Blind Trust (16 page)

“I'm sure he did. But it couldn't have been comfortable for him sitting outside your house all night to keep watch.”

“What?”

Julie chuckled. “You didn't know? When Ryan and I passed your house at midnight last night, Tom was sitting in his car across the street.”

“I had no idea.” Her gaze drifted to where she'd last spot
ted him. He was loading his other nephew onto his back. She should be irritated at him for staking out her house. But a warm fuzzy feeling that he'd been that worried about her ousted all the others.

Julie elbowed her. “If you ask me—which for some reason you don't seem to do anymore—he's a keeper.”

Um-hmm.
If only she could steer clear of involvement in his cases.

“Did you figure out what that plant was you found yesterday?”

“Unfortunately, no. Couldn't find anything like it in any of my books or online.”

Julie clapped her hands together. “That's great! So that proves it's rare!”

A couple of heads turned their way.

“Shh.” Kate's heart rate quickened at the sight of Brian Nagy's real estate agent moving away from the group of men he'd been talking with and pulling his phone from his pocket. “It doesn't work that way.” Kate shifted closer to the agent in hopes of eavesdropping on the call, as she suspected he'd been doing on their conversation.

But just then the rookie police officer Tom had enlisted to stake out Beck's apartment approached Tom, carrying a thick manila envelope. Tom straightened, letting his young nephew hop to the ground. Taking the envelope he slanted an anxious look in her direction.

Her heart skipped a beat, as much from the realization that he'd been aware of exactly where she was as from the concern in his gaze.

“Excuse me,” she said to Julie. “I've got to go.” She reached Tom just as the officer strode away. “Did they catch the guy?”

“Huh?”

“Beck. Wasn't that—?”

“No. I mean, yes.” Tom rolled the large envelope in his hand. “Hutchinson was watching Beck's place, but Beck never showed.”

“So what's in the envelope?”

A sigh seeped from his pursed lips, his grip on the rolled envelope tightening. “Your dad's file.”

Dad's file.
Nervous energy streaked through her chest, but words escaped her. Her fingers tingled, but she couldn't bring herself to reach for the envelope. This was the moment of truth, the moment she'd been longing for—and dreading—for twenty years.

The crowd's attention seesawed between watching Hutchinson climb into his cruiser and eyeing her speculatively.

Tom touched the small of her back. “Let's go to your house.”

The tenderness in his voice wrapped around her like a sweet embrace. “People are going to say you're protecting me, you know.”

He tucked her dad's file under his arm and looked so deeply into her eyes that her heart felt as if it were freefalling straight into his warm, strong hands. “And I'm going to keep on protecting you. Okay?”

“Thank you,” Kate whispered, nibbling her bottom lip.

Tom hated to see her so vulnerable. When she'd been rallying to clear Daisy's name, she'd been self-assured, fighting him at every turn. But now, ever since the day she landed in the middle of his counterfeiting investigation, it was as if something had broken inside her.

She hadn't lost the will to fight . . . not exactly. She was still fighting to prove Verna's innocence, and to save Verna's land, but she wasn't the same somehow.

They drove to her house in silence. Kate held her father's file on her lap. Every few seconds, she skimmed her fingers across it.

He hadn't really expected the small police detachment to have the file after twenty years. He was even less optimistic that it had the answers Kate was looking for.

About the twentieth time her fingers swept the envelope, the obvious smacked him between the eyes. All this anxiety she was radiating—it wasn't about the counterfeit money. She was petrified of what she might find inside that envelope.

“Are you sure you want to read the file, Kate?”

“Of course.” Her fingers stopped their restless sweeping, and she rested her palm on the envelope. “I need to know the truth.”

When they reached the house, she carried the packet to the kitchen table. “Do you want me to fix you a sandwich first?”

Pretty sure she was grasping for an excuse to put off looking at the file, he shook his head. The sooner they reviewed the reports, the sooner her torment would end. He slit the envelope and pulled out the pages. Her dad's photo sat on top of the stack.

Kate stared at the photo, frozen. The family resemblance was remarkable. They shared the same green eyes, the same red hair, even the same oval-shaped face, although her father's chin was a little more square.

She tentatively reached out and touched her dad's cheek, and Tom noticed another characteristic they shared—a tiny mole at the right temple.

“You okay?”

She swallowed. “Yes. Sorry.” She set the photo aside and looked at the next sheet of paper—an itemization of her dad's possessions upon processing.

They perused Peter's witness statement, which matched the details he'd shared with them. His supervisor's statement alleged that Kate's father had been sent to Colombia to bring back samples of plants, but he never delivered them, even though customs records confirmed he declared the plants upon arrival.

Kate gasped. “So he did bring them home.”

“According to his supervisor, he stole them to sell to their competition.” Tom shuffled through the pages. “Let's see what your dad had to say to the allegations.” He paused. “That's odd.”

“What?”

“Your father's statement isn't in the file.”

Kate let out a long sigh, her entire body deflating. “So we still don't know his side of the story.”

Tom read the investigating officer's notes aloud, but when he turned over the page to continue, the notes abruptly ended midsentence. “This file is messed up big-time. Half the detective's notes are missing too.” He leafed through the remaining pages. “There's no charge sheet. No arrest warrant.”

Kate tugged the next page—the coroner's report—toward her and drew in a ragged breath. Cause of death: heart attack. At the request of the family, no autopsy was performed.

“Did you see your father's body?”

“No.” Her fingers jittered over the words as if she might erase them, undo what happened. “Mom didn't want me to remember him that way. Why?”

Tom shook away the sudden crazy notion. “No reason. They just never noted who confirmed his identity.”

“We had a small graveside ceremony, and as soon as I finished my school year, we moved to my grandparents'.” Kate's gaze drifted to the wall, unfocused. “I remember asking Mom if we could stop at the cemetery and leave flowers before we left. It didn't seem right to move so far away from Daddy without doing something. I used to sneak there after school sometimes and talk to him.”

Tom's heart ached at Kate's wistful remembrances. He wanted to gather her in his arms and soothe her pain. Except that wasn't what she needed right now. She needed him to keep his head. His heart was already too entangled. He gathered the pages and stuffed them back into the envelope. “I'm sorry there wasn't more.”

A scrap of paper fluttered to the table, a name and number scribbled on it. He added the paper to the packet, making a mental note to follow up on it later.

Kate sighed. “The last thing my dad said to me was, ‘Remember I love you, Kate. I will always love you.'” Her voice hitched. “I guess that's all I really need to know.”

Unable to hold back any longer, Tom gathered her into his arms. More than anything he wanted to give her the answers she longed to hear. That her father was innocent. That the arrest had been a horrible mistake. That her search hadn't been in vain.

Inexplicably, his mind flashed to the explosion that took his former FBI partner's life. Why would he think of that now? He was long past expecting Kate to betray him the way his partner's double-crossing girlfriend had.

But hadn't his partner said the same of Zoe, the woman
who'd wooed him for information then planted a bomb in his car?

Tom stiffened. The name on the scrap of paper that fell out of the file. Z. Cortez.
Zoe Cortez
. What did Kate's father have to do with the spy who killed his partner?

Walking the corridors of the research station toward her office, Kate felt as if her legs were encased in cement. She hadn't slept at all. No, that wasn't true, because more than once she'd woken up screaming, haunted by nightmares of fires and her father and counterfeit money. It had brought the female officer bunking in her spare room running. The woman had come as a favor to Tom, not in any official capacity, but still, the idea of having a bodyguard in the house had only made her feel more unsettled. But with her stalker still at large, agreeing to have her there had been the only way to keep Tom from spending another night sleeping in his car outside the house.

“Lord,” she prayed aloud, as she had much of the night. Only unlike Tom's comforting embrace, God's solace hadn't come. “Was I wrong to dig up the past? I wanted so much to believe Dad was innocent. But the files only raised more questions. What am I supposed to do?”

A researcher unlocking his office looked up. “Were you talking to me?”

“No. Sorry. Talking to myself.” Embarrassed at being over
heard, she hurried to her lab. She needed to put her father out of her mind, focus on what she could do—her research and helping Verna. Since she'd had no luck identifying the plant she'd hoped would be the ticket to securing protection for the property, maybe her better chance of stopping Brian was to prove he was their counterfeiter.

“Hey,” Patti glanced up from her workbench as Kate pushed through the door. “I was beginning to wonder if you'd need another wake-up call.” She frowned. “But it looks like you never went to sleep.”

Kate finger-combed her hair. “Been having trouble sleeping.”

“Know what you mean. I had nightmares for months after my mom died. It was as if by reliving her last hours I might be able to do something differently so she wouldn't die.”

Kate nodded. She didn't have the energy to explain that her restlessness wasn't connected to Daisy's death. Not to mention she didn't want anyone beyond Tom to know the truth about her father—what little she really knew.

Patti reached across the bench and held out a file. “I did find something that might cheer you up.”

Cheer her up? She doubted anything could push past the grinding pain in her head, or her heart. Kate flipped through the pages—articles downloaded from the internet, all in Spanish. “What are these?”

“Info about that plant you emailed me a picture of Saturday afternoon. Since I couldn't find anything on it in English, I tried translating the description to French, Russian, and Spanish, and hit upon this.”

“You can read all those languages?”

Patti adjusted the slide on her microscope. “Nah, I used the translation tools.”

Kate squinted at the unfamiliar words but couldn't decipher more than two or three. “So how do you know this is relevant?”

“Look at the photo on the last page.”

Kate flipped to it and gasped. She pulled up the photo of the plant from Verna's property on her cell phone screen and compared the two images. “They're nearly identical.”

Patti grinned. “Near as I can figure, the guy who wrote the article is a missionary or priest or something in Central America, based on how many times he uses
dios
, the Spanish word for God, and
amen dios
. Not sure what that means. Must be like our
amen
. I tried using the translation tool to translate it all to English, but my computer locked up.”

Patti chattered on, but the words became a background noise of gibberish.

Amen dios
. Amen.
Amendoso
—the plant Lucetta's mom gave Dad?

Kate's heart fluttered. They couldn't be the same plant, could they? Those woods
had
felt unusually tropical. But sheltered enough to sustain a tropical plant through the winter?

“I figured you could ask Juan to translate it for you.” Patti's voice filtered past the questions racing through Kate's mind.

“Who?”

“You know, Juan. Building two. Studies peaches.”

No, she didn't dare ask anyone from the research station to translate this. If by some crazy coincidence this was the same plant that cost Dad his life, she couldn't risk the news getting to GPC.

“Or maybe that Lucetta woman you mentioned last week could.”

Kate's throat thickened. She definitely could
not
show this
to Lucetta. “Could you do me a favor and not mention this to anyone?”

Patti gave her a strange look.

“It just seems pretty rare. I want to learn more about it. How to protect it without risk of curiosity seekers destroying its habitat.” Thank goodness she never told Patti where she found the plant or why she wanted to identify it. Not when Dad lost his life trying to keep it out of GPC's hands.

Patti shrugged. “I guess that makes sense. I'll call Jarrett.”

Kate lurched. “No! I don't want you to tell
anyone
.”

“Jarrett already knows.”

No, no,
no
. Kate clutched the edge of the bench. If Jarrett told his father, what would the mayor—?

She shook the thought away. There was absolutely no reason why Jarrett would have said anything. No reason, if he had, why the mayor should connect the plant to GPC Pharmaceuticals . . . if it was connected.

Kate shuffled through the stack of papers Patti had printed off on their mystery plant. The website's address—the only English on the pages—was printed in the footer. She turned on her computer. Maybe she could get an online translation tool to decode the article. While she waited for the computer to boot, she called Julie. “Can you recommend an online translator that won't freeze up my computer?”

“For what language?”

“Spanish to English.”

“Why don't you just ask my aunt Betty at the B and B? All those years working on her parents' fruit farm beside the migrant Mexican workers, she got pretty fluent. She can read it too. At least as well as any online tool. What's this about anyway?”

“I'll fill you in later.”

If only she could show Lucetta the plant and find out if it was the same as the one Kate's dad had gone to Colombia to see. Learn how Lucetta's mother used it. But she didn't dare. Not when Lucetta was already suspicious about why she had a picture of the man she blamed for killing her mother.

She flipped off the computer and grabbed her car keys from her purse before remembering that she'd let her “bodyguard” drive her to work this morning at Tom's request. “Grrr. I knew I shouldn't have agreed.” Visits to the intern placements were almost due again. She could have used them as an excuse to slip out, stop by the B and B on the way, maybe even drop by Grandma Brewster's to see if she knew anything about the plant.

Tom would've been furious. He didn't want her going anywhere until they located Beck. But surely her stalker would expect her to be in the lab all day.

He wasn't going to show. Tom glanced at his car's dashboard clock. Kate had already been inside the research station for forty-five minutes, and for all Beck knew, she wouldn't emerge again until quitting time. It'd been a long shot expecting him to show up here, but they couldn't spare the manpower to stake out Beck's apartment any longer. And Tom would rather spend his day off watching Kate's back than sitting outside an apartment building half an hour away.

He pushed back his seat and pulled out her father's arrest file. The scrap of paper with a number for Z. Cortez sat atop the rest. The area code matched DC's, but reverse lookup on the internet hadn't yielded an address. For all he knew the
number was no longer in service or belonged to someone else now. But what if it didn't? What if the person who picked up the phone on the other end was the woman who betrayed his partner? What did he do then?

The woman had disappeared without a trace after the bombing. What were the chances this scrap of paper would lead to her? She would've been a teenager at the time of Kate's father's arrest.

Tom turned his phone in his hand. Yeah, what was he thinking? There was no way a twenty-year-old arrest was connected to Ian's killer. Zoe probably wasn't even the woman's name.

So why not call? Nothing to lose. None of their other leads were panning out.

The phone rang. Once. Twice.

He suddenly felt like a caged animal. If this turned out to be the same woman who got his partner killed . . .

He crushed the paper with her number scrawled on it, wishing it was her neck and hating the ugly emotions burgeoning in his chest, choking off all sense of—

“Hello,” a female voice said. Not Zoe's. The woman had a British accent.

“I'm calling for Zoe Cortez. She there?”

An odd scuffle sound interrupted the woman's response. “Ah, no, she's not in at the moment. May I take a message?”

If this was his partner's Zoe, there was no way she'd respond to his message. More likely she'd skip town the instant she found out he was onto her, which if she had caller ID, might be what that scuffle sound had been.

“No, that's okay. I'll call back. Thanks.” He clicked off the phone with a groan.
Lord, I need your help. Lead
me to this guy so I can protect Kate.

The rear door of the research center opened and Kate strolled out.

What was she doing? He'd told her to call him if she had to go anywhere. As he reached for the door handle to remind her as much, his cell phone rang. Kate held a phone to her ear. Okay, so he couldn't yell at her yet. He settled back in his seat and watched her through his windshield.

When she bypassed her yellow Bug and opened the door of a white Honda, he clicked on his phone and started his engine. “Where you going, Kate?”

“Hey.” She glanced around as if she'd sensed from his question that he might be watching, then slipped inside the car without noticing him. “I'm going to Landavars Greenhouses to pick up some herbs. But I'm borrowing Patti's car, so you don't have to worry about anyone following me.”

“Is that the only place you're going?”

“Uh, no.” She fixed her phone on the dash and turned on the car. “I need to drop off some paperwork at Betty's B and B.” Her voice rose with excitement as she pulled out of her parking space. “I might have a lead on that plant I found, but it's all in Spanish. Betty said she'd translate it for me.”

“That's awesome. I'll—” Movement in his side mirror caught his attention. “Listen, be careful. I'll catch up to you as soon as I can.” He clicked off as a tan Toyota Corolla coasted behind his parking spot, Michael Beck at the wheel, his gaze fixed in the direction Kate had just turned.

Tom rammed his gearshift into Reverse and stomped on the gas. His fender clipped the rear end of the Corolla, but Beck didn't stop.

Tom shoved his stick into Drive and swerved onto a parallel lane, racing him to the end. But instead of turning out of
the parking lot after Kate, Beck veered left across the bridge leading to the lilac garden. A dead end. Tom grinned. Beck obviously wasn't from around here. Tom careened after him, screeching to a diagonal stop in the center of the bridge.

The Corolla pulled a donut in the parking lot, then jerked to a stop, and Beck bolted from his car.

“Stop! Police!” Tom shouted, racing after him.

“Okay.” Beck lifted his arms.

But momentum, adrenaline, and a chestful of anger at what he'd put Kate through hurtled Tom straight into him. He whirled him around and rammed his back against the nearest tree. Fisting the guy's plaid shirt in his hand, Tom pressed hard against his chest.

The guy didn't put up a fight. In fact, he kind of smiled. Tom was struck by the sense he knew him, and not just because he'd seen his face a hundred times on that video clip. The red tinge of his beard stubble was testimony to his former hair color. “Who are you?” Tom locked on his green eyes, and his heart jerked. “You're supposed to be dead.”