One Summer’s Knight

by Kathleen Creighton

  How glad she was then that Riley’s back was toward the children! As it was, shielded by his body, she had barely time to step back, brush the telltale evidence of his kiss from her lips with trembling fingers before they were there, David first, breathless and excited, yelling, “Mom! Mr. Riley! Come see what we found-it’s something really weird. Hurry up! Come on-come on…”

  And then they had to run to investigate, Summer on legs she wasn’t sure would carry her, far down the beach and around the point, the children hopping and dancing and urging them on.

  “There!” David’s voice was a whisper of awe as he halted and pointed. “What in the world is it? I never saw such a thing, did you?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact I have,” said Riley, as with a wink for Summer he took each child by the hand and moved closer to the strange markings in the sand. “What this is is a sea turtle’s track. A mother sea turtle-most likely a loggerhead-came in last night to lay her eggs. This right here is the track she made when she went back to the water. Her nest should be…right up here somewhere…”

  With the children following, silent and tense with awe, Riley led the way up the beach to a spot above the high-water mark, just where the dunes began, where the sand had been recently disturbed. “Yeah-here it is, right here. See, she digs out a hole in the sand with her hind feet, and then she lays her eggs-dozens of ’em. They look sort of like Ping-Pong balls-” Helen giggled “-and then she covers ’em up and drags herself back down to the water and swims away. Then, in about two months the eggs hatch, and the baby turtles have to dig their way out of the nest and make their own way down to the water.”

  “I saw that on Discovery Channel,” said David solemnly, his eyes round. “Most of ’em get eaten up before they even get there. By birds and stuff.”

  Helen gave a cry of outrage. “I won’t let ’em get eaten! I’ll kill those ol’ birds-I will.”

  “Oh, dear,” Summer said to Riley in an undertone, “we aren’t going to hear the end of this. Isn’t there anything we can do?”

  He nodded as he rose to his feet, brushing sand from his knees. “I’ll tell Brasher about this nest. He’ll mark it, put wire barriers over it to protect the eggs from predators. He’ll date it, too, and try to be on hand when they hatch, but it’s hard to figure exactly when that’ll be.” He gave a sigh as he looked past her, his eyes following the track of the turtle to the water’s edge. “The cards are stacked against ’em-that’s one of the reasons I wanted to protect this place. There are so few places left where they can come ashore. They’ll lay offshore, you know, waiting until it’s safe-any loud noises, voices or lights will scare them off.”

  “What about the hurricane?” Summer asked in a low voice, not wanting to give the children something else to worry about. “You said one was coming. Can this nest survive?”

  Riley shrugged. “Who knows?” He looked down then at the sand dollar she still held in her hand. “When it comes to the forces of nature, there’s only so much we can do. The rest is mostly a matter of luck.” Just for a moment, and with a strange bleakness in his eyes, he curled his own and her fingers around the sand dollar and held it, protecting it as though it were a precious jewel.

  It was a magical day, and over too soon. After their discovery of the turtle’s nest, the children swam and played in the warm surf while Summer hunted in vain for another unbroken sand dollar and Riley kept a watchful eye on the sky. There was an edginess about him now, vibrations of awareness that she sensed had nothing to do with her. It’s the weather, she thought; he’s worried about what Brasher told him. So perhaps it was true, then, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that they were in for a bad storm.

  They ate the sandwiches they’d brought, but by early afternoon, with thunderheads piling up on the horizon, Riley loaded everyone into the boat and they headed back across the channel and motored up the narrow inlet to Brasher’s landing. Brasher wasn’t anywhere around when they arrived, but while Summer was coaxing her cranky and tired-out, waterlogged and sun-sated children into the car, Riley quietly excused himself and went off by himself, following a barely discernible footpath to the little house at the edge of the marsh.

  He’s gone to find Brasher, she told herself, to tell him about the turtle’s nest.

  But-she didn’t mean to watch, she really didn’t-it wasn’t Brasher who came out on the ramshackle porch to meet him. Instead it was a young black woman, tall and slender with close-cropped hair, who greeted Riley with a warm hug and the unmistakable ease of an old and close association. Something knotted inside Summer’s chest, and she tried to look away. It was none of her business, she knew. It wasn’t. One kiss, no matter how magical, did not make it so. But she watched, anyway, while Riley and the woman talked for what seemed like a long time but was probably only minutes, then went together into the house.

  It was a long time before they came out again-ten minutes, at least, or even fifteen. Summer tried to distract her mind with her children and their beachcombing haul, mediating arguments about whose treasures were prettiest or most numerous, but her senses would not be distracted; they were tuned to the slightest movement, the faintest sound from the house at the edge of the marsh. And so it was that, even though she didn’t want to be, she was watching when Riley and the young woman emerged from the house to stand once more on the porch, talking together, heads bowed and arms folded. Even from that distance Summer could see that the tension had gone out of him, that there was a heaviness about him now…a a certain sadness. And how, she wondered, deriding herself, did she feel she knew him well enough to know that?

  With a tightness in her throat, she watched Riley take something from his pocket-it could only have been money-and give it to the woman, then leave her and stride across the porch and down the steps without a backward glance.

  When he joined them again, the heaviness came with him, and a mood of melancholy and secrecy that banished the day’s magic as completely as a thunderstorm can turn the day to night.

  Chapter 12

  All the way home Riley berated himself without mercy. What had he been thinking of? For the last week behaving like a horny adolescent with his brains in his boxers, allowing his lust for a woman to lead him so far astray that he’d lost sight of who he was, who she was, and even more unforgivably, the fact that there were very probably the lives of two innocent children at stake. He couldn’t recall ever having behaved so badly, even when he was a horny adolescent

  There was no excuse for his actions-none at all. He could have no future with this woman. She’d said it herself: she didn’t belong in his life. She didn’t fit. How could she possibly? God knows he was not cut out to be a father, much less a stepfather! And with this woman anything short of full commitment would be unthinkable. Unforgivable.

  What had he been thinking of? Summer Robey was his client. He was responsible for her safety. What could have possessed him to kiss her?

  It was Monday morning before the truth finally hit him. It came while he was shaving, staring at his reflection in his bathroom mirror, the image repeated in the mirrored wall behind him over and over to infinity. His image…

  Ah yes, his image. There he was, eyeball to eyeball with the Riley Grogan he’d so carefully crafted, honed and polished and placed on display before the world, and in his mind, in his heart and soul, the real Riley Grogan was whispering, You’re a fraud, Grogan. The truth is, all that lofty rationalization about ethics and moral responsibility and all-it’s nothin’ but hooey, that’s what it is, just a bunch of hooey to hide the fact that you’re scared to death somebody’s gonna find out what a fraud you are. You’re afraid, Grogan. Afraid…

  So, needless to say, he wasn’t in the best humor when he walked into his office later that morning. For one thing, his sore foot was giving him trouble, it being the first occasion he’d had to put on a pair of dress shoes since stabbing himself in the instep with a pair of hedge clippers. And naturally, it was the first thing his secretary took not
ice of when he stopped by her desk for his messages. She glanced up at him, covered the telephone receiver with her hand and sang out, “Hey, what’d you do to your foot?”

  “What happened to ‘Good morning, Mr. Grogan, how was your weekend?’ ” he said sourly.

  “Good morning, Mr. Grogan, how was your weekend? What did you do to your foot?”

  “I kicked a door. Who’s that on the phone?”

  “It’s your old buddy-Jake Redfield. Want me to take a message?”

  In spite of himself, his heart gave a lurch. Please, Lord, let this be good news. Maybe, he thought, while he was spending his weekend cutting hedges, rescuing tots from trees and groping his client on the beach, the FBI had managed to find Hal Robey, bring down the syndicate and lock up all the bad guys so everybody could go home. Uh-uh. “No,” he said, frowning, “I’ll take it Put it through to my office.”

  “Tom Denby’s waitin’ for you in there.”

  “That’s okay. Anything else of interest?”

  “Couple things…” Hands busy with the phone, Danell jerked her head toward the tray on the corner of her desk. So, since Riley had to look down in order to gather up the message slips that had collected there, naturally the next thing he heard was “Hey, what’d you do to your head?”

  “None of your business,” he growled as he shuffled through the pile. He picked up his briefcase and started down the hallway.

  “Bumped into a door, I bet…”

  In his office, Riley closed the door behind him and said “Mornin’ ” to Tom, who was sitting in the client’s chair with one ankle propped on the opposite knee reading a Stephen King paperback. The investigator dog-eared the page and closed the book, even though Riley checked him with a hand gesture while he went to pick up his phone.

  “Agent Redfield,” he said crisply, making eye contact with Tom Denby as he hitched his backside onto a corner of his desk, “what can I do for you?”

  The FBI agent gave a mirthless snort. “I think you know the answer to that. Mrs. Robey ready to talk to us yet?”

  “Depends,” Riley drawled. “You arrested the people responsible for burnin’ down her house yet?”

  There was a pause, during which he could almost hear the FBI man counting to ten. Then, in that patented bureau monotone, Redfield said, “As a matter of fact, we may have gotten a little bit of a break in that regard.”

  “You have?” Riley glanced at his investigator, who had lifted his briefcase onto his knees and was snapping it open.

  There was a long pause; clearly, sharing information with an attorney-the enemy-wasn’t something the FBI enjoyed doing. Finally Redfield said, “We have reason to believe he may have been in contact with his wife’s parents.”

  Riley’s eyebrows shot up. “Hal Robey? What reason? Did he or didn’t he?”

  Another pause. Then, on a resigned exhalation, Redfield explained, “This past weekend, Mrs. Robey’s mother received a call from someone claiming to be from her daughters’ high school class reunion committee, requesting information as to how they might be reached. Mrs. Robey’s mother didn’t recognize the voice-said it may even have been a woman-but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s possible Robey could have disguised his voice or had someone else make the call for him.”

  “What makes you think it was Robey?” Riley held up a finger to forestall Tom Denby, who ignored it and leaned over to hand him several sheets of paper with what looked to be photocopied credit card receipts on them. He took them, stared at them.

  In his ear, Redfield’s voice was saying, “We’ve been monitoring credit card activity on Robey’s known aliases. Over the weekend we had a hit-a Motel 6 on Interstate 10 in Pensacola, Florida.”

  Riley swore, dragged a hand through his hair. Winced. He frowned, his mind in high gear, chewing it all over. “Mrs. Robey’s parents live in Pensacola Beach.”

  “Uh-huh…”

  “All right, so he’s looking for her.” Riley was silent for a moment, listening to the sound of his own breathing. “You’re thinking when he doesn’t find his wife at the address and phone number he’s got, he’ll get in touch with the sisters next.”

  “If he hasn’t already. From what I understand, the only one reachable is the one here in Georgia. He’s gonna be careful about it-he knows he’s a target.” Redfield paused, then said very quietly, “What we’re thinking is, when and if he does, if we’re not already too late, we’d like to make his next move a little easier for him.”

  Riley sat still for about three beats, then came up off the desk as if somebody’d shot him in the butt with a BB gun. “No. Lure him in, you mean-using Summer as bait. Are you out of your mind? No. Absolutely not. I can’t allow it.”

  “You can’t allow it?” Redfield’s voice had gone soft. “You mean, advise, don’t you? In the final analysis, isn’t the decision up to Mrs. Robey?”

  “Dammit, Redfield, the woman’s got two kids!”

  “I know she does-and you can’t keep them locked away forever, now, can you?”

  Riley said nothing. His skin felt itchy and hot, but there was a cold, sick feeling in his stomach. If I’m not in jail, I might as well be…

  “Look-” Redfield exhaled gustily in his ear “-you know as well as I do, if the bad guys want her badly enough, sooner or later they’re going to find a way to get to her. You want to live with that? You want her and those kids to live with that?” Riley said nothing; his eyes were following Tom Denby as the investigator paced at a polite distance, fidgeting with things in his pockets. The FBI man continued, almost gently, “They might be on Robey’s trail right now. He could be leading ’em right to her. If they get the chance to use the wife and kids to leverage Robey, they won’t hesitate for one minute, and you and I both know it. Robey’s gonna find her, the bad guys are gonna find Robey, and who knows who’s gonna find who first? Isn’t it better to have us be the ones writing the script? And if it gives us a chance to clear this thing up, once and for all…” The agent’s voice had taken on a curious vibration, and Riley remembered suddenly what Summer had said about Captain Ahab and Moby Dick.

  Then Redfield paused, and Riley could almost hear him fighting down his demons. Finally, once more back in the classic feds monotone, he murmured, “At least let us talk to her. That’s all we ask.”

  Sometimes, you know, I think I’d rather confront the fear. Go out there and face those…those bastards! Like-I don’t know, set myself up as bait for an FBI sting, or something. Anything to get those people caught.

  “I’ll talk to her,” Riley said heavily. But he already knew what her answer would be. “I’ll get back to you.”

  He cradled the phone and sat for a moment, staring at it. Then he straightened and looked at Tom Denby, who had turned from the window and was regarding him with a small, waiting smile. Denby was a stocky, nondescript man with thinning hair and nondescript glasses, the kind of man who would be easy to overlook in a crowd. But a man whose eyes and ears missed nothing, and the one man Riley wanted at his back in a brawl.

  “Tom,” he said on an exhalation, “I’m gonna have to ask you to be on standby for a while.”

  “I gathered.” The investigator nodded toward the phone. “That was the feds?”

  “That was the feds.” Riley smiled, but he felt dark and cold inside. “And I’m afraid we might not be working on quite the same agenda, if you know what I mean. We have…different priorities.”

  “I hear ya,” said Denby softly. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Riley said in an undertone as he ushered Summer and the children into his office the following afternoon. “Please keep that in mind-you are not obligated to do anything they ask you to do. Do you understand?” She sure should understand, he thought; he’d told her that often enough in the past twenty-four hours. Emphasized it, with silent gnashing of teeth, knowing how futile it was.

  As he’d feared, she’d jumped on the idea of using herself as bait in an FBI tra
p the instant he’d mentioned it to her. Far from being nervous or apprehensive, the notion of putting herself in jeopardy in order to bring about an end to her present state of fear and uncertainty seemed to have ignited something inside her-something fierce and purposeful. He could see it in the light that gleamed in her eyes, in the lift of her chin and the set of her shoulders. Feel it in the excitement and tension that seemed to emanate from her like a field of electrical energy. For the first time, he saw and understood just how strong and brave she really was, this woman he’d once allowed to be judged an airhead and a bimbo. Understood that for all her gentleness and nurturing heart, Summer Robey was a woman to be reckoned with, and an adversary to be feared.

  And she’d never looked more beautiful to him. Maybe it was because of the way she was dressed, which was the way he’d always pictured her, in a dress of soft, sunshine yellow with buttons all down the front, a scooped neckline and belted waist, her hair falling to her shoulders in gleaming golden waves, or it could be that new inner fire, or simply a change in his own perceptions. Whatever it was, he couldn’t seem to keep from looking at her. And whenever he did, his heart would begin to pound.

  “I’ll be fine,” Summer said in a quiet voice just for him, and at the same time with a radiant smile for Danell, who responded with a syrupy, “How’re you, Mrs. Robey, nice to see you again.”

  “They here yet?” Riley asked in a muttered undertone.

  “Waitin’ in your office.” She leaned across her desktop, braced on her forearms, to smile at the children. “Hey…who’s this we got here?”

  “David, Helen,” said Summer, “say hello to Mrs…uh-”

  “Johnson-but y’all can call me Danell if you want to, okay?” The children both nodded; apparently overcome with awe, they were expressing it in their own individual ways-David in round-eyed silence, Helen antsy and primed for battle.