Secrets Rising (23 page)

Her hand was soft, the fingers long and slim, the skin silky. Like all of her. "When the time comes," he said quietly, "you will. When you wake up with those muscles fully developed, you'll know it, and you'll be glad."

She took her hand away and lifted her soft drink, taking the straw between her lips and sipping the melting ice, then setting it down. "Why did you become a private detective?"

"I didn't like being a cop."

"Oh. Well, why did you become a cop?"

He closed his box of chicken bones and set it on the torn bag. "Control, I guess. It didn't seem like I had much when I was a kid, being shuttled from one place to another at somebody else's whim with a new set of rules every time. When you become a cop, you have one set of rules that you and everybody else have to live by. If they don't, then you can force them to."

"So what didn't you like about it?"

"It didn't work. Nobody wanted to play by the rules. The victims, the perps, they all have problems, and they expect you to solve them. You haul in a kid for doing drugs, and his mother hits the ceiling, the same mother who called you last week to report a prostitute working her neighborhood. Somebody gets killed and you bring in the killer. So the victim's family wants his head while his family screams that he's innocent and they want him released. Nobody's happy. Now I find information for people. They may not like the information I get for them, but I've done what I said I would. The rules are clear-cut. Nobody has any right to be upset. It's just a job, no emotional confusion, nobody expecting things I can't give."

She nodded slowly, the dappled sunlight and shadows gliding over her hair and her face. "I see. But you've warned me from the beginning that I might not like what you find for me. Is that part of your job? The warning?"

He blinked twice, scratched an eyebrow that didn't itch and gave himself a few seconds to assimilate her announcement. "You mean for the weekend."

"No, for good. I'm going to get out of your way and let you do the job I hired you to do." She gave a half-hearted, crooked grin. "To quote somebody we all know."

"When did you make that decision?"

"Last night. I decided, as long as we have to move out of the motel, I might as well go back to my condo. You seem to have things under control down here. And talking to Lorraine Griffin confirmed that I don't need to be here. If that woman should turn out to be my grandmother, I'm not sure I want to be around when we make that discovery."

"Well." He picked up a limp fry that had escaped his cleaning efforts and laid it on the torn paper bag. What was the matter with him? This was what he wanted, wasn't it? For her to go away, remove temptation, protect herself from the harsh realities they were bound to uncover...from the harsh reality of getting involved with him.

"Good," he said. "That's a wise choice. I'll call you every night. To keep you updated on the progress."

You'll call her every night to hear her voice.

He wanted to groan aloud at the startling revelation from some gremlin inside his head. He'd been so damned careful to protect Rebecca that he'd forgotten to watch out for himself. He'd let her get under his skin, let himself become accustomed to being around her. She'd become a habit of sorts. A damned attractive habit, one that sent his libido into overdrive.

But habits could be broken.

Thank goodness she was leaving. A couple of days and he wouldn't even remember what she looked like. It always happened that way. All those muscles acquired through the years automatically came into play.

He stood, gathering up their trash. "You ready to go?" He wasn't at all sure where they were going. He'd planned to spend the afternoon locating another motel. He supposed he could do that, but Rebecca would be left alone to fend for herself until time for dinner with Doris.

Not that taking care of her was his responsibility.

"If this is going to be our last day together—" He stopped in midsentence. Somehow that hadn't come out the way he'd intended. "If this is going to be the last day you're down here, I'd like to try to talk to Charles again with you along and see how he reacts to your presence. Yank his chain a little. Check out a hunch I've got."

Disgust and fear shadowed her delicate features. He realized her fear came from the possibility that they might discover Charles was her father rather than from physical fear. Accordingly, he recognized and admired the courage it took for her to lift her chin and agree.

"All right," she said. "I'll admit I'd as soon visit the city sewer as see him, but if it's what we need to do, let's go."

"There's no point in taking both cars, and this is probably as good a place as any to leave one of them." A totally logical thing to do so why did he feel guilty and a little excited to be riding in the same car as her?

"Let's take mine," she suggested, "since yours has that broken headlight. You're probably driving on borrowed time as it is. If you run into Farley Gates again, I have no doubt he'll be thrilled to give you another ticket, maybe take you to jail."

"Good idea." Reminding himself that he wasn't some drooling teenager with lustful thoughts of what could happen in a car after dark, he turned and strode toward the automobiles parked a short distance away. "I need to get that headlight fixed, but since I've put it off this long, I might as well wait until I get back to Dallas and get a friend of mine to help me." He should have done it the day after it happened. Surely they had an auto parts store in Edgewater. Even without the proper tools, he could have probably done the job in a couple of hours. But he'd been busy.

And he hadn't wanted to leave Rebecca alone after that threatening phone call.

Or was it just that he hadn't wanted to leave Rebecca?

He reached his car and realized he'd carried their trash with him. Damn! He never got distracted like this. When Rebecca was long gone and out of his hair, he'd be able to focus better.

She was already getting into her car. "Be right back," he told her.

He loped over to the refuse container near the table where they'd eaten and shoved the sack and paper cups inside.

Rebecca started her car and backed out of the parking space, and for a moment he thought she was leaving him. The brief spurt of disappointment that knifed though him was, he assured himself, merely the overreaction of his hormones. Anyway, she wasn't leaving, just moving the car into position.

He jogged back to where she waited, opened the door and slid in then looked out to the dark spot in the area where she'd been parked. "Do you have an oil leak?"

"Not that I know of. This car's only two years old, and I have it checked regularly."

"Probably condensation from your air conditioner." He fastened his seat belt and turned to her. "Are you ready to beard the mayor in his den?"

She didn't look any more ready for that experience than he was ready for her to leave, but they'd both do whatever was necessary.

Chapter 17

Rebecca leafed through the six-month old issue of Newsweek for the third time. Even if the reading material in the reception area of Charles Morton's office had been timely and interesting, she'd have found it difficult to concentrate, especially after they'd been waiting for almost an hour.

Jake, sitting in the molded plastic chair next to her, seemed fascinated with the old magazines, going through each one page by page. He'd warned her before they came in that they might be turned away without seeing Morton or might have to wait a long time before being admitted. The waiting didn't seem to bother him at all.

She supposed that was normal, though. This was only a job to him. It was her life, her future.

And the longer she waited, the more inclined she was to take Jake's advice and walk away, take him off the case, tell him to forget this whole nightmare.

Could it possibly be any worse never to know who her parents were than to have Lorraine Griffin for a grandmother and Charles Morton for a father...people who put a snake in her bathtub and had her evicted from her motel room?

"Bingo!" Jake muttered. He handed her the magazine he was reading, a regional publication.

"Mr. Thornton, Ms. Patterson, His Honor the Mayor will see you now," the receptionist announced.

Rebecca had only a second to glance at the article—a full page picture of Charles Morton, smiling beneficently and holding his cowboy hat in one outstretched hand as if about to throw it. A headline on the opposing page read:
Time for a New Face in Congress?

Jake urged her toward the receptionist who stood holding the door into the mayor's office.

Was Morton planning to run for Congress? She supposed that would be the next step up from Mayor. If he were, he certainly wouldn't want an illegitimate daughter appearing on the scene. He'd likely do whatever it took to dissuade her from uncovering old secrets he'd prefer to keep buried. A man in his position would have no problem using his influence to get that daughter evicted from the only motel in town.

Rebecca crossed the threshold into the inner office on legs as shaky as if she'd run five miles.

Morton rose to greet them from behind a huge mahogany desk that dominated the room. The desk held the usual paraphernalia—a gold pen in a holder, papers stacked in boxes, a couple of files, a telephone, and a computer monitor. Plaques adorned the walls, and a plant sat in one corner. A large tinted window behind Morton let in the afternoon light without glare. The office could not have been more ordinary, yet Rebecca felt as if she were walking straight into hell.

She clutched Jake's arm for support. Jake was a stranger, someone who'd come briefly into her life and would soon be gone from it. He'd made that very clear by his distance since they'd made love and by his lack of response to her announcement that she'd be leaving. But she had to have something to hold onto while she faced the possibility that the man smiling and offering to shake hands with her, the man who made her skin crawl could be the man who'd created her and regretted that accidental creation ever since.

Jake shook hands with him, but when Morton offered his hand to her, she could only stare at the broad fingers, the wide palm with no calluses, no signs of labor. An image flashed before her, the image of her father's hand—of Jerry Patterson's hand—with calluses from the hard work of maintaining a home and restaurant, with the puckered scar on one thumb from a grease spill when he'd been cooking, a white scar on the other from the time a knife slipped while he was slicing a roast. Those same hands had been gentle when they'd applied a bandage to her skinned knee or held her and stroked her hair when she cried.

A lump started in her throat then changed to bile and she felt certain that if she touched Charles, she would vomit.

He changed the outstretched hand into a motion toward the two burgundy leather chairs in front of his desk. "Have a seat. Sorry to keep you folks waiting so long. Being a public servant keeps you busy."

Reluctantly Rebecca let go of Jake's arm and sat gingerly on the edge of one of the chairs. Her revulsion to the inanimate object was, she knew, unwarranted, but the idea of sitting back in the chair was as abhorrent to her as shaking Charles' hand.

"What can I do for you folks today?" Morton asked, folding his uncallused hands on the polished surface of the desk. Rebecca found herself examining her own hands, clenched in her lap, searching, against her will, for any resemblance.

"We thought we'd drop in before we left town," Jake said.

"Leaving town, are you? Well, I hope you enjoyed your stay."

Charles Morton is evil
. Lorraine Griffin's words came back to her as the man sat before them, smiling and lying.

"It's been very educational," Jake said smoothly.

He was right. She had no place here. He was able to carry on a conversation with Morton, to do his job, while she sat in silent shock.

"But, you know," Jake continued, "the damnedest thing happened. We've been kicked out of our rooms at the motel. Seems the whole place suddenly got booked up."

"Is that right?" Charles made no effort to sound or look surprised. "Well, once in a while that happens. Wilbur would go broke if he didn't have a full house every now and then. Probably a high school reunion or something."

"Probably. We thought you might be able to recommend a motel close to Edgewater. Something in a town twenty or thirty minutes away. Driving distance."

Charles' jaw muscles tightened, and his eyes hardened to chips of marble, the light blue color tinted with gray as if dirty. Nevertheless, he smiled. "Don't know of any place like that until you get up close to Dallas. I have to say, I'm a little surprised that you folks are still digging around down here. I'd think by now you'd have realized you've come to the wrong place."

"We had begun to wonder, but then we talked to Lorraine Griffin."

Rebecca stole a glance at Jake as he dropped that potential bomb. He sat comfortably back, long, denim-clad legs stretched out in front of him, boots crossed, hands draped casually over the arms of the chair. His expression betrayed no hint of strain, concern, accusation...he might have been having a friendly chat. The detachment that kept her at arm's length served him well in his chosen profession.

"Lorraine Griffin is a very disturbed woman," Charles said coldly. "She lost her only daughter several years ago, and she never got over it. Of course, she always was kind of a fanatic. Her husband was the preacher at one of those extremist churches."

"I understand you were friendly with her daughter at one time."

Charles' knuckles whitened as he clenched his fingers more tightly about each other. Still his smile never wavered. "Of course I was friendly to her. I'm friendly to everybody. I'm a friendly guy."