And The Bride Vanishes

by Jacqueline Diamond

  Perhaps someone with a grudge against Harvey had mistaken her for Janet. But given their markedly different coloring, it seemed unlikely.

  Propping herself on her elbows, Linda saw that what she had thought was a room was actually a trailer. There was a mobile-home park alongside Inland Lake, but she doubted a kidnapper would have risked taking her there without tying and gagging her. Besides, this was a travel trailer, small enough to park in any secluded area. Most likely he had taken her into the desert around Inland. Its deceptively flat landscape hid countless canyons, many occupied by drifters and recluses.

  The canyons drew attention only when a brushfire or flash flood drove out their secretive denizens. Someone hiding here might escape discovery for weeks or even months.

  The faint sound of an indrawn breath across the room sent Linda’s heartbeat slamming into high gear. Her hands turned ice-cold as she fought against a wave of fear.

  The effects of the anesthetic were wearing off, but she knew she couldn’t put up much of a fight. What did this monster want, anyway?

  A figure shifted into view, blocking the glare from the window. Unless she could find some means of escape, she was at the kidnapper’s mercy. She and her baby both.

  The man moved toward her, silhouetted so that he appeared to be still wearing dark clothing and a ski mask. From where she lay, he looked massive and threatening.

  “Got a headache?” He spoke in a gruff baritone. “It’ll pass.”

  Linda tried to speak, but her throat was too dry. Noticing her efforts, the man grabbed a glass from a counter and ran water into it from a tap. The middle of the trailer doubled as the kitchen, she realized.

  When he handed her the glass, she wondered how clean it was and how fresh the water might be. Then, becoming aware of a raging thirst, she drained it.

  The effort sapped her energy and she sank back. She might as well be chained down, for all the ability she had to fight or flee. Tears pricked Linda’s eyes, and she bit her lip to stop them.

  “Don’t take this too hard.” Removing the glass, the man sat on the edge of the bed. Its stiff springs sagged beneath his weight. “I did you a favor.”

  “A favor?” she said weakly.

  He leaned forward, and she realized he wasn’t wearing the mask. She could make out the shape of his face now, the high cheekbones, the taut jawline. It was familiar. Too familiar. It couldn’t be.

  “Sorry to prevent you from marrying the man you really love,” said Wick Farley, “but I’m afraid you still have a husband.”

  Chapter Two

  He was close enough for Linda to see him clearly. The brown eyes were guarded, but the main thing she noticed was a scar puckering his left cheek.

  Wick. The man she’d loved and trusted—and lost. Linda’s chest ached. She was so glad to see him, and scared to death. She’d thought she’d known him intimately, but he wore a cold expression like a stranger. What on earth was going on?

  He’d been hurt, but not fatally, which explained why his body had never been recovered from the lake. But since he obviously was in full possession of his faculties, why hadn’t he simply walked back into her life?

  “I thought—” Her mouth went dry again.

  “Oh, yes. I know what you thought.” There was a bitter edge to his voice that she’d never heard before. “Or shall we say, hoped?”

  He believed that she’d wanted him dead? Linda supposed he’d drawn that conclusion because of her plans to remarry so quickly. But she and Avery had only been engaged for a month, which left the rest of his absence unexplained.

  Given her helpless situation and the probability that Wick was confused or even dangerous, she decided not to confront him directly. Instead, she said, “You must have been badly hurt. Who took care of you?”

  “A friend,” he said. “Besides, I’m used to taking care of myself.”

  “Whose trailer is this?”

  “Mine, for now.” He turned away as if the sight of her was painful.

  “Where are we?”

  “I doubt this canyon even has a name,” he said. “If it does, I have no idea what it is.”

  “You didn’t have to drug mc,” Linda said. “Wick, for heaven’s sake, this is so melodramatic. You’ve frightened Janet, and Avery must be beside himself.”

  She could see from the way he flinched that she’d said the wrong thing. “Sorry about Avery,” he snarled. “I always thought he was the man who had everything, but I guess there was one thing he lacked. Too bad it happened to be my wife.”

  She couldn’t hold back her anger. “Well, whose fault is that? I thought you were dead! So did Avery. Why didn’t you call me? If I’d known…”

  The hardest eyes she’d ever seen shifted toward her. In them, Linda saw a ruthless stranger, a man capable of anything. “Do you take me for a fool?”

  “What?”

  His mouth tightened. He was hurting, she realized, but not from any physical pain.

  A longing twisted through her, to take this man in her arms and soothe away his tension. Linda knew how his expression would mellow when she touched his cheek, and how his body would curve protectively over hers.

  How could she still want him when he’d abandoned her? And stolen from the Lyme Company, and cheated his best friend’s family, and done heaven knew what else?

  “Is it possible you don’t know?” he said. “Linda, my car was forced off that bridge.”

  She stared at him, trying to assess the implications. By the time the car was fished out of the lake, it had suffered such severe damage that the police hadn’t been able to determine much about the crash. So he might be telling the truth, or he might not.

  “Someone tried to kill you? That’s why you’re hiding?” Then, shocked, she said, “You thought I was part of it?”

  “Not at first.” He squared his shoulders, a big man in a cramped space. “Initially, I laid low because I believed you might be in danger if you knew I was alive. Then when I read in the newspaper about your engagement, it raised other possibilities. Perhaps I should say, probabilities.”

  Linda didn’t want to dwell on his suspicions. Until she knew more, she thought it sensible not to provoke him. “How did you find me?”

  “I called the church and asked where I should send the wedding present.”

  “Some wedding present,” she said.

  An unwilling smile crooked his mouth. “Thank goodness Janet went into the house, or I’d have had to subdue you both.”

  “Someone telephoned.” And hung up, she remembered. “That was you, wasn’t it?” Wick would know Janet’s signal for identifying personal calls, since he’d seen Linda use it. “With a cellular phone?”

  He gave a slight nod. “Too bad I couldn’t keep her on the line longer. If you’d just disappeared, the police might not search so hard. As it is, they’ll be looking everywhere.”

  “Everywhere but here,” she hazarded a guess.

  “So I hope.”

  In the pause that followed, she grasped the significance of Wick’s having a cellular phone. Surely he couldn’t be using his old one after four months of pretending to be dead. She doubted any of the hermits who occupied these canyons could have loaned him a phone, which meant that either someone on the outside was helping or he had an independent source of funds.

  He must be involved in a theft or a scam, just as everyone said. After all, coded computer information had been downloaded and removed from the Lyme Company. He could have sold it, or he might have taken company funds. Although they hadn’t yet uncovered any signs that money had been taken, the firm was auditing its books as a precaution.

  Linda didn’t want to ask him and risk arousing his wrath. Besides, there was something more important that she needed to know. “What do you intend to do with me?”

  For the first time since his reappearance, uncertainty softened Wick’s face. “The main point was to keep you from making a bigamist of yourself. Thoughtful of me, wasn’t it?”

  �
��And to keep me from having a wedding night with Avery?” The instant she saw the fury flash across his face, she regretted her words, but it was too late to call them back.

  “I suspect I’m a bit late for that, aren’t I?” he said, sneering.

  He thought she was having an affair with Avery! But then, how could he understand, when he didn’t know about the baby? Steeling herself, Linda sought a way to break the news gently. “Things aren’t the way you think.”

  “They certainly weren’t the way I thought, were they?” He stood, then ducked irritably as the top of his head grazed the ceiling. “What am I going to do with you? I don’t know, Linda. What should a man do who’s been betrayed by the woman he loved?”

  “You could try listening to reason!” she snapped.

  “Then reason with me!” Folding his arms, he sat on the edge of a built-in table across the center aisle. “Go on, convince me that you’re a grieving widow who just happens to be walking down the aisle with my best friend four months after my untimely death!”

  Stiffly, Linda swung into a sitting position. “I’m not doing it because I’m in love with Avery. I’m doing it because I’m pregnant.”

  For several heartbeats, he didn’t react. Then he said tightly, “Is it mine?”

  If he hadn’t already removed the glass, Linda might have thrown it at him. Her next idea was to slap his face, but she didn’t think she could move quickly enough.

  Besides, she didn’t believe that hitting people solved anything. In this case, it would undoubtedly make matters worse.

  Between gritted teeth, she said, “I’m five months along, Wick.”

  Twilight cast deep shadows through the trailer, making it hard to judge his reaction. She could hear him breathing sharply as he weighed her words.

  “You were pregnant when I—at the time of the crash?” he said.

  “Yes, but I didn’t know it.”

  He took a few more minutes to mull over the news. Linda wished she could read his mind. Surely he must realize what a dilemma she’d faced, left alone and estranged from her parents.

  Perhaps he did, but after a moment he said, “It doesn’t add up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Lots of women find themselves pregnant and stranded. That doesn’t mean they walk down the aisle with the first guy who comes along.”

  He knew as well as she did that Avery was an old friend, not just the first guy who’d come along. He must also have observed how Avery had sometimes looked at Linda. Even if she’d wanted to, she couldn’t pretend that the marriage was purely an act of kindness on the groom’s part.

  Wondering how on earth to make him understand, Linda said, “People told me you’d stolen from the Lyme Company. That you’d been using me all along, that you weren’t the man I thought you were.”

  “And you believed them?” He sat there blending into the darkness, his features impassive.

  “I didn’t want to,” she said. “I refused to live with my parents because I knew they’d bring up our child to believe the worst about you. Avery was the only one who defended you. He kept saying it couldn’t be true, that there had to be some other explanation.”

  “So he volunteered to take my place, purely out of altruism?” Disbelief darkened Wick’s voice.

  “He’s been in love with me for years,” Linda admitted. “If I were capable of loving him, it would have happened long before I met you. But I knew he’d be a good father, and that he’d shield our child from the gibes and insults about you. Wick, you know how cruel people can be.”

  “I know.” The simple statement vibrated with emotion. “You’ve taught me that.”

  “This is hopeless.” She spread her hands in dismay. “You’re determined to think the worst of me.”

  “And you weren’t determined to do the same about me?” He shook his head. “I take that back. If I can believe you, and I’d like to, you were at least trying to protect our baby.”

  “So here we are,” Linda said. “What happens now?”

  Instead of replying, he lifted a hurricane lamp from the table, fished a matchbook from his pocket and lit it. Warm light filled the trailer.

  “Let’s eat dinner,” he said. “After all, you’re dining for two.”

  AS HE FRIED hash at the stove, Wick tried not to keep glancing at Linda.

  He couldn’t believe she was sitting right here, her blue eyes bright in the lamplight, dark hair wisping across her heart-shaped face. He’d dreamed about her for months, wishing they could go back to the way they’d been, and tormenting himself with the possibility that nothing had ever been as it seemed.

  Was she part of a conspiracy? How could she possibly be as innocent as she seemed?

  His doubts had hardened into certainties when he’d seen the newspaper clipping about her engagement. A secret affair between his wife and Avery Lyme would explain a lot.

  But now he wasn’t so sure. As Linda said, she’d had plenty of opportunities to get involved with the man before Wick came on the scene.

  He hadn’t been thinking clearly when he decided to kidnap her. The prospect of her marriage to Avery had been intolerable. He hadn’t considered what he would do with her once they reached the hideout.

  If she was telling the truth about her situation, she would stay here rather than run to the authorities. On the other hand, if she was lying, he might seal his own fate by trusting her. But he couldn’t bring himself to tie her, especially not in her condition.

  He tried not to think about the implications of that condition, but he couldn’t help it. She was going to have a baby. They were going to have a baby.

  Raised by disinterested grandparents after his parents died in a hotel fire, Wick had sworn to be deeply involved with his own children. He still bore the scars of a lonely adolescence, of never feeling that he fitted anywhere.

  Marriage to Linda had meant more than she could imagine. It had been the first time he’d felt part of a warm and loving family, and he’d been determined to pass that feeling on to their kids.

  Then everything had vanished like smoke in the wind. He couldn’t bear to think about this child’s future, or what role he would play in it. There were more immediate concerns to be dealt with.

  Even if Linda cooperated, she couldn’t stay here more than a few weeks. She would need medical attention and, besides, once the cool spell wore off, the trailer would become unbearable for a pregnant woman.

  There wasn’t enough electricity for air-conditioning, just a battery, replenished whenever the canyon’s misfit residents rigged a line and pirated power from nearby overhead lines. Other than that, Wick made do with bottled gas and a tank of stored water.

  Dividing the hash onto two plates and adding a dollop of canned green beans from another pot, he served Linda at the table. She sat stiffly in her gray dress, locks of hair sneaking loose from the bun and trailing across her temples.

  After regarding the food dubiously, Linda set to eating. At least she had an appetite. He wondered if she suffered from morning sickness, or needed to take medication, or had some other mysterious requirements known only to females and obstetricians.

  Stretching his legs to one side, Wick swallowed his meal without tasting it. Nothing had had much flavor these past four months, only an aftertaste of bitterness.

  Fury and resentment had enabled him to survive his injuries and focus on revenge. It had galled Wick that for the first time in his life he had dared to trust people, Linda and Avery chief among them, only to find himself nearly destroyed.

  He was no longer quite so certain of her guilt. But someone had tried to kill him, and, in some way that he didn’t yet understand, Linda was right in the middle of whatever was going on.

  THE FOOD TASTED surprisingly good. After adhering to a diet of salads, lean meats, whole-wheat breads and fatfree dairy products since learning she was pregnant, Linda enjoyed the crispy hash and oversalted green beans.

  It didn’t compare to the feast that the Cap
eks had arranged at the Shore Club, of course. Felice had ordered steak and shrimp, fresh fruit, new potatoes and steamed vegetables. Linda wondered who was eating all that food, and realized she didn’t care.

  Watching the play of emotions on Wick’s face as he ate, she wished she could read his mind. He seemed so much like the man she’d fallen in love with that she knew she could easily believe any story he might tell.

  But would it be the truth? How much of her willingness to trust him was the result of honest observation, and how much came from the urge to nestle against him and inhale his masculine scent?

  She could picture how his gaze would soften as he took her in his arms. In bed, he knew just when to dominate her and when to yield, as if he sensed her responses even before she did. Then his fierce male instincts would take over, driving them both into wild realms of passion that she’d never experienced with anyone else, and never expected to find again.

  She was still vulnerable to him, perhaps even more so because of the rush of emotions that accompanied pregnancy. But, given Wick Farley’s ability to manipulate her, she could no longer rely on her instincts.

  Before she decided how to proceed, Linda needed to know more. He probably had some story prepared, and she knew her safety might depend on persuading him that she believed it. At the same time, she must try to find the holes in it.

  She must keep in mind that there had been no problems in the quiet town of Inland or the Lyme family’s long-established real-estate investment firm until Wick turned up. Whatever he told her, she must weigh it on the scale of reality.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me the rest?” she asked. “Who would want to kill you? What were you doing that night? The police say you met someone at a bar.”

  “I know. I’ve been following the stories on the radio.” He washed down his meal with a glass of water, the only beverage the trailer appeared to contain. “Not that the local newscast provides much in the way of detail.”

  He was deliberately avoiding answering her questions. “You have to admit, the evidence hasn’t given me much reason to trust you.”