Haunting Rachel (16 page)

“No, you wouldn’t have seen it except from here—or from the river. Adam, is something wrong?”

“No. No, of course not.” He got hold of himself, and walked on, putting the gate behind him.

They completed the circuit of the garden in silence, and it wasn’t until they’d almost reached the house again that Rachel spoke.

“You aren’t a stand-in for a dead man, Adam.”

“I’m glad.”

“You don’t believe me?”

He hesitated. “I don’t believe you’ve said good-bye to him yet, Rachel. Until you do, you can’t be sure.”

She didn’t reply to that. But she didn’t remove her hand from his arm, not even when they went inside and a truculent Fiona met them at the door of the sunroom.

“Mr. Graham has been waiting in the front parlor these fifteen minutes and more, Miss Rachel!”

Mildly, she said, “I’m sure he didn’t mind, Fiona.”

The housekeeper snorted, shot Adam a dark look, and stomped away.

“Makes a lot of noise for such a little thing,” he observed.

Rachel couldn’t help but smile, but all she said was “If we go this way, we can avoid the furniture blockade.” They did, and shortly afterward walked through the
double doors of the front parlor with Rachel’s hand still tucked into the crook of Adam’s arm.

Graham didn’t like what he saw.

“You two haven’t met officially,” Rachel said. “Graham, this is—”

“The man who lied to you,” Graham snapped.

ercy was more than a little worried to find that Nicholas was heading for a decidedly bad part of town.

It hadn’t been easy, keeping her small car behind his without making it obvious he was being followed, and as they left the heavier traffic behind, she had to drop farther back to avoid discovery. So she was barely within sight when he finally pulled over to the curb at what looked like a deserted warehouse.

She pulled her car to the curb and killed the engine quickly.

For about ten minutes, nothing happened. Then a tall man who seemed roughly dressed from where Mercy was sitting appeared seemingly out of the shadows of the building and got into Nick’s car.

Mercy would have given a year’s salary to be a fly in that car.

The meeting lasted no more than five minutes. The
stranger got out of the car and melted once more into the shadows. Nicholas’s car pulled away from the curb and went on.

Mercy followed.

“What are you up to?” she muttered to herself, her gaze fixed on that big black car. “Dammit, Nick, what are you up to?”

His actions for the next hour offered Mercy no clue. He met twice more with unsavory-looking men who appeared and disappeared into shadow. These meetings were a bit longer, but still were clearly furtive in nature.

Frustrated, Mercy followed him to yet another seemingly deserted warehouse and parked half a block back from him. This time Nicholas left his car and headed for the warehouse. He didn’t look to the left or right.

Mercy didn’t actually see him open a door; he just appeared to vanish into the shadows as all his grungy pals had done.

She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and debated getting out and going to look for him.

The passenger door opened suddenly.

“Hello, love. I hope I didn’t make it too difficult for you to keep up.”

“What did he lie about?” Rachel asked quietly.

“The man’s a convicted felon, Rachel.” Graham’s voice was heavy with satisfaction. “He served five years in prison.”

“Well, since I never asked him if he’d been in prison, I don’t see that he lied about it, Graham.”

“Rachel, for God’s sake!”

“Well, I don’t.”

Adam looked down at Rachel with a slight smile. He
led her to the sofa facing the fireplace, and when she sat down, he went to the hearth opposite where Graham stood and faced the other man.

“Tell her the rest,” Adam said.

For the first time, Graham looked a bit discomfited. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Sure you do. Tell her what my crime was, and where I served my time.” Adam shoved his hands into the pockets of his pants and lounged back against the mantel.

The physical contrast between the two men was a stark one. Graham, inarguably good-looking and elegant in his business suit, appeared curiously tame standing so near Adam. He lacked Adam’s height and visible strength, but it was more than that. Less formally dressed, his hair a bit shaggy, and his pose a lazy one, Adam radiated leashed intensity in the alert tilt of his head and the sharpness of his gaze, and his slight smile was not so much polite as it was inherently dangerous.

For the first time, Rachel saw a man who might well have spent time in a cage.

She looked at Graham, hiding a sudden anxiety. “Well?”

Reluctantly, Graham said, “He was in prison in South America.”

“And my crime?” Adam prompted softly. Through gritted teeth Graham said, “Crimes against the state.”

Adam looked at Rachel through shuttered eyes. “That’s a nice little euphemism used by tinpot dictators after they’ve successfully instigated a coup. A blanket charge to throw over any perceived enemy of the new regime. That’s what was happening in San Cristo, about a week after I arrived. Since I was there to help close down an American-owned business that the new regime
promptly nationalized, and since I spoke out against them, I was perceived as an enemy of the state.”

He paused. “The
trial
lasted about five minutes. The sentence was life. I got out early only because the tinpot dictator got himself shot almost five years later, and there was a new regime. One that didn’t consider me an enemy of the state.” He turned his gaze to Graham. “And I think that’s all you need to know, Becket.”

“I agree,” Rachel said.

Graham frowned at her. “Rachel—”

“Did you bring the lease by for me to sign?”

“Yes.”

“Is everything in order? All the I’s dotted and T’s crossed?”

He sighed. “Yes.”

“Then I’ll sign it now. And you can drop it off at the agency on your way back to town. I don’t want to take up any more of your time.” She kept her voice quiet, unwilling to get into any discussion with Graham that would lead to her defending Adam.

Graham shot Adam a look and opened his briefcase on the coffee table to get the lease. “Rachel, listen to me. No matter what his story of the imprisonment is, the fact is that I can’t find out anything about his background beyond a few sketchy facts. You know only what he’s telling you, and it could all be a pack of lies designed to win your trust.”

Rachel signed the lease and handed it back to him. “Thank you for going over this, Graham. As for the rest— I’ve always depended on you for advice. So what do you advise?”

“Don’t trust him.”

She looked at Adam, leaning silently against the mantel,
then returned her gaze to Graham. “I’ll have to make up my own mind about that, Graham.”

“Rachel—”

“Well, what else do you expect me to say? He landed in a South American prison through actions that neither of us would consider wrong. Once he got out, he convinced a man we both respected to give him a loan in order to start his own company, and five years later that company is thriving, the loan about to be repaid in full—”

“He says,” Graham interrupted.

Adam watched and listened in silence, offering nothing.

Rachel shook her head. “All right—he says. You haven’t offered any evidence that he’s lying, or even any reason why he would. So far, in fact, you haven’t given me any reason at all not to trust Adam, aside from your suspicions. I don’t happen to share them.”

“Because he looks like Thomas. Don’t you see, Rachel? He walked into your life looking like Thomas, and you’ve given him the benefit of every doubt because of that.”

Is that really it? Is that why I trust him?
Rachel hesitated, then shook her head. “I think you’ve said enough, Graham. You can show yourself out.”

Graham looked at her for a moment, wondering dimly if she had yet realized what was happening to her. He did. And it was a bitter thing to Graham to see her waking up, coming out of the state that Tom’s death had left her in, and to know that where he himself had failed, another man had succeeded.

He hesitated only an instant, knowing also that nothing he could say just then would change what was happening. Not unless he could find evidence that Adam Delafield was not who and what he claimed to be. Graham shot another
look at Adam, then gathered up his briefcase and strode from the room.

Still lounging back against the mantel, Adam said quietly, “You were pretty hard on him.”

“Was I? Maybe.”

“He seems to have your best interests at heart.”

“Even so.” Rachel looked at him steadily. “I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

“Graham’s attitude. And … about what happened to you. It must have been terrible.”

Adam came to the sofa and sat down a couple of feet away, turning toward her. “I want to tell you about it.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know. But I want to.” He smiled slightly. “The way I told your father.”

Rachel nodded. “All right.”

“I was working as an electrical designer at an engineering company in California.” Adam spoke slowly. “In that work, I developed a more efficient version of an electrical component already in wide use. It was sort of like inventing a better mousetrap. There was a built-in demand for the gadget, a huge one. Both the company and I stood to make a lot of money.”

Rachel nodded again, and waited.

“What I didn’t know at the time was that my superior in the company wanted to take the credit—and the money —for himself. All unsuspecting, I gave him my diagrams to look over. The next day I was handed plane tickets and told to get down to San Cristo, close down our manufacturing plant, and get our people out of there before the rumbles of a coup became reality.”

“Why was there a plant down there?”

“Cheap labor. And God knows what kind of tax breaks and kickbacks they’d been granted from the old regime. In
any case, there was a plant running three shifts, and dozens of American supervisors and office personnel. I had to get them out.”

“You must have been very young for such an assignment.”

“I was twenty-five. But I’d traveled a great deal during my college years, I could fly a plane, and I spoke Spanish like a native. At the time, it made perfect sense to me that I was the one to go.”

“I see.”
Another pilot. Like Dad. And like Thomas.

Adam shrugged. “Getting the others out was a major headache, but nothing I couldn’t handle. The company had sent two planes, one for the people, and a cargo plane for all the equipment I could get out.”

She frowned. “This was—ten years ago?”

“Not quite. It was in November of eighty-eight.”

Six months after Tom’s plane had vanished somewhere in South America. Rachel sighed. “So you got everybody out?”

“Yeah. But my superior had been insistent that I be the last man out, and that I do a final check of the plant to make sure nothing valuable had been left behind. Hell, I could practically smell the army coming, and I still went back there.” He paused. “I was barely able to get off a call to the cargo plane and tell the pilot to get out before they grabbed me.”

“So the new leader wasn’t too happy with you.”

“Not much, no. He could have used a lot of the equipment I’d managed to get out of the country. So, he gave me a five-minute trial and sentenced me to life at one of his country clubs.”

Rachel winced. “It must have been horrible.”

“It wasn’t fun.” He smiled faintly, but his eyes were still shuttered and he didn’t offer details.

Rachel decided not to ask. Instead, she asked another question. “But didn’t anyone here try to get you out? An American citizen being held like that on trumped-up charges—”

Adam shook his head. “I had no family. When the president of the company tried to find out what had happened to me, the new dictator in San Cristo claimed I’d been killed. He even had a body to ship home—conveniently burned beyond recognition. Seems the plant caught fire, and I didn’t get out in time. Terrible accident.” He paused, then added, “There’s a grave in California, a nice headstone all paid for by the company. And my name on it.”

Rachel shivered. “You mean still?”

“Oh, I went through the official process of having myself declared legally alive again. But nobody got around to digging up that poor bastard and finding out who he was. Another enemy of the state, I guess.”

“My God.”

Adam lifted a hand as though to touch her, then let it fall. “When I got home, I found out that my former superior had made a fortune on the gadget I’d invented, him and the company. There was no proof, of course, just my word against his—and five years later, nobody believed me. Nobody wanted to believe me.

“They offered me a job, but I couldn’t take it. To prevent me from suing for five years’ back pay, they offered a cash settlement—which I did take. It wasn’t enough to start my own company, but it was enough to live on while I drew up the plans for a new design I’d dreamed up in prison. That was about the time I called looking for Nick, and talked to Duncan Grant instead. You know the rest.”