by Jean Barrett
“But that wasn’t the end of it, was it?” Eden demanded.
Harriet shook her head. “About a year later she turned up at my door. She was broke. The rock musician had dumped her in Savannah. She laughed about it. ‘Turns out he did me a favor, Harry,’” she said. “‘Guess what I learned about Simon’s people while I was down there? They’re not poor like he was, Harry. They’re rich as sin. His daddy is, anyway.’”
“You’re telling us now,” Shane challenged her, “that Simon did have a family? That he lied about that on his donor record?”
“I didn’t know it myself until that morning, though Lissie had known all along. ‘That’s the way Simon wanted it, Harry,’” she told me. “‘He wouldn’t talk about his folks to me, except to say his father kicked him out when he wouldn’t give up painting and that he and his family were dead to one another and that was fine with him. But guess what else I heard in Savannah, Harry? Sebastian Jamison—that’s Simon’s rich daddy—is ailing and would give anything if his son could be with him again.’ I told Lissie I knew what she was thinking and that it was wicked. That I didn’t want to hear her even say the words.”
“Nathanial,” Eden whispered.
Shane, watching the color drain from her face, had all he could do to check his anger on her behalf. Restraint was necessary if they were to learn the whole story.
“But in the end you did listen to Lissie, didn’t you, Harriet?” he accused her. “You listened to her, and you gave her what she wanted. The name and address of the woman who bore Simon’s child. What else did you help her to learn? Maybe the day-care center the child attended?”
Harriet was now using the tissues, not to blow her nose, but to mop at the tears streaming from her eyes. “I didn’t know Lissie was going to snatch the kid like that,” she blubbered. “She swore she was going to offer his mother a deal and that all she wanted out of it was a cut of the fortune Nathanial was bound to inherit.”
“And what was your share going to be, Harriet?” Shane asked.
“It wasn’t like that.”
Harriet clutched the collar of her robe against her throat, a desperate, imploring look in her red, swollen eyes, her face all blotchy. Shane gazed at her without a shred of sympathy. The woman was despicable, letting a mother suffer all these years while she held her silence.
“No? What was it like, Harriet? What kept your mouth shut after Lissie Reardon took Nathanial and disappeared from Charleston?”
“I was scared,” she cried. “I would have lost my job, never been allowed to work again as a technician. I could have gone to prison. Can’t you understand that?”
“You don’t want to know what I understand,” Shane said in disgust. He glanced with concern at Eden. She’d made the effort to recover herself and was leaning intensely forward again in her chair.
“Did you have contact with Lissie after she left Charleston? You must have if you knew she took Nathanial.”
Harriet shook her head in emphatic denial. “No, I didn’t hear anything from her. And I didn’t know for certain it was Lissie who took the boy. Not until a couple of weeks ago, anyway.”
“What happened?” Eden urged her.
“I had a visitor. He told me some things, enough that I was able to piece together all the rest.”
“Such as?” Shane pressed her.
“Lissie did go to Savannah, but it couldn’t have been right away. Not from the date I was given when she turned up there. It had to have been months after she left Charleston.”
Months, Shane figured, that Lissie Reardon must have used to her advantage. Probably covering her trail, maybe by cunningly traveling as far away as she could get before doubling back to this region. Seattle, for instance. He remembered Eden telling him that one of her P.I. family had investigated a sighting in Seattle that went cold.
And, of course, Lissie would have also needed that time to win Nathanial’s trust, probably even his love. A two-year-old, after all, has a very short memory, and in a matter of months Nathanial could have been conditioned to forget everything in his past. Because Shane had no doubt at all what Lissie intended from the start, and from the taut expression on Eden’s face, he guessed she was thinking the same. Harriet verified as much seconds later.
“When Lissie finally did go to the Jamisons in Savannah,” she said, her fingers twisting the robe’s collar, “it was as Nathanial’s mother. Except she’d renamed him Patrick, after Simon’s grandfather.”
Shane, seeing Eden close her eyes in pain over the image of another woman replacing her as Nathanial’s mother, stretched out an arm toward her chair. His hand found hers, squeezing in brief comfort before he released her. Turning her head, she flashed him a look of gratitude before resolutely facing Harriet again.
“And, of course,” Eden said, “Sebastian Jamison must have welcomed them into his home. Why not, when Nathanial was the image of his son and, if any member of the family had demanded it, testing would prove he was Simon’s child. I don’t suppose they ever questioned Lissie’s motherhood. That wouldn’t have been an issue.”
“She might have showed them snapshots of her and Simon together,” Harriet said. “I know she had them, and I remember looking at this one taken when she was pregnant.”
“But they had to have wondered why she’d waited almost three years before going to them,” Shane pointed out. “What did she tell the Jamisons?”
“I don’t know that. Maybe just that she was in need. I guess the old man didn’t care. All he cared about was having the miracle of his grandson. He made Patrick one of his heirs.”
“Lissie must have been in clover,” Shane said dryly.
“You’d think so, but then why did she do what she did?”
“Which was?”
“The old man died about six weeks ago. Lissie took Patrick and left Savannah. No one knows where or why. It’s funny.”
“Yeah, it is,” Shane said. “And I’ll tell you something else that’s funny, Harriet. How did you come to be told all this? Who was this guy who visited you a couple of weeks ago, and what did he want?”
“He was a private investigator. The Jamison family wants Patrick back, and they hired him to find Lissie and recover the boy. He knew Lissie had lived in Charleston, and I don’t suppose it took him much digging to learn I was her neighbor and friend. But what could I tell him when I haven’t heard a word from Lissie since she left Charleston?”
“The private investigator from Savannah,” Eden said. “What was his name?”
There was something about the way she asked her question, maybe with a note of strain in her voice, that made Shane look at her closely.
“Charles Moses,” Harriet answered her.
Shane saw Eden’s mouth tighten and knew that he wasn’t imagining her strain. The name Charles Moses meant something to her, just as the name Reardon had seemed familiar to him. He and Eden would have questions for each other on this subject, but this wasn’t the time for them. They still had Harriet Krause to deal with.
“There’s something more we need to know,” Shane said to her. “This P.I.—did he ever refer to me? Or anyone that could have meant me?”
“No, he—” Her hand still on the collar of her robe, Harriet paused to clear her throat several times. “I think this cold is beginning to settle in my chest,” she complained.
Shane, offering no word of sympathy, waited for her to answer him. Her voice was even more noticeably hoarse when she went on.
“He didn’t mention anyone other than the people I already told you about.”
“You’re sure about that? How about the two gorillas who were bringing me here Saturday night?”
Harriet shook her head in vigorous denial. “I’ve said I don’t know anything about those men. I never heard of them until you told me about them.” Her anxious gaze went from Shane to Eden. “I’ve told you all I know. I cooperated and gave you everything you asked for. Now you’ve got to promise to keep me out of it, not to—”
Eden nodded in understanding when he sent her an unspoken question. They were in agreement. There was nothing more to be learned from Harriet Krause. It was time they got out of here, breathed air that didn’t smell of illness and complicity.
EDEN WAITED until they were out on the street again to express her joy.
“Nathanial is alive!” she said, turning to Shane. “He’s still alive! I would never allow myself to believe he didn’t survive, and I wouldn’t let others try to tell me otherwise, but underneath there was always the fear…”
“That maybe you were wrong,” Shane said with an understanding she would have thought only a parent could know. But this man had depths that surprised her at every turn. And warmed her. “But you weren’t wrong, Eden. Your boy is still out there.”
Or he was six weeks ago when the woman posing as his mother left Savannah with him. But Shane didn’t say that, and Eden wouldn’t permit herself to think Nathanial didn’t continue to be alive.
She and Shane had to talk, had to examine what Harriet Krause had unwillingly shared with them. Had to decide what to do next. But not while they drove aimlessly around the city, Eden thought with a glance at her car beside which they stood. Her taut nerves demanded action.
“Can we walk for a bit?” she asked Shane. “That is, if your leg is up to—”
“Eden, will you stop worrying about my leg? If it bothers me, I’ll let you know. And if we walk too far, and I get tired—” he paused to grin at her wickedly “—well, I’ll just let you put your arm around me tight and help me back.”
His grin suggested a great deal more than his permission for her to assist him in the event of a crisis. There was a promise in it as outrageously sexy as the solid figure of the man who fell into step beside her.
How, Eden wondered as they left her car parked at the curb and headed in the direction of the harbor front, was she supposed to concentrate on business when she was so aware of Shane close beside her? When her feelings for him seemed to grow stronger with each hour they spent together?
And treacherous, she reminded herself sharply. He was still a man without a memory. She didn’t know who or what he was any more than he did. However powerful her attraction to him, however convinced she was now of his basic decency, it could turn out that there was a dark, dangerous side to him.
So her emotions couldn’t be trusted. Not when there was something so vital as the welfare of her son demanding her immediate, full attention. Shane, too, must have realized the necessity of seriously addressing this subject. The provocative tone was gone from his voice when he spoke to her.
“What do your P.I. instincts say about Harriet Krause?”
“That she’s scared and probably regretting at this moment everything we threatened her into telling us. The question is, how much did she not tell us?”
“And is she being paid to keep her mouth shut?”
“Lissie Reardon?”
Shane nodded. “Yeah, it’s possible this Lissie promised her a cut of the action when she got established with the Jamisons. Why else would Harriet have risked her career and then kept silent all these years? On the other hand…”
Eden waited for Shane to go on. A horse-drawn carriage passed them out on the street, its driver pointing out the sights to the four occupants on the seats behind him.
“Maybe we’re looking in the wrong direction,” Shane continued. “Maybe there’s another explanation. Like Harriet lying to us about not knowing those two gorillas who grabbed me.”
“If she is involved with them, and it’s not Lissie who’s paying her, then Harriet is guilty of another complicity. But what?”
“And just where do I fit into this puzzle, and why can’t I remember?” Shane wondered, his frustration so enormous Eden could feel it.
Bahama Street ended at East Battery. They crossed the thoroughfare and mounted the elevated promenade along the seawall, turning to the right in the direction of White Point Gardens. On their left stretched the city’s broad, sun-licked harbor. Across Battery to their right were the unbroken ranks of the historic seafront mansions that were the pride of Charleston. But today Eden was immune to their elegance. Her attention was focused on the man who strolled beside her.
“But something Harriet Krause said was familiar to you, wasn’t it, Shane?” she asked him soberly. “I could see it in your face. The name Reardon had meaning.”
“If it did, I couldn’t make sense of it.” He stopped under a palmetto, whose leaves rattled in the gusts off the harbor, and turned to her. “But there’s one thing I am clear about. I’m the key to Nathanial. There are people who want him back, and they’re convinced I know where he is.”
“Yes,” Eden agreed with him. “That’s become more and more evident.”
They moved on again along the promenade. Shane was silent. When she glanced at his face, she saw him looking out into the distance at the tiny island that was the Fort Sumter National Monument. But she didn’t think he was seeing the island. His gaze was too intense for that.
His voice carried the same intensity when he spoke again. She listened, but she had the feeling he was talking more to himself than her. Impatiently, angrily reproaching himself for his inability to remember.
“And if I do know where he is, if the boy somehow came into my possession, where is he now? What did I do with him, and why does this brain of mine refuse to give up that secret?”
Eden had no answer for him. Her own mind was silently crying the same appeal. You’re somewhere out there, Nathanial. I can feel it. But where are you? Where?
They crossed Battery again and stood under a live oak at the edge of White Point Gardens. Shane looked into the park at the columned bandstand with that same unseeing gaze. But this time he spoke directly to her, resolve in his deep voice.
“I don’t know what I’ve done or why I did it, and at this point it isn’t important. All that matters is finding your boy, which is why we’ve got to take this whole thing now to the police.”
“But you’ve said all along—”
“I know what I said, and I’m changing my mind. We go to the police, Eden.”
“No,” she said. “We will not go to the police.”
Her complete reversal on this issue was so decisive and so unexpected that he stared at her in surprise. “Why this hundred-and-eighty-degree turn?”
“Because I’ve been thinking, and it suddenly makes sense. What if you’ve been resisting the police all along, not for your own sake, but for Nathanial’s sake? What if that locked mind of yours has been guarding him and refuses to part with him because it knows you aren’t legally entitled to him and that the police would turn him over to the people who do have a legal claim to him? The wrong people, Shane. People who could harm him before I could establish my own legal right to my son.”
“And what if I had a mercenary agenda of my own, Eden, and that’s why I took the boy and hid him? Are you prepared to risk that?”
“Yes, because I don’t think I’m just speculating. I think my explanation is the right one. A man can’t be bad and then turn around and be good just because of amnesia.”
“Is that how you see me, Eden?” he said softly, his voice husky, intimate. “As a good guy?”
He had turned to face her, and he stood so close that his virile nearness made her light-headed. He might in no way be a threat to Nathanial, but he was a threat to her. It was time to defuse the moment.
“Of course,” she said lightly. “You’re my husband, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I’m not forgetting that. Okay, so we don’t go to the police.”
“Which wouldn’t be very useful, anyway, when we don’t really have anything concrete to offer them. And I can’t see Harriet Krause confessing to them. She’d just deny everything she told us.”
“Probably. So what are you proposing?”
“That we go on trying to find Nathanial ourselves.” Her voice sobered again with urgency. “There’s something big at stake here, Shane. For all we know, it could be a kidnap-for-ransom plot that somehow went wrong. Whatever it is, I have this awful feeling—call it a mother’s intuition—that my son is at risk and that we have to get to him before—”
Eden couldn’t bring herself to say it. She didn’t want to imagine the worst, though her maternal fear was very real. So strong that she knew she mustn’t allow it to interfere with her judgment as a private investigator. Not if she were to save Nathanial.
She didn’t have to put it into words for Shane. The concerned expression on his face told her that he understood. And when he spoke, uttering a single word, it was all she needed to hear to know that their minds were turned in the same direction.
“Savannah?”
“Yes, Savannah,” she said, grateful for his acceptance.
He nodded. “Seems the logical place to try next. We’ve exhausted our leads here, and since the Jamison family is in Savannah, and with Lissie Reardon and the boy having lived there…yeah, we may find the answers in Savannah.”
“There’s something else I was thinking of,” Eden said slowly.
“What?”
“You could also have come from Savannah.”
“If that’s true, it could explain my connection with this situation. And if there’s anything I need right now, it’s an explanation, because I’m getting damn weary of this memory block.”
“Then let’s get back to the car and see what we can do about trying to relieve it.”
Eden was anxious to be on the road. It was too late to reach Savannah today, but they could at least make a start, spend the night along the way, and reach Savannah in the morning.
Eden’s mind was busy planning a quick stop at her house to collect their things as they hurried back toward Bahama Street and the parked Toyota. Shane’s sudden intrusion on her thoughts startled her.
