Читать книгу The Secret Father - Anna Adams - Страница 8

A BLUNT FINGERNAIL PRODDED Sheriff Zach Calvert’s shoulder from behind. “You’re the law,” said a woman’s voice. “Can’t you order those tellers to speed up?”

Zach turned, and Tammy Henderson, who co-owned Henderson Seed and Feed with her husband, tucked a brown deposit envelope beneath her elbow.

“How many times have I asked you and Mike to call me before you bring that?”

She elbowed the zippered bag closer to her body. “We took your advice and started making three deposits a week.”

That was about the best he could hope for in a town where the citizens believed crime happened everywhere except here. He checked the clock above the gray granite counter. “Is that right?” It was two minutes slower than his watch. “This is my weekend to have Lily.”

Tammy twisted her own watch and then nodded at the clock. “Tennessee Standard Bank and I match. What time do you have to be at Helene’s?”

“Six o’clock.” Or his ex-wife would make a stink in front of their four-year-old daughter. Helene liked to punish him for imagined transgressions and she had an advantage. He’d do anything to keep from hurting his child.

“I’ve heard how Helene tries to keep Lil…”

Zach lifted his brows. Tammy stopped, her mouth open, her weathered face reddening. When she looked away, Zach felt like a bully, but gossip bred like kudzu in Bardill’s Ridge. Being the number-one topic over the Formica tables at the Train Depot Café didn’t sit well with him.

And how would Lily feel if she heard the talk?

Zach tapped his holstered gun as the long black arm on the clock swept each second away, and the guy in front of him, a hunter in camouflage, twitched from foot to foot.

Time to give up and eat the late fee on his car loan payment. But as he turned, the town librarian marched to the counter, her back ramrod straight with annoyance. The hunter took her place at the front of the line, yanking his jacket as if he couldn’t make it fit right over his shoulders. Three and a half minutes ran by before he crossed to the next teller.

Another time check. Helene would explode in exactly twenty-two minutes. Unless he made it. Which he just might do if another patron walked away right now.

The camo guy turned. Zach almost breathed a thanks heavenward, but the other man opened his field jacket and revealed the reason he was uncomfortable. A silver cannon—or a gun the size of one—rested on his hip.

“Nobody move, or I’ll kill you all.” Something—fear?—sent his voice into an unnaturally high pitch as he pulled the gun out.

Not good. If he was scared, he might shoot anyway.

“Damn.” The word slipped out of Zach’s mouth as he eased in front of Tammy Henderson and her deposit bag. Any chance of reaching Lily in less than twenty minutes had just gone down the barrel of that gun. At least he’d caught the armed thief’s wild gaze.

“I said no talking, and especially not you, Sheriff.” He used the back of his hand to wipe spit off the top of his lip. “I’m in charge here.” He swung the weapon, his finger tightening on the trigger. The gesture told Zach that pulling the trigger took pressure. A good thing or else half the customers would be dead now.

The guy turned to the nearest teller, his gun veering in a silver arc that made Zach clench his hands in two fists. What kind of a coward did this to innocent people?

“Don’t even breathe near the alarm. I can see all four sides of this building from the windows.”

He nudged the nearest young woman with the gun barrel, shaking so hard the metal bumped her chin. Her eyes sparkled with tears, and Zach actually pictured himself snapping the other guy’s spine.

“If a police car comes, you die. Anyone makes a move, you die.” The thief swept the other patrons with a scornful gaze and stamped his booted foot. “Put your damn faces on the floor!”

Zach took his time, sparing a glance for Tammy, who was obviously trying to hide a third of a week’s profits. Zach grabbed the bag and slid it over to the thief’s feet.

“Hey,” Tammy protested.

“You want him to think you’re stingy?”

“You got more, lady?” Camo guy scooped up the bag and then came over to kick the purse wrapped around Tammy’s arm. “Dump it.”

Zach focused on the weapon while the robber looked to see whether Tammy was hiding any more money. As if he were reviewing a schematic, Zach saw exactly how to part the man from his gun and put him on the floor unconscious and on his stomach—bonus points for ease of cuffing.

Noting that the citizens in his care had all reached the marble, Zach sank the rest of the way, calming his rage to prevent impairing his response. He angled his gaze to keep an eye on the gunman.

“What are you looking at?” the guy asked. “I’m happy to start killing now. With you.”

People cried out around him, but Zach waited, forcing a few more seconds to go by. Keep it low, non-confrontational. No need to get anyone killed.

“How do you plan to escape? The second you leave, the law will pour in from all the nearby towns where everyone knows everyone else. You’re going to stand out.”

“Stand out?” This time he jabbed the gun in the direction of Zach’s head. “I didn’t ask for advice, Andy Taylor. Why don’t you keep your mouth shut?” He nodded at the tellers. “Faster with the money—I want it now.”

Zach smiled as he willed his body into the air. A fraction of a second later his foot connected with Camo Guy’s cheekbone. The thief rose off his feet, flew about a yard and landed on his face. Out like a light.

And no one died in Bardill’s Ridge. But damned if he didn’t long to kick the punk lying at his feet for threatening his people.

Instead, he leaned over the gunman, grabbed the weapon and took it apart. He’d flown helicopters in the Navy until he’d been trained to kill with the nearest weapon—or with his bare hands. A crash and a head wound had stolen his memory of that time and the two years preceding it. He sometimes discovered secrets about himself. Skills he shouldn’t have.

Though he shouldn’t know squat about any gun except the one he’d fired to qualify on the range, he scattered the pieces of the cannon across the marble floor. Continuing on unnerving instincts, he picked up the gunman’s wrist to check his pulse.

Still fluttering. “When you get out of the prison hospital, you should consider a different line of work.” He glanced at the closest teller. “Hit the alarm. Then get me Leland Nash on the phone.”

Nash’s family owned Tennessee Standard Bank. He was also married to Zach’s ex-wife, a connection that had never seemed useful until today. With one phone call, Zach could arrange for Nash to inspect his property and also beg Helene to allow him to pick up Lily tomorrow.

He glanced at the unconscious man, his own actions disturbing him almost as much as his town’s close call.

Before now, he’d controlled the bursts of rage he’d felt toward lawbreaking idiots who occasionally came to Bardill’s Ridge. Throwing that guy headfirst onto the marble floor could have killed him, and vigilantism wasn’t part of Zach’s job description.

He didn’t want to be a killer.

AT THE CHICAGO HEADQUARTERS of Relevance magazine, Olivia Kendall’s office door burst open. Her assistant, Brian Minsky, skidded across the sand-colored carpet. “Picture this.” He waved a printout at her as he collapsed in the chair across from her desk.

They’d worked together from day one on Relevance. Since they never stood on boss-employee etiquette, she waited for him to continue, half her mind still on the competitor’s article she’d been reading.

Brian remained silent. At last she noticed and looked up, plucking off her glasses with two fingers.

Brian looked satisfied. “You’re with me now.”

“What’s up?”

“I want you to listen. This story has a twist.”

She’d learned to give Brian the time he required. “Okay.”

“You’ve been in line at the bank for thirty-eight minutes, waiting to pay your car loan.”

“Not that big a twist.”

He offered a sour grin, the equivalent of telling her to shut up. “The guy in front of you gets to the teller and opens his coat to show off his big gun. He orders you and everyone else in the bank to lie on the floor while the tellers collect the money. What do you do?”

“I lie down.” Her first thought went to her five-year-old son, Evan. Face to the floor, she’d be praying like crazy that she got home to him. “And if I survive, I arrange a payroll deduction for that loan.”

Brian cracked a real grin. “Funny. But I’m not finished. The guy sees you’re the local sheriff. You tell him he can’t go far. It’s a small town, and everyone will notice him. Instead of thanking you he asks who you think you are—Andy Taylor?”

She laughed.

Brian didn’t, and she erased her smile. This must be the good part.

“What do you do now?” he asked.

“I point my nose to the floor, and I curse myself for not taking advantage of that payroll deduction option my helpful loan officer suggested.” She paused. “And I propose to change my name to Andy. What do you do?”

“I do what this Andy—his real name is Zach—I do what he did. I kick the gunman’s ass all over that bank, and then I tell him to look for another line of work after he gets out of the jail hospital.”

“You’re kidding.” She sat back, trying to hide her Pavlovian response to the name Zach.

Old memories fluttered at the back of her mind. She pushed them back. This might be a good story. “Didn’t Andy-Zach realize his response put everyone else in danger?”

“He says not. Apparently, he took the guy out by acting purely on instinct. Instinct that told him how to overpower an armed man with one blow.”

“One blow…” She leaned forward, jamming her stomach into the glass desk’s blunt edge. “What are you talking about?”

“Now you’re on board.” Brian slid her a photograph. “You and I want to know what’s behind Andy-Zach’s story. So will our readers. They’re going to see the facts in brief paragraphs about stupid criminals in their Kendall newspapers, but they’ll want to know more, and we can give them a bigger picture in Kendall’s premiere news magazine. Is the sheriff an android or a man? He says he just reacted. A guy doesn’t react like that without training.” Brian leaned back. “Or I would have had a better time in high school.”

She put her glasses back on and turned the picture around. The man’s face made her breath catch.

Not again.

Her heart boomeranged painfully. He was older, his blond hair longer than a military cut, his eyes more cynical and his body leaner.

But once again, the man in the picture, the kick-ass sheriff, was Lieutenant Zach Calvert, looking pretty damn healthy for a man who’d died six years ago.

She scanned the brief column beneath the picture. After she’d told her dad everything, he’d gone to the Navy. He was perfect for the job; he could get to the truth about the Loch Ness monster.

He’d spoken to a Commander Gould, who’d explained that Zach’s crash had been bad luck in a routine training flight. Today’s article didn’t mention the flight or the Navy or the crash that had supposedly killed Zach.

Olivia stared at his face in the grainy photo. She wasn’t wrong. This was Evan’s father. “Your daddy’s in heaven” had become her mantra. She’d hoped a daddy somewhere would make Evan feel like the children he’d envied for having fathers at home.

Numb with shock, she didn’t know whether to be furious or relieved. At least this time she didn’t seem to be falling apart at the sight of a lousy photo. She’d grieved and recovered. For six years, Lieutenant Zach Calvert had been dead.

Did that make being a sheriff in Bardill’s Ridge, Tennessee heaven? Or hell?

TWO DAYS AFTER Brian showed her Zach’s photo, Olivia’s plane drifted out of the clouds on approach to McGhee-Tyson Airport in Knoxville.

Her shock had dissipated and been replaced by pragmatism. Whatever Zach was playing at, he had a son. And her son deserved a chance to know and be loved by his father. She had to believe he could be kinder to his son than he’d been to her.

He’d gone to a lot of trouble to leave her. How had he persuaded his commanding officer to lie to her father? She’d barely stopped her dad from getting to the bottom of that question.

With any luck, looking after Evan would keep him too busy to hunt down Captain Kerwin Gould and pry the truth out of him. She wanted a word with Zach first.

After she’d called his office three times without being able to force a word out of her mouth, she’d asked Brian to set up the interview. She needed to see Zach’s face the first time he heard her voice. She’d believed him to be an honorable and loving man. She had to know who he really was before she invited him into her son’s life.

And she wondered why he’d agreed to let her interview him if he’d been so desperate to get away from her six years ago? Maybe he’d forgotten her.

Fine. He only had to remember enough to believe he might be Evan’s father.

As the plane drifted on descent, she opened Zach’s dossier. After his accident, he’d spent three months in a hospital outside San Diego. Four months after that, he’d married one of his nurses. Within eight months of their marriage, their daughter, Lily, had been born.

Which explained his silence. Had he been sleeping with Helene and her at the same time? Even six years later she felt like an idiot for trusting him.

Zach had been her first love. Tall and tough, unstoppable in his pursuit, he’d made her think she was all that mattered to him in the whole world. Combine that with his status as her father’s last choice, and she’d hardly known how to resist.

Looking back through newly opened eyes, she no longer believed in his passion or her own. She’d taken a stupid risk the night she’d forgotten her birth control. And after his supposed death, she’d made up a loving father for her son. The part where Zach had abandoned her never came into her stories.

Finally she’d tried not to remember Zach at all. But then a day would start when Evan woke with sleepy, is-it-morning eyes that reminded her of his father, or he startled her with the long capable fingers that looked too uncomfortably much like Zach’s.

She closed the folder and peered through the small window at the deep green forest flowing beneath the airplane. Dark and verdant, as mysterious as Zach’s true intentions. What had he wanted with her? Not that she’d expected forever, but a phone call to tell her she was no longer in the picture would have been nice.

Looking at mountains that seemed to have no border with flat land, she felt like an intruder. She’d once prayed Zach would ask her to meet his family. Now, possibly in front of them, she had to find out who he really was so she could decide whether to tell Evan he hadn’t died.

Olivia slipped the folder back into her soft briefcase and then fished out another clean, almost untouched file Brian had put together for her. She hadn’t told Evan or Brian the truth, so she had to go home with some kind of story.

The bank photo lay on top. Beneath were clippings from all the other stories Brian had gathered on the attempted robbery.

After the plane landed, Olivia collected her bags and packed them into her rental car. As soon as she left the airport, the road began to rise. The interstate, narrowing into two lanes, had been cut into red clay and granite hills spiked with evergreens, smoothed by icy-looking streams.

Like a bad omen, clouds covered the sun, dulling the red and gold leaves of the hardwoods. Rest stops and traffic came few and far between, and her ears began to pop at the higher elevation.

She fumbled in her purse and briefcase for gum, but Evan must have found her stash. Her boy was a fiend for gum. She gave up and yawned to clear the pressure.

As she passed the first mileage sign for Bardill’s Ridge, she breathed a sigh of relief. She ought to be able to find Sheriff Calvert’s office just in time for her appointment.

At her turnoff, she followed the long ramp away from the interstate. No sign of life stirred within the trees. Such a heavy dose of nature could make a city woman a little anxious.

At the end of the ramp a sign pointing to the left offered her the chance to turn back. To the right Bardill’s Ridge waited. Olivia opened her window and breathed in pine-laden air.

She could go home, continue the life she’d made with Evan and tell Brian the story on Zach hadn’t panned out. Her heart pounded in jackhammer fashion.

A right turn would change her life, but it might also bring her son a father who could love him. What choice did she have?

She turned right and the road inclined again. Soon a white church spire peeked out of the leaves. Just beyond the spire a redbrick cupola topped a black-shingled roof. Extremely Norman Rockwell. Olivia’s heart rate returned to normal. She could handle a Norman Rockwell town.

In front of her, a tractor turned off a dirt road onto the shoulder. The driver lifted his ball cap as she slowed to pass him.

That never happened in Chicago.

On the outskirts of Bardill’s Ridge, she passed a large blue clapboard feed store. The sign that clung to the roof of a wide veranda-cum-loading dock shouted Henderson’s in capital letters. Sticks of straw blew into the road from the bales on the porch. The men hoisting feed onto their trucks and into the backs of their SUVs looked up from their chores as she slowed to the speed limit.

Zach had been right when he’d warned the bank robber that people here noticed strangers. She passed a library, two small churches and too many curious faces.

Farther down the street, a sign painted with cartoon bears and rabbits and a bouncing typeface proclaimed the building behind it the ABC Daycare. Olivia missed Evan with a keen ache as the boys and girls spilled across the play yard.

Closer to the center of town, there were more office buildings. As she passed them the women and men who strode the surprisingly busy sidewalks watched her. No matter what he decided to do about Evan, Zach would have to explain about her after she left town.

Olivia glanced at her watch. Five past two.

At the next stop sign she glanced right and found the big white church. She turned, but had to stop again on the edge of a small square encircled by wrought iron. On one side stood the church. Beside her, a curlicued, Victorian theater promised the latest releases. Opposite, a high school looked buttoned up and busy, with papers on the windows and a teacher holding class outside as his students inspected a maple’s bright shedding leaves. The redbrick building across the square was the courthouse, Bardill’s county seat, according to a tall, black sign posted out front.

Olivia glanced at her briefcase, containing both folders and a photo vital to her plan. Zach had told Brian she’d find him in his office in the jail at the back of the courthouse.

She parked and grabbed her things. Fighting wind, she slipped into the square, via an iron gate. Her heels slid on the cobblestone path that crisscrossed the grass. At the other side of the park she exited through another gate and crossed the wide street. Breathing hard, she climbed the courthouse steps and scoured the map at the front door.

The jail was a left off the long, tall lower hall. Just beyond, a glass door led to a closer parking lot. Olivia swore and tried to tame her wild hair as her shoes clicked loudly on the marble.

Reaching Zach’s office door exactly on time, she twitched her skirt into place, tugged at her sweater’s neckline and then watched her right hand tremble on the doorknob.

If she’d known she was pregnant before Zach left, she would have told him. She was simply doing what she would have done then. If Zach didn’t want Evan, she could still say she’d done her best for her son.

She opened the door, anticipating a dispatcher. Instead, Zach looked up from paperwork spread on a wide, scarred oak desk.

His dark blue uniform emphasized lean muscles and the dark blond hair that nearly touched his collar. From ten feet away, a bleak shadow in his green eyes startled her. He was the same man, but he looked at the world from a different point of view. Something had drawn extra lines on his face and added more than six years of weariness to his eyes.

Olivia clung to the doorknob, rocking back on her high heels.

Zach stood and came around his desk. His gaze swept her, cataloging her head to toe. Not the way he had when they’d been lovers, but the way a stranger took stock of someone he might not entirely trust.

Olivia forgot how to breathe. How much had she changed? It didn’t seem to matter. Zach’s smile held no hint of recognition.

He held out his hand. “You must be Olivia Kendall.”