Sanctuary (20 page)

A dark shiver ran up her back.

“If we can find Ivanov, we’ll arrest him and try him with
your
testimony. Can you locate his so-called business card?”

Within ten minutes she found the imposter’s phone number. Agent Walsh dialed the number on his own cell phone and reached a Denver hotel. The man had already checked out. Instantly, the lead had vanished.

“We’ll have to wait … watch for him. We can set you up temporarily, try to lure him out again.”

“I’m not your bait,” she broke in firmly. She thought of Mrs. Browning and her grandparents. How would they feel if she, too, just happened to die from an “accident”? Hiding out hadn’t helped her father in the end. Ivanov had found him. Now they knew where
she
was….

“We need your testimony, Miss Keaton. We have a chance to catch the man who killed your father. “

“I’m sorry, but you don’t seem to protect your informants very well.”

“Miss Keaton—”

“And nothing will bring my father back,” she replied coldly.

Walsh glanced at the floor, shaking his head as frown lines wrinkled his brow. “You have no idea who or what you’re dealing with—just how treacherous these people can be. If Ivanov finds you again …” His voice trailed away.

“You mean that I might end up like Daddy,” she said accusingly.

The agent looked embarrassed. “If he thinks you know something about the eighty million—more specifically, where it’s hidden …”

Walsh seemed at a loss for words. “Melissa, if you won’t help us, we can’t force you,” he continued. “Off the record, if you wish to be safe, your best bet is to find a way to drop off the planet. Go where you can’t be found.”

He offered his personal contact number. “If you change your mind …”

She accepted his card. “Will they bother my friend, Mrs. Browning, my legal guardian?”

Hesitating, Walsh said, “I seriously doubt it. These guys operate in the shadows.”

That was some comfort. But only a little.

She contacted a private investigator, doing exactly as the FBI agent had advised. The PI, in turn, gave her a quick lesson on the art of disappearance: Find someone who has died and assume their identity.

Melissa recalled an acquaintance at the art institute whose sister had died at a very young age. The deceased girl’s name had been Melissa, as well; born in Marshall, Minnesota. Perfect.

After purchasing a short auburn wig, she attempted to make a radical change in her appearance. Only to save her life. She left in the middle of the night by taxi, checking in at a nearby Denver hotel, leaving behind her car and an apartment filled with her packed belongings. Mrs. Browning and others would think she was kidnapped for sure, but there was no other way.

While at the hotel, she was able to obtain a fake birth certificate and a new social security number. In a matter of days, she was Melissa Nolan, from Marshall, Minnesota, having appropriated the other girl’s vital data. Miss “Nolan” paid cash for her plane ticket to the East Coast, traveling by car to Westerly, Rhode Island, where her father had often visited. There she began her new life.

In New England she established residence close to her waitressing job at the Olympia Tea Room in Watch Hill, discarding the wig and heavy makeup. But the pain and deep disappointment regarding her father and his criminal involvement remained, torturing her night and day.

Was there one good person left in the world? Whom
could
she trust?

She had abandoned her life in Colorado, leaving all that was precious to her, never having the chance to make good on her hopes and dreams of establishing her own art gallery. All this for a peaceable life. At least she was safe here in Watch Hill.

  
Chapter Twenty-Four
  

LELA SHIFTED IN HER CHAIR, eyes fixed on Melissa. “So how was it you came to meet your husband?” she asked.

“I’d always felt we were
supposed
to meet, if you know what I mean,” she said, recalling wistfully that moment in time.

Some people were simply born gregarious. Ryan James was one such person. She’d first noticed him at the restaurant, stopping in for breakfast or lunch, about a week after she began working as a waitress at the Olympia Tea Room, one of the nicest places a person might ever expect to work or dine. Though a far cry from the world of painting she had planned for herself, the tip money alone more than paid for her rent and groceries. So, for the time being, she was set financially.

“It’s only temporary,” she explained to the tall and handsome man when he asked why a bright girl like herself was waiting on tables.

He took her answer in stride, steering their conversation to other things, speaking of his brokerage firm, “in Mystic … ever been there?”

She hadn’t. And she had no intention of leaving the protection of the cozy small-town feel of Watch Hill. Not even when he offered her a job as receptionist was she interested in broadening her horizons. She was still getting her bearings, acclimating to the name Nolan instead of Keaton, reminding herself that her birthday was no longer in mid-October but rather early May. She’d also falsified her life story to exclude the Brownings and, most importantly, her father’s dealings, telling Ryan that her mother had died when she was a baby and that her father abandoned them shortly after. As far as the handsome broker knew, she’d grown up in a small town in Minnesota, where winters crept in stiffly on the heels of autumn, where folk took long walks to cool hot tempers instead of resorting to domestic violence, where curling up with a good book or touring an art museum in the big city of Minneapolis was the rule, not the exception.

Week after week Ryan came to the restaurant, ordering full dinners over the lunch hour, no doubt to keep her coming back to his table, she came to realize. They talked, snippets of conversation here and there, when she brought his salad, more coffee, the dessert. Over time they got to know each other, though she’d never sat down across from him at the table, secretly longing to. She even wished he might ask her out, yet not knowing if she could follow through with a solid romance, the kind her heart longed for.

So she’d backed off, changing her work schedule, sending him an unspoken message. Suzie, however, kept her appraised of his comings and goings. More “no shows” than before. Must be that he was taking the hint, backing away from what might have been.

“The day Ryan found me on the beach was really amazing,” Melissa said. She told Lela of the wild roses, dyed both red and white by genetic origin, growing in nodding rows near the shoreline. Scent so fragile, yet alluring, she ran to them, eager to embrace their beauty … uncultivated and free. Here they flourished where one would least expect such robust blossoms, recipients of wind and weather, competing for attention with the enormity of the indigo sea. Minuscule distractions, no doubt, to the swell and pounce of breakers, the dash and spray of tide, and the salty bouquet of the deep. For Melissa, these roses held a special meaning, all the same. Delicate and lovely, they grew amidst smelly seaweed and polluted sand, like an innocent child surrounded by evil.

“I was so glad to be off work,” she said. “Tired of carrying trays and serving impatient customers.”

She had set up her tripod a few yards from water’s edge, determined to paint as long as she pleased. Here, along the shoreline of her favorite beach, she settled in for the duration, happy for the leisurely flow of the day. Be it sailboats, seaweed, or sea birds, she would paint to her heart’s delight. Whatever captured her fancy.

Heaven knows she needed a day like this, after what she’d gone through to find her way to safety and tranquility. Yet she’d left all that was dear behind. Never sparing time to say good-bye to either her grandparents or Mrs. Browning, she’d flown off to her new life, like a warbler’s migration. A season of change, in all respects. Yet the season was rife with summer, heart-stoppingly picturesque in every way.

A swan caught her eye. The gentle creature must have crossed the ridge, perhaps followed her here. She picked up her brush and made wide, broad strokes, composing the vision of grace before her on canvas. Oh, to share this moment with Mrs. Browning. More than ever, she missed the dear lady, having only been in Rhode Island for three months. Not a single day passed that she didn’t think of the woman, reliving the good days, the happy times, before everything changed. The ivory color of the swan reminded her of Daddy’s favorite roses—white as the moon.

“The farmer in the dell,” she sang, remembering her father’s nonsensical response.
Farmer’s stuck in the well …

How many times had she and Mrs. Browning laughed over that one? And all the other ridiculous, meaningless rhymes Daddy created as they tilled and weeded the rose gardens at both the Browning house and their own. This couldn’t be the same Daddy that …

Sighing, she knew if she recalled the memories for too long, she’d wind up weeping. Not today. Not here where the beach seemed to belong to her and her alone. Where a friendly swan had decided to pose for her, lingering near the shoreline, having waddled or flown over from the harbor, no doubt.

She focused on the gossamer whiteness, its feathers a high sheen in the luster of sun and half shadow. The sinuous movements intrigued her, and leaving her palette and canvas, she wandered out near the water, pulling bread crumbs from a small sack she’d brought with her, flinging the morsels. She laughed softly, coaxing the exquisite bird closer … closer.

In afternoon’s light, she stopped to listen, absorbing surf and sound, enthralled by the idyllic moment. She thought no more of her father, of loved ones, of her daring dash to safety. She put all of it behind her, caught up in the rapture of the swan, its tantalizing poise and amity beguiling her.

How long she remained there, feet stuck in wet sand and the ebb and flow of tide, she cared not. Her very existence she celebrated in that sweeping moment, when nature and beast reached into her very soul. She was alive! She’d survived the ordeal of her past. In one brush stroke of fate, she had been made new. The time had come to submit, give in to love fully.

Turn over more than one leaf at a time
, she told herself.

She must, as this swan did, acquiesce to both sun and shade. Allow the sky, as broad and lucid as heaven, to spread its canvas of blue, red, or gold above her; it mattered not. And the handsome young man who continued to pursue her, stopping by the restaurant to make supposed small talk over soup and sandwiches, was a big part of it. So why not? She had every reason to cease worry and enjoy life for a change, without fear.

This was
her
time, at last.

Melissa soon discovered Ryan sitting there in the sand. Not knowing how long he’d been there,
watching her
, she thought back to her interaction with the swan, blushing at her spontaneity. Nevertheless, Ryan had found her, observing her delight over the lone swan, soaking up the sunshine, rejoicing in her newfound life.

She had been wary of the dashing man since they’d met. Unwilling to trust, unsure of herself; too vulnerable, perhaps. This being the first time she’d ever gone so far from home, she felt she had better look out for number one. For too long now she had been looking over her shoulder, half expecting to come face-to-face with more of the insanity.

Something real changed in her that day at Napatree. It may have been the manner in which Ryan spoke to her, taking his time to let the moment unfold. Or perhaps it was that she sensed he was trustworthy after all. All the same, she’d met a man who, like herself, longed for a profound and meaningful companionship. Not just the flirtatious here-today-gone-tomorrow type of thing. No, Ryan James was solid as granite. And sure. She felt she could bet her life on him.

They began dating, falling into the swift current of a serious relationship. They saw each other regularly, nearly every day. She shared her love of art, told him about the secret meaning of roses, reciting the various hues and classifications. Before too many weeks they became engaged—she, accepting a ring, and Ryan pressing to set a wedding date.

But one morning she freaked and left her fiancé wondering what had happened to her. She’d awakened from a terrifying dream. A nightmare that involved the remnants from her past as Melissa Keaton, a dream so real, she nearly fell to her knees in prayer. Her father was being tied to a chair, asked repeatedly the same question:
“Where is the money?”

He refused to reveal a thing to the men in the room, the living room where bedtime stories had been lovingly told to Mellie, where she had laughed and romped and played with her darling father, the very room that had become their refuge from the universe. That day their home had been violated, her faith in all things good and true shattered. And now her dreams were menacing reminders of what she was trying to escape.

I can’t let them touch Ryan
, she thought, throwing clothes into a suitcase. She felt she must be crazy to fall in love with someone normal, someone who was innocent to the malevolence that lurked in the shadows, threatening to find and devour her. No, she would not let them hurt Ryan, too.

So she fled, “losing” herself for two days in the city of Providence, where she could easily hide, crying herself to sleep, knowing she had given up all hope of happiness. And she would have followed through, sneaked back to Watch Hill and packed up the few items she called her own, never to see Ryan again. She would’ve done so had she not missed him so desperately. Not only missed him but longed to be his wife, to start anew, to put the past behind her. This she decided the afternoon of the second day, phoning Ryan at his office in a panic, weeping … sobbing her apology.

Soon after, they planned a private wedding on a ridge of rocks jutting out into the ocean. To the cry of sea gulls, they sealed their love, tossing rose petals into the water below. The setting sun splashed reds and golds onto the blue canvas overhead, a ceremonious canopy. And Melissa Leigh Nolan took Ryan’s hand and his last name, embracing the covering of his love. Forever….