“He’s a good soldier, too,” Jake replied.
“I believe Dan said you served together before you left the military. Are you retired, maybe playing golf full-time?” Chloe asked, curious.
Jake laughed, his teeth a flash of white in his tanned face. “Not hardly. I started my own company when I left the Marine Corps more than five years ago—Morrissey Demolition. We’re headquartered just south of Pioneer Square. And two years ago, my reserve unit was called up and I was on active duty for twelve months. I’ve been back in Seattle running the company again for the past year.”
“How interesting. What exactly do you demolish?”
“Large buildings, mostly. We also have a contract with the Colville Tribe’s construction company. We remove boulders and rock from logging roads on their reservation in eastern Washington.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Chloe tried to envision working with explosives on a daily basis.
“Not if you know what you’re doing.” Jake shrugged. “I specialized in explosives in the military, and my crew has years of experience in this kind of work.”
“Chloe,” the reporter called, “will you join us, please?”
“Excuse me.” Chloe walked over to the small group surrounding Dan.
“You have a very attractive granddaughter, Mrs. Abbott,” Jake said, watching Chloe as she bent to talk to Dan.
“Yes, I know.”
Jake turned his head and his gaze met Winifred’s, her green eyes shrewd as she studied him.
“You aren’t the first man to admire Chloe,” she said. She tilted her head, and a small smile raised the corners of her mouth. “But I must say you’re the first one I’ve thought had serious potential.”
“Potential?” Jake repeated warily.
“Chloe is a strong-willed woman,” Winifred continued as if Jake hadn’t spoken. “And very bright. Just like my son and me, she stayed on to become a professor at the University of Washington after graduating magna cum laude.”
“Is that right?” Jake said evenly. “I have an engineering degree but I earned it in bits and pieces. The Marines moved me around fairly often.”
Winifred waved her hand dismissively. “It’s not about where a person is educated, it’s about how intelligent that person is in all aspects of his or her life.” She leaned closer. “My husband never went to college, but he was one of the most intelligent men I’ve ever known. Well rounded, that’s the important thing.”
Jake nodded without commenting, his eyes returning to Chloe.
“She teaches English at the University of Washington,” Winifred said. “Her office is in Liberty Hall, although I believe I’ll let you find out her phone number yourself. And Chloe recently bought a nice little house in the Queen Anne District. Where do you live, Mr. Morrissey?”
“I have an apartment on the top floor of the building I own, near Pioneer Square.” Jake grinned, amused by Winifred’s no-nonsense approach. “I’m also healthy, my bank account isn’t overdrawn, I’ve never been married and I don’t have any children. What do you think, Mrs. Abbott? Do I pass inspection?”
She laughed, her eyes gleaming with approval. “Yes, son, you pass. Now all you need to do is convince Chloe.”
“That might take a while. I’m heading back to Vegas tonight to finish a job. It’ll be four or five days before I’m back in Seattle.”
Winifred nodded. “Then I’ll expect you to attend my monthly brunch two weeks from this Sunday, promptly at 1:00 p.m. I assume you’ll be bringing Chloe?”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll certainly try.” Jake chuckled. The old lady was a force to be reckoned with. If Chloe was anything like her grandmother, he was in for a hell of a trip.
The Seattle Tribune lay open on the table. The article and photos taken at the UW Medical Center took up half of page six.
Rage hissed and uncoiled in his belly, spreading its heat through his veins. His fingers curled into fists, creasing the edges of the newspaper.
He reread the paragraphs, his morning routine disrupted as he ignored his customary breakfast of half a grapefruit and a single slice of rye toast, cut in a precise line from corner to corner. The mug of Starbucks coffee grew cold while he stared at the picture.
Three civilians stood next to a wounded solder in a wheelchair. The caption identified the patient as a marine private. The white-haired older woman was Winifred Abbott, a founding member of the Seattle Women’s Club. The club’s fund-raising had purchased the rehab equipment being used by the recovering marine. On Winifred’s left was a late-twenties brunette identified as her granddaughter, Chloe Abbott.
He didn’t have to read the name of the man standing to the right of Chloe Abbott. Jake Morrissey was all too familiar. He’d meticulously researched Morrissey for the past year and tracked his schedule and whereabouts for the past two months. Morrissey currently had a contract to implode a casino in Las Vegas; the demolition crew had been there for two weeks and weren’t due to return for another two days.
He’d been unaware of Morrissey’s return to Seattle this week. He was sure it wasn’t in the original plans for the Las Vegas job. He didn’t like it when schedules changed.
The Tribune article said Master Sergeant Morrissey had once served overseas with the wounded marine.
This marine was alive.
Other young men serving with Morrissey hadn’t been so lucky.
The fresh-faced marine, the older woman, the granddaughter and Morrissey smiled directly at the camera in the group photo. In a second photo, Morrissey’s head was bent toward the younger woman, his lips brushing her ear as he whispered to her, and her hand rested on his forearm with intimate ease. The look on the ex-master sergeant’s face said Chloe Abbott meant something to him. Their body language hinted that they knew each other well.
Despite intense covert observation of Morrissey’s life over the past six weeks, he’d uncovered no evidence of close family members and only casual ties to women friends. Morrissey’s personal life appeared to lack anyone whose death would cause him the devastation and grief he deserved.
That situation had apparently changed.
At last. At long last.
Time for the revenge his soul craved. He had the woman’s name, and he’d check her out. This might be his chance to destroy Jake Morrissey’s life just as his had been destroyed.
All things come to those who wait.
“Perfect. It’s absolutely perfect.” Chloe Abbott cradled the rosewood mantel clock in her hands, turning it to inspect each side. Sunlight poured through the windows of the antique shop on Fourth Avenue in Seattle, gleaming off chests of silver, displays of china and crystal, and finding deep red highlights in the clock’s wooden box.
She couldn’t detect a single fault with it. The wood had the fine patina of age, and when the clock struck the hour, the carved doors on the front opened. The delicate figures of two dancers in Louis IV court dress popped out to twirl to the strains of a Strauss waltz.
“Gran’s going to love this.” Delighted, Chloe set the clock carefully on the glass counter. “Thank you so much for finding it for me.”
“I’m glad you like it.” The shop owner, a thin, elegant man in an impeccable gray suit and tie, abandoned his normal reserve and fairly beamed at her. “I knew the moment it came into the shop that it was meant for Winifred. There’s only one tiny detail that detracts from its value. Someone modified the clockworks to add a modern battery-operated alarm inside.”
“I don’t care, David, and I doubt Gran will, either.” Chloe’s eyes half closed as she swayed to the lilting music. “‘The Blue Danube’ was my grandfather’s favorite waltz. Gran told me they danced to it the night they became engaged.”
“I seem to recall Winifred telling me that story.”
Chloe opened her eyes and chuckled at his expression of fond indulgence. David McPherson had grown up with Chloe’s grandmother Winifred and grandfather Richard in the community of Ballard, only a few miles from the heart of down
town Seattle. In 1943 Winifred had signed on as an assistant to her father, a cryptographer employed in the Seattle section of the Office of Strategic Services, precursor to the CIA. That same year, Richard Abbott and Winifred were married four days before he and David donned army uniforms and marched off to war. They’d returned to Seattle to take up their lives after peace was won. Winifred had resumed her university studies, earning her doctorate and stayed on to become a professor of literature. Richard inherited Abbott Construction from his father, while David had opened an antique shop in downtown Seattle. Both men had been stunningly successful, and although David was widowed at forty-two and never had children, he’d been adopted into Richard and Winifred’s family. Chloe thought of him as a much-loved great-uncle.
Which was why, when she’d wanted a special gift to mark her grandmother’s eightieth birthday, she’d called on David.
“Of course you remember. You were probably at the same dance.”
His blue eyes twinkled. “I’m sure I was. In fact, I distinctly remember slipping money to the bandleader so he’d play the waltz at just the right moment.”
Chloe laughed and hugged him. “Clever, David, very clever.”
“Sometimes true love needs a helping hand,” he said sagely, patting her back.
“Hmm.” Chloe herself had never experienced true love, so she’d have to take his word for it. She stepped back and looked once more at the clock, gleaming in splendor on the glass counter. “I’ll buy it, of course. It’s wonderful.”
“Give me a few minutes to pack it properly.” David walked behind the counter and disappeared through a curtained doorway.
The antique bell mounted above the outer door chimed. Chloe smiled politely at the three older woman who entered the shop before her gaze moved on to the big display window. Outside, the sidewalks were busy, thronged with pedestrians walking briskly past. A solitary man stood motionless, looking through the glass into the interior of the shop. He was of average height and weight, dressed in khaki pants with a neatly pressed plaid shirt. Mirrored sunglasses concealed his eyes below the bill of a Mariners baseball cap that covered all but a glimpse of short-cropped black hair.
Chloe’s skin prickled and she shivered. She couldn’t see the man’s eyes behind the dark glasses, but she had the uneasy conviction that he was staring at her. Something about his absolute stillness was unnerving. How long had he been watching her?
“Here we are.” David returned with a cardboard box, tissue paper and an elegant plastic bag.
Chloe turned to look at David, and when she glanced back at the window, the man was gone. Shrugging off the unsettling moment, she leaned against the counter. “Where did you find the clock?”
He carefully wrapped the tissue paper around the mantel clock before slipping it into the white box with his shop logo, Elegance, in tasteful script across the top.
“At an estate sale in the Capitol Hill District. Fortunately,” David told her, taping the lid of the box closed, “I had the opportunity for a private viewing before the house was open to the public and I picked up several nice pieces, including this clock.”
“What else did you find?”
Chloe listened with interest as David pointed out the various newly acquired items in his chic, cluttered shop. Finally she said goodbye and left, the clock held safely in her arms within its multiple layers of packing.
She checked her watch. She had to lecture college freshmen on the basics of English composition at two o’clock. If she was lucky and there were no traffic snarls, she could make it back to the campus with ten minutes to spare. She quickened her steps as she headed toward her car and was soon driving north on Dexter Avenue before crossing the Fremont Bridge to hook up with Pacific Avenue on her way to Lake Union and the University District. The University spires were already in sight when her cell phone rang. She flipped open the phone, read the caller ID information and held the slim silver phone to her ear.
“Hi, Alexie, what’s up?”
“Did you get Gran’s present?” Chloe’s sister didn’t bother with a greeting.
“Yes, and it’s gorgeous. You’re going to love it.”
“Good. Which one of us is picking up the cake?”
“I will.”
“Excellent.” Alexie sounded relieved. “With Mom and Lily still in England, and you and me responsible for Gran’s birthday, I’m a little worried that we’ll forget something. Speaking of forgetting, why didn’t you tell me about the guy you met at the UW Medical Center?”
“What guy?”
“The guy kissing you in the Tribune photo.”
“Jake Morrissey? He wasn’t kissing me.”
“Ohh, yes, he was,” Alexie drawled. “And I cut out the photo to prove it. Oops, gotta run, I’m due in court in thirty minutes. We’ll discuss this later. Call me after work.”
Chloe turned off the phone and reached across the console to tuck it back into her purse.
She’d thought Jake was interested, maybe a lot interested.
But he hadn’t called. She frowned. The article and photos weren’t published in the Tribune until this morning’s edition, but the photos had been taken three days earlier. She’d been sure Jake would call and was surprised at how disappointed she felt that he hadn’t.
She nosed the Volvo into the stream of cars crossing the University Bridge and checked her watch again. By the time she turned onto Pacific Avenue and arrived at the north-central side of the university campus, she had just enough time to slip into a faculty parking space, grab her purse, briefcase and an armful of books, and dash across campus.
Halfway to Liberty Hall, she had the feeling that someone was following her. She looked over her shoulder, but although students crowded the sidewalk, none of their faces were familiar and none appeared to be paying particular attention to her. Frowning, she dismissed the oddly disturbing sensation and picked up her pace once again.
Chloe’s freshman English classes were held in one of the original brick university buildings. The small single-story hall was used as the first campus church but during the mid-1950s, had been converted into a classroom. Now it contained only one lecture theater, accessed by students via a steep flight of concrete stairs leading to the double oak doors at the front. Professors entered at the lectern level through a side door that opened directly onto a sidewalk and the campus lawns beyond.
When Chloe walked inside, the three hundred tiered theater seats were half-filled with students. She dropped her briefcase and books on the table.
“Professor Abbott?”
Chloe glanced up from organizing her lecture notes and reference books and smiled at the first-year student seated in the front row.
“Yes?”
“I read the article in the Tribune this morning—the one about the solider in rehab? The article said your grandmother was a codebreaker.”
“Yes, she worked for the Office of Strategic Services at a satellite office here in Seattle. Her father was a cryptographer working for the OSS and he hired her as his assistant when she was only eighteen years old. She loved the work.”
An hour later, Chloe assigned a three-page essay as homework. Class time had been used for a lively and passionate discussion fueled by the Seattle Tribune article with the photos of Dan West, and Chloe had encouraged students to voice their views. The papers were to explore the impact made on each student’s life by the wounding or death of American military personnel stationed around the globe.
“The essays are due next Wednesday. If you drop them through the door slot at my office, they have to be there no later than 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the sound of books slamming shut. “And don’t forget to take a copy of the handouts on the table next to the exit. The page-three article on the style of Jane Austen is part of your required reading for next week.”
She gathered up her books and slung her purse over her shoulder, making a mental note to confirm with the student editor about
using the Opinions section of the university newspaper. She’d promised her class the winning essay would be published in the column, and the editor had agreed.
The lectern-level exit door stood ajar, letting fresh air and the scent of flowers into the hall. With her arms full, Chloe bumped the door with her shoulder to open it and the heavy metal panel crashed into something solid just outside.
“Hey!”
Chloe peered around the edge of the door. The janitor perched on the ladder grabbed the wall next to the empty light socket above the doorjamb.
“Are you all right, Fred?”
“Yeah.” The dour, midfifties man frowned, his carrot-colored brows pulling down into a V over his beaky nose. “The light bulb isn’t, though.”
Chloe followed his gaze. Pieces of shattered glass lay on the concrete sidewalk. “I didn’t see you there behind the door. I’m so sorry.”
Fred grunted an acknowledgment and descended to the walkway. “I’ll have to go to the maintenance shop and get another bulb. I’m leaving the ladder here.”
He paused, looking at her pointedly, and Chloe waved at the lawn and busy campus beyond. “It’s safe from me. I’m going to my office.”
“Uh-huh.”
He eyed her suspiciously before Chloe walked briskly away. The taciturn man had worked at Liberty Hall, her campus office building, for the past year and he had yet to warm up to any casual conversation beyond “hello.” She glanced over her shoulder. He was moving the ladder, carefully arranging it against the side wall. Then he took a small hand broom and dustpan from his toolbox, knelt down and began to sweep up the broken glass.
He takes his job so personally, she thought. As though the university is his own private place. But then, that’s probably a good trait in a janitor.
Jake Morrissey shaded his eyes with one hand. Despite his sunglasses, the Las Vegas sun was blinding, and he narrowed his eyes against the glare. The searing heat of the desert city was light years away from the cooler Puget Sound region he’d left yesterday.
He’d flown out of SeaTac airport on a red-eye express to Las Vegas barely twelve hours after he’d met Chloe Abbott at the UW Medical Center. There hadn’t been time to talk to her again, although he could’ve called her today, either on his cell or the hotel room phone. But like most of the jobs he took on, imploding the multistory casino-hotel was complicated and required all his attention. He wanted the work completed and out of the way so he could focus on Chloe. He’d grabbed three hours of sleep at the hotel before heading for the job site with his crew, already looking forward to finishing and flying home.
Hearts Divided Page 10
