Cold Target (28 page)

Her house was lit. An unmarked department car was in front of the house.

He hurried up to the porch and tried the door. It opened.

Meredith was sitting in the living room, wrapped in a robe. Her hair was tousled. Her face was pale but under tight control.

She glanced up and a look of relief crossed her face.

The detective in a chair opposite her looked annoyed. “I didn't know you've been assigned to this case.”

“I wasn't. I'm an acquaintance of Ms. Rawson. I thought she might need someone.”

Max Byers shook his head.

“Her father has just been killed, for God's sake,” Gage said. “She's not a witness.”

“But she was yesterday, wasn't she? That's one hell of a coincidence.”

Gage ignored him and sat down next to her. “Are you all right?” he asked softly.

“No.”

Gage turned to Byers. “Can she have some time?”

“She should identify the body.”

“Later today.”

Byers nodded. “Call me and I'll send over a car.”

“I'll take her.”

Byers raised an eyebrow but handed her a card and left, taking his partner with him.

Gage turned to Meredith and held out his arms. She went into them, her body shuddering against his.

“I'm so damned sorry,” he said.

“Thank you for coming. I know they're doing their jobs but …”

He ran his fingers through her hair, then down to her neck, massaging the muscles.

He didn't say anything, just held her close, wishing he could absorb some of her pain. He knew how he'd felt when his mother died. She'd never had time to be much of a mother, but she tried. God knew she had tried. He had been twenty-two and devastated.

“Cry,” he said.

“I can't,” she whispered into his shoulder. “I can't even comprehend.… He was here last night. Just a few hours ago.”

For a moment, he felt as if his breath had been knocked from him. Death was following her like some dark shadow.

“Did he say anything? Was he worried?”

“He wanted me to stop looking for my sister.”

“And you said …?”

“No. We argued. I didn't say good-bye.” A tear rolled down her cheeks.

Her body was tense. Rigid.

“Some coffee? Tea? Or rest?”

She gave him a wan smile. “Maybe some coffee. There's some already made.”

“I'll get it,” he said, gently unwinding from her.

“I have to tell Daddy's housekeeper. She …” She looked back at him. Tears hovered in her eyes. They were held back, he thought, by sheer determination. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to …”

“Hell with that,” he said, resting his hand on her shoulder. She'd just been orphaned. Her father was dead, her mother was dying, and someone was killing people around her. Perhaps they had even tried to kill her. And missed.

She was being uncommonly strong. Nearly anyone else—man or woman—would be on their knees after the past few days.

“Tell me about him,” he said, hoping that talking would help.

“He was a hard man to know. Distant.” She started talking, and the words flowed out. “Demanding. For years I did everything I could to get his approval, but nothing seemed good enough. He was furious when I left the district attorney's office. He had plans. A judgeship was the least of them.”

“I heard he'd been a prospect for a judgeship.”

“It was something he always wanted.”

“Why didn't he run for state judge?”

“He wanted the federal bench.”

She needed to talk. He felt a little manipulative that he encouraged her to do so. Charles Rawson had been one of his suspects in the murder of Prescott fifteen years earlier. He should warn her. And yet … the closer he came to answers, the safer she would be.

She suddenly went quiet but her eyes searched his as if she knew exactly what he was thinking.

Telepathy? He had never before felt the kind of connection he felt with her.

“Why did you come here this morning?” she finally asked.

“I thought you might need a friend.”

“Are you that?”

“I think so. I'm a good listener.”

Emotion swirled in those gorgeous eyes. “Neither of my parents would be nominated for mother or father of the year,” she said. “But they were all I had. The only family. Except …”

“The sister you've been trying to find.”

“Yes.”

“Which makes it all the more important.”

“Yes.”

“Everything began after you learned about her.”

She looked at him, her eyes huge. “Why didn't I pay attention when my father told me to leave it alone?”

“You said he warned you last night. Had he done it earlier?”

She nodded. “After my mother told me about my sister, I confronted him. I asked him if he knew about it.”

“Did he?”

“He didn't really answer. He just said it would soil my mother's reputation. And his. I really thought that was the only reason.…”

He read the guilt in her face and hated Charles Rawson. The man had been her father, for God's sake.

“How was he acting last night?”

“Nervous. It was unusual because he usually kept his emotions to himself. He asked me if I'd told anyone about my half sister.”

“And you said you had. To me?”

“Not you specifically. To the police.”

“Then what?”

He asked me if I had any idea of what I'd done. Then he left.” Tears were in her eyes. “Mrs. Starnes. My father. It's my fault. Why didn't I just leave it alone?”

He wrapped his arms around her again and kissed the area around her eyes. “Because your mother asked you. Because someone is trying to keep a deadly secret. And secrets have a way of surfacing.”

“It's my fault,” she insisted.

“No, Meredith, it's not. Your parents made choices years ago. I suspect they weren't the wisest choices. I think that's why your father died. Not because of anything you did.”

Her body trembled.

He held her against him, then asked the question he had to ask. “Is there any chance your mother might wake from the coma?”

“The doctors don't think so.” Then she sat straight, pulling away from him. “Do you think someone might try to kill her, too?”

“Not if she's in a coma. They've already taken too many chances. Perhaps they hoped your father's death would be considered a simple hit-and-run. Your mother's death …”

“It wouldn't be that difficult, though. She's dying. An extra shot of morphine or—”

“There wouldn't be a reason,” he assured her. “Not unless she regains consciousness. And even then she may not know any more than she told you.”

“When is it going to stop?” Her voice trembled. The words were more a plea than a question.

“I don't know,” he said. “This sister seems to be the reason behind everything. We can't keep it to ourselves any longer. I have to tell my partner. You have to tell Byers.”

She knew he was right. And now it couldn't hurt her father. Or her mother.

She nodded. “Then I have to find my sister, don't I? That's the only way we can unravel this puzzle.”

“Yes, but not alone. I don't want you alone from now on.”

“That's something else,” she said suddenly. “My father said he was going to hire protection for me. He knew something. He wouldn't tell me what.”

“Perhaps he left something at his office.”

“I'll …” She'd started to say she would go by the office later in the morning, but there were so many other things to do. Visit the coroner's office, for one. Make funeral arrangements. Notify people.

Her mother
.

She closed her eyes against the enormity of it all.

The best gift she could give to both of them was to find the person who had killed her father, and to find the sister she hadn't known existed. The two must be linked.

But would it result in more deaths?

What had Lulu Starnes known that was so dangerous? Was there a clue in her home? In a scrapbook?

And her father. She knew how meticulous he was about his cases. He was a compulsive note taker. Had he left information somewhere?

She knew she was asking the questions to keep other emotions at bay. Her father had never been warm. He had never been much of a father.

But he'd been
her
father.

She had loved him.

And her mother, for all practical purposes, was gone.

It frightened her that no tears fell. She didn't want to be as cool and detached as they had been. At one time, she had wanted that. It was protection from hurt. Now she wanted to feel sorrow, grief. Instead there was a great chasm inside. Black and fathomless.

“Cry,” Gage said. “Let it go.”

But she couldn't. She couldn't until she knew why.

Still, she leaned back in his arms and warmth crept into her.

Not the warmth of passion, but the warmth of comfort.

eighteen

T
UCSON

Trying to keep her nervousness from showing, Holly entered the Social Security office in Tucson.

A friend of Marty's was baby-sitting Harry at her house. Holly had not wanted to leave Harry in their own rented cottage. She still lived in fear that her husband would find them, snatch her son, then lay in wait for her.

She was loath to leave him at all. But a Social Security card was now urgent. She had to have one to get a bankcard, then a driver's license. Holly had rehearsed her story over and over again. If it sounded implausible to her, how would it sound to a clerk? But the book she read said that if you failed at one office, try another. Some clerks asked questions; others just accepted the fee and gave you a card.

She had her story together, the birth certificate, a baptismal certificate, a library card, and a rent receipt.

She'd practiced an accent for days. She had been excellent in French in high school and had continued her French studies during the two years she attended college.

She took a seat and waited for the first available clerk, then approached, holding an envelope with her pitiable documents.

“Mademoiselle
, I hope you can assist me,” she said with a slight accent.

The woman looked surprised and she gave Holly a smile. “I'll try.”

“I have just returned to the States after living abroad since I was a child. My father was American but my mother was French. She left him when I was a child and I grew up in France, even married there. But like my mother, I was unlucky with love, you see. My husband took all we had and ran away with another woman. It was very sad, and I decided to come home. But now I need a job. I was told I must have a card.”

The woman looked sympathetic. “You've never had one?”

“
Non
, I think not. We left America when I was a child.”

“Do you have identification?”

“Oui
. I have a birth certificate, a baptismal certificate made before we left this country and my library card. I am trying to relearn English again. I hope you will forgive my … poor—”

“You speak very well,” the woman said, glancing over the documents. “We really need something with a photo on it, but …”

“I tried to get a bankcard, but the people at the bank said I need one of these numbers, and so does the driver's license office. I have been going around and around, and I am so … desperate.”

“How did you happen to come to Arizona?”

Holly gave her a bright smile. “I read books about … your cowboys. And cactus. I thought, This looks a fine place to live. Not so much rain as France.”

The woman hesitated, then nodded. “I think this will be enough.”

Holly sighed with gratitude.
“Merci
. I mean, thank you.”

“Merci
will do nicely,” the woman said. She gave Holly forms to fill out, then took them back when Holly had completed them.

“Bring by your driver's license when you receive one, and I'll add it to the file,” she said.

“You are very kind,
Mademoiselle
…” Holly peered at the sign on the desk.
“Mademoiselle
Mackay.”

“It is Mrs.,” she said. “Welcome back to America.”

“I will be very happy here if everyone is like you.”

Holly took back her documents. The birth certificate. The baptismal certificate she had purchased at a Christian book and gift store, then aged by leaving it outside in the sun.

And was handed her Social Security card.

Her lifeline.

B
ISBEE

Liz Baker's reaction to her son's brief disappearance had raised a warning flag for Doug Menelo.

She never talked about her past. Never mentioned her husband's name or anything about him. At their first meeting, she'd been more than a little skittish around him. Wary. Even scared.

He had chalked it up to recent widowhood and the uncertainty of facing the dating world again. Now he wondered.

She had started to relax with him at Whitaker's ranch. Perhaps, he realized now, because he had done all the talking. He'd enjoyed teaching her about the land he loved. But he also remembered how reluctant she was to repeat that ride. Or go with him for supper.

He wasn't vain enough to think a woman should fall into his arms. But he would have been stupid not to recognize the attraction that had sparked between them. Something held her back. He'd thought it was her loyalty to a dead husband.

But there were small things … like Harry's unusual silence about his father, and his mother's worried expression when anyone talked to him.

Doug didn't like the thoughts. He liked her more than any woman he'd met for a long time. He had begun using cologne and dressing with more care. He'd smiled more since meeting her.

She was unquestionably a very pretty woman, although she seemed to try to hide it. She rarely used lipstick and dressed in oversized shirts and loose jeans or slacks. But the bone structure of her face was exquisite and she had a shy smile that lit all of the outdoors.