Danger In The Shadows

  “Think you’ll keep this one?”

  She blushed as she accepted the white-red rose. “Yes, I will. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” As she looked flustered, he got practical. “What’s for dinner?”

  She laughed. “Italian. But I warn you, I’m cooking so it could be an interesting meal. Come on back to the kitchen.”

  He liked her dress. She liked bold colors. He had noticed that the first evening they met, seen it in the statement she made with her office, and now in the dress she wore tonight. Solid blue on top, to a four-inch red sash at her waist, into a flowing skirt that flared with multiple colors. She was in high heels again—to put her closer to his height?

  Adam looked around the house as he followed her, finding it an intriguing mixture of European and early American furniture—walnut and redwood dominating. The home was light and airy, the profusion of plants and flowers making the home a warm living place. The paintings on the wall were bold in color and placed to attract the maximum attention. Family pictures and snapshots were displayed on polished tables. This was the home of a family who had wealth and had had it for many generations.

  It was also clear they lived here. In the den there was mail on the end table and a suit jacket tossed on the couch and a sprawling stack of magazines on the coffee table.

  The kitchen was spacious and smelled of olive oil and browning garlic. The cutting board was covered with freshly diced tomatoes, peppers, and olives. She was fixing a pasta dish, and the smells were heavenly. She moved to check the tenderness of the simmering pasta.

  “Help yourself to something to drink. Sodas are on the bottom shelf. That fruit juice stuff Dave likes is somewhere in back.”

  “What are you having?”

  She reached over to stir the sauce simmering on a back burner. “Ice water.” She grinned. “At least for now.”

  She wasn’t in a hurry in her own house; her movements were fluid, graceful, and relaxed. Charming.

  She didn’t mind that the meal wasn’t ready when he arrived. She seemed intent on having a relaxing evening with him, and Adam couldn’t find the words to express his gratitude. He had been afraid the evening would be stiff and formal and touched with the unfortunate history of their first two meetings. She seemed determined not to let that happen.

  He slipped off his suit jacket and draped it over one of the kitchen chairs. “Can I do the salad?”

  “Sure. Oh, and find us some music—there is a radio tucked by the bread maker.”

  The radio was already tuned to a jazz station.

  “That’s Dave’s preference. See if you can find some country.”

  Adam tuned in to a station he liked.

  “Thanks.”

  There were breadsticks ready to go in the oven and fresh-grated Parmesan cheese for the pasta already prepared.

  Adam cleared a section of countertop and took an interested look over the salad options she had set out on the counter. He liked to cook when it was going to be for more than just one. When it was just him, he didn’t bother.

  Sara leaned past him to retrieve some fresh oregano.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  She popped an olive in her mouth. “Sure.”

  “Why the invitation to come here instead of somewhere public?”

  “You would have seen a different me in a restaurant. As you seemed to be determined for us to spend a couple hours together, I thought it was best that you not see the wrapper but the real me.”

  “The security?”

  “Yes. But also the fact I would be sitting there exposed. That knowledge sets me on edge. I don’t have the security for the fun of it.”

  Adam considered what she had said. “Will you tell me someday why you need the security?”

  Sara momentarily stopped moving. “I don’t know. There are only about a dozen people in the world who know all the details, another couple dozen who know bits and pieces.”

  “That’s not many people.”

  “It’s been going on for twenty-five years, Adam,” she said simply. “Security is part of who I am and how I live. It’s either private or professional security, depending on my father’s job at any point in time, but it’s always there. You’re going to have a tough transition to learn what that means. To you, the public spotlight is your career; for me, staying out of the public spotlight is an absolute necessity for staying alive.”

  Adam absorbed that statement with some shock. Twenty-five years was practically her entire lifetime.

  “Sara, can you get this tie straight? I swear you bought this particular one deliberately.” Dave interrupted them, coming into the kitchen, dressed for a night out.

  Sara smiled as she wiped her hands. “You look quite elegant in black tie.”

  “Stuff it, squirt, and just fix the blasted thing. Next time you send ballet tickets to my girlfriend, I’m going to throttle you myself.” Dave held still as she fixed his tie. “Hello, Adam.”

  Adam grinned. “Hello, Dave.”

  Sara patted Dave’s chest. “There. You’re all set.”

  “Thank you. I think. What’s the password for tonight?”

  “Chili peppers.”

  “Got it. Security is hot in zones four, seven, and ten in the house and all the grounds. Travis is principal for the night.” Dave kissed her cheek. “Be good. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  Sara laughed and pushed him toward the doorway. “Out. Or you’re going to be late picking up Linda.”

  He glanced at the clock and grabbed his keys. “You’re right. And she absolutely hates that. Night, you two.”

  “Would you like to eat in here or the more formal dining room?” Sara asked as her brother left.

  “The difference being?”

  “The formal dining room is the white tablecloth, candlelight, china, et cetera.”

  Adam leaned against the kitchen counter and grinned. “And here?”

  She shrugged, grinning back. “It’s comfortable.”

  “With you, I think I prefer comfortable.”

  She gestured toward the cabinet to his right. “Plates are there.”

  The phone rang. She reached around and snagged a cordless phone from the counter. “This is Sara.”

  Her back stiffened and she straightened, her smile disappearing. “Hello, Father.”

  Adam was startled by the tone in her voice. It had turned cool and formal. Her father? It was obvious as the minutes passed that what she was listening to was not pleasant. She spoke few words, just listened. Her accent caught his attention. He had heard it before and not made the connection. The phone call ended and her jaw was tense. It was a moment before she set down the phone.

  Adam hesitated before he said anything. “You’re British?”

  “I hold dual British-American citizenship,” she replied, lost in thought.

  She shook her head slightly and gestured toward the kitchen table. She put the breadsticks into the oven and set the timer. “Let’s eat. The bread will be done when we’re ready for the pasta.”

  Adam didn’t push the subject.

  The salad was eaten quietly.

  They put the pasta together over the stove, passing plates back and forth. Adam bumped her shoulder as they moved toward the table. “Sorry.”

  She looked up, and the distant look in her eyes dropped away. Okay, maybe his move had not been that subtle.

  “Adam, you’re as bad as Dave.” She slid onto her seat. “Sorry. My father raised some subjects I would have rather dealt with tomorrow.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She smiled. “So am I. It interrupted what was becoming a nice evening.”

  “Sara.”

  She met his eyes.

  Adam smiled. “Enjoy your meal. It’s still going to be an enjoyable evening.”

  Her look was one of amusement. “Yes, I think it will be.”

  “The pasta’s good.” He was surprised to see a slight blush form as she accepted the compliment.
So she didn’t cook for many men besides her brother. He would be lying to say that fact didn’t please him.

  “Tell me how you got into writing children’s books,” he asked, moving the conversation to a subject he knew she was comfortable with.

  Sara choked on her water.

  Adam came around the table to help her as she struggled to get her breath back. “Okay?”

  She nodded, tears still wet in her eyes. “Sorry.”

  “Sit back easy and take a few deep breaths.”

  She finally did so and Adam felt some of his panic fade.

  “Your question surprised me. I apologize.”

  She hides behind formality when she gets uncomfortable. The realization made him want to smile. If they had been beyond a first date he would have reached over and stroked her chestnut hair back from her face, told her to relax. Instead, he took his seat and watched her with a slightly raised eyebrow, waiting for her to explain.

  “When my parents divorced, my mother married Frank Victor, and we went to live in Texas. Frank was the one who taught me to draw.” She hesitated. “I had been telling stories all my life, putting the two talents together seemed a natural fit. My first book as Sara Walsh was published when I was twenty.”

  “That wasn’t Frank on the phone.”

  “No. Frank died when I was fourteen. That was my father, William Richman.”

  Her face showed so much tension when she thought about her father. He could never imagine feeling that way about his dad. “Was the divorce bitter?”

  “On the contrary. My parents were so polite about the thing, it was barely even mentioned in the papers. One day we were in London and the next we were in Texas.”

  Adam tried to put together the pieces she had told him. Sara’s family had been living in London when her parents divorced. She and her mother had returned to the United States. A couple whose divorce would be worth a journalist’s time and a newspaper’s space…

  “Your father still lives in London?”

  “He’s still there.”

  Dave. That was the key. Adam remembered now. In the elevator. When Sara had whispered that what she had wanted most for her eighth birthday was not the horse Golden Glory but her brother back… “Dave didn’t come back to the States with you and your mom, did he?” Adam asked quietly. “He stayed with your father.”

  “He stayed with my father.”

  The pain had to be over twenty years old, and yet it still looked so raw in her eyes.

  “I made a cheesecake for dessert. Let’s take it into the living room.”

  Adam rose politely when she did, accepting the coffee and dessert she offered him.

  William Richman was Sara’s father. For some reason the name was familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

  The living room was a beautiful room, an extension of the rest of the house in its formal yet livable decor, the white carpet contrasting with gleaming polished wood. The bookcases were filled with mysteries and suspense novels; two books with bookmarks were stacked on the end table. Sara sank down on one end of the sofa, and Adam chose a comfortable chair across from her.

  Richman. Dave’s last name. Her mother had then married Frank Victor. So how had Sara’s last name become Walsh? Now that was an interesting puzzle. Had it ever been formally changed, or for security reasons had everything simply been changed overnight to Walsh? Adam froze.

  “Sara, you’ve never been married have you?” He didn’t know a polite way to ask the question.

  He was grateful she looked puzzled and not offended. “No.”

  “Your last name is Walsh. I was trying to figure out how that transpired.”

  He was getting used to her hesitations. It was as if she were mentally censoring what she said. “After Frank died, Mom married for a third time. I was adopted by Peter Walsh when I was sixteen.”

  “You don’t sound happy about that.”

  “It pleased my mother,” Sara replied, leaving it at that.

  His life had been one of consistency and steadiness; hers sounded like a life being shuffled from pillar to post. Different countries. Displaced siblings. Frank’s death—she spoke of him with great fondness. Yet a third home before she was eighteen. He couldn’t even imagine the toll that had taken on her as a child.

  He gestured to the pictures above the fireplace mantle. “May I?”

  “Feel free.” Sara continued to sip her coffee as she sat curled up on the couch, having slipped off her shoes.

  Adam got up and studied the pictures. They were informal shots, most of them pictures of her and Dave taken in the last few years. Sara was laughing at her brother in most of them. There was one of them on skis, snow flying up toward the camera as they both turned to an abrupt halt at the same instant. A second picture showed them apparently taking part in a game of touch football, for Sara had the football poised ready to throw as her brother rushed her—the picture had been taken an instant before they would have made contact. One that held his attention for some time was of a dusty, tired, sun-browned Sara wearing chaps, work gloves, boots, and riding a beautiful mare. Her brother rode a quarter horse. It didn’t look like a pleasure shot; the two of them gave the impression of coming back from a hard day’s work.

  Adam moved on. This picture had to be Sara and her mom. “What was your mom’s name?” Adam asked softly, already sensing what Sara had not told him directly, that her mother had passed away sometime in the past.

  “Michelle.”

  “She was a beautiful woman.”

  “Yes. She died in a car accident.”

  The picture third to the right stopped him in his tracks. “Your father is the U.S. ambassador to Britain.” Adam was more than stunned; he was speechless.

  “Yes.”

  Protective security. Someone was actively threatening her.

  Adam swung around and looked at Sara. She looked back at him calmly. “My life is not as neat as yours.” She half smiled. “You only have half the nation that knows your face and name and thinks you are a superstar. I’ve got one man out there somewhere who would like nothing more than to see me dead.”

  “Why?”

  “Sit down, Adam. You’re intimidating when you pace,” she said quietly. “I need your word that you will not repeat what I’m going to tell you—that includes your lawyer and your sister.”

  “My lawyer also happens to be my brother-in-law, but you’ve got my word.”

  “Children are targets, pawns, very effective ways to influence and pressure political figures, and I became one of those statistics when I was six. My father had just been appointed to the British post, and there were some extremely sensitive negotiations going on with China at the time. My parents’ marriage didn’t survive the kidnapping, and I didn’t talk for two-and-a-half years after the event.

  “One of the men is serving a life sentence in a federal prison, but the second man has never been apprehended. I know his face, buried somewhere in my mind, and I would put him away for life if I could remember it. He knows it. But rather than lie low, every few months he keeps taunting my father with…mementos…of the event. Worse, he’s daring the FBI to catch him. The psychiatrists think he is going insane.”

  Adam’s eyes closed. Lord, tell me what I’m hearing didn’t happen…please. He looked over at Sara who sat there calmly, her coffee cup resting in her relaxed hands. Other than her stumble over the mention of mementos, she had told him the facts with no discernible emotion or change in her voice. Could she even really feel after all the trauma she had just described, or had her emotions been so suppressed that this was the only way she could cope—to detach and say everything is okay when it could never truly be okay inside?

  “Sara.”

  She looked up.

  Adam came over and sat beside her, noticing the slight tightening of her posture. He took the coffee cup and held her hands in his. “Is that when you got these?”

  The scars on her wrists were more like tight bands of skin than ridges. He had no
ticed them as they fixed dinner, and they would’ve gone unmentioned until she chose to tell him, if not for the opening she had just given him. If she was six when the scars had occurred, it would explain the appearance of the skin now. As she had grown, the scarred skin would have been too tight to stretch naturally.

  She tried to pull her hands away, but after a career where hand control was a necessity, he could feel the nuances of her movements before she could make them, and he deliberately countered every one of them. She was very uncomfortable having him look at the scars. “I don’t mind the scars, Sara. I’d just like to know how they happened.”

  She bit her bottom lip. “The left wrist was from the initial struggle to get free of the ropes on the first day; the right wrist…it was later.”

  “How long were you held?”

  “Nine days.”

  The tremors were back in her hands now, the ones he had felt in the elevator, the ones he had felt the morning he tried to apologize in her office. “Come here.” He drew her toward his chest.

  Her entire body stiffened. His hand moved her head down to his shoulder; he wrapped his arms around her, then forced himself to go very still.

  She couldn’t break his hold. “Adam, I don’t want this.”

  “Tough.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because you need it.” He rubbed her back.

  It took almost three minutes before he felt her relax.

  She had been six when all this had happened. The details of her past were not going to change in the next few days or weeks. There would be plenty of time for questions and answers. And he’d need to understand them. He instinctively knew the biggest obstacle he had was not her past, but her ability to trust him.

  She trusted Dave.

  She could learn to trust him.

  “You are an obstinate man.”

  He smiled into her hair. “So my sister tells me frequently.” She tried to push away from him again, and he simply shifted his hold.

  “Adam, my coffee is going to get cold.”

  He let her turn in his arms and retrieve her cup.

  “Better?” He brushed her hair back behind her ear so he could see her face. He liked her earrings, for they sparkled with every turn of her head. He was now willing to bet the emeralds were real.