“You know, right before you arrived at the library, Barbara was telling me that a few weeks prior to her death, Mickie spent time at the library reading up on an old murder case. According to Barbara, it was a case Mickie worked early in her career with the county prosecutor’s office.”
“Oh?”
“I wonder why she would care about some old case when she was dying,” Taylor said, and Wyatt could almost see the wheels turning in that bright mind of hers.
“You know,” she continued, “everybody always assumed Dru was the primary target and Mickie was just collateral damage. That’s why the investigation turned so quickly to Hunter—the jealous, cukolded boyfriend. What if the police were wrong and it was the other way around? What if Mickie was the target all along?”
“How do you make that kind of jump just from Mickie looking up details of an old case?”
“I don’t know. It just seems so odd to me. At this point I think I’m just grasping at straws.”
“I guess you’ll keep grasping until you pull out the right one or until you run out of straws.”
“At least until Hunter is free.” She paused, her gaze on the stairs. “Oh, here comes Kate.”
Taylor slid across the booth seat to make room for her friend, and Wyatt stood as a petite blond woman joined them. He offered a welcoming smile that froze on his face when he caught sight of her features.
She had big blue eyes, a slender nose and a generous mouth that tilted up at the corners. Kate Spencer was a lovely woman, the kind of small, graceful creature that automatically made a man feel protective, want to tuck her close and keep her safe.
He felt as if someone had just karate-chopped him in the forehead, sending all his thoughts scattering, and for several seconds he couldn’t seem to grab hold of a single one.
“Sorry I’m late,” she was saying.
He thought maybe she added something else about not being able to find a parking space, but he could barely hear her over the buzzing in his ears.
Kate Spencer was a beautiful woman.
She was also the spitting image of his mother.
CHAPTER 11
“I’m delighted to finally meet you,” Kate said, holding out her hand.
Wyatt could barely breathe. Could it be? Was she Charlotte?
He thought he must have managed to mumble some response. When he took her hand, he wanted to feel some shock of recognition, some surge of blood toward blood. Instead, he only felt a small, competent hand in his. He yearned to hang on to it, but good manners and societal expectations forced him to release it.
To his relief, the white-aproned waiter arrived just then, giving Wyatt much-needed time to scramble for his composure.
It couldn’t be Charlotte. The odds against it were astronomical—that after all their years of searching—after all the dead ends and false hopes—he would just happen to bump into his abducted sister at lunch one day while he was going about the business of his life.
But, good lord! She looked exactly like pictures he’d seen of his mother on her wedding day, right down to the same tiny mole just under her left cheekbone.
Her eyes were just like Lynn’s, that same crystal blue, and even her smile was the same—warm, open, a little mischievous.
A few years ago, Gage had hired a specialist to create an age-progressed image of what Charlotte might look like today. Wyatt had memorized that picture. As he compared it in his mind to the woman in front of him, he thought maybe the artist’s rendering was a little off on the nose and Kate’s hair color was perhaps a darker blond, but Wyatt was willing to bet if he held Gage’s picture up right now to the woman sitting across from him, it would be dead-on.
“Wyatt?” Taylor’s voice jerked him back to the table and he realized the server was waiting to take his order. “Um, I’ll have whatever the special is today with chowder,” he mumbled.
The waiter nodded and hurried away, leaving an awkward silence at the table.
He caught himself staring at Kate, looking for any clue that this wild hope surging through him might be justified.
“So Taylor tells me you’re a doctor,” he said, compelled to find out more about her.
He didn’t miss the quick look she sent Taylor. “Yes. I’m a second-year intern at the University Hospital. Family medicine.”
He couldn’t seem to look away. He was aware of it, knew how odd it must appear to Taylor and Kate, but couldn’t help it.
He wanted so much to reach across the table and pull her into his arms, but he knew he couldn’t. Not yet. What if he was wrong? What if her uncanny resemblance to his mother was just some cosmic joke, an extraordinary coincidence.
He had to approach this all scientifically, try to dig into her past a little and find some verification before he did anything rash like declare to Kate that she could be his long-lost sister.
How would Gage handle this? He tried to think of his brother’s methodical approach. A DNA test would be the logical first step, but how the hell could he pull that off?
No, the first step would be information-gathering, he decided, to find out as much about her as possible.
“Are you from Utah?”
Some of the friendliness on her face dimmed a little. “No. I grew up in Florida.”
Florida! If she was Charlotte, how in heaven’s name did she get from Las Vegas to Florida. “What part?”
“Various places. I lived in the Pensacola area the longest, from around age twelve to when I left home for college.”
“Did you have a parent in the military? Is that why you moved around so much?”
She started to look a little uncomfortable at his probing. “Nope,” she said, her voice almost short.
She didn’t like talking about herself, he realized when she quickly changed the subject.
“How’s the book business? Has Taylor convinced you of Hunter’s innocence yet?”
He blinked at the frontal attack, then almost laughed, remembering how little Charley used to give as well as she got.
“I’m still withholding judgment,” he said, although he wasn’t sure if that was the truth. “I will say, there are more unanswered questions in this case than in any other I’ve written about.”
“I enjoy your books,” Kate said. “I read them even before Taylor found out you were writing about Hunter’s case.”
“It was Kate’s idea to show you the new evidence I’ve found since the trial,” Taylor said. “She read your books and knew you would be fair.”
“I’m trying,” he answered.
He had a million questions he wanted to ask this woman who looked so much like his mother, but the waiter’s arrival with their chowder forestalled him. No worries, he thought, excitement pulsing through him. His questions could wait a little longer—unlike the Charlotte he had spent twenty-three years seeking, he knew just where to find Kate Spencer.
* * *
Taylor supposed she should be used to this by now, to men completely going mental over Kate. In the five years they had been first friends, then roommates, she’d seen it happen dozens of times. Taylor had seen men forget their own names when Kate smiled at them.
She might have seen it all before, but she had never experienced this crushing misery. Just a few days ago she had been wrapped in his arms, his mouth warm and hard on hers and his eyes filled with what she could have sworn was tenderness.
How could he turn so quickly to Kate?
She pushed away her uneaten pasta, wondering if this interminable meal would ever end.
At least Wyatt’s interrogation of Kate about her life in Florida seemed to have stopped. Taylor was glad—she knew how much Kate disliked talking about her grim journey through the foster-care system or about the woman who had abandoned her to it.
She much preferred to focus on the kind foster parents who had taken her in from the age of twelve, who had loved her and mentored her and whose name she had finally taken when she reached adulthood and could make that choice for hersel
f.
Why did it bother her so much, watching Wyatt lose his head over Kate? It wasn’t as if she had any kind of claim on him. Despite his many kindnesses to her, he had made it abundantly clear the other night that while he might enjoy kissing her, he drew the line at anything further.
The answer hit her with a jolting shock, as if someone had just dumped their carafe of ice water on her head.
It bothered her so much—sliced at her heart like a dull razor—because she was falling in love with him.
How in the world could she have allowed such a disastrous thing to happen?
And now that she realized it, what was she going to do about it?
She was destined for heartbreak. Taylor recognized that unalterable fact with terrible clarity. There was no other outcome, no happy ending in it for her.
He cared about her—he wouldn’t have insisted on those daily check-ins if he didn’t—and he might have been temporarily attracted to her enough to kiss her a few times. But he wasn’t in love with her and she couldn’t compound her mistake by pretending otherwise.
“I’d better return to the hospital,” Kate said after she finished her entrée.
She stood to go, and Taylor realized her roommate was just as relieved to have this meal over.
“Working?” Taylor asked. “You weren’t even supposed to be back in the country until next week! How can you be on the schedule?”
“They were shorthanded so I offered to pull a shift. I can’t turn down the money right now.”
Guilt swamped her. Kate needed the money because, like Taylor, she had to replace everything she had lost in the fire. Until Taylor’s homeowners’ insurance came through, they would have to pay their own replacement costs for necessary items.
Kate was a struggling resident. Unlike Taylor, who had a trust fund to fall back on if necessary, Kate often found money tight. Taylor had tried to give her a temporary loan until the insurance payment came through, but with typical Kate stubbornness, her friend had refused.
The fire was Taylor’s fault. Whoever set it had been targeting her, had been trying to distract her from Hunter’s appeal. She tried to explain that to Kate, but she wouldn’t listen.
Taylor would figure out a way to make things right with her roommate, she vowed after Kate left—despite this ache in her heart that the man she loved was now apparently enamored with her.
* * *
“I know you’re on your honeymoon. I’m sorry,” Wyatt said into the phone fifteen minutes after he walked an uncharacteristically taciturn Taylor back to campus. “I would never have bugged you if it wasn’t important, I swear.”
“It damn well better be,” Gage growled.
He held his breath, not sure how to spring the news on his brother.
“I think I’ve found her,” he finally just blurted out, unable to hold back his growing excitement.
There was a long pause on the other end, then he heard muffled voices as Gage told Allie who he was talking to.
“I need you to use your Bureau connections to push through a DNA test,” he said when his brother came back on the line. “Do you think you can put a rush on it?”
“Wait a minute. Slow down. Why do you think it’s her?” Gage didn’t bother asking who Wyatt was talking about—but then, Wyatt wouldn’t have expected him to.
“Instinct. That’s all I’ve got. Not much, I know, but when you see her, though you’ll know what I mean. I’m telling you, Gage, she looks just like Mom at that age—same eyes, same hair color, everything.”
“Did you ask her about her past? For all you know she has six brothers and sisters who look just like her.”
“She’s an only child, raised in foster care in Florida. She has no siblings—or none she knows about yet.”
“And you just happened to run into her and say, ‘Hey, I think you might be my younger sister’?”
“No. I didn’t say a word. It was the hardest damn thing I’ve ever had to do to keep my mouth shut. I don’t know how it can be possible—where she’s been all this time—but it has to be her.”
“Odds are good that it’s not.”
He heard the warning in Gage’s voice and had to admit to a great feeling of comfort at it. Gage was worried he would get his hopes dashed. Not this time, he thought. This time was real, he was positive.
“Wait until you see her,” he responded.
“If you didn’t say anything to her about Charlotte, how did you plan to get a sample for the DNA test?”
Wyatt grinned and eyed the doggy bag he’d carried out of the restaurant, along with the contents he had surreptitiously pilfered. “I think I’ve got it taken care of. I took her drinking straw. There should be enough DNA on it to run a test. So how soon can you arrange it? I’ll give a blood test for comparison or whatever you need.”
“I’m on my honeymoon!”
Right. He winced, wondering just how mad Allie would be at him for interrupting. Because of the girls and Gage’s work commitments, they had only been able to squeeze out less than a week at a private, very exclusive escape along the Oregon Coast.
“Just give me the name of a lab you trust and I’ll take care of everything,” Wyatt said.
“No. I can make a few calls to expedite things. I’ll let you know where to go from here.”
* * *
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me your house burned down?”
Taylor winced at her brother’s angry voice ringing in her ear. He didn’t give her any kind of greeting once she accepted the collect charges for his call to her cell phone from prison—he just started in on her.
She hitched up her bag but didn’t ease her pace across campus. “How did you find out?”
“Does it matter?”
Yes, it mattered. She had purposely omitted that little tidbit of information from her conversation during her last visit with her brother. How would he have heard about it?
“Did Wyatt tell you?” she asked. She tried to stir up anger for him but she didn’t know if she could find room in her heart to be mad, not with all the hurt stuffed in there.
“McKinnon? No. I haven’t seen him for a while. Martin was here yesterday talking about the appeal. He mentioned your little fire in passing, assuming I knew all about it.”
Drat the man. Martin had time to run to the prison telling tales but he didn’t have time to talk to her about the appeal.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Hunter pressed.
“I didn’t want you to worry,” she admitted. “It was no big deal, really.”
“Martin seemed to think otherwise. He’s worried about you.”
“I can take care of myself. He should be worrying about you.”
She heard the heavy silence on the other end and braced herself for Hunter’s protective big-brother routine. When he spoke, his voice was tired but firm.
“Enough is enough, Tay. I want you to go back to med school now. Today. Leave the appeal to Martin.”
She sighed. Hadn’t they been through this about a couple hundred times before? “I can’t do that, Hunter. You know I can’t. I have to try.”
“It’s not worth your life! What if you had been inside the house at the time?”
“I wasn’t. I was with Wyatt. We were talking to a police sergeant about a story Dru was working on when she was killed, about deep police corruption in the department. We’ve made progress, Hunter. I can feel it.”
“None of that matters if you’re dead, Tay. Stop now.”
“Don’t you get it? If I stop I’ll give whatever bastard did this to Dru and Mickie—to you—just what he wants. He’ll get away with it. That’s why the threat, why my house was set on fire. So I’ll run scared and stop trying to find the truth.”
“What threat?”
Rats. She hadn’t meant to mention that little detail. “Nothing. Just a silly message. Drop it or else. That kind of thing.”
“Did you go to the police?”
“I don’t trust the police. Not any
more.”
“There are still good people on the force, Tay.”
“Maybe,” she answered. “But right now I’m having a tough time figuring out the bad from the good. Did you know the father of Dru’s baby was a married cop?”
He was quiet for a long time. “Yeah. I did.”
An odd note in his voice caught her attention. “Do you know who it was?”
He didn’t answer, which she considered a damning admission. “You know. I can tell you know. Who was he?”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“Maybe it does! Think about it, Hunt. A married cop would have one heck of a motive to kill Dru if she was threatening to go to his wife about their child. He would have the motive and his job would give him the means to pin it on you.”
“He didn’t kill her.”
“You don’t know that for sure! Tell me his name. Wyatt found out from Dru’s cousin that his first name is John. The only John I know personally on the force is John Randall and I know it couldn’t be him.”
This time the silence was longer and Taylor gripped the phone tightly. It couldn’t be. John Randall had been Hunter’s best friend. A family man, a churchgoing man. How could he have cheated both his wife and his partner by carrying on an affair with the woman Hunter thought he loved?
John Randall had been one of the few cops to stand by Hunter during the trial, she remembered. Had Hunter known then that he was the baby’s father?
“How long have you known it was John?” she asked.
Her brother sighed. “He came to see me during the trial and told me. Said he had to come clean, that he never meant to hurt me, that it just happened, yadda yadda. He has a solid alibi for the time of death, though. He was on a fishing trip in the Uintas with his son’s Scouts troop. He didn’t kill her. I’m sure of it.”
Taylor wasn’t nearly as convinced. If John Randall was cold-blooded enough to carry on an affair with Dru right under Hunter’s nose, he might just be capable of anything. She suddenly wanted to talk to Wyatt about this, to get his perspective.
“Was your house completely destroyed?” Hunter asked, distracting her from her thoughts.
She shifted gears. “Yes. Nothing left but some timbers.”
Lost in Cottonwood Canyon & How to Train a Cowboy--Lost in Cottonwood Canyon Page 14