The Night In Question Page 3

  Her jeans were slung across the back of a chair, and she went to them. Feeling inside the front pocket, she withdrew two tissue-wrapped objects. Carefully she nudged aside the nest of tissue and stared at the pair of earrings in her palm.

  Willa had called them her princess earrings. Kenneth had bought them for her as a wedding present, and had insisted she wear them whenever they were out in public together. He’d told her once that he enjoyed displaying his impeccable taste—in jewelry as in women.

  Appearances had been vitally important to him. She hadn’t known until too late that his gifts and attentions to her were as empty as their marriage had soon become, and it was even later that she’d realized his daughter meant just as little to Kenneth Tennant. She and Willa both had existed only as accoutrements to him—part of the background that he’d felt necessary for a man of his station in life.

  He’d been the coldest human being she’d ever known—as emotionless in his personal life as he was in his business dealings. She’d always been privately convinced that the latter had led to his death. Some rival he’d destroyed, some executive he’d ruined—it had to have been someone like that who’d found a way to kill him and make it look as though she’d been responsible. But even though that unknown enemy had robbed her of two years of her life, she had no intention of trying to discover his identity. She was only interested in one thing, and it wasn’t revenge.

  If Kenneth had still been alive, the wife he’d thought of as a possession would no longer have attracted him, Julia thought without self-pity. But the baubles she’d once been adorned with had kept their value. They were South Sea pearls, exquisitely matched and rimmed with diamonds. They were going to get her back her child.

  “I’m going to find her, Ross,” she said softly to the empty room. “I want what your people took from me—my daughter, my life, my freedom—and I’m going to get it. And when I do, we’re going to disappear so completely that you’ll never see us again.”

  “YOU WHAT?”

  Julia stared at the overweight young man sitting in front of her. He hit a key and spoke over his shoulder at her.

  “I said it only took me a couple of hours to do the job after you left on Tuesday. You should have given me a number where I could reach you.” He tucked a greasy strand of hair behind his ear. “So you’ve been in the joint, huh? What for—dealing?”

  There was absent curiosity in his tone, but most of his attention was focused on the computer screen in front of him. He typed in another command without waiting for her reply. She wasn’t about to tell him the truth anyway, Julia thought wryly.

  She’d gotten his name from one of the women in prison.

  Since the morning she’d sold her pearls to yet another shady connection she’d learned of in prison she’d been on tenterhooks, wondering desperately if Melvin Dobbs would be able to find Barbara’s and Willa’s whereabouts with the medical data she’d given him.

  It had been three days of knowing that Max would be on her trail, three days of looking over her shoulder and half expecting to see him there, even though she’d stayed in a different place every night.

  “You said the kid and the woman both had a rare allergy to wasp stings, so I ran a cross-check on prescriptions for the antidote that had been ordered in adult and child strength from the same pharmacist.” Dobbs hit the Enter key and sat back as the glowing blue screen in front of him rapidly filled up with lines of type. “There were several matches, but only one where both the adult and the child were females. By the way, they’re still in the state.”

  For a moment Julia wondered if she’d heard him correctly. “They’re still in this state?” she repeated stupidly.

  At his casual nod her hand flew to her mouth, stifling a choked-off sob. She felt the hot prickle of tears in her eyes, but thankfully Dobbs’s attention wasn’t on her.

  Dear God—they were still in Massachusetts! For two years she’d imagined Willa as being thousands of miles away from her, had ached with the certainty that between her and her daughter were rivers, mountains, countless cities as barriers—and all the time only a few hours at most had kept them apart.

  She could see her today, Julia thought, her mind racing. She wouldn’t do anything rash or foolish—she wouldn’t do anything that might jeopardize her goal—but if she was careful she might be able to catch a glimpse of Willa in a park or a playground. Just one quick look. Surely that would be safe enough.

  And then I’ll figure out a way to have you with me forever, sweetheart, she thought tremulously. I still don’t know how I’m going to do it, but we’ll be a family again, you and me.

  She fixed her burning gaze on Dobbs’s computer screen as the lines of type scrolled downward and then stopped.

  “That’s the one.” He grunted and reached over to a nearby printer. “I’ll run off a copy for you to—”

  “She was in prison for killing the girl’s father and the woman’s husband, Dobbs. And unless you shut down that computer right now, you’re looking at hard time yourself.”

  Shocked, Julia spun around at the sound of the harsh voice coming from the doorway. Her appalled gaze met the coldly assessing glance of the man standing there.

  “Hullo, Tennant,” Max said with a tight smile. “Looking for something?”

  “This is harassment, Ross.” She dragged in a constricted breath, and willed her voice to remain steady. “I warned you to leave me alone, and I meant it. You’re interrupting a private business transaction here, so get the hell—”

  “I said shut down the computer, Dobbs. Do it,” Max ordered, not taking his eyes from Julia. “Right off the top of my head I can come up with at least two charges that can be laid against you unless you cooperate. Endangering the life of a child is the first one. Being an accessory to kidnapping is the second. Shut it down.”

  But Melvin’s fingers were already flying over the keys, and even as Max delivered his ultimatum and Julia turned back to the computer, she saw the lines of type flicker and disappear from the screen. Her eyes opened wide in denial.

  “Bring it back up, Dobbs,” she commanded unsteadily. “I paid you for that information. He’s got no authority to—”

  “He’s a fed.” Flicking a switch at the side of his computer, the hacker jerked his head at the open ID wallet that Max was negligently displaying. “That’s authority enough for me.” Dismissively he turned away from Julia to the man behind her. “I didn’t know why she wanted it. Just get her out of here and let’s pretend this whole thing never happened, okay?”

  “No! No, it’s not okay, dammit!” Her hands balled into fists at her sides, Julia looked wildly first at Dobbs, and then Max. “Damn both of you—that’s my daughter’s address you’re keeping from me. I have the right to know where she is!”

  “No, Julia, you don’t.” Max had been standing a few feet away, but now he took two swift strides toward her. Behind the coolness of his gaze heat flared, and was immediately extinguished. “And if I even suspect that you’ve persuaded our venal friend here to change his mind and tell you where she is, I’ll have her relocated so fast you won’t get within a hundred miles of her. For a while after she was moved she was a sad and lonely little girl, but now she’s started to adjust. She’s in kindergarten now. Do you really want to be responsible for uprooting her all over again?”

  “She was sad and lonely because her mother was taken away from her, for God’s sake!” Julia hissed at the implacable face only inches from hers. “You were responsible for that, Ross!”

  “And I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.” His voice was ice. “She’s got a shot at a normal life. She wouldn’t have that, growing up with the woman who killed her father, her uncle and two innocent bystanders.”

  “You keep forgetting something.” He was so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her parted lips, and she realized with a small shock that it had been years since there had been this little distance between her and a man. Julia thrust the thought aside and con
tinued. “They had to let me go, Max. They couldn’t prove their case. I’m an innocent woman.”

  “You got off on a technicality, Tennant!” As if she’d goaded him into action, he grasped her arms just above her elbows, and pulled her closer, obliterating the last few inches of space between them. His jaw was set and his grip on her felt like steel. “You got off, but that doesn’t mean you’re not guilty. The only innocent one in this whole damn mess is that little girl, and I intend to keep her safe—from you. Do we understand each other?”

  She was vaguely aware of Melvin Dobbs, sitting frozenly a few feet away from them. But on a deeper, more visceral level, she suddenly felt as if nothing and no one had any solid reality except the man in front of her.

  His grasp on her arms was tight enough that it should have been uncomfortable. Instead she felt ridiculously as if it was all that was keeping her from falling into a terrible void and plummeting to her own destruction. He was strong, she thought disjointedly, but his strength wasn’t merely a matter of muscle and sinew. It was a strength made up of conviction and a bedrock foundation of personal honor. He meant what he said. He cared enough about a child he hardly knew that he would go the limit to keep her safe.

  Under different circumstances, she and Max Ross might have found themselves on the same side, she realized with a small shock. She would have liked that. He was a man a woman could count on.

  And if she were honest with herself, in those alternate circumstances there might well have been more than just cooperation between them. Even now, facing each other as enemies, there was a suppressed undercurrent flowing beneath the surface of their anger and antagonism.

  She distinctly remembered the first time she’d noticed him, although, as she’d learned during her trial, he’d been involved in the investigation from the first and had actually spoken with her an hour or so after the explosion on the night it had happened. She didn’t recall the encounter, but that was understandable. She’d been in shock those first few days, and then had come the nightmarish realization that the authorities saw her as their prime suspect. From then on her world had unravelled so swiftly she hadn’t taken in much of anything.

  Besides, Max was the original invisible man. Obviously that was an asset in his line of work, and she supposed he’d cultivated that ability he had of unobtrusively melting into the background, but she still didn’t know how he did it. Granted, there was nothing about him that was jarringly noticeable, unless the casual observer happened to look directly into his eyes. They were a dark, clear green, and in the tan of his face they looked like chips of arctic ice. But his hair, dark brown and cut fairly short, was ordinary enough, and his features, although harder than the average, were regular.

  Still, it seemed impossible that a big man with such a—she searched for the word—such a solid presence could go unnoticed in a crowd whenever he wanted to. Which meant that at her first remembered meeting with him, he’d wanted her to know he was there.

  It had been on the first day of her trial, and she’d been walking into the courtroom when she’d become aware of him standing a few feet away. His gaze had been steady and assessing, his expression carefully blank, and she’d suddenly known that the privileged shield of wealth and beauty and social status that had protected her for so long had been ripped away from her. She hadn’t realized who he was at that point, but she knew that the man watching her didn’t see her as Julia Tennant, the attractive young widow of a wealthy and powerful man. Those green eyes had seemed to be looking straight through her, as if they were trying to read her very soul.

  And even as he’d continued to stare at her, his attitude impersonally professional, she’d seen a hard edge of color rise up under the tan of his cheekbones. He’d turned away immediately, and during the rest of the trial he’d been careful not to meet her eyes again.

  But as she’d told him in the coffee shop, she’d known he’d been watching her. And, if she were honest with herself, the undercurrent she was feeling right now had been there from the start, on her side as well as his.

  Except that wouldn’t make any difference to him, she thought with renewed despair. Max Ross might have his alternate realities just as she did, and his might even be more urgent than hers, but even if they included sweat-soaked sheets, total satiation, and every dark desire he’d ever had, he would never let them interfere with real life.

  He was the law. She was an ex-convict. They weren’t on the same side and never would be, as far as he was concerned.

  She gave it one last try, knowing it was futile.

  “She’s my daughter, Max.” Her voice was husky. Her gaze on his, she tried desperately to make him see it her way. “I love her—surely you believe that? Even if everything else you thought about me was true, you must know that I love her too much to ever put her in danger. I’m her mother. She needs me.”

  Just for a second she thought she saw him waver, and her heart leapt. Then he shook his head and the irrational hope died.

  “If you love her you’ll give her up, Julia.” His voice was as low as hers had been, and it had lost its edge. “What kind of a life could you give her, even if you did find her? Her aunt has legal custody of her now, and that would make you a fugitive. You and Willa would be on the run, never putting down roots, never being able to give her a secure home. Is that what you want for her?”

  He stared at her for a long moment. Then he let go of her arms, and his own dropped to his sides. His eyes darkened with something that could have been compassion. “I think you’ll do the right thing, Julia. I think you’ll let her go.”

  And looking at him, she knew with sudden despair that he was right.

  Chapter Three

  She was soaked to the skin, but that didn’t matter. Hunching her shoulders against the downpour, Julia dimly realized that she was shivering, but that too was unimportant. She kept walking. Despite having no real destination in mind, somehow it seemed to her that she was heading in the right direction.

  Damn Max Ross. The unspoken epithet was automatic, with no heat behind it. Damn him for showing up, damn him for making sure she hadn’t gotten the information she’d wanted and damn him for what he’d said.

  But most of all, damn him for knowing her better than she’d known herself.

  “…on the run, never putting down roots, never being able to give her a secure home…is that what you want for her?”

  She’d wanted to scream at him that he was wrong, that it wouldn’t be that way. She’d wanted to tell him that no matter what difficulties faced her, she could give her daughter a stable life, a happy childhood. She’d wanted to tell him all the lies she’d been telling herself. She’d looked into his eyes and she hadn’t been able to say any of it, because she knew she didn’t believe it.

  She’d been holding on to a dream that had died the day she’d been convicted, and Max was right—no one would ever believe she hadn’t done what she’d been accused of. Although no reporters had tracked her down, in the last few days a newspaper or two had covered her surprising release. The gist of the stories was that she’d made a mockery of the legal system.

  No, there had never been any chance of getting Willa back again—not really. Max had known that from the start. Now she did too.

  There was no reason to go on anymore.

  The thought slipped into her mind as if it had been lurking there and waiting for the right opportunity to reveal itself. She was dead already, Julia thought distantly. Her body might go on for years, but it was only a shell. Everything that had been good, everything that had been real, everything that had been life to her had been held in a tiny pair of hands that had once clutched hers, had shone out of a pair of eyes that had gazed at her with absolute trust, had been encompassed by a love so perfect she could give nothing less in return.

  Max was right. If she persisted in trying to get Willa back, ultimately she would tear her daughter apart. Did he understand, even a little, what he was forcing her to face?

  He
had to. He’d lost a child himself. And although the few details she’d garnered about that loss had been scant, the impact it had had on him was visible. Oh, he’d managed to continue functioning. He’d kept his job, and even performed it with a kind of automatic zealousness—her own case was proof of that. But there was an almost two-dimensional quality to him, as if when his workday was over, and he was finally alone with only himself for company, he simply…shut down. Maybe his ability to fade into the background wasn’t simply a tool of his trade, she thought with sudden insight. Was it possible for a man to turn into a ghost one day at a time?

  Dead man walking. How much sheer strength of will did he have, that he could force himself to get up every morning and face an empty world, day after day?

  More than she had. More than she cared to have, she thought numbly.

  She stepped off the curb onto the street with barely a glance at the traffic lights. Her face was wet with rain, her hair plastered to her skull as if she’d just surfaced from a dive and suddenly she didn’t feel as if she could take another step. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, wanting to blot out the present, wanting to bring back the past…and just for a moment, it worked.

  She was holding Willa again, and feeling those tiny fingers delicately touching her ears.

  “Why are you crying, Mommy?”

  “Because pearls are for tears,” Julia said out loud, forcing a shaky smile to her lips and stopping stock-still in the middle of the road as the rain came down and the scars on her heart finally gave way and tore asunder. Her vision of Willa faded slowly away, and her voice sank to a raw whisper. “Everyone knows that, kitten-paws. Even I know that now.”

  Her head bowed, her shoulders shaking with soundless sobs, she didn’t hear the hoarse voice calling out her name until it was too late. Blindly she looked up and saw the bus bearing down on her.