Born in Mystery

by Susan Kearney

  As comprehension dawned before she had a chance to spell out the rest, Craig hurled his half-empty bourbon glass into the fireplace. The glass shattered into a million shards.

  Feeling as though he’d slapped her, she flinched at the smoldering anger beneath the controlled exterior. His nostrils flared, the only visible concession to his rage.

  Craig turned on her, his fists raised, his shoulders rigid, a muscle pulsing in his jaw. “You agreed to become a surrogate mother so you could vanish, didn’t you? You used me and my unborn children to disappear.”

  She winced at his accusation, felt the blood draining from her face. What she wouldn’t give to take back her decision. He had every right to be furious with her. Sorrow and guilt racked her, but she stiffened and faced him. “I never thought—”

  “That’s right—you didn’t think. You didn’t think you were risking the lives of my children.” He advanced.

  She retreated until she was backed against the wall, the robe slipping down one shoulder. Trapping her, he leaned forward, flattening his palms on both sides of her head.

  Her lungs refused to draw in a breath. “I didn’t think he’d find me. It was the perfect plan. I left my job. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. I started a new life.”

  “How can you act as if you’re blameless?”

  She shivered at the chill in his tone, the dark scowl on his lips, the icy fury in his eyes. With a touch as delicate as an artist’s, he slid his long fingers over her neck to the curve of her shoulder.

  “Don’t—”

  “Don’t what? Don’t let your wide, innocent eyes distract me from the truth? Don’t listen to the words from your lying lips?” He yanked the robe back over her shoulder, his gaze dropping briefly to the valley between her trembling breasts. “If you catch cold, my children might suffer.”

  She snatched the material and held the edges together like a shield. “I hoped some good could come from this. I hoped to give you what you wanted—your children.”

  Fierce eyes, burning coal gray and reflecting sparks of firelight, seared her. His hands clenched and unclenched. “Instead, you risked their lives before they’ve even been born.”

  “I thought I was safe,” she repeated, choking on the words, knowing he didn’t believe her and wondering bitterly why he should.

  “How long did it take him to find you after you disappeared the first time?”

  “Six weeks.” She told herself she deserved whatever he said. But she shook inside. That something could turn so bad when she’d been so full of good intentions filled her with intolerable sadness.

  He gripped her shoulders, his hold almost painful as he pinned her to the wall. “Today, he found you within hours. He must have followed you.”

  “I was careful.”

  He pierced her with a you-can’t-be-that-naive scowl, and she couldn’t blame him. By going to him for help, she’d put his life at risk along with her own. If whoever was after her succeeded, the babies would die with her. He had every right to be furious. Still, it hurt, and she shriveled a little at his contemptuous expression.

  She’d been so careful after she’d left her job and moved. She hadn’t contacted her friends. She’d even changed her hair color. So how had he found her?

  Craig grabbed her upper arm none too gently and shoved her onto the sofa. He sat on the coffee table in front of her, his elbows planted on his knees, his face inches from hers. “You must have some idea who’s after you.”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and raised her chin to look him in the eyes. “If I did, I wouldn’t have come to you. I’d have tracked him down.”

  Her response seemed to have no effect on him, but then he was good at concealing his thoughts. Only his eyes revealed the bitterness, and though he had not said what he planned to do, she had a feeling in her gut that he would make her pay.

  “You told me your parents are dead,” he half said, half asked.

  “Yes.” His seemingly abrupt change in questioning had her stomach doing flip-flops, but she stuck to the truth where she could.

  “The file said you’ve never been married.”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t yes me. You’ve been damn secretive about your past. I want details. Surely you’ve been involved in relationships. You haven’t lived your life as a hermit. You’ve known neighbors, co-workers, bosses and friends. Were the partings bitter or amicable? Where do your ex-boyfriends live?”

  The physicians at the clinic had asked detailed questions about her medical history and background before agreeing to accept her as a surrogate, but those files were sealed to him. He only knew what his attorneys knew, and that information she’d concocted in order to hide from the stalker.

  She supposed he had every right to ask such personal questions; still, she resented his intrusion into her private affairs. “Kendrick and I broke up two years ago. Our parting wasn’t especially bitter. We never lived together.”

  She sensed him mentally reviewing her file before cracking out his next question like a drill sergeant. “What about your job? A flight attendant meets all kinds of people. Were you dating?”

  Tell him.

  She twisted her hands on her thighs. “I wasn’t a flight attendant.”

  He rubbed his chin in exasperation, but his gaze never left hers. “Were you an undercover cop? Don’t tell me you work for the CIA.”

  “Nothing so hazardous. I’m a legal secretary.”

  “Where?”

  She kept twisting her fingers, noted her outward sign of nervousness but couldn’t stop fidgeting. “My first job was with Harry Pibbs’s law office, a small firm in the valley.”

  “And your second job?”

  She should never have worked as a legal secretary again, but she’d hated to give up all contact with the law. The deciding factor had been money. No other job that she was offered paid as well as a legal secretary. When Gran’s monthly bill at the nursing home had been overdue, she couldn’t let them evict her.

  At Gran’s age, changes didn’t come easy. Not that Gran complained. When Bianca first brought her to Jarrod’s, Gran’s confusion and fear slowly turned to pleasure at her surroundings. Bianca had vowed not to move Gran again. After all Gran had done for her, it was now time for Bianca to return the love.

  But she refused to make excuses to Craig. “I worked at Dean, Atherson, and Jackson.”

  As she named his attorneys’ office as her last place of employment, he flinched as if hit by a bullet. His voice flayed her with scorn. “You set me up from the start.”

  She nodded. “While I worked as a legal secretary, I saw your letter asking the firm to find a surrogate, applied for the position through the fertility clinic and concocted a background to match your requirements.”

  “Not exactly ethical behavior.”

  “It was my chance to disappear. Leave my job. Vanish. You have to believe I didn’t think he’d find me.

  Craig’s threatening stare held her in an iron-tight lock. “As a legal secretary, what kind of cases did you work on?”

  “Nothing criminal.” She knew where his questions were leading since she’d asked herself the same things a hundred times. Always she came up with zip.

  She couldn’t think of a reason anyone would want her dead. “Mostly divorces. Sometimes I helped with the probate of an estate.”

  He stood and paced like a magnificent animal in a cage, the tension in his shoulders holding him rigid. “We need to talk to my attorney. I want to go through their files.”

  “You can’t do that. It violates attorney-client privilege.”

  His dark face grew taut and derisive. “Then what are you suggesting?”

  Despair settled over her like a veil at the thought she’d lost all chance to win his respect without ever really k
nowing him. He didn’t seem to realize she wasn’t just a body to carry his children, but a person with hopes and dreams and goals. She’d put law school on hold while she hid from the stalker, but she fully intended to graduate one day. She’d worked too hard and too long to give up.

  Despite the lies she’d been forced to tell to survive, she had nothing to be ashamed of. She hadn’t hurt anyone. Pride kept her head high. She refused to let him see her unhappiness.

  “Just find me a place to hide somewhere close by so I can look after Gran. You needn’t visit or call me. After the babies are born, our deal will be finished. I’ll no longer be your concern.”

  “Lady, I’m not sure I believe a word you’ve told me. The court placed you in my custody, and I’m not letting you out of my sight. Besides, I still don’t understand why we can’t go home.”

  “The stalker followed your car to the beach and probably has had your license tag traced. So he knows your name. And with a name, courthouse documentation will reveal every piece of property owned in this county.”

  He shook his head. “My car is a company vehicle. There’s no way it can be traced to me. So we can still go back to my house.”

  Bianca swallowed a groan. Although it had been prudent not to return to his car, there had been no need to drive all the way to the mountains. She felt like the child who’d called wolf without reason, yet how could she have anticipated the car wasn’t registered in his name? They’d fled to the ski chalet when they could have simply called a cab and gone back to his home.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Beneath the calm, she sensed squelched fury, but he spoke evenly. “I’d rather take extra precautions and be safe than risk my children’s lives. Under the circumstances, you did the right thing.” He paused, anger repressed beneath a polished civility. “Have you considered you’re being followed when you visit your grandmother?”

  “I’m extremely careful. I always approach and leave from different directions. Sometimes I walk, other times I take a taxi or bus. And I wear disguises.”

  “You can’t be sure he’s not picking up your trail there.”

  “I’m not sure of anything. But the stalking started before Gran moved into Jarrod’s.”

  He leaned forward, his expression tense. “Why can’t we go to the police?”

  “Without evidence, they can’t do anything. I tried once before, and not only wouldn’t the cops help, as I left the police station, I was threatened.”

  “How?”

  She shuddered, wondering if she’d ever again feel safe. “I found a typed note on my car windshield.” His eyes flashed a combination of frustration, curiosity and anger. “What did the note say?”

  She didn’t want to tell him. The threat sounded so melodramatic, and once again she hadn’t gotten a peek at her assailant. As the icy determination in Craig’s stormy eyes raked her, she licked her bottom lip nervously.

  A tremor caressed her spine as she repeated the eerie words that haunted her nightmares. “The note was a threat. It said, ‘Don’t come back. I’ll be watching.’ It was signed, ‘The Sentry.’”

  “What happened to the note?”

  “I was so frightened . . . I tore it into pieces.” And she’d thrown it away, thrown away her only piece of hard evidence. Afterward, she wondered if she’d been hasty. Perhaps the police could have taken prints off the paper.

  Craig loomed over her like a lion about to pounce on his prey, his expression guarded. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me?”

  Chapter Four

  AS CRAIG SKIMMED the leaves from his backyard pool the following afternoon, Bianca reclined in a lounge chair, trying to hide the dark circles beneath her eyes with sunglasses. Although he’d asked her to write up a list of suspects, he could no more press her for answers now than he could last night at the ski chalet after she’d evaded his question.

  Damn it. He tightened his fingers on the skimmer’s pole. He’d banked most of the anger heating his veins after realizing she hadn’t deliberately endangered his children. Even so, he sensed her holding back secrets, and he wanted to shake more information out of her. What could she still be hiding? Last night, Bianca had balked at answering that question. Instead, hesitating as though the breath she took would be her last, she’d lowered her gaze to the floor, her long lashes veiling her eyes.

  Finally, she’d shaken her head, a lock from the blond wig falling over her pain-filled expression. He still didn’t know her natural hair color. Today, her wig was a tawny maple with burnished sandy highlights. Not even her sunglasses hid the look of anguish on her face, although whether her feelings were a result of the peril she’d put his children in, or for herself, he couldn’t tell.

  She hunched over a memo pad, nibbling the eraser between her straight white teeth, her full lips pursed. Every once in a while, she scribbled something, often scratching it out.

  While he skimmed the pool’s surface of windblown grass, water bugs and oak leaves, he vowed to remain indifferent to her and approach their problems in a businesslike manner. He allowed himself to admire her legs. Lots of women had long, lean legs tanned to a golden hue. So what?

  That’s it. Reduce her to impersonal body parts, each quite lovely. Get over her sensual, slender fingers with pink-tipped nails. Ignore the tiny frown marring her lush mouth. Pretend it didn’t matter that she seemed to care about his babies as much as he did.

  With a groan of disgust, she threw down the pad and drew her knees to her chest. “This is futile. I have no idea who is after me.”

  Forcing his gaze from her legs, he dumped the leaves into a pile, put down the skimmer and picked up a brush. Squatting, he scrubbed the tiles, meticulously working around the pool’s rim. “Most stalkers are ex-boyfriends or ex-husbands.”

  “Kendrick Yarlboro might have some bizarre ideas, but . . .”

  At her words he dropped the scrub brush into the water. “What kind of bizarre ideas?”

  Her mouth curved faintly. “Kendrick believes horror movies shouldn’t just show the blood and gore. He wants the audience to experience the terror. According to him, films today depend upon special effects instead of psychological terror. He thinks movies should tap into the human psyche’s fears.”

  Wonderful. That this memory of the man could make her grin caused some concern. Kendrick had to be their prime suspect. Craig held his suspicions to himself, retrieved the floating scrub brush and maintained his unemotional tone. “What’s Kendrick do for a living?”

  “He’s a successful horror writer, but he wants to produce movies.”

  How could she tell him that so calmly? She’d dated someone who created terror as easily as Craig imported chopsticks. Her former boyfriend probably knew more about stalking than the police.

  Yet, Bianca must have good reasons to believe Kendrick innocent. She was an intelligent woman, one who’d had the foresight to store clothing, disguises and cash at the bus station. On the beach, she’d remained unruffled under gunfire. Yet any woman could be brilliant—except when it came to judging men.

  He advanced to the tile by the shallow end of the pool. “Where does he live?”

  “LA. Where else?”

  Her flippant answer peeled away a layer of his composure, and he snapped at her in a tone harsher than he intended. “So he has the imagination to stalk you. He lives close enough to have the opportunity. But you don’t think he’s behind your problems?”

  “He doesn’t have a motive,” she flung back without an instant’s hesitation. “He isn’t passionate enough about me to be a stalker.”

  Her statement almost had him dropping the scrub brush again. How could any man not be passionate about Bianca? When she wasn’t making him furious, when he wasn’t protecting her and the babies, he was thinking about her pink nails raking his back, her long legs wrapped around his waist, the
softness of her lips during a passionate kiss. “Why?”

  “All Kendrick’s passion goes into his work. He hadn’t much time or feeling left over for me.”

  She spoke in a clipped tone, and he sensed the effort it cost to tell him—almost as though she believed there was something wrong with her if Kendrick hadn’t felt passionate about her. Craig knew better. Kendrick was even weirder than she realized.

  “Was it your idea to end the relationship?”

  “It was mutual. We just drifted apart. There were no acrimonious feelings. He still calls occasionally, but I’ve been out of touch for weeks now.”

  He stopped scrubbing, looked up and wished he could see her eyes without the sunglasses. “Why does he keep calling?”

  Bianca’s brows drew together. “We liked each other. We didn’t think our friendship had to end just because we’re no longer together.”

  He supposed not. Craig tried to accept what she’d told him objectively, but found he couldn’t. A horror writer had to have a twisted mind. Perhaps Kendrick had taken Bianca for granted until they’d split up. Maybe he hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted Bianca until she’d left. Could his passion have turned from writing stories to stalking a woman in the hope of frightening her into coming back to him? Or was Craig imagining this scenario because he wanted to identify the stalker quickly and move her out of his home before he did something stupid, like kiss her?

  “Who else is on your list?”

  “No one.”

  “All that scribbling and you couldn’t come up with another name?”

  She inhaled and let out her breath in an audible sigh. “I’ve been trying desperately to think of some suspects. It hasn’t been easy. Between trying to hide and work, I’ve had to concentrate on survival. I’ve lived in Santa Del Ray or Garden Grove my entire life, but the possibilities are barely limited. Whoever is doing this started before I worked for your attorney’s firm and before I moved Gran into the nursing home. I’m discounting everyone I met at the new job or at the nursing home.”