by Lisa Gardner
Her chest rose and fell rapidly in the silence, her breath labored. Abruptly, she raised one hand and scrubbed her pale cheeks.
“Tamara,” he asked quietly, “are you all right?”
A shiver snaked through her body. “I don’t know what came over me. . . .”
“You had quite a shock.” He waited a moment and, when she still didn’t speak, asked, “Did you just find the scorpion on the floor?”
“No. The bed. In the middle. I went to sit down to take off my boots and . . .”
“And that probably scared the living daylights out of you.”
“Yes. It did.” She rubbed her arms, her head finally rising to look out her window. The emotion had left her face. Now her skin was the color of bone, her smooth cheeks and chiseled jaw like the face of a marble sculpture.
“Tamara, who is Ben?”
“Ben? He was my physical therapist.”
“I see,” C.J. said, but he didn’t. He didn’t understand why she had become so angry, and he was beginning to wonder if she knew. She was a study of contrasts, a strong, composed, professional woman who said she didn’t respond to kisses. An enraged, angry female who could pulverize a scorpion better than any marine.
He took a step toward her. Instantly she raised a hand, halting him.
“Please,” she whispered. “I just . . . I need some time to myself.” She looked at him finally. The shadows seemed to have darkened around her eyes. She appeared at once vulnerable and wary.
“You don’t have to be alone, Tamara. No, no . . .” he said when she opened her mouth to immediately argue. “I’m not hitting on you this time—that’s not what I meant. But you’ve been through a big shock—you’ve had a long day. If you’d like, I’ll stay here on the sofa. Sometimes it’s nice to have someone around.”
She hesitated, her gaze going from him to the sofa to him. He could tell the idea appealed to her at least a little bit. But then she drew herself up, the fierce, independent, stubborn woman winning out.
“I appreciate your offer, but I’m fine. Honest. It was just a scorpion. I’ll call hotel management and have them take care of it.”
“Like you called your mechanic to take care of your car.”
“What . . . what do you mean?”
“I don’t know, Tamara, you tell me. First you have a problem with your brake lines in a car that shouldn’t have problems with a brake line, then you find a live scorpion in a room that shouldn’t have problems with scorpions.”
“I guess I’m having an unlucky week.”
“Sounds like a rather dangerous one to me.”
“C.J., please. It’s just coincidence. Don’t be making more out of this than is necessary.”
“Tamara, if something was going on, would you tell me?”
“You don’t even know me. We’re just two strangers—”
“Thank you,” he interrupted quietly. “That answers my question.” Abruptly, he was angry with her. No, frustrated. Tired of being knocked down when he was honestly trying to be helpful. The distance between them grew tense and unhappy. A rift had appeared in their very tenuous relationship, and he didn’t feel like mending it.
He wanted her to make some effort. Instead, as minute turned into minute, she brought her chin up stubbornly and squared her shoulders.
That did it. He headed for the door. There was a certain point where a man went from being a romantic to being a fool. Of course, after opening the door, he hesitated just long enough to give her a second chance at reaching out.
She didn’t take it.
• • •
He exited stage right, and Tamara was left standing all alone with only her pride to protect her.
Finally, she closed the door, fastened the bolt lock and retrieved her gun from her purse. Long after housekeeping came and removed the dead scorpion, she remained sitting in a dark corner, eyes peeled, gun ready, for a danger she couldn’t name.
She thought of the anger that had possessed her when she’d started to beat the scorpion, the white-hot rage that this thing would try to hurt her. She’d been so angry, she hadn’t recognized her own self. It was as if some dark, gnashing beast had taken over. Something ugly and hurting and feral. Then C.J. was trying to tell her it would be all right and the beast had turned on him. It would not be all right. Other people did not make things all right. Other people died and left you alone.
She rested her forehead on her knees and squeezed her eyes shut.
She didn’t know where any of the emotions had come from. She didn’t know what had possessed her, or why she had lashed out at C.J. like a madwoman. She was the cool, composed businesswoman. She was the determined person who’d taught herself how to walk even when her body had hated her. She had put tragedy behind her and built a successful career.
There was nothing to be angry about anymore.
Five days in Sedona, and she was unraveling like a cheaply woven sweater.
Get a grip, Tamara. Get a grip.
• • •
She tried to sleep, but the nightmares snatched it away. She was at the Chapel of the Holy Cross, the cross-shaped church carved in rock that had helped make Sedona famous. She was looking for her family. She was supposed to meet them here for services. She was supposed to find Shawn.
She stood at the arching, cross-shaped window, looking out at Sedona’s soaring red rocks and pressing her cheek against the cold glass. The church was so unbearably silent.
She walked across the tiny chapel, hunting beneath the pews for her family, gazing up at the vaulted ceiling as if they were hiding from her there. But she couldn’t find her parents. She couldn’t find Shawn.
She stood alone in the middle of the cold, empty church.
Why did you take them from me? And why did you let me live?
How could you have been so cruel?
But she couldn’t find her parents, she couldn’t find Shawn, and even in the church of her childhood, she could no longer find God.
• • •
She woke up with a start. The clock glowed three a.m. The exhaustion pressed against her and made her limbs heavy. She crawled out of bed, anyway, pulled herself together and formulated a new plan.
• • •
After tossing out two drunks and breaking up one brawl, C.J. finally closed up the Ancient Mariner and made it home. His mood hadn’t improved since leaving Tamara, and he was definitely looking forward to a long night’s sleep. In the morning, he told himself grumpily, he’d figure out the rest. In the morning.
He’d just dozed off when the phone rang.
“No,” he moaned from beneath the covers.
The phone rang again.
“Absolutely not. It’s three in the morning.”
The phone rang a third time.
“Dammit!” He snatched the receiver off the phone and dragged it beneath the covers. “What?” he demanded to know, still refusing to open his eyes for the occasion.
“Temper, temper,” a distinctly male voice drawled. “Am I interrupting something? Please tell her I said hi.”
“Brandon!” C.J. scowled, gave up on getting any sleep in the near future and sat up in bed, raking his hand through his hair. Since his wife’s death three years ago, Brandon had been traveling the globe in a rambling, restless fashion eerily similar to their father, Max. The last time C.J. had seen his brother was a year ago when Brandon had returned to Oregon to help rescue their sister, Maggie, who had been taken hostage by an escaped murderer, Cain Cannon. A former investment banker, Brandon had supplied a six-digit reward and his razor-sharp intellect. C.J. had brought guns and considerable other skills.
Maggie had stunned them both by saving herself and then turning around and marrying the man. Go figure.
“Brandon, where the hell are you, and why can’t you remember the time zone the rest of us are in?”
“It’s three a.m. where you are.”
“Thanks.”
“And tomorrow here in Iceland.”
<
br /> “What?”
“Iceland. You’re right. The country is beautiful.”
For a moment, C.J. was too stunned to speak. He knew Iceland. After his mother had died, Max had taken him to Europe ostensibly on business. A few months later, Max had announced that they deserved a vacation, and they’d gone to Iceland. For two weeks, they’d stayed up all night to enjoy twenty-three hours of sunlight. They’d hung out in bars with the grinning, happy locals, who could toss back beer like nobody’s business. Twelve-year-old C.J. had gotten his first taste of vodka and his first hangover. His father had taken him horseback riding across the breathtaking green landscape.
And for one moment, C.J. had forgotten the dirt and graffiti of Sunset Boulevard. He forgot cracked sidewalks filled with too many people who’d given up on their dreams. He forgot the nights he’d gone to bed hungry because he’d given all the food he could scrounge to his coughing, feverish mother. He forgot the hot, angry tears that had dribbled down his cheeks as he’d held her hand and watched her die, still calling for the man she insisted was the love of her life—Max Ferringer.
C.J. forgot some of his hatred. He saw Max as the strong, laughing, exotic hero his mother had claimed him to be. And for two weeks, he’d been proud to be Maximillian’s son.
Two months later, C.J. was on a farm in Tillamook, Oregon, while a grandma he barely knew quietly told him his father wouldn’t be picking him up. His plane had gone down in Indonesia. A search party was still trying to find his body.
“Why are you in Iceland?” C.J.’s voice was sharper than he wanted it to be.
“I’ve never been.”
“Dammit!” C.J. no longer tried to hide his anger. “This is me you’re talking to, Brandon. Don’t play your slick, Ivy League double-speak games with me. You think Maggie and I don’t know what you’re up to? Do you think we’re not worried sick about the way you’re treating yourself? When I saw you last year, you looked liked you’d dropped a good thirty pounds. Maggie complains that you’ve forgotten how to smile. For God’s sake, if you don’t care about yourself, at least think of Maggie and Lydia. They deserve a helluva lot better than—”
“Another Max?”
“You said it, Brandon, not me.”
There was a long silence filled with the crackling static of under-the-ocean phone cables. “Did you know that Iceland is one of the most volcanic regions on earth?” Brandon asked abruptly.
C.J. scowled, hating the way Brandon could so easily change topics. The man was scary bright, and his stint as a Wall Street investment banker had given him a hard edge that C.J. at once respected and abhorred. “Gee, Brandon, sitting in Arizona at three a.m., no, I had not contemplated that Iceland was one of the most volcanic regions on the planet. But thanks for the geography lesson.”
“So is Indonesia.”
“So?”
“So don’t you think there could be some connection here?” Brandon asked.
C.J. blinked his eyes a few times; then he shook his head. “No. No way. There is no connection between Max’s vacation with me in Iceland and his plane going down in Indonesia. For God’s sake, Brandon, the man hit about every country there was. It was what he did. Given your itinerary for the last few years, you ought to know that better than anyone.”
“Haven’t you ever wondered what Max actually did for a living?”
“He was an importer-exporter,” C.J. said blithely.
“Didn’t you ever wonder where all his money came from?”
“Maggie’s and your mothers,” C.J. zinged, then bit his own tongue. “Sorry,” he said after a moment. “That was unfair.”
“Yes,” Brandon said quietly, “but I understand.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. There was nothing Brandon, C.J. and Maggie wouldn’t do for one another, and in that sense, Lydia’s plan had worked. But Max still hung between them. They had shared different experiences with him and had come to terms with him in their own ways. C.J. tried hard not to resent the fact that Max had married his half siblings’ mothers when he’d refused to marry C.J.’s. Brandon and Maggie tried not to resent that for one year, C.J. had gotten to live with Max. More than any of them, he’d spent time with their enigmatic, unreachable father.
“Brandon, why are you doing this? Maggie, Lydia and I are beginning to really worry about you. For God’s sake, let Max go. Let Julia go.”
“I can’t.”
“You need to get a job again.”
“And make more money?” Brandon’s laughter was harsh. “No thanks.”
“Brandon,” C.J. sighed, but his older brother wouldn’t let him finish.
“I think there’s a connection,” he announced suddenly. “C.J., I think Max had something to do with Julia’s death.”
“What? Brandon, your wife was killed by a mugger in Central Park. And it was horrible and it was tragic and God, Brandon, I would do anything I could to help you, but this is insane—”
“Listen to me. Julia was working on a surprise birthday present for me when she died—a complete family history. To do that, she’d been researching Max. I found files, C.J., with articles she’d clipped, notes about his business partners. Julia was an academic, a research fiend. Once she got started . . . I think she may have asked too many questions. I think . . . I think she may have rocked the boat.”
“What boat?”
“I don’t know.” Brandon clipped the words out. “But don’t try to pretend our father was normal. He was not normal. Our mothers knew nothing about him. We don’t know anything about him. Not even Lydia understands the man he became. Why don’t we know more about him?”
“Why do we care?” C.J. was yelling. So was the normally reserved Brandon. The subject of Max was never without emotion.
“Because he was our father! And I want to know. I want to know exactly what kind of man—”
“Abandons his wives? Abandons his children?”
“Exactly!”
“Brandon,” C.J. groaned, “you’re obsessing. You’ve been obsessing since the day Julia died. Come on, get over it! Move on with your life. And leave Max alone. He was always best from a distance.”
“I can’t.”
“Brandon—”
“I’m going to continue this, C.J. I have to.”
The line went dead. C.J. was left sitting in bed, clutching the phone and swearing into the darkness. Damn, damn, damn. After all these years, Max was still messing with their minds. Dammit, he was still messing with their minds.
• • •
Tamara didn’t know what she was doing. She did it, anyway. At four a.m., she entered the El Dorado Hotel and Conference Center in black jeans and a dark gray cashmere turtleneck. The outfit would have screamed “Stop, Thief!” if not for the deep green raincoat she had belted over it. Her gun was tucked into the small of her back. She had a flashlight, notepad and pen tucked in her coat’s deep pockets. And she was working very hard at not hunching her shoulders and skulking through the hotel.
There was hardly anyone in the lobby at this time of night. The front desk was manned only by a dutiful night clerk and droopy-looking bellboy. She walked by them as if she had every reason to be there and headed down the vast main hall leading to the ballrooms. Chandeliers winked overhead. Marble tables with elaborate, wrought-iron pedestals boasted huge arrangements of larger-than-life cacti. Silk flowers in rich pink, burnt orange and deep red gave the illusion of blooms even in October. Elaborate mirrors reflected her image back to her a dozen times over.
She discovered quickly that the ballroom doors of the Brennan campaign headquarters were solidly locked. She tugged on them once, then twice, as if that would help.
She glanced down the huge hallway and waited to see if the bellboy was running after her. In the distance, he was flipping through a magazine and rubbing his temple. She looked back at the door. She was a public relations executive, for God’s sake. She knew how to package the most mundane lock as a complete home security system, but she
had no idea how to force one open. She chewed on her lower lip.
Go home, Tamara. Get some sleep. You’re exhausted. You’re losing your grip. How many hours have you even slept since arriving in Sedona? Ten? Eight? Six?
She couldn’t go back to her hotel room. She couldn’t bear the thought of crawling into bed and trying to sleep. She just couldn’t.
She moved down to the end of the hallway, found a door marked Employees Only and ducked into the bowels of the hotel. Gray concrete floors and exposed pipes haunted her passage. She encountered doorway after doorway, peering through each tiny window into an inky blackness her eyes couldn’t penetrate. One by one, she tried the doorknobs. Some were locked. Some were open. Obviously, the hotel staff was lax about such things. How lucky could she get?
The fifth door led her into an antechamber she recognized. From it, she walked into the gaping black hole that was the campaign war room. She stood in the middle with her flashlight, feeling the silence throb around her like a drum. The cold air curled around her cheek. The empty metal chairs and abandoned tables made her feel hollow.
She was shivering.
Find Mrs. Winslow’s desk, Tamara. Just find Mrs. Winslow’s desk.
Mary Winslow had been an active member of Senator Brennan’s various campaigns for the last fifteen years. She’d served as his head lieutenant in Sedona on the last three. There was nothing done on Senator Brennan’s behalf in Sedona that Mrs. Winslow did not know about and approve. Hopefully, that included car rentals.
Why would she keep car rental agreements that were ten years old? What do you really think you’ll find, Tamara?
She cut off her own doubts and sat down at Mrs. Winslow’s desk. Placing her flashlight upright on the desk like a lantern, she booted up Mrs. Winslow’s PC.
An arm swept around her neck and clamped over her mouth. One instant she was sitting nervously on the edge of a metal chair; the next she was dragged up and flattened against a wall. She cried out, but a callused palm muffled the scream. She lashed out with her foot, and muscled thighs clamped her legs. She began to struggle in earnest. The man pressed his full body against her, his arm trapping her arms, her breasts flattened by his torso.
