Riley made a disgusted noise. “My client has no idea where her ex-husband is. When he disappeared he left her and the kids flat broke, did you know that? If she knew where he was, don’t you suppose she’d be after him herself?”
Redfield shrugged. “Maybe…maybe not. All I know is, the syndicate we’re interested in wants Hal Robey, and they have come after his wife in a very serious way. To me, that says they must have some good reason to think she can give them what they want. Since we also want Hal Robey, and would very much like to find him before the bad guys do, we have to pay attention to that. You follow me? We have no choice but to look very hard at Mrs. Robey. The difference between us and them is that we don’t burn down people’s houses and threaten to hurt their children to get what we want.”
There was a hard, unhappy silence. Then Riley straightened and said quietly, “I believe I will see my client now.”
There had been a year in Summer’s childhood when the winter rains came early and stayed on into May in the California deserts and mountain foothills. They hadn’t known about El Nino then; old-tuners called it the year of the Hundred-Year Flood. For a while, California was in its glory. The desert bloomed with carpets of wildflowers, some that appeared only once or twice in a lifetime, and poppies and brush grew thick and lush on the slopes. And then in June the rains ceased and the Santa Ana winds blew down the canyons, and the vegetation became tinder. And the fire season began.
As the hills and forests and subdivisions of Southern California burned and firefighters and equipment poured in from all over the country to help wage the unwinnable war, base camps sprang up near those communities in the most desperate states of seige That year, one such tent city had been located in Summer’s hometown, because of its proximity both to an airfield large enough to accommodate the water bombers, and a reservoir that would be their source of water.
At the height of the holocaust, Summer’s daddy, Pop Waskowitz, the town’s chief of police, had taken his children to visit the camp. While Evie had run around taking pictures and home movies for a school social studies project, and Mirabella had fussed and fumed over what she considered to be rampant inefficiency and disorganized chaos, Summer had stared in silent sorrow at the firefighters coming in from the line. Too exhausted to eat, they would fall asleep where they hit the ground, sometimes with their heads pillowed on knapsacks, hard hats or bare ground. Their smoke-blackened faces and red-rimmed eyes had haunted Summer’s nightmares for weeks afterward.
She was dreaming of those faces again. Of young faces crusty with soot and eyes aged and hollow from staring into hell itself. But…for some reason the faces were David’s-all of them. No, some of the faces were Helen’s, too. And when she tried to touch them, the blackened faces-her children’s faces-crumpled and disintegrated and turned to ashes, each and every one. Crying, she kept trying to reach out to them, trying to touch them, one after the other, until there were none left. Yet…she could still hear their voices! She could hear them calling her…
“Mommy! Wake up! Mom, a
Summer opened her eyes and immediately thought she must still be dreaming. How else could she account for this surreal dissolve from the nightmare horror of her children’s burned and blackened faces to the vision of masculine beauty that stood before her now? An angel, perhaps? But…in
But of course it was not a dream. And if Cinderella, down on her knees in the fireplace, dressed in her tatters and rags and up to her elbows in ashes and soot, were to suddenly look up and find the Prince standing there in all his royal splendor, she could not have been more dazzled than Summer was when that fact became apparent to her. Or more humiliated.
“Oh, gosh-I must have dozed off,” she mumbled, struggling to shift Helen off her lap with one hand so she could sit up, wiping at her cheeks with the other. Had she been crying? Snoring? Her mouth and throat were dry. She cleared her throat and at the same time tried desperately to stifle a yawn. “Mr. Grogan-thank you so much for coming. I-”
“Why are you wearing that?” Helen asked from her battle station at Summer’s side, up on her knees with her arms folded and her chin jutting out, and the expression on her porcelain face one more of suspicion than awe.
“Helen-”
Riley Grogan said, with none of the adjustments to tone and manner adults usually employ when addressing small children, “I was at a party. I didn’t have time to go home and change.” He regarded his inquisitor through half-closed eyes while she considered that, her head tilted at a judicial angle.
“I’m sony,” Summer said in a low voice.
“Don’t be” Somehow his voice managed to be both crisp and comforting. He glanced toward the far end of the couch, where David was frowning and twitching, clinging to his troubled sleep. “If you’d like to get your things together, I’ll get you out of here now.”
Hope and gladness carried Summer to her feet before she remembered. Her shoulders slumped as she turned one to Riley Grogan, averting her face so he wouldn’t see the defeat and worry she knew must be written there. “That’s nice of you to offer, but I don’t know where we’d go. I’m told the Red Cross will provide us with shelter-I’ll check into it tomorrow-but I don’t know if they’ll take the animals. The hotels-”
“You just let me worry about that” He leaned down to give David’s shoulder a shake. “Come on, young man- rise and shine. Time to go.” Not yet fully awake, David rolled himself into a sitting position, still clutching the backpack to his chest and blinking slowly, like a fledgeling owl.
“Time to go
“I’d be interested in the answer to that question, myself,” Jake Redfield said quietly from the doorway. “We still have some questions we need to ask Mrs. Robey.”
“My client won’t be answering any more questions tonight,” Riley Grogan said, taking Summer’s elbow in a firm grip and ushering her toward the door. As Helen wedged herself between Riley and her mother, and David slid bonelessly off the couch to shuffle along in their wake, Summer’s eyes anxiously followed the FBI man, wondering how he would respond to her lawyer’s implacable declaration.
For one moment it did look as if Agent Redfield might try and stop them. “I’m gonna need to know where you’re taking my witness,” he said in a belligerent tone, but his face said he already knew it was a lost cause.
As they met in the doorway, Riley paused, and Summer saw the two men exchange a long, measuring stare. And she knew with a sudden primitive awareness that the silent struggle had much less to do with her and her current predicament than their words might suggest. More, perhaps, to do with the thunder of hoofbeats and the clang of antlers echoing on a cold autumn morning. That awareness stirred along her skin and her pulse quickened.
“Is my client under arrest?” her lawyer softly asked, and the FBI man made a sibilant noise of disgust. “In that case, where my client goes is none of the government’s business.”
Redfield stood his ground a moment longer, then turned his head away. “At least let me know where I can get ahold of her.”
“You can reach her through me.” Riley drew a card from his jacket pocket and offered it to the other man in a motion both controlled and graceful. “Right now I’m taking Mrs. Robey and her children someplace where they will be safe and can rest undisturbed. Give it a couple of days and then call my office. If I think Mrs. Robey is up to it, she’ll be available to answer your questions at that time. Now-Mrs. Robey? Shall we go?”
Still caught up in the primal spell of it herself, Summer allowed herself to be towed along for several steps before the realization kicked in that she was being treated exactly as if she were the spoils of that recent masculine power struggle. She halted, more like a balky child than a reluctant bride, and pulled her arm free of Riley Grogan’s grasp. She was obscurely pleased when he stopped and looked back at her in utter astonishment, as if an inanimate object had suddenly acquired legs and voice.
“Excuse me,” she said, “but
Riley stepped back and leaned down so that his face was close to hers. “Can we talk about this later? Like… outside?”
It was very quiet in the hallway. On the edges of her vision Summer was intensely aware of her children’s wide-eyed, listening stares, and beyond them, Jake Redfield, alert and interested, his face looking as if it might even smile. She inhaled through her nose, struggling to take in air that had suddenly become thick and warm as fur.
