Patricia Potter (29 page)

He had no right to find out. And every right.

He placed the clipping on his desk and picked up the thick sheaf of papers, thumbing through them once more. A report from the German detective agency he employed. There was a copy of a recent visa application for Kurt Weimer, and a long report of Weimer’s suspected Odessa connections and secret neo-Nazi sympathies. Suspicions, that was all, the report said, and even those were apparently kept private by the people who held them. Kurt Weimer was an influential and wealthy figure in West Germany, an economist of international reputation.

And Weimer was coming to the United States for a high-level economic conference on Sea Island, off the coast of Georgia. His expected arrival was in four weeks.

Chris’s hands shook as he considered the ramifications of the two seemingly separate, yet linked, pieces of information. Weimer’s visit to Sea Island could not be a coincidence. It was not accidental, he knew, that Meara and Lisa Evans now lived on neighboring Jekyll Island.

Not when Weimer had spent the last few years making inquiries about the Evans family.

Something cold and deadly settled in the pit of Chris’s stomach. He knew Kurt Weimer was plotting revenge, that something terrible was planned for the only two people in the world for whom Chris gave a damn. And Sanders Evans was no longer alive to protect them.

He thought of Meara, of the first time he had seen her with her red hair flying free in the wind, and her laughter floating over the water as she leaned down and whispered conspiratorially to two children. Her green eyes had been so vividly alive that they’d nearly blinded him. He had never met, nor had he since seen, anyone so free, so lovely, so full of love and life. He still remembered that quick “isn’t life wonderful” smile that had made it wonderful indeed. He had lost his heart then, and had never regained it.

Even as he had accepted that each hour was stolen, that they would both pay an enormous price for the theft, he had never guessed exactly how great a price it would be.

He had not known until years later when he had hired a detective agency to find her and discovered she had given birth to a daughter, Lisa, nearly nine months to the day after they had made love.

Chris’s hand crumpled the typewritten pages concerning Kurt Weimer. They were in danger now, Meara and Lisa. His love. His daughter. They were in danger because of what he had been twenty-one years ago, because of so many betrayals. His betrayals. And he was the only one who could help them, because he was the only one who knew the whole story. The only one still alive.

He buzzed his secretary.

“Make a reservation for me on a flight to Atlanta on—” he looked at his calendar—“July nineteenth. Also arrange for a private plane there for me.”

There was a short silence. “What return date?”

“Leave it open.”

“The meeting with Bill Hatch is July twenty-sixth,” the secretary reminded him. “He’s in Europe and won’t be back in Seattle until June thirtieth.”

Chris swore to himself. For a moment, he had forgotten the meeting. Bill Hatch was a competitor whose company Chris had been eying for a long time. Hatch had just let it be known that his company was for sale and Chris was but one of several potential buyers. Profitable and privately owned, it was a perfect adjunct to his own company, Northwest Lumber. He wanted nothing to do with public companies; he couldn’t afford the exposure and publicity they inevitably produced. Yet some competitive part of his nature wanted to keep his firm growing. Work blotted out so many other things.

“Allen can handle it,” he said, referring to his vice president of finance.

There was another silence. Chris Chandler seldom allowed anyone to substitute for him, especially in a meeting as important as Sally knew this one to be. But there had been an unfamiliar edge in his voice, a tension that warned her not to say anything.

“Yes, sir,” she said quickly, although her unasked question buzzed through the wire.

“Confirm everything as early as possible,” Chris stressed.

Less than four minutes later, Sally told him he had the reservations. Chris rose and walked over to the wall of windows overlooking Puget Sound. He had chosen Seattle as his headquarters because of the water, though Portland was nearer his base of operations. The Pacific coast was different, wilder, than the usually calm Atlantic around Jekyll Island, but the salt air, the unmistakable perfume of the sea, seemed to bind him to Meara, to her and to the one place he had been happy if only for the briefest of times.

Evans would be gone a month by the time he arrived. She would have said good-bye to one dead man.

What would she say, do, when confronted with another one?

He remembered the last time he saw her, her eyes full of disbelief and loathing and horror. She would hate him. Most certainly distrust him. She could also ruin him, send him to prison with one word. Spy.

But that didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered but her safety. That and his daughter’s. His daughter.

A muscle throbbed convulsively in his throat as he returned to his desk and forced himself to concentrate on a contract. Suddenly, nothing here meant anything. Only Meara. Only his daughter.

Dear God, keep them safe.

But if He couldn’t, then Chris would. Any way he could. No matter the price!

Four weeks later, he leaned back in his first-class seat on the flight to Atlanta and shut his eyes. Damn, but the memories kept flooding back.

Eric von Steimen. Michael Fielding.

Was there anything left of the two men in him?

He was Chandler now. Successful American businessman. Von Steimen disappeared years ago, the name completely buried in his mind when he learned his mother and brother had died in an American bombing raid of Berlin. There were no more von Steimens.

And Michael Fielding? Chris Chandler had also tried to bury him, but that had been far more difficult. Michael Fielding was the one of the three who had really lived, who had felt, who had laughed and loved. As much as Chris had tried in the past years, he had not been able to force those two weeks from his mind. They were as real to him today as they had been twenty-one years ago.

Grateful that he did not have a seat companion in the small compartment, he took out the fuzzy photo the detective had sent him years ago.

Chris remembered the beach where the picture had been taken. Meara was sitting on a blanket, a ten-year-old child next to her. It was a black-and-white photo, wrinkled and worn from being handled so often, and he could tell nothing about the child’s eyes although the hair looked blond. The detective said the girl’s eyes were blue. Deep blue. Like his own. There were other pictures of his daughter, but this one with Meara was his favorite.

Lisa was nearly twenty-one now, and a new graduate of the University of Virginia.

A stewardess interrupted his thoughts. He declined the offer of a meal, but decided on a Scotch and water. God, he needed something.

If Meara had hated him the night of the explosion, she must doubly so now. He had ruined every dream she’d ever had. The job at
Life
magazine, her career as a journalist, had all been sacrificed when she found herself with child. With
his
child. How she must have despised him.

At least, he thought, she’d had Sanders. Throughout the years he vacillated between gratitude and jealousy every time he thought of them, every time he realized Sanders had taken far better care of Meara than he ever had. Gratitude usually won, especially in the latter years. But in the beginning, it had been pure hell.

He would never forget those first desperate, miserable, pain-racked weeks after his escape from the island. He’d reached Savannah where he’d bought some clothes and an old car. Then he’d headed west.

Every place he went, he searched the newspapers. In Savannah, there was a news report about an attempted kidnapping of two children on Jekyll Island. The attempt, according to the story, had been foiled by the governess who had shot the kidnapper in self-defense. She was declared a heroine by the mother and father. A photo of Meara accompanied the report, but it didn’t look like her. There was nothing of joy in the picture. There had also been a murky photo of the kidnapper, taken apparently from his false identity papers.

There was no reference to Germans or submarines. The kidnapper was a gardener, a former soldier who was apparently mentally deranged as a result of combat.

But then, of course, there would have been no mention of German involvement. If word had leaked out of the planned raid, panic would have spread across the entire eastern coast. He later found another item, a short report of a Canadian who had been lost in a boating accident. For the benefit, he thought, of members of the Jekyll Island Club. He wondered now, twenty-one years later, if they had ever learned how close they came to disaster that Easter weekend.

He had reached Chicago four days later, and there he put his extensive training to use in trying to bury Michael Fielding. He found a cemetery and wandered through it, happening upon a small marker for a three-month-old baby who had died in 1909. Christopher Chandler. He wrote down the name and drove to the northwest corner of the United States, a place in which he thought he could get lost.

When he reached Portland, he headed toward a small isolated logging camp. He had no difficulty finding a job: the draft and enlistments had drained the logging industry of men while the need for lumber grew.

His limp explained why he wasn’t in the service, and he worked hard at learning the logger’s trade. Hard physical work made it possible for him to sleep at night, to forget Meara’s laughter, to forget the loathing in her eyes, to forget that last anguished cry despite all she had felt about him.

In a year, he had made foreman. Despite his reticence, his natural leadership always emerged, and he gained the company’s attention when he risked his life to save another logger and then rudely swept away all attempts to reward him. Instead of allowing him to retreat back into anonymity, his perceived modesty had had the opposite effect. Chris was named superintendent, and when the owner’s only son was killed in the Philippines he had seized on Chris as a substitute. Six years later, the owner had died of a heart attack and left half the firm to Chris, half to his sister. Chris bought her out three years later.

Using work as a substitute for feeling, Chris had built the company into one of the most successful private firms in Oregon, swallowing up smaller unsuccessful firms and making them profitable. Although he anonymously gave money to various charities, one of which was a journalism scholarship at the University of Oregon, he declined all invitations to be on boards. He wanted no attention.

He had lived with the possibility of being discovered every day of his life. Part of him, perhaps, even wished for it, although he knew what would happen. Only several months after his own escape, he’d read a story in the newspapers involving German spies—saboteurs—who were set ashore on Jacksonville Beach in Florida. One of them was George Dasch, who had lived in America for several years and then found himself caught in Germany when the war started. Unlike Chris, Dasch had surrendered himself when he’d reached American shores and reported the landing. Despite that, he had been tried and found guilty of espionage and given a prison sentence. His companions received the death penalty.

That episode had quelled all Chris’s illusions about his future if his true identity were discovered. Even now he could be arrested and imprisoned, he supposed. Certainly deported.

And Meara? What would she do when she discovered he was still alive? Alive and living in the United States.

She hadn’t been able to shoot him that night, but then everything had happened so fast, and she’d been stunned and confused. She’d had twenty-one years to hate now.

Dear God, he whispered to himself. He closed his eyes as he realized the shock she’d have in seeing him again. Yet he had to warn her. Had to protect her.

“Are you all right?” The stewardess bent over him, her face concerned, and he forced a smile and nodded.

“You looked like you were in pain.”

“I was just thinking of a business problem,” he said.

“It must be a big one,” she said. “Another drink?”

He nodded. He seldom had more than one drink. Like so many other things, it was dangerous. But this once…

When the drink came, he stared at the golden color, remembering a similar shade shimmering across the sand the afternoon he’d made love to Meara. He wondered if Meara’s body was still slim, yet curved so enticingly in the right places. He felt himself tensing inside at the forbidden thought. It had been so long.

He had not made love to a woman since Meara. He had thought about it; he was no monk, but something always stopped him. Part of the reason was penance, his own painful penance for the agony he had caused someone he loved. But there had been other reasons. He hadn’t had time or opportunity during the first years; he’d simply worked himself into a stupor each day. When he’d reached a position of some wealth, he was wary. Women were curious, and he couldn’t afford curiosity, he couldn’t afford involvement. After Meara, he’d had no wish for the kind of liaisons he’d had as a ship’s officer: mindless, physical acts with little or no feeling. The idea repelled him.

Chris hadn’t needed sex; he’d needed warmth to combat the cold, icy feeling inside since that night so long ago. Sex, he knew, would just make it colder. Emptier.