The Truth Seeker

  The same day Amy had disappeared, his father had been shot in the back out on the southern range of the ranch near the bluffs.

  After twenty years of searching he had finally accepted that Amy must have also died that day, but if she had instead fled and appeared sometime later in Chicago—he didn’t think she would have pulled the trigger, but she might have been with someone who had.

  If he could solve what had happened to Amy Ireland, maybe he could get a lead on who had killed his father.

  He had almost given up hope of ever finding a trace of her. He’d eliminated dozens of Amy Irelands over the years, but this one . . . the sense of hope was back. It fit. Amy had been a high-school photographer with a passion for what her camera could reveal. She’d had real talent even in her teens. Quinn could easily see her making it a future career.

  He had to know if this was the right Amy Ireland. And if it was, he had to be very careful not to send her running again. Practicing patience was not going to be easy.

  His partner, Marcus O’Malley, would have joined him if Quinn had alerted him to the hit on the name; he was that kind of friend. But Quinn hadn’t wanted to interrupt Marcus’s chance to spend time with his sister who was undergoing cancer treatment at Johns Hopkins and his new fiancée, Shari. Instead, Quinn had called an old friend.

  Quinn found Lincoln Beaumont waiting in the United Airlines’ business lounge. If he hadn’t known better, on first impression he would have assumed lawyer or investment banker, not retired U.S. Marshal and now private investigator. “Thanks for coming, Lincoln.” He tipped his cowboy hat to the lady with the retired marshal. “Ma’am.”

  “Emily Randall; I handle Lincoln’s research.” She was a nice-looking lady, businesslike in her handshake, feminine in her dress, and confident in her gaze. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Diamond.”

  “The pleasure’s mine,” Quinn replied with a smile. Lincoln had been right; she’d be perfect if it became necessary to have someone approach Amy.

  The smile directed at him showed curiosity. He was accustomed to it; he made no attempt to disguise the fact he was a misplaced man in the city. Why that should draw women was a phenomenon he accepted but didn’t really understand.

  It didn’t attract the attention of the one lady he wanted to notice him. No, he changed that. Lisa O’Malley noticed; she just found his interest uncomfortable to deal with and more often than not scowled rather than smiled when she saw him.

  He was determined to get Marcus’s sister to accept a dinner invitation on this trip through Chicago. She’d been ducking him long enough. He wasn’t after something profound; he just wanted to change her rather mixed reaction to him and replace it with a solid friendship. He visited Chicago on a regular basis; he wanted to be able to call Lisa when he was in town and have her actually be pleased to hear from him.

  Eating alone was a waste of time, so was spending his downtime at a hotel watching TV. He spent enough time with strangers. Lisa he knew, and she was the kind of friend he wanted: loyal, fun, and smart, with a stubborn streak he liked to ruffle. It was a bit like rubbing a cat’s fur the wrong way. She was cute when annoyed, and calling her ma’am always got a reaction. One thing was certain: Lisa’s life was never boring.

  He smiled as he thought of the excuses she was likely to throw up to the invitation to dinner and unfortunately misled Ms. Randall into assuming his smile was in response to hers. Before she could say something that would put them both in a fix, he calmly turned the conversation. “Tell me what you’ve found out about Amy Ireland.”

  Her hair smelled like smoke, her jeans were going to have to be bleached to remove the ground-in ash, and she’d managed to rub the back of her neck nearly raw with the sweat and heavy pressure of the fire coat. Miserable didn’t define it. Lisa paused to let Sidney out of his cage before heading to the shower. The ferret was a recent pet and one of her favorites; he scampered up her arm to push into her flyaway hair, and she sneezed. “Sorry. I’m covered in ash.” She lowered him to the floor and with her foot sent a small rubber ball rolling down the hallway. Sidney gave chase and leaped to stop it.

  Lisa glanced into her office as she headed to the shower and saw the answering machine blinking. Work would have paged . . . Jennifer. She abruptly changed course, hoping it was her sister.

  It was Jennifer, and the recorded message was three hours old. Regretting having not been home to take the call, Lisa picked up the cordless phone and punched in the hospital number, hoping she wouldn’t have the bad timing of catching Jen when she was sleeping. Jennifer’s fiancé Tom Peterson answered, reassured her that Jennifer was awake, and passed the phone over.

  “Thanks for calling back.” Jen’s voice was soft and Lisa had to press the phone close to hear, but compared to some days when the pain and the fatigue slurred her words, Jen sounded good.

  “Hey, it’s my pleasure. I had to work this afternoon or I would have called earlier. Are you having a good day?”

  “I’m running a fever.”

  “That’s excellent!” Lisa sank into the nearby chair, overjoyed. Jennifer’s immune system, overrun by the cancer, was finally getting a foothold to fight back.

  “I’m going to lick this yet.” The optimism in Jennifer’s voice throughout the weeks of hospitalization hadn’t wavered, even though it was there in spite of the facts.

  “You better believe it.” The cancer was around Jen’s spine and had touched her liver. The odds were severely against her, everyone in the O’Malley family knew that, but they also knew Jennifer had to win this fight. It was incomprehensible to imagine life without her.

  Lisa rubbed her eyes and winced as the smoke residue made them burn. Staying positive was mandatory; yet it came at a cost. There was so much fear inside—she had seen too many people die. It was her profession to deal with death, but this situation was going to crumble her defenses and shatter her heart. Jennifer had to get well, she just had to.

  The cancer was doing permanent damage each day it progressed, and the toxic radiation and chemotherapy being used to battle the disease were inflicting their own lasting damage. Lisa wished she had chosen pediatrics as her medical specialty like Jennifer had instead of forensic pathology so she could be less aware of the painful truth—death was coming. Unless the process could be checked, she was going to lose her best friend.

  It was a struggle to force her voice to stay light. “Tom’s there, so I gather you’re enjoying the evening.”

  “You better believe it. Mushy movie, good-looking date . . . ”

  Lisa had to laugh. “Being engaged suits you.”

  “The wedding won’t come soon enough.”

  Jennifer had set her heart on getting married October 22; it was looming a short five weeks away. The family had already caucused with Tom: If the O’Malleys had to arrive en masse in Baltimore and have the wedding at the hospital, they would make it happen for her. “Have Marcus and Shari arrived?”

  “They got in this afternoon. Shari is a sweetheart.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “So what were you working on this afternoon?”

  “Follow-up on a fire case from last week. I dragged Jack along with me out to the scene and spent two hours climbing around in a burned-out house. It was hot, heavy, dirty work. I haven’t been this beat in ages.”

  The doorbell rang. Lisa turned; she wasn’t expecting anyone. She was tempted to ignore the doorbell, but her car was in the drive making it obvious she was home. Which local kid had she not bought candy from for the junior high band trip? She’d seen Tony and Mandy yesterday. Chad.

  She reached for the spare stash of cash she kept tucked inside the baby panda cookie jar on her desk along with an assortment of hard candy and slipped the money into her pocket. The problem was that she always said yes, and all the kids knew it. And to miss someone— She’d long ago determined not to let that happen. She moved through the house, taking the phone with her.

  “Kate brought me the Chicago Tribune an
d the Sun Times. Was it the Paretti family fire? I saw the write-up in the metro section.”

  “No, thank goodness.” The Paretti family had died in a house fire on Monday. “This one was an old farmhouse out in Villa Grove. It looks like a dropped cigar started it.” Lisa looked through the front door’s security hole and flinched. “Jen, I need to call you back. Quinn’s here.”

  “Is he?”

  “He’s supposed to be in Montana,” Lisa said darkly. “And I’ve got enough ash in my hair it looks gray,” she muttered, releasing the chain and turning the dead bolt, “while he looks his normal, elegant self.” Her brief glance had been enough to confirm that. In the habit of cops, he was standing three feet back from the door and off to the side while he waited for her to answer the summons, his thumbs resting comfortably at the pockets of his jeans, his hands halfway to his concealed weapon.

  He was tall and lean and fit and would probably live to be a centurian. From the boots to the cowboy hat to the way he walked through a crowd, he was a man who knew where he came from and was comfortable with it. She distrusted the politeness and niceness. He was Marcus’s partner, and the stories she had heard about what the two of them had pulled off over the years . . . Appearances were deceiving with this man.

  His black hair was often smashed by the cowboy hat, and the deep lines around his blue eyes showed his habit of spending his days outdoors without sunglasses. It should have made him look ruffled; instead it just added a relaxed tone to the already strong sense of presence.

  She didn’t like the fact that at five foot four she had to tilt her head to look up at him. His presence intimidated witnesses he was interviewing, and he worked so hard to change that perception when he was off duty that it unfortunately just made her more aware of it.

  Quinn worked all over the country with her brother, and while she warily tried to keep track of him, he still caught her off guard at the most inconvenient moments.

  “He’s gorgeous enough to make your toes curl, and he’s one fine date.”

  “You should know.” Jennifer had dated Quinn two years ago. Last year Quinn had dated her sister Kate. Lisa had no intention of being number three. Not that she minded losing out to her sisters, but it was the principle of the thing.

  There was something humiliating at being thought of as third. And any guy who dared ask out three sisters in the same family either had a lot of guts or a lot of nerve—in Quinn’s case, both. She thought her answer to his last dinner invitation had been creative, eloquent, and final. She’d sent him a petrified squid.

  “Smile at him. And call me back.”

  “Maybe,” Lisa replied to her sister’s laugh. She hung up and forced herself to open the door.

  “Hello, Lisa.” She looked confused to see him; Quinn considered it an improvement over annoyed. A wave of cold air washed out from the house as she stood in the doorway, one hand gripping the door frame and the other resting on the screen door handle. “I was in town, I thought I’d say hi,” he elaborated.

  “Oh. Hi.”

  He tipped his hat, the brim rough against his fingers, and silently laughed as he scanned and enjoyed. Freckles. Baby blue eyes. Hair so fine and thick the sun set its color and the wind defined its form, much to her dismay and his pleasure. Cut short to try and tame it, her hair now curled and bobbed as she moved.

  Her voice held a touch of the full world—Quebec French, South American Spanish—the blend and tone of her voice changed with each passing year as she added traces of the people she met. She’d been in Venezuela six months ago and some inaccessible part of Africa a few months before that, absorbing the local culture and fitting herself in. He loved listening to her voice. He wanted to add to it a touch of Montana drawl. “Can I come in?”

  She flushed and stepped back. “Yes. Sorry. I just got home.”

  Bad timing on his part. Black ash streaked her left forearm, her faded yellow shirt was sweat stained, and her jeans were grimy at the knees. There was a marked tiredness to her polite smile, and something had scraped her right cheek.

  As she turned his eyes narrowed at the blisters he saw on the back of her neck. A fire scene, and for Lisa that meant victims. He couldn’t get a break even when he most needed one. She was obviously not in the mood for company tonight, even though she probably needed that distraction more on this evening than most others.

  “I was just talking with Jen.” She lifted the phone she carried, looking awkward. “Let me hang this up. I’ll just be a minute.”

  “Of course,” he said gently. He’d seen Lisa’s sister last week; the reality of that call explained part of the droop to Lisa’s shoulders. The situation was a source of stress to everyone, but for Lisa . . . Quinn knew how close the two of them were. And with Lisa being a doctor—the placating words others said in reassurance would not help her. She understood how much the hopeful language covered grim reality.

  He’d do what he could to get that stress to drain away tonight, even if he had to resort to badgering her into getting angry and letting that tension loose against him. It was one of the odd times where ruffling her into reacting would be the right thing to do.

  She turned toward the hallway, and he shot out a hand to grab her arm. “Hold it, you’ve got more company.” The animal nearly tripped her as it darted between her socked feet. It scampered across his boots and returned, intrigued by the smell.

  Quinn scooped him up in a worn, callous hand and held him at eye level, he and the animal showing equal curiosity. His smile was easy and amused. “One of your more interesting choices.” He settled the animal on his shoulder and it reached up to explore his hat. “Take a shower, Lisa, clean that scrape, and I’ll take you out somewhere nice to eat.”

  “I’ve got plans for tonight.”

  “I know. With me.” He didn’t ask her to extend the lie by trying to come up with what the plans were. She was a lousy liar. And since Marcus—the oldest and thus guardian of the O’Malley clan—was currently half a continent away, he was stepping in by proxy to make happen what was best for her. She needed a relaxing evening out. She started to protest and he interrupted. “Marcus and Shari have been talking about wedding plans; I thought you’d be interested.”

  She shot him a quelling look, annoyed that he knew details before she did, but reluctantly gave in. “Drinks are in the refrigerator; help yourself.”

  He turned that way, lowering the ferret to the floor, knowing better than to stay put and give Lisa a chance to get her bearings. When she dug in her heels she was a formidable opponent. “Has she fed you yet, buddy?”

  Two

  Lisa rested her head against the shower door and let the cold water take the sting out of the sunburn on the back of her neck. How did she get into situations like this?

  She had been planning a quiet night at home with maybe a record on the stereo and her topographical maps of the Smoky Mountains spread out on the table to plot her next vacation trek. She’d just bought the vinyl thirty-three with “Rainy Night in Georgia,” “Worried Man Blues,” and “Kentucky Rain” for a quarter at a garage sale yesterday morning, and it was the type of music that suited her mood for tonight; she’d enjoy the vacation planning. Instead of those evening plans—she wasn’t sure what she had ended up with, other than the frustrating realization that she was being nicely manipulated.

  Quinn was comfortable enough to just drop by whenever he was in town, and she had no idea why he continued to do it. It wasn’t like she had sparkling, interesting conversation to offer. She got positively tongue-tied around the man. He had a free evening, and he wasn’t the type of guy to spend it alone. She knew better than to think of it as a date.

  It fit Quinn’s pattern. Even his dates with Jennifer and Kate had been more focused on having someone to spend his time with than anything serious, the mood more laughter and teasing than romantic. But Lisa didn’t fit that same mold as her sisters, and she knew she’d disappoint Quinn if he expected the same thing from her.

  It w
ent with her miserable track record that Quinn had arrived while she looked like a charcoal block. She wasn’t vain about her looks; she was the middle of the O’Malley sisters in that regard and comfortable there—classical beauty was Rachel’s, sultry was Kate’s, Jennifer didn’t count as she’d be a petite size six for her wedding—but it would be nice if Quinn didn’t have a knack for catching her at her worst.

  She flinched under the spray as a blister broke. The sun had done a number on her today, and Jack’s air-conditioning was out in his car; the ninety-two-degree heat had wilted her. If Quinn felt the heat of the day, it wasn’t obvious. His body simply absorbed the sun and turned his skin a deeper, darker tan.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t like Quinn. Her brother’s partner was . . . an interesting man. Tenacious in a quiet way, he had to be in his midforties and it showed in his demeanor. She’d rarely seen him be anything but relaxed, calm, and professional. But he tracked down fugitives and worked cases with a single-minded focus she rarely saw even among the cops with whom she worked.

  She didn’t understand the man. He owned a prosperous ranch in Montana, was obviously more comfortable on the open land than in the city, and yet he worked as a U.S. Marshal traveling the country. Whatever his history was, it was tightly held.

  She knew herself very well—she just didn’t want to go out with a guy where getting her heart broken was inevitable. She didn’t know how to play it casual. If Quinn hadn’t settled down at forty, he wasn’t going to. She could get hurt letting herself get close to him.

  If Kate and Jennifer weren’t good enough to get him thinking about settling down, there was no way she would be. And she didn’t have the ability to let people come and go from her life and not record the scars—too many people had already left.

  The water slowly began to ease the ache in her muscles. She shampooed her hair for the second time.