Star Bright

  Feeling slightly better, Rainie got up to fix herself something to eat. Her habitual comfort foods, tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, sounded good. When her meal was ready, she sat on the living room sofa. Thomas joined her on the cushion to beg for morsels of cheese. Rainie shared her food with him, then settled back to watch the news. For about ten minutes, the commentator focused on world affairs. Then Rainie saw her own face flash onto the screen. She’d grown accustomed to that over the last few weeks, but it still never failed to startle her.

  “What really happened to Lorraina Danning?” the news anchor asked the audience. “Did she accidentally fall overboard, or was she pushed? It’s a mystery that the police have been unable to solve.” Rainie’s picture vanished from the screen, and the camera zoomed in on a live news conference. Detective Raymond Lord, with the King County police, stood at a podium. Expression solemn, blue eyes piercing, he announced that the FBI was officially taking over the investigation. The King County task force would, however, continue to lend support, assisting FBI agents in whatever way it could. Rainie’s face came back on the screen as the commentator resumed her narrative. No body, no clues. Lorraina Danning had disappeared without a trace.

  Staring at her own likeness, Rainie touched her cheek with a trembling fingertip. The picture had been taken before she’d gotten the scar, and she’d lost some weight as well. The sleek brown hair that had once been her trademark was now a wildly curly mane, as blond as it was brown. She no longer wore expensive clothing, either. Overall, she looked completely different. Or so she hoped. But what if Parker Harrigan was watching this newscast and recognized her?

  Composure shattered, Rainie went to the kitchen to open a bottle of merlot. It was becoming a habit, she realized. Her nerves were shot, and she was self-medicating. Not a good thing. Problem was, she couldn’t afford to go another night without sleep, and the wine would make her drowsy.

  The following day, Parker got busy in the morning and couldn’t find time to check out Anna’s references. When things slowed down shortly after lunch, he decided to do his detective work at the house. After seeing Anna several more times, he felt a little foolish for his suspicions. No one with big, guileless eyes like hers could be a practiced liar. That said, her behavior continued to raise warning flags in his mind. She was still as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs whenever he entered the office.

  Parker’s first call was to Pepperdine University. He was transferred from the main offices to those of Seaver College, a subsidiary school under the Pepperdine umbrella that apparently offered on-campus undergraduate degrees in accounting. A woman named Anna Pritchard had indeed taken that coursework and received her degree from Seaver in 1981. Wrong person. The Anna working in his stable office was only twenty-five. Parker asked the woman on the phone to please check her records for another Anna Pritchard who’d probably gotten her accounting degree in 2004 or 2005. Dead end. No one named Anna Pritchard had earned an accounting degree at Seaver College since 1981.

  As Parker ended the call, his blood began to heat with anger. Next he called one of Anna’s former employers. Some little old lady in Orange County answered the phone. She’d never heard of the company Parker named. He got off the phone and turned to his computer. A Google search for the company brought up no matches. Parker double-checked the name of the place and typed it in again. Still nothing. If the company existed, it wasn’t listed in this search engine.

  Before jumping to conclusions, Parker grimly placed several more phone calls. Once, he got a small child on the phone. The next time, he got a grease monkey at some gas station in Chico. At least the lady seemed to know her California area codes. So, what did that tell him, other than that she’d probably once lived in that state? It sure as hell told him nothing more—except that Anna Pritchard had lied on her application.

  Parker was pissed. He seldom lied to anyone, and he expected the same courtesy in return. He tried to calm down as he headed for the stable, but it was an effort in futility. He’d trusted her. When he remembered their conversation the day before yesterday, humiliation seared his cheeks. She’d made him look stupid. Correction, he’d made himself look stupid by allowing himself to be taken in by those innocent hazel eyes.

  Anna was standing at a file cabinet, hands full of papers, when he burst into the office. He made a conscious effort not to slam the door closed behind him.

  “We need to talk,” he bit out.

  Her face drained of color. “About?”

  “Sit down.”

  She put the papers on top of the cabinet and went to sit in her chair. Today she wore a fake suede skirt that had seen better times and a sleeveless blouse with one button that didn’t quite match the rest. As Parker advanced on her, he noticed that her face grew paler by the second and that the cherry surface of her work area gleamed with fresh polish.

  “I don’t appreciate being lied to,” he said evenly.

  Agitated and needing something to do with his hands, he reached for the granite paperweight on the blotter. At his movement, she flinched and jerked up her right arm to shield her face, clearly convinced he meant to strike her. Whoa. Parker was angry. He’d be the first to admit that. But he’d never hit a woman in his life, not even his little sister when they’d fought as kids.

  Fingertips still resting on the paperweight, Parker studied his frightened bookkeeper with mounting bewilderment. She had a small scar on her left cheek. It still bore the pink-ness of a recent wound. Now that he examined it more closely, a very unpleasant possibility sprang to his mind.

  In his younger years, he had occasionally gotten into honky-tonk brawls, and he’d seen his share of cheeks laid open by the force of a man’s fist. Had some jerk struck her? The question had no sooner entered Parker’s mind than he knew the answer. Everything about her suddenly added up—her fear of him, the countless lies on her job application, the way she shrank from his most casual touch. She had recently been involved in an abusive relationship. He saw it in her eyes—a trapped, wary look that made his heart catch. Now she was on the run, trying to stay one step ahead of the bastard who’d roughed her up. If he was wrong, he’d eat his hat for supper and his boots for dessert.

  This added a totally new wrinkle. He couldn’t very well blame a woman for lying to him about her references if she was trying to escape an abusive bully.

  The anger that had made him see red a moment ago eased from Parker’s body. Turning, he rested his hips against the edge of his desk and blocked her escape with his outstretched legs, angling them across the center aisle between the two workstations. He folded his arms loosely over his chest, hoping his relaxed posture might reassure her a little.

  “You never attended Pepperdine University or Seaver College,” he said without preamble. “The places of employment you listed don’t even exist.”

  She pushed up from the chair. Parker was surprised that she could stand. Her legs were shaking like aspen leaves in a brisk breeze. She went to the file cabinet to collect her purse and then turned toward him, holding the bag to her midriff as if it were a shield. Without a word, she tried to step over his crossed boots. No way was Parker going to let her leave, not until he had some answers. He thrust out a hand to grasp her arm.

  “Oh, no, you don’t. I hired you in good faith. I offered you an extremely attractive employment package. The very least you owe me is some sort of explanation.”

  He could feel her arm muscles quivering under the press of his fingertips. He knew she was terrified. Yet still she said nothing.

  “Well,” he said softly, “if you’ve got no explanations to offer, let me venture a couple of guesses. I think some asshole beat the ever-lovin’ hell out of you, and not that long ago, judgin’ by that scar on your cheek.” Her body jerked as if he’d slapped her. “My second guess is that your name isn’t really Anna Pritchard. How am I doin’ so far?”

  Chapter Four

  Rainie felt as if she might faint. This couldn’t be
happening. She had anticipated that Harrigan might check her references, but she’d never in her wildest dreams thought he might look beyond the lies and come up with a hypothesis so close to the truth. She remembered the time he’d gazed into her eyes and given her the uncomfortable feeling that he could read far more than she wanted to reveal. Now she realized that it had been more than just a feeling.

  He knew the truth—or a very close facsimile thereof. After all she’d been through to get safely away from Peter, she couldn’t allow her cover to be blown her second day on the job. Other people had stuck their necks out on her behalf, not only Margaret and Janet, but also Stan, a computer guru they’d chummed around with in college. Though Stan had been paid to get Rainie a fake birth certificate and passport, he hadn’t provided his services solely for the money. The penalties for breaching government firewalls and altering records were stiff. Stan could have robbed a bank for a much larger take and probably received about the same punishment if he were caught. No, he had helped Rainie out of friendship, a princely gesture that had momentarily restored her faith in the opposite sex.

  Now, cornered in the office by Parker Harrigan, Rainie had no well of faith left to tap, not when it came to men. There was no question in her mind that he would turn her in, and when he did, she and her friends would be in big trouble. The search for Lorraina Danning had cost a fortune in taxpayers’ money. The authorities would not be happy if they discovered that her disappearance had been staged.

  Digging deep for composure, Rainie looked directly into Harrigan’s eyes. “What on earth makes you think I lied about my name?” She asked the question with an incredulous laugh that she hoped was convincing. “I have a birth certificate, passport, and driver’s license to prove who I am.”

  “Identification can be faked.”

  “Not anymore,” she countered. “All government records are computerized and protected by impenetrable firewalls.”

  “Difficult to breach, perhaps, but not impossible.” He smiled slightly. “Nothin’ is impossible for a talented hacker. For a price, fake identification can still be acquired.”

  “I—” She gulped to steady her voice. “Can I just go, please?”

  “Somehow that doesn’t strike me as bein’ equitable.” His lips shimmered in the overhead fluorescent lights as he spoke. “You come into my world, you make me feel like an idiot for trustin’ you, and now you wanna waltz away without one word of explanation?”

  That was precisely what she wanted. Why couldn’t he just let it go at that?

  Only the grip of his fingers on her arm told her that he had no such intention. He wasn’t hurting her—yet. But she could feel the suppressed strength that he might unleash on her at any moment.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked shakily.

  “The truth.”

  That was the one thing Rainie couldn’t give him. Too many people, including herself, would be hurt.

  The tremors Parker felt coursing through Anna Pritchard’s body made him feel ashamed of himself. He’d wrestled with foals bigger than she was. A physical confrontation between them could have only one possible conclusion. But did that give him the right to push her around? He had a very bad feeling that she’d already been intimidated enough times in her young life.

  When she tried to jerk free of his grasp again, he didn’t have the heart to hold on. What kind of a man bullied someone her size? Even worse, what kind of a man had struck her with enough force to lay open her cheek? She looked so scared that he doubted she could spit if he yelled, “Fire.”

  After releasing her, Parker stepped over to the closed door and leaned his shoulder against the wood, still effectively barring her escape, only now without touching her. He needed to reassure her somehow. Problem was, he had no idea where to start.

  “You know, Anna, I’m kind of peculiar in some ways.”

  Her eyes went wide. He went back over what he’d said and wished he could recall the statement. The word peculiar was clearly equivalent to crazy in her mind.

  “What I mean is, I don’t always march to the same drum-beat as everyone else,” he amended.

  That didn’t work, either.

  “All right, scratch all that.” Damn it. Just like his brothers Clint and Zach, he’d inherited his father’s amazing talent for always saying the wrong thing. “What I’m tryin’ to say is . . .” What the hell was he trying to say? He’d never been good at beating around the bush. He was a direct man who shot from the hip. Whenever he tried to soften his delivery, he screwed it up. “Let me just say it without frills. Okay? If you lied because you’re tryin’ to escape an abusive relationship, I won’t hold it against you. A lot of employers might, but I won’t.”

  Taking measure of his audience, Parker decided that she still looked like a rabbit searching for a bolt-hole.

  “In fact,” he went on, “I admire your courage if that’s the case. A lot of women don’t have the guts to leave. It’s a pretty scary proposition to turn your back on everything familiar. No friends, no job, no home. That takes a lot of backbone.”

  His mouth had gone as dry as stale bread. His little sister, Sam, had gotten the hell beaten out of her a few times, and she’d been afraid to tell Parker for fear he’d end up in jail for killing her first husband. Major possibility. But how could he impart his feelings about abusive men to this frightened girl?

  Yes, in many ways she was only a girl, twenty-five and full-grown, but still far from being worldly. He could see the shattered innocence and pain of betrayal in her eyes. For a few hours, he’d talked himself into thinking her innocence was all an act, but no man with good sense could look at her and hold to that judgment. She was everything he’d perceived her to be during the job interview—young, uncertain, and more than a little skittish. She put him in mind of a pretty little filly he’d once purchased at auction that had been mistreated so badly it had taken her weeks to accept his touch. Befriending her had required more patience than Parker had known he had.

  “I have no respect for men who beat women,” he continued. “Or animals, for that matter. My father raised me better. If you’re runnin’ from someone like that, I don’t care what your real name is. I don’t care where you’re from. I don’t care if you really have an undergraduate degree in accountin’. I’ll keep you on the payroll, trustin’ in your ability to do the job. All I’ll ask of you is an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.”

  She still stood there as if her boots had been glued to the floor.

  Parker had only one more bullet to fire. “I won’t rat you out, if that’s your worry. I swear it.”

  Still trembling from head to toe, she struggled to speak, her slender throat working as if she were trying to swallow a golf ball. “I’m sorry about the falsehoods on my application. I don’t usually lie. Maybe that’s why I’m not very good at it. But now I just need to go.”

  Parker didn’t have it in him to block her way any longer. Intimidating women wasn’t high on his list of favorite things to do. As he stepped aside to let her pass, he pitched his voice low and said, “I don’t know where you’ve been in your life, Anna. I don’t know what’s happened to you. But I can guarantee you one thing: You can trust me. The job will be waitin’ for you if you change your mind. The next employer who checks out your references may not be as understandin’. You need to think about that.”

  She flashed him a look that nearly broke his heart, one filled with a hopeless yearning to trust that had been battered so badly it had lost its power to sway her. “Thanks.”

  It was all she said before she grabbed the doorknob, gave it a frantic twist, and rushed from the office. Parker didn’t go after her. He had already frightened her enough.

  Silence filled the room after she left. He recalled his entrance a few minutes earlier. He’d been mad enough to chew nails and spit out screws. Was it any wonder she’d been afraid he meant to strike her when he reached for the paperweight? Damn it. He wished he could give himself a swift kick
in the ass.

  She’d sought sanctuary here, and he’d driven her away with his penchant for the truth and only the truth. Sometimes people had no choice but to lie.

  Parker stepped over to the window to watch her race to her rusted-out excuse for an automobile. When he glanced beneath the undercarriage, he saw a dark splotch, undeniable evidence that the Mazda was leaking oil. Shit. He felt like such a jerk. The three hundred bucks that he had advanced her yesterday would be gone in a blink if that car broke down.

  Almost as if he’d spoken the thought out loud, she stopped before getting into the vehicle. After hesitating for a moment, she set her purse on the hood, fished deep, and came up with her wallet. No, damn it, no. But sure as rain was wet, she retraced her steps to the personnel door.

  When Parker lost sight of her again, he pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He hadn’t felt this ashamed of himself in years. When she knocked lightly, he swallowed hard, turned, and said, “Come in.”

  The door eased open. She stood on the threshold, looking like an impoverished waif in the grab-bag clothing and battered riding boots. She held a wad of money in one fist, her wallet in the other. “I forgot,” she pushed out. “I can’t accept an advance on wages that I won’t ever earn.”

  Parker’s eyes burned as he stared at her. “Just keep it,” he whispered.

  “No.” She stepped over to his desk. “I may be a liar, Mr. Harrigan, but I’m not a thief.”

  After dropping the money on the blotter, she left again. Parker stared at the closed door, unable to move. He felt awful. He went to the window to watch her leave. He expected her to speed away. Instead, she folded her slender arms over the steering wheel and rested her head on the backs of her hands.

  When several minutes passed and she still hadn’t left, Parker got a lump in his throat that he couldn’t swallow away. No question about it, he needed a serious attitude adjustment. Who’d elected him to be her judge and jury? He’d had it easy all his life—a great father, a tight-knit family, and unfailing support. The only time he’d ever gotten the snot beat out of him had been at a honky-tonk, when he’d had too much to drink and been pushed into a fight. He had no idea how it felt to be helpless and afraid, day in and day out, or how frightening it was to be on the run. He’d also never needed a job so desperately that he would have lied to get one.