Unforgettable

by Joan Johnston

  “Oh, dear. I don’t think Sam will want your help.”

  “He doesn’t have any choice,” Lydia said with conviction. “I lost the Ghost. And I intend to be there when it’s found.”

  Chapter Two

  Samantha Warren paced the Mexican-tiled kitchen floor of her sprawling home in Dallas, her cell phone clutched in one hand. She chewed on a fingernail that was already bitten to the quick, shook her hand when she drew blood, and sucked on the wounded finger to ease the pain. She’d known this day was coming. She was only surprised it had taken two years for it to arrive.

  The Duchess of Blackthorne’s assistant, Emily Sheldon, had called with a new assignment, one which required the presence of the owner of Warren & Warren Investigations, Sam Warren, in person. The problem was, Samantha’s father, Sam Warren, had been missing, and presumed dead, for two years.

  Her father had disappeared while scuba diving near the Greek island of Santorini. After a brief investigation, the Greek authorities had concluded he’d drowned. Sam didn’t buy it. Her father was a master diver, too careful in his preparations to have had a diving accident. And he was an Olympic silver medalist in distance swimming.

  It seemed impossible that a man as competent and conscientious as her father could have drowned, disappearing without a trace. The authorities claimed he had. Her father’s rented Chris-Craft had been discovered anchored near a small Greek island. No sign of him had ever been found.

  Samantha had been twenty-four at the time and had been working for her father full-time since graduation from Texas Tech. She’d used all the investigative skills her father had taught her to search for him. Two years later, she was no closer to knowing what had happened to Sam Warren than she had been on the dreadful day she’d learned of his disappearance.

  She’d clung tenaciously to the fragile hope that somehow, somewhere, her father was still alive. But if he was, why hadn’t he contacted her? The only explanation that made any sense was that her father had been injured and had no memory of who he was. Which meant she was going to have to retrace his steps in Greece to find him.

  That had been harder than she’d ever imagined, especially with all her responsibilities at Warren & Warren Investigations.

  Most of her father’s business had been devoted to keeping an eye on the Duchess of Blackthorne’s four sons and daughter. Samantha had actually been the one responsible for the monthly reports to the duchess that had threatened to take up all of her father’s time. When her father disappeared, she’d been afraid that if the duchess knew that Sam Warren’s twenty-something daughter was taking over in his “temporary” absence, she’d shift her business to someone older and wiser.

  So Samantha had hired a male assistant to be the “voice” of Sam Warren and pretended in her communications with the duchess that her father was still on the job.

  With the crazy economy, and the increased demand over the past year for information about her five grown children, the Duchess of Blackthorne had become the only client of Warren & Warren Investigations. If the duchess discovered Samantha’s deceit now, chances were that she would fire her for sure, which would effectively put Samantha out of business.

  She wouldn’t have cared, except she spent every penny she made, and all of her free time, searching for clues to what had happened to her father. Recently, she’d gotten the first promising lead she’d had since shortly after his disappearance. She needed the duchess’s money to follow it all the way to Greece. Which meant she needed to keep Bella as a client.

  That was why, come hell or high water, Sam Warren had to show up in Rome tomorrow morning. The only question was who Samantha should send, since she certainly couldn’t show up herself.

  The obvious person to go was Kevin Mortenson, the male PI Samantha had hired to impersonate her father if the duchess ever wanted to speak to Sam Warren on the phone. Because her father ran his business out of their home, Samantha had often been the one who’d answered the phone when the duchess or her assistant called while her father was still alive. She’d continued to do so after his disappearance.

  Luckily, between texting, email, and International Fed-Ex shipping, it had never once been necessary for Kevin to pretend to be her father. So Samantha was shocked when Kevin vehemently refused to go to Rome.

  “No, Sam,” he’d said, staring her down. “Not only no, but I’d rather burn in hell for eternity than fly to Rome and impersonate your dad.”

  “Why not?” she’d demanded. “That was the reason I hired you in the first place!”

  “I know enough about the duchess now to fear what might happen to me if she ever found out the truth about what’s been going on for the past two years.”

  Samantha scoffed. “What is it you think she’s going to do?”

  “That woman can be as ruthless as her eldest son, as heartless as her twin sister, and as unpredictable as her husband. That’s a lethal combination. I don’t have the first clue what she might do if she caught me pretending to be Sam Warren. And I don’t intend to find out.”

  “What do you suggest I do?” Sam said, her balled fist stuck on one canted hip.

  “Tell her the truth.”

  “But she might—”

  “My point exactly,” Kevin interrupted. “She might do something terrible. You got yourself into this mess. You can get yourself out.”

  Kevin stalked out without giving Samantha a chance to beg. She was staring out the kitchen window at the tall hedge that was all that separated her from a nearby neighbor, fighting back tears, when she heard bottles rattling. She turned in time to see her brother Joe standing between the open refrigerator door and the shelves inside. He twisted the cap off a bottle of Heineken, then held himself steady with a hand on the door and brought the ice-cold beer bottle up to his lips.

  Samantha stared, entranced, as he leaned his head back and swallowed down half of it. At thirty, Joe was only four years older than she was, but he had the ageless gaze of an old man, the result of violent years spent as a member of the army’s elite Delta Force. Master Sergeant Joseph Samuel Warren had received a medical discharge six months ago due to a catastrophic injury to his right leg from an IED—an improvised explosive device—in Afghanistan.

  Once a powerful, broad-shouldered six foot two, her brother was now mostly ribs. A jagged white scar angled down the right side of his face, cutting through brow and cheekbone all the way to his chin. Before her stood a shadow of the proud soldier who’d left for Afghanistan less than a year ago.

  Samantha had allowed Joe to brood—and drink—because she’d thought he would get over his bitterness in a few days or weeks and move on with his life. But the more self-pity he’d displayed at being forced out of a job he loved—and losing a fiancée who didn’t bargain for a disabled, scarred, and jobless husband—the less sorry she’d felt for him.

  Joe was still drinking six months after his discharge, with no signs of stopping. His light-blue eyes were bloodshot, his face was covered with a rough stubble of dark beard, and his military buzz cut had long since grown out, lank black hair hanging over his forehead.

  When his Adam’s apple had finished bobbing, he scratched his gaunt belly, belched loudly, stepped back so he could shove the refrigerator door closed, and asked in a slurred voice, “What’s for supper?”

  Samantha’s green eyes narrowed on her brother. Instead of the sallow-faced drunk standing in her kitchen, she imagined the tanned, muscular, skillful—and dangerous—Delta Force operative Joe used to be. Maybe she could kill two birds with one stone. Why not send Joe? It would give him something to do that would get him out of the house and away from the bottle. And it would provide her with a “Sam Warren” to help Lydia Benedict find the Ghost.

  “You don’t have time for supper,” she said, suddenly making up her mind.

  “Why not?”

  “You’ve got to catch a flight to Rome.”

  His eyes widened in surprise. Then he grinned, revealing very white, very straight—tha
nks to several years in braces he’d hated—teeth. “Is this a joke?”

  It was a wicked smile, one that had made her girlfriends sigh and wish that Joe would look in their direction. Hopefully, that smile would keep Lydia Benedict distracted long enough for Samantha to find the missing Ghost of Ali Pasha. Once Samantha had located the apparently stolen jewel, which was too well-known not to be talked of in the black market, she could send Joe to retrieve it, something she was certain he could manage.

  “No joke,” she said brusquely. “I need you to fly to Rome tonight for a case I’m working on.”

  “I’m going back to bed.” He staggered as he turned, accidentally putting weight on a leg that could no longer hold him all by itself. He caught himself with a palm smacked against the wall, then limped back toward the hallway that led to his bedroom.

  “I need your help, Joe.”

  That stopped him in his tracks. He leaned most of his weight on his good leg and kept a hand on the wall to ease the strain on his injured limb. “I can’t help you, Sam. I can’t help anyone,” he said bitterly.

  Samantha hurried to catch her brother before he could move again. She grabbed his arm and was astonished when she felt rock-hard muscles tense at her touch. She’d noticed Joe doing push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups every morning, but she hadn’t paid much attention to his workouts. Apparently he was a lot more fit than his bloodshot eyes and gaunt ribs suggested.

  Joe kept his head down and his eyes averted as she pleaded, “The duchess expects Sam Warren in person to show up in Rome to track down a priceless pearl necklace, called the Ghost of Ali Pasha, that’s been stolen. Kevin won’t go. If you don’t help me, she’s going to find out the truth. And I’m going to be out of business.”

  “You made your bed—” he began.

  “Yes, I did,” she said fiercely. “Because I was afraid the duchess wouldn’t keep using Dad’s business to investigate her children’s activities if she knew it was just me. But I’ve finally got a decent lead on what happened to Dad in Greece. I need the money the duchess pays me to follow it.”

  Joe scratched the short growth of whiskers under his chin with his free hand and glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “I’m not going to be much use in any kind of fight. This bum leg won’t support me.”

  “You’re not going to have to fight anyone,” she assured him. “I just need someone to be Sam Warren while I investigate the theft of the Ghost.”

  “I’m too young to pass for Dad.”

  Samantha grimaced. “You’re a better choice than me. And I don’t have anyone else to send.” She hesitated, then added, “There’s a slight hitch.”

  His lips quirked. “There always is.”

  She gave him the bad news quickly. “The duchess’s daughter, Lady Lydia, wants to help look for the Ghost. You’ll be spending most of your time in Rome with her.”

  “No way,” he said flatly. “I don’t need some rich bitch spoiled brat ordering me around.”

  Samantha wasn’t certain whether Lydia was a bitch or not, but she certainly was rich and spoiled. Not as rich as she had been before she’d donated her trust fund to the Castle Foundation. Nevertheless, the allowance Lydia got from the foundation allowed her to maintain her wealthy lifestyle.

  Samantha felt a moment’s hesitation when she imagined the pampered young woman interacting with her nuts-and-bolts, no-nonsense brother. But she had no choice. “Lydia didn’t have permission from her mother to borrow the Ghost, even though she told her brother—who retrieved the necklace for her from the vault in England where it was stored—that she did.”

  Joe shook his head in disbelief.

  “Now she’s worried that Oliver will blame her for losing it.”

  “She did lose it.”

  “The Ghost isn’t the sort of thing you ‘lose.’ More likely, it was stolen from her.”

  “I don’t know squat about recovering lost jewels,” Joe said flatly.

  “I’ll do the investigating,” Samantha said. “I just need you to be a body in place.”

  Joe scowled. “That’s about all I’m good for now.”

  Samantha hated the despair she heard in her brother’s voice. She was determined to get Joe on that plane to Rome. He needed to start thinking about the future instead of reliving the glories of a past that was gone forever.

  “I talked with Lydia briefly,” she continued, “and she has no memory of how she got home from the charity ball where she wore the necklace or much of anything else that happened.”

  “Rohypnol,” Joe said brusquely. He turned and leaned his back against the wall, taking all the weight off his bad leg. “Do you want to sit down?” Samantha asked with concern.

  Joe shook his head. “I’m fine. Go on.”

  She could see he was in pain. It was his own fault. The doctors had told him that too much muscle was gone from his right calf and thigh for the leg ever to do the job it was supposed to do. They’d been convinced he would never walk again on a leg with so much damage, and that if he did somehow manage to walk, he would always need a cane. They’d wanted to amputate and give Joe a prosthetic device. He’d fought to keep his mutilated leg.

  The doctors had also warned him that the lacerated muscle tissue would continue to cause him pain long after it had healed.

  But Joe had been adamant. “Leave the leg where it is.”

  When he’d gotten out of Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, he’d been a crazy man, exercising his leg until he had horrible cramps. But it had never gotten strong enough to bear his entire weight on its own. He’d proved the doctors partly wrong. He was walking again. Limping, rather. But her brother’s strained features made it plain that the doctors had been right about the pain—except that what he suffered was far worse than mere pain. He could only avoid the excruciating cramps by consistently using a cane to take the weight off his injured leg.

  Which, of course, he refused to do.

  So he suffered. And raged at the circumstances that had taken away his mobility and the work he loved. And drank to blot out the pain, both physical and emotional.

  He’d paid a price for his stubbornness. He wasn’t the same powerful, confident, glass-is-overflowing man he’d been before his injury.

  Samantha eyed her brother, wondering exactly how she should phrase her plea. She needed him to work with Lydia. She didn’t want Lydia complaining later to her mother that Sam Warren hadn’t let her help. “Lydia might be a little spoiled—”

  Joe made a disgusted sound in his throat.

  Samantha hurried on. “But she’s more naive than anything else. With four older brothers, and being the only girl, she’s been indulged and protected her entire life. She probably couldn’t imagine someone daring to drug her drink.”

  Joe lifted a brow. “Is the Ghost the only thing she lost when she was drugged?”

  “If you’re asking if she was sexually assaulted after she was dosed with whatever was put in her drink, I don’t believe so,” Samantha said. “I asked, and Lydia said she was still wearing her clothes, down to her underwear, when she woke up, and she doesn’t have any cuts or bruises that would suggest an attack.”

  The young woman had been surprised at the question and startled at the thought that she might have been drugged. She’d admitted that she rarely got drinks for herself, that some man or another was always bringing one to her. She didn’t remember having a drink handed to her by a stranger, but everyone at the ball had been masked. Even if a stranger had handed her a drugged drink, she wouldn’t have seen his face.

  The fact that Lydia hadn’t been personally attacked after she’d been drugged was a blessing. But Lydia’s inability to remember what had happened the night of the masked ball left Samantha with a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of investigating to do.

  “You’re going to have to deal with Lydia,” she told her brother. “She insists on being involved in the recovery of the stolen necklace.”

  “Talk her out of it.”
/>   “I’ve already tried,” Samantha admitted. “It didn’t work. Honestly, she might be able to help.”

  “A spoiled princess is going to help?” Joe said with a sneer. “How? By putting a jeweled crown on her head and demanding the bad guys hand over the goods?”

  Samantha wouldn’t have put it past Lydia to do exactly that, if she thought it would work. The girl was both intelligent and resourceful. And beautiful. Men were often struck dumb when they saw her for the first time. But she didn’t think those arguments would improve her brother’s attitude toward the privileged young woman.

  So she said, “Lydia’s been doing a lot of investigating herself over the past few months, looking for a stolen painting. She’s not a complete novice, although her methods aren’t too subtle.”

  “Why don’t you go and work with this Lydia person yourself?” Joe asked. “That seems like the best solution all around.”

  Samantha shook her head. “I can’t take the chance that the duchess will fire me. A man named Sam Warren has to show up. I can’t lose this job, Joe. In a couple of months I’ll have enough to finance a trip to Greece to figure out what happened to Dad. Just help me out this once, and I promise I’ll never ask again.”

  Samantha waited with bated breath until Joe said, “Just this once.”

  She gave him a quick hug and said in a choked voice, “Thank you!”

  He shoved himself off the wall and hugged her tight for a moment before he let her go. “You realize I don’t have any civvies.”

  His civilian clothes were at his home near Fort Bragg, the army camp in North Carolina where he’d last been posted. He’d shown up in Dallas wearing cammies and carrying his B-4 bag and hadn’t left the house since.

  “You can take the insignia off a set of cammies to wear on the plane and buy what you need when you get to Rome,” Samantha said.

  “I won’t need much.”

  “You need a shave. And you need to be clear-eyed to deal with Lydia. She’s no dummy, Joe. And she’s extraordinarily beautiful.”