Twisted Shadows (11 page)

“Half brother?” She didn't miss the “my” that preceded it.

“George—Georgio, as he prefers. He's the son of my father's mistress. I always wondered why he didn't marry her. Maybe he didn't want to commit bigamy.” That enigmatic smile passed his lips again.

“Bigamy?”

“If my father knew his wife was still alive, maybe he feared she … might just reappear someday. He wouldn't want to be charged with bigamy. The feds would love that. They couldn't get him on racketeering, but they bust him for bigamy.” He looked amused at the thought.

“
If my father knew his wife was still alive
…” Not “my mother.” Still, it was the first sign that he thought their relationship might be a possibility.

Sam closed her eyes. She had assumed her mother had divorced Paul Merritta. If she hadn't …

Slowly she opened them again and saw Nicholas's gaze intent on her, watching every emotion. He had reached the same damning conclusion, obviously. Why couldn't she be as expressionless as he? But it wouldn't make the earthquake impact on him as it did on her. He didn't know Patsy Carroll. He didn't know the woman who had stressed honesty and honor and law all her life.

She tried to change the subject. “George? I didn't read anything about him.”

“He goes by his mother's name. My father has always protected his privacy. To hell with mine.”

“Do you see him often?”

“My father? Not any more than necessary.”

“I promised I would see him tomorrow. Will you go with me?”

He looked startled. “Tommy isn't picking you up?”

“I told him I would go on my own on Saturday. I want to be able to leave when I wish.”

A glimmer of admiration lit eyes that had shown precious little emotion. “A taxi?”

“No, for then I would still be dependent. I planned to rent a car.”

“Planned?”

He was quick. “Plan,” she corrected herself.

“Where are you staying?” he asked suddenly.

She paused.

“Or is it a secret?” he asked.

It was. Even to her. She had no idea where she was spending the night. “Will you go with me?” she asked again.

“My father won't like it.”

“I think his invitation should include whomever I wish to bring.”

“You don't know my father. He sets the rules.”

“Not this time,” Sam said. “He wanted me to leave several days ago on a flight he paid for. I refused. I wanted to pay my own way.”

Merritt lifted his glass. “One for you.”

Sarcasm? Approval? He was impossible to read. She did not know what she had expected, but it wasn't this cool, almost indifferent demeanor. He acted as if he were an observer. But occasionally she would see a muscle flex in his cheek, and she wondered whether he'd just mastered supreme control.

Her fist knotted under the table. She wanted some emotion, dammit. She wanted it in herself, and she wanted it in him. She'd felt a momentary sense of familiarity, but his responses had been cold, distant.

This was a mistake. A terrible mistake. They had been apart thirty-four years. They were strangers. Yet she had expected …

She didn't know what she expected. She just knew bitter disappointment. Still, she struggled not to show it. “You were in the army?”

“You read all about me, too,” he said with that wry twist of his lips.

“What I could find,” she said honestly.

“Aren't you afraid of me?”

“Should I be?”

“You should run like hell back to Colorado.”

“That's not an answer.”

He shrugged. “There's no reason to fear me. The family's a far different story.”

She couldn't tell whether it was a warning, a threat or a statement. His voice had not changed at all.

She absorbed that. “Tell me about Paul Merritta.”

“He'll charm you. He's sick and he's under investigation by the feds, but he'll charm you anyway.” He paused. “You should know that once you see him, you'll be on the FBI radar, if you're not already.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that they will turn your life upside down and keep it that way.”

“Have they done that to you?”

He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “If you don't want to explore the possibility, take the next plane back to wherever you came from.”

“Steamboat Springs,” she reminded him.

“You see, you never should have told me that.”

“Why? Those two men who visited me knew where I was.”

“When you are a Merritta, you don't give out information for free.”

“Not even to a Merritta?” she asked before she could think better of it. The very good food in her stomach turned sour, and the knot in her chest tightened.
The family. FBI radar …
She hadn't considered what being a Merritta would mean to her business, to her life—

He was studying her carefully. “Having second thoughts?”

She closed her fist around her napkin, suddenly tired of watching every word, every movement, tired of examining every emotion she felt in herself or observed in others. “I was approached by two men in our gallery and told about my father and my brother without ceremony—without any of the consideration I've shown you. They issued veiled threats when I didn't go along with them. My house was broken into and I was attacked.” She stopped for a moment, catching her breath, then started again before he could interrupt her. “I was accosted at the airport by two men who chased me out of the terminal. I gave a false name at the hotel. All day I've walked around looking for thugs or assassins or whatever that might be following me. I'm suddenly conducting my life as if I were on the run and trying to hide.”

She pinned him with a glare she'd perfected on board members and men with more machismo than manners. “I came because I wanted to meet my brother. And I came because I'm angry and outraged and want to let Mr. Merritta know that I will not run around on his leash.” Her hands were clenched so tightly they were numb.

He stared at her. “Someone attacked you at the airport? Describe them.”

“First there was a man alone. He was standing at the gate when I arrived. He watched every move I made. Then he was behind me when two other men started coming toward me.”

“The first man—what did he look like?” Nicholas demanded, cutting her off.

“Tall, lean. Probably about twenty pounds less than you. Sandy hair.”

“Green eyes?”

She nodded. “Do you know who—”

“Turn around.”

She did as he asked.

Vivid green eyes met hers. He was sitting at the bar. He wore the same tweed coat despite the summer warmth. He gave her a brief smile and a salute.

For a moment, she couldn't move. Then reluctantly she turned back to Nick.

“He came in just minutes after you did,” Nick said. “He apparently followed me. Or you.”

“Who is he?”

“A bastard,” Nick said bitterly. “A real bastard.” It was the first real emotion she'd heard from him. The anger curdled her blood.

“Why?”

“You're now on the FBI radar,” he said. “His name is McLean, and he's a fed. He's been after the Merrittas for at least five years. He's tried to destroy my business. He'll do the same to you. Stay away from him.”

The stab of disappointment was deep, more painful than she would have thought possible. “I think he … saved me last night. The two men … he intercepted them.”

“It was probably one of his games,” Nick said. “I don't agree with my father on much, but if he invited you here, you're safe from his people. And from any other family. He has his own kind of honor. No one would dare violate it.”

“What about my home in Colorado, the one that was burglarized? Would that be included in his honor?” she asked sarcastically.

“I don't know. I'm not privy to what he does. I don't want to be privy to it. And if you're smart, you won't want to be, either.”

Sam had to force herself not to look back at the bar, at the man who had so attracted her last night. The man she hadn't been able to get out of her thoughts.

And then he was there. At the table. Looming over them.

“Want to introduce me?” he asked Nick.

“No.”

The intensity in him was as strong as, if not stronger than, it had been the night before. There was a light in those green eyes as if his fondest desire in life was to torment the man across from her.

He leaned over and held out his hand. “I'm Nathan McLean,” he said in a surprisingly gentle voice. “I'm sorry I missed you last night.”

Her hand tingled in his. Heat spread from his hand into hers and jolted up her arm and through her. His eyes flickered slightly and he looked surprised, as if he might have been affected as well.

“You're not welcome at this table,” Nick said in a low voice as he rose from his seat. “I think there is something called harassment.”

“I didn't hear the lady ask me to leave.”

Sam heard the enmity between the two men. It was poisonous.

She knew that if she didn't retreat from McLean's hold, she might lose her brother forever.

She jerked her hand away. “Please leave,” she said.

“We can give you protection.”

“I don't need protection.”

He looked at her brother. “No? Then who tried to get to you last night?”

“That's enough,” Nick said. “Perhaps it was another one of your games, like telling all my customers they might be subpoenaed even though you have no evidence of anything wrong.”

“That's what happens when you take mob money,” McLean said. He took out a card and held it out to her. “It was no game, Miss Carroll. One of those men was a hired gun. If you need anything …”

Dazed by the bitter hostility between the two men, she barely registered what he'd said.

He dropped the card on the table next to her hand. “You're in dangerous company, Miss Carroll. Don't wait to call us.” He left and returned to the bar.

Nick's face was impassive but she saw the anger in his eyes. “I'm sorry for that,” he said. “But I warned you.”

The very good grouper was rebelling in her stomach. Being the law-abiding citizen she was, she'd always thought well of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. She had good friends on the Steamboat Springs police force.

For the first time, the enormity of what was happening struck her. It was one thing to read about a mobster. It was another to learn he could be—was—her father. And to become an adversary of an agency she'd always held in high esteem.

“Don't trust him,” her brother said. “He'll do anything to bring down the family.”

“Why?”

“Damned if I know. But he's made the family his life work.”

“How do you know that?”

“The family does have sources inside the FBI.”

“How do you know that if you're not part of it?” she asked in a low voice.

“I was raised within the family, groomed by the family to take part in the business. I still see my father occasionally. I have supper there. I hear things.”

She was silent. Nothing was as it seemed. Her life had been a lie, and now she was being told by an FBI agent that her family might be dangerous for her, and told by a brother she'd just met that the FBI indulged in personal vendettas. She had no idea who to believe.

“Stay away from him,” Nick Merritt said again.

“Are you trying to scare me off?”

“I don't think you scare that easily. Maybe I underestimated you. You might give the feds a run for their money.”

She sat back and absorbed what he was saying and the way he continued to say it. Occasionally with a touch of anger or bitterness. But mostly as an observer.

Had she really expected him to hold open his arms?

A hired shooter. She believed the agent, and she didn't want to. No one wanted to believe someone would hire a professional to kill her. It implied unreasoning hatred. Or cold-blooded calculation.

She tried to shake the lingering effects of the FBI agent's intrusion. The attraction she'd felt, the heat, then the chill from his warning. Whom to trust?

She wanted to trust the man across from her. “You haven't answered me. Will you go with me to your father's?”

“Will you turn around and go home if I don't?”

“No.”

“Have to open Pandora's box, do you?”

“And all the evil in the world exploded. Is that what you think will happen?”

“The evil is already out,” he said.

“Is my father evil?”

He played with his glass of wine, but didn't answer. “You'll have to make up your own mind … if you proceed.”

Another warning. She was receiving less information, less help, less sympathy than she had imagined. She had expected doubt because she'd had doubt. She had expected anger at the breakup of the family and his abandonment by his mother. She had expected anything but the icy, analytical composure.

And the intrusion of Agent McLean. His warnings kept rumbling in her mind. She wondered whether he was still at the bar, but she wasn't going to turn and look.

Nick apparently saw the thought, maybe in the flicker of her eyes. “He just left,” he said. “Probably waiting outside to follow you. Or me.”

She heard the resignation in his voice. The truth.

He had warned her. Her mother had warned her.

The chill in her spread. She felt she'd just entered a gathering of shifting, twisting shadows.

eight

“Go home, Samantha. You don't belong here.”

Nicholas's comment brought her back to the moment.

“It's tempting,” she admitted. “I have a very nice business in Colorado. I like being in the woods. Hiking, skiing, riding. It's honest. Everything is what it appears to be. The shadows are all benign.”