Chapter Two

Early the next morning Kathryn quietly let herself into the big Morgan mansion that would never be home to her. She’d realized that from the very first day she’d arrived as a bride, when her new husband had left her in the car and gone striding into the house to join his father in the study for a drink. Kathryn had timidly followed him inside, thoroughly intimidated by her elegant surroundings.

She’d followed the sound of low male voices but, opening the study door, she’d felt like an intruder as two pairs of cold male eyes swiveled toward her. And she’d continued to feel like an intruder even after Alex’s birth. Just as she felt like an intruder now, tiptoeing in like a teenager who’d overdone a curfew.

The early morning silence of the house was both a relief and a burden. If she was lucky, Ket would be away for the day and she’d escape his vitriolic autopsy of her sins of the previous evening. Made worse, no doubt, by the fact she’d stayed out all night.

“Mrs. Morgan, good morning,” Cynthia Warren, Ket’s housekeeper, greeted her. Cynthia, tall, slim and dignified, had been the only warm spot in the big house, taking Kathryn on as a protégé and teaching her the rudiments of social behavior she needed to survive in Lobster Cove high society.

“Is my husband in, Cynthia?” Even now the words left a dusty feel on her tongue. She tried not to see the flicker of sympathy in the housekeeper’s eyes.

“No, madam, Mr. Morgan took Alex out with him, early this morning.” Cynthia didn’t meet her eyes as she delivered this news.

Kathryn tried to keep the anxiety out of her voice. Ket never took Alex out. “Did he say where they were going?”

“No, madam. Actually, he wasn’t in a very talkative mood.”

Kathryn shuddered. Poor little Alex, having to cope alone with Ket in one of his moods. Seeing her employer flinch, Cynthia said gently: “I’m sure he’ll be just fine.”

But a finger of anxiety scratched at Kathryn’s mind throughout the rest of the morning.

****

Ben sat with his feet up on the scarred top of the sheriff’s desk, a mug of coffee in one big hand, a report from the traffic duty cops in the other. He was having difficulty focusing his attention on the report of the night’s list of highway offenses. No matter how hard he tried to shut it out, his mind kept returning to the scenes with Kathryn last night and he heard again her low murmured question. Are all men bastards?

Lobster Cove wasn’t exactly a hot bed of crime. At least, not on the surface. The only out-of-the-ordinary item was a report of a driver who was stopped by an officer about 5:30 that morning and issued with a warning because a young boy in the back seat was leaning out of the window far enough for it to be dangerous. The officer had issued an on-the-spot fine for lack of seatbelts and warned the man to watch his nephew’s behavior in future. Ben sighed. Hardly likely to set the law enforcement world on fire.

Other than that, it had been quiet in Lobster Cove. No break-ins, drive-by shootings, not even a rowdy domestic or a bunch of late-night revelers to be quelled. Nothing interesting or urgent enough to take his mind off Kathryn Fitzgerald. Who was now Kathryn Morgan and far from his grasp.

Had it really been almost seven years since he’d last seen her? Less than a year before that he’d wiped away the tears on her cheeks and tried to shield himself from the pain of his betrayal in her eyes. He’d been on his way to enlist, the only way he could see to pull himself out of the poverty he’d been born into in Lobster Cove. He’d told Kathryn he’d serve his time, learn a trade, and then he’d be able to give her all the things a man wants to give the woman he loves.

But his country was at war and the months of training turned into three tours of duty in Afghanistan and an undercover assignment in Iraq that had left him hardened and cynical. His superiors noted he had a talent for undercover security operations. One had led to another. Secret operations, life and death matters that meant he couldn’t call home but his thoughts always turned to the sweetheart who waited for him.

But while he was gone, Kathryn had found another, easier way to a life of luxury beyond anything he could ever offer.

His work had kept him out of the country, bound in a world of secrecy where contact with anyone back home was forbidden. When he did get a chance to call Kathryn, her number was out of service, leaving him with a worm of worry in his gut. But then he was in deep cover in Afghanistan’s cocaine producing areas to root out drug dealers raising money to fund the Taliban by sending their deadly product to the States.

That assignment had gone horribly wrong when a drug addict had ripped a knife through a muscle in his leg and left him to bleed to death in a filthy alleyway.

Giving up on the paperwork, Ben pushed to his feet and stretched his cramped muscles. He pulled open his office door and walked into the outer office where his civilian secretary, Tess Highland, reigned supreme over reports, administration, and police department communications.

“I’ll be out for half an hour, getting lunch. You can find me at the diner or call me on my cell if it’s urgent. Otherwise just tell anyone looking for me that I’ll be back soon.”

Tess had worked for Lynn Lawton, the current sheriff, and for Lynn’s father, the now retired Sheriff Amos Lawton, and knew just about every process in the office. She had taken Ben under her wing as acting replacement for her boss. Before Lynn Lawton had stood against him and won the election to sheriff, the older Lawton had been the law’s representative in Lobster Cove for more years than most people could remember.

Ben guessed few people would remember the youth he had been when last in town, or wonder how he came to be back in Lobster Cove. Most would simply accept he was a returning soldier, a war hero, and not question his rise to the position of acting sheriff. Even so, he had his story and cover all ready—a career in the military followed by the police academy. When the leg wound had ended his active service days in the military, the academy was the natural choice since he knew little else. The part of his history that wasn’t in the cover story was that following his graduation he was head-hunted by the FBI. His knowledge of the drug trade got him a desk job in forensics, tracing drug shipments and the money that paid for them.

His experience undercover was the only thing that took him out of the office these days and only because there were certain facts he just couldn’t get behind a desk. None of these were things he could share. So if asked, he planned to joke with whoever was listening that he’d been put out to pasture with the state police, acting as ‘filler-in’ for departments short-staffed due to holidays and sick leave.

****

One of the few people who did remember him was Maggie, the middle-aged proprietor of the Maggie’s Diner. She greeted him warmly as he slipped onto a stool at the counter, her smile transporting Ben back to the day he’d finally returned on leave to find Kathryn, almost a year after he’d left her standing at the bus station watching as he rode away.

Except there’d been nobody home in the ramshackle cottage Kathryn and her town-drunk father had called home, so he’d gone into the diner on the off-chance she’d be there. Maggie had recognized and filled him in on all the gossip from his time away.

“You’ve missed such goings on,” she had said, plopping a cup of coffee down in front of him and settling across from him for a chat. “That Kathryn Fitzgerald—you knew her, didn’t you? Worked at the bank. Well, she finally grabbed the brass ring. Married Ketler Morgan, Junior, soon after you left, it would have been. Seems he’d gotten her pregnant and he did the right thing by her, I’ll say that much for him. But it was against his father’s wishes—I heard the old man nearly had a coronary when he heard his new daughter-in-law and the mother-to-be of his grandchild was the daughter of that old drunk Fitzgerald.”

Maggie obviously relished the details as she poured Ben another cup of coffee, blissfully unaware of the impact the information had on him. He had wanted to dash from the café, obliterate her words as if he’d never heard them. Instead, he sat rooted to the seat, forced by the devil on his shoulder to hear her out.

“Can’t say I blame the girl, though, coming from the family background she comes from.” Maggie went on, “You could say she’s done well for herself—they’ve even put that father of hers in a fancy nursing home. Not that there’s much chance of drying that old drunk out without killing him. Ketler Morgan was her boss, and she worked hard to get the job as a teller in the bank, probably plotting this all along. Anyway, she’s set for life. Little Kathryn Fitzgerald gave the Morgan dynasty a son and heir about three months or so ago. Even the old man will have to accept her now. She’s given him what he’s wanted for years.

“Funny thing, though—all the Morgan firstborn boys have had the name Ketler—but this baby’s called Alexander Fitzgerald Morgan, after Kathryn’s daddy. In fact, I believe they’re christening the baby today.”

So, even though he swore he never wanted to set eyes on her again, Ben had driven by the church on his way to shake the dust of Lobster Cove off his boots. He drove by slowly, just as they were taking photographs after the christening.

He remembered as clearly as if he’d had a snapshot, the picture of Kathryn on the church steps, expensively dressed, with another man’s son in her arms. Standing beside her was a satisfied looking Ketler Morgan, Junior. The image was burned forever onto his heart.

“Are you all settled in over at the sheriff’s office now, Ben?” Maggie asked as she placed his meal before him. Ben thanked her, wondering if Maggie remembered that conversation seven years ago. Now Ben was back in Lobster Cove and knew that time had not dimmed that wave of pain when he’d seen Kathryn with the Morgans.

****

“Where’s my daddy? I don’t see him here.” Alex bit his lip. Being out with Daddy was scary enough, without him sending for this strange old man to pick him up and bring him to the weekend-empty Morgan Quality Shoe Factory.

“It’s okay, he’ll be here soon; he said for you to wait for him down here.” The man, who smelled of tobacco and bad teeth, led the boy down a rickety flight of iron stairs and then another, right into the bowels of the factory. Alex had never been here before and the dank smell, the raw brick, and rusty heavy machinery frightened him. He remembered how angry Daddy got when he cried, so he sniffed back his fears and followed the creepy old man into a small room.

That funny feeling that something was wrong intensified as he looked around. In the dim light from the man’s flashlight, he saw a camping cot, a bucket, and a tiny table in the room with no windows. He turned, fear making him want to run away even if it did make Daddy angry. Then a smelly cloth went over his face and he was left struggling to breathe before falling into darkness.