Twisted Shadows

by Patricia Potter

  “He knew it was the Merrittas?”

  “He knew. She’d apparently told him they were going away, that he had to be very careful of the Merrittas. The kid told the police. He even identified one of the shooters. But there was no other proof. Then he disappeared into the welfare system. We didn’t know he was the McLean with the FBI until four years ago.”

  “Do his superiors know about it?”

  “Hell, no. We didn’t want that case reopened.”

  “How old was he?”

  Victor shrugged. “Eight. Nine.”

  “And you didn’t see fit to tell me?”

  “Your father didn’t… want you to know.”

  “It concerned me, Victor. McLean has nearly destroyed my business. If I had known why…”

  “Do you think your sister knows?” Victor said slyly. “I understand he… stayed at her home part of the day yesterday. I wonder whether she would have done that if she’d known her grandfather killed his mother.”

  Nick swore. “And my mother?” he asked again. “How did she escape the same fate?”

  “Your father made some kind of bargain with her.”

  “Like he got me, and she took my sister? There had to be more, or he would have taken both of us.”

  “She took something with her,” Victor said reluctantly.

  “Something that could have hurt Pop.”

  “Yes.”

  “And others?”

  Victor was silent.

  “Tell me about my mother and why you told me she died all those years ago.”

  “She couldn’t accept our life,” Victor said. “She endangered us from the moment she arrived. Papa was afraid she would go to the feds. You were better off thinking she was dead.”

  “Along with the authorities?”

  “Yes.”

  “From what I know of my grandfather, he wouldn’t let go that easily. She must have taken something very important.”

  Victor was silent.

  “What was it, Victor?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t give me that. You know everything about the family.”

  “Not that.”

  “Okay,” Nick said. “Tell me more about my mother.”

  “Didn’t she tell you?”

  “She? My sister? Yes. I heard her version. Now I want to hear yours.”

  Victor looked away. “She never fit in. She hated it here. And she was a sneak. She knew too much. Paul should have…” He stopped.

  “Paul should have what?”

  Victor gave him a weak smile. “He shouldn’t have let her go. That’s all.”

  “Did you like her?”

  “No. She had nothing in common with your father. She didn’t understand our life and never could. Paul never should have married her.”

  “But she tried, didn’t she?” Nick said. “She played the piano and was proficient at art, and she was gentle. Pop loved her. Otherwise he wouldn’t have defied his family by marrying her.”

  “Did she tell you that?” Victor said. “Well, she was wrong. Tracy complained from the day she arrived. She saw a meal ticket, that’s all, and your father wanted her in bed. Her daughter is no better. Butting into business that doesn’t concern her.”

  “Really?” Nick said. He was tiring of the game. He’d wanted to rattle his uncle into telling him what and how much he knew. He also wanted to know who, other than Victor, wanted Samantha out of the way.

  “I asked you before whether you had anything to do with the attempts on Samantha’s life. I want you to tell me again.”

  Victor was silent.

  “I could come after you, Victor. You know I can.”

  “Okay, I ordered the attack at your home. I wanted to scare her. I wanted her out of Boston temporarily. If anything happens to her here, you know we’ll be blamed. More investigations, more search warrants. We can’t afford that.”

  “Why did Pop bring Sam here in the first place?”

  “I don’t know,” Victor said. “Paul never mentioned her name until several weeks ago. He told me he’d found her. Found both of them. But I had no idea he’d sent for her.”

  “A shock to George’s ambitions,” Nick said dryly.

  “Your father would never leave a sizeable part of his empire to a woman.”

  “Then why was she summoned?”

  Victor shook his head. “He told us he wanted to talk to both her and Tracy. He might have been afraid Tracy would come after the estate. I don’t know.”

  “She never divorced my father?”

  “As far as I know.”

  Nick still struggled with the idea of having a live mother. God knew he had wished for one as a boy. No, he’d prayed for one. Nothing happened, though. He was just shipped off to another school. That was when he decided prayer was for normal people. Not for Merrittas.

  “I don’t want anything to happen to her,” Nick said.

  “Which one?”

  “My sister and her mother. I want you to swear on that.”

  “Tracy deserted you. She deserted your father. It broke his heart.”

  Nick looked at him skeptically. “What heart?”

  “He loved you. More than you’ll ever know.”

  “Then why didn’t he let me go?”

  “He believed you were the only one who could continue to take the family into respectable businesses.”

  Nick smiled slowly. “That’s what he said. But he never left the protection business, or the loan sharking, or the city contracts.”

  “We did the city a damn good job on those contracts.”

  “Yeah, at twice the price.”

  “We’re positioned to go legit.”

  “Pop said that for the last ten years. It didn’t happen.”

  “The other families wouldn’t allow it. You can outsmart them.”

  “If I’m not dead first,” Nick said wryly. “I’m happy as I am.”

  “You make a fraction of what you could.”

  “I don’t crave power like Pop did. I saw what happened when you did.”

  “They’re going to come after you, boy, whether or not you’re in.”

  Nick was silent for a moment. He knew it was true. Too many people thought he was heir apparent. Maybe part of him had always known it, too. How could you derail destiny?

  The family had been his destiny.

  “There’s no one else, Nick.”

  “George. And Anna.”

  “No one will obey a woman.”

  “Then George…”

  “He’s a fool.”

  “Pop sent him to law school. He intended—”

  “He intended to convince you that the family was your responsibility. He thought you would realize George would lead us into disaster. He wants to get in the drug business.”

  “He can’t do it without approval.”

  “Approval from whom? He would kill me in a second if he thought I stood in his way.”

  “And Samantha? What does she have to do with this?”

  “Your father thought he would be able to control her, use her to get you back in the family.”

  “Is George behind the attempts on her life?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maury said not.” Maury was the closest thing to an “enforcer” the family had these days. He’d been completely loyal to Paul Merritta. And now that George has expectations, he would have gone to Maury if he wanted anything done.

  “I don’t want anything to happen to Samantha,” Nick repeated.

  “There’s only one way to do that,” Victor said.

  The meaning was clear.

  “Damn you,” he said. “Damn my father.”

  “It’s the family, Nick,” Victor said. “It’s always been the family.”

  “The family can go to hell.” He turned to leave.

  “Nick, bring her back for the memorial service, for the reading of the will.”

  “I thought you wanted her gone.”

  “Thi
ngs have changed in the past two days.”

  “How?”

  Victor shook his head. “We have to talk to the mother,” he said. “We didn’t think she would pull a disappearing act.”

  “Maybe you frightened her daughter a little too much.”

  “The bitch knows she has the upper hand. We can’t touch her. But we do want to talk to her.”

  “You still haven’t told me why.”

  “Someone else was involved in what she knows. That someone wants to make sure she will never talk about it.”

  “Ah. Finally the truth. You frightened the daughter to get to the mother.”

  “No one wanted the girl hurt. She’s a Merritta.”

  “What about me? The car crash could have killed me. I won’t even talk about the gunshot.”

  Victor shrugged. “He would have missed. It was unfortunate you decided to play hero.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “That was a warning. But now someone wants to kill both of them. The mother and daughter. You’re the only one who can stop it.”

  “Damn it, Victor, stop trying to play me. You’re not good at it. You keep lying. You can’t even keep the lies straight.”

  “When Tracy left, she took something valuable with her, something that can ruin a very important figure in this state.”

  “Why all the interest now?”

  “That figure will soon be nationally known. He can’t afford loose ends.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t tell you. Not as long as you’re outside the family.”

  Nick stared at him for a long moment. “But I’m not outside the family.”

  twenty-five

  “He’s our connection,” Sam said. “Whoever is out there is the connection to my mother.”

  “If you’re right,” Nathan said, “he’s keeping out of sight.”

  “Why?”

  “Damned if I know.” He was already faming at the fact that he’d been a few moments too late yet again. Someone else did what he should have done. Protect Sam. Some FBI agent he was.

  His personal involvement with Sam should not have happened. It had obviously dulled his instincts. How could he have been so careless to let her go alone as she had this morning? Yet she wasn’t under arrest. He’d had no reason to detain her.

  But it was obvious that she didn’t trust him. She’d slept with him. She obviously felt something for him. But she didn’t trust him.

  That was something that needed to be remedied. Now.

  His fingers interlocked with hers. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

  She gave him a wry grin. “That was my doing. Not yours.”

  “I’m a cop. I should have anticipated—”

  “I wanted to see my friend alone. I thought I had taken precautions.”

  “You took some damn good ones, but don’t do it again. Okay?”

  “How could they have found me?”

  “Research. Who works for your gallery. Who your Mends are. Wouldn’t take a professional long. A question at the diner, a friendly observation. A global positioning unit on the car.”

  “But I changed cars.”

  “Did you take anything from one car to another?”

  “My purse.”

  He was silent.

  “There was no way to get something inside my purse. It was in the house, then I left it in the trunk when I met Terri.”

  “Someone might have been following Terri,” he said. She closed her eyes. How many more people were going to be hurt?

  “Where is my purse now?”

  “Dan called. He took the car back to the garage. He’s bringing your purse and gun here, once he’s sure no one’s tracking him.”

  “What do I do now?”

  “What do we do now,” he corrected.

  “Because it’s your job?”

  “I doubt I’ll have it long,” he said, surprised suddenly at how little he cared. He had made the FBI the focus of his life for years, had taken night courses while working in a law office as a paralegal to meet FBI qualifications. He’d gone into it for the wrong reasons, but nonetheless it had taken over his life. He was FBI to the core. Or had been.

  But now he’d found something more important.

  “Why?”

  “I’ve been ordered off the case. And away from you.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m too personally involved, I was told,” he said.

  “Are you?” she asked bluntly.

  “It’s too convenient,” he said. “Gray and I have been working on the Merrittas for four years. There have been other cases, but we were the most knowledgeable. It doesn’t make sense that all of a sudden, we’re taken off it.”

  “Are you saying someone in the FBI…?”

  “I don’t know, Samantha. I don’t like to think that. But I do know that they’ve had an informer inside the family for years. I’m not sure that it doesn’t go two ways.”

  “Sam,” she corrected.

  His lips cracked into a smile. He was finally being admitted into her world. “You don’t look like a Sam.”

  “I hope not,” she said with the smallest shadow of a smile. “Still, I like it.”

  The door opened and Dr. McIntyre entered. “Ah, you’re awake.”

  She nodded, moved and winced with pain.

  The doctor leaned over, checked the bloody bandage, then unwrapped it and inspected the wound. “It’s draining well.” He busied himself replacing the bandage,

  “Can she leave?” Nate said.

  “If she takes the antibiotics and you keep the wound clean.”

  Nate nodded.

  “Where are you going?”

  “South,” he said shortly.

  “Which probably means north,” McIntyre said.

  “You could get in trouble for this.”

  “I’ve always been in trouble,” the doctor said.

  “Thank you,” Sam said.

  “I liked your father,” McIntyre said.

  Nate saw tears gathered in the comers of her eyes. She hadn’t cried when he knew she was in great pain. She hadn’t wrung her hands over what had happened or complained, as she had every right to do, about his competence as an agent.

  But she had shed tears over a father who had died two years ago.

  Not Paul Merritta.

  His hand tightened on hers. She must feel that everything she knew, thought, believed was being ripped away from her.

  His mind raced. He had to get them the hell away from here and keep them moving until he and Gray could figure out who in the hell had put out a contract and why.

  It obviously had something to do with her mother and the “insurance” he and Gray had speculated about.

  But her mother was spooked now, too—spooked enough to disappear but not spooked enough to leave her daughter unprotected.

  So bad guys were following them. And a good guy was not far behind.

  McIntyre finished wrapping the bandage.

  Nate squeezed her hand. “We need to go.”

  She nodded. No questions this time. Not even any arguments.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have flattened your tire.”

  “Nope,” he agreed. “You shouldn’t have. I haven’t changed a tire in years. Besides,” he added, “it was embarrassing, particularly driving down the road on that little tire. Thank God the flat only needed a plug.”

  She gave him a faint grin. “I planned it that way. I could have ripped—”

  He gave her a wry look. “I didn’t know you had destructive tendencies.”

  Her eyes brightened. “I won’t do it again. I don’t think.”

  “Damn right, you won’t.”

  Her hair was mussed, her face devoid of makeup, but he didn’t know when he’d been so attracted to a woman. To what she was, and to who she was.

  It was all he could do to make himself behave. He wanted to lean down and kiss her, but now was not the time. The bad guys would know by now that she
’d not gone to the hospital and would be looking for someone like McIntyre.

  He glanced at the doctor. “Can you take a little vacation yourself?”

  McIntyre seemed surprised, then nodded. “I have a little fishing shack.”

  “Anyone know about it?”

  “A few people, but they don’t talk much to strangers.”

  “Have a gun?”

  “Yep. And I know how to use it. I was in Korea. That’s why I liked Dave Carroll so much. He understood.”

  Nate smiled. “How much do you know about him?”

  “Only that he was in some kind of special services. Seals, Rangers. He never said. But I knew he had special training.”

  “He never said where he served?”

  McIntyre looked at Sam, who nodded. “Vietnam for sure,” he said. “Not that he talked much about it. Just a few things slipped now and then.”

  Nate knew he was wasting too much time, but David Carroll was one of the keys to this puzzle. He came from nowhere. He settled in a small town as a struggling owner of a small art gallery. It might make sense if he had a past.

  Had Cairoll given up everything for Sam’s mother? If her mother was anything like Sam, Nate understood.

  Satisfied with McIntyre’s answers, he helped Sam sit up. She wore the shirt she’d worn riding. McIntyre had washed what was left of her slacks. They were stained and cut.

  She looked down at them.

  “We’ll buy some new clothes,” Nate said. “Let’s get going.”

  Dr. Mac gave her a cane. Sam hadn’t thought she would need one, but when she tried to stand, pain ripped through her. She accepted the cane gratefully.

  She thanked him and hoped with all her heart she hadn’t put him in danger as she had Terri.

  She took the purse that Dan had brought from her car, making sure the gun was inside. Then she left with Nathan.

  He had his rental car. While she watched, he examined every part of it. He crawled underneath, checked the trunk and the engine area.

  She only hoped that their unexpected savior had thrown whoever the killer was off stride. There was no question, Nate said, that the stalker had been injured. Was he the only one? Would someone else come after them?

  “Gray is trying to find out who’s behind the contract,” Nate said.

  A contract. Such a cold, objective word to describe a violent act. A legal word used to commission an illegal act. Who? Why?