The Soul Mate [130-4.6]
By: Carly Bishop
Synopsis:
"Who are you?"
Robyn's eyes fastened on his lips. A fris son skated over her skin.
"An avenging angel," Kiel said.
"Of course. Did you leave your wings at the door?"
"No." His brow rose. "I don't do wings, except under extreme
circumstances."
She smiled. "I don't fall into bed with strange angels, either. I'm a
widow," she confided, then frowned. "But I guess you know all that if
you're an angel?"
"I know, Robyn."
The firelight behind him set a halo about his hair. Or maybe,
expecting angel accoutrements, she was only making that up. Kiel was
way too sexy to be an angel. The way he made her feel was how only one
man on earth had ever made her feel her husband!
Dear Reader:
The word angel conjures up chubby cherubs, not men who are virile and
muscular and sinfully sexy. But you're about to enter the Denver
Branch of Avenging Angels to meet some the sexiest angels this side of
heaven!
Whenever there's injustice, the AVENGING ANGELS are on the case.
Carly Bishop brings you another irresistible angel in The Soul Mate.
Sexy Kiel faces an assignment unlike any other he has to avenge his own
death!
We know you'll love Kiel -- and all the AVENGING ANGELS. We hope you
haven't missed any of this super-special quartet!
Regards,
The Editors
SILHOUETTE Intrigue
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First published in Great Britain 1997
Silhouette Books, Eton House, 18o24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey
TW9 1SR
Cheryl McGonigle 1996
ISBN 0 373 22370 6
46-9704
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham PLC, Chatham
To my dear Aunt Sody for your grit and grace under a lifetime of
fire
Chapter One
"You guys ever asked yourselves why a mine shaft collapses on a
particular day after standing there for a him-tired-and-six years?"
Robyn Delaney Trueblood blanched. Before the comment she and her
friends had been swapping gossip about the decadent life-styles of the
Aspen, Colorado, rich and famous. Now her laughter died in her throat,
and for a moment, a pin dropping would have rocked her condo.
Her husband, Keller, had died one year ago tomorrow in the collapse of
a shaft of the Hallelujah silver mine, and her friends had gathered
together tonight at her place to help her finally lay Keller's memory
to rest. To celebrate his life, not to wallow more over his loss.
Robyn's best friend and local TV News producer, Jessie Blahnik, glared
at Mike Massie, a Denver criminal defense attorney. "Stow it, why
don't you," Jessie snapped.
"Because I want to know," Mike persisted, undaunted by Jessie's raised
eyebrows. "I mean, look. Keller was winding up his prosecution of
Trudi Candelaria. The dame murdered her lover, the internationally
famous ski jumper, Spyder Nielsen. One day, Keller goes poking around
in a mine shaft with Robyn that has withstood the test of time,
marauders, hikers and mining fiends for well over a century--"
"Mike, everyone who grows up in Colorado knows old mines collapse.
Besides, the last thing Robyn needs is your--"
"No... Jessie. It's okay," Robyn interrupted. "I've asked myself the
same question a million times. Why that mine shaft? Why that day? Why
did Keller have to die and not me?" Her head dipped low. She hadn't
exactly come out of the Hallelujah unscathed, either, but losing Keller
had nearly killed her where the old, rotted timbers had failed.
She straightened her shoulders and finished her wine. She no longer
needed to cry about it. "It was more dangerous than we knew, or we
went too far beyond where there were any modern reinforcements. But
the only real answer I know, Mike, is that there is no answer. Things
just happen, things we have no control over."
"Exactly," the third and last of her remaining guests, Scott "Kline,
put in. A writing buddy and colleague of Robyn's, Scott wrote for the
Denver Post. It's like asking why the Challenger had to blow up. "Or,
why did the Titanic'have to sink? Or, why didn t Abe Lincoln sneeze?
"Other than that Mrs. Lincoln... how did you enjoy the play?" Mike
muttered darkly, nursing his tequila lime. "This one ain't over,
folks."
"Massie, what are you talking about?" Jessie demanded.
"The murder of Keller Trueblood, Esquire, special prosecutor in the
case of Colorado v. Candelaria."
A chill swept over Robyn's flesh. "Murder?" The pit of her stomach
dropped like a stone. She stared at Keller's oldest and best friend.
Cocksure, arrogant, full of himself--maybe. He'd probably had one too
many margaritas but Robyn had never known Michael Massie to indulge
paranoid, unlikely, off-the-wall crime theories.
Massie slugged down the dregs of his tequila and lime. "What would you
say if I told you that Smart Willetts put his condo in Aspen on the
market yesterday?" "How about, "So what?"" Jessie jibed.
'54nd," Mike went on, "the day before that he moved in with Trudi
Candelaria--right into Spyder Nielsen's
"I'd say you're so far out in left field you might as well be in the
Rock Pile," Jessie retorted, referring to the cheap seats in the Denver
&
nbsp; Rockies baseball park. "How do you know any of this?"
"Because I grew up in Pitkin County, Jess," Mike snapped. "Because I
know people. The regular live-in maid, Frau Kautz, who spent twenty
years with Spyder, is on a week's holiday. Candelaria has hired
temporary help, and people I know know other people who've witnessed
Willetts's possessions be' rag moved in. I'm telling you, as far as
Candelaria and Willetts were concerned, Keller had to die."
Jessie shook her head, put down her drink, picked up her purse and
stood up. "Come on, Michael. It's late. I'll drive you home and you
can sleep it off."
But however easily Jessie tossed off Mike's query, Robyn couldn't.
Murder was her stock in trade. She wrote true-crime novels--which was
how she'd met Keller in the first place, interviewing him almost four
years ago in the course of researching her book, Where Angels Fear to
Tread. Keller had been the prosecuting attorney in that murder trial.
They married fourteen months after Keller brought in a stunning
conviction, and a few weeks after Robyn's book hit the stands.
So Robyn knew murder. She'd spent hundreds of hours over the course of
her career in maximum security pens, interviewing murderers. Even more
hours went into poring over transcripts and research with the families,
friends and associates of killers and their victims. She had a Ph.D.
in sociology and three true-crime bestsellers to her credit.
No one could ever know what was in another person's heart, but Robyn
understood that most people didn't get to be killers overnight, or
without passions and masons and rages that drove them to commit such
terrible, final acts as murder.
Stuart Willetts had been Keller's second chair--his assistant-in the
prosecution of Trudi Candelaia. If Stuart and the accused, Trudi
Candelaria, were now involved, as Michael Massie was suggesting, the
question begged to be asked--had Trudi and Stuart conspired to get rid
of Keller so the murder indictment against her could be scuttled?
"Jessie, wait. Sit down for another minute, okay?" She waited until
her friend gave in and sat back down before posing her question to make
absolutely sure she understood his point. "Mike, are you saying
Keller's chief deputy prosecutor is having an affair with the
defendant, with Trudi Candelaria?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying. Yes. I'd bet Willetts had the hots
for the Candelaria dame from day one--and she damned well knew it."
"Wouldn't Keller have seen that kind of thing going on?" Robyn asked.
"I can't believe he wouldn't have taken Willetts off the case in a New
York minute if he thought there was any impropriety like that."
"Maybe." Mike shrugged. "I'm not knocking Keller, Robyn. Not at all.
But Willetts swims with the rest of us sharks. He knows how to present
himself and how to play his cards close to the chest. Tip his hand? I
don't think so. That's why Keller picked him in the first place."
Jessie shook her head. "Mike, you're making shark bait out of minnows.
How could Stuart Willetts possibly have known that Keller and Robyn
were going to that mine on that particular Sunday? What could he
possibly know about making a mine shaft collapse?"
Robyn grimaced. "He knew we were going, Jessie. He was at dinner with
us at Planet HollYWood in Aspen that Friday night. I wanted to go see
the Hallelujah. I was working on a story about the silver miners,
remember?"
"Of course. It was Mike who put you in touch with Lucinda Montbank."
"Yes." Montbank was a well-known name in Aspen. The Montbank fortune
was made in silver mining a century ago, before gold became the
standard. Now, of the Montbanks, only Lucinda remained, and the rights
to the Hallelujah remained in her possession. She also possessed
substantial real estate holdings in a town where multimillion-dollar
homes were the norm.
"I asked Keller to go with me to the mine. I remember this all very
distinctly because Willetts was giving me a hard time about not going
hang gliding with Keller and him instead."
"Okay," Jessie granted. "Supposing that's true, what about the
technical knowledge? How could anyone be sure Keller would die in that
mine? How would you even go about making a mine shaft collapse?"
"Come on, Jessie." Mike got up to pour himself a cup of coffee. "This
is Aspen we're talking. That kind of information qualifies as local
lore. There's the library, the Historical Society. Hell, some crusty
old miner living in a shack up by Marble could do it for a few bucks on
a bet."
Scott Kline plunked his cocktail glass down on the table. "I hate to
admit it, but this scenario is beginning to make sense. Willetts had
to know that if Keller died, the defense would lobby for the charges
against Trudi to be dismissed or for a mistrial at the very least."
"Which is exactly what happened, isn't it?" Robyn asked.
Mike nodded. "Willetts beat the land-speed record for conceding to a
mistrial. At the time, I thought he was just being cagey. That he
would reinstate the murder charges and start over."
"He never did, did he?" Robyn asked. It seemed hard to believe, now,
that she hadn't followed the news after the mine collapsed, but she had
been in a Denver hospital undergoing the first of three operations to
restore her leg to some semblance of working order.
Even if she hadn't been knocked out for weeks on end with pain
medications for the operations, she and Keller had agreed it would be
vital to both their careers to keep their professional paths from
crossing after they married. She'd made a point of steering clear no
matter how juicy the Spyder Nielsen case became, and to pick up the
threads after it was all over, after Keller died, wasn't in her
heart.
"That's right," Mike concurred. "Willetts never reinstated the
charges. He bailed out on the pretext that the evidence against Trudi
had proven too shaky to make the charges stick."
"Maybe it wasn't a pretext at all," Robyn protested. "Maybe Stuart
Willetts just knew when to cut his losses. I overheard Keller on the
phone one night in a pretty heated conversation with the main
detective. Maybe the case wasn't stacking up."
"Yeah, well, you can put that spin on it," Mike said, sitting back. He
hung both arms over the back of his chair. "But now Willetts has moved
in with the merry widow. Lover, I guess," he corrected himself, "since
Trudi and Spyder weren't married.
"I think," he concluded darkly, "you have to ask yourself this
question. If you were an obscenely wealthy jet-setter like Trudi
Candelaria, why would you give a guy like Willetts the time of day
-unless he was the one who kept you out of the slammer?"
"Love?" Robyn suggested.
Massie gave her a look. "Get a grip, Robyn. You and Keller may have
been soulmates unto eternity, but the only person Trudi Candelaria
gives a rat's ass about is Trudi."
THE FOLLOWING AFTFERNOON, Monday, on the anniversary of Keller's death,
Robyn departed the Rocky Mountain Re
habilitation Center for the last
time.
Her outpatient treatment program had run its course, though her leg
wasn't back to one hundred percent. The prognosis said it never would
be. Most nights a numbness around her foot and ankle kept her awake,
and in the mornings she would awaken feeling as if she hadn't slept
very well.
Last night she hadn't slept at all.
After a year spent in a hellish round of operations and physical
therapy, she could get around without her cane for most of the day. She
could drive, take small hikes and even manage an hour on a stair
stepper. As for her emotional fitness, she was making do with a little
seashell night-light plugged into the wall, where for months she hadn't
been able to endure the lights being turned off at all.
There was no darker place than a mine shaft that has collapsed, and
before her rescue was effected, more than the pain of her leg, the
blackness had invaded her heart, mind and soul, leaving her unable to
cope with the dark at all.
That was passing, too. The tiny light of the seashell kept her
rational in the dark now.
What she couldn't seem to do, what had motivated the small party last
night, was to get over losing Keller.
She didn't buy into New Age anything. Not crystals, not dream
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