Familiar Stranger (13 page)

"Lord," David muttered.

Cara rubbed her hand across his shoulder in a comforting motion.

"It's okay, honey. Just watch. If you have questions, ask. Otherwise, most of the stuff is self-explanatory."

He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. For the next two hours, he was virtually mute. When that video was over, he looked up with a start, like a man who had been rudely awakened.

"That's not all, is it?"

He'd only seen the first year of her life. She had just been learning to walk.

Cara was already up and changing the tape.

"Oh, no. There are far more than you could possibly watch in one night. You haven't even gotten to the part where she finally gets a whole spoonful of cereal into her mouth without spilling it."

"You have that on tape?"

"Yes, thanks to Ray."

He swallowed around the lump in his throat. "It seems I have a lot to thank Ray Justice for."

"Don't be sad, David. I couldn't bear it if this hurt you. I only wanted you to see the little milestones in her life. They weren't all caught on tape, but enough were so that you will see part of her growing up."

"Not sad. Just so damned sorry."

She hesitated before putting the next tape in the VCR.

"No regrets, remember?"

He sighed. "I remember."

"Okay. Then here goes."

And so David sat, reliving his daughter's life in silence, from birthday parties and swimming lessons, to learning to ride a bike. When the camera caught her taking a spill, David flinched. He watched her get up crying—saw a tiny trickle of blood on her knee and the pain in his chest was so great he thought he would die. She'd hurt and someone else had wiped away her tears.

He saw her hit a home run at a softball game and the joy on her face as she rounded third base to home made him laugh aloud.

Cara hugged him, her cheek against his shoulder, but she remained silent, answering questions only when he asked, letting him see and accept this in his own way—in his own time.

Bethany's life unfolded beneath his gaze, from the gap in her smile when she lost her first tooth to her first date. He saw it all, unaware that Cara had fallen asleep beside him. When the tape in the VCR ran out, he glanced at his watch, then at Cara. She was asleep on the sofa beside him, and no wonder. It was ten minutes to three in the morning.

He switched off the TV then picked her up and carried her to their bed. As be laid her down, she roused briefly.

"Ssh, just sleep," he said softly, as he took off her shoes.

She rolled over with a sigh. He pulled a sheet over her shoulders, not bothering to help her undress. He'd slept many nights in his clothes and it hadn't changed the gravity of the earth. She could surely do the same. But when he started to undress and get into bed beside her, he hesitated, then stopped. Knowing himself too well, he knew there was no way he would be able to sleep. Not after the evening he'd just had.

Instead, he moved quietly through the house and began to clear the dinner dishes from the table. There in the quiet of the house with the memories of his baby girl's face in his heart, he washed the dishes from the meal that Cara had prepared. The hot soapy water felt good on his skin, cleaning the ugliness of his past just as he cleaned the china. Uncertain where to put the things he had washed, he left the china in neat stacks on the kitchen counter instead, then hung up the dish towel and turned out the light.

As he exited, he stopped in the doorway and turned, looking back at the room to make sure he'd left nothing undone. The table was clean. The dishes were shadowy stacks against a darkened counter—the curtained windows like judgmental eyes looking back at him. He shuddered, and as he did, sensed he wasn't alone in his inability to sleep. Somewhere, his brother was also awake—and thinking of ways to kill him.

* * *

Frank Wilson was a haunted man. The past year had been one disappointment after another, and with each failure to get to David, his frustration had risen, multiplying into a dozen different symptoms.

Spicy food made him nauseous and he couldn't remember when he hadn't had a headache. He had intermittent bouts of insomnia that would often last for days and when his body finally gave out and he could sleep, it wasn't rest. Instead, he seemed destined to relive the failures of his past.

Inevitably, the dreams always spiraled into one horrible, recurring nightmare—of fire and burning flesh, of the mind-bending pain that came afterward. His brother's traitorous face was etched in his brain and he would know no peace until David was dead.

Tonight wasn't any different. The silhouette of the Colorado Rockies were visible from his hotel room. They rose above the landscape like jagged rips in the horizon. But the grandeur of the presence completely missed him. He rubbed a weary hand across his face and wished for peace.

At night, without his wig and mustache, he couldn't hide from himself. The face looking back at him in the mirror was the same man who was on the run, not the cocky New York cop he was pretending to be. He hated that face. He hated the man behind it.

He paced before the windows, ignoring the traffic on the street below for the blanket of star-littered sky. It was nights like this that he missed Australia. It seemed that the sky there was larger and the stars closer. Martha had loved to camp out with him, lying on their bedrolls beneath the wide open spaces and sleeping beneath the stars.

His chin jutted angrily as he slammed a fist against the windowsill.

Get over it, sucker. Those times are gone forever.

"Damn it," he muttered, and sank onto the side of the bed, then covered his face with his hands, unconsciously tracing the road map of burn scars with his fingertips.

A car horn sounded on the street below, and in the distance, he could hear approaching sirens.

God, but he missed the quiet of the outback. Maybe retiring to Florida wasn't such a good idea after all. Quiet would be the last thing he'd find in such a place.

Swamps and alligators—oranges and hurricanes.

Hundreds of thousands of people whose first language was not English.

Old people who'd moved there to live out what was left of their lives.

He sighed. Damn it all to hell, wasn't there a place left on earth to which he could belong?

He laid back on the bed and closed his eyes, and while he was feeling sorry for himself, exhaustion came and wrapped him in a blanket of deep, dreamless sleep.

* * *

The unexpected night of rest had given Frank a whole new outlook on life. He awoke with the feeling that he could conquer the world. For the first time in months, he was confident of what he was doing. As he dressed, he began to lay out his plans for the day. Maybe another round of practice at the firing range, a good meal around mid-afternoon; after that, find a good travel agent. Another night or so here in Denver and it would be time to move on.

This hotel suite was a far cry from the roach motel he'd been at in L.A., but then, he'd had few options. It had been easier to disappear into the seedy life of a city than to explain away the bandages he'd been wearing at the time. Now that they were gone, his lifestyle had taken a big change for the better.

He sat down on the sofa, opened his laptop, plugged in the modem and logged on to the Internet. His hands were steady as he opened his e-mail, but his heart was pounding. He'd been sending the same message to the same mailbox each day, certain that he would eventually get the answer he wanted. It began to download, zapping one message after the other through a medium he still found amazing. He'd seen a lot of things in his lifetime, but in his opinion, the public availability of the Internet was the most life-altering one of them all.

The little You've Got Mail logo centered on the screen. He scanned the contents rapidly, deleting any and everything that didn't have David Wilson's name on it. Thirty-nine messages later he leaned back with a frustrated sigh. Still no answer.

He shrugged. It didn't matter. It wasn't like he was on a time schedule. Hell. Time was all he had. He could wait.

He typed in the same message that he'd been sending regularly each day and then pressed send. When the process was finished, he shut down the computer and set it aside. His stomach was growling and he had a need to feel the sun on his face and the wind in his hair.

A few minutes later, he exited the hotel and strode to the curb to hail a cab. As he did, he heard the shrill and strident voice of an insistent child. He looked out of curiosity and suddenly found himself on the receiving end of a little girl's delight.

"Ganpa! Ganpa!"

He froze. The little girl, who couldn't have been more than two or three, had wrapped herself around his leg.

"Up!" she shrieked. "Want up!"

Before he could react, a young woman emerged from a doorway, her expression frantic.

"Martie! Martie! Where are you?" she shouted.

Frank turned again, this time waving to get the woman's attention.

"Lady … is this your kid?"

"Oh, my God!" the woman cried, and then bolted toward them. Seconds later she was on her knees, unwinding the child from Frank's leg. Then she stood and picked her up in her arms. "Bad girl! You ran away from Mommy."

The baby's lower lip slipped forward in an instinctive pout.

"Ganpa!" she muttered.

For the first time, the woman got a good look at Frank's face, and as she did, a smile of recognition replaced her frown

"Oh, my goodness," she said. "No wonder Martie ran to you."

"I'm sorry?" Frank said, certain that he'd never seen them before in his life.

"No, I'm the one who should be apologizing," the woman said, and then held out her hand. "My name is Beth Stalling. This is my daughter, Martha. We call her Martie, for short. You look enough like my father-in-law to be his twin." Then she hugged her daughter to her. "And Martie loves her grandpa Jules. She must have thought you were him."

Frank shook her hand, but he had quit listening to what she was saying after hearing the little girl's name. Martha. Martha of the blue eyes and platinum blond hair. And this little girl had blue eyes and almost cotton-white hair, just like
his
Martha.

"…so I hope you understand," the woman finished.

Frank blinked, suddenly realizing that she'd still been talking.

"Of course. No harm done," he said briefly, and then something—maybe the last good part of his soul—prompted an action quite out of character. He reached for the little girl's hair and lightly fingered the soft, cottony whorls.

"I'm thinking Grandpa Jules is a very fortunate man."

The woman beamed. "Why, thank you."

Suddenly uncomfortable with the whole incident, he muttered something about being late for a meeting and headed for the curb. Saved from having to make further conversation by the immediate arrival of a cab, he slid into the back seat and actually breathed a sigh of relief as the door slammed behind him.

Unwilling to be reminded of a life he'd chosen to forgo, he wouldn't look back. Yet the farther they drove, the heavier his heart became. He even toyed with the notion of walking away now. Just quitting on the idea of revenge and losing himself in America. He could do it. He'd done it before. Everyone knew that you could buy anything in America for the right amount of money. It would be cheap to buy a new identity and live out the rest of his life in relative comfort. But as he glanced at the window, he caught a glimpse of his reflection and realized it was not his own. With his mask in place, the man beneath did not exist. But night always came and the mask always came off.

The notion of forgive and forget quickly disappeared. David had wronged him. He had to pay.

"Let me out here," he told the cabby, tossed him a handful of dollars and all but bolted from the cab.

His steps were hasty as he started down the street, as if he was trying to outrun a new enemy. But the farther he went, the more he realized that there was no escape for him as long as David still lived.

Once the thought was firmly in his mind, he began to relax. His steps slowed, his thinking cleared. He spied a travel agent on the opposite corner of the street. Now was as good a time as any to make his plans. But as he stood at the corner, waiting for the light to change, he knew it would be a long, long time before he forgot the silken texture of baby hair against the palm of his hand.

By the time night came to Denver, Frank Wilson was long gone. As his plane landed in Chicago, he had security of knowing that the next four days were securely mapped out in his mind. This time when he got to a hotel, he was digging in until he heard from David.

* * *

Cara came out of the kitchen with a vase of flowers in her hand, heading toward the dining room table. Every wood surface in the house gleamed from the polishing she'd given it, and wonderful scents were coming from the kitchen. In spite of the enticing aromas, David knew they were not for him.

Last night, just as Cara had come out of the shower, she'd glanced at the calendar and gasped. The planning committee for the annual fall church bazaar was being held at her house. And the meeting was going to be tomorrow! She'd known about it for weeks. But with all the excitement of David's arrival, she'd completely forgotten the date and that she was expected to serve lunch in the process.

He'd laughed and told her not to worry, that he'd help her straighten up the house, but that was before he had completely understood.

Twelve women were coming to her home. Twelve women who had husbands and children and homes of their own. Twelve women who would be judging Cara's worth on this earth by how clean she kept her house and how tasty and unique her menu would be.

She had set the alarm for six-thirty and was up before it went off. And she hadn't just straightened the house. In David's opinion, she'd done everything short of rebuild it. Wisely, he'd chosen a simple bowl of cereal for breakfast and then when he was finished, washed and dried the dish and put it back where it belonged.

By the time she had moved into the kitchen to begin preparing the food she would serve, he'd made another wise decision and dragged the lawn mower out of the shed and begun mowing the front yard. Her pleasure at his choice of occupation was obvious when, an hour later, she brought him a cold drink and gave him a kiss that rocked him back on his heels.