Body Double (31 page)

“They are, especially with jam.” Blake used his thumb to wipe a blob of jam from the corner of her mouth and then licked it off his thumb. The bruises on her arms and torso were darker now, and she moved slowly from the soreness caused by her struggle the day before, but her eyes were brighter after a good night’s sleep. His phone, sitting on the table beside his plate, rang and vibrated. His mom’s name and photo appeared on the screen. “She’s probably calling to check on you.”

“She’s so sweet. Tell her I’m much better.”

“Hey, Mom,” he answered cheerfully. “She’s fine.”

“How could she be fine?” Gloria asked. “How could you? Didn’t she tell you about her dad?”

His blood ran cold. Had something happened to Harold? “Uh, yeah, she told me he hasn’t been a perfect father.”

She made that impatient sound in her throat she used to make before chewing him out when he was a kid. “Are you on the way to the hospital?”

Hospital? Uh oh. He checked the time: just after eight o’clock. “No, we just got up. We’ll be there in an hour or so.”

“My God, Blake. He might not make it another hour.”

He sat up straight. What? Did Sarah know what happened? If she did, why hadn’t she called to give them a heads up? “She didn’t think it was that serious.”

“No wonder you couldn’t reach him last night when you tried to call,” his mom said. “It must’ve happened right after I told him about the abduction incident. That must’ve pushed his blood pressure too high. Oh, Blake. It’s my fault. If he dies, it’ll be on me.”

Blood pressure... Had Harold had a heart attack? “No, Mom, that’s not true. Harold hasn’t been living a healthy lifestyle. What happened to him wasn’t your fault. We’ll get down there as soon as we can. UCSF Medical Center, right?” There were closer hospitals to his house in Pacific Heights, but if Harold had a say, it would be the best.

Andrea leaned forward with concern wrinkling her forehead, her eyes searching his.

“Yes, that’s what Richard told me.”

Richard. Of course he’d be the one to make the calls, though Blake wasn’t on his list. And why would he be if he was living with Sarah? “All right. Will you be going?”

“He’s in the I.C.U., honey. I’m not family. They won’t let me see him. Please give him my best and let him know I’m praying for his recovery.”

“We will. Bye, Mom.” He disconnected and set the phone down.

“What was that all about?” Andrea asked.

“Harold’s in the I.C.U.. I’m guessing he had a heart attack, maybe after hearing that Sarah had been attacked. Why didn’t she call us herself?”

“Maybe she did. I left my phone upstairs. Let me go get it.” She stood and headed toward the back staircase, just beyond the kitchen.

“Yeah,” he called, “but she could’ve tried me if she’d gotten your voice mail.” He picked up his phone and called Sarah.

“Hi, Blake,” she said on answering. “I was just fixing to call you.”

“My mom called asking about your dad. What happened?”

“Apparently he had some kind of heart attack or something. He’s in the hospital, probably running the nurses ragged and causing an outbreak of tension headaches.”

“Mom said it was serious. He’s in the I.C.U.?”

“They always put old geezers in the I.C.U. for the least little thing. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Apparently she wasn’t, but this was her father, her closest living relative. Why was she so cavalier? “It might be more serious than you think, Sarah. We’re going down there in a bit.”

“No, don’t,” she said, her voice hardened. “If Andrea shows up, he’ll know something’s amiss. He knows good and well I wouldn’t go see him in the hospital.”

“Even if he was dying?”

She answered with a moment of cold silence. “Listen, I’m about to give my deposition. Give me about three hours before you go to the hospital, okay? I’ll call him as soon as I’m done here and find out how he’s doing, and if he seems really sick, then you can go visit if you want to.”

His heart sank. He knew she didn’t get along with her dad or even respect him, but this. This was cold. Heartless. “Fine,” he said and hung up. For someone who cared so deeply about strangers, it was disheartening to know she had so little regard for her own flesh and blood.

“She didn’t call me,” Andrea said on returning. She had her cell phone in hand. “I’ll call her.”

“Don’t bother. I just did. She’s heading in to give her deposition, so she won’t be able to talk for the next three hours or so.”

“What’d she say about her dad?”

He rubbed his brow, trying to massage away the budding headache. “She doesn’t realize he’s seriously ill. She thinks the hospital is overreacting and asked us to wait until she’s finished before we go down there—to give her time to call him and find out the seriousness of it.”

“No,” Andrea said. “If he’s had a heart attack, we’ve got to go now.” She turned on her heel and headed back the way she’d come, though he could tell by her sluggish movements that the soreness in her body was wearing her down.

“Andrea, Sarah doesn’t want us to go. She doesn’t want you to go.”

She paused to gape at him with her hands on her hips. “That’s just too damned bad. There’s a man lying in a hospital bed with tubes and needles in him and who knows what else, and all he wants is a kind word from the daughter he loves. So you can get dressed and come with me or you can stay here, but I’m going to the hospital. It might be his last chance to see Sarah and say what he needs to say to her to be at peace.” With her shoulders set, she continued on her way.

His eyes welled, and his heart threatened to bubble over. God, he loved her. This was the woman he should have married. This was the woman he had to find a way to be with, no matter what. He ran up the stairs after her.

Blake let Andrea out at the hospital’s front entrance and went to park the car. While she waited for him to find a spot, she inquired at the information desk about Harold Gentry. She was given a map and told he’d been moved from the I.C.U. to a private room.

Once Blake found her, they stopped at the gift shop for a small vase of flowers, and continued up the elevator to the cardiac wing. Nurses at the central station hunched over computers, tapping keys. Others scurried about, carrying supplies and equipment of various kinds. In nearly every one of the rooms they passed, a patient lay with tubes running to IV drips and machines that pushed air up the little plugs in their nostrils.

They found Harold’s room number and paused outside the closed door.

“Are you sure you want to go in alone?” he asked.

Andrea nodded, not entirely sure, but she wanted to give Harold the chance to get anything off his chest without Blake listening in. Her years as a social worker had prepared her for this, and her resemblance to Sarah made her the ideal person to hear him. She took a deep breath, pushed the door open, and went in.

The bed was surrounded by machines and monitors with tubes and things connected to Harold’s frail body. She set the flowers on the table opposite the bed, went to his side, and put her trembling hands on the railing, looking down into his face. He didn’t look like the tyrant she’d tried to avoid, the cold-hearted bastard that had closed The Delmar Center, the man worthy of his own daughter’s contempt and indifference. He looked like a father not unlike her own, the man she’d idolized as a little girl and leaned on as a young woman and hoped never to disappoint. The man she hadn’t seen since last Christmas because somehow money always got in the way.

Her eyes filled with tears. What if this were her dad, lying here dependent on machines and drugs to keep him alive? What would she say to him?

His eyelids fluttered, and he opened his eyes. They were bloodshot and weary, but they brightened when they found her face. “My Sarah,” he said, barely above a whisper. “You came.” He pressed a button on his bed, and it inclined his upper body a few inches.

She put a hand on his shoulder. Comforting him calmed her own nervousness. “Of course I came. Are you in pain? Should I call the nurse?”

“No, baby doll. Just let me look at you for a minute.”

Andrea held her breath, worried that he would begin to notice the differences between her and Sarah—the jawline, the nose, her lack of the beauty mark on her jaw that she hadn’t remembered to pencil in. Without his glasses on, maybe he wouldn’t be able to spot those details.

His gaze glided down her arms. “You’re all scraped and bruised up. I’m so sorry. What happened?”

She exhaled, thankful to have gotten past the initial scrutiny. “It’s not your fault. I pissed off some guys in the trafficking world, but I’m safe now. The police are on it, and Blake won’t let me out of his sight until I hire a bodyguard.”

“Good,” he said with a small nod. He painstakingly moved his hand toward hers, and she took it. “I haven’t always been a good father.”

“Hush,” she said. “You can apologize when you’re better.”

“I haven’t always been a good
man
, but somehow you turned out all right, even if you did pick up some of my less... savory behavior.”

Andrea tried to smile as if she understood he was joking. “What are you talking about? I did not. I’m a perfect angel.”

“I don’t know how you did it,” he said, “how you managed to be in two places at once, but you fooled me.”

Her heart began to race. “Father, hush now. You need rest. I’ll go so you can—”

Harold gripped her hand with surprising strength. “No, you stay and listen.” The beeps on his machine increased slightly in frequency, and the numbers displayed there ticked upward. He paused to catch his breath. “The marriage is real. I checked. Brava for pulling that off, but you didn’t hold up your end of the bargain. Someone else went on the honeymoon with Blake while you went to Colombia.”

Andrea’s hands felt cold, her body distant as blood rushed in her ears. How did he know that? “What makes you think—”

“Think? No, I know.” He licked his lips and took a few breaths that seemed to slow the beeps on his machine. “Did you forget that I have friends in the Colombia judicial system? When Paulo called last week and asked why I hadn’t told him my daughter was in Bogotá, I didn’t know what he was talking about. He faxed me papers with your signature on them.”

Andrea stiffened. She and Blake had been afraid something like that might happen. She started forming a lie about having to cut their honeymoon short to pursue a lead on some traffickers.

He went on. “Remember the couple, Don and Margo, you had dinner with one night and met up with for some snorkeling? Two of my employees.”

Oh, crap.
Blake had introduced her as Andrea to nearly everyone they met on the honeymoon. Trapped, her only way out was to go on the offensive. “You spied on me?” she asked, trying to sound incensed.

“I did what I had to do because I can’t trust you. Remember the man you met on the plane? The one Blake assaulted? Another employee. He was there to take pictures of you so I could see that you actually went on the honeymoon and didn’t go off by yourself once you got to Hawaii. You weren’t supposed to be on that flight, by the way. Whose idea was it to skip the reception? Yours?”

“No, it was Blake’s. Christ, Father. We got married. That’s what you wanted.”

“You have a legal union to Blake Thomas, though you still deceived me. The rogue in me applauds your ingenuity. The father in me weeps, wondering where I went so wrong. Your mother would be heartbroken at what a deceitful woman you’ve become. I wanted better for you, Sarah. I wanted you to take after Anna, and that’s why I’m not going to give you the fifty million.”

Andrea blanched. Sarah was counting on that money. Without it, she might stay married to Blake. There had to be a way to convince him. “But you promised,” she said, an urgent plea in her voice. “You know I’m gay, and marrying a man won’t make me straight. I can’t change who I am any more than you can, Daddy. The Lighthouse needs that money. The people we help—”

“Daddy?” He looked at her hard, his brows stiff and low. “When have you ever called me Daddy?”

Andrea knew then that she’d slipped up in a big way. This whole charade was about to come crumbling down around her ears. “Ever since I was a girl, I’ve wanted the kind of father I could call Daddy, a father I could count on and confide in, whose love I never had to fear losing. When I set aside all the pain you’ve caused me and see you as a man who loves his baby doll, I call you Daddy in my heart.” For now, he seemed to be buying it, but if she went on too long, he might suspect she wasn’t Sarah.

His eyes welled, and a tear spilled down his temple and into his graying hair. “I don’t have much time left,” he said. “I just need to hear you say it once before I die. Just once, Sarah.”

Say what? That she forgave him? That she loved him? Somewhere along the way, Harold had done something to alienate his daughter, but Andrea had no idea what that was. The question she asked herself was: Should she stand up for Sarah and let him know she wasn’t ready to forgive him and that he must accept her for who she was, or should she acknowledge that, despite what he’d done, she knew he loved her, and give him the peace he needed before he died? Whatever she said to him today, Sarah need never know. She could give this man some peace and let Sarah hang onto her anger if that was what she wanted. If Sarah expressed regret later at not having been there to say goodbye to her father, Andrea could tell her that he died knowing she loved and forgave him.