by Joyce Lamb
Mac couldn’t stop himself from grinning in spite of the lingering hurt. Noah had seen something between him and Sam. Maybe he’d gotten another vibe. “Probably not.”
“The point is that you’re going to have to keep close tabs on her. As soon as she gets another opportunity, she’s going to bolt. She made a mistake letting you bring her here.”
“She needs her sisters.”
“She needs her sisters to be safe, and in her mind, as long as she’s around, no one is safe.”
“Unless we find a way to take care of the guy after her.”
“That’s going to take some time. And he might not be alone. He could have the entire might of the federal government behind him.”
“I don’t know about that. He seems like a lone wolf to me.”
“Sam’s a psychic spy. You think people like her are easy to come by? The feds might do everything they possibly can to get her back.”
“They can’t force her to—”
“I’m just warning you that this isn’t going to get resolved overnight.”
Mac sighed. “And it’s already been such a cakewalk.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Where have you been the past fourteen years, Sam? What’s with all the mystery?”
Charlie sounded as exhausted as Sam felt. The fact that Sam was the one who’d exhausted her just made her feel worse. But she had a bigger concern at the moment. “You didn’t finish telling me about what’s happening with Alex.”
Instead of answering, Charlie got up from the sofa and walked into the kitchenette.
Sam swallowed against the anxiety growing in her throat. Disappointment that this couldn’t be a happy reunion added to the tension, along with the urgent need to stride the four steps to the hotel room door, open it and walk out. Sad, considering how desperately she’d yearned to come home the past fourteen years. Never once had it occurred to her that maybe home didn’t want her anymore.
She swiped a finger at a brimming tear and cursed her inability to control her emotions. She blamed Mac. He’d opened her up when she hadn’t remembered the vital importance of remaining closed, when N3’s ruthless drugs had taken her memory and her defenses.
Maybe she should blame hormones, too, now that she thought about it.
Resting her head against the back of the club chair, she closed her eyes and concentrated on getting it together. If Charlie couldn’t stand to be in the room with her, then she’d deal. She’d dealt with worse over the years. She’d most likely deal with worse in the near future. But, God, it hurt. So much for the unconditional love of family. Not that she begrudged her sister her anger. If the positions had been reversed—
“Here.”
Sam snapped her eyes open. Charlie stood beside the chair, a coffee cup in each hand, one extended toward her. “I figure we’re both going to need caffeine for this.”
Sam knew her eyes shimmered as she accepted the steaming cup, because the fierce lines in Charlie’s forehead smoothed out and the compressed line of her lips softened.
“Thank you,” Sam said, her voice hitching.
Charlie resettled on the sofa but instead of sitting back, she perched on the front half of the cushions with her elbows braced on her knees and the cup cradled in her hands. “You think I’m not happy to see you.”
“Can’t say I blame you.”
Charlie smiled faintly. “I’ve been mad at you for a long time.”
“Can’t blame you for that, either.”
“This just isn’t how I pictured your homecoming.”
“I’m sorry for the way it’s happened. It’s not fair to any of you.”
“Would you be here now if you didn’t need help?”
“I lost my memory. I didn’t know who to go to for help. And Mac . . . Mac saved my life.”
“Woo hoo, Mac.” Charlie paused, eyes briefly narrowing then widening as though she’d put two and two together and had come up with Sam and Mac. She quickly got over it, apparently, because she said, “Not an answer, though. Would you be here now?”
Sam worried her bottom lip between her teeth. Charlie always had been a reporter to the core. Dogged with the questions, perceptive as all hell, quick to notice when the key questions were dodged. “No, I wouldn’t be here now.”
“Where would you be?”
“Dead, probably.”
A muscle under Charlie’s right eye twitched. “Then I’m glad you’re here, regardless of how it happened.”
Sam swallowed and nodded. “Me, too.”
“Why did you leave? All these years, we’ve never known.”
“Are you deliberately avoiding the subject of our kid sister?”
“I’m thinking I’m entitled to answers first, considering.”
She studied Charlie for a long moment, getting a read on her emotions. Wariness. Relief. Curiosity. Resentment. Underlying them all: fear, worry, helplessness. Sam wasn’t the only issue churning Charlie’s insides. And that churned Sam’s even more. Something was seriously wrong with Alex.
If Charlie wanted answers first, then Sam would provide as many as she could. “Dad isn’t . . . my biological father.”
Instead of disbelief or shock, Charlie seemed to think for a minute, several different emotions—surprise, comprehension, sadness—flitting through her eyes before she sat back, coffee cup resting on her thigh. “Well, that explains a lot.”
“Does it?”
“Mom’s been a wench our entire lives. I figured it had to be something big.” She frowned. “Sad thing is that I kind of thought Dad cheated on her way back when, and that’s why he’s stuck with her all this time despite her broom-ready personality.”
Sam’s lips quirked into a sad smile. “So she hasn’t changed.”
“Nope.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
“I’m sorry I left you to deal with her alone. My plan, after I found my father and his family, was to come back for you and Alex.”
“But things didn’t go as expected.” It wasn’t a question.
“Not even close.”
“So how did it go with your dad?”
“Dad is my dad. Ben Dillon was the guy who knocked up Mom. I’d known him about a year when he got himself killed during a con gone bad.”
“God, Sam.”
“He used me. It sucked.”
“Understatement.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t much better for our mother,” Sam said. “He bailed on her after she got pregnant. She must have fled her family and changed her name before she met Dad.”
“Do you think Dad knows you aren’t his?” Charlie asked. “Biologically, I mean.”
“If he does, it must not have mattered. He never treated me any differently than he treated you and Alex.”
“It’s more likely that Mom let him think you were his, and that’s why she’s so tense all the time. She’s terrified we’re going to discover her secret.”
“You came close the night you found that photo album in her dresser drawer,” Sam said. “That must be all that’s left of her past.”
“That and you.”
Sam gave her a rueful smile. “I was the daily reminder of how Ben Dillon screwed her over and dumped her. She might have been relieved to see me go.”
Charlie cocked her head, regarding her with searching eyes. “You said he died only a year after you found him. Why didn’t you come home after that?”
Sam hesitated as she thought of her years with Flinn Ford and N3. Every detail was classified. “I can’t—”
“I know it’s bad. I can tell by looking at you.”
Sam glanced down at her cup. Ripples in the coffee gave away the tremors in her hands. “Well.”
“Don’t take that the wrong way,” Charlie said quickly. “You’re beautiful. Gorgeous. You always have been. But life has been hard on you. Your eyes . . . they look . . . God, Sam, your eyes look old and sad. It kills me that I don’t know why, that I can’t make i
t better.”
Sam covered her mouth with one hand, swallowing convulsively against the raw emotion clawing up from her chest.
Charlie moved fast, rescuing Sam’s wobbling coffee cup and setting it aside before kneeling beside her chair and clasping both hands in a firm, unyielding grip.
They stiffened at the same time, and Sam saw herself through her sister’s eyes.
Oh my God, it’s Sam! It has to be Sam! She’s really here. God, my heart is about to pound right out of my chest.
She looks the same. Older, sure, but the same.
But what the heck is she doing in the hall, looking so . . . stricken? Like she’s lost the best friend she’s ever had. Could that be Mac?
Wait. Oh, hell. She’s leaving. She came all this way, and now she’s running again.
Damn it. Damn her.
As Sam fell out of Charlie’s memory, she took several deep breaths to calm her racing pulse and loosen the tightness banded around her ribs. But it was only temporary. All that coiled anxiety would be back soon enough.
“You’re in love with Mac,” Charlie said, voice soft.
Sam focused on her sister’s gold-flecked eyes as realization shuddered through her. While Sam had taken a trip into Charlie’s memory, Charlie had taken a trip into Sam’s. “You’re empathic,” Sam said, her tone filled with wonder. “How? I mean . . . I didn’t think you were when I left Lake Avalon.”
Charlie sat back on her heels, keeping Sam’s hands gripped in hers, as though she feared letting go might encourage her to slip away. “Had a run-in with a cousin Mom never told us about. Maybe you met that side of the family when you found Ben Dillon?”
“No. He was estranged from them. I know next to nothing about them.”
After releasing Sam’s hands, Charlie reclaimed her spot on the sofa and picked up her coffee. “Long story short: I was touching our cousin when she died, and we think her power mingled with mine to double-charge it.”
“Wow.”
“That’s what I said. After several days of freaking out. So . . . Mac?”
Sam gave her sister a small smile. “I hope that’s okay. I know you have a history.”
“I’m just . . . aren’t you going to leave again?”
Sam winced. “It’s complicated.”
“I got that when I was in your head.”
She couldn’t quell her instant apprehension. Did Charlie know about other things? “What else did you get?”
“Nothing much,” Charlie said. “My empathy is imprecise. I get a brief flash of something, and that’s it. It can be damned confusing, but it’s better than what Alex has to deal with.”
“She’s empathic, too? No wonder Mom’s been a basket case all these years. She was surrounded by daughters who might or might not have been psychic and could have discovered her secrets at any moment.”
“Believe it or not, Mom’s got the curse. I’ve never seen her in action, but Alex got a hit off her indicating that when she was a teenager, she used her ability to con people out of money.”
“That’s what my father did,” Sam said. “He told me that his family and Mom’s family were part of a band of grifters. More than a decade before I showed up, they started to scatter. By the time I located Ben, he was among only a few left in the area that served as their home base. He said he didn’t know why Mom took off, other than he thought she was having an abortion.”
“I’ve got that piece of the puzzle,” Charlie said. “Alex flashed on Mom discovering a man right after he’d committed suicide. She’d helped con him out of a bunch of money then felt guilty and tried to return it. She was too late. She must have taken off right after that.”
“In search of a better life.” Ironic, Sam thought. That’s why she’d taken off fourteen years ago, determined to find someone more fit than her mother to be family. She’d headed in the completely wrong direction.
Charlie sighed. “Mom found that better life with Dad. It’s kind of romantic, when you think about it.”
Laughing softly, Sam rubbed at her eyes. “God, I was an idiot to take off like I did.”
“If Mom had told us the truth from the start, maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Sam smiled. Leave it to Charlie to bottom-line it, though Sam figured her teen self would still have been determined to meet her biological father.
Leaning forward, Sam retrieved her coffee from the table and inhaled the enticing aroma. Her stomach growled, but she didn’t drink. Was it silly to worry about caffeine’s effects on an unborn child after all the drugs she’d been given?
“Are you hungry?” Charlie asked suddenly. “I haven’t had breakfast.”
“There’s food in the fridge. Mac’s boss set us up very well.”
“Simon Walker’s my boss, too. Great guy for a billionaire.”
As they walked into the kitchenette, Charlie said, “Simon saved the newspaper. Did you know that?”
“Mac told me, yes.”
As Sam opened a cupboard and reached for bagels, Charlie whipped open the fridge and peered inside. “Did he also tell you Simon had to swoop in after I defied Dad and single-handedly killed the paper by writing a big story about a crooked advertiser?”
Sam arched her brows. “Nope. Didn’t mention that.”
Charlie smiled. “God, he was pissed. Mac, I mean. He’d just become managing editor. Dad, believe it or not, was proud of me.”
Sam paused, hands full of bagels and eyes filling with tears. “I miss him, Charlie. I miss Dad. I hope he can forgive me.”
“Forgive you for what? You went looking for answers. You didn’t become a journalist like Alex and I did, but you still went looking for the truth. I bet you stand for truth and justice as vehemently as Alex and I do, just in a different way. It’s kind of in our DNA.”
Sam didn’t respond for a long moment while she liberated the bagels from their packaging and popped one into the toaster. She didn’t tell her sister that she didn’t know anymore what she stood for. She’d thought she worked on the side of truth and justice, but Flinn Ford could have manipulated every aspect of her life for the past fourteen years, rather than just the part where he’d blackmailed her into working for him. And drugged her. And used her. And killed her best friend.
Sam shook the distressing thoughts from her head—she’d deal with all of that soon enough—and watched Charlie pry the lid off a tub of whipped cream cheese.
“Should we yell at the guys to come get something?” Sam asked as she got a knife out of the drawer.
“Nah, I’ve never known Noah to go hungry. If he wants something, he’ll come looking. Mac, too.” Charlie started slathering a healthy glob of cream cheese on half of an untoasted bagel. “You know what I miss?”
Sam smiled at the warmth that infused her as she and her sister shared something as mundane as bagel prep. “What?”
“Those omelets you used to make. The ones with the ham and onions and peppers? I haven’t had an omelet that good since you left. Do you still make those?”
Sam shook her head. “It’s been a long time.”
“Do you cook at all like you used to? I swear I haven’t eaten a decent meal in fourteen years.”
“I gave that up when I left.”
“We need to work on that, then. It’s just not right to let talent like that go to waste.”
Sam swallowed against the renewed tightness of emotion. Charlie talked as though all would be well again. And Sam knew it wouldn’t.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Flinn sat in the corner booth of Mama Mo’s in downtown Lake Avalon. The diner buzzed with the activity of morning customers as they washed down biscuits and gravy, ham and eggs, bacon and hash browns with copious amounts of coffee and chatter. The Florida sun blazed through the clean windows, casting in sharp relief the differences in the customers. Where the visitors, in shorts and T-shirts, smiled and laughed and planned their excursions for the day, the workday crowd, most in business casual, paged through t
he newspaper or talked self-importantly on cell phones.
Flinn’s own phone chirped, and he pulled it out of his inside jacket pocket. There’d better damn well be some good fucking news coming his way.
“Nat,” he said in greeting.
“Good morning, sir.”
“What’ve you got for me?” He wasn’t in the mood for chitchat after the restless night he’d had.
“Got a hit on some guests at the Hotel Sandpiper in St. Petersburg.”
He paused to smile. Natalie had disappointed him by admiring Toby’s intellect over his own, but Flinn had a forgiving nature, especially when he got what he wanted. “Tell me.”
“Simon Walker, CEO of Walker Media, is a regular at the Sandpiper. He also owns the newspaper in Lake Avalon.”
Flinn nodded, a renewed eagerness spurting adrenaline into his bloodstream. “Where both Hunter and Charlie work.”
“I called Mr. Walker’s assistant and posed as the Sandpiper’s customer relations manager checking on whether Mr. Walker required anything special for his visit. She said she’d already confirmed that his special requests had been taken care of.”
“Special requests?”
“Yes. He asked for some new clothing and other items, for both men and women, to be delivered to his suite.” Natalie paused. “There’s more.” She had a smile in her voice.
“Please continue.”
“According to business news reports online, Mr. Walker is in Denver for a media conference this week. He’s giving the keynote address this evening.”
Flinn began to grin. “It sounds as though we’ve found our wayward operative, Nat.”
“I’m e-mailing you directions from Lake Avalon to the Sandpiper as we speak. It’s about a three-hour drive, depending on traffic.”
“Nat, you make me proud.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Where’s Marco? I want him to accompany me.”
“He’s helping with the setup of the medical facility you requested. He and Dr. Ames secured an abandoned veterinary clinic in a Lake Avalon neighborhood that flooded last summer. They assembled a team of workers and hope to have it ready late this afternoon.”
