Unbreakable (3 page)

"Wow. This is going to b-be so fun."

*  *  *

Present Day
Town & Country, Missouri

The chiming of the grandfather clock jerked her from the memory, and she stood up and closed the window. Moving to her desk, she lifted a photo in a burnished copper frame. It was of five girls in their earlier teens, their slim arms wrapped around each other's shoulders. Their faces were wreathed in smiles, two of them grinning wildly despite the railroad tracks that were wrapped around their teeth. It had been early summer, she recalled, and the attire was cut-off blue jeans and white muslin shirts embroidered with bright flowers and cut with an empire waist or peasant blouses made of gauzy cotton.

The mysteries of the world were still theirs to explore and their happiness and innocence showed.

Tears stung her eyes as she slid the photo from its frame, careful not to crease it. She pulled her PDA from her desk drawer and laid the photo in her scanner as she retrieved a phone number and email address. When she found them, she moved to her computer and spent a few moments composing an email before picking up the phone.

"Gramercy Investigations," a man answered. "This is Ted Gramercy speaking."

"Hello, Mr. Gramercy, this is–"

"Mrs. Langtree, I'd recognize your voice anywhere." She'd called him the day before, but had rushed off the phone when Malcolm came home unexpectedly.

She cringed, reminded once again of the distinctive, if gentle, Southern twang that she never had been quite able to lose completely and that clearly denoted a lower-class bloodline to St. Louis society.

"I'm glad you called the agency," Ted continued. "It's my pleasure to have the opportunity to work for you. What can I do for you, ma'am?"

She rubbed her temple with one hand, feeling a headache coming on fast. "I just emailed you a photograph, Mr. Gramercy."

"I'm printing it now."

She nodded even though he couldn't see the gesture, appreciating his efficiency.

"It's finished printing. Nice photo."

A tiny smile tugged at the edge of her lips. "Yes. It is." She picked up the photo again and studied it, knowing he was doing the same thing. "There is a list of names in the email. They're in the same order that the girls appear in the photograph from left to right. I've also included as much other information about each girl as I could. I'm afraid it's not much."

"And what do you want me to do when I find them?"

She smiled at his use of "when" and not "if." "I don't want you to do anything… at least not yet. Just contact me with their addresses and then I'll give you some additional instructions." Pausing, she gently cleared her throat. "I trust that you understand your complete discretion is required, Mr. Gramercy."

"Of course. As far as anyone but you is concerned, I don't exist. I'll email my standard contract back to the same address and be in touch soon."

"That's fine. I'll overnight your retainer in cash. Good–"

"Wait! Mrs. Langtree, you only have four names listed here and there are five girls."

She ran the tip of her finger over each girl's smiling face. "You only need to find four girls… I should say women, they're all nearly 40 now." A pause. "The fifth girl in the photograph is me… in another life. Gwen Hopkins."

Present Day
St. Louis, Missouri

T
HE PHONE RANG and Katherine Schaub swiveled sideways in her office chair, shifting her unlit cigarette to the corner of her mouth. "Damn communist ‘No Smoking' buildings are killing me," she murmured. She glanced at her caller ID box before answering, mindful of the hounds from her credit card companies who had already called work three times this week. Pressing the receiver to her ear, she dropped a manila folder into her outbox and said, "Hey, sweetheart, I was wondering if you were ever going to get back to me." Unconsciously, her hand moved through her white-blonde hair, and she straightened the short spikes as she spoke.

"How could I resist? In fact–"

Her lips curled into a slow, coy smile when the words coming from the man on the other end of the phone began to get steamy enough to get her pulse racing. "Yes, you're forgiven," she said gently. "Tonight then?" Her smile broadened and her face took on a dreamy expression. "I can't wait either. Love you, too. Bye." Long after the line was dead she hung up, unable to focus on anything but the vision of a sexy pair of brown eyes. She and her beau had been a couple for more than a year and she still felt like a lovestruck teenager. That was a very good sign.

Finally, she grabbed another file from her inbox and opened it, plucking a pen from the plastic holder that was overflowing with them.

The phone rang again and she grinned.

Without looking, she reached behind her and picked it up, her voice melting into a sexy purr. "Couldn't wait ‘til tonight, huh, lover?"

A burst of laughter from the other end of the line caused her to scramble back and look at the phone display. "Toby, you bastard."

"Me?" Toby laughed again. "What did I do, lover?"

"Funny."

"I thought it was."

"What do you want, Toby?" Her tone was a cross between impatience and teasing, heavy on the impatience. "If I want to get out of here before six, I need to get busy."

"Well," Toby let out an indignant snort, "I'll bet you weren't this grumpy with lover boy."

"Toby."

"Fine. Since you're in such a great mood, I'll cut right to the chase."

Katherine gave a mental groan. "I'm sorry." She reached down and took off her shoes, tucking them under the desk before leaning back in her chair. It had already been a long day and she still had hours to go. "You know what early September is like for me. I'm swamped."

"And don't forget that you're mean because you're giving up cigarettes."

"How could I forget?" Katherine removed the cigarette from her mouth and sniffed the end, taking in the pungent scent of tobacco with a look of unadulterated bliss. "Those bad, bad things," she murmured insincerely. For a fleeting moment she wondered if she couldn't just eat the tobacco and get her nicotine buzz that way. How many calories could tobacco really have? "I just hate them." With the tip of her tongue she tasted the end.

"Uh huh." Toby's voice was doubtful. "You hate them the way I hate hot dogs and cheesecake."

"Oh, God." Katherine's eyes rolled back in her head. "If I could have all the cheesecake and cigarettes I wanted, sex would be irrelevant because I'd be so satisfied." Then she thought about that for a moment. "Well," she conceded, "I might get horny when the high from both wore off. But only then."

"You'd be too fat and cancer-ridden to even reach your horny parts."

"Ugh." With a look of disgust, Katherine tossed the cigarette on her desk. "Now I know why I stopped dating you. Was there a reason you called? You usually don't call me at work."

"Well, I thought you'd be interested that my nerdiness has finally paid off for you. I hit on the finger."

"In English, Toby, please. We can't all be senior information consultants, aka uber-nerds, for Fortune 500 companies."

"Wow, when you say it that way I sound really important. Will you describe my job like that to my mother?"

"Toby," Katherine warned.

"Fine. Fine. In laymen's terms, after we spoke last month and you told me about your trouble with the credit reporting agencies, I did a little creative account accessing–"

"Hacking, you mean."

Toby continued to speak as though he hadn't heard Katherine's comment. "I put a tracer on your file so that I could peek in on anybody who was peeking in at you. With me so far?"

A nod. "Still with you."

"Earlier in the week you had an interesting hit. I didn't have the time to check it out then, but it stuck in the back of my mind, and so today I did a little digging. Someone has been checking you out, Katherine… thoroughly."

Katherine tensed in her chair. "Somebody who?" Her voice rose a notch. "You mean those damned VISA people? God, a little bad luck and a few late payments and they're all over me like stink on shit. I paid my full payment this month!"

"No, not them. That's what caught my eye. It was a smaller company. One I'd never heard of."

Katherine could hear Toby lean forward in his chair.

"Here's where things get interesting. It took me some major digging, this guy is good, but I found that whoever was poking around was logging on from small local company. And they were using a bogus name and office address to do it." All traces of good humor left Toby's voice. "What kind of trouble are you in?"

Katherine blinked slowly, too surprised to speak. Who would be checking her out? And more importantly, why? Something came to mind instantly, but she dismissed the notion as paranoid and the product of inflated sense of guilt. "Honestly, I'm not in any trouble. When my meager investments went tits-up last year, I tried to cover them with cash. And soon the cash was gone too. Things were rough there for a while, you know that, but they're getting back on track now. I'm actually caught up and saving again."

"On your salary?"

One of Katherine's eyebrows quirked. "Yes, even on my pitiful little office manager's salary."

"I'm sorry, Katherine." Toby winced. "I didn't mean it like that."

"I know." Katherine picked up her cigarette and put it back in her mouth, this time not bothering to fight her urge to chew on the end. "So why is someone checking me out." She audibly gulped. "What the hell do they want?"

"You sound a little worried for someone who's not in trouble."

She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. "Don't go there, Toby. If you don't believe what I've told you then that's your problem."

Toby knew a "back off" when he heard one. There was something his friend wasn't telling him, but it would have to wait. "Listen, I gotta go. I have a meeting in five. The name of the company doing the digging, and I mean digging, we're talking credit report, tax returns, DMV, bank records, everything, is a local detective agency called Gramercy Investigations."

Anxiously, Katherine searched her mind for even the slightest hint of recognition. "But…" she shook her head a little, "I've never heard of them."

"Well, Katherine, all I can say is that they've sure as hell heard of you."

*  *  *

Present Day
St. Louis, Missouri

"What are you doing here at five?" Jacie's lips thinned as she unlatched the chain on her door, but pointedly didn't offer an invitation to come inside. She schooled herself in patience as she spoke. "What happened to 7:30?"

She had just walked in the door from an unexpected trip to the office when her doorbell rang. Her briefcase was still in one hand, a scuffed yellow hardhat in the other.

"Nothing happened to 7:30. I'm just a little early to pick up Emily."

"Two and a half hours isn't a little early. Listen," Jacie tossed her hardhat and briefcase onto the floor next to the closet, causing the hat to bounce several times on the ceramic tiled floor. She stepped out into the hallway and quietly closed the door behind her. "I don't give a good God damn what you're ready for." Her jaw bunched and released as she tried to control her temper. "It's my weekend with Emily, and that doesn't end until 7:30 tonight. That's our court-ordered arrangement."

Nervously, she peered over her shoulder at her front door and ran a hand through shoulder-length auburn hair as she consciously lowered her voice. "Don't fuck with me over this." She let her hand drop tiredly, wondering why, after more than two years apart, they were still having the same old arguments. "I've changed my plans twice this month just so you could accommodate your girlfriend's schedule. I'm not changing today. We haven't even eaten dinner yet." Her voice went a little cold. "Deal with it."

"You bitch."

Jacie crossed her arms over her chest. "Takes one to know one."

"I never–"

"Yes, yes, I know," Jacie interrupted, knowing this particular rejoinder like the back of her hand. "Let me save us both some time, shall I? You should have never allowed me to adopt
your
child. What a horrible mistake that was on your part… Asshole," she added as her temper flared. "Never mind the fact that we planned having her and went through the months of you trying to get pregnant together. And never mind that I've been loving, raising, and supporting her since the day she was born. The judge clearly made a huge mistake by awarding me joint custody of our daughter."

"Don't take that tone with me. This is your fault, Jacie. If you hadn't left us–"

Jacie's eyes flashed. "I left
you
because you are impossible and we were all miserable. I
never
left Emily. Don't you dare even say that." Her words were met with a stony silence. "Come back to get our daughter at 7:30. We're going out for dinner, so don't bother showing up early." And with that, she marched back inside her condo and slammed the door behind her, hearing muffled cursing traveling down the hall. "Goodbye, Alison. You have a great evening, too," she said under her breath, feeling the knots in her stomach beginning to ease now that she was out of her ex-lover's presence. For the millionth time she wondered how one of the worst mistakes of her life could have also produced the best thing in it.

She stepped over to a chair and angrily threw herself down. Her condo was cluttered, but not really dirty, and filled with low, whitewashed furniture and littered with marble coasters. Pale, overstuffed living room furniture sat atop colorful woven rugs and several watercolors graced the walls. It was the kind of atmosphere where Jacie could sink into the sofa, close her eyes, and put her feet up after a hard day's work. She'd found a home in this small, eclectic building near Forest Park.

Just then a dark-haired 7-year-old bounded out of the kitchen with two cans of RC in tow. "Who were you talking to, Mom?"

Jacie smiled, her soft brown eyes now glittering with affection rather than anger. "Were you eavesdropping again, young lady?" Slender eyebrows lifted as she waited.