Twisted Shadows (23 page)

“I should call Mom,” she said. “I have to tell her about Paul Merritta's death. And tell her the FBI knows about her. They might try to find her.”

A muscle moved in his cheek. “Do you have a cell phone?”

“Not now. Mine was burned in the car. I was going to get one today.”

“I have one you can use. It's clean,” he said.

She hesitated.
Clean?

“You're suspicious. Good. Stay that way. You can erase the number when you finish, and take the phone with you if you like. I have no interest in where she is.”

She still hesitated, then agreed. She would call her mother's cell phone.

“Is your home phone tapped?”

“Probably,” he said.

“Can they do that even when you haven't been accused of anything?”

He gave her a look that told her how naive he thought she was. “Anything involving organized crime gives them more powers than they usually have. Say ‘conspiracy' and a judge signs on the dotted line. Be careful, Samantha. Don't trust McLean, or any fed. They'll use you, then throw you away.”

“Did that happen to you?”

“I didn't let it happen to me, but it's not for lack of trying on their part. My company is audited every year. They visit our customers and warn them about doing business with us. They follow us on occasion.”

As McLean had, the night of the accident.

“How do you stay in business?”

“A lot of our sales are with foreign companies who could care less about the FBI. The others … well, we have good products, good prices and great service.”

She wanted to ask more questions, but he simply looked at her. “Use the study. It's down the hall on the left.”

“Will you talk to her?” she asked again.

“No.”

She wanted to argue, but he looked too tired, too drawn.

Sam went down the hall and found the study. His desk was completely clear, the opposite of her own, which she always termed as organized chaos. She looked at the computer and thought about turning it on.

A touch of a few keys might supply a clue.

But just as she couldn't invade her mother's privacy, neither could she do it to Nick's.

Instead she used the cell phone he had given her and dialed.

Her mother picked up immediately. She must have had the phone next to her.

“Is everything all right?” her mother asked. Almost as if she knew it was not.

“My
father …
Paul Merritta died this morning.” She didn't know why she used the word
father,
except possibly to evoke a reaction. As much as she deplored it, a residue of resentment, of loss, of anger still lingered deep inside.

“He
wasn't
your father. David was.” Her mother's voice broke slightly.

Sam regretted that flash of anger. “I know. David will always be my dad.”

“Your brother … Nick. How is he?”

“He's all right.” Sam paused, then added, “He came home from the hospital today. I'm staying with him.” She didn't think it was the time to tell her mother what had really happened, that someone had actually taken a shot at her. She just prayed there wouldn't be any news coverage.

“Are you still planning to return tomorrow?”

Sam wavered. In the last few hours, she'd considered—briefly—staying for the funeral. If it was within the next two or three days. Maybe it would be a closure. But could you have closure, when you never had opening?

“I want to see you,” her mother said. “There are things I can tell you, that I have to tell you.”

“Tomorrow,” she promised.

“Don't let them drag you into their web,” her mother warned. “Victor … the others …”

“I won't.”

A pause. She knew her mother didn't want to let her go, probably wanted to ask a dozen questions about Nick, but she had always been a very private, very proud woman. The fact that she had not asked to talk to him said volumes.

There was a hopelessness in the sigh that came over the line.

Then Sam said what she hated to say. “The FBI knows about you. Why don't you stay where you are?” She was careful not to say where. It was a unique experience, weighing every question, every answer, every comment.

“I knew it was coming,” her mother said, resignation softening her voice into a mere whisper.

But Sam had not, and now she felt wracked with guilt. She had been so consumed with meeting her brother that she'd not considered the cost to her mother, the fact that a life she'd so carefully constructed might collapse.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“Don't be,” her mother said. “It was going to happen sooner or later. Secrets have a way of leaking out.”

“It could hurt you.”

“
You've
already been hurt. That's what grieves me,” her mother said.

“I'm safe here,” Sam said. She wanted to assure her mother that she should be, too, now that Paul Merritta was dead. She was struck by the irony of feeling grief for a father she'd never known, while being relieved that the threat to her mother had probably died with Paul Merritta. “Why don't you stay where you are until I come home? Then we can spend a few days together before …”

“Before all hell breaks loose?” her mother said.

It was an uncharacteristic comment from her mother. “Yes,” Sam said.

“Be careful of Nicholas. He was raised by them.”

Sam winced at the strain in her mother's voice and wondered what it had cost her to say that about her own son. “That wasn't his fault.”

“No, but it's fact.”

Sam knew that. The seed of doubt that McLean had planted hadn't entirely faded. Nor had the finger of fear. It was just that the emotional need to get to know Nick was stronger. That didn't mean she wouldn't be careful.

“I'll see you tomorrow,” she said.

She heard a relieved sigh.

“Will you call Terri and tell her?” Sam said. She didn't want to go over the explanations again with her friend.

“Of course.”

“I'll try to reach you,” Sam said. She didn't want to give her Nick's number. She shuddered at the idea of some stranger listening in on a conversation between them.

“I love you, Samantha,” her mother said.

“I love you, too,” Sam said, and turned the phone off. God knew it was true. She was angry, even furious at her mother for hiding the truth so many years. And yet she couldn't deny thirty-five years of love, or caring. It was as much a part of her as her heart. Or maybe it
was
her heart.

And what would happen to Western Wonders when rumors started flying that the Carrolls might be connected to organized crime? How could her mother lose that, too?

Sam sat down in a comfortable chair and looked about the office. It was much neater than her own, the product of an organized mind. How organized? How compartmentalized? How much did she really know about him?

She heard the faint sound of a voice. She hadn't heard a phone ring, but then she probably wouldn't hear a cell phone. She stood and went over to the door, but was able to hear only a word now and then.

She did hear the word “Pop,” and she thought he would probably only use it with a member of the family. She opened the door and walked in.

“I'll talk to you later,” Nick said into the phone, then replaced it in his pocket.

“You didn't have to stop talking for my sake,” she said, wondering why he felt she shouldn't hear any of the conversation. That wriggle of doubt ran down her spine again.

“I was through. By the way, Kelley brought over your luggage. He also checked the safe and retrieved what you left there. They're in your room upstairs.”

She felt a tug of annoyance. It had probably been easy enough for Kelley to open the safe since he was an ex-officer, and then there were the adjoining rooms. Still, she felt choices being taken away from her. “How did he open the safe?”

He shrugged. “Did you use your birthday?”

Feeling somewhat simple, she nodded.

“That's probably it, then.”

He peered at her as if aware of her disquieting feelings. “Hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Can you cook?” he asked. “I have bacon and eggs.”

She nodded. “I enjoy cooking.”

“Good. I can make the toast,” he offered.

He seemed more relaxed than at any time since she'd met him. She wondered whether it was real or a pose.

There were so many things she didn't understand about him.

She followed him into a spacious kitchen that was as tidy—and pristine—as the rest of the house.

She got the bacon and eggs from the fridge and, at his instructions, found the frying pan in the cabinet. He took a stool and watched her as she started frying the bacon.

“Mother asked about you.”

“Thirty-four years late,” he said abruptly.

She was becoming accustomed to his broad Boston accent and short answers.

She sighed. “Her life is turned upside down, too.”

He didn't reply.

What was she doing here? He obviously didn't want her. Her mother probably needed her. Her mother
would
need her once she was assaulted by federal officers and the resulting publicity.

“Was that someone with the family?” she asked about the phone call he'd just ended.

“Yes.”

“Who?” she asked with exasperation.

“Victor.”

The one her mother warned her about. “Did he say anything about what happened last night?”

“Says he doesn't know anything about the attempt on your life. About Pop, only that the maid discovered him this morning. He wanted me to know that's why no one showed up at the hospital. They were all detained.”

“Could the two be a coincidence? The attempt on my life? His death?”

He gave her a sharp look. “His death was apparently natural.”

She was struck by his coolness, by his concern for food rather than going to the Merritta house and sharing grief over a lost loved one. “Are you going over there?”

“Later.”

“I want to go.”

“Glutton for punishment, aren't you?”

She turned over the bacon and put down the long fork with more emphasis than she'd intended. “Don't you care?”

He gave her a long, level look. “Not that it's your business, but yes, I care,” he said through clenched teeth. “But I didn't intend to show it in front of McLean, and I don't care to share it with Victor or George or the others.” He waited a minute, then said softly, “Or with you. You didn't know him. You don't know me.”

His icy disdain chilled her from her toes to the top of her head, stunning her.

She thought him capable of anything at that moment. Had she been wrong to trust him? To come here? What did she really know about him, other than they shared the same blood?

“Can you tell me anything about him? And the business?”

“I only know that he's been trying to steer the family toward legitimate businesses. He saw the handwriting on the wall. Every family in the northeast has been decimated by the feds. There's damn little loyalty any longer. People turn on a dime.”

“Did everyone agree on the new direction?”

“No,” he said flatly.

“Who didn't?”

His eyes grew hard again. “Don't get into it, Samantha. Don't even think about it.”

“I still don't know why he asked me to come.”

“You probably never will. Just as I won't. If you go home and disappear, you'll probably be safe. You and your mother. But butt into this, and all bets are off. Whoever forced us off the road last night wasn't playing games.”

Her blood ran cold. “
You and your mother.
” He'd mentioned her mother several times. Why? What had happened more than thirty years ago couldn't possibly threaten anyone today … could it? Maybe someone thought she might take some tiny part of an inheritance. But why her mother?

Something nagged at her. It was more than apprehension. It was foreboding.

“
Was
his death natural?” she asked.

“I have no reason to believe otherwise. You saw him.”

“Yes, I saw him. He looked sick but not as if he would die in a few hours.”

“And you're a doctor?”

The sarcasm hurt. “Agent McLean seems to think it wasn't natural.” She wanted to ruffle him. She was tired of his cool demeanor, his seeming indifference to his father's death, his lack of curiosity about his mother. Or perhaps, she thought, it was his defense. Hers had been charging forward. His might be retreating.

But at the mention of the FBI agent's name, he became silent, building a wall too high for her to breach. She put the food on the table while he rummaged with his one good hand for silverware.

They ate in silence. He'd closed up like a clam, apparently unwillingly to let her inside whatever walls he'd built. She wished Terri were here. She would have had him talking in a moment. But Sam couldn't do that. There were too many secrets between them, too much pain, too much time.

“When do you plan to fly home?” he asked as they finished the meal.

“Tomorrow. When is the funeral?”

His face tightened. “It'll be at least five days away. There will be an autopsy, thanks to the police, and a lot of people will want to attend. It will take some time to arrange that.” He scowled at her. “You aren't thinking of coming back?”

“Eager to get rid of me?”

“That's not what I meant. I just think you will be safer in Colorado. Why in the hell do you want to go to the funeral, anyway? He meant nothing to you. You didn't even know he existed until a few days ago. Why pretend differently?”

She felt violated. Insulted by his judgment of her. She wasn't pretending. She really didn't feel anything toward the man whose seed had created her. But she wanted closure on this, and somehow she felt the funeral would do that. It was obvious from his voice that he didn't want her here. The thought hurt more than she believed possible.