Shadowkiller (11 page)

“I'm sure someone would let you know if I wasn't,” she always said in response—though, truth be told, she really wasn't so sure about that. Technically, her brother was her next of kin, but it wasn't as though she'd bothered to write a will, or even had friends who'd know Brett's last name or where in Nebraska to find him.

Then again, she supposed that these days, you could find just about anyone, even if you had no idea where to look. You just had to know
how
.

That was why she'd decided to call her brother tonight, after her Google search at the office turned up nothing at all.

Allen Taylor, Centerfield, Nebraska, came back with a couple of hits on her own name: Allison Taylor, Centerfield, Nebraska. Both were archived articles in the
Centerfield Register
. One was a listing of Centerfield High School graduates in 1995; the other was a mention in her mother's obituary from the
Centerfield Register
—which, of course, didn't list her father at all, not as a survivor or as a predeceased husband.

She'd waffled on the decision ever since she left the office, and almost mentioned it to Luis, who definitely noticed her preoccupation.

But she didn't feel like discussing it with him.

She didn't feel like discussing it with her brother, either, but she was in this deep—she might as well get it over with. She couldn't afford to lose another night's sleep, didn't want this weighing on her mind for days. It wasn't worth it.
He
—her father—wasn't worth it.

She just wanted to know, that was all. And then she could push him back into the shadowy past where he belonged.

As the phone rang, she perched nervously on the ugly orange futon she'd inherited from the previous tenant. She was saving to buy several pieces pictured on bent-cornered pages in last fall's Pottery Barn catalog. Real furniture wouldn't change the fact that she was alone here—alone in the world, really—but she felt that it would go a long way toward making this small one-bedroom apartment feel like a real home.

“Hello?”

“Brett—it's me.”

“Jody?”

“Allison. Your sister.”

“Oh! I thought you were Cin's friend, Jody. She's supposed to—never mind. How are you doing, Allison? How's life in the Big Apple? Are you biting it or is it biting you?”

He laughed hard at his own cleverness.

Ordinarily, Allison would force a chuckle as if she were hearing his little quip for the first time. But it was how he kicked off every conversation, and she wasn't in the mood for niceties, so she got right down to business.

“Remember when you said you were going to look for Daddy?”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. She could hear Brett's television in the background: Alex Trebek posing the Final Jeopardy question.

Alex
. . . she'd tried that name, too. Just in case.

Alex Taylor, Centerfield, Nebraska.

And, just in case it made a difference, Alexander.

Along with Alec, Allan, Allen, Alvin, Albert, even Allesandro, and Alejandro . . .

“Do you mean, after Mom died?” Brett asked at last.

She realized that the sound of his television had faded away, as though he'd muted the volume or left the room.

“Yes. Did you find him?”

“You said you didn't want to know if I did. You said you never wanted to hear his name again.”

“I know what I said. But now I need to know. Did you find him?”

Another long pause.

Then: “No. I didn't find him.”

Unsure whether to believe that, she asked, “Did you try?”

“Not very hard. Not as hard as I tried to find out who my own father was.”

“
What?
I never knew you did that. When was that?”

“After my own kids were born. I figured he might want to know he had a son out there somewhere, because if I were him, I'd want to know. And I was pretty sure Mom never told him.”

“
Told
him? I thought she didn't even know who he was.”

“That's probably true. But you never know. Mom might have lied about it.”

“Why would she?”

“Why do people lie, Allison?” Without waiting for a reply, he went on, “She did it to protect me, probably. Or him. Or herself. We'll never know if she did, or why.”

“But you tried to find your father, and you couldn't?”

“Right. He's listed as Unknown in the official birth records in Omaha, and when I tracked down a few of Mom's so-called friends from that time, I realized that if he was anything like them, I'd probably be better off not finding him. So that was that.”

“I'm sorry, Brett.”

“Me too. But why are you asking about
your
father now?”

“I just wanted to know . . . what was his name?”

“You're kidding, right?”

“No.”

“Why would you want to go dredging all that up again after all these years? Why can't you leave well enough alone?”

“What was his name, Brett?”

After a very long pause, her brother said, “You know his name: Allen Taylor. You were going to be named after him if you were a boy, but—”

“I know that,” she cut in impatiently, all too familiar with the story of her birth, which her brother—never her mother—had shared with her, years ago. Many times.

He'd delighted in telling her that her father went around telling everyone he met that Mom had better be carrying a boy, because he'd always wanted a son of his own. That in itself was insensitive, considering that Allen Taylor was the only father Brett had ever known, though he'd never formally adopted him. But he wanted an Al Junior, the story went; instead, he got a daughter. She became his namesake, in a way:
Al's son
became
Allison
. That was how Brett explained it.

“Well, you were named after Mom,” Allison once told him when she was a little girl, feeling sorrier for her big brother than she did for herself.

“So what? She changed hers to Taylor when she got married. Now I'm the only Downing in the house.”

“No, I mean her first name. She's Brenda, and you're Brett. It's almost the same thing.”

“No, it isn't,” Brett said darkly. “It's not the same thing at all.”

Of course, he was right. It wasn't the same thing. Allison had two parents. Brett just had one.

But then, after her own father left, so did she.

And then there were none.

Tonight, there was no pushing the ugly truth to the back of her mind as she usually did whenever it popped up. Tonight, she wanted to get to the bottom of it, once and for all.

“Mom called him Al,” she told her brother, “and I always thought it was short for Allen, but—”

“It was.”

“Spelled A-L-L-E-N? Or A-N? One L or two? One A or two?” Not that it mattered. She'd plugged every combination into the search engine, to no avail.

“Two Ls, one A,” Brett said tersely. “Why?”

“Because I tried to find him.”

“Why? You actually want to see him again, after the way he left?”

I don't know
.
I don't know what I want.

Aloud, she said, “No. I don't want to
see
him. I was just curious about what ever happened to him. And I thought maybe Al could have been short for something else. I tried it spelled different ways, and I tried Alex, and Alvin, and—”

“It wasn't. It was Allen,” he says in his flat Midwestern accent that makes it into
Ay-al-an.

“Are you sure?”

“Look, Allison, I don't get why you're trying to find him after all these years. I mean, did he ever try to find you?”

“I don't know. Maybe.”

“You really believe that?”

“Maybe,” she said again. Something about talking to her brother made her feel like a stubborn child all over again, believing in . . .

What? Her daddy? Fairy-tale endings?

“Did you find any documents lying around when we moved out after Mom died, Brett?” she persisted. “Like their marriage license, or his birth certificate? Anything like that?”

“You really think Mom would have kept them?”

Remembering how her mother had nearly burned down the house destroying every last photo of her father, she said, “I guess not. But it's like he vanished without a trace.”

“Exactly. That was the way he wanted it. That's the way you should leave it.”

“You didn't want to leave it that way. After Mom died, you said you were going to look for him.”

“I thought it was the responsible thing to do. You were a minor. He was your only living parent.”

He still is
, she thought.
If he's alive
.

“And you never came up with anything at all?”

“Dead end.”

Right. Just like now.

Realizing that she couldn't find him even if she wanted to, Allison leaned back against the futon cushion and closed her eyes, exhausted, frustrated, and angry.

But not at her father. Not this time.

Angry at herself.

This is your own fault. After all these years of leaving well enough alone, you had to go and look. And when you did, admit it—you weren't just thinking you'd find out what happened to him and leave it at that.

You were thinking you'd actually
find
him
.
Reconnect with him. Welcome him back into your life.

But that was never going to happen.

Not just because her father had made damned good and sure he'd covered his trail so that he'd be impossible to find, but because even if she
did
somehow manage to track him down, he wasn't going to be her long-lost daddy, grateful to have his little girl back.

“Face it, Allison. You're better off this way, just like I am. I mean, even more than I am. Chances are my own father didn't even know I existed. Yours did—and he left you. You're never going to see him again, but after what he did, I can't believe you even thought you wanted to.”

“I don't,” she told Brett, and this time, she meant it.

I
t hadn't been much of a date, Ralph thought, as he and Sue stopped to wait for the light at Central Park West and West Sixty-sixth Street. After a couple of drinks at a bar near Lincoln Center—which was completely dead on Tuesday evening—she'd abruptly announced that she had to get going.

It was probably just as well. She wasn't bad-looking. Not great-looking, either, though he wouldn't kick her out of bed.

But now that they were alone together, he realized he might have had the wrong idea about what tonight might hold. Occasionally, he glimpsed a fleeting spark in something she said or in her expression that did make him wonder if she was holding back. But he really didn't get the sense that she was playing hard to get—more that she wasn't connecting to him on any level. Or maybe she just didn't have much personality to begin with.

Whatever—it was time to put an end to the night.

“So are you going to walk me all the way home?” she asked, as the light changed and they started across the street.

Surprised by her sexy tone, he glanced over at her, and noticed a gleam in her eye. His pulse picked up again. Was it possible that he'd been right after all?

Wow. Never again would he complain about Juliana's monthly mood swings. Forget PMS, this Sue woman ran hot and cold like a two-handled faucet.

“Where do you live?”

“East Sixty-third.”

“Let's grab a cab,” he suggested, thinking she was probably going to invite him inside for a nightcap. So to speak.

“It's a nice night. I'd rather walk.”

“East Sixty-third's a hike from here, though.”

“We can cut through the park,” she said. “It's faster.”

It was also more dangerous. His mother had taught him never to set foot into the park after dark. But Ralph didn't want to appear less than manly, so he kept his fears to himself.

Into the park they went, surrounded by shadowy clumps of trees. There was traffic, of course—including a couple of cabs that went zipping past, dome lights indicating that they were available.

“Are you sure you want to walk?”

“Positive.”

Now he couldn't see her eyes, but her tone wasn't exactly sexy. It was almost brusque.

They walked deeper into the park. She was silent, striding along with her heavy-looking tote bag over her shoulder and both hands buried in the pockets of her coat. It was a long, bulky down parka, the kind you wore to keep warm, not to look good—or even halfway decent.

Juliana wouldn't be caught dead in a coat like that, even on the coldest day of the year. Or in the rubber rain boots Sue was wearing—though it wasn't really even raining.

Ralph tried to think of something to say. Something other than
Forget this, I'm going back.

Finally, just as those very words were about to spill off his tongue, Sue reached out and grabbed his arm. “I'm getting tired. Aren't you?”

Tired? No.

Pissed off? Hell, yes.

“We should stop and rest.” Her tone hinted that she didn't mean just
rest
.

Perking up immediately, he looked around, seeing only trees and shrubs and a couple of garbage cans. “There aren't any benches, so how about if we go back and grab a cab to—”

“Who needs a bench? There's a nice, secluded spot back in there where we can stretch out and . . . you know . . .
relax
.”

“You mean . . . on the ground?” His heart raced as he looked at the wooded spot where she was pointing.

“Sure, why not?”

Grinning, he allowed her to lead him off the path. Wait till he told Carlos about
this
.