” he blurted.
The question startled her. Why in the world had he asked it? “I thought so,” she said.
“And what about now?”
“No, but does it matter?”
“I guess not.” He started to leave and then turned back with a husky, “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to offer you that safety you were looking for when you turned to Ramey. I’m just not a safe kind of guy.”
Was he warning her about himself? “I’ll remember that,” she called after him as he started down the walk to his car.
“There’s something else I want to ask you to do,” he said over his shoulder. “Try again to reach what’s-her-name, this assistant of Ramey’s. Could be she has the answers.”
“Bonnie Wodeski, and I will.”
She watched him drive off to his hotel, and then she went into the house and rang Bonnie’s apartment. As before, she got nothing but the answering machine. Leaving another message, she went up to her bed.
As she had predicted, sleep was impossible. And not just because she was sick with worry about Livie. The image of Devlin Hawke, with his black hair, blue eyes and killer smile, troubled her thoughts. He was a necessity. She couldn’t find Livie without him. But their essential alliance was as uneasy as the atmosphere before a summer storm, charged with issues and past conflicts as volatile as chain lighting. Karen didn’t know how she was going to survive him.
HER FIRST CHALLENGE in that area occurred early the next morning. Exhaustion had finally permitted her to drift off, but she couldn’t have been asleep more than a few hours when she was roused by the insistent ringing of her doorbell.
Disoriented, it took her several moments to struggle out of bed and into her robe. By the time she groped her way down the stairs, the ringing sounded so urgent that her heart was in her throat. All she could think of was that the police were here to report the worst.
She didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry when she arrived in the kitchen and saw Devlin at the door, signaling through the glass to be let in. Still groggy, she fumbled with the lock and opened the door.
“What is it?” she demanded. “Is something wrong?”
“Not unless the coffee gets cold.” He held up a bulging paper bag. “I brought breakfast.”
“You scared me to death!”
“Sorry.” He pushed past her into the kitchen.
When she closed the door and turned to confront him again, he was already busy at the counter unpacking the bag, lifting out juice, two containers of coffee and a selection of Danish. The sight of him fully awake, with a brisk, take-charge attitude and wearing a pair of crisp tan slacks and a fresh oxford shirt that managed to emphasize his rugged good looks, irritated her. She was conscious of looking less than human herself in her wrinkled robe and with her auburn hair uncombed.
“What are you doing here at this ungodly hour?” she accused him. “The bank doesn’t open until nine.”
“We’ve got other errands before then. I want to get inside Ramey’s office and look at his records. That is, if you know where to lay your hands on a key.”
“There’s a spare one in his desk here, providing he didn’t take it with him.”
“Good. And along the way, I’d like to stop off and turn in my car. No point in paying rent on it when we’ve got yours.”
“I see,” she said dryly. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, how do you like your Danish? Warm or cold?”
“Neither until I’ve showered and dressed. And while I’m doing that, you can make yourself useful.” She slapped a phone book in front of him. “You’ll find the air-conditioning service listed at the back. See what you can do about arranging for a repair. Bonnie Wodeski’s number is there, too. Maybe you’ll have better luck reaching her. All I get is her answering machine.”
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