Royal Heir
Alice Sharpe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is dedicated to my friends in the

Mid-Willamette Valley RWA whose

professionalism, enthusiasm and giant hearts

make a solitary job so much more fun.

Round trip tickets to Montivitz for everyone!

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Prologue

March 2, north of Seattle, Washington

The call came as he prepared to leave the office. He had to scramble to get the phone himself as his secretary had left for the day and the damn thing was hidden under a sheet of architectural drawings.

The caller’s voice caught him at once, though, her anxiety as loud and clear as her voice was furtive.

“I’ve got compromising photos of your wife and my husband. He’ll kill me if he finds out I hired a private detective to follow him. I’m too scared to use the pictures myself, but the bastard deserves to be humiliated. The pictures are yours if you want them…just be careful. He’s chief of police…”

She’d gone on to name a waterside restaurant across the river. She’d get her sister to drive her there. “Meet me in one hour…”

By now he was living on his boat, a thirty-two-foot cruiser with two powerful gasoline engines, and his mind raced as he plotted a course across the river. Her last murmured, “Make sure you aren’t followed,” trailed him all the way down to the marina as he threw cautious glances in the rearview mirror.

He’d known his wife was seeing someone but the chief of police? Who was the chief of police, anyway?

The big engines started at once and he cast off the dock lines without fanfare, replacing his tailored suit jacket with a heavy wool coat as April was cold this far north. He’d crossed the river many, many times, often after sundown. He kept his gaze on the buoys and distant landmarks. He knew the channel, was comfortable with the strong currents. He was an experienced, methodical boater.

But in his mind, the caller’s frantic voice tangled with the memory of his wife’s. She’d promised to ruin him, to take his child…

Not if he could help it.

Revealing, embarrassing pictures might be enough to get her to back down…it was a chance worth taking.

He heard the other vessel before he saw it, a distant buzz that grew louder even though no lights shone on the water. He turned off his own cockpit light, thinking it might be robbing him of night vision, and then he saw it, a black hull, low freeboard, racing toward him like a SCUD missile.

He blinked his running lights back on and flipped the switches of every other light he could reach until his yacht shone like a Christmas tree. Still the smaller boat raced toward him. Mesmerized, it took him too long to admit he was the target, that if he didn’t do something right now he was going to be blown out of the water.

Climbing up on the stern gunwale, he dove into the black river, taking deep, strong pulls with his arms to move as far away from his own propeller and the impending explosion as possible. The coat weighed him down, slowed him down and he slipped his arms free as he surfaced. At that moment, the two vessels collided, filling the night air with fire and smoke.

Debris rained down, falling close by, scorching his face and hair, sending him back below the surface to the quiet depths of water too cold to keep a man alive for long.

Chapter One

April 11, San Francisco, California

With an anxious glance at the clock on her dashboard, Julia Sheridan pulled into the San Francisco airport short-term parking garage. She was more than an hour late, her margin for safety eaten up by a flat tire and the bumbling Good Samaritan who had stopped to “help” her.

As if she couldn’t change her own tire.

The first empty parking spot she found was four flights up and toward the back. She was out of the car in a flash, hair, jeans and leather flight jacket damp from her adventure beside the freeway. Straightening the white wool scarf around her neck and slinging her huge shoulder bag over her arm, she hurried toward the elevator, heart pounding in anticipation.

Once aboard the elevator, she slid to the side and took her cell phone from her coat pocket, punching in the lawyer’s number. As before, she was directed to leave a message but this time she didn’t bother.

She should have given herself more time for potential problems. As an air transport pilot, who knew better than she the inevitable last-minute crisis that threw the best-laid plans awry? But she’d been rushing around this Saturday morning like nobody’s business, buying baby furniture and diapers, a car seat and special shampoo. Even the stuffed blue elephant she’d left on the passenger seat of the car still sported tags dangling from one floppy ear.

The elevator made the ground floor in seconds. As she made her way through the crowd waiting to get on the elevator, she spied several families with small children and her heart lurched. One woman with deep-set eyes and long, dark hair clutched a blanketed baby to her chest while a tall man in a raincoat put a protective arm around her shoulders.

Julia was riddled with self-doubt. Without a husband, could she make a family for Leo? Would she be enough?

The twinge in her heart was replaced by a vow: she would be all the family little Leo ever needed.

She’d spoken to the lawyer two or three times in the week since Nicole’s death, each time struggling to understand the lawyer’s thick French-Canadian accent. He’d emigrated from Quebec to Seattle years earlier, he’d explained, but the accent was part of him and he couldn’t seem to shake it. He’d told her she would recognize him by his dark mustache and bald head.

She also assumed he’d be one of very few men holding a ten-month-old baby.

As she hurried toward the gate where he’d told her he’d wait, she found herself crossing her fingers that he was a patient man, that he wouldn’t have given up and caught a flight back home or that Leo wouldn’t be howling…

She found the lawyer with no trouble, his mustache small and tidy. He wore a camel-hair coat over a black suit, his shoes as polished as his balding dome. He sat on a chair near the windows, a briefcase on his lap, a book in his hand, which he seemed to be studying. There was no sign of Nicole’s baby.

Your baby now.

Julia came to a stop in front of him. “Monsieur Henri Pepin?” she gasped.

Lowering the engagement diary, he looked up at her with round, brown eyes. “Oui.”

“I’m Nicole Chastain’s cousin.”

The man blinked a couple of times. His gaze raking her up and down, expression guarded, he said, “Mademoiselle?”

Julia finger-combed long, damp, dark tendrils away from her face, tendrils that had escaped her habitual ponytail. Assuming his hesitation had something to do with the fact that she looked more like a drowned rat than a soon-to-be guardian of her cousin’s baby, she added, “My tire blew. On the interstate. Some klutz stopped to help…It’s raining out there and windy. Anyway, I tried calling to tell you I was running late, but—”

“My phone is not on,” he said. “It was not necessary to turn it on.”

“Didn’t you wonder where I was?”

“But, no, mademoiselle. I was met at the gate as planned. Most expedient.”

Julia sank down on the chair beside him. She said, “I don’t understand. Where’s Leo?”

He looked as confused as she felt. He said, “Nor do I. You are Nicole Chastain’s cousin? She had another?”

“No, no, just the one, just me, Julia Sheridan, Leonardo’s guardian as named in Nicole’s will. You called me, monsieur, the day after her death, six days ago. You said since Nicole’s husband died last month—”

“Oui, in a boating accident. Most unfortunate.”

“Yes. Well, you told me Nicole wanted me to become Leo’s guardian. You said you would bring him to me as instructed in her will. Where is he? Where’s Leo?”

Now his mouth was as round as his eyes. “Yes, yes, this is all true, but there must be some misunderstanding. I was met right here. By Julia Sheridan.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Julia Sheridan was waiting for me when I arrived.” He narrowed his eyes before adding, “She is different than you but much the same. Her voice is lower, her speech more formal. Her fiancé is a fine fellow. Quiet.” With a scolding expression as though he disapproved of Julia’s attempt at a hoax, he added, “I assure you, she had all the right papers.”

Julia swallowed the knot in her throat. “But I’m Julia Sheridan.”

They stared at each other for a long moment until Julia felt another gaze boring into her back. She turned to catch a tall, well-built man glancing away.

He appeared to be in his early thirties, black hair, gray eyes, dressed in an ill-fitting gray suit. His gaze followed a parade of straggling teenagers with the studied indifference of a policeman.

The lawyer said, “Mademoiselle?”

Blinking, Julia looked back at Pepin. “Do you mean that you gave Leo to someone pretending to be me?”

Trembling now, the lawyer opened his briefcase and shuffled through the contents. “Here, here,” he protested, shoving papers complete with Julia’s signature. Only it wasn’t Julia’s handwriting, but how was he supposed to know that?

“When did this happen?” she asked, her voice rising in alarm.

He glanced at his watch. “The other…Julia…she left a half hour ago. Maybe a few minutes more. She took the infant, Leonardo Chastain, with her.”

Julia opened her shoulder bag and brought out all the identification she had been told she would need to verify her identity: social security card, birth certificate, passport, driver’s license. She’d even included a picture of herself taken with Nicole a few weeks before. In the photo, Julia held Leo as Nicole hadn’t wanted to take a chance the baby would spit up on her dress. Julia shoved the photo beneath a protesting Henri Pepin’s nose.

He blinked as he studied the image of Julia—brown hair tamed into a long ponytail, no makeup, grinning—and Nicole—flaming red hair, hips thrust forward, shoulders back, expression grim. Julia recalled the conversation preceding the photo snapped by one of Julia’s friends. Nicole had been complaining about her soon-to-be ex-husband, saying how tightfisted he was, how mean, how he was going to rue the day he met her.

The lawyer gasped. “Mon dieu!” he said, as tiny beads of perspiration popped out on his high forehead. “How can this be?”

Julia echoed the sentiment as she rifled through his copies of what appeared to be legal documents and photocopies of fake identification.

“Why?” she insisted. “Why would anyone go to such lengths to claim Leo?”

“There is no reason. He is just an ordinary baby. His parents, before their deaths, ordinary people, a little savings, a little debt…”

“Who knew you were bringing him here?” Julia added.

“My office, child protection, the police. It was even in the newspaper. It was no secret.”

“Monsieur Pepin, we need to alert security at once. We need to find Leo.”

“Oui, oui,” the lawyer said, snapping his case shut again and rising.

Julia was already on her feet. “Tell me again what the woman looked like,” she pleaded as they hurried toward a uniformed airline employee.

“Much like you, mademoiselle,” the lawyer said, his accent growing thicker as his panic escalated. “The man, I don’t know, very quiet,” he added. “Fair complexion, name of George Abbot, wearing a raincoat…”

“George Abbot?” Julia asked, forehead wrinkled.

“Oui. I had wrapped the baby in a white blanket…”

Julia pushed away the alarm that her boss’s name had produced as she recalled the people getting on the elevator as she got off. Man with blond hair, much like the real George Abbot, but too tall, too thin, baby bundled in a light-colored, perhaps white, blanket, its face hidden against the woman’s shoulder, deep-set brown eyes on the woman herself.

Eyes like Julia’s.

With Monsieur Pepin’s voice ringing in her ears, Julia darted off down the bustling corridor. “Call the police,” she yelled as she shouldered her way through the crush.

Someone grabbed her arm. She twirled and faced the man she’d noticed earlier. The one in the gray suit. He blurted out, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Julia did not like strangers touching her or asking questions that were none of their business. But there was a look in this man’s eyes that stopped her from rebuffing him. Besides, she was scared to death her tardiness had put Leo’s life in jeopardy and this guy looked official. She said, “A kidnapping. My baby—”

“Your baby?” the man said, and now there was something new in his eyes and she felt a new wave of apprehension.

“It’s too difficult to explain. Let go of me, I need to search—”

“I’ll go with you,” he said.

“Who are you?”

“Airport security,” he snapped as he dropped his hand. “Quick, tell me what happened.”

Julia related the facts. As she spoke, they hurried to the elevator, retracing her steps, scouring the elevator when it emptied of people, searching each floor of the parking garage, looking in among the sea of cars for a tall blond man, a woman with dark eyes, a ten-month-old baby in a white blanket.

“It’s useless,” Julia cried as they reentered the airport. She faced the fact that the couple could have transferred to a different terminal, boarded a private plane.

A knot of uniforms surrounded the lawyer. Julia’s heart leapt in a surge of hope.

“Maybe they found him,” the man said.

Julia called out, “Monsieur Pepin? Is Leo safe?”

As one, the crowd turned to face Julia. “No, no,” Monsieur Pepin said, his face now pale, his voice jittery. “There is no sign, I’m afraid. He’s vanished into thin air.”

A huge man with tiny glasses perched on his nose and white-blond hair parted in the middle strode toward Julia. “San Francisco police,” he said, flipping open a badge. “Detective Morris. I need to ask you a few questions, Miss Sheridan. Let’s start with why you ran off.”

“I remembered seeing three people fitting the descriptions Monsieur Pepin gave me,” Julia said, her voice shaky and it wasn’t just because of Leo. Standing face-to-face, more or less, with a uniformed police officer who towered over her made her feel small and vulnerable. “I thought there might be time to catch them in the garage. This gentleman—” She paused here, turning to face the man who’d been helping her, hoping to enlist his aid in this explanation but he’d disappeared. She glanced in a full circle—he was gone.

“Miss Sheridan?”

“Where did the guy from airport security go?”

“Airport security is fanning out all over the airport. I need to ask you a few questions.”

Julia’s head threatened to explode. Years of helplessness, of being shuffled between foster homes, of never being in control, never belonging, never understanding, never being able to count on anyone or anything came charging back.

“Miss Sheridan?” The detective’s voice sounded softer this time.

“Leo’s gone,” she said, tears flooding her eyes as she gazed up at him. “Oh, my heavens, he’s gone.”

Detective Morris took her arm and guided her to a plastic chair. She closed her eyes. Leo had been her chance to make the world a better place for one small, orphaned child.

And she’d failed him.

HOURS LATER, after answering a million questions, Julia made her way back to her car.

She attempted to make a mental list. George Abbot needed to be alerted—there would be questions asked of him, embarrassing questions about why anyone would pretend he and Julia were engaged. And the babysitter she’d arranged to watch Leo on Monday morning when she had to fly a load of computer parts to Fresno had to be cancelled. Unless Leo was back by then, unless his kidnappers returned him—

Face it: the hoax was too elaborate for an easy resolution. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to take Leo. The police expected a ransom call and had arranged to tap her home phone. She was directed to keep a close account of all incoming cell phone transmissions.

She had to shake this fuzzy feeling that made each step an effort. She had to get past the horror of what had happened and work on a solution.

Trouble was, Julia didn’t have anything to ransom. She owed money on her car, on her house, on every credit card. She had no rich family—for that matter, no family at all now that Nicole was dead. She had several friends but they were poor, too. Except for George Abbot, but he was her boss and his money was tied up in his company. The bank would laugh in her face if she asked for a loan.

How was she ever going to find Leo and get him back? Oh, why had her tire blown out this morning of all mornings? Why had she been so polite to the man who had been determined to put the spare on for her? Why hadn’t she told him to get lost, that she’d do it herself? Why hadn’t she given herself more time? What good was baby furniture without a baby?

Worse thoughts crept into her head as she exited the elevator and started toward her car. Was Leo okay? Would the kidnappers take good care of him? At least he was too young to identify them. The worries circled around in her head like vultures over carrion.

One thing was more or less certain. The child was no longer at the airport. All exiting vehicles and departing flights had been searched but the time delay between his disappearance and the start of the investigation meant there had been plenty of time for Leo’s kidnappers to whisk him away in a car or even on a plane if the timing was good. The police would check every flight manifesto, looking for an unexplained babe in arms, but Julia had a feeling it would all be in vain. Whoever took him was a wizard with identification papers—Leo would be well documented under a phony name. Anyone could claim Leo was theirs. Who would ever suspect?

She’d never before considered how vulnerable a baby was. He couldn’t talk for himself. If he cried, his kidnappers would pat him on the back and onlookers would think he was just fussy. Without fingerprinting or DNA samples, Leo was a ten-month-old Caucasian boy just like any other ten-month-old Caucasian boy. He had a little strawberry mark on the back of his neck, but who would see that with blankets pulled up around his head?

Even in the dim light of the parking garage she could see ahead to her car and discern the fuzzy raised blue trunk of the huge stuffed elephant she’d bought to welcome Leo. That elephant had been her version of a promise: Everything will be okay. I’ll make it okay.

Tears filled her eyes. The emptiness of her arms mirrored the big hole in her heart.

The sound of a car engine revving broke through her thoughts. She looked up to find two headlights bearing down on her. In the next instant, someone tackled her from the right. She felt as much as heard a dull thud as she flew, still trapped in her tackler’s arms, until they landed on the pavement, his body cushioning hers. She looked up to see two red taillights turning the corner toward the exit ramp.

The man spent little time righting himself and dragging Julia to her feet as well. The fall had knocked the breath out of her.

She looked up to find clear gray eyes, eyes she’d seen just hours before as he helped her search for Leo.

“Are you okay?” he said.

She tore herself from his grip. “You!”

“Listen—”

“No,” she said, stepping away from him, brushing off her clothes, ashamed of the way her hands trembled. “You’re not with airport security, are you?”

Wincing, he mumbled, “No.”

Noticing the tear in the sleeve of his suit and the blood-streaked white shirt beneath, she said, “You’re hurt. The car hit you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

She took off her wool scarf and wrapped it around his arm. “You need to get it cleaned and disinfected.”

His face reflected none of the pain the gash must have inflicted. He said, “It’s nothing.”

Tucking one end of the scarf under the makeshift bandage, she narrowed her eyes. “What do you have to do with the disappearance of Leonardo Chastain?”

“Nothing, I swear,” he said.

She stared hard at him, the weaker part of herself wanting to believe him, wanting to think he was as he portrayed himself. But he’d already lied to her.

She said, “I was late today picking up Leo because some doofus on the freeway stopped to help me when my tire blew. I couldn’t get rid of him and he didn’t know what he was doing. And then right after I found out Leo was gone, you appeared and led me on a merry chase up and down the elevator—”

“I led you?” he said. “You were the one leading.”

“And now Leo is gone and you show up again—”

“You’re forgetting the car that came within inches of killing you just now,” he said, his voice tight. “The one I saved you from.” Brow wrinkled, he addressed his next comments to himself. “I don’t get it,” he mumbled. “Who was driving that car?”

“A bad driver—”

“I don’t think so. I’ve been watching you since you got off the elevator and began walking this way. You’ve been preoccupied. That car came out of the shadows, headed straight for you. And that doesn’t fit—”

Julia, digging in her shoulder bag for her keys, kept moving toward her car, aware he followed. She zeroed in on the blue elephant. “Fit what?” she said.

No answer.

Keys in her fist, arranged as a weapon with one poking out between each finger, she faced him. She said, “If you take one more step—”

He stopped, holding up his hands. He smiled then—the first smile she’d seen. If he thought she was one of those women who rolled over when a handsome man smiled at them he was in for a surprise. Julia had been smiled at many times by men she didn’t know and seldom had anything good come of it. But then she’d been weaker, smaller, more frightened—a victim. She reached inside herself, reclaiming the gutsy broad she’d had to become to survive. “Go away,” she said.

“Julia, listen to me.”

She couldn’t remember giving him her name. It jarred her into mumbling, “I’m listening.”

“I came here to see you. I came to get Leo back.”

“I knew you were in on this!” she said, tightening her grip on the keys.

“You don’t understand,” he said.

“How can I understand? You haven’t said anything.”

He looked down at his feet and then at her. Eyes smoldering with an intensity that unnerved her, he repeated, “I came to get Leo back.”

“Get him back? If you didn’t know he was going to be kidnapped then how—”

“I didn’t know about the kidnapping. I came to get him back…from you.”

“From me?”

Staring into her eyes, he added, “Of course I came for him. I’m his father.”

Chapter Two

Julia absorbed this latest shock for a moment before mumbling, “Are you saying that the late William Chastain wasn’t Leo’s father?”

“No. I’m telling you that I am William Chastain.”

“He’s dead,” Julia said.

“Well, no.”

“Nicole called me the week before she died and told me he was killed when his boat blew up.”

“And his body?”

“Between the explosion and the river currents, what body?”

“Exactly. I know it’s hard for you to believe, but I didn’t die on the river. I escaped.”

Julia shook her head. “Preposterous. Why would Nicole say you were dead if you weren’t?”

“Because she didn’t know I wasn’t.”

Julia shook her head again. “This is crazy—”

“I know it sounds nuts. But I can explain.”

“So do it.”

“Not here.”

She stared at him.

“Listen, Leo has big blue eyes and fuzzy reddish hair, like his mother. Like she had. He has a little mark on the back of his neck, a birthmark. You’re Julia Sheridan, Nicole’s cousin. You’ve just known Nicole a couple of years. I believe she took advantage of your generosity by calling on you to watch Leo when she flew down here to party with her pals. Am I close?”

“Close,” Julia said. “Trouble is, the people who took Leo knew all about me, too.”

“Then ask me something unique about Nicole.”

Julia rubbed her temples. Would this confusion never stop? She looked into his eyes and once again resisted the pull to trust him, to take him at face value. She said, “Why don’t you just show me some identification?”

He smiled again, but this time the thought crossed her mind that the gesture was fueled by frustration. “I don’t have any identification,” he said. “My wallet was in my suit jacket when my boat blew up. I wasn’t wearing it at the time.”

“Of course you weren’t,” she said.

He waved aside her sarcasm. “If I understood what was happening in there with the lawyer, the kidnappers produced all sorts of fake documents, right? If I was one of them, don’t you think I’d at least have made myself a nice official-looking Washington state driver’s license?”

He had a point.

“Look at me,” he added.

She did as he asked and for the first time, she noticed the details that she’d been too preoccupied to notice before.

“What happened to you?” she said. “Why are you wearing someone else’s clothes? What happened to your forehead and cheeks? When’s the last time you slept?”

“The clothes belong to some poor guy who left his car unlocked and his dry cleaning in the backseat.”

“You stole a suit?”

“I just wish he’d been a taller man,” he said and they both glanced down at the pant legs, which were too short. The sleeves were, too.

“What about those marks on your face? And your hair…?”

“The marks are leftover burns from the boat explosion. The hair got burned, too. Not too bad, but it frizzled off in spots.”

Julia suppressed a sigh. Things just kept getting more and more bizarre.

“After the crash, I managed to swim to shore. I had a friend with an old cabin cruiser in a small marina. He’s out of town. I jimmied the lock on his boat and hunkered down to figure things out.”

“Why? Why not just go home?”

“Because my home blew up. I wasn’t living with Nicole by then. And I suspected she might have had a hand in trying to kill me.”

“Why would you—”

“Later. Right now, you’re the one in danger. Someone tried to run you down a few minutes ago. It doesn’t fit with what I think happened to Leo, but maybe there are two different agendas at work or maybe your boyfriend went postal—”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“You think he’s too stable? You never know—”

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, wincing as the muscle in his upper arm flexed. “Do you think we could get out of here and go somewhere a little less…open?” he said.

“I need to go home. I need to be there to answer the phone.”

“Why?”

“The police think someone will call with a ransom—”

“No,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“If my suspicions are right, Leo is in no danger of being hurt. There’ll never be a ransom call. The danger will be that he’ll all but disappear off the face of the earth. We have to move fast.”

She studied his eyes for a second then swore under her breath. She wanted to believe him. She wanted Leo to be safe, but how? “I don’t understand. You know who kidnapped him?”

“I have my suspicions.”

“Then tell me. Tell the cops or the FBI. Why are we standing here talking—”

“Because I’m not going to tell anyone anything until I use a phone and make certain.”

“I have a cell phone—”

“It’s not that easy. Finding the right number is going to take a little work.”

“Listen,” she said, turning again to the car, “it’s been a long day and I’m tired of your riddles. I’m going home.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.

Bristling, Julia whirled to face him. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean someone just tried to mow you down.”

“So you say.”

“Your house might be the next place they try.”

She swallowed a jolt of fear. Her house was her refuge. The thought someone might breach it—

“Go to a friend’s house for the night,” he said.

“I can’t. I have to be there if the kidnappers call.”

“But—”

“I can’t bet on your suspicions even if I understood them, which I don’t. I’m going home.”

“Then I’ll go with you.”

“Hold on,” she said. If this man was Nicole’s husband, he was turning out to be just as infuriating as her cousin had always insisted he was. Julia didn’t have the time or energy for any more verbal sparring. Time was passing, Leo was gone…

She added, “I don’t want you to come to my house. If you follow me, I’ll drive straight to the police station—”

“I can’t follow anyone right now,” he said. “I hitchhiked down here when I read that Leo was being sent to you. I was lucky to make it to the airport on time. Come on, Julia, think. There must be something about Nicole that wouldn’t make its way onto a fact sheet and would convince you I was married to her. Some habit, some gesture. Like the way she flipped that mane of hair. The way her eyes could turn you to stone when she was unhappy with you. The obsession with red underwear, the mole on her left thigh, the way she flossed three times a day. Something.”

His description of Nicole was right on the mark. But anyone meticulous enough to dig up George Abbot’s name could dig up all these things as well. On the other hand, she realized she was beginning to give up. If he wasn’t William Chastain, who was he and what did he want with her?

“Okay, I’ll play along,” she said, searching her memory for some obscure detail of Nicole’s life. “I know. Tell me what kind of diet she started after Christmas.”

He looked startled by her question. “I was living on my boat by then. I saw her when I came to see Leo and she did as much to make that next to impossible as she could.

“Besides, she was always on a diet. Wait, we met for lunch in January. She complained she’d gained half a pound over the holidays. Half a pound. I didn’t even know they made home scales that measured down to half a pound. Let’s see. She settled on some kind of seaweed algae smoothie. It looked like bilgewater. Smelled like it, too.”

“It did smell like bilgewater,” Julia said.

“Well?”

“You’re William Chastain?”

“Call me Will. Only Nicole insisted on calling me William.”

“Nicole told me a lot…well, about you.”

“None of it good, right?”

“No, not much.”

His voice softened. “Things were good at the beginning, but you didn’t know her then. By the time you discovered she existed, things had gone sour. My fault as much as hers.”

It was decision time. Julia, trusting her gut instinct, said, “Okay.”

“Does that mean you’ll take me along?”

“Yes. But I’m warning you, I know how to defend myself.”

This time his smile reached his eyes. “I don’t doubt it for a minute,” he said.

WILL CLOSED his eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept without visions of exploding boats tearing him from sleep. Days, maybe. His eyes felt gritty, as though he’d been caught in a sandstorm. His arm throbbed where the car had thumped him. His hip no doubt sported a black-and-blue mark the size of a salad plate.

And he was hungry. For the first time in days, he was hungry.

“When’s the last time you saw Nicole?” he asked. They were just exiting the freeway, Julia driving fast. He found her impatience reassuring.

She didn’t answer.

He’d been thinking about Julia ever since he’d learned his child was to be given to her, handed over by Nicole’s directive. He’d tried to recall what Nicole had said about her cousin. “Mousy and shy” were the terms Nicole had most often used when describing Julia.

He sneaked a look at Julia’s profile. No, she wasn’t flashy like Nicole. It didn’t look as though she spent a lot of time pouting or posturing, either. She came across as a loner. From the first moment he’d spied her in the airport, he’d recognized in her the same aura of isolation he carried inside himself.

Mousy? No. Her brown hair was windblown but luxuriant, her dark eyes intelligent, her tall frame athletic but curvy. She wore her blue jeans like a second skin, and the suppleness of the sable leather jacket set off her hair and eyes while mimicking the smooth texture of her skin.

His hand drifted to the bandage on his arm—her white scarf—ruined now by his blood. Well, no wonder Nicole wrote her cousin off as little more than a babysitter for those times when Leo became an inconvenience. His wife had been a tad egotistical. She seldom picked up on nuances, either, and wouldn’t have differentiated shyness from restraint.

“Two weeks before you were reported dead,” Julia said.

It took him a second to realize she was answering his question.

“Nicole called to ask me if she could leave Leo with me for a weekend. But I was working and I said no.”

Her voice choked up on the last word. He was beginning to understand that Leo’s plight was personal to her. He hadn’t understood how close she’d become to his son.

Okay. Nicole had wanted a weekend free. Out of town, out of state, for that matter. A lover’s tryst with a man whose face and position were too well known to stay close to home while romancing a woman other than his wife? Would Nicole’s chief of police boyfriend come along or would they have met somewhere? He said, “Did she ever bring any friends to your house when she brought Leo over?”

“Friends?”

“Men,” he said.

She darted him a glance and then turned her concentration back to the road. “No,” she said.

“Does it surprise you to hear she had a boyfriend?”

“No,” she said, not looking at him this time. “Tell me why you pretended you were dead and why you let Leo leave Washington.”

He had known this was coming. He’d prepared a few lies. But now, sitting in the dark car, too tired to dissimilate, he chose the truth. “I’m pretty sure Nicole set up my supposed accident. I got a call from a woman claiming to have compromising pictures of my wife and her husband. She said she’d hired a private eye to get them. Told me they were mine for the taking.”

“Why didn’t the woman use them herself?”

“She said she was afraid of her husband. Claimed he was the chief of police. She told me to meet her at a restaurant across the river. The fastest way there was on my boat so I took it. Only someone who knew me well would know that’s what I would do.”

“Nicole, for instance.”

“Of the people interested in our small world of problems, only Nicole. Anyway, I was living on the boat by then so all my papers, everything I valued besides my son, were aboard.”

“And it exploded?”

“It was hit by another boat going like a bat out of hell. I got off in the nick of time. The newspaper the next day said that human remains were found were are being tested for DNA to see which boater they belong to, me or the nameless other guy. Contrary to what television leads us to believe, the testing can take a while. A small speedboat was reported stolen from a nearby marina. Recovered wreckage confirmed that it was the boat that hit mine.”

“But you don’t think it was an accident?”

“No.”

“Why?”

He thought for a moment. “It came right at me. I turned on every light and still it came. The next day I called the chief of police’s house. A servant informed me that the chief’s wife was in the hospital following childbirth complications. Had been for several days. Hard to picture her calling me from a hospital bed, then sneaking out to rendezvous at a restaurant across the river. I don’t doubt the affair. I just doubt the pictures and the setup.”

“So you determined Nicole must have been behind it?”

“Who else? I didn’t want her or the boyfriend to know they weren’t successful. A man in that position has serious clout. I’m just an architect, a relative unknown. I thought if I was declared dead, I could uncover some kind of evidence that would prove Nicole and her lover guilty of attempted murder. Then I could use that proof to gain custody of Leo.”

“But before all that could happen, Nicole drove off the side of the highway and crashed into a tree.”

“Yes. With Leo in the car. It’s a miracle he wasn’t hurt. By the time I found out she was dead, Leo was in protective custody. How could I prove who I was without sounding like a nutcase? How could I tell the authorities my story, including the chief’s part in it without endangering my chances of ever recovering my boy?

“In the end, I decided it would be best to let Leo come to you. It would give me time to reestablish my identity before approaching you. But I had to make sure he got here safe and sound and that you were…capable…of watching him.” He paused for a second. The truth was that he’d been afraid Julia was a carbon copy of Nicole. He’d had to make sure she was willing to take on a child for even a few weeks, as well as be responsible enough not to do him harm. He added, “I thought if you were halfway reasonable, I could talk to you about this and we could work something out.”

His voice trailed off. He didn’t know what else to say. Everything so far made him sound like an idiot.

“That’s why you were at the airport? Just to watch me take custody of Leo?”

“Yes.”

Her voice took on an impatient tone as she added, “Then did you see the imposter? The woman pretending to be me? A tall man in a gray raincoat?”

He shook his head. “I was late. I got there after you. I recognized Nicole’s lawyer so I had to stay out of his line of vision. The panic on your face when you turned to catch me staring at you just about tore my gut open.”

She cast him a quick glance. Even in the dim light, he caught the sparkle in her eyes that suggested pooling tears.

Julia’s hand strayed to her face where he presumed she brushed away the tears. Damn, her raw emotions touched him more than he liked. She was a grown-up. Her past and her problems were not his concern.

“Where do you think Leo is?” she asked at last.

“I think he’s with my aunt,” he said.

This earned him a longer glance, which she jerked away only because she needed to watch the road. As she guided the car around a corner, she almost whispered, “Why would your aunt steal your son in such an elaborate ruse?”

“Fiona Chastain is sophisticated and wealthy and she hated Nicole’s guts. The feeling was mutual.”

“So that’s why I was chosen as guardian and not your aunt.”

“I can’t imagine the words the two of them must have exchanged after my supposed death. I’m betting Aunt Fiona caught wind of Nicole’s decision to provide for Leo in the event of her death and over-reacted. She’s got lots of connections. I think she put this elaborate hoax into operation as soon as she learned she’d been bypassed as Leo’s guardian. I checked the airline schedules. There was a flight leaving for Spokane just minutes after you think you spotted Leo and his abductors in the elevator. My aunt happens to have relocated to Spokane.”

“But I would have been happy to share Leo with your aunt,” Julia said. “I would have loved knowing he had more family—”

“My aunt wouldn’t see things that way,” he said. Picking the next words with care, he added, “She’s very…controlling.”

“What did you mean that he was in no danger except for disappearing?”

“Fiona has the means and knowledge to disappear at will. If she goes underground with Leo, I don’t know how I’ll ever find him again.”

He could tell she thought he was overstating things. He didn’t blame her. He added, “I know this, Julia, because that’s how she raised me.”

“Moving you, hiding you—”

“Yes.”

“Nicole told me you were orphaned.”

“Father disappeared before birth, identity and location unknown. Mom died after giving birth. Her sister, Aunt Fiona, stepped in and took me. She was a fierce parent.”

“Who would never hurt you.”

“She thinks I’m dead, remember? I should have contacted her, but I didn’t trust her not to say something to Nicole. In retrospect, it was cruel on my part to do this to her.”

“Then the thing in the parking garage,” Julia said, her glance taking in his bandaged arm this time, “had to be an accident.”

“No. I don’t think so. I don’t know what that was about, but there was a calculated air about the whole thing. It wasn’t until the car revved up and headed straight for you that I realized I’d been aware of an idling engine for some time.”

“Just a moment. Your aunt tried to run me down?”

“No, of course not. That’s what I mean about things not making sense.”

“You can say that again,” she said, making another turn.

“Fiona wouldn’t have done any of this herself. She would have arranged it. Maybe one of her minions got creative.”

This remark was met with silence.

“It’s at least a place to start,” he said as they turned yet another corner. Though it had stopped raining and a full moon bathed the streets, he knew he’d never find his way out of this maze of streets and look-alike houses without help. He pushed aside the thought of leaving. First he had to make sure Julia’s house was safe for her to return to, and then he’d contact his aunt and figure out transportation—

She said, “The police—”

“The police aren’t going to be able to solve this situation,” he said. “They’ll wait for a ransom call that will never come. They’ll appeal to the public. My son’s photo will end up on a milk carton if they still do that. If I want Leo back, I’m going to have to get him myself.”

As she made another turn, her voice turned thoughtful. “I’m going to go about this the traditional way,” she said. “I’m going to rely on the cops and wait for a call. I can’t take the chance that I’ll let Leo down again, that I won’t be there when the right time occurs.”

He sneaked another look at her. Was it possible she’d forgotten that Leo no longer needed her as a guardian, at least for the long term, that his father was alive and well and sitting in the seat next to her?

Or did she still not believe he was who he said he was?

Or maybe she’d just written him off. God Almighty, she wouldn’t try to take Leo away from him, would she? Claim he was unbalanced or that his wacky aunt had undue influence?

That aunt of his. She’d been his salvation and his cross to bear, as touchy as a rattlesnake, as crafty as a third-world despot.

Irritated with Julia’s obstinacy, he looked out the window. The neighborhood through which they traveled wasn’t ritzy. Lawns looked sparse. The moonlight revealed too many abandoned toys littering driveways and front yards. Lots of cars, most older than the compact in which he rode, which had to be entering its teens. Compared to the lakeside community he’d been working on before his supposed death, this place looked like a slum. Even his and Nicole’s high-rise condo looked classy in comparison. It was hard to picture Nicole even visiting such modest surroundings.

But more to the point, how could Julia believe anyone would stage such an intricate kidnapping to gain custody of Leo just to ransom him back to a woman who drove an old car and lived in a very modest house? The certainty his aunt was behind this doubled.

Julia pulled her aging sedan into the driveway of a small square house. The wash of headlights revealed well-tended plants and no accumulated junk. Other than that, it looked very much like every other house on the block.

“Home,” she said with a touch of anxiety he realized he’d planted. She was nervous. Good. Might keep her on her toes.

Okay, he shouldn’t have accompanied Julia home. Now he was stuck out here with a phone tapped by the police. But he couldn’t let her return to a house that could be booby-trapped when she wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for him. He’d check out the house, figure out his next step, warn her about locking up and disappear into the night.

Easier said than done, but he’d do it just the same. The most important thing was to get Leo back.

Clothes and ID weren’t the only things he’d lost when his boat exploded. Also gone were his laptop, cell phone and address book, all of which held his aunt’s unlisted number. He’d never bothered to memorize her number. Why bother when it was always handy? A man doesn’t expect to have his whole life blown apart.

“Do you have a computer?” he asked.

“Yes.”

She was soon out of the car, pulling the blue stuffed animal from the back where he’d tossed it when he got in the passenger seat. Maybe he could use her computer to access the address book on his computer at work. Of course, since the architectural firm of Wainwright and Co. thought he was dead, they may well have terminated his access…He’d have to see.

And he’d also have to talk Julia Sheridan out of her car.

Reenergized with a plan of action, he got out of the car and followed Julia up the front walk toward her door. She should have left lights burning for her return, but then he recalled she hadn’t expected to get back after dark.

He was about to step in front of her when he noticed a faint line of light stripping the long vertical edge of the door. He glanced to his left, through what appeared to be her kitchen window.

He pulled Julia back against his chest, moving backward.

“Hey—” she gasped before he slapped a hand over her mouth. Loosening his grip, he leaned forward until his lips brushed her ear. “Your front door is ajar. There’s a light bobbing around in there,” he whispered. “Someone with a flashlight.”

To his absolute amazement, she tore herself free and stormed toward her unlocked door, ripping it open and charging inside before he could stop her.

Raised voices reached him as he crossed the threshold in her wake.

A moment later, a gunshot thundered through the house.

Chapter Three

As the dark shape of a man charged toward her, Julia swung Leo’s stuffed elephant by its trunk. She felt the impact as she hit something. A male voice swore. She kicked what she hoped was a leg, kicked hard, aiming for the side of the kneecap where it would do the most damage. If she connected.

She hit something. Her foot throbbed as a gun fired and someone ran over the top of her.

“Get off me!” she screamed, kicking and throwing punches, driven now by fear as well as anger.

Will’s voice reached her. “Are you hurt?” he yelled, all but lifting her to her feet.

“Get him!” she cried, pointing at the sliding glass door that led to the backyard where the dark figure of her attacker, highlighted against the light coming through the glass, struggled with the latch.

Will darted toward the door. Julia heard it slide open and the dark shape disappeared into her yard, Will on his heels.

She staggered to the door, flipping on the yard light just in time to see Will leap over the low fence in the back, still in pursuit. Both men disappeared into the merciless shadows of the neighbor’s yard.

She found other light switches and flipped them all on, illuminating every dark corner.

The gunshot had taken off a corner of a plaster wall and shattered a mirror. But not before it had torn through the elephant, almost severing its neck, ripping its blue fur, blasting out an eyeball. Stuffing, piled like snow drifts, littered the floor along with shards of glass from the mirror. Julia dropped the elephant—it was beyond saving. She swept the glass and stuffing against the floorboards where it wouldn’t be a hazard.

She would have to get Leo a new stuffed animal. The thought brought more tears to her eyes.

Moving from room to room, she found a pillow case missing from one of the pillows on her bed. Besides that, only a couple of open drawers drew her attention until it dawned on her that the few nice things she owned were gone.

A locket belonging to her mother. A silver frame around a picture of her sister. Her father’s modest coin collection. Her whole family, gone, and now the precious few mementoes she’d managed to hold on to after years of turmoil gone as well.

As were a few pieces of costume jewelry and the silver-plated ladle she’d received as a Christmas gift. From Nicole.

Julia picked up the cordless phone to call 911. She paused on the last digit, clicking the phone off, re-settling it on the charger base, glancing toward the door through which Will had disappeared.

What in the hell was going on?

What kind of burglar robs a house in a neighborhood like this one, settling on a few ornaments when the computer and stereo were worth far more?

“Tweakers,” her boss, George Abbot, called them. His brother was a cop and George enjoyed throwing out the lingo. He was referring to meth addicts, people who stole just to finance their next high. Petty crime, as a rule of thumb, nonviolent. That kind of break-in was common around here.

But the gun—

Julia plopped down on the inexpensive over-stuffed red chair she’d bought on deferred payments just hours before news of Nicole’s death had reached her. Stilling her trembling hands by sitting on them, she looked at the few other pieces of furniture, each chosen to complement the sunny-yellow paint of the walls.

This house was her castle. In daylight, sun streamed through the windows and pooled on the floors. After dark, it became a sanctuary, a place in which to retreat from the world. It was the reason she’d marched through the front door without thinking and almost gotten herself shot dead.

She’d left that morning intending to share her home with a tiny boy who needed her. She’d come home empty-handed, the child’s whereabouts unknown, his future in jeopardy, her haven violated.

And now his father was here, a dead man, only not dead. Where was Will?

When the phone rang, Julia popped to her feet. Her heart rate doubled. The kidnappers! It had to be.

“Hello?” she said, listening for some sound, a clicking, a whir, that would indicate the police had activated the tracing device. Of course, advanced technology no doubt precluded telltale sounds—

“Miss Sheridan? This is Detective Morris.”

Taking a deep breath, she said, “Detective Morris.”

“Sorry to alarm you,” he said. “Just calling to see if you made it home okay.”

“Well—”

“I want you to know we’ll have a police car patrolling your neighborhood tonight, starting at midnight. There are no new developments at the airport. Any word from the kidnappers? Any new developments we should know about?”

She should tell him about her intruder…

Her gaze strayed to the glass door as Will Chastain made his way across her well-lit patio, a bag of some kind dangling from his right hand. Relieved to see him still in one piece, she took a deep breath. He looked up and their eyes met.

She said, “Nothing to report, Detective.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. Did Monsieur Pepin return to Washington?”

“We let him go a couple of hours ago. We know where to find him. He was very upset. He feels responsible.”

Don’t we all? Julia thought.

“You call if you need anything. We’ll monitor all your incoming calls.”

“I understand,” she said, replacing the receiver as Will let himself in the sliding glass door.

“He got away,” he said, crossing the floor in his socks. He pointed at the phone and added, “You called the cops?”

“No. They called me.” As a flicker of hope ignited his eyes, she added, “It was a routine call, nothing more.”

“I see. Did you tell them about…this?”

Her knees wobbled. Julia sat down again. Some of it was the culmination of the day’s events, some of it was the profound relief that Will had returned unharmed.

If he was Will Chastain. But even that automatic mental disqualifier felt feeble now. She’d started accepting him as who he said he was some time before. For better or worse, she’d bought into his story.

And now she coveted his presence. Disheveled and weathered though he was, he exuded confidence and something more.

Determination. That was it. Nothing was going to stop him. No one was going to keep him from Leo. What must it be like to be loved like that, wanted like that? It struck her that if Leo was ever going to return to her—to them—Will was going to have to be a part of it. And she wanted to be a part of it, too.

She said, “I didn’t mention any of…this.”

“Because?”

“I guess I thought we should talk about it first,” she said.

“Then let’s talk.”

“First tell me what happened out there,” she said, gesturing at the only other chair in the room. It was orange and armless, not really comfortable, chosen for its color and price tag rather than its function. That had seemed the way to decorate to Julia who, before decorating this house, had never even chosen a bedspread for herself.

He brought her the sack which she’d more or less forgotten about until he placed it in her hands. It was the pillowcase off her bed, a fact she’d registered when he’d come through the door with it dangling from his hand. In it, she found all her missing items.

Trinkets. Mementoes of a scratchy past, of people whose faces had faded in her mind.

Studying the bullet-sheared wall and the mess of stuffing and plaster and glass swept against the baseboard, Will whistled. “Thank the Lord our thief is a lousy shot or you’d be dead,” he said as he perched on the edge of the orange chair. There were bright smears of blood on the scarf still wrapped around his arm. There were also new streaks of mud on his pants and caked on his shoes. He looked absolutely exhausted.

At first Nicole had often commented on her husband’s good looks and his success as an architect. The comments had morphed, though, into how cruel he was. No specifics, just words like selfish and callous which Julia had always understood to mean he wasn’t giving Nicole everything she wanted.

He said, “I chased him through at least five backyards. Woke up every dog in the neighborhood. The guy had a limp, but he ran like hell. I think I would have caught him except that I slipped in some mud and he scampered over another fence. I heard a car door, but by the time I got to the fence and looked over, he was peeling away from the curb.”

Julia, proud that her kick had connected with the intruder’s leg, said, “Was the car the same—”

“As the one from the parking garage? I don’t know. It could have been. Same low profile, same general color but other than that…I just don’t know.”

“It has to be connected,” Julia said.

“Explain.”

“Well, just that so many odd and terrible things have happened today. First the blowout on the freeway—”

He sat forward, hands gripped together between his knees, eyes burning. “Yes. Tell me about that.”

She shrugged. “What’s to tell? The tire blew.”

“How fast were you driving?”

“Well, the freeway was crowded. I’d just slowed down to about fifty when the right front tire blew.”

“Which lane were you in?”

“Far left. It was hairy for a few minutes but I managed to get the car across three lanes to the shoulder. I was kind of shaken up. A guy behind me stopped. He insisted on taking off the old tire and putting on the spare. He wasn’t very proficient. And he was dressed in a suit. The drizzle made it nasty out there and I let him help me.”

“It strikes me that you’re the kind of woman who changes her own tire,” Will said.

“Yes,” she said. She thought for a moment. “He was so insistent,” she said. “He had an accent I couldn’t place. I thought maybe it was a matter of honor for him. I asked him where he was from, but he didn’t seem to understand me. In the end it was just easier…or so I thought at first…but he was an absolute klutz and I was late and then Leo was gone—”

He was at her side. Taking her hands, he pulled her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her. She hadn’t known she was shaking until she felt his warm, solid embrace.

It was tempting to lean, tempting to give him her burdens. Tempting to depend on him. Taking a step away, she took a deep breath and did none of those things.

“What did the guy on the freeway look like?”

Biting her lip in concentration, she forced his image into her mind. “Medium build. Dark hair and eyes. A little bit of a tan which I noticed because you don’t see that very often in San Francisco in April. Dark suit.” She shrugged and added, “Kind of average.”

“Sounds pretty much like the guy who shot at you just now, doesn’t it?”

She nodded. It could have been the same man. Of course, her description was so vague it could have fit lots of people. Besides, it was dark and her shooter hadn’t spoken this time. She’d made all the racket.

“Show me your flat tire,” Will said.

She started to ask why and let it go. She couldn’t see what the tire would tell him, but she was beginning to trust his instincts. Taking a flashlight off the kitchen counter, she took him through the empty garage to the driveway where she’d parked the car and opened the trunk. Will took the flashlight from her and examined the tire. She’d been in such a hurry that she’d just thrown it in without cinching it down. The panic of the moments when she realized she was going to be late picking up Leo at the airport came rushing back.

“Look,” Will said, focusing the light on the tire. “See this hole? That’s the entry wound, so to speak. The shredded rubber on the opposite side is where it exited. If the traffic hadn’t slowed…if you’d been racing along at seventy you would have lost control for sure.”

She stared at the hole, refusing to believe what her eyes told her.

“Someone shot your tire,” he said.

The concrete beneath Julia’s feet seemed to rumble.

“That’s why the guy who stopped behind you didn’t want you fooling with the tire,” Will added. “You weren’t supposed to survive this attack.”

“But he must have known I’d see the tire later—”

“You’re forgetting the attempt to run you down in the parking garage and then the ‘burglar’ in your house, lying in wait for you with a gun—the tire would have disappeared, Julia.”

She stared at the hole, jumping when Will slammed the trunk. Looking up and down the empty street, he took her arm. “Go back in the house, please,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “First, leave me your keys so I can move the car into the garage. Lock all the doors. I’ll be in right after you.”

She did as he asked without argument.

An entry wound, Will had called it.

A place where a bullet had pierced the tire before exploding out the other side. Shot with the hope that the car would pile into others, causing a catastrophic wreck, killing who knew how many people. Killing her.

What in the world was going on?

A SLY SMILE played across Will’s lips as his attempt to hack into the company’s computer system went through without a hitch. He knew he owed his luck to Brian Wainwright’s tendency to procrastinate, a tendency that had driven Will crazy for years.

But not tonight.

“Thanks, Brian, you lazy SOB,” he whispered.

As he printed out his address book, he caught the sound of the running shower. Despite the late hour—it was closing in on midnight—Julia had announced her decision to bathe with a defiant look on her pretty face. He wasn’t sure to what he should attribute that look. His presence in her home? The intruder, the attempts on her life, the kidnapping of Leo?

The woman had had quite a day.

And she was taking him on faith. Worrisome.

He’d refused her attempts to bathe and bandage his arm. He couldn’t afford the time. It seemed as though they were standing still, that Leo was moving farther and farther away.

But he hadn’t refused the offer of a ham sandwich and a glass of milk. After polishing off the last of both, he unwound Julia’s white wool scarf from his arm, glancing around what was to have been his son’s room. Julia hadn’t gotten too far on the decorating. Blue walls, a blue synthetic oriental-type rug, one side of the room taken up with a single bed, a desk and the computer equipment. A box against the other wall held a crib yet to be assembled. Another box held a high chair. She’d cleared off the top of a dresser and stacked disposable diapers and baby-related items like baby oil and wiping cloths, a brand-new package of pacifiers, bibs, swabs.

It jarred him to think that these things were meant for his son.

He dumped the scarf in the garbage. The bleeding had stopped. Of course, the sleeve of the suit and the shirt beneath were torn and stained. Along with his muddy pants and wacky hair, he must present quite an attractive package.

She walked into the room just as he lifted the paper from her printer.

“Did you find your aunt’s phone number?”

“Yes,” he said, turning to face her. No femme fatale outfit for Julia Sheridan, he saw. She had changed into gray sweatpants and a pink T-shirt, both on the baggy side. Her brown hair was wet and shiny, caught in a ponytail, her skin rosy. She looked sixteen. Way too young and innocent to be in the same room with him.

She handed him the phone, but he shook his head. “I don’t want the cops listening in,” he said as he folded the pages and stuck them in a pocket. “May I use your cell phone?”

She left the room without comment and he followed her into the kitchen. She’d started a pot of coffee and he poured himself a cup as she dug her cell phone from her handbag.

His aunt didn’t answer. He left a phone number but not his name. In fact, he didn’t identify himself at all, just urged her to return his call at the first opportunity, day or night.

“Does she have a cell phone? Is there another number you could call?”

“She has one but she doesn’t leave it on. Uses it to make calls but hates being a ‘slave’ to it. Besides, odds are at this time of the night she was there, listening to my message.”

“Why wouldn’t she answer you?”

“You’re forgetting the last news she had about me was that I perished in a boating accident. Even if she hears this message, she’ll be wary that it’s me. If she doesn’t call soon, I’ll call her back.”

They stood staring at each other for several moments as Will sipped the coffee without tasting it. It came to him that he was beginning to think of Julia as a woman, not just as Nicole’s little cousin or Leo’s surrogate mother. He was beginning to notice the shape of her body, the thrust of her breasts against her T-shirt, the softness of her lips in repose, the expressions that flashed across her face at breakneck speed.

He wanted to know more about her.

But first he wanted sleep. And a shower and clean clothes. And most of all, Leo safe in his arms.

She said, “I think you’d better start wondering who else would steal your son, Will. And I’d better start wondering who wants me dead.”

Will couldn’t answer either question, though he wondered if his past, swathed in a suffocating silence his aunt had always refused to break, could have played a part in Leo’s abduction. He couldn’t picture anyone wanting to kill Julia unless it was connected to Leo’s disappearance. Someone was afraid she could identify them. That’s what made sense.

A banging on the front door interrupted the silence that had descended after Julia’s last observations. A male voice called, “Julia? Julia, are you in there? Open up!”

“It’s a little late for callers,” Will said, glancing at the flower wall clock. It was after midnight now. He set aside his coffee mug.

“I forgot all about George,” she said, hurrying to answer the door. By the time Will rounded the corner, he found Julia engulfed in a tall man’s arms. She burst into tears.

Who the hell was George?

“I MEANT TO CALL you,” Julia said when she came up for air. Embarrassed by her tears and the emotional meltdown that had prompted them, she kept her gaze fastened on a wall somewhere between the two men. By then, George had steered her into the living room and Will had closed and locked the front door. “I kind of forgot,” she added.

“Damn it, Julia, what’s going on here?” George demanded. Nearing forty, George Abbot was not only Julia’s boss at Abbot Air Transport, but also her friend. They’d tried dating a while ago. They’d tried hard. But George had pointed out that anything special between a man and a woman shouldn’t take so much effort and they’d gone back to being friends. It had been a profound relief to Julia, who had to admit to herself that what George represented to her was a father figure, not a lover.

“Did the police—”

“Grill me like I was a common criminal? Yes, they did,” George said. “Who would impersonate me and pretend to be your fiancé? Where’d they get that? I think the cops are still watching me. There’s a patrol car in your neighborhood. I passed it coming in—”

“They’re just watching the house. It has nothing to do with you. I’m sorry I didn’t warn you—”

“Seems like you’ve been busy,” George said with a glance at Will.

“It’s been quite a night,” she agreed. Would Will introduce himself to George? And if he did, would they then have to try to explain how he got here, why he wasn’t dead? Would George feel honor-bound to tell the police—

“Good thing I had an alibi,” George added. “Been with Barbara all day. Her and her girls. Amber is on a basketball team. Tournament today. Just got home a little while ago and there were the cops, waiting for me.”

Julia refrained from apologizing again. George was perturbed. She didn’t blame him. Barbara was the new love of his life and he was crazy about her preteen daughters as well. It must have ruined his day to come home after a fun time of games and laughter to antagonistic questioning.

“Guess the important thing now is to find your cousin’s baby,” he said, some of his bluster dissipating. He was still eyeing Will with suspicion. He said, “You a cop?”

Julia didn’t see how anyone as savvy as George about police matters could mistake Will in his present condition for a cop.

You thought he was airport security, a little voice in her head whispered. Sometimes a person sees what they expect to see—

Will said, “Something like that. I’m here to help Julia.”

George’s nod was brisk. It looked as though the matter of Will’s identity was settled in his mind.

“I think I should try making that call,” Will added.

“The phone is on the counter.”

She listened to George describe his police interrogation with half an ear. With the other half, she listened as Will placed his call. When it was obvious he was speaking to someone, she stilled George with a hand and hurried to Will’s side.

“Honest, Aunt Fiona, it is me,” he was saying as his gaze met Julia’s. He turned the corner in the kitchen, placing himself out of view of the living room, sandwiching himself between the refrigerator and the sink. Julia followed. Lowering his voice, he said into the phone, “It was a terrible thing for me to do to you and I’m sorry. I’ll explain very soon, I promise. But right now I need to know if you have Leo.”

He listened for just a moment, his forehead wrinkling. “Why are you being so evasive?” he asked.

After a pause, he said, “I’d understand if you thought you should rescue him from Nicole’s relatives.” With this he glanced at Julia and shrugged. “What I mean is that you thought I was dead. I know you would want to protect the little guy.”

He listened for a few more seconds before switching to a calming voice. “I get the feeling you can’t talk right now. Are you okay?”

After a brief pause, he said, “I understand.” She must have reassured him though his expression didn’t look reassured. He added, “I’ll come see you soon—”

Now his eyes narrowed and his mouth formed a straight line. He said, “Polo,” waiting with what seemed suspended breath before snapping, “Fiona? Aunt Fiona?”

He folded Julia’s phone and looked at her. “Something is wrong,” he said.

“What do you mean, wrong?”

For the first time, Julia was aware that George had joined them in the kitchen and stood with his hands behind his back, listening.

Will seemed too distracted to notice or care. He said, “It’s a code she taught me eons ago. Nothing unique. She uses the name Marco in a sentence. I answer with Polo to let her know I’m on to her. We used to joke that if either one of us ever made a friend named Marco we’d have to come up with a new code.”

“What does the code mean?” George asked.

Will’s head snapped up and he met George’s gaze. “It means to stay away, that she’ll contact me when it’s safe.” Looking at Julia, he added, “Back when I was a kid, I knew it meant not to go home. To stay where I was until she came for me. Soon afterwards, I’d have a new name, a new house, a new school.”

“This is part of that odd upbringing you mentioned,” Julia said.

“Yes.”

Julia’s cell phone erupted. Will was still holding it. He flipped it open and glanced at the screen. “My aunt’s calling back,” he said, followed by a tap of a button and a soft, “Yes?” into the phone.

He listened for a moment before snapping, “Who’s this?” He lowered the phone, once again clicking it shut.

“Whoever it was hung up without identifying themselves.”

“It wasn’t your aunt?”

“Why would she have called without speaking? It was her number, but it was someone else on the phone. Someone was with her, I’m sure of it. She must have caller ID now. When she refused to tell them who it was, they called to check for themselves. I have to get back to Washington.”

He pushed the phone into Julia’s hands.

“But your aunt’s code to stay where you are—”

“I’m not a child anymore,” he said. “I don’t stay when I’m told to. I have an awful feeling she’s in jeopardy and that it’s tied to Leo.”

“What about calling the police where she is? Someone might be able to go check—”

“No. You don’t know my aunt. No cops. I have to go.”

She caught his arm. “You can’t walk, Will. I’ll drive you back to the airport.”

He looked self-conscious as he said, “A ride to the interstate will suffice.”

Of course. He didn’t have any money. How could she have overlooked something as familiar as being broke?

“You can take my car,” she said, digging in her purse for a credit card that wasn’t up to its limit. “Use this for gas money. I can’t leave here and go with you. If the kidnappers call I have to be here.”

“They won’t call,” Will insisted. “Don’t you understand? This is tied up with my aunt, maybe back to my deep dark past, hell, I don’t know. But it isn’t some garden-variety kidnapper wanting a few bucks. You need to go somewhere safe. To a motel or something.” Pausing a second he added, “Or come with me.”

She wanted to go. The intensity of that want all but drowned her. Yet how did she abandon her post? She knew Leo’s best chance was his father. No one loved him as much, no one needed him as much—

Except her.

They’d both forgotten about George again. He shifted his weight and brought his hands from behind his back. He held what was left of the blue elephant.

“You’re not a cop, are you?” he said.

Will swore before grumbling, “This is not my day for fooling anyone.”

“You’re connected to the little boy?”

“He’s my son.”

“Julia thought you were dead.”

“I know. I don’t have to time to explain—”

George held up both hands, the elephant dangling, bleeding stuffing. “Hell, I don’t want an explanation. Even I can see something terrible is going on here.” Reaching in his pocket, he extracted a ring of keys and took one off. “Take my truck, the both of you. I’ll stay here. Take your cell phone, Julia, and I’ll let you know when and if a ransom call comes.”

“George, I can’t—”

“Your car won’t make it to Washington, we both know that. Wait, I have a better idea. Drive the truck to the field and take the Skyhawk. It’s all fueled up and ready to go.”

“That’s your personal plane, George. It’s brand-new. I couldn’t—”

“You’ll have it back before I can miss it,” he said. “Besides, all the others are tied up with business tomorrow. Go ahead, take it. You’ll be there in a few hours that way.”

Now Will protested. “You don’t know a thing about me.”

“No. But I do know Julia. And I trust her. Judging from the bullet lodged in the molding in the living room, she’s in danger. So are your aunt and your kid. Look, I don’t want to lose my best pilot.” His gaze lingering on Will’s torn, bloodied sleeve, he added, “When you get to my office, take a few minutes and go upstairs. There’s a shower up there and clean clothes. We’re about the same size, help yourself to what you need.”

“I’ll repay you,” Will said. “When I get my life back. When I find my son—”

“Good. Fuel’s expensive. Just take care of Julia.”

“You can count on it.”

“We can take my car—” Julia began, but Will stilled her with a glance. “You don’t have a spare. We can’t chance getting stuck out on the road. Take George’s truck. Leave his key on his desk. Let’s go.”

The two men shook hands. Their pact seemed to relegate Julia to the role of damsel in distress. A flicker of annoyance fizzled in a cold wave of rational thought. Face it, they were more or less right about her. Someone was trying to kill her and she didn’t have the faintest idea how to protect herself. From a mugger? Sure. But from a gun, fired from far away or a car aimed at her in an intersection? No way.

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