“Mallory?”
“Rae?”
“My God.” Mallory opens her arms and pulls her friend into them. Suddenly tears are streaming from behind her dark glasses, trickling down her cheeks to dampen Rae’s silk blouse.
Her friend doesn’t seem to mind.
“I can’t believe you’re really here,” Rae tells her, finally pulling back and looking at her.
Mallory nods, unable to speak, her throat choked with emotion as she takes in the changes the years have wrought in this once dear and familiar face.
Her friend had looked the same from a distance a moment ago—same impeccably styled blond hair, same svelte figure, moving along through the gate area in the same hurried stride.
But up close Mallory sees that Rae’s eyes are edged with a faint network of lines, that there are bags beneath them, marring her perfect complexion.
Rae looks older. World-weary.
“We should get out of here,” Rae says hurriedly, casting a furtive glance around.
Mallory does the same, aware of the bustle around them as other passengers emerge from the jetway. But people are scurrying by undistracted, as if they haven’t bothered to notice the two long-lost friends greeting each other at the gate.
And Mallory realizes that no one has recognized her—yet.
The anonymity she had enjoyed during the long plane trip—mostly spent sleeping off a week’s worth of exhaustion—has carried over. Because no one is thinking of Mallory Eden as a brunette with an hour-glass figure.
Still, if the local press has been tipped off and is awaiting her arrival, it’s only a matter of time before they spot her, dark hair and all.
“Did you tell anyone you were meeting me here?” Mallory asks Rae, trying to quell a rush of uneasiness.
“You told me not to, and I didn’t. Did you tell anyone I was meeting you?”
“Who would I tell?” Mallory asks.
Rae shrugs. “I don’t know. Is there someone …”
“There’s no one,” Mallory says firmly, shoving aside thoughts of Harper. “I’ve been alone for five years. There’s no one to tell—about anything I do.”
“Except me,” Rae says, flashing a smile that almost reaches her shadowed eyes. “Now that you’re back.”
“Except you. I’ve really missed you, Rae.”
“I’ve missed you too, Mallory,” her friend says, her tone hollow.
Mallory knows how hurt she must be, knows she should say something, should attempt to apologize, somehow, for the way she had left. For allowing Rae to believe she was dead for all these years.
But there will be time for explanations later.
Plenty of time.
“Let’s go, then,” she tells Rae, slinging her bag over her shoulder, eager to get out of there. She can’t help feeling like a target, out there in the open.
Rae snaps into action, turning toward the main terminal with an efficient air. “Did you check any luggage?”
“Are you out of your mind? First of all, there’s nothing I’d want to bring with me from there that wouldn’t fit into this carry-on bag …”
Five years, and there’s nothing to leave behind, she thinks ruefully.
Not material possessions anyway.
Again she shoves aside thoughts of Harper.
And Manny.
“Second,” she continues, “I can’t wait to just get out of here, before the press sniffs me out.”
“They’ve already sniffed me out,” Rae says, leading the way along the concourse. “That’s why I’ve had my phone off the hook since yesterday.”
“That’s what I figured,” Mallory says.
“No comment’ wasn’t sitting too well with anyone, so I decided to be out of reach for a while, at least so I could get a decent night’s sleep. But this morning I figured I’d better put the phone back on the hook, in case you were trying to call.”
“I’m glad you did. Where are you living anyway?”
“Burbank,” Rae says briefly. “I’ve been renting a condo there for a year. But we’re not going there.”
“We’re not?”
“There was a horde of reporters camped out in front of my building this morning. I snuck out the back way. We can’t go there.”
“Where are we going?” Mallory asks uneasily.
Maybe she shouldn’t have come back so soon. Maybe she should have waited a little longer, until the fallout settled, until the worldwide curiosity had waned.
“Where are we going?” Rae flashes a smile. “You said it yourself. Remember?”
“What did I say?”
“That whenever I used to pick you up at the airport after you’d been out of town for a while we would go—”
“Straight to the beach,” Mallory says with a grin.
“Right.” Rae slings a limber arm over Mallory’s shoulders. “I was thinking we’d really shake the press off our trail … maybe drive up to Big Sur for a few days. We can be there late tonight. I made a reservation at the Treetop Inn.”
The Treetop Inn …
That’s the isolated resort hotel where the two of them had spent so many relaxing weekends. Mallory closes her eyes and pictures the rambling hotel, perched high above the pounding Pacific surf.
“You made a reservation? You didn’t use your own name, did you?” she asks Rae.
“Of course not. I used Amy Abernathy, of course.”
Mallory smiles. The name had always been her travel alias. “I can’t believe you remembered that.”
“How could I forget. It’ll be perfect, Mal. We’ll be anonymous, bum around … just like old times.”
Big Sur …
The isolated wooded stretch of rocky California coastline is the perfect place to hide temporarily while she adjusts to the dizzying changes—and to once again being Mallory Eden.
“Oh, my God, Rae, Big Sur sounds fantastic. You”—Mallory gives her friend a squeeze—“are a lifesaver.”
Flynn refills his glass from the bottle of gin, then reaches into the dwindling bowl of cut-up limes and plucks one out. He sloppily squeezes the green rind so that the tart juice trickles over his fingers before dripping down into the gin, then plops the whole wedge into the glass with a splash, and dunks his hand in to rinse it off.
He licks his fingers, takes a sip from the glass, and then a gulp, appreciating the way the citrus flavor mellows the liquor’s sting. He leans back in his chaise and sighs.
He’s merely having a civilized cocktail or two, simply relaxing on a hot summer Sunday afternoon by the pool.
He’s not guzzling cheap rotgut straight from a bottle, the way a lowlife drunk would. No, sir.
His glass is Wedgwood crystal; his gin is top-shelf stuff. He’s clean-shaven, his thinning hair neatly combed. The music piped over the stereo speakers is classical. Pachelbel’s Canon in D.
And as soon as he finishes guzzling this drink, he’s going to try calling Rae again.
He’d reached her about an hour ago. She’d sounded rushed. Breathless. Like she was on her way somewhere.
He had asked her if she’d heard from Mallory, and she had said she hadn’t.
But he wonders if she was lying.
If she was protecting Mallory, for some reason.
He has heard the rumors that Mallory left Rhode Island, that she was flying to Los Angeles.
Why wouldn’t she have gotten in touch with him first?
There’s only one reason that Flynn can think of.
Mallory doesn’t want to see him.
She doesn’t want him to be her agent anymore.
He takes another big swig, finishing what’s left in his glass.
The gin burns going down, and when he’s swallowed it, he looks at the bottle again, contemplating another drink.
Just one more …
No, he decides grimly, standing and starting, on unsteady feet, for the house.
He has to go find Rae.
And Mallory.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Those of you seated by the windows will have a great view of the Grand Canyon in just a few minutes.”
Harper is in a window seat.
He stares absently out at the cloudless sky, not caring about seeing the Grand Canyon.
Not caring about anything but the fact that in just a few hours he’s going to be landing in Los Angeles.
The city he’d sworn he’d never return to.
The city he had left abruptly just a little over a year ago …
After the funeral.
Carolyn’s funeral.
Carolyn Rutherford.
The woman whose life had been entrusted into his hands.
He had failed her. Failed her miserably.
And all because he’d fallen in love with her.
As a security specialist, he had been well aware of how risky it could be for a bodyguard to become emotionally involved with the person he was assigned to watch over.
And he had known the moment he laid eyes on Carolyn, a slender blonde with a throaty laugh and a provocative gleam in her dark eyes, that he was hopelessly attracted to her.
She knew it too. She later told him that.
He, who had always been a ladies’ man, who had vowed never to settle down, had told himself that she was no big deal.
And Carolyn, who had always loved a challenge, had made it her mission to seduce him …
To prove that what sizzled between them was more than lust, and that maybe they should both consider settling down—together.
He should have refused the assignment.
Lord, why hadn’t he refused the assignment?
Because the beautiful heiress was in danger, and he had been cocky enough to need to be the one who kept her safe.
Her father, Cyrus Rutherford, a billionaire computer software wizard, had been the victim of a thwarted kidnapping attempt just weeks before hiring the security firm that employed Harper. Convinced that his entire family was at risk, Rutherford had been willing to pay any price to keep them safe.
Especially Carolyn.
The youngest of his four grown children. The free spirit who had insisted on moving from the family compound in Carmel to Los Angeles. Bent on “just having fun,” as she put it, she frequented seedy after-hours nightclubs, socialized with an eclectic crowd, lived alone in an isolated beach house.
Her father had believed that her imprudent behavior would get her killed, so he had hired a bodyguard.
Little had Cyrus known that it was her bodyguard who would get her killed.
Harper will never forget the grieving billionaire’s words to him when he had tried to attend Carolyn’s memorial service.
“How dare you try to set foot in this chapel,” he had said, meeting Harper at the door, glaring at him with tormented eyes. “You murdered my daughter as surely as if you’d fired that gun yourself.”
And he had been right.
Harper had been asleep in Carolyn’s bed the night the kidnappers had broken into her house. Asleep, after a steamy bout of lovemaking.
He’d never heard the two men who swept into the bedroom and brazenly grabbed Carolyn …
Never heard them—until it was too late.
Until her muffled scream woke him, sent him fumbling for his gun.
Only he couldn’t find it in the jumble of rumpled clothes beside the bed.
The two men had panicked; one of them had shot at him, but missed.
That was when Harper had tried to be a hero.
More gunfire had erupted, and Carolyn had been caught in the cross fire.
Harper, seeing that she’d been struck in the head, had screamed.
“Noooo …”
Sometimes that scream echoes back to him.
He had sunk to his knees in the pool of blood soaking the white bedroom carpet, had taken her into his arms, had moaned her name, told her not to leave him.
But she had died right there, as the retreating footsteps of the two kidnappers faded away to mingle with the pounding surf.
And so he had left L.A., left the profession that had once filled him with a sense of power—a sense that he was actually helping people, keeping them safe.
And he had struggled to create a new life in Windmere Cove, a life he had vowed would be lived in isolation.
He had hurt too many people.
His parents.
His sister.
And Carolyn.
Every meaningful relationship he’d ever had.
That’s why he should never have allowed himself to fall for Elizabeth. But the attraction had struck him like lightning this time too, sparked by the nagging idea that he had seen her someplace before …
Now he knows where.
At the Academy Awards ceremony the March before she’d disappeared.
She had been there with some big-name actor, and he had been on security detail at the Shrine Auditorium.
He had heard the crowd getting all worked up, had watched as the cause of their excitement stepped onto the red carpet.
Mallory Eden, the famed, beloved actress, had arrived.
And at that moment, as she stood there, poised and smiling for the zillions of screaming fans and cameras and reporters, gazing around at the throng, their eyes had collided.
It couldn’t have been for more than a second or two, but she had seen him.
And he had felt an electrifying surge of attraction.
It was easy enough to dismiss in the next moment as her eyes drifted past him and she moved away, down the red carpet on the arm of her date. What red-blooded man in the world could lock gazes with a screen goddess like Mallory Eden and not feel a stirring in his loins?
Still, the moment had never really left his consciousness. Not if the memory had been triggered the moment he heard her tortured voice saying her name to Frank Minelli in that darkened house on Friday night.
That long-ago, fleeting connection to her had come to him in a flash …
Along with the knowledge that she was in danger, and he had to save her.
He hadn’t stopped to think when he went hurtling into that shadowy room to grab her attacker.
Not about the wisdom of making his presence known to a man who might have a gun …
And not about what had happened to Carolyn.
All he knew was that she needed him; Mallory needed him.
Just as all he knows now is that he needs her.
There’s a click of the public address system, and then the captain’s voice is once again booming through the cabin. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, there’s that view of the Grand Canyon I promised you. Truly amazing, isn’t it?”
And Harper thinks that the only thing that’s truly amazing is that he let Mallory Eden leave town without telling her exactly how he feels about her.
But this time, for the first time in his life, it won’t be too late.
Gretchen stares out the window at the sprawling Grand Canyon below, but not because it’s “truly amazing,” as the pilot described it. She isn’t even seeing the scenery beyond the layers of glass.
She’s been staring absently out the window ever since the plane took off from T. F. Green airport.
Anything to shield her face from the curious, or pitying, or horrified stares from the other passengers.
The big, broad-brimmed hat and oversized sunglasses she wore in the car and in the airport hadn’t provided nearly enough camouflage. She had heard people gasping as she passed, and several small children started crying at the sight of her. Her rage had grown with every step she had taken toward the departure gate.
Damn Mallory Eden for not returning her call.
Damn her for leaving Rhode Island.
Damn her for forcing Gretchen to venture out in public for the first time in five years.
By now, her mother will have returned home from work. She’ll see that the Chevy is missing from the driveway, and when she goes inside, she’ll find the note Gretchen wrote her.
The note telling her not to worry; that Gretchen had some business to attend to, and that she’ll call or come home in a few days.
Of course, her mother will worry anyway. She’s been a nervous wreck ever since Gretchen’s father dropped dead of a heart attack ten years ago, a few days after Gretchen had moved to Los Angeles.
Sorry for putting you through this, Mom, Gretchen says silently as the Grand Canyon fades into the distance. But I have to take this chance.
She closes her eyes and rests her forehead against the window, telling herself that Mallory Eden will agree to help her.
She has to.
She has to …
How many times had she said to Gretchen, “Remind me that I owe you a big favor”?
She’d said it when Gretchen had hunted all over Melrose Avenue to find the perfect shade of a chiffon floral scarf to match an outfit she was wearing to a charity luncheon.
She’d said it when Gretchen had driven Mallory’s dog, Gent, all the way up to that Big Sur resort that Mallory and her friend Rae were always going to, just because Mallory had decided she missed her pet.
She’d even said it whenever Gretchen drove the long way to work so she could stop at a Santa Monica bakery and pick up a couple of the low-fat chocolate muffins Mallory loved.
Remind me that I owe you a big favor, Gretchen.
I will, Mallory, Gretchen thinks grimly, digging her nails into the palm of her hand. Believe me, I will....
“Well, you can’t have him!”
“The hell I can’t! He’s my kid!”
Manny winces at the shrill voice that belongs to his mother, and hugs his knees more tightly against his chest, listening to the argument. Though it’s taking place all the way downstairs, in the kitchen, every word is loud and clear.
“We’re going to talk to the police about you, so don’t you go thinking you can—”
“What do you mean, talk to the police about me?”
“We’re going to tell them to make sure you stay away from Manny.”
“You can’t do that. He’s my kid!”
“You just want him because you’re jealous that he was spending time with that movie-star lady,” Manny’s grandfather accuses. “Until he started hanging around her, you never cared what the hell he was up to.”
“Hell, I didn’t know she was a movie star until yesterday. But she had no business trying to take over my kid! If she wants him, she has to talk to me about it. She has to pay.”
“Pay?” Manny’s grandfather yells. “You want to sell her your own son? I knew you were rotten through the core, but—”
“Rafael, calm down,” Manny’s grandmother cuts in. “You’re getting all red in the face. Calm down. Your heart …”
“Do you hear what our daughter is saying? She wants to sell her own son!”
“Well, that woman can’t just have him! You can’t just take somebody’s kid away.”
“He’s not yours anymore. You signed your rights away to us a long time ago, remember? When he wasn’t more than a baby. You never wanted him.”
Manny’s stomach does a flip-flop at his grandfather’s words. So his mother signed her rights away. Why should that take him by surprise? Anyway, he should be happy to find out that she has no legal claim to him....
“And at least the movie star tried to help him! That’s more than you ever did.” That’s Manny’s grandmother talking, her voice shrill and her accent thicker than usual, the way it always gets when she’s angry.
“I don’t have to listen to this. I want my kid. Where is he? Manny!”
“Get back here! Get back here! You can’t take him!”
Tears fill Manny’s eyes at his grandfather’s fierce words. How had he ever doubted that Gramps and Grammy loved him enough to keep him? They won’t let her take him away. They won’t.
Manny huddles on the floor in the corner of his room, trembling.
What if they can’t stop her?
Several sets of footsteps are pounding rapidly along the downstairs hall toward the stairs.
Grammy is crying now, yelling, “Stop it! Don’t go up there! Leave him alone!”
“Get back here!” Gramps hollers again. “Don’t you dare—”
His words are cut off abruptly with a gasp, and a moment later Manny hears a loud thump.
“Rafael!” Grammy shrieks. “Rafael! Oh, God, Rafael! It’s his heart! It’s his heart! Do something! Call 911! For Christ’s sake, he’s your father! Call 911! Please!”
Manny’s hands fly to his mouth and he squeezes his eyes shut, paralyzed in horror, listening as he hears his mother’s footsteps racing back toward the kitchen.
He half expects to hear the back door open and slam, but then her voice can be heard on the telephone, calling for help.
At the foot of the stairs his grandmother is wailing. “No! Rafael, don’t you leave me! No!”
And still Manny can’t move, can only sit motionless, listening, longing to somehow end the nightmare.
Elizabeth, he thinks, tears streaming down his cheeks. If I ever needed you in my whole life, it’s now.
But You’re gone.
You’re gone forever.
Rae’s car phone rings as she’s steering onto the Ventura Freeway.
She glances at it, then at Mallory.
“Are you going to get it?” Mallory asks.
“Should I?”
“Do you think it’s some reporter?”
“I don’t know how they’d get this number,” Rae tells her. “Only a handful of people have it.”
“Go ahead and answer it, I guess,” Mallory says with a shrug.
Rae picks up the phone, propping it between her ear and shoulder and steering the car into a center lane as she says, “Hello?”
“Rae, it’s me.”
“Flynn …” Rae glances at Mallory, who’s shaking her head.
Mallory mouths, “Don’t tell him I’m here.”
Rae nods. “How are you?” she asks. She glances in the rearview mirror, noticing a blue compact car moving into the same lane some distance behind her. Wasn’t that car behind her on the freeway on the way to the airport earlier?
“Where are you? I’ve been trying to reach you at home, on your cell phone …”
“I wasn’t carrying it with me.” She glances again at the car. A truck has entered the lane in front of it, and it’s out of her view.
“Where are you?” Flynn asks again.
“On the freeway.”
“Have you heard from Mallory?”
Rae tightens her grip on the steering wheel. “No,” she lies. “I haven’t.”
“I haven’t either. I just heard on the radio that she’s supposed to be flying back out here.”
He’s slurring, Rae realizes. He’s been drinking again. Damn.
“She may already be in town,” he goes on. “I figured she’d contact you or me.”
Rae nervously reaches down to adjust the volume on the radio. “Well, she didn’t call me.”
“Rae, look out!” Mallory screams in the seat beside her.
Rae glances up through the windshield, sees that the car in front of her has slammed its brakes on.
She swerves into the next lane, narrowly avoiding a collision.
“That was her!” Flynn’s voice accuses in her ear. “That was Mallory’s voice. She’s with you, Rae.”
“Flynn—”
“You lied to me. How could you lie to me, Rae? After what I did for you, setting you up with de Lisser?”
“Flynn—”
“Bring her over here, Rae,” he commands churlishly. “I need to talk to her.”
“I can’t, Flynn. We’re … we’re getting out of town for a few days.” She glances at Mallory.
Mallory’s face is pale, watching her.
“Where are you going?” Flynn wants to know.
Rae hesitates, stares out the windshield, looks again at Mallory.
Mallory shakes her head.
“I’m not sure,” Rae tells Flynn.
“Tell me, Rae!”
“Flynn, I have to go.”
“Rae—”
She disconnects the line.
“I’m sorry for making you he,” Mallory says. “I just can’t see him right now, Rae. I don’t want to see anyone yet. I need time.”
“I know.”
“Oh, God. I feel sick inside. Hiding from Flynn …”
“It’s okay, Mal”
“Was he angry?”
“He’ll get over it.” Rae keeps her gaze focused on the traffic.
She remembers to check the rearview mirror after a moment, and sees that the blue compact car is nowhere in sight. It must have been her imagination.
Becky O’Neal feels like a movie star as she steps into the terminal at LAX.
Lights and cameras are everywhere, all of them aimed at her.
And so are the questions …
So many questions.
“Have you been in contact with your daughter since she turned up alive?”
“Why did you abandon your daughter?”
“Is it true that you’re clean?”
“How long has it been since you last did drugs?”
Becky glances at Laura Madison, who looks calm. She takes Becky’s arm and leads her through the crowd, following two important-looking men in suits. They go down a long hall and through several doors, into a private lounge area.
“I need to make a call,” Laura tells Becky as they sit on two chairs off in a corner. “Then we’ll go out to the limo.”
“Limo?”
Laura smiles. “Sure, Becky. In exchange for giving us the exclusive on your reunion with your daughter, we’re making sure you get there in style.”
“Where is Cindy? Is she waiting for me?”
“she’s not waiting for you, no. We’re going to surprise her, remember? Everyone likes surprises.”
Becky nods. She remembers how little Cindy had loved the big, brightly colored plastic blocks she’d given her for her first birthday. Her little face had lit up and she’d clapped her chubby hands together in glee, squealing at her mama, holding her arms up for a hug.
But today’s surprise would be quite different.
Today Becky’s daughter might not be so eager to smile, to hug her.
I can’t take any more rejection from her, Becky tells herself, tensely clasping her trembling fingers with the opposite hand, watching but not listening as Laura Madison talks on the phone.
If she hurts me today, in front of Laura and all those cameras, after I traveled so far to be with her…
Becky clenches her jaw and tries to stop the trembling.
“Okay,” Laura says, hanging up her cellular phone and turning to Becky. “We’ve got Mallory heading north up the coast.”
It takes a moment for Becky to focus, and even when she does, she doesn’t quite understand what Laura’s talking about. “What do you mean?”
“We had someone trailing an old friend of hers on the hunch that Mallory might have contacted her for a rendezvous. It paid off. The friend picked up a woman at the airport a few hours ago, coming in on a flight from Rhode Island. The passenger didn’t look like Mallory from what our reporter could see, but nobody’s seen her in five years, so we’re assuming it’s her.”
“Did you tell her I’m here?”
“No—remember? It’s a surprise, Becky.” This time Laura sounds impatient, and not as pleasant as she had been the whole flight out here.
“I’m sorry. I just … I guess I forgot.”
“Let’s go. We have to get on the road.”
“But how do we know where we’re going?”
“I told you. We have someone on Mallory’s trail. We’ll keep checking in with them until we get a destination.”
“Okay.”
Laura sure is smart. Becky would never have thought of looking up Cindy’s old friends in case her daughter had called one of them. She doesn’t even know who Cindy’s old friends are.
Her own daughter, and she knows nothing about her life from the time she was two years old.
Except, of course, for what Elizabeth had told her when she’d visited her sister in Los Angeles.
And that wasn’t much. Elizabeth was so far gone most of the time that she hadn’t noticed or conveyed many details.
Becky has spent too many years wondering about her mystery daughter.
And now she’s about to come face-to-face with her at last.
Gretchen closes the hotel room door behind her and lets out an audible sigh of relief. She tosses the keys to the rental car onto the table between the two beds and perches on the edge of one of them.
She made it.
She’s back in Los Angeles.
And she’s finally alone again, away from strangers’ gazes.
The flight was hell, and so was the endless wait at LAX for a rental car. Thank God the hotel is right across from the airport, so she didn’t have to deal with traffic on top of everything else.
Now all she has to do is figure out where Mallory would have gone once she landed in L.A.
At least she had remembered to bring her old Filofax, the one from her stint as Mallory’s assistant. The one that lists all of Mallory’s friends and business associates.
It had been packed away in a box in the attic, along with the rest of her belongings her mother had had shipped back to Connecticut after the accident.
Gretchen had never bothered to unpack anything. She hadn’t wanted reminders of that fleeting golden life she had lived on the West Coast.
But that morning she had hurriedly dug through first one carton, and then another, until she found the Filofax. She had left the rest of her stuff—the designer clothes and stacks of head shots and textbooks from her acting classes—strewn all over the attic floor.
The first call she places is to Rae Hamilton.
She, if anyone, will know where Mallory is. The two were inseparable.
Rae’s line has been disconnected.
It figures.
Not everyone is going to be in the same place they were five years ago, Gretchen reminds herself. But some people are bound to be.
Flynn Soderland is next.
Her heart leaps when she hears a click and then his voice, but she realizes then that it’s just voice mail.
Well, at least his number hasn’t changed.
Gretchen hesitates, uncertain whether to leave a message. She decides against it, opting instead to try his cellular phone, on the off chance that that number, too, has remained unchanged.
The line is answered almost before it finishes one ring.
“Yeah, this is Flynn.”
“Flynn Soderland?”
“Who is this?”
She hears the distant sound of traffic, horns honking. He’s on the road somewhere. Is Mallory with him?
“This is Gretchen Dodd,” she says, struggling to keep her voice from wavering. “I’m Mallory Eden’s former assistant, and—”
“Mallory’s assistant? Has she called you?”
“No.” Her hopes sink. “You haven’t heard from her either?”
“She hasn’t called me, no. But she’s with Rae Hamilton. They’re heading out of town.”
Gretchen’s heart is pounding. “Where are they going?”
“I have no idea. They wouldn’t tell me. Rae says Mallory needs a few days to herself.”
He’s slurring his speech, Gretchen notices. She suddenly remembers that Flynn had always had a drinking problem. In fact …
Jeez, how could she have forgotten that?
Mallory had been thinking of firing him that last year, Gretchen recalls, after he got into drunken public arguments with business associates.
Details come rushing back at her, triggered by the sound of Flynn’s voice, and being back in town.
She is seized by a sudden torrent of longing for her old life. Christ, how glorious it had felt to be a part of that fast-paced, high-powered, scandal-ridden world. She squeezes her eyes closed against the flood of memories.
“Listen,” Flynn is saying sloppily, “you wouldn’t know where they might be headed, would you? The two of them used to go off together on those long weekends all the time, remember?”
“I … I really don’t remember that, no,” Gretchen says, trying to stay focused on the conversation.
Where would Mallory and Rae be headed?
Again she is transported back over the years, back to the old days as Mallory’s assistant.
“They always went up to Big Sur,” Flynn says, “and I’ll be willing to bet that’s where they’re headed now.”
Big Sur, Gretchen thinks. Yes, that’s where they always went.
“In fact,” Flynn continues, “I’m on my way up there myself. But do you know where I should start looking? I can’t seem to remember the name of that hotel Mallory loved so much. It’s on the fringes of my mind, but it keeps evading me.”
“Uh, I can’t tell you what it was, Mr. Soderland.” Gretchen stands and paces the narrow aisle between the hotel room’s two double beds, eager to get off the phone.
“You don’t know?” Flynn asks, sounding disappointed.
Of course I know. But, like I said, I can’t tell you.
“I’m afraid not,” she says aloud.
“Well, if you think of the place, would you give me a call back?”
“Sure I will. And if you see Mallory … tell her I’m looking forward to connecting with her again.”
“I will.... What was your name again?”
A prickle of anger darts through her. He doesn’t even remember her name, and she had practically talked to him daily when she worked for Mallory.
“It’s Gretchen,” she says curtly.
Gretchen Dodd … you old drunk.
“That’s right. I don’t know why I can’t remember anything today.”
Probably because You’re wasted.
“Hey,” he says abruptly, as if he’s just remembered something. “You’re the one who got hurt. Didn’t you? When that flower arrangement blew up in your face?”
“Yes” is her terse reply.
“I forgot all about that. How are you? You got pretty banged up. It was your legs, right?”
“My face.”
“Are you okay now?”
“I’m fine now,” she says crisply, careful not to walk all the way to the end of the aisle between the beds, where she might catch a glimpse of her reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door.
She bids a quick, terse farewell to Flynn Soderland and hangs up the phone.
So Flynn suspects that Mallory and her friend Rae are headed toward Big Sur.
And Gretchen knows how to find out for sure.
Her memory is sharper than ever.
All she has to do is flip through her Filofax to the T’s.
She starts dialing.
“Good evening, Treetop Inn,” a voice greets her a moment later. “How may I help you?”
“I’d like to confirm a reservation,” Gretchen says, the years falling away so that her voice is an echo of her long-ago efficiency.
“Certainly. May I have the name, please?”
“It’s Abernathy. Amy Abernathy.”
“One moment while I check, please.”
Gretchen clutches the phone to her ear, her vacant gaze darting around the silent, impersonal hotel room.
If this isn’t it, she’ll have to go back to the phone book and start calling other contacts. The trouble is, if Mallory’s with Rae, she probably hasn’t called anyone else. The two of them pretty much kept to themselves when they were together.
And if they aren’t at the Treetop, then Gretchen has no idea where—
“Hello? Yes, your reservation is confirmed, Ms. Abernathy. And I do have your credit card approval for late arrival this evening, so you’re all set.”
“Thank you very much,” Gretchen says, smiling as she hangs up the phone and picks up the keys to the rental car.
Harper is stuck in traffic on the San Diego Freeway.
Not that it matters.
He has no idea where he’s going.
No idea how to begin looking for Mallory.
He figures he’ll find a hotel somewhere by the beach, settle in, and wait for her to surface.
It shouldn’t take long.
He isn’t the only one looking for her.
The press has apparently worked itself into a frenzy. He saw reporters and camera crews all over the airport when he landed, and as soon as he turned on the radio in the rental car, he heard a deejay offering free tickets to a Nine Inch Nails concert to the first listener who calls in an accurate Mallory sighting.
In the meantime, Harper is sitting in traffic, wondering why he had ever thought living in Los Angeles was a good idea.
Sure, the beach is great …
But there’s a beach in Windmere Cove too. And no traffic.
No smog either, he thinks, glancing out the window at the indistinct night sky.
He thinks about all the other negative aspects of living here.
The high rent.
The earthquakes.
The crime.
The—
He jumps in his seat, startled by a faint tone coming from the vicinity of his waist.
His pager.
Somebody is paging him.
Can it possibly be …
He pulls it from his belt loop and glances at the number displayed.
It’s an unfamiliar number; the area code is 408.
Where …?
It’s in California, he realizes.
The area code for Carolyn’s family’s compound up in Carmel.
They wouldn’t be calling him, of course—for all they know, he’s fallen off the face of the earth, and none too soon for them.
Harper knows nobody else living in that area code.
Can it possibly be Mallory, trying to reach him?
Is she somewhere up the coast, in trouble, waiting desperately for him to call this number?
He glances out the windshield at the cars in front of him. He glances in the rearview mirror and sees nothing but a sea of traffic behind him too. He’s boxed in. At a standstill.
Without a phone.
Mallory checks her watch one more time.
It’s been a half hour since she had impulsively tried to page Harper, and he still hasn’t called her back.
Maybe he doesn’t want anything to do with you now that You’re gone, she thinks wistfully as she flashes one last glance at the pay telephone before turning away.
The only phone for guest use at the inn is tucked away in a dark nook of the rustic lobby, around the corner from the registration desk and the comfortable seating area by the stone fireplace.
The place is fairly deserted at this hour on a Sunday evening. As she passes through the lobby, Mallory spies a lone man sitting in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, a sketch pad on his lap.
She frowns.
What can he be sketching at this hour?
There’s nothing to see out the window but velvet, starlit sky.
Yet in the morning, Mallory knows, the view will be dazzling.
She walks slowly back along the corridor, shadowy with its dark, rough-hewn cedar walls, toward the second-floor suite she and Rae are sharing. It, too, has a spectacular vista of the ocean, as do most rooms in the inn.
The Treetop sits on two hundred secluded acres atop a sheer cliff that rises more than a thousand feet above the foaming white surf. There are several sun decks, lush flower gardens, and a series of trails through deep thickets of redwood and pine that emerge periodically at majestic clearings high above the sea.
Mallory tells herself, as she mounts the staircase at the end of the hall, that she has to relax. She’s been on edge all day.
Hell, you’ve been on edge for over five years, she reminds herself.
Being there at Big Sur with Rae is the soul-cleansing she so sorely needs. She can finally forget about the nightmare of the past, the …
But what about the stalker?
What if it wasn’t Frank?
She had called the Windmere Cove police station before trying Harper just now. They reported that Frank is still in custody, and hasn’t confessed to stalking her in California.
That was what had triggered her to call Harper’s pager.
For some reason, she had thought that if she could just hear his voice, she might be able to put to rest the nagging sense of uneasiness that has dogged her ever since she touched down in L.A.
What if it wasn’t Frank?
What if whoever was after me five years ago is still out there someplace?
What if he’s been watching, and waiting to strike, and …
She shudders and picks up her pace, arriving at the top of the stairs and turning the corner. She hurries past the row of closed doors until she reaches the end of the hall.
Two quick knocks, and the door is promptly thrown open by Rae, who’s wearing a pair of light blue silk pajamas. She looks cool, comfortable, and stylish, as always. But her eyes are troubled.
“My God, you don’t know how worried I’ve been,” she says, stepping aside to let Mallory into the suite. “Where have you been? I thought you were just going to call the police back in Rhode Island and come right back.”
“I was, but … I decided to take a short walk around.”
She isn’t ready to share her thoughts about Harper yet—not even with Rae. Nor does she want to tell Rae about Manny, whom she had also intended to reach—until she realized it’s well past midnight on the East Coast She’ll call him tomorrow.
“You were walking alone, in the dark?” Rae looks dismayed.
“I just strolled out to see the calla lilies in the garden. It’s been so long since I’ve been here. I just couldn’t wait to look around a little bit. It hasn’t changed.”
“Well, don’t forget we’re going hiking on the trails first thing in the morning. You’ll be able to see everything better then.”
“I can’t wait.”
“Did you get ahold of the police?”
Mallory nods. “They said he still hasn’t confessed.”
“To stalking you five years ago?”
“Right.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“They’ll try to prove it was him. He was in Los Angeles at the time.” She shrugs.
Rae is watching her. “Do you think it was him?”
Mallory hesitates, then nods. “After the way he attacked me the other night, yes. He’s sick. I just hope he doesn’t somehow get away with all of this.”
“Don’t worry, Mallory. They’ll get him to confess. Or they’ll find the evidence to convict him. And then this whole nightmare will be over.”
But will I ever feel truly safe again?
“Just try and put the whole thing out of your head if you can,” Rae suggests.
“Good idea.” Mallory yawns and starts toward the sleeping area off the rectangular sitting room with its homey couch and chairs. “I think I’ll go right to bed. I’m exhausted.”
“Are you sure?”
She turns at the unexpected sound of disappointment in Rae’s voice.
That’s when she notices the two glasses of red wine on the low oak coffee table, and the sea breeze wafting through the open door leading to the secluded balcony.
She realizes that Rae had planned on the two of them sitting out there, drinking wine until the wee hours, the way they always had when they came up here.
“I thought … I mean, we have so much catching up to do,” Rae says, sounding hesitant. “I guess I’m just eager to hear about everything, not just what you’ve been doing alone in Rhode Island for all this time, but about your plans for the future. I mean … I don’t even know whether you’ve decided to go back to acting.”
Mallory hesitates in the doorway, looking from the waiting wine to Rae’s face, which looks slightly wistful.
For a moment she considers sitting down for a nice rambling conversation, unwinding over a glass of wine, reestablishing the old intimacy with her dearest friend.
But then she realizes that she’s simply too bone tired to think straight. All she wants to do is fall into bed and sleep for hours, without intrusive thoughts of the past—or the future.
“I’m sorry, Rae,” she says reluctantly. “I’m exhausted. I’ll be more in the mood to chat tomorrow. But thank you for all you’ve done. You … you’ve saved me.”
“It’s no big deal,” Rae tells her, flashing a brief smile. “I’m really tired too. Let’s just go to sleep. But I’m going to wake you up at dawn for that hike.”
“You do that,” Mallory tells her with a grin before going into her room and closing the door.
She changes into one of the nightgowns she had purchased that afternoon when she had Rae stop at a shopping mall along the way. She needed everything—pajamas and clothes and undergarments and shoes and jackets, even toiletries.
In the adjoining bathroom she swiftly brushes her teeth, washes her face, and runs a brush through her hair. Her face in the mirror is lined with shadows, testimony to what she’s been through these past few days.
Hell.
You just need to sleep, she tells herself. Everything will be better in the morning.
She climbs into the mission-style bed and sinks gratefully into the downy feather bed cushioning the mattress.
But she doesn’t fall asleep right away, despite her fatigue.
For a long time after she hears Rae’s bedroom door close next door, she lies awake in the unfamiliar bed, listening to the distant crashing of the waves....
And telling herself that there’s nothing to fear.
Frank Minelli is a continent away.
But what if it wasn’t him?
What if it was someone else?
Someone who knows where I am?
She remembers the way Rae had seemed to be keeping an uneasy eye on the rearview mirror during the drive up here. As though she were making sure they weren’t being followed …
Or as though she thought someone was trailing them.
When Mallory asked her about it, she said she was just being cautious, keeping an eye out for the nosy press.
And that’s probably all there was to it, Mallory tells herself.
Probably.