Falling for a Stranger (22 page)

He grinned. "When you're around I'm always hot and bothered."

She popped the last bite of pancake into her mouth and then said, "I'm going to take a shower. You can do the dishes."

"Or I could take a shower with you," he suggested.

"Not going to happen," she said, tossing her napkin at him, and then she went into the bedroom and shut the door.

When she got into the bathroom, she caught sight of her face in the mirror, and she was actually surprised at her reflection. She couldn't remember the last time she'd looked so alive, so happy. Actually, she could remember the last time. It was a year and a half ago, right after she'd climbed out of Drew's bed.

Moving away from the mirror, she turned on the shower and didn't wait for the water to heat up. She could use a little cold water on her face. She needed to get her head together. Today was a new day.

* * *

Drew cleaned up the breakfast dishes and tried not to think about Ria naked in the shower. The ringing of his cell phone provided a welcome distraction.

"Tim," he said in surprise. "You're up early on a Sunday."

"I picked up a shift last night for John. His wife went into labor."

"That's great news. What did she have?"

"Don’t know yet. Apparently, the labor is still going on. Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I spoke to my friend on Isla de los Sueños."

His stomach turned over. He'd forgotten all about Tim's offer to look into Ria's boat accident. And Tim didn't know that he'd met up with Ria again. He'd thought about mentioning it, but Ria was so afraid he'd reveal her whereabouts that he'd kept quiet.

"Drew? Did you hear me?"

"Yeah. What did you find out?"

"Your bartender wasn't the only one to die in that explosion. Apparently, the niece of Enrique Valdez was also on that boat as well. Her bodyguard was supposed to be with her, but he overslept and didn't make the trip. He ended up dead two weeks later. Valdez blamed him for his niece's death." Tim paused. "Valdez is rumored to be the head of a large criminal organization. Most people on the island speak his name in hushed tones."

Drew sat down at the kitchen table, the pieces falling into place. Valdez's niece had to be Megan. "What was the girl's name?" he asked.

"Marguerite Valdez. My friend said that no bodies have ever been found, but that he's sure he would have heard something if your friend or Valdez's niece had turned out to be alive. Many, many people spent days looking for them because of Valdez's money and power. Everyone wanted to be the hero, the one to bring his niece home."

"Okay," Drew said, wanting to end the call before he said too much.

"I can keep asking questions," Tim said. "In fact, I might be headed down there in a week or two. They're having a poker tournament on the island. Maybe you'd like to go with me."

"I don't think so."

"Yeah, I figured you'd say that. Sorry I don't have better information."

"It's fine. And you don't need to ask any more questions. I'm going to move on."

"Well, that's good news. Do you think you can finally let her go, stop trying to save her?"

That was a million dollar question, Drew thought, and he still didn't have an answer. "I'll see you next week, Tim."

"Yeah, see you then."

Drew hung up the phone, his pulse pounding way too fast. He'd been afraid to push Ria to the end of her story, worried that whatever line she'd crossed would be one too many for him to overlook. Now he knew exactly what she'd done. It was so clear he couldn't believe he hadn't realized it before.

Ria walked back into the living room, her hair wet from her shower. When she saw his face and the phone in his hand, she stopped abruptly, giving him a wary look. "What's wrong?"

He got to his feet and walked over to her. "I'm going to ask you a question, and I want the truth." His gaze locked with hers. "Did you kidnap Megan?"

Chapter Sixteen

Ria stared at Drew, her blood pounding through her veins. Apparently, he'd made his decision, and now she had to make hers. She would tell him her story, but she wouldn't necessarily wait around to see what he would do with the information. The prom was over. If she had to leave, she would.

"Megan came with me willingly," she said. "Does that sound like a kidnapping?"

"But you don't have custody of her, do you?"

"No, I don't. Her uncle has custody, but he is a dangerous criminal. Megan was not safe with him. So I stepped in."

"Start at the beginning," he said.

"That's going to take some time. Megan will be home soon."

"And I assume she already knows the story." He walked back over to the kitchen table and sat down. "Talk."

A moment later, she took the seat across from him. "I've told you a lot of it already, but here's the rest. Kate was eighteen when she went to study abroad in Spain. Like me, she also had wanderlust in her soul; she just didn’t care to see the world by boat." Ria took a breath, trying not to get sidetracked by sad thoughts of her sister.

"Anyway," Ria continued, "Kate was only in Spain for six weeks when she met Reynoldo Valdez. He was twenty-five years old and a young lawyer, very handsome, sophisticated. He'd been educated in the U.S., so he spoke perfect English. They fell in love. When her semester of study was over, Kate couldn't bring herself to leave. She signed up for another year. A few months later, she became pregnant. She dropped out of school and married Reynoldo."

"And your family had nothing to say about that?" he asked.

"My family was scattered to the winds. My mother was having her own love affair. I was fourteen and trying to make my way through my first year of high school. My dad was doing his thing, whatever that was. Everyone was thinking about themselves."

"At least two of those people should have been thinking about you," he said quietly.

"Well, this story isn't about me, at least not yet. Both of my parents tried to talk to Kate, but she was headstrong and in love. She was still angry with my mother, so she didn't give a damn what my mother had to say. Kate convinced my father that she was having the time of her life with her rich, handsome husband. After Megan was born, Kate sent me a picture of the two of them. She looked happy, and the baby had all this beautiful dark hair. I really wanted to see them both, but I was a kid. I couldn't get myself to Spain. Kate had no interest in returning to the States."

Ria cleared her throat. "For the next several years, I had little contact with Kate," she continued. "I wrote to her a few times, but she rarely wrote back. Then one day she sent me an email and asked me to stop writing her. She said she would be in touch with me when she could. I thought that was weird, but our relationship was so distant by then, I didn't care anymore."

"I doubt that you didn't care, Ria."

"Well, I tried not to care. After I left home and started traveling, I didn't really think about Kate. When I was twenty-two, my father got really sick. He was dying, and he wanted to see me. I could hardly believe it," she said, thinking about how shocked she had been at the time. "I was angry that ten years had passed since our last visit, but I was also touched that he remembered me at all. So against my mother's wishes, I flew to his house. He was living in Texas at the time with some woman I didn’t know. That's when I saw Kate again. She had Megan with her. Megan was ten years old. She was the cutest thing. We were together a week before my dad passed away."

"Ria, are we getting to the kidnapping part soon?" he asked impatiently.

"You wanted the story from the beginning, so sit back and be quiet."

"Fine."

"During that week Kate and I bonded again as sisters. She confided in me that her husband's family was not what she had thought. She loved Reynoldo, and he was an honorable man, but she believed that many of the family businesses were fronts for organized crime and that his brother Enrique was the ringleader. She was fearful for Reynoldo and also for herself, because people who challenged Enrique tended to disappear." Ria thought back to that long ago conversation that had changed so many lives. "I didn't completely believe her. Kate loved drama. I should have taken her more seriously."

"It's always easier to see things when you're looking back," Drew said. "What happened next?"

"Nothing happened for a while. Kate told me that the reason she'd asked me not to contact her was because she didn't want anyone to know about me. After my father passed away, the Valdez family thought she was an orphan. She'd apparently told Reynoldo at their first meeting that her mother was dead, because to all intents and purposes she was dead to Kate. The next time I saw my sister was three years later—in France. I was in a sailboat race, and she and Megan came to see me. I guess she had a friend who lived in the area, so she was able to get away from the family without anyone knowing she was coming to see me. Megan was thirteen, and I could see the changes in both of them."

"Like what?"

"They were tense, quiet, nervous. Kate told me she thought Enrique was having her followed. He'd taken charge of the family a few months earlier when Reynoldo's father died. Kate was afraid that Reynoldo was standing in Enrique's way. She was planning an escape. She'd already gotten fake papers set up for her and Megan and Reynoldo, but she had yet to convince Reynoldo to leave his family and his home. He thought he could handle his brother, but Kate didn't believe that. She said her husband was too kind; he saw the good in people instead of the evil. She made me promise that if anything happened to her, I would find Megan, and I would get her away from the Valdez family."

"What did you think at that point?" Drew asked curiously.

"I believed her. She showed me evidence that Enrique wasn't just a criminal; he was also cruel. He'd hurt people. He'd hurt women especially. And she said that for some reason he seemed to think she was his property, even though she was married to his brother."

"If she and Megan were away from the family at that point, why didn't they stay away?"

"Because Kate loved Reynoldo, and she didn't want to take Megan away from her father. Reynoldo wasn't ready to admit defeat yet."

"Over the next few months Kate would use random phones to call me to let me know about the plans she was making. She was a few weeks away from her escape when she and Reynoldo were in a car accident. They were driving down the steep hills by their house when the brakes failed. They were killed instantly. Megan was put under the guardianship of Enrique."

Drew let out a breath. "And that's where you came in."

"It took me a while to find Megan. Enrique moved her to the island. I guess he was afraid that she would talk to the wrong people and he wanted to keep her under his thumb."

"So you went to the island to get her."

"Yes, but I couldn't do anything right away. I had to build an identity that wasn't suspicious, and then I had to find a way to contact Megan. She was rarely out of the house, and when she was, she had bodyguards with her. After a few months, Enrique rarely came to the island, and the guard grew more complacent. Megan began to be seen in town more often. One day I followed her in to a ladies' room in the back of a restaurant. That's when we saw each other again."

"How did she react?"

"She started crying. She said she'd been waiting for me to come for her. That her mother had told her I would save her. She cried harder when I told her we were going to have to take our time, come up with a plan. She was scared of Enrique and tired of being a prisoner. We set up a way to meet once a week for a few minutes. Eventually, we put the plan in motion. Megan would convince her handlers to let her take a sailing lesson." She let out a weary breath and waved her hand in the air. "You know the rest."

"Not exactly. How did you get explosives to blow up the boat?"

"I saved fireworks from the Fourth of July. I went on the Internet and learned how to make a timer. It was rough, and I wasn’t sure it would work, but it did. I had a life raft on board, and I used that to get us to another boat that I'd stashed on a nearby island. For days I thought someone would catch us. I knew Valdez would have an army out looking for Megan, but we managed to get away."

"Where did you go?"

"We moved around a lot the first few months. Megan was pretty shaken up. It took a while for her to start breathing more freely. We took some self-defense classes, so she'd feel like she wasn't so vulnerable. I even learned how to shoot a gun, but I was afraid to keep one in the house, so that didn't do much good. I knew I wasn't going to win in a gun battle against Megan's uncle, so I concentrated on staying hidden." She paused, trying to get a read on what Drew was thinking, but he wasn't giving much away. "I couldn't go to the cops, because Enrique is Megan's guardian, and to answer your original question, in the eyes of the law, I kidnapped her."

Drew sat back in his seat, his gaze reflective, thoughtful. "Did Enrique hurt Megan?"

"Not physically. She told me that he scared her, that he threatened her. He said if she didn't want to end up like her mother, she needed to be loyal to him." She paused. "I forgot to mention that Megan saw her parents' car go off the road. She was looking out her bedroom window, watching them leave. I guess Kate had decided at the last minute to go with Reynoldo to meet his brother. But, of course, they didn't make it. Megan said she started screaming and went running down the hill, but no one would let her get to her parents. I thank God for that. I wouldn’t have wanted her to see them like that."

He shook his head, his jaw tight. "That's too much for a kid to see."

"Yes. And for a long time she had nightmares, but she's better now."

"She speaks perfect English without a trace of an accent. Surprising for a kid who grew up in Spain, in what I assume was a Spanish-speaking household."

She nodded. "Kate wanted Megan to speak perfect English and perfect Spanish. She worked a lot with her. She felt certain that at some point they would be back in the States, and she wanted to be sure that Megan could fit in. Megan hasn't spoken Spanish since the day we left the island. Sometimes, I forget that's her first language. And since she's been spending so much time with kids her own age, I only occasionally notice a trace of an accent."