Authors: Roxanne St. Claire
What she had, Devyn thought, was a right to know that somewhere, someone might know her darkest secret. That information could
be damning to her career… or worse.
So, really Devyn was doing her a favor.
Holding tight to the justification that had gotten her this far, she scooped up her bag and opened the car door, soaked before
she could jog up the three stone steps to the covered front porch. There, she intrepidly opened the screen door and rapped
hard on the front door.
Fifteen endless seconds passed; then she knocked again. Emboldened, disappointed, and frustrated, she pounded with the side
of her fist, an unwanted lump forming in her throat.
“You have to be home,” she murmured, her hand sliding down to the large brass handle. A blinding burst of lightning tore a
gasp from her throat, making her squeeze the latch in fear and hold tight as the thunder cracked the night air.
And the door opened.
Devyn jerked her hand away the moment she realized
she’d
unlatched the unlocked door. The next blindingly close bolt of lightning pushed her inside, survival instinct trumping everything
else.
“Dr. Greenberg?” she called, still knocking on the open door. “Are you here, Dr. Greenberg?”
This was so not how she wanted this meeting to unfold.
Pitch-black inside, the cloying scent of candle wax and potpourri fought with the muskiness of a closed-up house.
“Dr. Greenberg, are you home?”
Obviously not. And Devyn, with the blood of a man who once topped the FBI’s Most Wanted list cascading through her veins,
took another step into a house where she hadn’t been invited. Her adopted mother would keel
over in disgrace. But right now, her adopted mother didn’t matter. Her
real
mother did.
Two months had passed since Devyn’s husband had been murdered. Two months she’d waited for the investigation to close and
the police to clear her to leave the Boston area. Two months she’d struggled with a question no one had ever asked and only
Joshua Sterling could answer: Had he taken the name of Devyn’s birth mother to the grave? Two months was too much time not
to have this conversation and deliver the potentially bad news to Dr. Greenberg.
And have the perfect excuse to meet.
All she had to say was,
Your secret is no longer safe.
In fact, under the circumstances, a simple note could do the job. Not as satisfying as face-to-face, but maybe this was what
was meant to be.
She called out again, blinking to get night vision, able to make out an entry table in the shadows where brown sticks surrounded
by curled, dried leaves poked out of a vase.
Either Sharon had been gone a while, or she really didn’t care about living things.
And, really, wasn’t that what Devyn had traveled to North Carolina to discover?
Somewhere to the left, an antique clock ticked. The soft hum of the refrigerator buzzed from a kitchen around the corner.
Rain thumped on the shingles, but there were no other sounds.
On her right, through French doors, Devyn could see the green light of a printer and the shape of a large desk stacked with
papers and files. The office was the place to write and leave a note… or find a clue as to what made Dr. Sharon Greenberg
tick.
With a shiver of apprehension and a stab of guilt, she pushed open the door and walked to the desk, flipping on a tiny halogen
lamp to scan the mess. There were little hills of papers, files, articles, medical journals, a leaning tower of DVDs, and
a half dozen candles melted into various sizes and shapes.
For a moment, she just drank in the first impression. Mom was a slob, she thought with a slight twist of a smile. An untidy,
disorganized, hardworking scientist who… had sex with mobsters?
Curiosity burned, along with something else Devyn couldn’t identify. Something that felt like hunger. A burn to… bond.
Let it go, Devyn
.
She lifted some papers, eyeing the magazines, the arcane terminology, seeking clues to who this woman was. The investigator
she’d paid dearly for bits of information said Dr. Greenberg was divorced, childless, and working as a researcher at the University
of North Carolina teaching hospital.
The tabs on a stack of file folders confirmed her life as a scientist. Retrovirology. Immunology. Serology. Pathology. Belfast.
Belfast?
The word was scratched in pencil, light enough that it looked like it had already been erased. Devyn tugged the file, something
pulling at her as the manila folder slid out from under the others.
Belfast. The city conjured up twenty-year-old newscasts of bombings, violence, deaths, Irish mobs, and…
Irish mobs.
Slowly, she opened the folder, her pulse kicking up
after it had finally slowed. Inside, there were several pages of notes, some drawings, an e-mail. And on a “Recycle for Life”
notepad were the words
US Air Arrives 2:45 pm Belfast w/ layover Heathrow 8/29. Rtn open.
August twenty-ninth was almost two weeks ago. She glanced at the papers in the file, obscure scientific drawings, several
printouts of e-mails, a magazine article with the name
Liam Baird
underlined. She lifted it to read the story, but her gaze was pulled to a grainy photograph in the file behind the article.
Taken from a distance, the image was of a girl on a bike, a backpack on her shoulders, her hair in a pony—
“Oh my God.” The words stuck in her throat as she stared at the photo. She knew that bike, that street, that girl.
It was her.
Which meant Sharon knew her identity. She knew enough about Devyn to have a picture of her!
Trembling, she flipped the picture over and stared at the small handwriting.
Finn 617-555-6253
Finn? Finn MacCauley with a Boston phone number?
Lightning flashed blindingly bright with a simultaneous, deafening crack of thunder. The desk light went black, and thunder
rolled with such intensity that the hardwood floor vibrated under Devyn’s feet.
Had the house been hit? She stood there, the file still in one hand, as the thunder stopped, followed by the soft digital
sound of her cell phone. Grabbing her phone, she read the caller ID.
Dr. Sharon Greenberg.
“Oh my God.” Sharon was calling her?
She took a moment to breathe and think, too paralyzed to answer. Sharon must have just redialed, curious as to who had called
her a few minutes ago.
But she has my picture in a file on her desk.
With unsteady fingers, she tapped the green button and put the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
Nothing. Silence. But someone was there; she could tell.
“Dr. Greenberg?” She pulled the phone away, checked the name again to be sure she hadn’t imagined it. “Hello?”
No response. The house was silent around her, all electrical buzzing dead from the power outage. Devyn stood in the pitch
blackness, holding the lifeline to her birth mother… which was just as silent. She’d lost the call.
With a soft cry of frustration, she hit Redial. From down the hall, a digital ring cut through the silence.
Sharon was in the house? The call that just came in was made… from this house?
Slowly, like someone was guiding her with puppet strings, she walked around the desk, through the darkness, her arm automatically
slipping through the shoulder bag she’d set on top of one of the piles.
The phone stopped midring, and there was a soft click in her ear.
Someone had picked up the phone
.
Someone in this house.
“Dr. Greenberg?” she said it loudly, not to the phone but toward the hall. “Are you there?”
Silence.
Icy panic prickled over her skin, sending the hairs on the back of her neck straight up. She wasn’t alone.
Fumbling through the dark, she found her way back to
the entry hall. There, she stood still, listening, then turned back to call out to Sharon one last time, just as a hand clamped
over her mouth and yanked her back into a solid man’s chest.
“What are you doing here?” The man growled the words, adding so much pressure that her neck cracked.
White terror flashed behind her eyes, a scream trapped in her throat.
“What?” he demanded, lifting his hand enough for her to breathe and speak.
“Looking… for… Shar—”
“Why?”
“I… I wanted to…” She tried to think of a reasonable answer. “Leave her something.”
“What?”
Whoever this guy was—a husband, a boyfriend, or a guard dog—he probably knew where Sharon was. She had to be calm and come
up with a plausible story.
“I’m her student,” she said in a controlled voice. “She needed me to give her some papers. In person.”
He tightened his grip, pressing so hard across her chest she could feel her heart beat into his forearm.
“Who sent you?” he ground out.
“Nobody sent me. I’m a student—”
“A student who broke in?” He lifted his left hand, palming the side of her head while a beefy arm pinned her. Slowly, he pushed
her head to the side until her neck muscles strained and tendons snapped. Pain ricocheted down her arm and terror shot up
her spine.
“Who sent you?”
“I came on my own. It’s personal.” Miraculously, her voice didn’t crack like her neck. “I have to talk to her.”
He pushed her toward the door, which she just realized was open. Had she left it that way? Had he followed her in? Or had
he been waiting?
She dug her feet into the mat, refusing to be pushed into the screen and out into the rain. “I have to talk to her,” she said
again, trying to squirm around to see his face, but he wouldn’t allow it.
Had he hurt Sharon? Was her body lying bloody in the back of the house? “When you find her, give her a message.” A shove sent
her flying against the screen door, popping it open. She twisted just enough to see a glimpse of his face, older than she
expected, light eyes, grim mouth.
He whipped her around and braced her again. “If she comes back here without getting her job done, she’s dead.”
Devyn squirmed, finally getting her brain to work enough to try fruitlessly to jerk out of his grip. “What job?”
“She knows what job. She steps into this house a failure, she’ll leave in a box. We’re watching and we’re waiting.”
He shoved her outside, still holding her so tight she couldn’t turn to see him. One more push and she was out from under the
overhang, drenched, as the screen door was slammed shut behind her.
She spun around to get a look at him, just as an earsplitting sound sent her jumping backward, staring in disbelief at the
hole in the screen.
He’d backed into the shadows of the house and shot at her! Instantly, she pivoted toward the driveway, slipping on the concrete.
Using the banister to right herself, she sailed down the stairs, taking another look over her shoulder.
Fear vibrated through her, her heart hammering as if it
would explode out of her chest. The rush of blood and rain drowned out the little cries that escaped her lips as she stabbed
in her bag for the car keys.
Had she left them in the house?
Panic almost knocked her over, just as the keys scraped her knuckles. She whipped them out and promptly dropped them in a
puddle.
“Shit!” Falling to her knees, photos and papers she’d taken from Sharon’s file fluttered to the ground. The picture? Everything
was soaked before it hit the pavement.
One more shot exploded out into the night.
Abandoning the papers except what she could scoop in one shaky grab, she snatched the keys and dragged open the car door,
scrambling inside and tossing the remains of the file and her purse across the console. She found the ignition, turned on
the car, and jerked it into reverse. With her full weight on the accelerator, she launched backward out of the driveway.
She stole one last glance at the picture window, the reflection of her headlights illuminating the blinds. They parted briefly
as her attacker watched her leave. A man who would kill Sharon Greenberg if she returned…
without getting her job done
. What kind of job was that? Research for UNC? In Belfast?
She managed a quick look at the papers she’d thrown on the passenger seat; the picture was still there.
A picture of Devyn taken seventeen years ago.
Why would Sharon have that?
A hundred answers clobbered her brain, all dizzying in their possibilities. But only one electrified her. Her birth mother
had been keeping track of her.
Her birth mother
cared
.
Was that possible?
She had to know. The burn intensified until she could taste the metallic, bitter flavor of need in her mouth. She had to know
why Sharon had that picture. And she had to warn Sharon that her home was under surveillance and that she was in danger.
But how?
Trembling, she followed the darkened street back to the curvy Carolina roads. Finding Dr. Sharon Greenberg had just gone from
an impulse to a mission.
Belfast
.
Fortunately, she’d brought her passport.
T
he offices of the fledgling security and investigation firm sat directly above a lingerie store on Newbury Street, giving
Marc Rossi one more reason to like his new job.
He loitered at the window of Silk, drinking in the display of autumn gold thongs and russet front-clasp brassieres. While
he briefly imagined the pleasure of putting them on—and taking them off—the right woman, he answered his vibrating cell phone
without looking at caller ID.
He knew who it was anyway.
“I see you staring at the unmentionables, Marc.”
Inching back, he grinned up at the bay window that protruded from the second floor and saw his cousin looking down at him
with an amused expression on her devilish features.
“You can mention them, Vivi. I just don’t remember my father’s offices having such excellent downstairs neighbors.”
“That’s because Silk was a Chinese laundry when Uncle Jim used this suite. But I’m thinking we can add a tagline to the Guardian
Angelinos Web site: ‘
We’re just above the underwear
’.”