One Summer’s Knight

her mind with her children and their beachcombing haul, mediating arguments about whose treasures were prettiest or most numerous, but her senses would not be distracted; they were tuned to the slightest movement, the faintest sound from the house at the edge of the marsh. And so it was that, even though she didn’t want to be, she was watching when Riley and the young woman emerged from the house to stand once more on the porch, talking together, heads bowed and arms folded. Even from that distance Summer could see that the tension had gone out of him, that there was a heaviness about him now…a a certain sadness. And how, she wondered, deriding herself, did she feel she knew him well enough to know that?

With a tightness in her throat, she watched Riley take something from his pocket-it could only have been money-and give it to the woman, then leave her and stride across the porch and down the steps without a backward glance.

When he joined them again, the heaviness came with him, and a mood of melancholy and secrecy that banished the day’s magic as completely as a thunderstorm can turn the day to night.

Chapter 12

All the way home Riley berated himself without mercy. What had he been thinking of? For the last week behaving like a horny adolescent with his brains in his boxers, allowing his lust for a woman to lead him so far astray that he’d lost sight of who he was, who she was, and even more unforgivably, the fact that there were very probably the lives of two innocent children at stake. He couldn’t recall ever having behaved so badly, even when he was a horny adolescent

There was no excuse for his actions-none at all. He could have no future with this woman. She’d said it herself: she didn’t belong in his life. She didn’t fit. How could she possibly? God knows he was not cut out to be a father, much less a stepfather! And with this woman anything short of full commitment would be unthinkable. Unforgivable.

What had he been thinking of? Summer Robey was his client. He was responsible for her safety. What could have possessed him to kiss her?

It was Monday morning before the truth finally hit him. It came while he was shaving, staring at his reflection in his bathroom mirror, the image repeated in the mirrored wall behind him over and over to infinity. His image…

Ah yes, his image. There he was, eyeball to eyeball with the Riley Grogan he’d so carefully crafted, honed and polished and placed on display before the world, and in his mind, in his heart and soul, the real Riley Grogan was whispering, You’re a fraud, Grogan. The truth is, all that lofty rationalization about ethics and moral responsibility and all-it’s nothin’ but hooey, that’s what it is, just a bunch of hooey to hide the fact that you’re scared to death somebody’s gonna find out what a fraud you are. You’re afraid, Grogan. Afraid…

So, needless to say, he wasn’t in the best humor when he walked into his office later that morning. For one thing, his sore foot was giving him trouble, it being the first occasion he’d had to put on a pair of dress shoes since stabbing himself in the instep with a pair of hedge clippers. And naturally, it was the first thing his secretary took notice of when he stopped by her desk for his messages. She glanced up at him, covered the telephone receiver with her hand and sang out, “Hey, what’d you do to your foot?”

“What happened to ‘Good morning, Mr. Grogan, how was your weekend?’ ” he said sourly.

“Good morning, Mr. Grogan, how was your weekend? What did you do to your foot?”

“I kicked a door. Who’s that on the phone?”

“It’s your old buddy-Jake Redfield. Want me to take a message?”

In spite of himself, his heart gave a lurch. Please, Lord, let this be good news. Maybe, he thought, while he was spending his weekend cutting hedges, rescuing tots from trees and groping his client on the beach, the FBI had managed to find Hal Robey, bring down the syndicate and lock up all the bad guys so everybody could go home. Uh-uh. “No,” he said, frowning, “I’ll take it Put it through to my office.”

“Tom Denby’s waitin’ for you in there.”

“That’s okay. Anything else of interest?”

“Couple things…” Hands busy with the phone, Danell jerked her head toward the tray on the corner of her desk. So, since Riley had to look down in order to gather up the message slips that had collected there, naturally the next thing he heard was “Hey, what’d you do to your head?”

“None of your business,” he growled as he shuffled through the pile. He picked up his briefcase and started down the hallway.

“Bumped into a door, I bet…”

In his office, Riley closed the door behind him and said “Mornin’ ” to Tom, who was sitting in the client’s chair with one ankle propped on the opposite knee reading a Stephen King paperback. The investigator dog-eared the page and closed the book, even though Riley checked him with a hand gesture while he went to pick up his phone.

“Agent Redfield,” he said crisply, making eye contact with Tom Denby as he hitched his backside onto a corner of his desk, “what can I do for you?”

The FBI agent gave a mirthless snort. “I think you know the answer to that. Mrs. Robey ready to talk to us yet?”

“Depends,” Riley drawled. “You arrested the people responsible for burnin’ down her house yet?”

There was a pause, during which he could almost hear the FBI man counting to ten. Then, in that patented bureau monotone, Redfield said, “As a matter of fact, we may have gotten a little bit of a break in that regard.”

“You have?” Riley glanced at his investigator, who had lifted his briefcase onto his knees and was snapping it open.

There was a long pause; clearly, sharing information with an attorney-the enemy-wasn’t something the FBI enjoyed doing. Finally Redfield said, “We have reason to believe he may have been in contact with his wife’s parents.”

Riley’s eyebrows shot up. “Hal Robey? What reason? Did he or didn’t he?”

Another pause. Then, on a resigned exhalation, Redfield explained, “This past weekend, Mrs. Robey’s mother received a call from someone claiming to be from her daughters’ high school class reunion committee, requesting information as to how they might be reached. Mrs. Robey’s mother didn’t recognize the voice-said it may even have been a woman-but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s possible Robey could have disguised his voice or had someone else make the call for him.”

“What makes you think it was Robey?” Riley held up a finger to forestall Tom Denby, who ignored it and leaned over to hand him several sheets of paper with what looked to be photocopied credit card receipts on them. He took them, stared at them.

In his ear, Redfield’s voice was saying, “We’ve been monitoring credit card activity on Robey’s known aliases. Over the weekend we had a hit-a Motel 6 on Interstate 10 in Pensacola, Florida.”

Riley swore, dragged a hand through his hair. Winced. He frowned, his mind in high gear, chewing it all over. “Mrs. Robey’s parents live in Pensacola Beach.”

“Uh-huh…”

“All right, so he’s looking for her.” Riley was silent for a moment, listening to the sound of his own breathing. “You’re thinking when he doesn’t find his wife at the address and phone number he’s got, he’ll get in touch with the sisters next.”

“If he hasn’t already. From what I understand, the only one reachable is the one here in Georgia. He’s gonna be careful about it-he knows he’s a target.” Redfield paused, then said very quietly, “What we’re thinking is, when and if he does, if we’re not already too late, we’d like to make his next move a little easier for him.”

Riley sat still for about three beats, then came up off the desk as if somebody’d shot him in the butt with a BB gun. “No. Lure him in, you mean-using Summer as bait. Are you out of your mind? No. Absolutely not. I can’t allow it.”

“You can’t allow it?” Redfield’s voice had gone soft. “You mean, advise, don’t you? In the final analysis, isn’t the decision up to Mrs. Robey?”

“Dammit, Redfield, the woman’s got two kids!”