“Watch me, Mom!”
Lara lifted her hand to shade her eyes as Hunter sprinted to the swings. The quick nap in the car had energized him, and she was glad she had decided to stop at the park before going home. He’d have a chance to run and play, and she’d have a moment to sit and catch her breath after a long day.
Keeping an eye on Hunter, she turned and walked down the trail toward a bench that overlooked the playground, then slowed her step. Another woman sat there, a solitary figure who kept her eyes on the distant horizon as if her thoughts were far away.
Lara thought about following Hunter to the swings, then decided against it. She had spent the entire day on her feet, and her supervisor at the Osceola Oaks nursing home had been in a particularly foul mood. More than once Lara had bit back a protest and obeyed an inane command, knowing full well that the supervisor was not qualified to oversee the staff. But Lara, known to everyone here as Rose Shepard, was a lowly licensed practical nurse, without enough authority to swat a cockroach. She quietly tended her patients, often going above and beyond her job description, because she cared about the people in her wing.
She started to call Hunter back, but the sound of his laughter persuaded her to stay. Sighing, she approached the bench. “Do you mind if I sit down?”
The young woman looked up and gave Lara a distracted smile. “Sure.”
“Thanks.” Lara sank to the bench and leaned back, then closed her eyes for a moment in blissful relaxation.
“Mom!”
Hunter’s cry brought her eyes open again. He stood on a child-sized balance beam six inches above the ground. As she watched, he spread his arms and walked the beam with short, careful steps, an almost perfect imitation of the gymnast he’d watched on television the week before.
“That’s good, sweetheart,” Lara called. “Very good.”
The other woman followed Lara’s gaze; then her mouth tipped in a faint smile. “He’s cute. How old?”
“Five.” Lara turned back to Hunter, hoping the woman would take the hint and stay quiet. Since moving to Florida, she had cultivated few friends. This woman was probably just a tired professional on her way home from work, but even after five years, Lara remained cautious in her dealings with strangers. She’d seen enough to know that money bought power and Devin Sloane had a limitless supply of both.
The woman sighed heavily. “I wish I had a kid. My husband doesn’t want them—says they’re too expensive. I want a baby more than anything, but he won’t listen to reason.”
Lara glanced at the woman’s hand. A slender gold wedding band shone on her ring finger, a modest piece of jewelry that seemed appropriate for a struggling newlywed. The woman was young, probably not yet thirty, and she wore a denim skirt, a plaid blouse, and brown leather slip-ons. Lara’s brow crinkled when she recognized the emblem on the shoes—Manalo Blahnik. If this woman wanted a baby, she’d have to start economizing on footwear.
“Babies may be expensive,” she said, her distrust subsiding, “but they’re worth it. And if you’re careful, you may not feel the expense at all. Baby showers, thrift shops, discount shopping—there are ways to cut costs.”
The woman thrust out her hand. “I’m Mary Godfrey.”
Lara took a quick, sharp breath at the name, then smiled and shook the woman’s hand. “I’m Rose. Nice to meet you.”
Mary smiled and released Lara’s hand. “I’m really sorry to burden you with all this, but it’s nice to talk to somebody. My husband won’t even discuss children anymore.”
“It’s important that he talk.” Lara’s gaze shifted to follow Hunter, and part of her brain registered the irony that she, a single mother, was dispensing marital advice. Nonetheless, she pressed on. “It’s important to have your husband’s agreement. A child needs a father.”
Mary made a faint moue of distaste. “I don’t know about that—a lot of my friends are raising kids alone. And tell me the truth—how much time does your husband spend with your son?”
Lara crossed her arms, feeling a sudden chill. “I don’t have a husband.” She kept her gaze on Hunter. “That’s why I know he needs a father. I try my best to be all Hunter needs, but I can’t be everything. I don’t have the energy or the time, and I’m not a man.” She kept her face blank, trying to hide her misery from Mary’s probing stare. “I love my son dearly, but he needs a father. I have no idea how I’m going to provide him with one.”
“You could get married.” Even wide open, the woman’s eyes had a catlike slant to them. “You’re an attractive woman. I’ll bet the guys would line up if you let them know you were interested.”
Lara rubbed a finger over her lip, quelling the sudden urge to laugh. “I don’t think so. I don’t have time to socialize. Hunter and I get out to church once a week, but other than that, I’m either at work or home with him.”
Mary’s gaze roved over Lara’s navy slacks and white top. “You work in a doctor’s office?”
“I’m a nurse.”
Mary shrugged and turned toward Hunter. “I’m a preschool teacher. That’s how I know I love kids. And that’s why I want one.”
Hunter’s shrill scream broke the heavy stillness of the afternoon, and Lara rose to her feet, her heart pounding. Hunter ran toward her, his hand waving, his face puffy with tears and exertion.
“What’s wrong, buddy?”
“Bee!” He turned and pointed toward the playground. “A big bee.”
Lara glanced at the glaring red spot on his palm. “You were stung, buddy, that’s all. It will hurt, but then the pain will go away.”
His sobbing quieted to a soft whimper. “It was a big bee.”
A shadow fell over Hunter’s face as Mary approached. “He’s all right?”
“A bee sting, nothing serious. But I’d better take him home and put some baking soda on it.”
“Let me see.”
Whimpering, Hunter held up his injured palm for Mary’s inspection.
“Poor baby.” The woman gave him a soothing smile. “But you’ll be all right. I see things like this all the time. I’m a teacher, you know.”
Hunter’s eyes flew open wide; then he looked at Lara. “She’s not, Mom. Why did she lie?”
Lara felt her stomach drop. She grasped Hunter’s uninjured hand and pulled him toward the parking lot. “We’ve got to go,” she called, lengthening her stride. “I’d better get him home and put something on this.”
“Why are we running? What’s wrong, Mom?”
Lara didn’t answer until Hunter was safely buckled into his seat. She started the engine, backed out of the parking space, and paused for a moment. Mary Godfrey, if that was truly her name, was still sitting on the park bench, her head down as she pressed a cell phone to her ear.
Hunter followed her gaze. “Who is that lady, Mom? Why did she lie?”
Lara felt a cold hand pass down her spine as she closed her eyes. More important, who was the lady calling?
From the wide windows in her office, Nadine Harrington watched the setting sun cast the Washington Monument’s oblique shadow over the surrounding park. She tented her hands and locked her long nails, congratulating herself for her perseverance and perspicacity. For five years she had sought Lara Godfrey, and she had always known the key to finding the woman lay in Connor O’Hara.
They had questioned him, directly and indirectly, immediately after the woman disappeared. In response to the judge’s pickup order, the police had even investigated that silly skiing alibi, but Nadine knew they’d done little more than call the Wintergreen hotel to check O’Hara’s registration. Once the police discovered that Connor O’Hara didn’t have the woman or the infant, they left him alone. Most cops hated family law cases, and because Lara Godfrey had apparently left the state before the pickup order was issued, technically she had not committed a crime in Virginia.
At Sloane’s insistence, the police had picked O’Hara up and administered a lie detector test, which the librarian passed with flying colors. Either the guy had learned how to beat the truth detector, Nadine reasoned, or he honestly didn’t know where Lara Godfrey had gone. He admitted helping her leave the city; he admitted seeing the baby—a boy—but he gave them no other useful information.
Sloane had pushed for round-the-clock surveillance on O’Hara’s house, but Nadine knew the librarian didn’t have the woman. He had sent her somewhere, probably far away, at great personal cost. Watching him one afternoon as he sat in lonely silence on his front porch, Nadine realized just how much it had cost him to help Lara Godfrey. The man had obviously come to love her, and what he had done—well, few men of Nadine’s acquaintance would have acted so nobly.
Still, he had to know what had happened to Lara and the child.
When electronic surveillance failed to turn up any sign of Lara Godfrey, Nadine hired private investigators and sent them all over the country, even sending a man to North Pole, Alaska, in case O’Hara had sent the Godfrey woman to his sister. Nadine bought mailing lists from medical associations and physician’s assistants’ organizations, then hired a team to call every listed name and pretend to conduct a random survey. Because Lara Godfrey had been an avid churchgoer, Nadine hired an innocent-looking elderly woman to visit a different Virginia congregation each week and look for any young mother who matched Lara Godfrey’s description. She knew it was a long shot, but Sloane wanted every possible clue checked out.
While her people scoured the countryside, Nadine labored to keep Sloane calm. Unnerved by the Godfrey woman’s successful disappearance, he vacillated between believing that O’Hara knew nothing and wanting to send goons to torture the man. Nadine urged Sloane to proceed carefully, remaining within the bounds of the law as much as possible. At some point, she assured him, Connor O’Hara would drop his guard. The child was young; there was still time for Sloane to be a father . . . or at least that’s what she kept telling herself.
Her gaze fell upon the faded photo perched on the edge of her desk. Ryan Christopher Harrington was now thirteen, nearly a man. Did he look anything like his baby picture? Did he remember anything about her, or had his stepmother erased all the bad memories?
She gripped the edge of her desk, anchoring herself in reality lest she drown in a sudden wave of guilt. Children were resilient, her therapist assured her. They were like rubber, easily molded, quick to bounce back. Ryan probably didn’t even remember her, much less hold a grudge. He wouldn’t remember the nights she’d passed out on the kitchen floor, or the time he pulled a pot of boiling water from the stove because she had been careless and left the handle within his reach. The scars on his arm would heal, the doctor had said. Everything healed with time.
The memory edged her teeth.
Abruptly, she swiveled her chair beneath her desk and studied her calendar. December had been a productive month, and the holidays had given her an elegantly simple idea. Beginning on December first, the start of the holiday mailing season, she’d had an agent check Connor O’Hara’s mailbox. On Monday of last week they intercepted his neat stack of outgoing Christmas cards; her people spent Tuesday systematically identifying every individual to whom the librarian sent a holiday greeting. Fortunately, Connor O’Hara was a local boy and somewhat reclusive, only three cards were addressed to females outside the state of Virginia. One proved to be the married sister in North Pole, Alaska; another was a sixty-five-year-old coworker who had retired and moved to Florida. The third was addressed to Ms. Rose Shepard in Osceola, Florida.
On Wednesday, December sixteenth, Abby Smith, a young investigator from Nadine’s agency, had flown into Clearwater, driven to Osceola, and found a room at a local motel. On Thursday morning Abby found Rose Shepard’s home in a crowded trailer park. The subject had changed her hair color and lost a few pounds, but Rose had a preschool child and bore a striking resemblance to Lara Godfrey. Within five days, the investigator had established Ms. Shepard’s weekday routine—drive to the preschool, work, back to the preschool, the park, the library, and home again.
This afternoon, Abby Smith made contact.
Rose Shepard, Abby had just told Nadine, reacted strongly to the name Godfrey, had a five-year-old son, had remained unmarried, and worked as a nurse. “And,” Abby added, breathless with success, “she left in a hurry.”
Anxiety cooled Nadine’s racing thoughts. “Did you do something?”
“That’s just it,” Abby replied, an edge to her voice. “I thought I had completely won her over. I was beginning to win the kid too. Thinking that all little kids love school, I told him I was a teacher, but he looked right at me and caught me in a lie.”
Nadine’s hand tightened around the phone. “How?”
“I have no idea. But the mother practically yanked him away from me. It was all a little confusing because a bee had just stung the kid, but he seemed completely coherent when he looked at me. It was almost creepy.”
Nadine thanked Abby for the report, then told the young woman to return to Washington. After disconnecting the call, she had closed her eyes and felt her stomach sway. She’d had an uneasy feeling about this case ever since Devin Sloane sent that dour young man to invite her to his dark Virginia mansion. If Sloane had let her into his innermost “circle of secrets” on that day, she would never have accepted the case.
What sort of child had Sloane’s genetic manipulation created?
A cynical inner voice cut through her anxiety. The boy was probably just like any other kid. Abby was inexperienced and might have slipped somehow. Children could say outlandish things; one never knew what to expect. And if the boy was crying and injured, of course the mother would be eager to take him home. Lara Godfrey hadn’t run because she feared exposing her child’s unique abilities; she had hurried away because her child was hurt.
But Sloane would not want to hear that he’d spent more than four million dollars to find an ordinary kid.
Nadine picked up the phone and pressed the speed dial button for Sloane, then smiled as she brought the phone to her ear. With any luck, Sloane would have his uniquely talented child home for Christmas.
Lara propped Hunter and his book in an empty chair next to hers, then pressed her finger to her lips. The boy nodded and mimicked the gesture, then promptly defeated the purpose of her little pantomime: “I know, Mom. You gots to be quiet in the liarry.”
Lara smiled ruefully and pointed to the book. Hunter immediately opened the pages and ducked his shining blond head, intent upon another adventure of Curious George.
Knowing that Hunter’s attention span was limited, she worked quickly at the computer. She accessed the Internet, logged onto the Web page for Hotmail, then entered her ID and password. She hadn’t been able to afford a computer for the trailer, and Connor had insisted she wouldn’t be safe with an e-mail account through a local service provider. The Internet was a friendly place, too friendly, in Connor’s estimation, so he’d asked her to establish seven free e-mail accounts and rotate between them. Tuesday was Hotmail day.
She felt her heart sink when she saw that she had no messages waiting. She had grown accustomed to hearing from Connor nearly every afternoon, but she knew he traveled occasionally and was away from the computer. This must be one of his travel days.
In order to safeguard her privacy, she had allowed an entire year to elapse before she dared send an e-mail to the reference desk of University of Virginia Library. She had sent an innocuous and unsigned query about the book Mr. and Mrs. BoJo Jones, and the reference department had responded immediately with another question—“Do you have the book safely stored away?”
For the past four years she had stopped by the library nearly every afternoon. Hunter loved the place and often entertained the librarians by acting out his favorite picture books, particularly relishing the tales of Curious George and Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel.
Now Lara typed in the address for Connor’s mailbox, then typed A Close Encounter in the subject heading. She tabbed down to the message field.
Dear Mr. O’Hara:
Long time, no hear from you. What’s it been, two days? Not like you, my friend, to let me drift so long without a word.
Had a scare today at the park. A bee stung the pipsqueak, and we met a stranger. I thought she was perfectly harmless, but the PS caught her in a lie. I don’t know how to explain what he does—I suppose you could call it infallible intuition. But the experience was enough to make me leave the park in a hurry and take the long way as I drove home.
We miss you, my friend. When I saw that woman sitting alone in the park, I couldn’t help but remember that five years ago I was just like her. Now my life is much more full and complete, although I do miss . . . roots. I shall begin to pray for the time and space to put down a few.
As always, I am praying for you. May God hold you tight in the palm of his hand.
Always,
Mrs. BoJo
Lara reread her letter for spelling, then read it again with the detached eye of a reference librarian who might happen to glance over Connor’s shoulder as he read the message. She trusted him to be careful, but one careless mistake might bring her fragile world tumbling down.
Satisfied that she had conveyed her heart in the sparest prose possible, she clicked send, then smiled at Hunter. “Ready to go home, buddy?”
His attention drifting on a tide of fatigue, Helmut Braun pushed away from his computer, then glanced out his office window at the empty lab beyond. His students had been gone for hours. Only a single light burned over a culture growing in the far corner of the room.
Helmut swiped at a wiry strand of hair that had fallen into his eyes, then sighed heavily. Force of habit urged him to get up and go home, but there was nothing homelike about the bare little apartment he shared with a nameless gray cat.
Wistfully, his mind wandered back to the time when he used to go home to Olivia. At the time he had thought their marriage rather detached and professional, but in the light of his current loneliness their past relationship seemed warm and genuine. How she had made him laugh! Olivia’s smile had eased him into relaxation each night; her stories about the practice had carried him through the drudgery of each day. And when she asked him to leave, he had realized, too late, all he had possessed.
With an exhausted sigh, he stood up and patted his pockets, searching for his keys. He ought to lock up his papers before leaving, though it was doubtful anyone would want to look at them. Five years ago, after a few teasing hints from the University’s press office, the scientific world had held its breath for news of his great accomplishment, but that announcement had never come. Lara had vanished, taking the results of Helmut’s experiment with her.
He had often thought that her disappearance was a good thing. With the child gone, his secrets were safe. Sloane had wanted to try again with another woman, but Helmut had convinced him that until the laws changed, surrogate mothers would cause more problems than benefits. “Concentrate on your phase-one work at the hospital,” he had urged Sloane. “You are making progress with the children. And who knows? Perhaps, in time, you will find Lara Godfrey and her son.”
But every night before closing his eyes to sleep, Helmut gazed at the ceiling and asked any god who might be listening to keep Lara safely hidden.
He closed the notebook on his desk. The computer was password protected. That security measure wouldn’t stop any snoop with more than an elementary knowledge of computers, but it would keep students from prying into his personal thoughts. And if a spy was willing to delve into the past—well, let him have at it. Helmut was past caring.
He stood and slipped into his coat, then halted when the outer door to the lab opened. A tall figure walked through a rectangle of light from the hallway, then merged into the lab’s shadows as the door closed. The voice was unmistakable.
“Dr. Braun. I had hoped to find you here.”
Helmut stopped dead, his heart beating hard enough to be heard a yard away. “I was just leaving.”
“Nonsense, dear professor, you can’t leave until you have heard my news.” Sloane stepped into the light and leaned in the doorway of Helmut’s office. As always, he wore an immaculate and understated suit, but tonight an exuberant quality underlay his posture and expression.
Helmut clasped his hands together. “Devin. How can I help you?”
“The child, Doctor.” Sloane’s face brightened in a sudden, arresting smile. “We’ve found him. Nadine’s people will pick him up tomorrow.”
An anticipatory shiver of dread rippled through Helmut’s limbs. “You have found Lara Godfrey?”
“She went to Florida, a logical move for a nurse, considering Florida’s geriatric population. She is employed by a convalescent home in Osceola.”
Helmut stood there, blank, amazed, and shaken, as Sloane threw back his head and laughed. “It is time to continue, Helmut. The child is nearly six years old, but that is nothing! We can take custody tomorrow and keep him protected until the case comes to trial. By the time Lara Godfrey recovers from Nadine’s surprise assault, we’ll have so much evidence against her that no judge in his right mind would refuse to grant me permanent custody.”
Helmut steadied himself on his chair. “The child—what is he like?”
“We don’t know.” Sloane’s smile faded. “Nadine’s contact said he was a perfectly normal-looking boy. But soon we will know more. Nadine, my lawyer, and I are flying to Florida tomorrow to oversee the pickup.” Sloane straightened, smoothed the lapel of his suit, then waved his hand at Helmut’s cluttered office. “Shelve whatever project you’re working on now, Doctor, for the real work is about to begin. Our boy is coming home, and I need you to set up the testing programs. I’ll want to harvest a sample of his DNA, and I’ll need a team of psychologists at the house to evaluate his IQ, his stamina, his emotional stability. Of course,” he frowned, “there’s no way to judge what influence the Godfrey woman has had on him, but I trust she’s done no irreparable harm.”
Helmut stared at the floor, a host of nightmare images rising in his brain—Lara’s frightened eyes as he tried to subdue her, the dark, lifeless rooms in Sloane’s west wing, and Olivia’s wounded expression when she learned that he had tampered with the husband’s genetic material.
“I wanted to tell you personally.” Devin smiled and gestured toward the door. “I feel like celebrating. Would you care to join me for dinner? The car’s waiting outside.”
“No, thank you.” Helmut tightened his hold on the chair, but managed to look up and meet Sloane’s gaze. “I have already made plans.”
“Very well, then. I’ll keep you informed.”
Helmut remained rooted to the floor until Sloane disappeared down the hall. When he had gone, Helmut pulled his keys from his pocket, then stumbled woodenly toward the light outside.
Lara Godfrey was a resourceful woman. Perhaps she would yet escape.
She had to.