Frustrated, Hayley decided to use the back of a blank envelope. Pulling one out, she discovered it wasn’t empty. A photograph landed on the desk faceup. Another, more recent picture of Leigh. But it couldn’t be. Unlike the one Hayley had found in her room the other night, this appeared to be a current photo—except for Leigh’s hair.
The shorter bob was flattering, but neither she nor her sister had ever worn their hair exactly like this. In the picture, Leigh was laughing, looking up at a man with his back to the camera.
Hayley studied the image, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. The background was clear in this picture. It had been taken on the street outside a familiar coffee shop in New York City. In the background was the bank building with one of those signs that flashed the time, date and temperature. The date was showing in the picture.
“Impossible.”
She tore through the drawers, hunting for her grandfather’s magnifying glass. She had to be wrong. The sign couldn’t possibly say what she thought it said.
But it did.
The picture had been taken two days ago.
Chapter Eight
The photograph couldn’t be of her sister, then. Leigh was in England.
Wasn’t she?
Hayley set the magnifying glass on top of the phone book. Of course Leigh was in England. Hayley had just spoken with her. She’d driven Leigh and her friends to the airport the other morning. She hadn’t actually watched them board the plane, but Leigh wouldn’t lie to her. They never kept secrets from each other.
Tears pricked at Hayley’s eyes. Her entire world was suddenly upside down. If she couldn’t trust her own twin, who could she trust?
Bram. Except he was keeping his own secrets.
Until a few minutes ago, she would have said she could trust Jacob, but that hadn’t been brotherly interest in his eyes just now. Eden disliked her, Mrs. Walsh and Kathy were gone, and the new staff didn’t bear consideration. That left Marcus.
Yeah, right. The father who seemed to despise his twin daughters and had spent twenty-four years trying to ignore them completely.
Hayley rested her head on her arms, dislodging the towel from her head. She’d forgotten all about her wet hair.
“I am going crazy,” she whispered.
“No, but you might if you keep talking to yourself.”
Hayley jerked up her head, quickly blinking back the unshed tears. Bram filled the doorway leading to the hall.
“What is it? Did something happen to your sister?”
“I thought you left,” she managed.
“I came back. What’s wrong?”
Wordlessly, she shook her head and slid the picture across the desk to him.
Bram picked it up, frowning. “Leigh again? What’s wrong? You don’t like the guy she’s with?”
“I don’t know the guy she’s with. Apparently, I don’t know my sister, either. She’s supposed to be in England, not New York. I just got off the phone with her. She said she was having a great time over there.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Look at the date on the sign in the background. Here’s a magnifying glass if—”
“I can read it.”
He studied the picture, turning it over. His frown lines deepened.
“How do you know this wasn’t taken in London? This could be any city street.”
“Well, for one thing, how would a picture taken in England two days ago be in a blank envelope inside this desk today? For another, I recognize both the street and that coffee shop. Leigh and I have eaten there several times.”
Bram tapped the picture against his open palm. He turned it over, then surveyed the room thoughtfully. “Does all that equipment work?”
Hayley followed his gaze across the room to what her grandfather had called his technology center. He’d loved gadgets and was always buying the latest computer, the latest printer, the most up-to-date software.
Bram crossed to the computer and turned it on.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to show you how your sister can be in London and New York at the same time.”
Hayley rose stiffly. She wanted to tell him what Jacob had said. She wanted to hear Bram tell her he hadn’t come here for some sort of twisted revenge. She wanted reassurance that he wasn’t using her for some reason of his own. But nothing was as it should have been. Everything Jacob had told her was starting to seem more possible.
Bram sat down before the bank of machines.
I don’t know what Myers did for a living before, but he and his wife used to live in New York City, Jacob had told her, so I’d say it’s a safe bet he wasn’t always a blacksmith.
“You know computers?”
“Doesn’t everyone these days? How do you think your father found me?” Bram asked. “Every good businessman needs a Web page.”
“I never thought about it.” She couldn’t see Marcus searching the Web for a blacksmith.
Bram’s fingers fairly danced over the keyboard. She’d always been a pretty good typist, but she doubted she was in his league.
“Nice system,” he said approvingly.
“It belonged to my grandfather, but it’s at least seven years old.”
Bram looked at her sharply. “Not this machine. They only put this chip out last year.”
Hayley stared from him to the machine. She studied it for a minute and realized he was right. This wasn’t the computer her grandfather had owned. Before she could wonder about that, Bram’s next words captured her attention.
“If we knew where to look, I’m betting we’d find a copy of this photograph stored in one of these files. I could do a search, but it’s probably quicker just to show you what I meant using this picture.”
“I don’t understand.” Her head was starting to throb.
“Watch.”
Taking the photo, Bram worked with quiet efficiency, moving easily from one program to another as he scanned the picture into the machine and began to manipulate the image. Obviously, he was more than a little familiar with this sort of work. Unease formed a lump in her stomach.
He zeroed in on the date until it filled the screen.
“What day would you like it to read?”
He could have been speaking Chinese. Her tired brain could barely focus on the screen, let alone his words.
“How about tomorrow?” he asked when she didn’t answer.
Minutes flew past as he changed the date on the image. Hayley pulled over a chair, afraid that if she didn’t sit down, she’d fall down. She wasn’t familiar with the graphics program he was using. Leigh was the computer whiz. She’d probably understand exactly what Bram was doing.
He rose and began checking through packages of printer paper before selecting one. Minutes later she held the same-size photograph printed on an 8½x11 sheet of photo-quality paper. The only difference between the two photos was the date on the bank’s display screen.
“That’s how it was done, Hayley. If we use that paper cutter over there, you’d never be able to tell which was the original.”
Why wasn’t that knowledge more reassuring?
“But Leigh’s hair is long like mine—unless she just got it cut.”
Bram shook his head. “Changing a hairstyle is almost as simple. There are even programs that do that. Watch.”
He began searching file listings, stopping when he found one called Hayley. She immediately recognized the picture he opened. Jacob had taken it with the digital camera he’d gotten for his birthday. She had been mugging for the camera at a restaurant in New York where they’d met him for dinner to celebrate. As she watched, Bram erased the hair spilling past her shoulders. Before her eyes, the picture was transformed. Her long hair vanished, replaced by a shorter length.
“It would take time to clean this up completely, but trust me, I could finish this picture so you’d never be able to tell I had altered it. Want to see what you would look like with bangs? I could add
them. Want your hair red? No problem.”
The knot of unease was growing in direct proportion to her headache.
“That’s how it was done, Hayley. Simple, for those who know how. The question is, who in this house knows how?”
Helplessly, she shook her head. “Leigh might be able to do that, if she was here.”
“What about Jacob?”
“Probably. This could even be his machine, now that I think about it. I know he’s taken computer courses. He and Leigh talked about them once. Computers don’t hold much fascination for me so I’ve never paid much attention. But why go to all this trouble? What’s the point?”
“An excellent question.”
And one that was starting to really scare her. She reached for her hair, mildly surprised to find it damp. The events of this morning seemed a lifetime ago. She threaded her fingers through the tangled strands. Bram had already seen her at her worst, but if she didn’t comb it soon, she’d have a heck of a time getting rid of the snarls.
“Whenever you start toying with your hair like that I know something’s on your mind,” Bram said.
Immediately, she dropped her hands. There was no point in beating around the bush. “Is it true you were married?”
The question netted a flicker of surprise. “I suppose I have Jacob to thank for that question?”
Hayley nodded.
“My wife died more than ten years ago.”
“In childbirth?”
Their gazes locked. If eyes truly were a window to a person’s soul, she was gazing into a soul filled with torment.
“Yes,” he said tersely. “I assume Jacob didn’t omit the fact that my daughter died, as well.”
Remembering what Jacob had said about Bram’s vigil with his daughter, Hayley laid her hand on his biceps, touching the tip of the dragon’s tail. His muscles were knotted tighter than steel. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” he said simply.
“Was Marcus your wife’s doctor?”
“What, exactly, did your pal tell you?” he asked softly.
Hayley flinched, but she refused to look away. “Jacob said you married into a wealthy local family. He said your wife showed up in town one day, pregnant and alone. She began seeing a local doctor. Something went horribly wrong with the delivery. I just wondered if Marcus was that doctor.”
“How is it that good old Jacob managed to omit that part?”
“He didn’t know who the doctor was.”
Bram’s jaw was clenched so tightly she was afraid he’d crack a tooth.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Are you?”
Her hand fell from his arm. She felt his grief and his anger as if Bram and she were physically connected somehow.
“Let me guess. Jacob suggested I must have returned seeking vengeance. Right?” Bram swore. “Is that what you think? That I’m here planning some sort of convoluted revenge ten years after the fact?”
He stood so fast the chair rolled across the floor, smashing against the desk. Hayley couldn’t prevent a tiny gasp.
“Of course you do. You don’t want to believe it, but you do. Why shouldn’t you? You barely know anything about me.”
“That isn’t true!”
“No? Deep down inside aren’t you wondering? Isn’t there a small part of you that is worried Jacob might be right?”
She couldn’t stand to see his pain. “Stop it, Bram.”
“Rest easy, Hayley. I’m not some tragic figure seeking belated justice.”
“I know that.”
He ignored her as if she hadn’t spoken. “Do you want to know the truth about why my wife came here instead of staying in New York, where she had doctors she trusted and medical care only minutes away?”
“You don’t owe me any explanation.”
“She came here so she wouldn’t be alone when our baby came. She was angry with me because I was seldom around. You see, I was busy trying to build an empire so I could give her the sort of life and things she was used to having. I was hardly ever home.”
He closed his eyes briefly, opening them before Hayley could find any words in response.
“Helen died at the hands of an incompetent doctor who missed a pre-existing condition and botched an operation most doctors could have performed in their sleep. I wanted revenge, all right, but you know what I discovered?”
She shook her head, her throat too thick to speak.
“It’s damn hard to take revenge against yourself. Not that I didn’t give it a good try, you understand, but it really isn’t all that easy to drink yourself to death. I spent four and a half years trying.”
“Please. You don’t have to tell me this.”
“Sure I do. You’ll need my version for comparison when you try to decide which one of us is lying.”
“Stop it!”
“Your father wasn’t Helen’s doctor, it was some old man who should have retired years earlier. Want to know who the real victim was in all this? My daughter.” His voice thickened. “She was so tiny I was afraid to touch her. I’ve never been a religious man, Hayley, but I prayed she would live. Even when they told me she’d be permanently damaged due to oxygen deprivation, I prayed for her to live. But God wasn’t answering prayers that day, nor any of the days that followed. I got to watch this tiny little infant hooked to machines, struggling for each shallow breath until—” His voice broke. “Until she died, too tired to struggle anymore. And all because I’d put business ahead of my wife and child.”
His pain was unbearable. Hayley’s throat ached as silent tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks. “Don’t you think you’ve blamed yourself long enough?” she whispered.
Dry-eyed, he stared at her. “Eternity won’t be long enough.”
He strode from the room without another word, a proud, strong man filled with bitter regret. She sat in her grandfather’s chair and wept, not sure if the tears were for his pain or her own.
She’d fallen in love with a man who had no room left for love. She was not only crazy, she was a fool.
HAYLEY WOKE with a raging thirst and absolutely no idea where she was. She lay perfectly still in the dark room, breathing rapidly until her sluggish brain remembered. She was curled on the couch in her grandfather’s office. The damp towel she’d used on her hair was still damp, from her tears now.
After locking all three doors to avoid conversation with anyone else, she’d given in to a crying jag totally unlike her. She had actually cried herself to sleep. The result was a stiff, puffy face and a raw sore throat.
And for what? Rumors and speculation? She’d caused Bram to relive all that pain when she didn’t even believe he’d come here for revenge against Marcus. Bram hadn’t needed to answer, but he’d said Marcus hadn’t been his wife’s doctor, and Hayley believed him.
Staggering to the bathroom, she switched on the light and then blinked, her eyes scratchy. Her face was a mess, but worse, it was going to take forever to remove the tangles from her hair. She’d have to sneak up to her room and hope no one saw her. Hayley had no idea what time it was, but sensed it was late.
Her stomach growled in assent, feeling as empty and hollow as her emotions. Gulping tapwater from the tiny paper cup, she realized she was going to have to risk Mrs. Norwich’s disapproval by raiding the kitchen. But she’d better clean up the mess she’d made in the office first.
Hayley stepped back into the room and turned on the lights. Fear chased goose bumps over her arms. The room was as pristine and neat as it had been when she’d first entered to take her sister’s phone call.
“This can’t be happening. Not again.”
The open phone book was gone from the desk. The chair Bram had sent rolling across the carpeting was tucked in its usual spot. The computer was turned off. Only her bottle of water, sitting on the edge of the desk, was out of place. Without that and the towel and the depression on the couch where she’d been lying, she would think she had dreamed the entire thing.
&nb
sp; Her heart thundered in her chest. Hurrying to the workstation, she hunted for the picture Bram had printed. It was gone. So was the one from the desk. The wastebasket was empty. There was nothing on the floor.
Someone had entered the room after she’d fallen asleep, and they’d wanted her to know. A quick check proved all the doors were still locked. Even the windows were locked. With extreme care, she searched every inch of the workstation and each one of the desk drawers for the pictures.
They were definitely gone.
If it wasn’t for their absence, she might have been able to convince herself Mrs. Norwhich had used a master key to unlock the door so she could tidy up. But Mrs. Norwhich would have no use for those pictures.
Who did?
Picking up her water, Hayley drained the rest of the bottle. Bram had left with nothing in his hands, she’d swear to that. She was not losing her mind and it had not been a dream. He’d been here. They’d talked. And she hadn’t cleaned up when he left.
Turning on the computer, Hayley tried to convince herself the pictures weren’t important. But they must be or they wouldn’t be missing. Bram had thought the one she’d found in the drawer was in a file on the computer somewhere. Maybe she could find that file.
Except the computer wouldn’t open without a password.
Hayley battled the encroaching fear that rose like bile to poison her mind. The computer hadn’t requested a password earlier.
“A fluke,” she told herself. “Or maybe Mrs. Norwhich did come in to clean and something happened when she turned the computer off.”
Rebooting the computer netted the same results. The machine wanted a password.
Hayley felt cold right down to her bones. Could Bram have done this? Why would he?
So that she couldn’t search the computer for the pictures.
Hayley drew in a long, shaky breath. Darn it, she was tired of feeling scared in her own home! No matter how late it was, she was calling that lawyer right now. He must have an answering service or something. Weren’t they like doctors, with clients calling them at odd hours? She was not going to let some faceless person terrorize her in her own home!
The Firstborn Page 13
