Bridal Reconnaissance (2 page)

Because there was so little to remember, she never let herself think about the past. Now it intended to pay a vengeful visit.

E
VAN
Q
UADE STARED OUT
over the city lights reflected in the dark water of the river below his hotel-room window. River City, Michigan.

He liked the simplicity of the name. Amanda would have laughed at it, but then she’d laughed freely. And when she’d left him, the laughter had gone from his life. “I think this is another dead end, Royce,” he said, shaking the memory from his mind.

In the mirrored surface of the glass, his friend, Royce, lifted a shoulder and let it drop. Then he held up his free hand as he clutched his cell phone to his ear, whispering into it. Sweet nothings, probably.

The fool was in love. A malady that had struck Evan once and from which he’d never been totally cured. But he’d gotten so sick that he avoided the disease now. At all costs.

And if sometimes loneliness ate at what was left of his soul… Well, his soul was a small price to pay for his sanity. He turned from the window to the table that sat before it. A glossy photo topped the loose documents spread across the cherry-wood surface.

Shimmering blond hair floated loose and wild around her shoulders and beyond. Dazzling white teeth sparkled out of a wide flirtatious smile. Despite the twinkle of naughtiness dancing in her green eyes, he caught the ghost of loneliness looming in the opaque depths.

Amanda had always been lonely, too. Despite her parents’ many marriages and a plethora of half and stepsiblings, Amanda had always been alone. Maybe that was why she had thirsted for attention and adventure.

He ran a hand through his hair. In the course of treating his mother’s debilitating depression, he’d talked with enough shrinks in the last couple of years that it seemed he’d begun to think like one.

“She’s a knockout,” his friend said.

Evan glanced up just as Royce tapped his cell phone into his pocket. “Dragged yourself away from your bride?” Evan asked. The ex-FBI agent had married Evan’s former business partner less than a year ago.

A goofy smile twisted his friend’s mouth. “Barely. And I had to help Jeremy with some homework. Not that he really needed it. Kid’s damn smart.” Royce’s face shone with pride in his stepson.

“Yeah, he’s a good kid.” Another piece of his soul chipped away as Evan accepted that he’d never have a child of his own. Knowing what he did now, he couldn’t.

But six years ago he’d wanted a baby so desperately that his need had stressed his fledgling marriage to the breaking point. If he hadn’t fallen so hard so fast for Amanda’s gorgeous face and fun spirit, he might have taken the time to discover how incompatible they’d been. The last thing Amanda had wanted was a child, at least his child.

What kind of life did she lead now?

The kind she’d been living when they’d met? Jet-setting? High society?

He’d been working for his father on a business deal to sell warehouse space to a fashion designer. The deal had fallen through, and Amanda, the designer’s daughter, had broken the news over a business dinner. But things had not remained business between them for long.

“Evan, did you hear me?”

“What?” Evan shook off the distraction, as thoughts of Amanda often were.

“Jeremy’s working on his purple belt. He wants you to run through the kata with him when we get back.”

“Gladly, but I’m sure you can teach him what he needs to know.”

“I’m not a sensei, Evan. You’re ninth degree, man.”

“
I’m
not a sensei, Royce.” He’d never achieved the degree of control necessary to master the art, the control being over himself. And after what he’d discovered about himself, he doubted he ever would.

He shook off the maudlin thoughts. “She’s not in this town, Royce. I’ve been searching for almost six years. If she’d been living this close to me, I would have found her.”

Royce glanced toward the city lights. “River City’s just a few hours south of Winter Falls.” The small town both men now called home.

“And a few hours north of Chicago, where Amanda and I had lived when she left. But although River City is pretty big and sprawling, it’s a world removed in culture and fashion. Amanda had never lived anywhere but a bustling city. Chicago. Milan. Paris. New York.”

“But you checked those cities?” Royce asked.

“I checked everywhere. Even morgues.”

Evan sighed, remembering the frenzy of his initial search when he’d been convinced she’d needed him. At first the police had suspected his involvement in Amanda’s disappearance until they had learned of her stay at her mother’s country estate—and discovered what she’d left for him.

Her wedding ring burned against his skin where it dangled on a chain beneath his shirt. Close to his heart, so he would remember her leaving and how much it hurt. So he would never be foolish enough to risk that kind of pain again. “I couldn’t find her.”

“You’ve been looking a lot of years…”

Evan understood the inflection in Royce’s voice. But even though he’d searched those morgues, he hadn’t really believed that she could be dead. Not Amanda.

“You even hired the private investigator that found your biological mother.” A search he’d started because of the challenge Amanda had hurled at him when she’d left. Instead of starting a family with him, she’d told him to find the one that had given him up.

His adoptive parents had told him about the private adoption hospital in Winter Falls. He had hired the investigator to find his mother from their records. And he couldn’t reveal to Royce, an ex-FBI agent, exactly how that investigator had obtained those records. After the man had found his mother in a sanatorium, Evan had kept him on retainer to search for Amanda. But she hadn’t been as easy to find. Years had passed without any leads to her whereabouts.

He admitted, “I never left the search for Amanda
completely to him.” He’d then fired the guy when his friend and former business partner had married the notorious FBI Tracker.

Royce narrowed his eyes. “You haven’t left it completely to me, either.”

“She’s my wife.” Evan rubbed his hands over his face, pressing the heels of his palms against his tired eyes. He’d been looking so long, in the beginning to get her back, and now, to let her go.

Royce sighed. “Maybe if you’d given me more to go on…like the reason she left.”

Evan carried his burdens alone, always had, probably always would. Especially now, knowing what he knew, what his mother had revealed to him when she’d recovered. He knew who and
what
his father was…a violent criminal unfit to live in society. “Royce…”

“I know. It’s not any of my business.”

His friend stared hard at him, trying to crack him with his FBI-agent-interrogation face that Evan had seen before. Then he griped, “Jeez, man, you’re one uptight—”

Evan laughed. Royce could always be counted on to speak his mind. The ex-FBI agent thought holding his peace meant carrying a gun. Although they hadn’t known each other long, they knew each other well.

“I’m serious, man. You keep everything locked up inside and one day you’re going to explode. And it won’t be pretty.”

Evan’s gut clenched, his greatest fear had been spoken aloud. “That’s my risk.”

One he wouldn’t inflict on anyone else, especially not his runaway wife.

Royce sighed as he unwrapped the crinkly paper from a butterscotch, then popped the candy into his mouth. “So you’re not going to tell me anything about the past between you and this beauty.”

Evan shook his head, not knowing where to start. But knowing that he had to finally accept that it had ended.

The ex-FBI agent crunched on the hard treat. “Tell me one thing. Why are you so anxious to find her now?”

Evan wished he knew. Although he had that gnawing feeling in his gut that she needed him again, he’d been wrong about that before.

He glanced down at the wedding ring banded around the third finger of his left hand where Amanda had slid it almost seven years ago. Then he’d believed they would last forever. But he hadn’t known then what he knew now. Amanda had been smart to leave him.

Finally, after a heavy sigh, he answered his friend, “It’s time.”

Time to truly set her free. And himself.

S
HE ONLY HAD A FEW DAYS
to pack up over five years’ worth of belongings. Amanda tossed toys into an open box, glad that she’d sent Christopher to school that morning despite her initial separation anxiety. Maybe now she’d have everything packed before he got home.

And with that animal in prison for a few more days, Christopher was safe yet. She’d had to convince herself of that before she’d been able to put him on the kindergarten bus. She had to keep as much normalcy
in his life as she could right now. When they ran, she’d be turning his little familiar world upside down.

The old doorbell pealed out its disjointed tune, startling a gasp from her lips. Heart hammering, she dragged in a deep breath.
He
wouldn’t ring the bell. And as she kept reminding herself, his release wasn’t scheduled for three more days.

As she crossed the overcrowded living room, the song rang out again, the notes echoing flatly throughout the small house.

“Who is it?” She hated the quaver of fear that weakened her voice, but the only remedy was safety. She doubted she’d ever feel safe once that animal was out.

“Amanda, it’s me.”

Relief sighed out as a shaky breath. With trembling fingers she fumbled with the old-fashioned chain lock and threw open the door. “Mr. Sullivan.”

The River City district attorney tugged at his wrinkled tie with one hand while he ran his other over his iron-gray hair. “Amanda, I came over today as soon as I could.”

“I know.” Ever since her attack, Peter Sullivan had been there for her, offering the comfort and guidance of a father since she couldn’t remember if she had one of her own.

“The police managed to lift some prints from the inside of your van last night. They’re running them now.”

“You had the van brought back here, right?” All she wanted to do was load it with all the boxes she’d packed. The prints didn’t matter to her. Nothing mattered but safety for her son and herself.

“Amanda, we’ll track this guy down—”

“And do what? Arrest him for telling me what you wouldn’t? That animal’s getting out!”

“I knew you’d get upset—”

“Damn right!” She welcomed the surge of anger sending heat coursing through her veins. Ever since her encounter the night before, she’d been so cold. Now she was hot. “I should have been told he was getting out early.”

“Only four months.”

“He served less than six years for all the years of my memory he stole.” The injustice pressed against her chest, making deep breathing impossible. “He tried to kill me and my unborn child.”

The D.A. tugged at his tie again, and frustration wrinkled his already lined brow. “We couldn’t prove that. You were only a few months pregnant. He couldn’t have known. All we could prove was assault. The witness didn’t see everything, and your testimony…”

“He tried to rape me!”

“Amanda, we couldn’t—”

“Couldn’t prove it. I know. If I hadn’t fought…” She would have lost more than her memory.

“You wouldn’t be alive. Neither would your son. You know that. I know that, but there wasn’t enough evidence to prove it to a jury. Then he and his lawyer kept telling that crazy story that you were a hitchhiker trying to steal his car—that he’d only been defending himself.”

She nodded at the appropriate place in their old argument, but frustration and impotent rage rolled through her empty stomach.

“If you hadn’t fought, he would have gotten away, Amanda. You took him off the streets for almost six years. You saved a lot of lives of other young women.”

She shivered despite the sunshine radiating through her picture window and heating the room. “You’re still convinced that I wasn’t his first victim?”

“The police could link him to areas where other women disappeared but nothing more. He had no previous record, and there was no evidence to link him to the women who were never found.”

Lost. Just as she was. “I disappeared, too.”

“Amanda…”

“No, it’s true. If not for this necklace, I wouldn’t even know my first name. I’ll probably never know my last. Whoever I was before he grabbed me, she’s gone, too. And after nearly six years and countless shrinks, nobody’s been able to find her.” She allowed herself to dip into the well of self-pity for just a moment and wonder why nobody had looked for her. No loved ones. Not even the man who’d fathered her baby.

Or had he been some anonymous sperm donor? She had no clue. Nothing but a necklace she would be forced to pawn for traveling money.

Peter Sullivan shook his head. “I can’t imagine what you feel like—”

“No, you can’t.”

He smiled, a weak effort. “Another woman would complain more about the physical scars he left you.”

Amanda slid her fingers through her short tresses to the hard ridge of the scar on the back of her scalp. She almost lifted her other hand to the slightly
crooked bend of her nose, but what did the physical injuries matter? “No, I’m more upset about what he stole from me. My past. And my courage.”

“That’s not true. You’re very brave in light of your circumstances.”

She smiled even though tears of frustration burned behind her eyes. “Very brave for a victim. That’s what you mean.” She was so sick of being a victim, sick of pity and fear.

“Amanda, you’re letting him get to you—”

“No! He won’t get to my son or me. We’ll be long gone before he’s set loose.” To her he was a rabid dog. Not William Weering III, not a human being. He was a beast.

Fortunately she didn’t remember the attack, but she knew him from the courtroom. From the testimony of witnesses, she knew what he’d done to her and she could guess what he would have done if those witnesses hadn’t intervened.

She also knew him from her one visit to him in prison when he’d been properly confined behind bars. She’d screwed up the last of her courage and asked him for her life back. But whatever he’d known of her past, he’d kept locked in his twisted mind behind a cruel grin.