The anger, she realized, was coming from somewhere deep within him. Here was the nine-year-old boy who'd lost his mother and been left with a distant and unemotional father. For years he'd been struggling to conquer the rage, but it was beginning to get the better of him. She scooted closer to him so she could place her hands on his chest. His heart was pounding a mad rhythm. "I wasted too much time being angry and afraid," she said softly. "I thought revenge would make me happy, and then I realized that every day I spent waiting for it was another day I had thrown away. Dad wouldn't have wanted me to live like that."
"You had a right to know," he insisted.
"Maybe." He frowned, and Abby smoothed the creases from his forehead with her fingertip. "Being angry won't bring them back, Ethan." His eyes glittered at her. "She died," she said carefully, waiting for him to absorb her meaning. "Your mother died and left you alone. It wasn't fair."
His hands closed over hers in a bruising grip. "Abby—"
Abby held up a finger to his lips. "It's all right that it made you angry. You can still be angry." Tears stung her eyes when she thought of all he'd lost, how he'd never felt the freedom to shake his fist at God, how no one had embraced him and let him weep. "But you have to feel it," she said. "You have to be willing to feel it." Silence. She pressed on. "If you don't feel it, Ethan, you can never be alive again."
The firelight sharpened the lines of his face. His sterling silver gaze had turned almost black. Abby stroked his cheek with gentle fingers. "I'll go there with you," she promised him. "You can't scare me."
An inarticulate groan seemed to rip out of him as he pulled her to him in a fierce embrace. "God, Abby—"
"I'm so sorry," she whispered, stroking his hair. Tears were streaming from her eyes now. "I'm so sorry."
His body shuddered against her. She laid her cheek on the top of his head and tried to absorb some of his pain. "Ethan, please," she whispered. "Please let me share this with you."
He turned his face into the curve of her neck. She sensed the struggle in him and dug her heels in for the onslaught. "Please don't shut me out," she told him. "Fight for it, and I'll help you get there."
"You don't know—" he began.
She cupped his face in her hands and forced him to look at her. The pain in his eyes was fathomless. "Yes, I do," she insisted. "Let me love you. Please, just let me love you."
He groaned and covered her mouth in a kiss that released a tempest. Abby clutched his shoulders and hung on as the storm set loose its fury.
fifteen
Abby punched the button on her intercom the following afternoon. "Yes, Marcie?" She told her assistant.
"Detective Krestyanov is here to see you." Abby darted a quick glance at the clock on her desk. She was expecting Ethan at any minute. "You can send him in," she told her assistant, "And if Ethan gets here, ask him to join us."
"Sure."
"Why didn't you tell me about this earlier?" the detective asked as he threw open the door to her office.
Abby rounded her desk and waved a hand in the direction of the stuffed chairs. "Hello. Would you like to sit down?"
He shook his head. "No time. I've got to meet my partner downtown. I got your message about that playing card."
Abby had called him that morning and left a voice-mail message. "I take it the lab didn't turn anything up?"
"No." He scowled. "And it's the damnedest thing. I went to the evidence room to look at the card myself. They've sent it out of state to another lab."
She wasn't surprised. "Oh?"
"Until you called this morning, this was nothing more than a routine attempted break-in. Why the hell would they do that?"
"You couldn't access the case files on my parents' murder either, could you?"
"Sealed," he confirmed. He started to pace. "I'd like to know just what the hell I'm getting myself into, Ms. Lee. I haven't run into this much—"
"Am I interrupting?" Ethan stuck his head in the doorway.
Abby smiled at him. "No. I'm glad you're here."
The detective swung around. "Maddux. Do you have that file for me?"
Ethan nodded and handed him the large envelope in his hand. "This is everything I've turned up in the last few weeks, plus the information we got from Harrison."
Krestyanov stuck the envelope under his arm. "All right." He turned back to Abby. "I talked this over with Detective Garrison, and we're going to look into it. We won't be able to do much before we have to run it by the department."
"When you do," Ethan pointed out, "they'll tell you to drop it."
"I figure that too." The policeman ran a hand through his already rumpled dark hair. "I'll see what I can do, though, and I'll get back to you."
"I'd appreciate that," Abby told him.
"All right." He nodded to Ethan on his way out the door. "I'll be in touch."
The door swung shut, and Abby wasted no time. She wrapped her arms around Ethan's waist and hugged him hard. Late in the night, when they'd lain fully spent and exhausted, Ethan had gathered her to him so closely, she'd felt their heartbeats merge. The feeling had been so intimate; her heart had almost overflowed with love for him. Tears had followed. When first one, then another salty drop had plopped onto his skin, Ethan had eased her away and looked at her with concern. It had taken her several minutes to persuade him that she was crying for his loss and not her own. He'd offered to finally share all of it with her today.
"Thank you for coming," she said.
He crushed her to him. "You don't have to do this," he assured her.
"You do. And I want to." She stepped away from him and reached for her purse. When she took his hand, his fingers closed hard on hers.
As they moved through the outer office, Abby spoke to her assistant. "I'll be out for the rest of the day, Marcie. If anything urgent comes up, refer it to Deirdre."
Marcie's jaw nearly dropped. "Deirdre? Are you kidding?"
Abby shook her head. "No. It's time she started earning her way as event chair."
They made the cab ride in silence. Ethan fought a growing sense of alarm as they neared the gates of the public cemetery. He hadn't been here since the day Letty had brought him to his mother's funeral. At that time there had been Letty, a priest she had hired, and him. Today he had only Abby.
Something had broken loose inside him last night. There in Abby's living room, he'd finally lost the war. True to her word, she'd accepted all of it. He'd made love to her with a fierce intensity that had left him drained and breathless and unaccountably cleansed.
Abby had refused to let him retreat to safety.
Rather than passively riding out the storm inside him, she'd spurred it, urging him higher and faster. When he'd tried to slow the pace, she'd demanded more. She'd stripped him of every vestige of restraint and civility, forcing him to give full release to the turmoil he'd buried for so long.
Once, she'd sunk her teeth into his shoulder, and the not-so-subtle nip had fought its way through another barrier. He'd lost count of the peaks and valleys she'd shown him. By the time he'd emptied himself for the last time, he'd lain in her arms feeling as weak as the day he was born.
Abby had stroked his shoulders and whispered her love in his ear. It had simultaneously shaken him and strengthened him. When she'd wept over his sorrow, he'd felt humbled by the sacrifice. She had renewed him, and with that realization had come an even more pressing one: he could never give Abby what she deserved until he was ready to lay the past to rest. He wasn't sure he had her courage.
She had kissed him and promised to give him some of hers.
His fingers tightened on hers briefly before he released her hand to reach for his wallet. He gave the cabdriver a fifty-dollar bill and asked him to wait. Except for a few lone visitors, the cemetery grounds were deserted. Abby paid a vendor at the entrance for a small bunch of flowers. Ethan put his arm around her shoulder and led her to the place he hadn't been to in nearly thirty years.
He found it odd that he'
d never forgotten the way through the winding paths, as if every step had been permanently etched on his brain.
When they reached the tiny marker for Lina's grave, Abby handed him the flowers. He held them for a long time and simply stared at the piece of granite. He had always believed he would hate Harrison Montgomery at this moment—that everything the man had done and failed to do would well up inside him until he boiled with it. Instead, he pictured the haggard look on Harrison's face when he'd talked about Lina. Had she known, Ethan wondered, that Harrison had loved her?
Had she known that he'd never married because, Ethan now suspected, a part of his heart was buried in that grave?
"What do you remember?" Abby asked softly.
Ethan continued to look at the small stone. "She had red hair," he said. "Dark red. It was long, but she always wore it up. I never saw it down except at night." His chest had started to ache. "Sometimes she let me braid it."
Abby wrapped her arms around his waist. He absently stroked her back. "She laughed a lot. She had a great laugh."
"Like you."
"Mine is rusty," he confessed. "I don't use it as much as she'd want me to." He sifted through the memories again. "She liked butterflies. Once, she took me to a butterfly arboretum so we could see them. I wanted to catch one for her. That's when she taught me the lesson about letting wild things be free."
"Like her."
"Like her," he agreed. "She could have let Harrison's father destroy her."
"She had your strength."
"A lot more. She wouldn't have hidden from her feelings for this long."
Abby's arms tightened around him. "What would she tell you if she was here?"
He thought about it for a long time. "My mother was never afraid to feel things, even when it hurt. She loved Harrison." He'd never admitted that before. "Even though he disappointed her, she loved him. And me. I always knew that she loved me."
He closed his eyes for a moment. A soft breeze ruffled his hair and rustled the leaves of a nearby shade tree. He heard the sound of a bird whistling from the branches, as if it sensed that the stormy weather of the past few days had finally passed, and it felt free to sing again.
In so many ways, he thought. He could visualize the clearest picture of Lina's face that he'd had in years. "Love her," she seemed to be telling him. "For God's sake, Ethan, have the courage to love her."
"I will," he whispered to the wind.
Abby slipped out of his embrace and faced him with tears in her eyes. She took the flowers from him and stooped to put them on Lina's grave. Gently, she cleared away the leaves and twigs that had gathered around the stone. She pulled each flower from the bunch and placed it with excruciating care. When she was done, she stood beside him again and linked her fingers with his.
"Someone will come by here now," she told him, "and see that and know that you loved her."
Abby gasped when Ethan pressed a kiss to a particularly sensitive spot near her collarbone. They were in his hotel room. She wasn't really sure when they'd decided to go there. Sometime after they'd left the cemetery, the mood between them had undergone a subtle shift. He had looked at her with an overwhelming tenderness, and she'd nodded, understanding the silent inquiry.
Ethan smiled against her skin. "Want me to do it again?"
Abby threaded her hands in his hair. "I might expire if you do."
He laughed and kissed her deeply. She wrapped her arms around his neck and returned the kiss with equal fervor. He'd lingered over her endlessly that afternoon. He'd taken her places she'd never even dreamed of, then driven her higher as he'd lavished attention on every inch of her flesh. Her body felt both pampered and exhausted. When he lifted his head, his eyes were filled with the same tenderness she'd seen earlier. "Thank you, Abby."
She smiled at him. "I'm the one who got all the attention today."
He shook his head, his expression rueful. "You know what I mean."
She did. She stretched with the contented luxury of an overfed cat. Giggling, she remembered telling him how she'd felt like the slowest and fattest gazelle in the herd. "What are you laughing about?" he asked her.
"Gazelles," she said enigmatically. "And panthers."
Ethan entwined his hands with hers and pressed them to the pillow. "You're amazing."
"You're not so bad yourself," she assured him as he lowered his head.
The jarring ring of his cell phone on the nightstand interrupted them. He looked over at it with disgust. "I should flush that thing."
"It might be important," Abby told him.
He shook his head and kissed her. "Not more important than this."
The phone continued to ring, insistent and demanding. Finally, he tore his mouth from hers with a muttered curse and reached for it. "Maddux," he barked.
Abby watched his expression change from frustration to determination as the voice on the other end identified itself. He rolled away from her and sat up in bed. "How do you know?" he asked the caller.
Abby placed a hand on his shoulder. Ethan nodded at whatever the caller was telling him. "Fine," he said. "We'll be there in fifteen minutes." He hung up the phone and tossed it on the nightstand.
"Ethan, what is going on?"
He held out a hand to her. "We only have time for one shower, so it'll have to serve both of us."
"Who was that?" She let him pull her from the bed.
"General John Standen. He wants us downtown for a briefing."
"I don't understand," Abby said an hour later as she listened to John Standen talk to Detective Nick Krestyanov. "You think the person who tried to break into my house is connected to the center? How do you even know about this?"
Carter Jameson patted Abby's hand. "Ethan asked us to look into it."
She shot Ethan a look of surprise. He nodded. "My investigator had already turned up evidence that your father's military connections might have somehow played a role in his murder. I asked a few questions."
"I knew your father," Carter said, "when he worked at the recruiting office. I used to volunteer there just to take my mind off things. I didn't put you together with him until Ethan started asking around."
Abby frowned. "But the break-in—"
"After that night," Ethan said, "I came down here to see what I could find out."
John Standen concurred. "We began to really dig around. Most of the older veterans in this town still remember your dad's restaurant. It wasn't hard to get some answers."
The detective snorted. "I found it hard enough."
Carter laughed. "You didn't know how to ask the right questions."
Abby rubbed her eyes, hoping to clear her head. "And you think someone here knew why my father was killed?"
"A lot of money got passed around by the Feds after your dad's murder, Abby," the general told her. "People who barely knew the man were encouraged to remember deeper friendships."
"And his friends disappeared."
"Damn bunch of cowards," Carter muttered.
John continued. "But to a man, everyone remembered one thing about the weeks following his death." He looked at Detective Krestyanov. "There's a fellow named George Dryden. He's been here several years."
"Keeps to himself," Carter added.
"He's got a nephew who pulled some strings to get him in here. This is one of the better places around, and the waiting list is long."
"You think Dryden is behind this?" Krestyanov asked, writing the name down in his notepad.
"No," John said. "It's Dryden's nephew. We never met the guy until the other day. That's when the whole thing came together."
Carter nodded and slammed his hand down on the arm of his wheelchair. "If I hadn't been confined to this damned thing, I'd have slugged the guy."
"Do you have a name?" the detective asked.
John reached for Abby's hand and enfolded it in his own. "Abby knows him. David Wilcox."
"Why," Abby insisted later that day, "couldn't it just be a coincidence?" They were seat
ed in Detective Krestyanov's office, where he was making phone calls about David Wilcox.
Ethan shoved a diet soda into her hand. "Honey, listen to me—"
"But I've known David for years. He's always been a friend."
That didn't surprise Ethan. David Wilcox would have made damned sure he could keep an eye on things. He'd been managing his uncle's money for him for years—a worthy chunk of cash Ethan was willing to bet could be traced to Abby's father. The last thing he'd appreciate was for information to surface that might stop the free ride he'd been getting from his uncle's assets.
"Try to look at this logically," Ethan urged.
"I don't want to look at it logically," she protested.
Ethan rolled his eyes and gave up trying to argue. The detective finished his call and nodded briefly at Ethan. "Okay. We're going to set up surveillance. If what you say is true, he's going to feel a little desperate as soon as he gets the news."
"Good." Ethan had persuaded Harrison to circulate rumors through his company executives about the reason for the planned sell-off. The news of the MDS breakup had already gone public that morning. If Wilcox suspected that Harrison was onto him, he'd have to act. "I called my office in San Francisco. They're making sure that the right people start calling the MDS corporate office for answers. Wilcox is going to feel the heat pretty damn quick."
"We can keep him under surveillance for a while," Krestyanov promised, "but something will have to bring this to a head soon. If one of the Feds was really responsible for getting Abby's father killed, we won't be able to get the guy unless we move fast enough to outsmart them. The roots of this are deep."
Abby shook her head. "I just can't believe—" She exhaled a heavy breath and asked the detective, "Do you think Rachel and I are in any danger?"
"Not right now," he said, "Wilcox is in this for the money. If he tried to break into your house, he most likely just wanted to scare you. If the man, or men, responsible for your father's death knew we were investigating this, that would be a different story."
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