Son of the Enemy (30 page)

“Hello there,” the voice said from the darkness.

Ronald Geer’s voice mail directed John to leave a message and promised he would get back to him as soon as possible. John flipped his phone shut. “No answer. Damn it.”

Hannah continued folding clothes and sticking them into their bags. She was doing it for both of them, which touched John in a very deep way. Wives packed for their husbands and their kids. He remembered his mother packing them all up to go to the beach, before the shit hit the fan. It didn’t seem like something guys did for anybody, including themselves.

“Thanks for doing that for me,” he said.

She looked up, glanced back at the bags on the bed and shrugged. “Oh. I’m just doing it without thinking.”

“It doesn’t surprise me that you’d automatically take care of someone that way without being asked.” He’d almost said
me,
but figured she’d stop doing it if she thought too hard about who was benefiting. “I put in a call to the sheriff’s office. If they can’t do anything else, at least they can scope out the area around your house to make sure nobody’s waiting for us when we get there.” But damn, he wanted to hear back from Ronald Geer.

“Did they agree to do that?”

“Yeah.” He stared at his phone, willing it to ring. “It’ll be pretty late by the time we get back, though. I still think it would be smarter to go tomorrow, but”—he held up his palm, anticipating her reaction—“we could still stay in a hotel in Virginia and go back in the morning when it’s light.”

“Together, presumably.” She didn’t look at him when she said that.

He started to come back with a rejoinder but decided it wasn’t worth it. It was probably unrealistic to think they could get beyond their past even in the best possible case.

He was going to have to get used to not being with her.

It might never feel okay, but too much water had passed under the bridge now to change that. He’d made his choice—to try to save his father—and however that worked out, getting her to understand it, accept it, forgive him and, ultimately, to trust him enough to love him… Maybe that was too much to ask anybody.

He checked his watch. “Our plane isn’t for almost three hours. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather spend that time here than at Logan. So unless you have some objection, I’d like to take a look through those boxes.”

“Be my guest.”

John lifted the top box from the corner and brought it into the sitting room. He threw a small log on the fire, more to bolster his spirits than to drive away the cold, and began sorting through odds and ends—hairbrushes, perfume bottles, match books, buttons—the minutia of daily life. When he was done he pulled out the other, heavier box, which was filled mostly with scrapbooks and framed photos, picked up each one and examined it.

At the very bottom of the box was a high school yearbook. Class of 1977. It had to be Sharon’s yearbook. He sat back and leafed through. The individual shots of the seniors were in the back, so he began to go through them. It was a thick book and there had to be at least five hundred seniors.

He flipped to the L section and felt a shock of recognition when Sharon Lavoie’s face appeared on the page. Was this what Hannah looked like in high school
?
He sensed she was staring at him, but he didn’t look up.

There were subtle differences between the women. Hannah’s eyebrows were more pronounced, her eyes a bit bigger. Sharon Duncan’s smile, that of an untroubled seventeen- or eighteen-year-old, was one he’d never seen on Hannah. Maybe someday he would see that kind of smile on her.

And maybe someday bears would stop shitting in the woods.

Under Sharon’s photo was the list of activities and honors.
Field Hockey, 9, 10. Prom Chair, 12. Newspaper, 10, 11. Drama club, 9-12.
And so on. When he first opened the book, John had noticed some of the club headings, so he flipped back now, curious to see more of the woman who looked so eerily like Hannah. The woman his father had fallen in love with—and loved still. How easy it was for John to understand that, now.

There were four pages of photos of the drama club. One was a group shot, and Sharon was in the second row, that beautiful smile on her face. The other photos were from plays the group had performed.
Streetcar Named Desire
,
Glass Menagerie
, and a couple with names he didn’t recognize. He spotted Sharon in a long dress, arms outstretched to a boy in ragged clothing and read the caption below.

A student-produced play written by Philip Krantz
, it said.
A unique take on
Beauty and the Beast
, with Sharon Lavoie as
—

“Holy shit.”

Hannah appeared beside him. “What? What did you find?”

He pointed at the photo, unable to speak over the pounding of blood in his ears. Hannah leaned closer to examine the picture.

“Oh my God,” she whispered several seconds later. “That’s my mother, playing—” She brought her hand to her mouth.

“Belle,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

John flipped back to the group shot of the drama club. “All of the people in this group, and any number of people at her school, knew your mother played Belle in that play.”

Hannah was reeling from the discovery of the photo. John’s eyes had a new light to them, though, which she was heartened to see. He was the FBI agent, and if he believed they’d stumbled on to something then maybe they really had. “But that’s a whole lot of people to follow-up with.”

John had punched a series of numbers into his cell phone and was now holding it to his ear. “That’s the point. We can’t do it ourselves, but the FBI can. They’ve got databases that—”

“What?”

He held up a finger. “Ron, this is John Emerson. Look, I’ve got a lead on the Sharon Duncan murder case. I believe the same guy is currently stalking her daughter.” He paused and glanced at Hannah. “I think it’s time we met and talked. I’m not keeping my cell on, for reasons I think you already know, but if you’ll leave me a number I can reach you at, I’ll call you. I’m in Marblehead right now, as you may have guessed, but I’ll—
we
’ll be at my place tonight.” He gave his number, clicked the phone shut and stuck it in his breast pocket.

“Who was that?”

“Ronald Geer.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that before? You said you were going to call a friend.” As soon as the words left her lips, she realized how contentious she sounded, but damn it, her emotions were all over the place where John was concerned.

John raised his face to the ceiling and blew out a breath. “Please don’t start bitching at me again, Hannah, okay? I wasn’t trying to keep anything from you.”

At that moment, something inside her snapped. “Oh, so I’m the shrew now, is that it? Never mind that you’ve held something back from me every step of the way. If you’d just told me the truth right from the beginning—”

“You never would have let me in the door,” he shot back. “The only reason you agreed to help me was because my father knew about the stalker. If I’d told you up front I was Sam Daly’s son and wanted you to help me prove his innocence, you would have thrown me out on my ass and you know it.”

She swallowed. He was right about that. “You should have told me who you were before you made love to me.”

“By the time we made love, I cared too much to risk losing you.”

“Cared too much to lose my memories, you mean. Well, now you know my memories are worthless, so what’s to keep you around?”

His face was turning red. “You really want to know why I haven’t said the hell with you, take your sarcasm and stick it?”

“Yes!”

“Because I love you, goddamn it! I love you and I’m scared to death of losing you. Happy now?”

Hannah’s jaw dropped. All she could do was stare at the angry, hurting man who had just thrown the words she’d wanted to hear right in her face. He stood there running his hands through his hair, trying to regain his cool but having no luck. A couple of seconds later he murmured, “Fuck this,” under his breath, grabbed his jacket off the bed and stalked out the door, slamming it behind him. She sat down on the couch, bent forward with her hands tucked between her knees, incapable of thought. The rolling suitcases lay open on the bed. She should really go and collect their toiletries so they didn’t accidentally leave anything behind. But she didn’t move. She couldn’t. There was only one thing she could do at the moment.

She waited.

It was after ten by the time they were sitting in a cab on their way to John’s apartment. Neither of them had said much since he had stormed out of the room back in Marblehead. He came back as furious as he’d left, grabbed their bags, tossed them and the two boxes of Sharon Duncan’s things into the trunk of the rental car and started off for the airport. Hannah’s one attempt at conversation had been met with a curt reply that confirmed he was in a funk and was not receptive to anything she had to say. All he’d said as they stood in the cold waiting for a cab was “We’re going to my place, and you can give me shit about it if you want, but it won’t get you anywhere.”

Of course, that hadn’t sat well with her, so she’d given him a flip answer. “I suppose if I refuse you’ll shoot me.” To which he’d given her a look that could have shattered steel. She’d wisely shut up after that. Not because he frightened her, but because he was obviously struggling so hard with his feelings—particularly with a declaration of love he had to have been fighting for quite a while—and she didn’t want to risk an explosion right there in the taxi line.

His place turned out to be a furnished apartment with none of the amenities of a real home. The walls were cream colored and bare. A couch and boxy upholstered chairs with wooden arms and matching lamp tables made up the living room, which showed the only signs of life—two empty Corona bottles on the coffee table. As soon as they walked in the door, John went to the refrigerator and grabbed a beer, took a long sip and began a detailed search of the living room.

“Want something?” His tone said he was just being polite.

“A little wine would be nice.”

“I only have beer.”

“In that case I’ll have a beer.”

“Help yourself.”

She did. “When you said you only had beer, you weren’t exaggerating.” She opened a Corona while she scanned the shelves. “There’s nothing in here but beer, cold water, a pizza box and Chinese takeout containers. You don’t even have mustard. Or eggs.”

“Thank you, I didn’t need you to take inventory of my refrigerator.”

She sipped the ice-cold beer in the small kitchenette. “Good Lord, you’re prickly.”

John said nothing as he inspected the front door. He murmured something unintelligible, then flipped both locks. “You’re welcome to take the bedroom. I can bunk out here.” The pain in his voice was almost too much to take.

“Could we talk for a minute?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Do you want the bed or not?”

“Not.”

“Fine. Do you need a shower?”

“Depends on whether you need me to be clean.”

He finally looked at her. “What?”

She tried to smile but wasn’t sure she pulled it off. “When I slip into your bed later. If you’d rather have me clean then yeah, I’ll take a shower. If you don’t care…”

John closed his eyes. “Don’t yank me around, Hannah. If you want to sleep with me, just come into the bedroom now. But do me a favor and don’t come if you’re going to tell me there’s no way we can be together. After this, I mean.” He opened his eyes. “After all my lying. And hurting you.”

Her heart felt huge in her chest. She set her beer down on the counter and walked to him slowly. She stopped a couple of feet away from him and could see the fear in his eyes. “You didn’t want to tell me, did you?”

“No. I didn’t want to tell you almost as much as I didn’t want to love you. But I do, and there’s nothing I can do about that now.”

Warmth tingled through her body, and a slender shoot of hope rose through the raw wound in her chest. She stepped closer and laid her hand over his heart. The other she kept wrapped around her middle. “And that’s why you’ve been so angry all evening.”

“I’ve been angry since I was twelve years old,” he said, his voice rough. “About everything. But nothing has ever made me as angry as losing someone I love.”

She looked deep into his eyes. Whatever he had lied to her about before, he wasn’t lying about this. Somehow she knew that with certainty. Still…

“I don’t know where this leaves us,” she said, looking down. Trust was a fragile thing. It wouldn’t be fair to tell him she loved him, only to say later that she couldn’t be with him. When she looked up, his gaze gripped her soul.

“That’s up to you. All I know is I love you so much it takes my breath away.” He reached out and stroked her hair. “I think I could die of love for you.”

She tried to imagine walking away from him, but couldn’t. “Let’s take it a day at a time,” she whispered, reaching up to touch his cheek. “We’ll never know whether we can get past this if we don’t try.”

He pulled her into his arms. “What would you suggest as a first step?”

“How about a little honesty from me?”

He tipped her chin up, frowning. “Okay. About what?”

She had trouble holding his gaze. “That whole bondage thing, with my robe belt.”

He swallowed hard. “Just say it.”

“That was a first for me. And I never, uh, took Thornton in my m—”

He laid two fingers over her lips and shushed her. The frown was gone and his shoulders looked more relaxed. “I don’t need to hear more. You had a right to be angry. And to use me, if that’s what you were doing.”

She fingered his belt buckle, heart pounding in anticipation. “I wouldn’t mind using you again.”

He searched her face, no doubt making sure he understood, then unbuckled his belt and slid it off. He kissed her hard, probing with his tongue while he unfastened her bra, and then pulled her sweater and bra over her head. When she was standing before him naked from the waist up, he reached behind her and bound her wrists. Excitement skittered up her arms and rippled through her body. She was at his mercy, and she knew what he wanted—what they both wanted.