Freefall (53 page)
“Uncle Rob, who’s that man?” she whispered in his ear.
“What?”
“That blond man.” But already the guy was sliding through the crowd.
They reached the couch, and Cameron laid Allegra on her side. The doctor stooped beside her as her eyes fluttered open.
Gentry grabbed Cameron’s arm and tugged him aside. “I saw the man with Malakua.”
“What?”
“Out at the pool.”
Clasping her wrist, he pulled her through the friends and neighbors who had closed in. “Where?”
She searched the deck and patio. “He’s not here.”
They rushed around the side of the house as a car rounded the block. All she saw was the back quarter panel. A glimpse of orange. No license plate. Her heart hammered. Her temples pulsed. Again she felt the brush of malice.
Cameron turned, his expression the sharp intensity of that first night. “Talk to me.”
“I recognized his face, and then I remembered seeing it before. At the bar in Hanalei. He watched over his shoulder when Malakua told us about an out-of-the-way trail. At the end of our discussion, Malakua went back over to sit with him.”
“Describe him. Everything you can remember.”
“About your height. Maybe forty. Blond. Blue eyes. Muscular. Tan. A pronounced Adam’s apple.” It was fading. She could picture him, but no distinctive details.
“Can you draw him?”
“No. I’m terrible.” She pressed her fingers to her forehead. “What would he be doing here?”
Cameron drew a slow breath and released it. “Good question.”
“Do you think he followed me?”
“It’s possible. But why choose a public scene?”
She’d already asked herself all of that. “If he’s a stalker, maybe he gets off on the risk. Mingling with my family as though he’s one of us.” Could he have followed her to Kauai, hired Malakua to snatch her?
He scowled. “What was he doing when you saw him?”
“Standing there, staring. But so was everyone else, watching you carry my aunt.”
“Did he know you recognized him?”
“He must have, to run off like that.”
She pressed her hands to her head. Why was this happening? She had dared to believe it was over. She’d convinced herself. Just like Mom and Dad, fluffing whipped cream over charred pie.
Cameron hooked an arm around her shoulders. “Why don’t you go in with your family.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Ask around. See if anyone recognized him.”
She dug her nails into her palms. She should be worrying about her aunt, helping Uncle Rob, not wondering whether she’d drawn some psycho into the family fold.
“Hey.” He raised her chin. “We’ll handle this.”
She gathered herself and nodded, then stretched up and kissed his mouth. “Thank you.”
“And now she expects me to think.”
“I’ll be inside.” Their hands drifted apart.
Using the description Gentry had given, Cameron tried to find someone who could identify Malakua’s companion. A few people had noticed him. “Yes,” one woman said. “He had a gold chain on his neck, the flat, shiny kind that catches the sunlight. And he was real tan.”
“Do you know him?”
She shook her head. “Never seen him before.”
Same story all around until he questioned the doctor’s wife, Sandra. “I can’t say for sure, but I think I saw him with Allegra once. Outside her place.” Her mouth pulled down sternly.
Cameron pondered that. Was the guy a legitimate guest after all?
Sandra leaned in. “Don’t take this for anything more than it is, but Allegra was very evasive.”
Aha
. That turned all the wheels she’d meant it to, but what did that have to do with Gentry? Had he gotten close to the aunt for information? About Gentry’s trip to Kauai? Maybe Allegra could identify him when she recovered from her shock. He hoped amnesia didn’t run in the family.
At Julie and Brendan’s suggestion, the guests dispersed. Cameron wasn’t sure he’d questioned all of them, but Sandra’s lead was a start, if Allegra was up to answering. He knew little beyond what he’d observed, her elegant entrance and Rob’s aching reception. It had cut close to his own experience.
The sun was hot on the empty deck and cast a shimmery net across the floor of the pool. Discarded glasses and plates cluttered the tables, and chairs stood away as though abruptly abandoned—as indeed they’d been. Every setting told a tale.
He took out his phone and called TJ. “I don’t care what the chief told you, brah. I need to know what Malakua said.” His tone had enough bite to penetrate TJ’s silence.
“Say some
haole
wen hire him get dem lost. Make happen one accident.”
“Who?”
“No name. Da cell got cancel.”
“Got a description?”
“
Haole
. Blond. Built like. Blue eye. So wazzup, bruddah?”
Cameron shielded the sun from his eyes and looked over the pool area. “Gentry saw him—the guy who was with Malakua.”
“Got one name?”
“No. But I intend to.”
Gentry met him at the door when he went in, strain gathering her brow. “Mom and Dad never saw him. I haven’t asked my aunt and uncle. They wanted to be alone.”
“Is she all right?”
“The doctor thought so. She always looks cool and poised, but I think she’s pretty high-strung.”
He noted the closed doors of the sunroom. “The doctor’s wife said she saw the guy once before with your aunt.”
Gentry rolled her eyes. “Sandra’s a walking tabloid. She’s seen Elvis.”
That deflated him, but he shrugged. “Then it’s suspect, but not irrelevant. We need to talk to your aunt.”
“I don’t know, Cameron. I convinced her to come see Uncle Rob, and it’s the first chance they’ve had to deal with their situation. I don’t want mine to get in the way.”
“I don’t think Rob would agree. He wants answers as badly as I do. Have you remembered anywhere else you might have seen him?”
She furrowed her brow. “Nothing to do with the troupe or the studio. I can’t picture him at any other parties or events. But I see him clearly at the bamboo bar. I would have recognized him then, if I’d seen him before.”
“But you know he’s the one you saw.”
“The recognition shocked my recollection.”
He nodded. “TJ matched your description. Malakua said a
haole
hired him to cause an accident.”
She sagged against the wall. “Then it wasn’t money he wanted. He really wanted me dead.”
He rubbed her shoulders. “The longer we wait, the farther he gets.”
She chewed her upper lip.
“Hey.” He put his finger there.
“Stop damaging the body I’m guarding.”
Her lip slipped free, and he caught it between his just as her mother’s heels clicked across the marble tile.
“Oh.”
So much for keeping it simple.
In the sunroom, alone with his wife, Rob watched Allegra struggle. He’d never seen her overwrought, but now she sat on the lounge, wringing her hands.
“I don’t understand.” Her voice broke. “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m only saying I’m sorry. I wish … I’d been wiser. Kinder.”
“Stop it!” She buried her face in her hands.
How could that upset her? What was he doing wrong? He dropped his chin.
Lord
.
She stood up and paced. He didn’t remind her that Bruce had just warned her against abrupt movements. Fear kicked in again. Had she been diagnosed with cancer? Become addicted to pain killers? What had happened while he was nursing his righteous anger? “Allegra—”
“That’s not my name.”
What?
“I’m not Allegra Delaney. My name is Allison Carter. Or was before I changed it.”
His jaw slackened. “Allison …”
“I’m telling you this so you’ll understand the rest.”
His thigh started to throb. The phantom-limb pain had decreased in frequency and intensity, but the stump had been fatigued. He should rub the muscle but didn’t.
“I grew up in Arkansas, one of five. Had no mama I ever knew.”
Rob’s mind reeled. Who was this person? She didn’t look or sound like Allegra. And Arkansas? She had told him Connecticut. Why lie about where she’d been born?
“From the day Mama ran off, my father told me I was trash.”
His spirit plunged.
“He said only trash comes from trash, and no book learning or fancy dreams would change what I am.” Her face pinched with the memory of the cruel words. “But I didn’t believe him. I was going to be someone. I was worth something.”
He surged with pride for what she’d accomplished, just combating such viciousness.
Her hands fell listlessly to her sides. “I was wrong.”
“No.” The word jumped out. “Allegra—”
“Please. You don’t know what I’ve come to say.”
“There’s nothing you could say that would make you worthless.”
She raised her brows wearily. “Because you believe the illusion. From the moment I met you, my only goal was to measure up. To be worthy of Robert Fox and the life you’d given me.”
His chest caved. Had he been so insufferable? His pride so overweening? Here was God’s judgment, his crime against his wife.
“It took everything I had, but I managed. I fixed every imperfection, improved every asset.” She gave a bleak laugh. “And then you found God. You wanted to start over, a whole new beginning.” Her features twisted. “But I’d already done that, was still doing it. Being good enough for you was killing me. How could I ever be—” She covered her face and sobbed.
He groped to his feet, limped over to her.
“Don’t touch me!”
Her brittle cry froze his arms in the air. All he wanted was to comfort her.
“While you were on Kauai with Gentry, I was at Waikiki with someone else. His name is Curt. We had an affair.”
His arms sank to his sides. His mind reeled with this added offense. He’d driven her to another man? In his stiff-necked arrogance, he’d been blind to her struggle. In all their years together, and the ones apart, had he wondered what demons compelled her obsessions? His compliments had reinforced her compulsions until he’d yanked even that from her.
Lord.
His voice rasped. “I’m sorry.”
“What?” The word came on a breath.
If he hadn’t almost died in the cave, hadn’t faced down the demons of his own; if he hadn’t fought these last months against debilitating loneliness, crippling despair, his reaction might have been different. He might have felt wronged, violated. Instead he felt achingly illuminated.
His hands shook. His throat cleaved. “I’m asking again. Allegra, can you forgive me?”
She sank onto the lounge. “You haven’t heard me.”
“Yes. Yes, I have. Probably for the first time, I’ve really heard you.”
She stared into his face. “I had an affair.”
He nodded. “I know.” Pain shot up his leg, circled his lower back and resided there. “Now I want you to hear me. Can you listen?”
“I always hear you, Rob.”
“I love you. That’s the first thing I want you to know.”
Her face paled. Was she going to faint again?
“Whatever you’ve done—what we’ve done—we’ll find a way through it.” He shook his head. “I never meant for you to try so hard to be someone you’re not.” None of his inventions compared to her creation of a complete, altered self. “For every way I’ve made you feel inadequate, please forgive me.”
She stared as though he spoke a foreign language, and he supposed he did. He wished he could get down on his knees as when he’d proposed to her. Instead he took her hands and raised her to his level. “The last thing I want you to know is I love you. Allegra Delaney or Allison Carter. Wherever you’re from; whatever you’ve done, you’re my wife.”
Her whole body shook. “I can’t … you can’t mean it.”
He took her into his arms, breaking all over again. Two years his pride had kept him from holding her. No more. “I mean it.”
“Uncle Rob?” Gentr y tapped the door.
Cameron had waited as long as she could expect him to. The door slid open.
“What is it, Gentry?” Her uncle looked exhausted, yet somehow light.
“We need to talk to Aunt Allegra.”
He glanced behind her to Cameron. “Can it wait?”
Cameron shook his head. “Gentry saw Malakua’s partner.”
“What? Where?”
“Here. At the party.”
He looked from her to Cameron and back. “Did you call the police?”
She shook her head. “Someone thought Aunt Allegra might know him.”
A shadow crossed his face, and she prayed this would not cause them more heartache. He rotated back on the artificial leg. Her aunt had clearly been crying, her sphinxlike calm shattered. Yet there was something transcendent in her grief as well.
“What’s wrong?”
Gentry went to her. “I saw someone who might be involved in what happened to us on Kauai. Sandra thought you might know him. He’s blond, fortyish, muscular.”
Her aunt sank down onto the lounge. “Curt.”
Cameron came up beside her, his focus tangible. “Curt who?”
“Blanchard.” Her aunt’s tone was barren. “I saw him come in. That’s what … It shocked me to see him here.”
“He came to see you?” Cameron asked.
Her gaze locked with Uncle Rob’s. “He couldn’t be involved with what happened. We were on Oahu.”
