Patricia Potter (39 page)

Pretty little Lisa. She was his weapon. Nothing could be traced back to him, other than a temporary affair with a willing young woman.

As her mother had robbed him of a father, he would rob Meara of a daughter. And in the cruelest possible way.

Kurt downed the rest of the glass of schnapps with a sigh of anticipation.

Chris went out to the porch. It was just past sunrise, and he had been up for hours. He was so damnably restless. He longed to take a long walk, but he was afraid to get far from the telephone.

He knew that once Meara had left him on the beach, it was altogether possible she’d reconsidered everything, that she would decide not to believe him. The story was, after all, bizarre: a respected official of a friendly government seeking revenge after so many years.

All night he’d halfway thought there would be a knock at the door, that federal agents would be there.

And then there was Lisa. Chris’s stomach coiled in a tight knot as he thought about Weimer with Lisa. Meara’s daughter. His daughter.

Lisa wasn’t much younger than Meara had been that spring of ’42. And probably more impressionable. Meara had been mature for her age; she had worked hard for everything she had, everything she’d had to give up, because of him.

“Damn it,” he exploded. He had not meant to hurt Meara, and yet he had, in the most terrible way. He had known exactly how much last night when sobs ripped through her body. If Weimer meant to hurt Lisa, it could be accomplished easily. The man was, from all reports, convincing, personable, charming. And Lisa was too young, too inexperienced, to see through him.

He poured himself another cup of coffee, and waited, using the time to wonder about Lisa, and what she was like. The sight of her had just whetted his appetite for more and more information. He wanted to know everything about her. Everything. But he knew he had to be careful. Meara didn’t trust him.

But he wanted to know so much. He wanted to know how Lisa planned to spend her life. His investigators had told him she had graduated from the University of Virginia with top grades. It was something, but not enough. Nothing was enough. He had an enormous hunger to know everything there was to know about her, everything a father should. He had a fierce desire to protect.

Yet he sensed if he said any of that, Meara would see it as a threat. He could well understand it. She had tried to bury the past, and now he’d returned to dig it all up again. But had she buried it completely? For a moment last night when she had cried out his name, the hunger and love was there, just as it had been years ago. When he had held her those precious few moments, he’d experienced that tender oneness he had known only with her. She had felt it too. He knew it. But was it too late?

Call, he demanded silently.

He looked down at his watch. Nine-thirty. He wondered about walking over there, but he knew he couldn’t do that. He went to the telephone and hesitated, wondering whether he should call, when the phone rang shrilly. Chris picked it up quickly.

“Chandler,” he said automatically.

There was a pause on the line, then her voice. Uncertain. “I don’t know if…I can get used to that name.”

“Meara, thank God. I’ve been going crazy.”

“I had to wait until Lisa left.”

“She’s gone, then?”

“She has a summer job in Brunswick. With a law firm.”

Chris stood there stiffly and waited.

“He…Kurt Weimer took Lisa to dinner last night. He wants to see her again this weekend. Why?” The last word was bewildered.

“Can you come over here?”

Again, there was a pause. He could almost feel her hesitancy over the phone wires.

“Or I could come there?” he offered.

“No,” she said immediately.

He waited again, not wanting to push.

“I’ll be over there in ten minutes,” she said finally and hung up the phone.

Chris started a new pot of coffee and found another cup. Just as it finished percolating, he heard the soft knock at the door.

The dog was with her, and Chris grinned suddenly, but there was a hint of uncertainty in her eyes. “Reserves?”

“Hardly,” she said, looking at the dog. “A fly makes him flinch. This is Raggedy Andy. I didn’t introduce you last night.” There was something of the old flash of humor in the words, yet they came too quickly. As if she used them to avoid panic.

“Raggedy Andy?” he queried with the lifting of one of those heavy cocked eyebrows.

“My daughter named him for her favorite doll. They were both misfits. The doll was awkward looking with stuffing falling out everywhere, and Andy, well, Andy didn’t look any better. Lisa had dragged him off the middle of a road in Virginia.”

So the daughter had the same soft heart as the mother. A piece of information to treasure, Chris thought. But he confined his words to asking her about coffee.

“Please,” she said formally, woodenly, as she looked around the house. It was very neat, unlike that of most men living alone. Or was he? For a single desperate moment she wondered whether he had ever married.

“Are you…alone?” she finally asked.

“Yes.”

“In—in Seattle?”

He glanced at her with hooded eyes. “Yes.”

“You never married?”

“No,” he replied slowly. “I’m afraid a fugitive is poor husband material.”

“You’re not a fugitive. No one knows you’re alive.”

“Except you. I half expected the police last night.”

“I thought about it,” she said quietly.

“I imagine you did.”

She was silent, and he went to the kitchen, pouring them both a cup of coffee and returning to the living room where she still stood, the dog still at her side.

Chris handed her a cup. “I remember you didn’t like anything in it…or has that changed?”

She stared at him with amazement. They’d only had coffee once during those two weeks. “You remember that?”

“I remember everything,” he said. “What you ate, the dresses you wore, how the rain felt.”

His voice was slow, slowly seductive, as he made her see and feel the same warm, confusing, sensual feelings she had felt then. No, she told herself, jerking out of his trance. She wasn’t going to let him do this to her again.

She sipped her coffee, and lowered her eyes. She didn’t want him to see what perhaps was in them. She had learned to hide her feelings, but not always.

“I called a friend of Sanders’s at the FBI,” she said suddenly and had the slight satisfaction of watching him tense ever so slightly. “I asked him to check on Kurt Weimer.” She paused a fraction of a second. “I didn’t say anything about you.”

“What excuse did you give?”

“Only an overprotective mother after all that has happened. He understood.”

“I doubt whether he finds anything.”

“You did.”

“I had information they don’t.”

“Like the name of the man I shot.”

“Yes,” Chris said simply.

“I’ve been trying to remember everything that happened that night. I don’t think his name was ever mentioned. But you said Hans last night. Hans Weimer. That was his real name?”

“Yes.”

She looked down at her coffee. “It always seemed strange, to know you’ve killed a man and not even know his name.” There was a bleakness in her voice.

“You had no choice, Meara. He would have killed all of you. After he found the radio was useless, he knew the mission was ruined. The submarine wouldn’t come in without contact. The only way he could have escaped was killing you. Believe me, he wouldn’t have had any remorse.”

She was silent a moment, thinking back. “Sanders always wondered about that battery….”

“Did he?” Chris said noncommittally. He had thought about telling her everything, but he didn’t think she would believe him. It would be, after all, obviously self-serving. He had to earn her trust now, and then perhaps he could tell her exactly what happened that night. But once again, he was grateful to Sanders Evans. He had planted a seed in Meara’s mind, a doubt.

Meara’s voice suddenly hardened. Questions had been plaguing her all night. “Michael Fielding? Who was he?”

“There was a Michael Fielding, a Canadian on a British destroyer. He was captured.”

“What happened to him?”

“I was told he died of wounds,” Chris said.

“You believed that?”

“I didn’t have any reason not to.” But he had. He knew the way German Intelligence operated. No loose ends. He hadn’t wanted to think about it, hadn’t wanted to believe a prisoner had died because of his resemblance to him.

She closed her eyes. “Did I ever know you?” Bewilderment was in the question.

“I think you knew me far better than anyone ever has.”

“That’s not at all, is it?” Meara said sadly.

His dark, impenetrable eyes studied her. “Maybe not,” he replied finally, enigmatically.

They were talking in even voices, normal tones, like two people who had met after an absence, catching up on each other. But both of Meara’s hands had to clasp her cup to keep them from shaking, and Chris was striding back and forth, his fingers flexing at his side. Electricity was palpable; it snaked across the room. Each seemed to be waiting for something as they probed and retreated, parried and retreated.

“What do you think he wants from me?” she said finally, returning to the subject of the meeting.

Chris shrugged. “I don’t think he will do anything openly violent. He’s worked too hard to get where he is. For whatever reason.”

“Then…?”

“He might try to hurt you through your daughter.”

“How?”

Chris shrugged. “Can you ask her not to see him?”

Meara stared at him hopelessly. “No, not without explaining everything.” Her voice died as she realized she was about to say too much.

He smiled tightly but did not probe any further. “She’s stubborn? Like her mother?”

“Yes,” Meara said in a barely audible voice. How could she explain her strained relationship with Lisa, how, when she didn’t understand it herself?

“Then we’ll have to protect her the best we can.”

Meara looked at him hopelessly. “How?”

“We have an ace Weimer doesn’t know about. Me. He has no idea I’m alive, that someone knows what happened that evening.” Chris paused. “Sanders never indicated to anyone that I might have survived?”

“No,” she said with certainty. She and Sanders had seen the explosion seconds after seeing Michael leave in the boat. “They searched for a body, but the explosion and fire were so fierce they weren’t surprised when…nothing was found.” Her voice shook a little as she remembered the aftermath, the teams of federal agents searching every part of the island, even the marshes.

“I’m sorry,” Chris said softly, seeing the pain on her face. “There was no other way.”

“There was always another way,” she said in a strangled voice.

“Perhaps, but I couldn’t see it then.”

One of Meara’s hands left the cup and rubbed her eyes, her face, as a long, deep sigh escaped her throat. Let the past go, she told herself. Think about today. About Lisa.

“Why?” she said suddenly.

“Why what?”

“Why are you so…concerned now? After all these years?”
Do you know about Lisa? Do you know she’s your daughter?
That was what she really wanted to ask, but couldn’t.

“Because I feel responsible for everything that happened,” he said simply.

“Nothing else?” she asked suspiciously.

“Once this is over,” he replied carefully, “I’ll leave and never contact you again. If that’s what you want.” He couldn’t help adding the last sentence.

She relaxed slightly, as much as she could when he was in the immediate vicinity. “What do we do now?”

Chris liked the “we.” He liked it very much. “I have a very good investigative agency I’ve used throughout the years. I’ll call and have Weimer followed, particularly when he’s with your daughter.”

“He won’t realize…?”

“Not with these people. Especially since he has no idea that we’re aware of him.”

“I feel so helpless,” she said. Everything seemed out of control.

Chris hesitated. “They’ll need to know something about Lisa.”

Meara looked at him suspiciously. Again, the thought flickered through her mind that this all might be only because he wanted to get close to Lisa, that he knew she was his daughter. She wished John Malcomb would get back to her. She wished she knew whom she could trust and whom she couldn’t.

“Meara. Trust me.” He was reading her mind, just as he’d always been able to. Damn him.

“I don’t know if I can,” she said, her heart aching with the truth of the statement. She wanted to trust him. She needed to. But twenty years was too long to harbor hurt and betrayal, not to be left with a deep residue of suspicion.

Frustrated, he looked down at her and felt that peculiar weakness he had always known with her, a crumbling of defenses, an overwhelming need to hold and love and protect. Her eyes were wide and hurt and confused, like a cornered animal, yet he remembered what she’d said last night about touching her. He couldn’t risk frightening her, sending her running away.