COLLATERAL CASUALTIES (The Kate Huntington mystery series) (5 page)

            “That didn’t help you feel better, huh?” he said.

            “Yes and no. You’ve validated my own reaction, but there’s more. I got him some names of other private investigators from Skip–”

            “Then you’ve definitely done all that you should.”

            Kate shook her head. “He needed a detective to help him verify this ambassador’s identity. Then he’s going to report the guy to the CIA. The man will be shipped home to be executed as a traitor. So no matter how this mess turns out, somebody’s going to die.”

            Before Rob could point out that this wasn’t her fault, she jumped up and paced around the room. “Then I come back around to thinking he’s crazy. But I know he’s not. I worked with him for three years, walked with him down into the bowels of emotional hell, and he never cracked, not even a little bit.”

            She stopped and turned toward Rob. Her eyes were shiny with unshed tears. “All he ever wanted was to have a loving family. Be the guy with the white picket fence and the mini-van full of kids.”

            Rob grabbed for her hand before she could start pacing again. He pulled her down onto the chair next to him. “And he’s had that. Years of happiness he wouldn’t have had without your help. But now his past has caught up with him, and there’s nothing you can do about that. Nothing you
should
do about that. It’s sad. It’s horrible. But it’s not your problem. You’re a therapist, not a spy! And as for the ambassador, he made his bed as well. He’s had three decades of the good life but now his past has come back to bite him.”

            “Okay, that helps.” She wrapped both her hands around his big paw and hung on tight. “Dear God in Heaven, please keep him safe. Keep his family safe.”

            Rob knew she didn’t mean the ambassador. He stood and pulled her up to give her a hug. “Try to let it go, sweetheart.”

~~~~~~~

            Kate found it somewhat easier to put aside her worries about Miller on Thursday. Her talk with Rob had helped. After a day of focusing on her clients’ various issues, she was packing up her briefcase and looking forward to dinner and a relaxing evening with Skip and the kids.

            When the phone on her desk rang, she toyed with the temptation to let it go to voicemail. Finally the responsible part of her overrode the tired part and she picked up the receiver. “Kate Huntington,” she said, giving the name she still used for professional purposes.

            “Kate, if you have a few minutes,” Miller said without identifying himself. “I could really use a sounding board.”

            Kate was struggling to get her tired mind back into therapist mode. When she didn’t respond right away, he said, “Oh, man, I’d forgotten how lonely it gets when you can’t tell anyone what’s going on.”

            Her heart ached for him. She cleared her throat. “I’ll be happy to be your sounding board, Miller. I was just a bit surprised for a second. I hadn’t expected to hear from you again, after all the cloak and dagger stuff on Monday.”

            “I’m on another throwaway cell. Bought it for cash, no way to trace it back to me.”

            “I didn’t mean it that way, although I appreciate your concern for my safety. What do you need to sort out?”

            “I got the confirmation I needed. Thanks for your help with that. But I also got another communication from the party in question, with reassurances that he means me no harm. Indeed, he says he’s trying to keep me from harm. A little hard to believe since I harmed him, but still...”

            Kate waited patiently for him to continue.

            “I’m just not that guy anymore.” She heard anguish in his voice. “I can’t stop thinking about the look of horror on your face when you realized what would happen to–”

            “Don’t let that stop you from protecting yourself and your family. This stuff is so far out of my league, I don’t even know how to react.” She stopped, made herself take a calming breath. “Please don’t let my reactions influence your decisions about what’s best for you.”

            He chuckled. “Spoken like a true therapist.”

            “No! I’m not talking as a therapist here. I have no clue how to advise you.” She softened her tone. “I’m speaking as someone who cares about you, who knows you’re in a terrible bind. I can’t see the way out of that bind any better than you can.”

            Silence on the line for a moment. “Thank you for caring so much, Kate.” Another pause. “I don’t know why but my instincts are telling me to trust... Well, maybe trust is too strong a word. Let’s say I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s practically begging me to meet with him tomorrow.”

            “You haven’t told anyone who you think he is?” Kate realized she’d picked up a pencil from her desk and was jabbing the point repeatedly into the note pad she kept by the phone. She made herself put the pencil down.

            “No, by the time the detective got back to me I’d already gotten this letter and was having second thoughts. He implies that someone else is involved. That he’s trying to protect me from that someone.”

            “So what are you planning to do?”

            “That’s what I need to figure out. The place he wants to meet me, it’s a place where I would normally go. He’s not asking me to break my routine, do something unusual. Which fits with the idea that someone else might be watching me. It’s possible he’s telling the truth, that he isn’t the one who’s been trying to kill me.”

            “Isn’t it dangerous though, to meet him?” Kate picked up the pencil again. “Can’t you take one of your, uh, former friends?”

            “I don’t think I should. I’ve already made them suspicious enough. That’s another thing, another reason why my gut says he may be telling the truth. He didn’t say anything about coming alone.”

            “Maybe he realizes you’d just ignore such a request.”

            “Maybe.” Miller paused. “You may not hear from me again, but know that you’ve helped tremendously, just as you did years ago.”

            The pencil snapped in two and fell from her fingers. But she managed to keep her voice calm. “No, it’s not the same at all. Then I knew what to advise, how to steer you.”

            “Still, you’ve helped, just by being somebody I could talk to about all this.” Another pause. “Please don’t feel guilty if... if things don’t go the way I hope they do.”

            Kate was very glad he couldn’t see her face. “You’re going to meet with him then?”

            “I think so. I think I need to hear what he has to say. I couldn’t live with myself if I condemned him, and he wasn’t really a threat.” His voice was thick with emotion.

            Kate clutched the phone receiver. “Dear God, be careful!”

            In typical excruciatingly-honest-Miller fashion, he didn’t jump right in and reassure her that he would be. “I’m gonna do my best to take care of myself,” he said after a moment. “But at least if this doesn’t turn out good for me, he’ll probably leave my family alone. And you still can’t tell anybody, Kate, no matter what happens. I don’t want you getting caught up in this and getting hurt.”

            “Miller...” Her throat closed with fear for him. She swallowed hard. “I’ve never told you this, not in so many words, but you are the most remarkable person I’ve ever known. The world would be... a darker place without you.”

            She wasn’t sure but she thought she heard a sob. After a long pause, he cleared his throat. She could see him, in her mind’s eye, pulling himself together, squaring his shoulders, sitting up straight, ready to do what a man has to do.

            Part of her wanted to tell him all that was crap. He should just take his family and run! But it wasn’t her call.

            “Please, please, be careful!”

            “I will be, as careful as I can be.” His way of saying there was no way to do this without putting himself at risk.

            “Miller, I think you’ll know how I mean this. I love you.”

            Another long pause. “I love you too, Kate. Thank you for being there for me, again.”

            This time the silence was different. She held the phone receiver in numb fingers, staring sightlessly across the room, until a recorded voice started squawking in her ear, “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again...”

~~~~~~~

            Three days later she read the obituary in the paper.

CHAPTER FOUR

            It took every ounce of Kate’s energy to pretend to be interested in four-year-old Billy’s description, over Sunday dinner, of the friend’s birthday party he’d attended that afternoon. She had been severely depressed ever since she’d read the headline in the morning paper,
Sykesville Man Found Dead on Hiking Trail
.

            The paper had honored Miller with a longer than normal obituary, detailing his volunteer work in the community and the supposed accident that had taken his life while doing one of the things he loved most, running on the trails of Patapsco State Park.

            Skip kept watching her, worry in his eyes. Twice he’d asked her what was wrong, but she just shook her head.

            By the time the kids’ baths were done, she was so tired she could hardly stand upright. When Skip took over for story time, she trudged downstairs and into the master bathroom to  brush her teeth.

            Skip found her already getting ready for bed. He looped an arm around her waist and dragged her over to sit next to him on the bed. “Come on, talk to me. What’s the matter, darlin’?”

            Kate shook her head, struggling not to cry. “I can’t tell you. It has to do with that case. And tomorrow I won’t be home for dinner. I have to go somewhere after work.”

            “You said the client’s in danger.” There was alarm in his voice. “You’re not going to meet her, are you?”

            “The danger’s over now,” Kate said, not bothering to correct his assumption about the client’s gender. “Sweetheart, I wish I could talk to you about this, but I can’t. Confidentiality...” She caught herself. She’d been about to say,
Confidentiality doesn’t die with the client.
Skip was an investigator. She dared not give him any hints about what had happened or he might start poking around in this hornet’s nest. Kate shuddered at that thought.

            “Confidentiality doesn’t allow me to say anything more, but I need to go somewhere tomorrow evening. It’s important to me.” She prayed he would stop asking questions she couldn’t answer.

            “Okay, but the suspense is killing me.”

           
Better suspense than foreign agents,
Kate thought as Skip pulled her onto his lap. She closed her eyes and relaxed against him.

            He touched his lips to each of her eyelids and wrapped his arms more snugly around her. She was grateful for the warmth of his embrace, but it didn’t completely ease the hollow feeling in her chest.

~~~~~~~

            Kate arrived at the funeral home Monday evening shortly after the viewing had begun. She planned to hover in the background until she could discreetly approach the coffin to say goodbye, and then offer her condolences to Jill Dawson as a friend Miller used to work with. It wasn’t a lie. He had worked with her, very hard in fact, in therapy.

            But things did not go according to plan. Stepping into the funeral home brought back a flood of memories from Eddie´s memorial service. The low voice of the funeral director as he greeted her at the door, the cloying fragrance of the flower arrangements, the murmur of conversations... It was all she could do not to turn and run.

            She hid in the cloak room for a few minutes, actively struggling to find the delicate balance between warm caring and clinical detachment that came so naturally in her therapy office.

            Still a bit shaky, she stepped out into the main room. But she couldn’t make herself go up to the coffin. One glimpse of Miller’s immobile face from ten feet away told her she would burst into tears if she got any nearer. That would make the other mourners far too curious about who she was.

            When there was a lull in the line of people trickling past the widow, Kate approached, her hand extended. “I’m Kate Canfield. Miller and I worked together years ago. I’m so sorry for your loss. He was a wonderful man.”

            Kate’s use of Canfield did not fool Jill Dawson. Her red-rimmed eyes went wide. “You’re Kate. Oh, thank you, Lord!” She grabbed Kate’s arm and hustled her to a far corner of the room.

            An older man started to approach but Jill shook her head slightly in his direction. “That’s my father. The kids are home with my mom. They were here earlier but I couldn’t put them through this again.” Her voice broke on a sob but she quickly got herself under control.

            “You’re the Kate he saw, the therapist that helped him, right?”

            Kate nodded. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the elderly gentleman discreetly steering people away from where they were sitting.

            “I need to talk to you. I know he met with you recently.” Jill’s words tumbled out. “He told me not to contact you, but whoever killed him wouldn’t suspect anything from this. I mean it’s only natural that you would come here to pay your respects, and that I would talk to you for comfort, right?”

            Kate looked around nervously but no one was within earshot. What could she say to this woman to convince her that Miller had died of natural causes, or at least get her to let it go? There was nothing to be gained from the truth now. He was dead, and if Jill pursued his murderer it would just put her and their kids in danger.

            “The paper said it was an accident but I just overheard someone say that Miller had a heart attack. That must’ve caused his fall.”

            Jill snorted. “He didn’t have a heart attack. He was only fifty-two years old and healthy as a horse!”

            “I know it’s hard to believe but seemingly healthy people do have heart attacks. I know of at least two cases. One was an acquaintance of my first husband. The man was a runner, like Miller–”