“Really. You don’t have an accent. Usually.”
“I left the South behind fairly early on. It still crops up now and again, I guess.”
Most people would have missed the slight flinching of the soft skin around his eyes when he said that, but Billie didn’t. And she thought,
She filed the knowledge away for future reference.
“Sorry about your nap,” she said, and her eyes kept coming back to the wrinkle mark on his cheek. She had the strongest desire to reach out and touch it. Why did it seem so poignant to her? Something about that mark on the supercool, iron-hard Clint Eastwood clone brought to mind images of unexpected innocence…or vulnerability.
He regarded her while he drank coffee, then said, “I wasn’t expecting you this early.”
“Well, here I am.” She lifted a shoulder, not about to concede how badly she wanted what he had to give her. Billie didn’t give her opponents that kind of advantage over her, not if she could help it.
Holt didn’t say anything, just watched her over the rim of his coffee cup. She fought down impatient anger and said lightly, “You were going to tell me a story.”
His eyebrows rose. He set down the cup. “Just like that? No social niceties?”
She gave a little tiff of sarcastic laughter. “Social
Unbidden, the thought popped into Holt’s head that dancing with Billie Farrell might be a very nice thing. Unsettled by the notion, he gave her a thoughtful smile. For a moment the air between them did the sizzle and crackle thing, and then he thought,
“How about, who hired you to find…this woman?”
He nodded. “Fair enough. His name is Cory Pearson.”
“Never heard of him.”
“No,” said Holt, “of course you haven’t. But the story begins with him. When Cory was a little kid his dad went off to fight in Vietnam. He came back changed-nothing like the loving daddy who used to tell his little boy bedtime stories he made up himself. He was moody and withdrawn…started drinking heavily, couldn’t hold a job. It was a familiar story at that time.
“Anyway, as time went on, the family grew to include four more children-two boys, and then twin girls. When their father was having one of his spells of PTSD, it was Cory’s job to keep the little ones out of his way while his mother tried to talk her husband back from whatever hell he’d gotten lost in. Finally, one night when the little girls- the twins-were about two, their father had a violent episode during which he shot his wife and then himself.”
“Good God,” Billie exclaimed.
Holt nodded, picked up his cup and found it empty. A waitress appeared to refill it. He thanked her, waited until she had left, then went on. All the while Billie sat without moving, without seeming to breathe, even, her face gone still and pale as death.
“Since there was no other family, the kids were taken by social services. Evidently, no foster family could be found to take all five, so they were farmed out all over the system. Eventually, the four younger children were adopted-the two boys by one family, the twins by another.”
Billie spoke almost without moving her lips, and devoid of all inflection. “What about Cory?”
“He was older, about twelve by that time. Too old for most adoptive parents to consider. He stayed in foster care for a while, but ran away so many times trying to find his brothers and baby sisters, that he eventually wound up in juvenile detention. By the time he graduated out of the system when he was eighteen, his brothers and sisters had vanished-adopted and gone.”
Billie muttered under her breath.
Holt nodded. “He was just a kid, and a known troublemaker at that. What could he do?” He paused, cleared his throat and wondered whether, behind those dark lenses, there might, just possibly, be tears in her eyes. Was it his wishful thinking, or did her mouth have a softness about it he hadn’t seen before?
As if determined to deny that, she cleared her throat and said harshly, “Okay, so he’s hired you to find the four siblings-I get it. So why did he wait so long? Vietnam-that had to be…what, thirty years ago?”
Holt nodded. “That’s a question Cory has asked himself. Mostly, I think he’d just given up. He managed to turn his own life around-went to college, became a journalist, a war correspondent. Fairly famous one, too-won a Pulitzer for his reporting on the Middle East wars. Was captured and held prisoner for a while himself.” He paused. “It was while he was in an Iraqi prison that he met a man, an aviator who had been shot down during the first Gulf War and had been in that same prison for eight years. They were rescued together. Eventually, Cory married the man’s daughter, Samantha. It was Sam who convinced Cory he needed to find his brothers and sisters. That’s when he contacted me.”
“Because you specialize in finding people.” Billie’s lips twitched slightly, too quickly to be called a smile.
“That’s right.” He spoke very softly now, too, watching her face. It occurred to him that she seemed to have gone a shade whiter, if that was possible. “As I said, I’ve found the two boys. Wade is a homicide detective in Portland, Oregon, and Matt is in Southern California-splits his year between teaching inner-city kids and being a whitewater rafting guide, which is quite a feat, considering a rock-climbing accident put him in a wheelchair a few years back. I also found one of the twins-Brooke. That was a couple of months ago. She told me-”
Billie stood up so abruptly Holt flinched back as if from an expected blow. “Like I said-can’t help you,” she mumbled, and there was no question about it now…her face was the color of cold ashes. She paused, then made a valiant attempt at a smile, obviously trying to backtrack, mend what for her had to be a catastrophic breakdown of her defenses. “Look…thanks for the Coke…Gotta go. Wasn’t watching the time…I’m supposed to be-sorry.”
She walked away, moving as rapidly through the dining room as the closely set tables would allow.
He didn’t try to stop her, or follow her, either. He knew desperation when he saw it.
Billie managed to wait until she’d turned the corner and was out of Holt Kincaid’s line of sight before she bolted. Fortunately, she’d played a tournament in the hotel and knew where the restrooms were. Even so, she barely made it into a stall before becoming wretchedly, violently ill.
Thankfully, the restroom was empty. She threw up until she had nothing left in her stomach, then collapsed onto the cold tile floor, pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them in a vain effort to stop the shaking. The pressure of sobs was like an iron fist squeezing her chest, and she hauled in air in great gulps and clenched her teeth so hard in her determination to hold them back, her jaws screamed in agony. She tore off her sunglasses and dug the heels of her hands into dry, burning eye sockets. But no matter how hard she pressed, no matter how viciously she tried to scrub them away, the images came. Images she thought she’d blocked out of her mind forever. Memories of pain and fear and humiliation and shame.
Chapter 4
Holt was trying to decide whether he’d just had a major break in his case, or blown it completely. One thing he did know: He was never going to be able to figure out Billie Farrell or anticipate her reactions, so he might as well quit trying.
Cory Pearson’s story had shaken her, no doubt about that. And if it had finally sunk in that she had three brothers she didn’t know about, he could have expected some degree of shock. Given the color of her complexion, he wasn’t all that surprised she’d felt the need to make a hasty exit.
But he hadn’t expected her not to come back.
He’d waited for her for nearly an hour, nursing his cup of coffee and smiling at the waitress whenever she appeared anxiously at his elbow. He’d figured once Billie regained her composure she’d have a jillion questions-or at the very least, be ready to stand fast on her denial of any relationship to his client. Finally, accepting the fact that his quarry had slipped away, he’d signed his tab and gone back to his room to plan his next move.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed gazing at the wooden skewer in its napkin nest and trying to calculate the odds a lab might be able to get a reading on Billie’s DNA from it, when a knock came on the hotel room door. His heart jolted and skittered around a bit, but he was pretty sure his voice was calm as he called out, “Yeah, who is it?”
