Haunting Rachel (25 page)

And the only person in the world awake at this hour.

The house was silent, and she wasn’t willing to risk waking Cam and Fiona by going downstairs. But it was a long time until morning. And she really didn’t want to think about that dream.

She turned on her television to CNN, the volume low, then looked around her room for something else to occupy her mind for a few hours. She found her father’s datebook, and it took her a moment to remember that she’d brought
it up days before, meaning to go through it when she had time.

Now she had time.

She curled up in a chair and began looking through the last year of her father’s life. All his appointments, professional and private. Notes he’d jotted while on the phone. Addresses and phone numbers.

It was hard for Rachel to turn the pages, to see his last days play out before her. She cried a little, her emotions closer to the surface than they had been in a long time. And then she got to the day of his death.

And went cold.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered.

When he heard the knock on the door of his room, Adam was only mildly surprised, even though it was four A.M. Room service had delivered coffee and rolls an hour before, and all Adam thought as he went to glance through the security spyhole was that somebody downstairs was bored and had come to collect the tray.

It wasn’t room service.

Adam started to open the door, then stopped. He quickly unfastened the chain from around his neck and slid it and the locket into the front pocket of his pants. Not long out of the shower, the pants were all he was wearing.

Then he opened the door. “Rachel, what in God’s name are you doing out this time of night? And alone, dammit—”

“Sorry if I woke you,” she murmured.

He didn’t like the stillness of her eyes. “I was up. Come in.”

She did. “I remembered your room number, and—” She gasped.

Realizing his back was to her as he closed the door, Adam turned around quickly. “Rachel—”

“My God,” she whispered.

“It wasn’t as bad as it looks.” He got a shirt from the closet and shrugged into it, leaving it unbuttoned. “Just scars, and those will fade away until they’re hardly visible. Eventually.”

“How could they do that to you?”

He said lightly, “They were the bad guys.”

“Oh, Adam …”

He took her hand and led her to the sofa in the small sitting area. “Here, sit down. Good thing the coffee’s still hot. Your hand’s like ice.”

She sat there, her eyes never leaving him, and when he fixed the coffee the way she liked it, she accepted the cup and wrapped her hands around it. “I don’t understand people like that.”

“Good.” He smiled.

“They did that to you … for five years?”

“No, most of it came in the first few months. After that they got bored with me. Besides, given the methods of the new government, there were plenty of prisoners coming in every day. I became a very small and unimportant target.” He sat down in the chair across from her, not daring to get any closer.

“But why? Why did they want to hurt you like that?”

Adam shook his head. “It was a brutal regime. All they knew was violence. They wanted to make sure I didn’t have any information that could benefit them. And … I had to be punished.”

“For what?”

“For doing what I’d been sent there to do. Getting those people and that equipment out of the country.”

“It was your job.”

“I never said they were fair, Rachel.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It was a long time ago. I healed.”

“Did you?”

He managed another smile. “More or less. Rachel, what are you doing here? To come into the city this time of night, alone … What were you thinking?”

She seemed to shake off her horror. Adam was glad. But he was also wary.

“I was thinking I needed to ask you something,” Rachel said.

“Something that couldn’t wait until morning?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you just call me?”

“I needed to see your face when I asked. When you answered.”

That watchful stillness was back in her eyes. It made him feel cold. He was afraid this was going to be bad. “Okay. You’re here. What’s your question?”

Rachel leaned forward to set her cup on the coffee table between them. Her gaze never left his face. “Why didn’t you tell me you were with Dad the day he died?”

He’d been right.

It was bad.

ow did you find out?” Adam kept his voice level.

“Dad’s datebook.”

“And he’d noted a lunch appointment with me just a couple of hours before he and your mother got in that plane.”

“Yes.” Rachel shook her head. “Why didn’t you tell me you were with him?”

Adam drew a breath and let it out slowly. “Because … it might have led you to ask other questions I wasn’t ready to answer. I didn’t want to say anything until we had proof.”

“Proof? Proof of what? And who is ‘We’?”

Adam answered the last question. “Nick and me.”

“Nick was with Dad that day?”

“No. But he believed me when I went to him and told him what I suspected. What I knew. So we’ve been working together. Looking for proof.”

Rachel sat back on the sofa and stared at him. “Proof of what?”

“Proof that the plane crash wasn’t an accident.”

“Dad’s plane? You’re saying you think somebody deliberately rigged it to crash?” She felt an icy chill sweep over her. “That somebody wanted to kill them?”

“That somebody wanted to kill Duncan. Your mother wasn’t scheduled to fly with him that day. I don’t know why she was on the plane.”

“She … sometimes went with him when she was in the mood,” Rachel murmured. “Adam—the FAA concluded that an electrical spark ignited fumes. That it was an accident.”

“I know.”

“Then why do you think it wasn’t?”

“Because I was there, Rachel. At the airport when he took off, waiting for my own flight back home. Because I was able to see the wreckage a few days later, and I found something. The FAA investigator should have found the same thing, because it was fairly obvious. But his report stated that the crash was an accident. Maybe because he was inept, or maybe because he was corrupt. I don’t know —yet. But I found enough to convince me that Duncan’s plane was brought down deliberately.”

“What? What did you find?”

Adam leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and looked at her steadily. “I know electronics. And even more than most pilots, I know what electronics are found on a plane. What I found didn’t belong there. The explosion destroyed most of it, but there were a few pieces of a device that must have been fixed to the altimeter. A kind of timer. That, and a package of explosives hidden near the fuel tank, must have caused the plane to explode when it reached a certain altitude.”

“But you don’t know that for sure.”

“I’m sure, Rachel. In my own mind I’m positive. And those pieces I found are being kept safe by your father’s mechanic out at the airport. He agrees with me. And he’ll testify. When we have more evidence.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?”

Adam hesitated. “Because while I could prove the plane was brought down, I was also fairly certain that the guilty party couldn’t be identified by what’s left of that timer. Going to the police would just alert him that he was under suspicion, and we’d never get him. I thought Nick and I stood a better chance on our own. It … isn’t the first time we’ve done this sort of thing, and I trust us more than I trust the cops.”

Rachel was trying to let it sink in, let it make sense to her. “Why would anyone want Dad dead?”

“That’s something we haven’t been able to find out.” Adam paused, then said, “At lunch that day, Duncan seemed preoccupied, unusually distant. So I asked him if anything was wrong. He said it was nothing, just that he was somewhat troubled by something he’d found out about a recent business venture—with a man named Walsh.”

“Jordan Walsh?”

“We think so. It’s the only clue Duncan offered, the only trail we had to follow.”

“Then—you knew about him before we found Dad’s journal?”

“We’ve been concentrating on him for months. The note about the loan just gave us a more concrete reason to suspect him.”

“Adam, even if you had only suspicions, surely the police would be better able to investigate than you two. They must have more resources.”

“Maybe. But sometimes belief counts for more. Rachel, Jordan Walsh has ties to the underworld. The police suspect, but can’t prove, that he was involved in more than a dozen murders during the past few years. They suspect, but can’t prove, that he ran a multimillion-dollar money-laundering operation for a New York crime syndicate.

“And even though the police would no doubt investigate him on your father’s behalf, we don’t have enough proof to give their investigation the weight it deserves. If we go to them now, they’ll just have another unsolved homicide on their books—and Walsh will know we’re on to him.”

“Adam, I don’t understand this. Jordan Walsh doesn’t sound like the kind of man my father would do business with.”

He nodded. “We think the same thing. It’s the most puzzling question in all this. One thing—Walsh was operating out of D.C. when your father lent him that money, and his public reputation is clean. If Duncan had asked around, he wouldn’t have necessarily heard anything negative, not unless he dug really deep. And that note in his journal, about doing a favor for an old friend, might also explain it.”

“You mean he might not have investigated Walsh until something made him uneasy after he’d already lent the money?”

“Could be. He never asked Nick about Walsh, but that was very much in keeping with how he handled his private loans.” Adam paused, then went on. “Except in my case, when he was aware Nick had known me for years. But he might have used a P.I. unconnected with the bank—like that John Elliot we saw named in his notes—to investigate if he became uneasy.”

Adam shrugged. “But we won’t know that unless and until we hear from Elliot. Assuming he knows anything.”

“So all we know is that Dad loaned Walsh money at the request of an old friend.”

“Yes.”

“Who? What friend?”

“I have no idea. Have you?”

Rachel thought about it, but none of the names flitting through her head made sense. “Dad had lots of old friends. Here, in D.C.— all around the world. It’s a long list, Adam.”

“I was afraid of that.”

Slowly, Rachel said, “But no matter who it was who recommended the loan, you believe that Jordan Walsh is responsible for Dad’s death.”

“Yes.”

“And … the attempts against me?”

“It seems likely. We haven’t been able to find another answer, Rachel.”

“I don’t understand that. I didn’t even know about Walsh until I found Dad’s journal. And even then, how could I be a threat to him? You can’t take a notebook to court and demand repayment of a debt.”

“I know. We—haven’t been able to come up with an answer for that either. All we can be reasonably sure of is that somehow you pose a threat to someone. Walsh seems most likely, but we don’t know for sure. But he turned up in Richmond just after you came home. And things started happening.”

Rachel was silent for a moment, then said, “How have you and Nick been investigating this?”

“Cautiously. I had to return to California shortly after the funeral, and with the work involved in settling Duncan’s estate, Nick pretty much had his hands full. But
in the course of that, he went through all the bank’s records, which told us that whatever dealings Duncan had had with Walsh had either been in the very early stages, or were very private. From my experience with him, we knew he made private loans and investments.” Adam paused. “What we didn’t have was access to Duncan’s private records.”

Rachel drew a breath. “I see.”

“Rachel—”

“That was your job, I take it. To cozy up to me and get access to Dad’s papers.”

“That’s not the way it was.”

“Oh, no? Are you saying it wasn’t your … assignment to tell me about your private loan from Dad and so encourage me to go through all his papers probably sooner than I otherwise would have? That it wasn’t your job to talk to me, and help me, and just possibly find the evidence you wanted?”

“Rachel—”

“Wasn’t it?”

“You make it sound very cold-blooded.”

That was answer enough.

She nodded slowly. “It is cold-blooded.” Astonishingly to her, she was able to keep her voice calm, even reflective. “But I guess I can’t be too upset about it, huh? After all, you and Nick were just trying to … avenge my father’s death.”

“And protect you.”

“It started with Dad.”

“I owe him a great deal, Rachel. So does Nick.”

“And you didn’t owe me anything. I understand that.”

Her voice must not have been as calm as she’d thought, because he flinched.

“Rachel, please. I never wanted to hurt you. And I never lied to you. What happened between us—”

“Nothing happened between us, Adam.”

A muscle in his jaw tightened. “You know better than that.”

“No, I don’t.” A little laugh escaped her. “In a way, Graham was right. It was all a con. So I’d trust you, and confide in you. But the goal was always Dad’s papers.”