CLOSE TO YOU: Enhanced (Lost Hearts) (31 page)

             
"I wanted to hear you were involved."

             
"We are involved."

             
"I wanted to hear you were engaged."

             
Teague intervened before Kate had to tangle with that. "About the stalking—there are a few coincidences that make us uneasy."

             
"Coincidences." Mom turned that mother-look on him. "Tell me all about them."

             
"Are you sure you don't know Senator George Oberlin?" Kate asked.

             
Mom thought for a moment. "I'm sure. But I do remember you decided Mrs. Oberlin was your stalker." She looked from Teague to Kate and back again. "Wasn't she?"

             
"Yes, she actually was. The trouble is, Evelyn Oberlin died in a fall last Friday." Teague observed Mom as acutely as she had observed him earlier.

             
"My God!" Mom covered her mouth. "How?"

             
"She was drunk," Teague said. "She fell down the stairs in her house."

             
"I'm sorry to hear that, but if she was drunk . . ." Her brow furrowed in puzzlement.

             
"She was drunk the night I caught her behind the Dumpster at Kate's apartment, too." Teague's mouth flattened grimly. "She babbled about Kate, about how she was stalking her to chase her away and keep her safe."

             
"She was crazy." The kettle started whistling, and Mom poured the boiling water into the pot.

             
"But how crazy?" Kate asked. "While she was talking, she apologized to Lana. Do we know a Lana?"

             
"No." But her mother looked cautious.

             
"She said Kate looked like her mother." Teague watched her mother.

             
Mom's naturally rosy complexion turned pale.

             
"She said Kate needed to leave before
he
killed her
again
." Teague ruthlessly pressed Mom for information. "I'll feel a lot more peace of mind if you tell me you know more about Kate's adoption than she does."

             
Mom's eyes shifted away as if she were guilty. Lifting the pot, she poured tea in a cup. "It's not ready yet," she said, and dumped the liquid down the drain.

             
Kate's reporter instincts came alive and honed in. "I wondered, Mom, if Senator Oberlin had anything to do with my adoption."

             
"No. No, it was a church. adoption." Her mother spoke with absolute certainty.               "Which church?" Teague asked smoothly. "Where can we find Kate's records?"               "The adoption agency is out of business."

             
"But her records must be somewhere," Teague insisted.

             
"When we went back . . . it was two years before we came back to the States. Business kept us away." Mom poured tea again, and this time she was satisfied for she filled the three cups and passed them out with a container of sweetener. "By the time we came back, the adoption agency was gone."

             
"But adoption agencies don't disappear." Kate leaned toward her mother. This was important. Her mother had to know more than this.

             
"This one did," Mom said sharply.

             
"But you must have tried to find them, to get Kate's records," Teague said.

             
"We did, but we couldn't find them." Mom's voice grew higher, louder. "And as I said to my husband, Kate had been left on the church step. What kind of records could the agency have had?"

             
Teague started to say something, but Kate squeezed his thigh. Hard. He fell silent.

             
Mom's gaze dropped to Kate's hand, then she looked back at them. "I have a birth certificate that the state made up for her. The birth date is approximate. The place of birth is left blank. And I have her adoption papers. But why is this important?"

             
"We wonder if the reason Senator Oberlin's wife stalked me, if the reason she died in a fall, has something to do with my other family. My blood relatives."

             
"How could . . . how could they have found you?" Mom's voice wavered.

             
"We don't know that that's it. Maybe Oberlin periodically picks out some girl to be infatuated with," Teague said.

             
"And kill?" Mom grasped Kate's shoulder. "You can't go back to that capitol to go to work. You need to stay away from that man!"

             
"Mom, I have to work. Teague's helping me avoid the senator." Kate glared meaningfully at Teague. "Aren't you?"

             
"Mrs. Montgomery is right," he answered. "It would make me feel better if you stayed away from work for a couple of days."

             
"A couple of days?" The opportunistic jerk had sided with her mother!

             
"The legislators are dragging their feet about the school funding vote. What can happen in a couple of days?" he asked in his most soothing tone.

             
"I've already been off because of the stalker." Kate was exasperated with both of them. "If I ask for a couple more days off, Brad will fire me. You know he will."

             
Mom took her hand. "Please, darling. Do it for me. If that Oberlin has killed before—"

             
Teague interrupted. "We don't know that that's his intention. This may be a special case because from what Evelyn Oberlin said, Kate strongly resembles someone. Maybe someone in Kate's biological family."

             
"Darling, you have to be careful." Mom's lips trembled. "Promise me you won't go to work this week."

             
Kate surrendered. How could she not in the face of her mother's deep and honest distress. "All right. I'll stay home." She flashed a dirty look at Teague. "But I won't like it."

             
"Better unhappy than six feet under." Teague stood and brought Kate to her feet with him. "I promise I'll keep her safe, but please, Mrs. Montgomery, if you remember anything we should know, give one of us a call." He placed his business card on the counter. "Kate's life may hang in the balance."

EIGHTEEN

              "Where were you yesterday?" Wednesday morning, as the elevator ascended toward the newsroom, Linda grabbed Kate's arm and glared into her eyes. "After two months of wrangling, the Senate votes on the school funding, and you're nowhere in sight? Brad yelled at me for letting a story get away, then he yelled at me because I didn't know where you were!"

             
"I'm sorry." Kate removed Linda's claws from her arm. Kate
was
sorry. She'd been chasing news stories ever since she'd got to Austin, and they'd all been building toward one big story, the school-funding vote. And she'd missed it because she'd done as Teague had instructed her—she'd stayed home to avoid Oberlin. For one lousy day!

             
"Everybody, and I mean everybody, seems to think that I should keep track of you. Brad, Cathy, Oberlin— they all ask me where you are, and they all act as if I'm delinquent if I don't know. Well, let me tell you, Kate Montgomery"—as the doors opened, Linda's voice rose to a crescendo—"I don't care what you're doing as long as you do your job!"

             
Ducking her head, Kate scurried into the newsroom. It felt very much like her first day when no one liked her because they thought she had got her post through influence and money. She could see the criticism in every gaze, and she realized that was exactly what they thought. The spoiled rich girl had got tired of doing her job and screwed up when they needed her most.

             
She would have to start from ground-zero building her reputation again, and this time it would take a lot longer.

             
"Miss Montgomery!" Brad bellowed from his office. "If you would come in here, please!"

             
She dragged herself in, a dunce expecting punishment.

             
"I'm pleased and proud that you could drag your poor, wretched female body in today." He paced his office, his belly rolling over his belt in an undulating wave. "After months and months of wrangling, we have the school-funding vote, and you call in sick."

             
"Last week, I broke the best stories," Kate said. It was a feeble argument. Last week was dead and gone. A reporter was only worth the news she discovered today; this week, she had avoided Oberlin and, thus, the news.

             
"Linda said she saw you and Teague Ramos out having a cozy dinner last night! Damn it, Miss Montgomery, I want my reporters out there chasing stories, not canoodling with the goddamn security men."

             
Kate almost drowned in embarrassment. Of
course
Linda had seen Kate and Teague together, and of
course
she had run right to Brad with the information. Linda had a nose for sniffing out the stories no one wanted known, and she was mad at Kate.

             
"Yes, sir. It won't happen again, sir." No explanation existed that Brad would accept. Certainly not that Kate was being stalked—again—by a prominent senator. She knew the skepticism that would greet that announcement.

             
And Brad wouldn't care even if it was true. Kate was a reporter. Even in a hurricane, she was supposed to wade into the Gulf. Even if she faced death or, at the very least, PMS, she was supposed to get the story. If she had to look George Oberlin in the eye and pretend she knew nothing about his past and his crimes and his weird obsession, she would do it. "I'll be on top of things today."

             
"You'd better be." Brad pulled his belt up over his belly as he glared at her. "Or I'll damned well know the reason why."

"Look at him." Teague p
ointed to the monitor in the security center in the capitol and spoke to nobody in particular. "Every time he sees Kate, he preens like a bird."

             
Big Bob leaned over the monitor. "A tough, burly, old hawk."

             
"He keeps luring her in with stories." That son of a bitch Oberlin was doing some sort of weird political courtship dance designed to lure his chosen mate to his nest, and Teague could barely stand it. He knew Kate was in trouble at the station for missing the big news yesterday, but did she have to be so driven? As a reporter, Kate was doing okay; why couldn't she be satisfied with that?

             
"Boss, I can hear your teeth grinding," Rolf said.

             
"She has to know Oberlin is lying in wait for her. She understands what a psychopath he is. But for the love of her job, she keeps stepping right into danger's way."

             
"I wouldn't say it was exactly
dangerous
," Gemma pointed out. "She's not leaving the capitol complex, and he's not going to do anything to her here."

             
Teague whipped around and glared at her, then turned back to his surveillance.

             
Kate had dressed for the part. Today she wore a tight black skirt, a black leather jacket, a red silk shirt, and such tall spike heels she stood absolutely upright and walked with this jiggle . . . no man in the capitol would be able to resist giving her an interview if she wanted one.

             
Hell, Teague would give her another interview if she wanted.

             
But today she didn't want to talk to him. She wanted to talk to Oberlin and the other important newsmakers, and that bit the big one.

             
In a soothing tone, Gemma said, "Teague, it's time for Kate's coffee fix. She's alone right now. No Oberlin for miles. Why don't you take her to Starbucks?"

             
"I can't. I need to stay here until I figure out what Oberlin's been up to all these years." Teague indicated the computer he would be using for research—if Kate would cooperate and behave and stop distracting him.

             
"I can investigate Oberlin." Rolf cracked his knuckles as if he couldn't wait to get into the game. "
I'll
find out what he's been hiding."

             
Teague considered Rolf. Rolf was a genius at computers, and he was right—he could dig deep enough to find out what Oberlin was hiding. "All right." Teague stood. "I'll go down on the floor. But if I run into Oberlin—"