Twisted Shadows

by Patricia Potter

  “No need. I found it on the Internet. That and a lot more.”

  “Sassy, aren’t you?” Tommy said. “I’ll see you Saturday. Otherwise, we’ll be back.”

  “She’s coming,” Nate said. “Friday.” A rare surge of excitement gripped him. At last a chance to get inside the family.

  “We definitely have a wild card in the game,” Gray said.

  “Some game. Four—maybe five—factions ready to take over when Merritta dies, and willing to do anything to achieve that. Now a long-lost daughter.”

  “I feel sorry for her.”

  Nate tapped his fingers on the desk. “She has to know Merritta’s involved in organized crime unless she’s been in a convent all these years. So if she’s coming, she’s either greedy or not too smart. Either way, we might be able to use her.”

  “You’re a cynic, Nate, particularly where the Merritta family is concerned. You know about him, but you’ve been hunting him all these years. There’s no reason someone in Colorado would know. Besides, she just discovered she has a brother. Wouldn’t it be normal to want to meet him?”

  Nate shrugged. “She’s a Merritta. Like her brother.”

  Gray steepled his fingers. “We still don’t know Nicholas Merritt is involved in the family business.”

  “I do. His company with its foreign sales is perfect for money laundering. He grew up in that family. I haven’t seen him walk away, go someplace where it wouldn’t follow him. No one else could have gotten the loans to start a company that he did at such favorable rates.” Nate sat back in his chair. “Or he could be the witness someone in the Bureau is protecting.” He could barely suppress a growl. He hated the Bureau practice of protecting criminals to catch other criminals. It often ended up with catching little guys to make arrest records look good. The real bad guys went free.

  “If he is, our superiors won’t let us touch him.”

  “Unless it becomes too hairy for them.”

  “Don’t even think about it, Nate. Nailing Merritta isn’t worth our careers.”

  “It’s worth mine.”

  “I doubt there’s anything there, anyway. You’ve been trying to get something on him for years.”

  “He’s smarter than the rest. Doesn’t mean he’s any more honest.”

  Gray shook his head. “How do we find this newest member before they get to her?”

  “We know she’s coming in from Colorado Friday. We could check out all Denver flights. Maybe even start tonight.”

  “And look for whom? We don’t have the manpower, not unless you want to let a few more people in on this.”

  “No,” Nate said sharply. “I don’t. No one else is monitoring these conversations, so we can keep it between us for now.” He hesitated. He went to his computer and checked on Denver to Boston flights and printed out the schedule. “Only two nonstops daily. One is coming in tonight, two tomorrow.”

  Gray looked over his shoulder. “And a bunch of connections.”

  “Let’s concentrate on the nonstops,” Nate said. “And she has to drive from wherever she is, or catch a commuter to Denver.”

  “You’re assuming a lot. Maybe she’s closer to another airport.”

  “We’ve been able to pinpoint the cell phone calls to north central Colorado. Denver’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “Anyway, how will we recognize her?’

  “Maybe she looks like Merritta. Or her twin. Or maybe some of Merritta’s men will be there.”

  “I’ll take the afternoon flight tomorrow,” Gray said, giving up.

  “I’ll take the evening flight.” Nate tapped his printout of flight schedules. “I’ll start tonight, just in case.”

  “And what do I do if I think I’ve located her?” Gray said. “She hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  “If you find her, call me. Maybe we can convince her to cooperate.”

  Gray raised an eyebrow. “Right… with your charm.”

  “Go to hell,” Nate said with good nature. It was well known he had no charm. He was direct and argumentative and offended nearly everyone, particularly his superiors with his bluntness and unwillingness to play political head games. He was not, he was told repeatedly, a team player. But he was damn good with numbers, and he had the tenacity of a bulldog. And he closed more than his share of cases. That had saved him.

  “If we miss her?” Gray asked.

  “Then I’ll keep an eye on Merritta’s house,” Nate said.

  “Do you really think she’ll cooperate?”

  “If she’s an honest citizen, she’ll help.”

  “Come on, Nate. How many honest citizens spy on their families?”

  Nate shrugged. “I can try.”

  “Even if she’s stupid or greedy?” Gray mocked.

  “Either of those qualities can be used to our advantage,” Nate said.

  “And we don’t tell the boss yet?”

  “No,” Nate said. “I want to get this woman first.”

  “He isn’t going to like it.”

  Nate shrugged. “We don’t know anything for sure yet. We’re just exercising initiative.”

  Gray grinned. “You’re going to get me fired, Nate, ole buddy.”

  “You’re as frustrated at our lack of progress as I am.”

  “Yep, but it doesn’t keep me up at nights like it does you.”

  Nate didn’t answer. There was no answer. He would never sleep well until the last Merritta was in prison.

  “Another IRS audit,” Cal White told Nick Merritt when he entered the office. “They’ve taken over the office.”

  “McLean?”

  “He’s probably behind it. They say it’s routine.”

  “Like it’s been routine each of the last five years.” Nick tried to hold his temper. “I’m sorry, Cal.”

  “Don’t be. You warned me.”

  “We should have set up shop someplace else.”

  “We never would have gotten the financing if we had.”

  Nick laughed bitterly. “I thought we had gotten it on our own.”

  “We paid it back. That’s what’s important. We’re on our own now.”

  “If the feds would leave us alone. This audit will close us down for several weeks.”

  Cal settled into a chair, his long gangly form slowly sinking into the cushions. He stretched out his legs and hiked them up on the desk. “They won’t find anything.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past McLean to plant something.”

  “Neither would I,” Cal said. He’d had his own encounters with Nathan McLean, who’d appeared in their offices several times, once after a Mafia-related killing, and again several weeks ago for no apparent reason. They both knew McLean had been unsuccessful at obtaining telephone taps on company phones.

  “It’s because of my father,” Nick said. “There’s so many damn rumors now. I’m even getting queries as to who I’ll support to take his place. As if it would make any difference.”

  Cal’s brows furrowed. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “My aunt asked me to go to lunch this week. It’s the first time she’s called in five years. Uncle Vic called yesterday. Wants a meeting.”

  “Are you going?”

  “And give the feds more ammunition? To hell with them. Maybe I should take a vacation. Say to the South Seas.”

  “And leave me with the audit?”

  Nick knew he couldn’t do that. Cal was the inventor, the idea man and the general nerd in their partnership. He stuttered when he met a stranger. Authority figures intimidated him.

  They had met in the service. It had been Nick’s rebellion and Cal’s only way to an education. Both had been trained as medics. Nick was older, having attended two years of college and nearing the end of his service when the Gulf War broke out. They had been on duty when an Iraqi rocket hit a barracks in Saudi Arabia.

  During the harrowing aftermath, he and Cal had become friends and attended the same university on veteran programs. Cal had majored in engi
neering and Nick in business. Cal had talked about ideas he had for several medical devices he thought would help those suffering traumatic wounds, and the two had decided to start a small firm together.

  Boston, with all its medical facilities, seemed the logical place to locate the business. It would be easier to get financing there, as well as professional consultants. Nick had hesitated, knowing that his name might be a detriment, but he didn’t like the idea of running away from it, either. And he loved Boston. He loved the waterfront, the row houses, the history and vitality, the sea and his small sailboat. He wasn’t going to give it up because of his family. He’d thought Boston would be big enough for all of them—him, the family, the FBI. Then there were times, like now, when he wasn’t sure the planet was big enough for all of them.

  The phone rang. He picked it up, balancing it on his shoulder.

  “Merritt,” he said

  “Nick?”

  He tensed. “Yes.”

  “Join us for supper Saturday night.”

  “I can’t. I have other plans.”

  “It’s important, Nick. I have a surprise.”

  “I’m too old for surprises. Are you calling from home?”

  “I’m calling my son. I can do that, can’t I?”

  Yes, he could, and the feds would be listening on the tap they no doubt had on his father’s phone. Nick swore under his breath. The only way to end the call was to agree. “What time?”

  “Around six?”

  “All right,” he said. “Good-bye.”

  “Your father?” Cal asked.

  Nick shrugged. “The monthly duty visit. Hell, Cal, he’s dying.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You never say anything. You’re a saint.”

  “Tell Janet that.”

  “She already knows that.” Nick envied Cal his wife. Janet would never be called beautiful, but she had a warmth that drew people to her. She was funny and realistic and smart and, next to Cal, had the biggest heart of anyone Nick knew.

  He stood. “We’d better tell Russell about the audit. It will make his day.”

  The plane was late taking off from Denver. Sam had taken a puddle jumper to the Denver airport, then had a long wait for her flight. She wouldn’t reach Boston until eleven tonight, but it was the only nonstop, and she didn’t want to make connections. Too many delays these days; too many airports closing down for some security reason.

  She kept glancing around at people in the terminal, then on the plane. She knew she was overreacting but better to err on the side of caution.

  Her mother’s philosophy. How many times had she heard those words? Now they held new meaning.

  Sam sat back and closed her eyes as the plane took off. Ten minutes later, when the expected announcement came about passengers being able to use electronic devices, she turned on her notebook computer and went to her Merritta file again, lingering for a moment on a news photo of her father. She compared that with the one she carried, the photo given her by the “messengers.” He wore a proud smile as he loomed above his wife and children. He was handsome and confident-looking and had a possessive hand on her mother’s shoulder. The later news photo showed a man putting on weight, his face not as sharply handsome but still possessing magnetic eyes.

  She wished she had pushed her mother for more information. Had she been physically abused? She hadn’t said so. But would she? Her mother was a proud woman.

  What had scared her so badly that she had left a child behind?

  Why was she—Samantha—so determined to open Pandora’s box? She usually didn’t question her decisions. She learned that didn’t help anything. But now she did question.

  Was she making a terrible mistake?

  Should she have contacted the police? The FBI? Anyone?

  And tell them what? That a father wanted to see his daughter?

  She swallowed hard. She’d come this far. She couldn’t turn around now. She would meet her father, ask him to leave her mother in peace. Surely if he cared enough to want to see his daughter, he would agree to her one request of him.

  And perhaps her brother would agree to meet their mother. Sam knew that would mean everything to her mother.

  Sam tried to still her spasms of apprehension. And prayed she wasn’t opening a door that would plunge both her and her mother into something neither could control.

  six

  As Sam deplaned at Boston’s Logan Airport, she looked around for what she thought of as wise guys for want of a better description. Then she remembered that nonpassengers were no longer allowed on the concourse.

  She was still wary. Her Boston visitors had said they had nothing to do with the burglary of her home. Then who had? The coincidence was too hard to believe, though she’d tried.

  The thought of another party involved haunted her.

  There were a few loiterers in the gate area. She supposed they had departed the plane before she did or were waiting for a flight.

  Her attention focused on a tall, lanky man who stood next to an airline customer-service representative. Since it was past eleven at night, most airport personnel—if not all—were headed toward the exit and home.

  The stranger’s gaze had lingered on several passengers—all women—who preceded her. She’d noticed with wry resignation—men always scoped out the female of the species, just as he was doing now.

  He was lean to the point of thinness, but there was an aura of strength about him. Strength and barely controlled energy. His sandy blond hair looked as if it had been combed by fingers, if at all. His face was all angles. Not handsome, but arresting. She saw battles in his face—in the firm line of his mouth, the wariness in his eyes. The straightness of his bearing suggested he was guarding something and would never surrender it.

  Himself, perhaps?

  Their gazes met and she felt an odd sense of recognition, of attraction, a quickening of her senses. Her breath stopped for a moment, then came a bit too fast. Something about him touched her—the utter stillness that overtook him as he stared back at her, the starkness in his gaze.

  The utter sense of aloneness of it.

  She forcibly shook off the spell as he seemed to take in a choppy breath. Her hands trembled as she leaned over to rearrange her carry-on and purse. When she straightened, he had turned away from her, only his profile visible as he smiled at the customer service agent.

  Again she shook her head, this time at her odd lapse into imagination. She must really be desperate for diversion from worry and fear to let herself be distracted by a face in a near-empty airport.

  “Hey, pretty lady,” someone said in a low voice behind her.

  She spun around. A fellow passenger. Tall. Good-looking. Nonthreatening. He’d sat in the seat in front of her and had offered to help her with her carry-on bag.

  She tried a brief impersonal smile that usually put off unwanted Romeos.

  He apparently didn’t get the message. “You looked as if you were looking for someone,” he continued in the same low, intimate voice. “If someone isn’t meeting you, perhaps we could share a cab if you’re going downtown. It’s late, and you shouldn’t be alone.” He put an arm around her.

  She realized he was a little drunk.

  Sam knew her smile was fading. “No, thank you,” she said as she released the handle of her wheeled carry-on and faced him, instincts developed in self-defense class kicking in. “I’ve made arrangements.”

  It was a lie, but he seemed to accept it. “I’ll walk with you down to baggage claim, then.”

  She turned toward the stranger with the interesting face, but his attention had wandered from her to another woman deplaning.

  What had attracted her attention, anyway? He was probably just a pilot or a businessman who spent too many hours settling for a few casual words with acquaintances rather than conversation with friends or family. She’d met men like him when she’d done a lot of business traveling for her former employers. They made their living in the
cockpits of airplanes or in first-class seats, and spent much of their time in hotels.

  Several of her coworkers used to speculate about people in airports, but she never had. But she’d never before been going to meet a mobster father and brother she’d never known existed.

  Any diversion was welcome. Even a drunken stranger.

  She started down the concourse, only too aware of the persistent man striding beside her. She didn’t want a scene, but she would stop in the next rest room and get rid of her unwanted companion.

  Staring straight ahead, she missed a foot in her way and stumbled. She caught herself, but in doing so, she stopped and glanced backward. The man who had so unexpectedly interested her was still there, one hand resting on the counter, the other holding a cell phone to his ear. And for a moment, he seemed to slump—just a little—as if he’d suffered a momentary lapse into weariness.

  His gray-green tweed sports coat was unbuttoned and had fallen open, his gray slacks and white shirt were rumpled and the knot of his tie had been pulled loose.

  What struck her, though, was the intensity of his vivid green eyes and the energy radiating from his body as he spoke into the phone. His foot tapped; his hand moved as he talked. His eyes, she thought, didn’t seem to miss anything, and now they seemed fastened on her.

  She turned back to see her companion charging ahead without her, evidently finally getting the message.

  She relaxed, realizing only then that her body had become stiff with tension. It wasn’t exactly fear she felt but something more like wariness. Caution.

  Was this how her mother had lived—never allowing herself an unguarded moment, always having to watch and suspect everything? Would she feel that way every time she encountered a stranger? She turned back to the concourse, her pace quickening as she passed closed stores and a bar with one lonely-looking patron.

  But as fast as she walked, others were keeping pace. Most people at this time of night were on automatic pilot, going their own way. She followed the signs leading to the baggage area and transportation. She would grab a cab there.

  As she reached the luggage area and saw all the people waiting in front of empty conveyors, she was grateful she had managed to get everything into her carry-on. She didn’t plan to stay long. She had a life to return to.