AWOL with the Operative (14 page)

Treacherous enough to undertake when you could clearly see your way, but in a thick fog… Dammit, when would this stuff lift?

The delay was unnerving him, making him as frustrated as their enemy must be, waiting wherever that chopper was to resume their search.

Wildly impatient now for results, he stood there on the shore, rocking on his heels, an idling engine ready to roar, needing only a destination.

Tomorrow, Sam fiercely promised himself. Too late today to attempt it, but first thing tomorrow, whatever the conditions were, he and Eve would go.

He was ready to return to the cabin when a soft splash out on the lake captured his attention. Had to be a fish surfacing in one of the openings, he thought. There must be plenty of fish in the lake. Probably trout and northern pike.

The likelihood triggered another memory. The image of an ice fishing shanty out on a frozen lake. A boy kneeling on the ice. The boy was him. His father and his uncle Jack were teaching him how to use an auger and a spud bar to drill a hole through the ice. Back in Michigan, where he had grown up.

Sam began to pace along the shore, reaching for other memories. They came freely this time, a tide of them streaming through an open gate. One by one, he selected the last pieces and fit them into place until the puzzle was whole again, complete.

Everything was there, settled firmly into his consciousness, including the explanation of those mysterious paintings. Paintings ranged along the walls of a Chicago art gallery, dimly lit by security lamps. There, in that midnight gallery, his anguish had been born all those long months ago. It was the one memory he didn’t want.

You don’t need those demons eating away at you like a cancer. You’ve got something else to think about.

With his memory fully restored now, he knew just what that
something
was. Eve Warren and what his squad supervisor, Frank Kowsloski, had told him about the case in Chicago. This was what demanded his immediate action.

All FBI now, Sam swung around and strode back up the hill. He could hear her moving around in the kitchen when he entered the cabin. She had left her shoulder bag in the living room. It was in plain sight, resting on the seat of a rocking chair in the corner.

This was his opportunity to search that bag, now while she remained unaware of his return. Wrong. As quiet as he was, she must have somehow sensed his presence. He had the bag open in his hands and was looking through its contents when she appeared in the kitchen doorway.

“Sam? What are you doing in my bag?”

His voice was sharper than he intended, without any inflection of guilt, when he confronted her. “Where is it? Where are you hiding it?”

Chapter 7

A
ll along she had fought not to surrender her heart to him. And even though a portion of her still battled that outcome, she knew it was too late. That was what had frightened her last night after their lovemaking—that she’d already lost the struggle. And she had.

Go on, admit it. You went and fell in love with him, didn’t you?

Or the man he had been, anyway. But that Sam McDonough no longer existed. This was the other Sam.

Eve didn’t need to ask him if he had fully recovered his memory down there at the lake. She knew he had. She could hear it in the harshness of his voice, see it in the hardness of his expression as he came toward her, her bag in his hand.

There was something else she saw, this time in his eyes. A look of secret suffering. Back at the plane, before he’d regained consciousness, she had remembered and wondered about the tightness around his mouth prior to the crash. Even then it had suggested the existence of whatever it was that haunted him.

So, that discovery hadn’t been her imagination, after all. It was real. As real as the daunting stranger who stood here now, waiting for her to answer him.

Eve had known Sam would eventually find himself again. Had told herself she would be prepared for this moment. She wasn’t. If she felt anything at all beyond her state of numbness, it was sadness. Sadness and regret over the loss of the man who had come to mean everything to her.

Foolish, Eve. He’s gone, and all you have is the cynical, overbearing Sam who returned with his memory. Better start accepting that.

“Are you going to tell me, or do I have to dump this bag out on the floor?”

She hated the accusing tone of his voice, the anger that drove it. Maintaining her silence, she went and sat down on one of the chairs, her hands folded in her lap. She wanted him to think she was calm and composed.

But maybe he knew she wasn’t. That what she intended as an attitude of self-defense, a tempering of any grief, was nothing but an illusion. That the hands in her lap were cold, that inwardly she was neither calm nor composed. Maybe that’s why he came and hovered over her. Because he knew she was vulnerable, that if he was persistent she would tell him what he wanted to know.

Not that she could, but he was right. She couldn’t go on being silent. “I don’t know what you think I’m hiding. Why don’t you save both of us some time and just explain the mystery to me?” She’d meant her response to sound resentful, but it came out weary.

He, himself, registered impatience, which was exactly what she expected. “Look, Eve, we can go on playing games, but sooner or later I’m going to get it out of you. So, why don’t you just tell me?”

“I told you, I don’t—”

“Yeah, yeah, you don’t know what I’m talking about. Okay, have it your way.” Dropping her bag on the floor, he seized another chair, swung it around and straddled it, facing her, his arms folded across the top rail as he leaned toward her. “The computer disk, the flash drive, whatever it is that Charlie Fowler gave you to protect for him. Now are you going to go on pretending you don’t have it?”

“But I don’t have it. Why on earth do you think I would?”

“Because it’s the only logical explanation, although it took getting my memory back for me to figure it out.”

“Explanation for what?”

“Why Victor DeMarco’s thugs want you so badly. They’d have searched Charlie Fowler and his rental car after they killed him. When they didn’t find what they wanted, they would have assumed Fowler entrusted you with it. So they came after you, either to get it or to make sure it was destroyed when they shot our plane down. Make sense?”

“That much does, yes. But if this computer disk, flash drive or whatever does exist, why is it so important? What does it contain?”

“Detailed information on years of tax cheating that could send a crime boss to prison for a long time. Or are you going to deny knowing that Charlie Fowler was Victor DeMarco’s accountant?”

“I knew,” she admitted.

“Now we’re getting someplace.”

“Are we?” Eve was still baffled. “I have yet to understand why anyone, including you, would assume Charlie handed this important evidence over to me.”

Sam shrugged. “Maybe because he was desperate, somehow realized DeMarco’s boys were getting close. He needed someone he could trust. You, Eve. Hell, you were living with him up in that ski chalet, weren’t you?”

“And you think— What, Sam? That Charlie was my lover? You do think just that, don’t you?”

“Do I have to point out the obvious?”

“Well, you’re wrong.” She could no longer avoid it. It was time he knew the truth. “Charlie was not my lover. He was my father.”

She had expected him to look stunned by her revelation, or at least surprised. He was neither. His only reaction was to narrow his eyes in suspicion. “If you’re lying to me—”

“It’s the truth. Charlie was my father.”

“Why am I just now learning this?”

“Because Charlie made me promise that I would never tell anyone I was his daughter, even an FBI special agent. He didn’t explain it, but he must have feared I could be in danger if the wrong people ever learned I was his daughter. He was protecting me. Which,” she added emphatically, “was why he would never have turned over a record of tax evasions to me in any form.”

She watched Sam, hearing him draw a deep breath, then exhale it slowly. She knew by the look on his face, when he sat back in his chair, that he’d accepted what she had related to him. For now, anyway.

“If you don’t have his electronic copy of those incriminating records, then where is it? He was planning to turn it over to the FBI as soon as he got back to Chicago.” He gazed at her speculatively, caring about nothing now but the missing evidence needed to send a crime lord to prison. She no longer mattered to him, except as an assignment. “I don’t suppose he…”

“No, he didn’t tell me where it is. All he asked me to do was to visit his lawyer in Chicago after his death. I had the feeling it was in connection with his will. But if he has left me his money, I could never spend it on myself. Not when he earned it the way he did. Whatever it is, I’ll give it all to charity, possibly cancer research.”

Sam nodded, but she could see he wasn’t interested in that. She meant no more to him now than the subject of an FBI-style interrogation. Was he always this intense, she wondered, whenever he conducted one of those interrogations? Maybe with a frown on his face like the one he was suddenly wearing.

Something must have occurred to him. That’s why he bent toward her again with a gruff “Wait a minute. You told me back in the root cellar your father died when you were a teenager.”

“And you think what? That I haven’t told you the truth about Charlie?”

“Have you?”

“I did tell you the truth, both back in the root cellar and now. Until a couple of weeks ago, George Warren was the only father I’d ever known. He adopted me, gave me his name when I was an infant shortly after he married my mother.”

“You never wondered about your biological father?”

“My mother was vague about him when I was old enough to ask. I was given the impression he’d died before I was born. I suppose she didn’t want anyone, especially her daughter, knowing the man who fathered me worked for a crime lord.”

“So you never knew Charlie Fowler was still alive, never had any contact with him?”

“I didn’t say that. I did know he existed, did have contact with him. Of sorts.”

“Want to explain that?”

Sam wasn’t going to rest until he had it all. Eve gave it to him in a flat, resigned voice. “I knew him as
Uncle
Charlie. The uncle I never saw, who lived in Chicago and was always much too busy to ever visit us in St. Louis, but somehow was interested in my welfare.”

“In what way?”

“Letters that an uncle might write to a niece, asking about her life. Birthday and Christmas presents that arrived regularly over the years, even a few phone calls. I have a feeling he may even have paid for my college education.”

“A pretty odd setup, wasn’t it?” Sam observed dryly.

Eve lifted her hands in a gesture meant to convey her own failure to completely understand the situation. “I can only imagine it was something arranged between Mom and Charlie. He could care about me, be generous to me, as long as he promised to keep his distance. Something like that.”

“Uh-huh. And even after your stepfather and mother were gone, Fowler went on honoring that promise, until— What is it you said? A couple of weeks ago?”

“When Charlie phoned me and asked me to join him at the skiing village, he told me he had terminal cancer and wanted to spend a little time with me before the end. I couldn’t refuse him, not when he was dying. It wasn’t until I arrived that I learned from him he was my birth father.”

“Did he also tell you he worked for DeMarco?”

“Yes. I wanted to hate him for that, but I couldn’t. Not when he was my father. Not a man I only knew as someone kind and generous.”

“I’ll give him that,” Sam allowed. “Along with the knowledge that Fowler was protecting you again when he insisted both of you travel separately to and from the skiing village.”

Which, Eve thought, was something Special Agent McDonough would have been briefed about before he left Chicago. And now he knew it all. He was finished with her. That was evident when he scraped his chair back and got to his feet.

Sam had accepted her story, but she sensed he still didn’t fully trust her. And probably never would again.

What an idiot she had been to fall in love with him against all her warnings to herself.

Face it, Eve. You lost what you never really had.

He hadn’t called her “angel” at any time during this exchange. That, too, was probably something she would never hear again. Why this should suddenly occur to her she didn’t know. It wasn’t important. Or shouldn’t be, even if her heart was aching over the realization.

It didn’t surprise Eve that Sam kept his distance from her throughout the rest of the day, both emotionally and physically. It was what she’d expected.

She had no choice. She accepted his absences when he suddenly seemed to have a list of essential tasks to undertake, all of which he attacked with a nervous energy. Extinguishing the fire in the kitchen stove, burying the ashes in the snow behind the cabin, closing and fastening all the shutters outside.