Thirty-two years later=m
* * *
Something was wrong. David Powers knew it as surely as he knew his own name. He frowned, glancing at the stack of phone messages he’d found on his desk after returning from court that morning. Three were from his mother.
Helen Powers never “bothered” him at the office. It was a point of pride with her. In the twelve years David had been with the public defender’s office in New York City, he could count on one hand the times his mother had called him at work.
“You’re a busy man,” she would tell him, ladling another helping of chicken and dumplings—comfort food from her Southern background—onto his plate at their weekly Sunday dinner. “The last thing you need is for me to call you at work and make a nuisance of myself.”
David would reply indulgently, if a little impatiently, “I appreciate that. But as I’ve told you before, if you ever need me, you don’t have to be afraid to call the office, okay? Margaret won’t bite.”
Actually, he wasn’t altogether sure that was true. Margaret Petermen, the receptionist at the P.D.’s office, was a sixty-year-old barracuda who swore profusely, screened calls to a fault, and kept a plaque on her desk proclaiming, I Have One Nerve Left And You’re Getting On It.
In spite of his mother’s protests to the contrary, David knew Margaret intimidated her. So many people did. His mother was quiet and shy and didn’t mix well with others. She liked to keep to herself, rarely even used the phone. Something had to be wrong if she’d gotten up enough courage to brave Margaret’s sharp tongue, not once, but three times in as many hours.
He instantly thought of the doctor’s appointment she’d had the previous week, the one she’d refused to talk to him about on Sunday. She’d been experiencing severe headaches, and David had insisted she go in for a checkup.
Hesitating for only a second, David picked up the phone and placed the call to Richford, the small town in upstate New York where he’d grown up.
His mother answered on the first ring, as if she’d been sitting by the phone waiting for his call. “David?”
He could hear the tremor in her voice, and his concern deepened. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
The pause that followed was so long he thought for a moment the connection had been severed. Then, in a near whisper, she said, “Come home, David. Come home now.”
“What’s—”
The phone clicked in his ear before he had a chance to finish the question. David stared at the receiver for a second, then hung up and grabbed his briefcase, hurrying out of his cramped, downtown office. He’d never heard his mother sound so distressed. Something was definitely wrong.
“I’m leaving early,” he told his secretary, who looked up from her computer in astonishment. “Cancel my appointments for the rest of the day.”
“But you have a meeting with Mr. Hollingsworth at four-thirty—”
David swore. He’d forgotten about the interview he had that afternoon at Hollingsworth, Beckman, and Carr, a prestigious Manhattan law firm that had approached him about joining their ranks. A thousand other attorneys would have killed for such an interview, but David was less than enthusiastic. Perhaps if he thought their interest had more to do with his merit and less to do with the fact that J.C. Hollingsworth’s daughter, Rachel, was his fianc;aaee, he might have been able to muster a little more excitement.
Besides, he liked working in the public defender’s office. He’d made a name for himself here, and every case was a challenge. If he entered the cutthroat world of Hollingsworth, Beckman, and Carr, he had the disturbing feeling he might never be his own man again.
“Make my apologies,” he told his secretary without compunction. “Say I was called away on a family emergency. You’d better call Rachel, too. Leave word with her secretary if she’s not in. I may not make it back in time for dinner tonight. She’s to go without me.”
“But Mr. Powers—”
He was out the door and heading down the hallway toward the bank of elevators before his secretary could finish voicing her protest. The doors slid open and Rachel Hollingsworth, dressed in a red Chanel power suit, stepped out. As always, her dark hair was pulled straight back, accenting the perfect angles of her face and the exotic tilt of her gray eyes. She looked elegant, sophisticated, and completely out of place in the institutional surroundings—not at all what she was accustomed to at the Madison Avenue offices of Hollingsworth, Beckman, and Carr.
“Perfect timing!” she exclaimed with a dazzling smile. So dazzling, in fact, that harried passersby in the hallway stopped to stare at her. “I have a one o’clock reservation at Justine’s, and I won’t take no for an answer.”
David glanced at his watch, a functional black Seiko his mother had given to him when he graduated from Columbia. “Sorry, but I’ve already had lunch, and besides, I’m on my way out.”
The smile slipped a bit. “But I came all the way down here just to see you, and you know what traffic is like on Fridays. The least you can do is keep me company while I eat. I need to talk to you about your meeting with Daddy this afternoon—”
“I’m sorry,” David said again, placing his hands on her shoulders and bending to give her a perfunctory kiss on her smooth cheek. “I don’t have time to talk.” Quickly he stepped into the elevator and jabbed the Down button with his thumb. “I’ll call you later.”
She turned to stare at him in disbelief, her elegant brows arching in icy outrage as the doors slid closed between them. Rachel Hollingsworth was not used to such treatment, and David knew there would be hell to pay later. But right now, he didn’t give a damn.
He wondered if he ever had.
* * *
A STRANGE CAR WAS parked at the curb in front of his mother’s house, and the uneasiness David had been experiencing on the drive up from the city strengthened. He pulled into the driveway, parked his own car, and got out, striding up the flower-lined walkway to the front door. He had his key, but before he could insert it into the lock, the door was drawn back, revealing his mother’s careworn face.
She was not a pretty woman, nor had she aged particularly well. Her hair had gone completely gray at a young age, and the deep lines that etched her face had been there ever since David could remember.
She used to tell him fondly that he had gotten his dark good looks from his father, who had died in Vietnam while David was still a baby. She would show him pictures of a handsome young man in a military uniform, and David would stare at his father’s image, trying to find his own features in the stranger’s face, but never seeing them there. After a while he quit searching. After a while he stopped asking the questions that always upset his mother so much.
“I came as soon as I could.” He stepped into the tiny foyer and closed the door behind him. Over his mother’s shoulder, David saw a man in the living room watching them. He looked to be about David’s age, mid-thirties, tall and lean, with inquisitive eyes and a solemn expression that matched the somber atmosphere of the house.
David glanced down at his mother. “Are you all right?”
She nodded briefly, her eyes not meeting his. “Come into the living room. There’s someone you need to meet.”
The stranger came forward to greet him. “My name is Jake McClain. You must be…David.” His handshake was firm, his eyes inscrutable as he studied David’s face.
Behind him, his mother said, “Mr. McClain is a private investigator from Memphis, Tennessee.”
David glanced at her in astonishment. “A private investigator? What the hell is going on here?”
“Maybe I should leave you two alone,” McClain suggested. He looked at David’s mother, and his gaze seemed to soften in spite of himself.
She nodded. “Maybe you should.” When David started to say something, she put a hand on his sleeve. “Let’s sit down.”
An eerie sensation crept over David as he sat down on his mother’s worn sofa and watched her take a seat in her favorite rocking chair near the fireplace. In the background, the front door closed discreetly as Jake McClain slipped away to allow them privacy.
What the hell was going on? David wondered again, but for some reason, he remained silent. He had a feeling that what his mother was about to tell him was something he just might not want to hear.
Don’t ask the question, his legal mind told him, unless you know the answer. And right now, he didn’t have a clue.
Out of habit, his mother rocked to and fro, her hazel eyes glinting with an emotion David could only call fear. And despair. But it wasn’t until they heard Jake McClain’s car start up outside and drive away that she broke the silence.
“I’ve prayed this day would never come,” she murmured. “But I somehow knew it would. Secrets always have a way of coming out, my mother used to say. No matter how deeply you bury them.”
“Just tell me one thing.” David leaned toward her, resting his forearms on his knees. “Does this have anything to do with your doctor’s appointment last week?”
Her eyes clouded. “Not really. This day would have come regardless of what my doctor told me. It just makes things…a bit easier in some ways.”
“What do you mean?”
Without responding, she got up from the rocking chair and crossed the room to the antique walnut wardrobe in the corner. As long as David could remember, she’d kept the key to the wardrobe on a satin ribbon around her neck and only opened it to take out the picture of David’s father when he asked to see it.
Once, when he was about seven, she’d caught him trying to pick the lock with a hairpin, and her censure had been so severe he’d never tried again. The contents of the wardrobe, including the photo of his father, had soon been forgotten because that summer David had discovered Little League, and sports had taken over his life.
His mother took the key from her neck and in the almost-preternatural silence of the tiny living room, David heard the distinctive sound as the old-fashioned lock clicked open. Spreading the doors, she withdrew the white, leather-bound photo album he remembered from his childhood and another book he’d never seen before. She retraced her steps across the room, but rather than taking her place in the rocker, she sat down beside him on the sofa and opened the photo album to the picture of his father.
David stared down at the likeness. The photo was black-and-white, but he could tell that his father’s eyes were dark, almost black, not blue like David’s. The hair was similar, dark and thick with a hint of a wave, but the hairline was different, as was the shape of the face, the nose, the mouth, the high cheekbones that hinted at a Native American heritage. A heritage that did not show in David’s own features.
He looked up at his mother and she nodded. “You’ve always known, I think.”
Somewhere deep inside, David felt a brief sense of relief. The truth was about to come out. “He isn’t my father, is he?” When his mother shook her head, David asked, “Who was my real father? What happened? Did he run out on you? Refuse to marry you? Did he even know about me?” All the questions he’d wondered about for years came flowing out. It wasn’t so much an emotional response as one of curiosity. One of logic. He simply wanted to know.
His mother took a deep, trembling breath. “Your real father was an important man, David. His family was very rich and powerful. Well-educated and cultured. Everything that I’m not.”
David took his mother’s hand. “You know that’s never mattered to me.”
Tears glimmered in her eyes. “You’ve always been a wonderful son, David. I’ve known from the first you were special. Destined for greatness. I’ve tried to make sure you had everything you needed to fulfill your destiny.”
His mother had scrimped and saved all his life, sometimes working two and three jobs, just so David could have the education and advantages she’d never had. It was a debt he knew he would never be able to repay her.
“Were you and my father ever married?”
She shook her head sadly.
“What happened? The family you mentioned… did they give you a hard time?”
Her hand crept to her throat, and David saw that it was trembling. “They never even knew I existed.”
“So it was him,” David concluded dispassionately. “It was his decision to have no part of me.”
She wavered for a moment, as if considering the truth of his words. Then her gaze dropped to the photograph album still lying open in her lap. She touched the picture lovingly.
“Who is that man?” David asked.
There was another pause, then, “He was my husband.”
She couldn’t have surprised him more. His mother had always been so quiet and shy. So reserved. To think that she could have had an illicit love affair with one man while married to another—
“Are you saying you were married to this man when my father got you pregnant?”
“My husband was already dead by the time I knew anything about your father.” With shaking hands, she lifted the photo album and laid it open on the coffee table in front of them. Then she opened the second album, and a picture of a little boy smiled up at them. With her fingertip, she traced the child’s features—the dark eyes, the high cheekbones, the full, smiling lips. He was the spitting image of the man David had always thought was his father.
A cold knot of dread wedged somewhere in David’s chest. The whole scenario had taken a turn he hadn’t expected, and he wasn’t sure what to prepare himself for next. He glanced at his mother, but she was still gazing down at the child’s face.
“Who is he?” he finally asked.
“My son,” she answered softly, so softly David had to strain to hear her.
He gaped at her in shock. “Your son?”
Her nod was almost imperceptible. “He and my husband died in a car wreck. My baby was only three years old.”
The knot of dread turned to confusion, but David, sensing his mother was teetering on some emotional edge, forced his tone to remain neutral while the world as he knew it started to crumble around him. Before his eyes, the woman who’d raised him had suddenly become a stranger—and his life, a lie. He felt a slight panicky sensation in his chest, not unlike the rare times when he’d been ambushed by his adversary in court.
He checked the date stamped in the right-hand corner of the picture. David had been three years old that year, also. “How could you have two sons the same age? Unless, of course, we were twins, but I don’t think that was the case, was it?” He bore not even a passing resemblance to the child in the photograph.
“David.” At last his mother looked up at him. A tear spilled down her cheek as she reached out to touch him. Inadvertently he flinched, and pain flashed in her eyes as she let her hand drop to her lap. “I’ve loved you with all my heart,” she whispered. “I couldn’t have loved you more if I’d given birth to you.”
David sucked in a sharp breath. He’d always known the man in the photograph wasn’t his real father; but now, to learn that his mother…wasn’t his real mother… What other secrets did she harbor?
He gazed at her for a long moment, then said slowly, “So you’re telling me I’m adopted?” When she didn’t respond, he demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me before? Why keep it from me?” Then another thought dawned on him. “The private investigator who was here—who does he work for? My birth mother?” There was an edge of bitterness in his voice that surprised him.
In his line of work, David had seen the worst life had to offer pass through his office door. He’d made sure he was both mentally and physically tough; he couldn’t have lasted in the public defender’s office for twelve years if he hadn’t been. But the knowledge that his birth mother had given him away wasn’t exactly easy to shrug off—even for him.
“Your real mother is dead,” Helen Powers told him.
David frowned, unsure how he felt about that revelation. “So who sent the detective? My father?”
“Your grandmother.”
David sat back against the sofa, trying to digest all that he’d learned. He had a grandmother somewhere. A grandmother who was trying to find him. And a father? Brothers and sisters? A whole damned family he’d never known anything about?
“Your mother—your real mother—loved you very much. I’m sure of it. She died when you were only three years old. She had nothing to do with any of this.”
“Whose idea was it to give me away, then? My father’s?” When she didn’t answer, David leaned toward her. “Look, you don’t have to be afraid to tell me the rest. You took me in when they didn’t want me. You’ve given me a good life. You’re still my mother, and nothing you can say will ever change that.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “You don’t know how much I want to believe that,” she whispered. She bowed her head, as if overcome with emotion. But when David put his hand on her arm and she looked up, her eyes were clear and resolved.
“I was barely twenty when I lost my husband and my son,” she said. “They were everything to me, the only good and decent thing I’d ever known in my life, and then, suddenly, they were gone. Just…gone, as if they’d never existed. I was all alone again. And my arms were so empty. So very empty…”
She took another long breath, as if willing her strength. “Their deaths…did something to me. I couldn’t let go. I used to go out to the cemetery and sit by their graves for hours at a time, talking to them and pretending we were all still together. I finally managed to convince myself they weren’t really dead, after all. They were just…away somewhere. And one day they’d come back to me.”
A cold chill crept up David’s spine. Her eyes were no longer clear, but glazed and distant, as if she’d somehow transported herself back to that time. Back to that dark fantasy.
She took another trembling breath. “I was working as a waitress in a downtown coffee shop in Memphis. A lot of cops came in there. One of them in particular…he was always so nice to me. Always so kind. He reminded me a little of David.”
David started at the sound of his own name. The movement seemed to bring his mother back for an instant. She nodded absently. “My husband’s name was David. So was my son’s. We called him Davey.”
The chill deepened inside David. He’d always known his mother was a little on the fragile side, but the woman who sat before him now seemed almost…lost. She’d named him for her dead husband and son—a husband and son she’d thought were coming back to her.
Was it his imagination or had the temperature in the room suddenly dropped?
David gazed at her with morbid fascination. He told himself he didn’t want to hear anything more. Somehow he knew that what she was going to tell him would change his life forever, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from asking, “What happened with the cop?”
Helen Powers’s fingers twisted together in her lap. “The more he came into the coffee shop, the more I thought he looked like my husband, and the more I started looking forward to his visits. We began seeing each other, and he seemed to know all the places that David and I had gone to, all our favorites songs and movies. I realized later that I’d probably told him these things in all the long talks we had in the coffee shop and at his apartment, but at the time…”
“You wanted to believe that he was your husband,” David said.
His mother glanced up hopefully. “Then you understand how it could have happened?”
David wasn’t sure he understood any of it, but he felt obliged to try. “You were very young, and you’d just suffered a terrible loss. This man preyed on your vulnerability.”
She nodded. “He told me he had a child, a son that was the same age as Davey. He wanted me to look after the boy for a few days while he was out of town. He took me to a secluded cabin in the mountains, and told me he’d bring the boy there in a day or two. I was to wait for them. We’d have the time of our lives. He made it sound like an adventure, just the way my David would have.”
Her eyes sparkled for a moment in remembrance, then darkened with reality. “I waited in the cabin for two days, and when he finally showed up with the child, I knew right away something was wrong. The boy was crying. He wouldn’t stop sobbing. He kept calling for his mommy. It nearly broke my heart.”
“And this man, this cop,” David said grimly. “What happened to him?”
“He left. He said he’d be back in a week and the three of us could spend a little time together before he had to take the boy back to his family. I knew by then the child wasn’t his, but I was afraid to ask too many questions. Afraid of what I might have gotten myself into. So I just didn’t think about it. I concentrated all my efforts on the boy. On comforting him. And after a while, he responded. After a while…he clung to me.”
David knew what was coming. Like a freight train racing out of control, the truth was about to hit him head-on, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop it.
“What happened when the cop came back?” he managed to ask.
“I don’t know.” She glanced up, meeting his eyes briefly before turning away again. “I wasn’t there. I took the child and…left.”
The weight of her words pressed down on David. His chest tightened painfully. “You kidnapped me. That’s what you’re saying.”
She winced as if he’d physically struck her. “Please, try to understand. I loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you. I couldn’t bear the thought of someone taking you away from me. Not again.”
“Not again? But I wasn’t your son. I wasn’t Davey.”
“But I wanted you to be.” Her eyes pleaded with him for understanding. “I wanted it so badly that I just left that mountain and disappeared with you.”
He rubbed his hands over his eyes. It was like the plot of a made-for-TV movie, stranger than any case he’d ever worked on. It couldn’t be true, and yet it was. He didn’t doubt the validity of her words—not for a second, because he’d always known that something about his life wasn’t right. “What about my birth certificate?” he asked numbly. “How did you manage that?”
“My father and brother were in and out of prison all of their lives,” she said. “I learned things from them. I knew there were ways to get things done.”
“So you bought a fake birth certificate.” He didn’t bother to ask her where she’d gotten the money to do so. He didn’t want to know. “All these years, I’ve thought you were my mother. I’ve thought you the most caring, the most loyal, the most generous woman I’ve ever known, when all along you perpetrated the most selfish act I can imagine. You kept me from my real family. Who am I, Moth—” he started to ask, then stopped himself short on the last word. He took a deep breath. “Who am I?”
Without answering, she flipped several pages of the photo album until she came to a newspaper article. The headline read: Kingsley Baby Stolen From Nursery.
A thrill of adrenaline shot through him. My God, he thought. Was she trying to tell him he was Adam Kingsley?
He glanced up, unable to give voice to the dozens of questions crashing through his head.
“Turn the pages,” she said softly.
He flipped the page of the photo album and another headline read: The Search Continues For Adam Kingsley. Still another: Kingsley Baby Found Dead.
David kept turning the pages. He couldn’t seem to stop himself. The headlines blurred before his eyes like some strange and horrifying kaleidoscope.
Kingsley Kidnapper Found Guilty.
Cletus Brown Sentenced To Life In Prison.
And then, toward the back of the book, there were more recent articles with headlines proclaiming Cletus Brown’s innocence, and the revelation by the real kidnapper, an ex-cop named Raymond Colter, that Adam Kingsley might still be alive.
David turned the pages until he reached the end of the book. Then he sat numbly as the images continued to flash inside his brain. Adam Kingsley. He was Adam Kingsley.
Was it possible?
David knew all about the kidnapping. One of his professors in law school had reenacted Cletus Brown’s trial in the classroom. David had even been assigned to Brown’s mock-defense team.
He thought about that now and wished he could appreciate the irony. He’d gone over every aspect of that case in preparation for the classroom trial. He knew the most minute details of Adam Kingsley’s kidnapping, but he hadn’t known that he was Adam Kingsley.
What a joke, he thought. What a great joke. The best joke he’d ever heard.
So why wasn’t he laughing?
The woman who had been his mother less than an hour ago reached out to him beseechingly. When he jerked away from her touch, she put a trembling hand to her lips. “You said I would still be your mother,” she whispered. “You said nothing I could tell you would change that.”
He stared at her in disbelief. “I had no idea you were a kidnapper when I said that.”
“I wasn’t the one who took you from your home, David. You have to believe that.”
“Oh, I believe it. But in the eyes of the law, you’re just as guilty as Raymond Colter. It’s called conspiracy. You may not have taken me from the nursery, but you sure as hell didn’t return me, either. You let my family think I was dead. You let an innocent man spend over thirty years in prison for a crime you knew he didn’t commit. What kind of person could do something like that?” He was being deliberately cruel, but he couldn’t seem to stop. He told himself a man shouldn’t care about these things. Shouldn’t feel all the turbulent emotions churning inside him. He was too logical for that, too indifferent. What happened all those years ago should have no bearing on his life now. He’d been relatively happy until a few minutes ago. Why let what he’d just learned change that?
But it was no use. He couldn’t shake the almost-overwhelming sense of betrayal, the cold, hard anger growing inside him. He couldn’t forget that his whole life had been a lie.
“God, what a mess,” he said, walking to the window to stare out at the street. “You know, of course, that if and when the police get involved, you’re going to need an attorney. I can recommend someone—”
“I don’t want an attorney,” she said in a low voice. “I’m going to go to the police and confess.”
David whirled at that. In spite of everything, the notion of her spending the rest of her life in prison was not something he could ignore. He strode across the room to stand over her. “Listen to me. This is a very serious situation. I don’t want you to talk to anyone about any of this until you’ve spoken with an attorney. Not the police, not McClain, no one. Do you understand?”
But she was already shaking her head. “I won’t drag this thing out, put you through any more grief than I already have. I’ll take my punishment, whatever it is. In the long run, it won’t really matter anyway.”
Something in her tone alarmed him. “What do you mean, it won’t matter?”
She gazed up at him. Pain shimmered in her eyes. “I’m dying, David. I found out last week I have a brain tumor. There’s nothing that can be done. But at least now I can make retribution before I go. I can face up to my sins and ask to be forgiven.”
David didn’t know if that was possible. But he still couldn’t help caring for her, grieving for her. She’d been his mother for too long for him to turn his back on her completely. No matter what she’d done. He knelt in front of her. “There must be something they can do for you.”
She shook her head. “There’s nothing. Just accept it. I have.”
“I don’t want you to die.”
She reached out as if to touch his face, then let her hand fall back to her lap. “I’ve had a good life, David—far better than I deserved because my happiness was stolen from someone else. Don’t grieve for me. Just find a way to get on with your life.”
He drew a long, weary breath. “I need some air,” he muttered, rising and turning toward the door.
“David.” She stood suddenly and caught his arm. “What are you going to do?”
“About what?”
“About…the Kingsleys?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess at some point I’ll want to see them.”
Fear flashed in her eyes as she clung to him. “Make them come to you, David. Make them come here.”
“Why?”
“Don’t go back there,” she babbled. “Whatever you do, don’t go to Memphis.”
It was all he could do not to remove her hand from his arm. Suddenly, she had the look of dementia in her eyes. A chill crawled through him as he stared down at her. “Why shouldn’t I go to Memphis?” he asked softly, trying not to alarm her any further.
“Because he didn’t act alone.”
“What? Who are you talking about?”
Her eyes were wide and dazed with fear. David thought he was beyond shock, but to see his mother’s face, to realize how close to the edge she really was made him wonder if he could believe anything she’d told him today. What if her illness had made her delusional?
Her grip tightened on his arm. “I heard Raymond talking to someone on the telephone in his apartment one day. I didn’t know it then, but they were plotting your kidnapping, David.” He could feel her nails dig into his skin through his suit coat. “It was someone in that house who helped him. Someone who was there that night.”
It was his turn to grip her arm. He grabbed her shoulders and held her in front of him. “What are you saying?”
Her eyes glowed with an inner intensity—or was it insanity—as she gazed up at him. “Someone in that house paid Raymond Colter to kidnap you. Someone connected to that family wanted you gone. If you go back there now—”
A wave of nausea rose in David’s throat. “I don’t believe that. Why would my own family hire someone to kidnap me?”
He felt a tremor course through her as she slowly backed away from him. “I don’t know. But if you go back there, your life could still be in danger. Whoever hired Raymond Colter to kidnap you might still want to harm you.”
* * *
IN HER HOTEL ROOM in Cannes, Bradlee Fitzgerald awakened suddenly, an inexplicable finger of apprehension wending its way up her backbone. Getting out of bed, she slipped across the shadowy room and stepped onto the tiny, ornate balcony that overlooked the harbor. An impressive array of yachts, outlined in lights and moored for the night, were strung across the glassy water like diamonds glistening on black satin.
The night was warm and starlit, but the dream that had awakened Bradlee sent an icy chill rushing through her veins. She wrapped her arms around her middle and stared down at the dark waters of the Mediterranean, wondering why the nightmare had returned now, when so many miles and so many years separated her from Adam Kingsley’s kidnapping.
Even though she’d only been three years old when it happened, Bradlee had been certain back then that she was somehow to blame for Adam’s disappearance; that buried somewhere in the deep recesses of her mind was a clue to his whereabouts, if only she could remember.
The psychiatrist her parents had taken her to after the kidnapping had assured them that her trauma would abate with time. The nightmares would eventually disappear, but perhaps a change of scenery would help.
Her father, Bradford Fitzgerald, had just been hired by one of the top law firms in the city and had no intention of throwing away what promised to be a brilliant future for the sake of a few bad dreams his daughter was experiencing. He refused to leave Memphis, and as a result, her parents had divorced. Her mother had moved with her to Southern California, where Bradlee had grown up.
She’d been twelve years old when she learned the facts behind her parents’ breakup, and for a while, Bradlee had blamed herself. The guilt had been so overwhelming that the old nightmares had returned, as they always did in times of distress. Night after night, she’d had visions of a shadow standing over her while she lay helpless in her bed. It was the shadow of someone she knew, someone she trusted, someone she didn’t dare give a face to.
It was the shadow of Adam Kingsley’s kidnapper.
As a child, she’d seen pictures of Cletus Brown, the man convicted of abducting Adam, but his image hadn’t stirred her fear. Not like the dreams had. It wasn’t until last year that she’d understood why. After serving thirty-one years in prison, Cletus Brown had been proved innocent, but even when the real kidnapper, Raymond Colter, had come forward and confessed, Bradlee had felt no sense of relief, no sense of justice or peace. Because it wasn’t Raymond Colter’s shadow she saw in her dreams.
And now the nightmare had come back just when Bradlee thought her life was finally on track. She’d just finished shooting a much-coveted layout for Charisma, the L.A.-based fashion magazine for which she freelanced on a regular basis, and she’d been extremely pleased with the results.
The models, the swimsuits, the dazzling Riviera had all produced a breathtaking effect, and Bradlee knew that Karen Cory Black, the editor-in-chief of the magazine and a close friend, would be ecstatic. There would be other assignments forthcoming, more than enough to keep Bradlee and her two assistants busy throughout the coming year.
But for the next three months, Bradlee was a free woman. No temperamental models to deal with, no frustrating clients to worry about, no impossible deadlines to meet. Just her camera, her backpack, and a Roman holiday she’d been planning for years.
So why the nightmare?
Stress, she told herself as she gazed down at the darkened water. But more likely it was the phone call earlier from her mother. “I heard from your father,” she’d said in the formal tone she always used when referring to her ex-husband. “He told me something amazing. Something we both thought you might want to know.”
“What is it?” Bradlee asked, wondering if her father was about to plunge into marriage for the sixth time. Or would this be number seven?
Her mother paused dramatically. “They think they’ve found Adam Kingsley.”
Bradlee gasped. Adam had been missing for over thirty years. To think that he might have been found after all this time—
She closed her eyes, conjuring an image of a dark-haired little boy with sad eyes. She hadn’t forgotten what he looked like. In all these years, she hadn’t forgotten.
“Are they sure this time? I mean, after that terrible business with Andrew’s murder and that man claiming to be Adam—how much more can Iris take?”
“Iris Kingsley is strong enough to take just about anything,” Bradlee’s mother said dryly. “But you’re right. I don’t think she’d take a chance on being duped by another impostor. The fact that she told your father—or anyone—means she’s positive this time. Beyond a doubt.”
“So what are they going to do?” Bradlee asked, trying to quiet the flutter of nerves in her stomach.
“Bring him home, I guess. If he wants to come. This is all very secretive, of course. Your father only told me because he thought you should know, considering the way you’ve always felt about the kidnapping and all. He even suggested you might think about going to Memphis when everything’s settled. You know, to see Adam for yourself.”
And therein lay the cause of her apprehension, Bradlee thought, shivering as the breeze off the Mediterranean picked up. That was the reason for her nightmare. The prospect of going back to Memphis suddenly terrified her.
You’re being silly, she chided herself. So what if she did go to Memphis? There was nothing to be frightened of there. She’d been back dozens of times to visit her father over the years. He still maintained close ties with the Kingsleys, and Bradlee had even stayed at the mansion on occasion, when her presence at her father’s place had made things a bit too awkward for whichever new wife he might have had at the time.
Bradlee had gone back last year when it was discovered that Adam might still be alive, and again a few months ago, when his twin brother, Andrew, had been killed. So why was this time any different?
She closed her eyes as a tremor of fear passed through her.
This time was different because if Adam had truly been found, he would have to be warned. If he came back home, his life could still be in danger, and Bradlee might be the only one who could save him.
This time, she couldn’t let him down.