by Joy Fielding
“Wow,” the employee, whose name tag identified him as Tony, exclaimed when she presented him with her shattered cell phone. “What happened here?”
“I dropped it.”
“Down a well?”
Robin quickly selected a new phone, bursting into a flood of grateful tears when Tony told her that she’d be able to keep her old number.
“Wow,” he said, “you must really like that number.”
Robin was wiping away her tears when she caught sight of a man’s shadow at the store window. Was it the same man who’d been peering at her through the window at Starbucks?
“Who’s that?” she asked Tony.
Tony looked past her toward the street. “Who’s who?”
“That man,” Robin began, then stopped when she realized no one was there. So, not only are you paranoid, but you’re seeing things as well.
No more Ativan for you, dear, she decided as she left the shop. You’re strong. You’re in control. You don’t need it. With exaggerated resolve, she reached into her purse and impulsively chucked the tiny plastic bottle containing the remaining pills into a trash can at the corner, along with her empty coffee cup. Immediately she regretted her decision. As she was trying to figure out how she could retrieve the bottle, her gaze fell on the bright yellow newspaper box nearby.
MILLIONAIRE DEVELOPER GREG DAVIS FIGHTS FOR HIS LIFE, screamed the headline of the Red Bluff Daily News. Below it was the same photograph of her father, Tara, and Cassidy that had hung on the wall in her father’s office, hiding the safe. Tara Davis succumbs to her wounds; daughter Cassidy remains in critical condition, read the caption accompanying the picture.
Berating herself for jettisoning the pills, Robin hurried down the street to where she’d parked Melanie’s car, anxiety nipping at her heels like an overeager puppy.
“Excuse me, Miss Davis,” a voice called as Robin was unlocking the car door.
Instinctively, Robin turned her head. A man with a camera stood less than ten feet away, furiously snapping one photo after another of her.
The same man who’d been watching her earlier? she wondered as he continued clicking away. “Get away from me!” she yelled. Head down, she quickly climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled away from the curb, eyes barely clearing the top of the steering wheel as she sped down the street. She didn’t stop until she reached the hospital parking lot.
She noted the two police cruisers still occupying their positions and wondered if they’d ever left. She left the engine running as she retrieved her new phone from her purse, quickly punching in the number of Blake’s office. “Okay,” she said to herself, “get a grip.” It was important that she sound in control.
Or, at the very least, sane.
The call was picked up in the middle of the second ring. “Blake Upton’s office. Kelly speaking.”
Robin recognized the plummy tones of Blake’s assistant even before the young woman identified herself. She pictured the California beauty with her sun-kissed hair and bottomless blue eyes, imagined her balancing a legal brief in her hands while balancing her round little bottom on Blake’s lap. “Is Blake there?”
“I’m sorry, no. He’s tied up in meetings all day. Is this Robin?”
Robin was so surprised to hear her name on the younger woman’s lips that for a second she was speechless.
“Robin?” Kelly asked again.
“Yes, this is Robin.”
“Blake told me what happened. I just wanted to say how sorry I am.”
“Thank you.”
“Is anything new? Have they caught who did it?”
“Nothing’s new,” Robin said, answering both questions. “Would you please tell Blake that I called?”
“Of course. And Robin…”
“Yes?”
“Our prayers are with you.”
Our prayers? “Thank you.” Robin disconnected the call and tossed her phone back into her purse. “Our prayers?”
There was a knock on her side window.
Robin’s head snapped toward the sound.
A man’s face appeared against the glass, his sly smile filling the frame.
She knew him immediately, even though it had been more than a decade since their last meeting. He was even more attractive than she remembered. “You’ve been following me,” she said, lowering the window and staring into his sea-green eyes with their impossibly long, girlish lashes. She shut off the ignition and stepped out of the car into the sauna-like heat.
“That I have,” Tara’s ex-husband, Dylan, acknowledged, his bad-boy grin widening. “Do I get a hug?” He stretched his arms toward her, well-defined muscles evident beneath his navy T-shirt.
Guess you had lots of time to exercise in prison, Robin thought, recoiling from his proffered embrace. “Do you want to tell me why you’ve been following me?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time?” He lowered his arms, clearly enjoying her discomfort.
“Goodbye, Dylan.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “Truth is, I didn’t set out to follow you. But when I spotted you in Starbucks, I figured I might as well see what you were up to.”
“Okay, well, now you’ve seen me.”
“Now I’ve seen you.”
“Now you can go.”
“And not see my daughter?”
Robin froze. “Are you kidding me?”
“Not really the best time for joking around.”
“You haven’t seen Cassidy in…how many years?”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been kind of busy.”
“You’ve been in jail,” Robin corrected.
“Picky, picky.” His grin spread, causing deep dimples to form on either side of his mouth. “Anyway, what difference does it make where I’ve been? The important thing is that Dylan Campbell is here now.”
Robin looked toward her feet, trying not to picture Tara’s beautiful face battered by Dylan’s fists. “What were you in for this time?”
“This time,” he repeated. “Ouch. Oh, well. Guess I deserved that. Assault. No big deal. Served two years.”
“And you’ve been out how long?”
“Three months. Perfect timing, wouldn’t you say?”
“Perfect timing for what?”
“My little girl needs me.”
“You’re the last thing she needs.”
“She just lost her mother.”
“You wouldn’t have had anything to do with that, would you?” Robin surprised them both by asking. She heard the quiver in her voice and looked toward the hospital entrance. Now would be a really good time for Sheriff Prescott to make an appearance.
“Me? Of course not. How could you think such a horrible thing?”
Robin shook her head. “I’m sure the sheriff will be eager to talk to you about your whereabouts that night.”
“More than happy to speak to the man.” Dylan laughed. “Do you really think I’d be foolish enough to show my handsome face around here if I’d had anything at all to do with what happened?”
“I would never underestimate how foolish you might be.”
He smiled. “Okay, maybe I deserved that, too. But why the hell would I shoot my own kid? I mean, shooting Tara and your dad, that’s one thing. But my own flesh and blood? I’d have to be some kind of monster.”
“You are some kind of monster.”
“Not anymore. I’ve changed, Robin. I’m ready to be a real father to that little girl.”
“How noble. The fact that Cassidy could come into a lot of money if my father dies has absolutely nothing to do with this sudden urge to be a parent?”
“Absolutely nothing,” he repeated. “The thought never entered my mind.”
“Thoughts rarely do.”
The smile toying with the corners of his lips froze. “Shall we go inside?”
“I’m going inside,” Robin said. “You can go to hell.” With that, she pushed him aside and marched toward the hospital doors.
“See you around,�
�� he called after her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Robin alerted the deputy outside Cassidy’s room to Dylan’s presence and asked him not to allow the man anywhere near his daughter. Then she spoke to Cassidy’s doctor, who informed her that the child had shown a marked improvement during the night and that her condition had been downgraded from critical to serious, although she was by no means out of the woods.
“That’s such good news, sweetheart,” she said to the pale young girl sitting up in bed. “How are you feeling?”
“A little better.” Cassidy dropped an issue of Star magazine to the bed, watching helplessly as it slid off the stiff white sheets to the floor. “Oh,” she said, looking as if she was about to burst into tears.
Robin quickly scooped up the magazine. “My goodness,” she said, perusing its headlines. “It seems that Jennifer Aniston is pregnant with triplets. Again. That must make at least fifty children she’s had in the last five years.”
Cassidy smiled, the effort causing her to wince in pain. “She’s a real little firecracker, all right. That’s what Daddy would say.”
Yes, he would, Robin thought, smoothing some hair away from the girl’s delicate face, then gently kissing her forehead. “Did the nurses bring you these?” She noted that in addition to Star, there were also current issues of People, Us, and Vogue on the nightstand beside her bed.
“No. Kenny did.”
“Kenny Stapleton?”
Cassidy nodded. “It’s too hard to read them. I’m just looking at the pictures.”
“When was Kenny here?”
“This morning. I said it was okay. Was that all right? Did I do something wrong?”
“No, sweetheart. Not if you felt safe with him.”
“With Kenny? Why wouldn’t I?”
Robin hesitated.
“He’s not the man who shot me,” Cassidy said. The force with which she said it elicited another grimace of pain.
“How can you be sure?” Robin asked.
“Because he doesn’t look anything like the men who were in the house that night.”
“You didn’t see their faces,” Robin reminded her.
“I didn’t have to see their faces to know it wasn’t Kenny,” Cassidy replied. “Kenny’s tall and skinny. The men who shot us were way bigger, way more muscular. Like they worked out a lot.”
Like Dylan Campbell, Robin thought, pulling up a chair and sitting down. Another unwelcome thought intruded. Like Landon. She quickly brushed that thought aside. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Cassidy attempted another smile, her lips quivering with the effort. “I like that you worry about me. Mommy was right about you.”
Robin felt a pang of guilt pierce her heart. She’d cut Tara off without so much as a word of goodbye, and while Tara had tried reestablishing contact from time to time—seeking her out on Facebook and regularly sending her cards on her birthday—Robin had ignored or rebuffed every attempt. “You know that your mother and I had a falling-out.”
“I know,” Cassidy acknowledged. “She said you were mad at her for marrying Daddy.”
“I was.”
“Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Because of Alec?”
“Partly that.”
“How come Melanie wasn’t angry?” Cassidy asked.
Beats the shit out of me, Robin thought. Melanie was always angry about something.
“She was always nice to us.”
“I’m glad.”
“She said that the important thing was for Daddy to be happy, and if Mommy made him happy, then she was happy, too,” she recited, as if from memory.
Robin paused, carefully considering her next remark. “So why do you think your mommy didn’t trust her?”
Cassidy shrugged.
They sat in silence for several seconds.
“Tell me about my mother,” Cassidy urged.
“What do you want to know?”
“Like, what she was like when she was my age. If she had any boyfriends. If she was, you know, popular.”
“Your mother had more friends than anyone I’ve ever met. Girls and boys. The boys wanted to be around her; the girls wanted to be her.”
“So she was, like, really popular.”
“She was, like, really popular,” Robin agreed.
“I’ve never been popular,” Cassidy said softly.
“No? Me neither.”
“Really? You’re not just saying that?”
“It’s the truth. I was always shy and a little on the quiet side.”
“It’s kind of funny,” Cassidy said.
“What is?”
“That Mommy had so many friends in school.”
“How so?”
“ ’Cause she really didn’t have any now.”
“She didn’t?”
“Maybe Melanie, but they weren’t exactly…Oh, there was Tom.”
“Tom?”
“This guy she went to school with.”
Robin searched her memory for someone in any of their classes named Tom. She couldn’t think of anyone. “Tom who?”
“I don’t remember. He lives in San Francisco now. We visited him a few times when we went to see the decorator.”
A frisson of anxiety wriggled through Robin’s chest. Alec lives in San Francisco, she thought, then banished the unwelcome thought from her mind.
“Can I ask you something?” Robin said.
“Sure.”
“Was your mother happy?”
“You mean with Daddy?”
“Yes.”
“They were so happy,” Cassidy said. “They loved each other so much.”
So what about the rumors of infidelity? What about this mysterious “friend,” Tom? Robin wanted to ask, knowing she couldn’t. “And my…our father?” she asked instead. “Was he a good father to you?”
“The best. I mean, Melanie always complained that he was spoiling me rotten, but then Daddy would tell her that you can’t spoil a child with too much love.”
Wow. “I’m sure that went over big,” Robin said without thinking.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.” Robin found herself wishing that she’d known the “Daddy” Greg Davis had been to Cassidy. Would that he’d been so loving and magnanimous toward his own children. “Do you ever wonder about your biological father?” she asked.
Cassidy studied Robin for several long seconds, as if trying to peek inside her brain. “He’s here, isn’t he?” she stunned Robin by asking. “Have you talked to him?”
“Yes, he’s here. How did you know?”
“Because Mommy always said he’d turn up one day. She said that he was like a rash you couldn’t get rid of.” Cassidy’s already pale complexion turned ashen. She looked as if she was about to faint. “Do you think he’s the one who shot us?”
“I don’t know. He says no.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I’m sure the sheriff will have his alibi thoroughly checked out.”
“I don’t want to see him.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I don’t want to see him,” Cassidy repeated. “Ever. I already have a father. A real father. And he’s going to be okay. He’s going to be okay, right? He’s not going to die.”
Robin tried to form the words, but they wouldn’t come. “I wish I knew,” she whispered.
“What will happen to me if he dies?”
“Let’s not worry about that now.”
“Will they make me go live with him?” Cassidy asked, panic returning to her voice.
“With Dylan Campbell? No! Of course not.” Would they?
“Because I’d run away if they did. I’d kill myself.”
“Sweetheart, no. Don’t talk that way.”
“And I don’t want to live with Melanie. I know she doesn’t really want me. And Landon, well, he’s nice and all, but he can be kind of scary sometimes. The way he rocks all the t
ime and everything. I know it’s not his fault, that he can’t help it…” Cassidy reached over and grabbed Robin’s hand. “I want to live with you,” she said, her voice pleading. “If anything happens to Daddy, please, can I live with you?” Her eyes suddenly rolled back in her head and she collapsed against her pillows, unconscious.
Robin jumped out of her seat and ran to the door. “Get a nurse,” she shouted at the officer stationed in the hall.
* * *
—
“Tell me again exactly what he said to you,” Sheriff Prescott instructed Robin. They were in the waiting area down the hall from Cassidy’s room, sitting in the same two chairs they’d occupied the first time they’d met. Cassidy’s vital signs had returned to normal, although the doctors cautioned that everything could change in an instant.
For the third time, Robin relayed her conversation with Dylan to the sheriff, watching as he checked her story against the notes he’d already made. “You have any idea where he’s staying?” he asked.
“None.”
“Well, I guess it shouldn’t be too difficult to find him.” The sheriff ran his palm across the top of his smooth head. “From everything he said to you, it doesn’t look as if he’s going anywhere anytime soon.”
“Are you going to check his alibi?”
“Soon as I know what it is,” the sheriff said with a smile.
“Do you think he did it?”
“I won’t know what to think till I talk to the man. Is there anything else you want to tell me?”
Robin debated informing the sheriff what had happened at the dinner table the previous night—Landon’s violent reaction to the ringing of her cell phone, his fleeing the house and not returning until after midnight.
“He can be kind of scary,” she heard Cassidy say.
“What is it?” Prescott asked.
Robin shook her head. The sheriff was already suspicious of Landon. Anything she said would only reinforce that suspicion, make him less likely to examine other possibilities. She couldn’t betray her nephew. Not without tangible evidence that he’d done something wrong. “Nothing.”
“You’re sure? You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”
“Who’s Donny Warren?” Robin asked.
“Donny Warren,” the sheriff repeated. “Why do you ask?”