He raised his eyebrows and lifted his lips in a slow smile. “From where I’m standing, I’d say you’re well equipped with everything essentially female.”
“Remember you’re a married man, Chandler. That knock on the head must have affected more than your memories.”
Her teasing reprimand served its purpose. His heated look dissolved into an expression of chagrin.
She closed her eyes and sighed. His earlier appreciative glance had given cabin fever an entirely new meaning. For two cents, she would load everything back into the Blazer so they could take off for Atlanta immediately, and she could avoid another intimate night in the motel, but her medical expertise reminded her that Stephen needed another good night’s rest to recuperate.
She doubted she’d sleep well. Besides missing Jessica and worrying about who was stalking them, she’d become too aware of Stephen and the response he evoked in her. The prospect of spending another night in the same room with him made her uncomfortable.
To save herself from further scrutiny by Stephen, she waved a hand at the packages on the bed. “Do you think these disguises will work?”
He hunched his shoulders. “They’ll keep a casual observer from spotting us and passing that information on. That’s the most we can hope for.”
She nodded. They wouldn’t be in disguise long. She couldn’t continue living like this—afraid for her life, missing her child and tormented by the proximity of the man she loved but could never have. If their attempt to reconstruct Stephen’s actions his last few days in Atlanta didn’t yield their stalkers’ identities, they’d be out of options.
If that happened, she’d go to the FBI office in Atlanta and ask for help.
No matter what Stephen said.
Chapter Eight
The patter of drizzling rain against the window beside his bed awoke Stephen before daybreak. For the first time since he’d regained consciousness in his uncle’s cabin, he felt rested. Flexing his wounded arm gingerly, he detected only a slight ache, a tribute to Rachel’s first aid skill.
He raised himself on his elbows and gazed at the woman asleep in the other bed. Several times during the night he had awakened to hear her turning, tossing and occasionally moaning softly in her dreams, so he doubted she’d slept well. Who could blame her, with a killer on her trail and her tiny daughter so far away?
More than once he’d been tempted to go to her, to slip beneath the covers and hold her close until she slept soundly, but he’d known he couldn’t trust his responses at that proximity.
Besides, according to Rachel, he was married, damn it. If only he could remember his wife, perhaps his powerful attraction to Rachel would disappear.
With difficulty he shoved his fascination with his former partner to the back of his mind. More important than the emotions she stirred in him was catching the people who pursued them. Then he and Rachel could return to their normal lives and routines.
He considered again her continued insistence that they call his partner at the Atlanta office, but, despite the logic of her suggestion, he couldn’t risk making contact. He had lost his memories, but his instincts remained strong, warning him that danger lay down that path.
Moving quietly to keep from waking her, he threw back the covers. Before pulling on his jeans, he wrapped his right knee with an Ace bandage to hold it rigid. His resulting stiff-legged gait and the accompanying cane would be part of his disguise. Favoring his wounded arm, he tugged on a black turtleneck sweater and zipped his jeans.
In the cabin’s bathroom, he liberally streaked gray dye through his sideburns, the dark hair at his temples, and his growing beard. Round gold-rimmed glasses with rose-colored lenses completed his camouflage. The disguise wouldn’t fool anyone who knew him, but it might throw off someone looking for a clean-cut FBI agent.
When he stepped out of the bathroom, he discovered Rachel, awake and dressed, packing a soft-sided suitcase she’d purchased the day before.
Last night she had cropped her blond hair to just below her ears and colored it a rich auburn. The new hue emphasized the startling green of her eyes. This morning, through the skillful application of makeup, a smattering of becoming freckles decorated her nose and cheeks. She had exchanged her tailored slacks and sweater for black tights, black patent-leather Doc Martens and a brilliant red bulky pullover sweater that covered her trim thighs. Gigantic medallions of filigreed silver dangled from her ears.
“What do you think?” She pirouetted in front of him.
“You have great taste,” he teased. “You auditioning to join the Spice Girls?”
She wrinkled her nose in a manner that jolted his senses. “I chose everything I ordinarily would not buy.”
“It works. Your own mother probably wouldn’t recognize you.”
“You and I make quite a pair, huh?” Her dazzling smile threatened to dissolve all his good intentions to keep his distance.
“Do you want to order breakfast in the room,” he asked, “or hit the road?”
“This rain will slow us down. Let’s get started, as soon as I’ve called the Kidbroughs to check on Jessica.”
Loading their scant belongings into the Blazer took only a few minutes. After a stop at the motel office to settle their bill, they turned onto rain-slicked Highway 64 and headed west.
In the darkness of the predawn morning, neither noticed the navy blue sedan as it pulled out from behind the nearest cabin without its headlights and followed them onto the highway at a distance.
AT CASHIERS Rachel turned south on Highway 27, a narrow winding road that would take them out of the mountains to the interstate.
The wipers swept steady rain from the windshield with a hypnotic rhythm, and she had to keep talking to prevent herself from falling asleep. “Did you have any luck getting into your computer while I was shopping yesterday?”
“No. But I made a few phone calls that narrowed our search.”
“What kind of calls?”
She glanced at him in alarm, then returned her attention to the treacherous, curving road and shifted the Blazer into low gear for the steep descent.
“I called the federal penitentiary where Johnny Slade is jailed and talked to the warden. I wanted to find out whether Johnny has been in touch recently with any wise guys from the mob.”
“What did you find out?”
“We can scratch Johnny Slade from our list of probable suspects.”
“Why?”
“He’s been in the prison infirmary for the past three months, dying of lung cancer.”
“If he’s dying in prison, doesn’t that give him a greater motive to kill us? After all, we put him there.”
“That was my first reaction. But the warden assures me that Slade hasn’t had any visitors.”
“Not even family?”
“No one.”
Sympathy for Slade stabbed through her. She remembered him as a cocky, arrogant con man, a flashy dresser with an eye for women and a glib tongue. She’d disliked him instantly the first time she met him, but even so, he didn’t deserve to die alone. “No letters, phone calls?”
“Nothing. So unless some friend or relative is acting on his own for Johnny’s revenge—”
“That’s doubtful, isn’t it, since no one even bothers to visit when he’s dying?”
“That brings us back to the hate group.”
She sighed. “And a dead end.”
“A poor choice of words,” he said with a wry grimace.
She glanced in the rearview mirror. Unable to pass on the narrow, two-lane mad, cars and trucks had stacked up behind them.
“In this kind of traffic,” she said, “we can’t tell whether we’re being followed.”
“How could anyone be tailing us, unless they picked up our trail at the motel? And if they had, I doubt we’d be here now to talk about it.”
An hour later they left the mountains and entered the rolling piedmont. In a quaint little town named Walhalla that historical markers claimed
was founded by German immigrants, they stopped for breakfast.
A few miles outside Walhalla, they picked up I-85 and headed southwest toward Atlanta. In bumper-tobumper, six-lane traffic, Rachel felt anonymous for the first time since leaving George Windham’s cabin. With their disguises and rented sport utility vehicle, they’d be hard to recognize.
Exiting onto I-285 that circled Atlanta, she headed toward the suburb listed on Stephen’s driver’s license. They planned to search his place first. Rachel hoped he’d sent his wife into hiding before leaving Atlanta, not only for the woman’s safety but also because Rachel wasn’t looking forward to meeting the ex-beauty queen and advertising executive Stephen had married.
Not that she was jealous, she assured herself.
Yeah, right.
When they reached the bedroom community listed on Stephen’s driver’s license, they stopped and asked a letter carrier for directions to the street where Stephen lived. The address turned out to be a group of large apartment buildings, not unlike the complex where Stephen had rented in Savannah.
Looking for signs of surveillance, Rachel circled Stephen’s apartment building several times. Most of the parking spaces were vacant, their occupants probably at work for the day. The few cars remaining were empty.
“The building has a single main entrance,” Stephen noted. “If anyone sees us going inside, they won’t be able to tell which apartment we’re visiting.”
Rachel pulled into a parking space marked Visitors. “Do you have your gun?”
He opened his jacket to reveal his shoulder holster. “And you?”
She reached into the back seat for an oversize purse with a shoulder strap. “It’s here. Ready?”
They climbed out of the vehicle and started up the tiered walkway that led to the entrance. The air, while cool, was several degrees warmer than the mountains had been, and the surrounding trees hadn’t surrendered yet to autumn’s colorful palette. All that greenery offered a hundred places for an assassin to hide, but not a branch or leaf stirred in the midday stillness.
Rachel stopped and scanned the complex, checking doors and windows for signs of anyone watching. Not a curtain moved. She turned and followed Stephen, whose bound knee slowed his progress up the stairs.
“If I was staking out this place,” she said, “I’d plant a lookout in the lobby.”
“If a lookout’s waiting, our disguises will give us the element of surprise.”
“I hope so,” she said doubtfully.
He swung open the double glass doors, and Rachel, her right hand grasping the gun inside her purse, entered the lobby first. The room was deserted, its only sound piped-in, easy-listening music. A discreet sign opposite the tenants’ mailboxes indicated which apartment numbers could be accessed from which hallway. Stephen’s apartment was to the left.
Stephen motioned Rachel behind him and preceded down the dimly lit hall. They weren’t out of danger yet. The most obvious place a killer might be waiting was inside Stephen’s apartment.
When they reached his apartment, they drew their guns. Standing to the side of the entrance with Rachel backed against the wall on the opposite side, Stephen tried the door.
It was unlocked.
With a quick flick of his wrist, he flung the door open and waited.
Not a sound issued from inside the apartment.
Stephen leaned into the doorway for a split-second glance and just as quickly withdrew. Rachel raised her eyebrows in question, and he shook his head. He hadn’t spotted anyone.
But that didn’t mean no one was there.
Rachel followed Stephen inside. A tiny foyer led into an open floor plan, and she could observe the living and dining areas and kitchen from where she stood. The rooms were deserted.
Except for the mess.
Cushions had been tossed from sofas and chairs and ripped apart. The kitchen cabinets—even the refrigerator—stood open, and dishes had been smashed on the ceramic tile floor. Mirrors were shattered, littering the floor with shards of glass. Contents of drawers and bookcases had been scattered across the living room carpeting. Even potted plants had been uprooted from their containers and their dirt strewn across the floor.
Someone had searched the apartment, but not with the rational calm of a professional. The stench of out-of-control anger and desperation hung in the air.
Stephen touched her arm and pointed to the foot of the stairs in the foyer. Moving silently, he headed up them, weapon at the ready. She followed, guarding his back.
The stairs led to a master suite on the second floor that had suffered the same mistreatment as the rooms below. Linens had been torn from the bed, clothes dumped from the closets, and the pillows and mattress cover ripped apart.
“What were they looking for?” Rachel whispered for the first time since entering the apartment.
“Me,” Stephen said with a grimace. “And they were obviously mad as hell when they didn’t find me.”
Rachel shoved her gun into her purse and placed it on the dresser. “We have our own search to conduct.”
Holstering his weapon, Stephen surveyed the trashed room with a shake of his head. “You really think we’ll find anything in all this mess?”
“Won’t know till we try.”
She leaned down and picked up a framed picture from the floor where it had apparently landed after being knocked from the dresser. In spite of the cracked glass, she recognized immediately the snapshot Jason Bender had taken of her and Stephen the night of his going-away party. They were smiling at each other, oblivious of the camera, and the warmth in their expressions left little to the imagination.
Rachel frowned. Stephen’s wife must have loved having that photo prominently displayed in her bedroom.
“You said I was married.” Stephen’s accusing tone interrupted her thoughts.
“What?”
“Only men’s clothing is here. If I have a wife, where are her belongings?”
“She must have taken them with her when she went into hiding.”
“Everything?” Stephen’s expression was skeptical. He stepped into the adjacent bathroom and returned in a few seconds. “She didn’t leave so much as a tube of lipstick or an old bathrobe. If she went into hiding in a hurry, why did she take time to clean out every trace?”
“Maybe the wedding hasn’t taken place yet.” Joy shot through her at the possibility—and just as quickly died. Just because Stephen hadn’t married his beauty queen yet, didn’t mean he wouldn’t be. And soon.
“Why don’t I at least have a picture of her? Is that what you’re holding?”
Rachel placed the photo facedown on the dresser. “It’s just an old snapshot from your days in Savannah.”
“Let me see.”
Reluctantly she handed him the frame.
When he looked at the picture, he lifted his eyebrows in twin peaks of surprise and turned his amazed look on Rachel. Her face flamed with embarrassment.
“You told me we were just friends.” Accusation edged his words and he shook the framed photo at her. “Like brother and sister, you said.”
“That’s right,” she insisted.
He narrowed his eyes. “Brothers and sisters don’t look at each other like this.”
She scrambled for an explanation. “It was a party. We’d had too much to drink.”
“You don’t look drunk.”
“Really,” she said nervously, “you’re reading something into the photograph that isn’t there.”
“Yeah?” His dark-eyed gaze bore into her. “Then why did I keep this picture on my dresser?”
She wished she knew. “As a joke?”
“This isn’t funny, Doc.”
“We don’t know that you kept it on the dresser. Whoever vandalized this place could have found it in the bottom of a drawer and tossed it out.”
He shook his head, as if uncertain whether to accept her explanation, and riveted her with piercing stare. “How can I be sure you’re being straight wit
h me?”
“You can’t.” She forced herself to meet his gaze without flinching. “But you have to realize that if I intended to harm you, I’ve had ample opportunities and used none.”
She sank onto the edge of the bed to stop her knees from trembling.
Confusion clouded his eyes, but the iron set of his jaw didn’t soften. “For all I know, you could be leading me into some kind of trap.”
“What?” His accusation stung her.
“You just haven’t sprung it yet.”
“If you really believe that, there’s the phone.” She nodded toward the bedside table. “Call the Atlanta FBI office. Have them help you.”
His dark eyes glinted with bewilderment. “My instincts tell me not to call in the FBI. But they also warn me you’re not telling the whole truth.”
Oh boy, he had that right.
She wasn’t about to share her feelings for him. Or reveal that he was Jessica’s father. But she had to convince him she was on his side or he might go charging off, straight into danger, without the memories he needed to keep him safe.
“Look,” she said in her most reasonable tone, “you called me, you faxed me the map to the cabin, you’re the one who won’t let me go to the authorities for help, and you can’t tell me who’s after us. If anyone has a right to be wary, it should be me.”
He grabbed her by her shoulders, hauled her to her feet and lowered his face only inches from hers. “What aren’t you telling me?”
His grip was firm and not uncomfortable, but she found breathing difficult with him so near. She closed her eyes against the magnificence of his anger. “If I misled you about your marital state, I apologize. If you remember, I said from the beginning I’d heard only rumors. I never claimed to know the gospel truth.”
He released her and stepped away, and, in spite of his annoyance with her, she wished him close again.
“I’m sorry.” He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. “The tension is getting to me, or I wouldn’t have questioned your motives.”
“Forget it,” she said, relief cascading through her.
He surveyed the room and shook his head. “Things just don’t add up somehow.”
Undercover Dad Page 11
