by Lisa Gardner
“Oh, that's a good one, Miss Holmes. Harper ever take you to a hypnotist? What about regression therapy or aromatherapy or whatever else quacks are dreaming up these days?”
“The doctors who checked me out said I was physically fine and that I'd remember when I was ready to remember.”
“Come on, Miss Holmes, surely the great Dr. Harper Stokes had a few opinions on this subject. He coulda taken you to a hypnotist anytime and what would anybody have done about it? What would have happened? You would've remembered, that's what. And your family, sweetheart, doesn't want you to remember.”
“Oh, this is stupid! All you have supplied are a bunch of coincidences. And your little scenario has holes you could drive a truck through. Plain and simple, my parents loved Meagan. No way would they knowingly have adopted the child of her killer. That doesn't make sense.”
Larry Digger was looking at her curiously. “You honestly believe that, don't you?”
“Of course I do. What the hell do you mean?”
“Huh.” He nodded to himself as if she'd just answered a very important question. Melanie shook her head, starting to feel more confused now, as if she were at the top of a very steep precipice and she'd just taken her first misstep.
The throbbing in her head was growing. Black voids were appearing in front of her eyes. She hadn't suffered from a serious migraine in years, but now she had the faint realization that she was dangerously close to vomiting.
“Maybe you had to know Harper and Patricia in Texas,” Digger was murmuring. “Maybe you had to see them sitting up in their rich palace no fourth-year resident should be able to afford. Maybe you had to see them in Texas with their two kids, one so sweet, everyone loved her, and one already so troubled, half the moms on the block wouldn't let him play with their children. I'm getting the impression, Miss Holmes, there's a helluva lot about your family you just plain don't know.”
“That's not true. It's not.”
“Ah, Miss Holmes.” Larry Digger sounded sympathetic, almost pitying. It confused her more than his vicious comments had. “Let me tell you something, Melanie, for your own sake. I didn't find you on my own, kid. I got a tip. An anonymous call in the middle of the night. Needless to say, reporters don't like anonymous tips, not even washed-up pieces of shit like me.” His teeth flashed, then his voice turned horribly somber. “I had the caller traced the second time, Miss Holmes. Right back to Boston, Massachusetts. Right back to Beacon Street. Right back to your house. Why do you think that is, Mel? Why is someone from your house calling me about Russell Lee Holmes?”
“I don't . . . It doesn't . . . None of this makes any sense.” The world tilted suddenly. Melanie sat down on the ground. She heard herself whisper, “But that was so long ago . . .”
Larry Digger smiled. “You get what you deserve, Melanie Stokes. By the caller's own words, you get what you deserve.”
“No—”
“How much of a person's temperament is genetic, Melanie Holmes? Are junkyard dogs born or raised? Are you really as polished and refined as your uptight adoptive parents, or does a little Texas white trash lurk beneath that surface? I already know you can be tough. Now, what about violence? Ever look at a little kid, Miss Holmes, and feel hungry?”
“No! No. Oh, God . . .” Her head exploded. Melanie grabbed her temples, pressed her forehead against her knees, and rocked on the grass.
From far away she heard Larry Digger chortle. “I'm right, aren't I? Twenty-five years later, I'm finally getting it ri—” His words suddenly ended in a yelp.
Melanie turned slowly. A white figure had joined them in the park. He seemed to have his hand clamped on Larry Digger's shoulder.
“She asked you to leave,” the newcomer said calmly.
Larry Digger tried to push the man away. “Hey, this is private. Don't you got horse d'oovers to serve or something?”
“No, but I'm thinking of sharpening my knives.”
The man tightened his grip even more, and Digger held up his hands in surrender. The minute he was released, he backed up. “Okay, I'll go. But I'm not lying. I do have proof, Miss Holmes. I have information, not just about your father, but your birth mother as well. Ever think of her, Miss Holmes? Bet she could actually tell you your real birthday, let alone your real name. Midtown Hotel, sweetheart. Pleasant dreams.”
The man took a quick step forward at the sarcastic tone, and Larry Digger hightailed it out of there, his stained coat flapping behind him.
Melanie's stomach heaved. She celebrated Larry Digger's departure by spewing shrimp all over the grass and the man's glossy black shoes.
“Shit!” he yelped, leaping back awkwardly. He didn't seem to know what to do.
That made two of them. Tears of rage streamed down Melanie's cheeks. Her head was throbbing, and images added to the chaos in her mind. Blue dress, blond hair, pleading eyes. I want to go home now. Please, let me go home.
“Are you going to be okay?” A hand draped back her hair. “Jesus, you're burning up. Let me call an ambulance.”
“No!” Melanie's fear of hospitals outweighed her fear of pain. She snapped her head up and promptly winced. “Give me . . . a minute.”
Her savior was not impressed. “Jesus, lady. You go walking with a seedy-looking stranger—what were you thinking?”
“Nothing, obviously.” Melanie pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. The man was absolutely right, and she resented him for it. With no other choice, she finally risked opening her eyes.
It was hard to see in the dark. The gas lamp caught the man's features only in half wash, illuminating a square jaw, lean cheeks, and a nose that had been broken a few too many times. Thick dark hair, cut conservatively short. Lips pressed into a grim, unyielding line. She recognized his uniform. Great, she'd just been saved by one of her own waiters.
She closed her eyes again. Nothing like being caught at her worst by someone who could spread stories.
“Are you going to live?” the waiter asked sharply.
“Possibly. It would help if you'd lower your voice.”
He seemed contrite for a moment, then ruined the impression with his next words. “You shouldn't have let him drag you off like that. That was a stupid thing to do. Did he want money?”
“Who doesn't?” Melanie staggered to her feet, needing to move, to just . . . move. Unfortunately the ground shifted beneath her, the trees bobbed.
The waiter had to grab her arm. “You keep trying to stand and we're going to have to start a suicide watch for you. Vision?”
“White dots.”
“Hearing?”
“What?”
“Prescription meds, right?”
“In the house,” she murmured, and tried to take a step. Her legs collapsed. The waiter caught her. She floated limply on his arm, suddenly beyond caring.
Please, please let me go home!
No, honey. You don't want to go home. It's not safe . . .
The man muttered something about foolish women, then swung her up in his arms. She leaned against his shoulder. He felt solid and firm and strong. He smelled like Old Spice.
Melanie buried her face against his neck and let the world slip away.
SPECIAL AGENT DAVID Riggs was not happy. First, because he wasn't fond of rescuing damsels in distress. Second, because he was going to take a lot of heat for rescuing this particular damsel.
“We're eyes and ears only at this stage. This is a very delicate investigation. Don't fuck it up.”
Riggs was pretty sure Supervisory Agent Lairmore would consider following, intervening, and now carrying Melanie Stokes to be a fuckup. He was supposed to be shadowing her father. He was supposed to be overhearing Dr. Harper Stokes's confession of healthcare fraud that he would casually drop at his daughter's black-tie event, high on vodka tonics and friends. Uh-huh.
David shifted Melanie more comfortably in his arms and crossed the street. She was smaller than he would've guessed, having watched her dart around the house all e
vening like a firefly. She never slowed down and hardly even seemed to need a gasp of air. He'd watched her do everything from heft boxes of mangoes to mop up a spill. He'd also noted that she circled back to the living room half a dozen times to discreetly check up on her mother.
Now she was leaning her head against his shoulder in a way a woman hadn't done in a long, long time.
He didn't know what to make of that, so he turned his mind sharply to the file he had on the Stokes family and the few things it told him about Melanie Stokes. Daughter, adopted at the age of nine after being abandoned at the hospital where Dr. Stokes worked. A bit of a media buzz portraying her as a modern-day Orphan Annie. She'd graduated with a B.A. from Wellesley in '91 and was active in various charitable organizations. One of those I-want-to-give-
something-back-to-the-world kind of people. Nine months earlier she'd become engaged to Dr. William Sheffield, her father's favorite right-hand man, then ended it a mere three months later without ever giving a reason. One of those my-business-is-my-business kind of people. She helped take care of her mother, who, as Larry Digger had pointed out, had never been the same since the murder of her first daughter. One of those you-mess-with-my-family-you-mess-with-me kind of people. Whatever.
Nothing in the files indicated that Melanie Stokes was the daughter of a serial killer, though David had found the reporter's list of coincidences extremely interesting. Then again, David couldn't decide what he thought of the reporter. For all his bluster, Larry Digger's hands had been shaking toward the end. The man had probably skipped his nightly pint of bourbon to make contact. No doubt he was drowning in it now.
Melanie moaned as the house lights hit them both.
“Don't throw up on me again,” David muttered.
“Wait . . .”
“Are you going to be sick?”
“Wait.” She gripped his jacket. “Don't . . . tell anyone,” she muttered intently. “Not . . . my family. I'll pay you . . .”
Her eyes were clear. Big and earnest and a startling color, somewhere between blue and gray.
“Yeah, well, sure. Whatever you want.”
She sank back down into his arms, seemingly satisfied. David pushed into the foyer and everyone spotted them at once.
“What's going on here?” Harper Stokes immediately strode toward them, William Sheffield in tow. Then Patricia Stokes came flying, sloshing orange juice on her designer dress.
“Oh, my God, Melanie.”
“Bedroom?” David asked, and ignoring everyone's gasps and questions, headed up the stairs. “She mentioned having a migraine.”
Harper swore. “She should have Fiorinal with codeine in the bathroom. Patricia?”
She darted ahead three flights and burst from her daughter's bathroom, pills and water in hand, just as David laid Melanie down on a rumpled bed. Immediately he was pushed aside by her family, Harper anxiously picking up his daughter's hand and checking her pulse. He took the water and held it to his daughter's pale lips to wash down the pills. Patricia followed with a damp towel, gently bathing Melanie's face. That left William Sheffield, who hovered self-consciously in the doorway. It wasn't clear to David why the former fiancé was even in the room.
“What happened?” Harper demanded. He checked his daughter's pulse again, then took the towel from his wife and positioned it across Melanie's forehead. “Where was Melanie? How did you end up with her?”
“I found her in the park,” David said. Apparently the answer sounded as vague to Harper as it did to David, because the surgeon shot him a look. David returned the stare.
Of all the people in the room, David knew the most about Dr. Harper Stokes—he'd spent the past three weeks compiling a file on the man. Considered a brilliant surgeon by many, he'd recently been anointed the top cardiac surgeon in a town known for its surgeons. Others alleged he was an egomaniac, that his zealousness to heal had more to do with the recognition it brought him than honest interest in his patients. Given the growing Hollywoodization of hospital surgery, David found that a tough call to make. Most cardiac surgeons these days were after fame or fortune. After all, there were NBA athletes courted less aggressively than a good, charismatic surgeon who could bring in the bucks.
The only thing different David could find out about Dr. Harper Stokes was his background. In a day and age when a surgeon's career track started at the age of eighteen with enrollment in an Ivy League college, Dr. Stokes's academic career was mediocre at best. He'd graduated from Texas A&M at the middle of his class. He hadn't gotten into any of the top twenty medical schools, having to settle for his local “safety school,” Sam Houston University. There, he'd been known more for his upscale wardrobe and dogged work ethic than for a gift for surgery.
Oddly enough, the single event that seemed to transform Harper Stokes from average resident to surgeon extraordinaire was the kidnapping of his daughter. His personal life had disintegrated, and he had turned to work. The more chaotic the Stokeses' world became, the more time Harper spent in the hospital, where he did have the power to heal and redeem, and, what the hell, play God.
Russell Lee Holmes may have destroyed a family, but in a strange way he had also created one topnotch surgeon.
Recently the FBI had received three phone calls on the healthcare fraud hotline about Boston's number one cardiac man. Someone thought Harper's pacemaker surgeries were questionable. At this point in the investigation, David had no idea. Could be just a jealous rival blowing smoke. Could be that the doctor had come up with a way to make a few extra bucks—God knows the Stokeses lived high enough on the hog.
So far the only dirt David had found on the man was his penchant for beautiful women. Even that didn't seem to be much of a secret. He went out with his pieces of pretty young fluff; his wife kept looking the other way. Lots of marriages worked like that.
“But why was Melanie in the park?” Harper was asking with a frown, jerking David's attention back to the cramped bedroom.
Melanie answered first. “I wanted some fresh air. I was going to step out for only a moment.”
“I happened to notice her leaving the house,” David said. “When she hadn't returned for a while, I decided to see if everything was all right. I heard the sound of someone being ill across the street and found her.”
Harper remained frowning, then turned to his daughter with a mixture of genuine concern and reproach. “You've been pushing yourself too hard, Melanie. You know what stress can do to you. You have to remember to monitor your level of anxiety. For heaven's sake, your mom and I would've helped you more if you'd just said something—”
“I know.”
“You take too much upon yourself.”
“I know.”
“It's not healthy, young lady.”
Melanie smiled wryly. “Would you believe I get it from you?”
Harper harrumphed but appeared honestly sheepish. He glanced at his wife, and the two of them exchanged a look David couldn't read.
“We should let her rest,” Patricia said. “Honey, you just get some sleep, relax. Your father and I will handle everything downstairs.”
“It's my job,” Melanie tried to protest, but the pills were getting the better of her, making her eyelids droop. She made an effort at sitting up in the bed, but didn't even make it past halfway. Finally she curled up in a little ball in the middle of the big sleigh bed. She looked frailer than she had standing up to the reporter. She looked . . .
Patricia covered her with a quilt, then ushered everyone out.
“You just happened to notice Mel leaving the house,” William Sheffield said as David brushed by him.
David calmly responded. “Yes, I did. Did you?”
The ex-fiancé flushed, glanced quickly at Harper for support, and when he got none, slunk away.
“Thank you for helping our daughter, Mr.—” Patricia paused in the doorway long enough to place a light hand on David's shoulder.
“Reese. David Reese.”
Patricia kept her h
and on his shoulder. “Thank you, Mr. Reese. Really, we are indebted—”
“Not a big deal.”
She smiled, an expression that was sad. “To me it is.”
Before David had to summon another reply, Jamie O'Donnell burst up the stairs, demanding to know what had happened to his Melanie. A trim woman with graying Brillo-like hair and nurses' whites was hot on his heels. Ann Margaret, David heard Patricia exclaim.
David used the opportunity to exit, then paused on the second-story landing to eavesdrop. O'Donnell was adamant about being informed. Ann Margaret insisted upon seeing Melanie. Harper uttered something sharp and low under his breath. David didn't catch it, but all four adults immediately hushed up. No more conversation from upstairs, just the sounds of four adults easing into Melanie Stokes's bedroom.
The hair was prickling on the back of David's neck. He hadn't felt this way in a long time. Not since that day he'd sat in the doctor's office, waiting for the final news, then saw the look on the M.D.'s face when he walked back into the examining room. At that moment David had known that life as he knew it—as his father knew it—was coming to an end.
There was no good reason for him to feel that way here. So far he had just a doctor, a family, and a drunken reporter. Nothing that sinister, nothing that promising as an investigative lead.
And yet . . . What was it Larry Digger had said?
He'd received his tip on Melanie Stokes's alleged parentage from an anonymous caller who declared that everyone gets what they deserve.
That was odd. Three weeks earlier, when the Boston field office had received an anonymous tip regarding Dr. Stokes's alleged illegal surgeries, the caller had also insisted that everyone gets what they deserve.
And David didn't believe in coincidences.
FOUR
T HREE A.M. DAVID Riggs's shift as a waiter for the reception finally ended and released him into the streets of Boston. He was limping badly, his back feeling the strain even more than usual. Playing waiter was hard work. It meant he got to serve drinks, replenish hors d'oeuvre trays, and scrub his knuckles raw cleaning up. It meant he got to run all over hell and back, trying to be both a decent server and a diligent agent. Next time Lairmore asked him to go undercover, Riggs would nominate Chenney. Let the rookie lead the glamorous life.
