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As she had done so many times over the last few months, Rachel straightened her back and forced the muscles in her face to relax into an expression that hid her grief and her anger.
“Yes, sweetie?” she said, turning around.
Sarah stood uncertainly in the doorway, rubbing her finger against her thumbnail as she often did when she was thinking.
“Why are you so mad at Micah?” she asked.
Rachel weighed that part of the truth she was willing to tell her daughter. She couldn’t tell Sarah that she had been falling in love with the man, that for the first time since her husband had died she’d felt alive and young and happy. Sarah wouldn’t understand that Micah’s friendship had been a sham. How could she? Rachel herself didn’t understand it.
Remembering the day she had hired Micah, she stared at her daughter. Never in Rachel’s wildest dreams had she imagined the carpenter with his competent hands and his dark, gentle eyes would turn out to be an undercover agent with the DEA, sent to investigate her as a possible drug dealer.
He hadn’t been her friend after all, which made her impulse to call him after the threats started all the more stupid.
The first demand for a half-million dollars had come via an e-mail, and she had deleted it, sure it was spam. The next demand had come in the mail, the plain white paper in an equally plain white envelope with no return address containing a single sentence. She’d thrown that away, too, sure that it was an awful prank, playing on all her new vulnerability. Then, a rock had been thrown through the living-room window one night, but the police had dismissed it as a random act of vandalism, probably by neighborhood kids.
Rachel had known it had something to do with the demand for money. She had been so certain of it that she had gone to see Angela in prison. Since she had been convicted of using their business to launder drug money, Rachel assumed the demands had something to do with Angela’s old activities. She had told Rachel she didn’t know a thing about a missing half-million and Rachel had left the prison that day, sure an overactive imagination had piled on top of her recent catastrophes and made her fear the very worst. She’d decided it all had to be some hideous prank, and that it was perfectly safe to let her children ride their bikes up and down the block without seeing a bogeyman behind every bush.
Rachel’s heart pounded as one realization after another sank into her. Angela had lied…again. The demand for money wasn’t some outrageous practical joke—it was real. Micah was back, which had to mean she was once again a suspect no matter what he said. His nicely put apology had to be merely for show. And somebody wanted money she knew nothing about.
“Mom?” Sarah asked, drawing Rachel’s attention away from her bleak thoughts.
“He lied to me,” she finally said. “A huge lie that I don’t think I can forgive.”
“Did he tell you he was sorry?” Sarah asked with the direct logic reserved for the very young.
Rachel nodded.
“Then, you’re supposed to forgive him,” her daughter said. “That’s what Mrs. Berrey says in Sunday school.”
It was also the advice of Rachel’s father, a retired minister.
If only forgiveness were that simple. Rachel crossed the room to her daughter, gave her a quick hug, and wondered how to answer. From the beginning she had taught her children to live by the lessons passed on to her by her father. At the core of her being she had believed, really believed, in everything she’d learned. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. What you ask for in faith shall be given to you. Until last spring, she had been so sure those beliefs were as much a part of her as her next breath.
She’d been wrong. She had played by the rules, had lived the kind of life expected of the daughter of a minister, and she had been happy with it. But as it turned out, faith had been as hollow as promises made by her lifelong friend, Angela. Faith hadn’t protected her or her family, and it hadn’t provided an iota of comfort.
“If a person says they’re sorry, you’re supposed to say that it’s okay,” Sarah said.
“That’s very good advice.” She brushed Sarah’s bangs off her forehead and pressed a kiss there. “But it may take me a while to accept his apology.”
“I told you that he’d come back,” Sarah said.
“Yes, you did.” And each time her daughter had made the prediction, Rachel had prayed she would never see the man again.
More than ever, she knew God had turned a deaf ear to her prayers, a knowledge she had confessed to her dad one bleak night. The deaf ear, he had told her, was hers, not God’s. They had argued, and she’d felt battered by the notion that she had abandoned God when it was clearly the other way around.
Over the last few months she had lost nearly everything that had been important to her. Her business. Her reputation. Her ability to provide a comfortable living for herself and her children. Prayer hadn’t helped, and the platitudes offered by well-meaning friends cut to the quick. As for God—that serene Presence she’d felt all her life was gone as though it had never been.
She kept that to herself, though.
The last time she had voiced that thought, her dad had told her that life came down to only two choices. Move toward your Source or away from it.
“The reason you don’t feel God,” he had told her, “is because you’ve locked your heart up tight, and you’ve moved away from Him.”
“And I came here to talk to my father, hoping he’d understand at least a little bit,” she had replied. “Instead, once again, I got the minister, who doesn’t understand at all.”
That had been a long-standing argument between them, but now it seemed insurmountable. All she wanted was for her dad to comfort her, because she was still just as scared as she’d sometimes been when she was a child. The ensuing rift felt as deep as Glenwood Canyon to Rachel. Now, they no longer spoke except as it related to Sarah and Andy. She wouldn’t deny him access to his grandchildren since the three of them were his only living family.
Dragging her thoughts back to the moment, she looked down at Sarah. “Want to help me finish making dinner?”
“Okay.”
Rachel forced another smile. “Okay.”
And for an hour, she could pretend that making dinner was the biggest challenge she faced.
TWO
The following morning, Rachel headed for work, hearing her father’s voice in her head. “Be bold as a lion, Rachel,” had been his advice right after Angela’s arraignment last spring. “Only the guilty have reason to hide in the dark.” Except, she felt guilty, even if only by association.
As her dad had said to her recently, the words didn’t offer comfort. Though she still heard his voice in her head, she no longer confused it with God. Though her loss of faith had hurt her father, she couldn’t pretend to believe.
These days she related most to Job’s trials. Like the biblical figure, Rachel was sure there could be no purpose to all she had endured over the last several years—the death of her husband when an aneurysm had burst in his abdomen, the betrayal by her best friend, the loss of her business. Unlike Job, she thought of fleeing, though she had no idea where she would go or whether she would be able to make things better for her children.
“As with Job,” her father had told her, “all this is a test of faith.”
“Is that the category for your visits to Angela? A test?”
He’d looked genuinely shocked. “Of course not. She’s in need of my care, of spiritual guidance.”
“Even though she betrayed me?”
“Especially because of that.” And, as he’d said a thousand times before, he had told her, “My ministry to another doesn’t lessen my love for you.”
“Your visits to her feel like another betrayal,” Rachel had confessed angrily.
He’d looked at her sternly, then, in the way that had always, always made her obey him. “You know better than that. Prayer and study will show you that that is as ridiculous as your assertion that God has abandoned you. I’m so disappointed in you.”
Like the Look, his “I’m so disappointed” speech usually guaranteed she’d strive to please him even as the phrase cut her to the quick. But for the first time in her life, she had retreated, feeling lost and confused and emotionally abandoned. Now she no longer called her father except to make arrangements for her children to visit him.
She felt as though the support, understanding and compassion she wanted for herself had been given away to others, especially Angela. And, her dad seemed to believe she was asking him to choose between his ministry and her. Yet she had simply wanted some of his boundless compassion for herself. Maybe the wanting made her selfish, but she hadn’t been able to banish it.
Seven blocks from her home, she drove past the brick-front building that had housed Victorian Rose Antiques. The green awning shaded the front window, which still posted the sign that the business had been closed by the DEA. Since their merchandise was tainted by the drug trade, it had been seized. The day Angela had been arraigned, the bank had called in the loan that had secured the purchase of all that merchandise.
And now it was all her problem.
Rachel’s daily refrain echoed in her head. What in the world had Angela been thinking? Even Angela herself hadn’t been able to answer. All Rachel knew was that Angela had plea-bargained the charges against her and provided the names that had led Agent Micah McLeod to the bigger fish he had really been after.
But was that bigger fish now after her?
Rachel’s hands grew clammy with the memory of the rock shattering the window and bringing her out of a restless sleep. Since she no longer had the e-mail or the letter with their simple, one-line demands—I want my $500,000—the police had no reason to think the rock was anything more than a prank. She had told them about the notes, immediately knowing how lame her story sounded.
“Call us,” the investigating officer had told her, “if another note comes.” A month had passed since then, and until Micah McLeod had showed up yesterday afternoon, she had hoped the police were right about the rock and notes being a prank.
The fear was back, and she hated it.
Think about today, she told herself. Today would be a good day because of the appointment she had after work. Jane Clark, one of her best—and wealthiest—clients from the antique shop, had a referral for Rachel. The whispered promise of returning to the work that she loved sang through her. Today, she reminded herself, was a new day.
After a half-hour on the road, Rachel parked her car behind one of the hotels that lined I-70. She went through the service entrance, clocked in and went to work for the first of her three jobs—this one as a maid.
She was so used to being invisible that she didn’t even look twice when a man came out of one of the rooms and approached her. His steps slowed, and she looked up.
Micah McLeod, his dark-brown eyes steady on her.
Her heart gave a familiar lurch—it always did when she saw him. She didn’t want to notice that he looked good, but he did. He wore jeans, a Western-style shirt, cowboy boots and a Stetson with the ease of a man who had grown up in the clothes rather than adopting them like some packaged country-music singer. She knew under his hat was a full head of hair, the dark strands liberally streaked with gray.
She forced herself to look away and wished he would walk right past her, somehow knowing that he wouldn’t. He came to a halt next to her cart, blocking her way back into the room she was cleaning.
“What in the world are you doing here?” he asked.
“Working.” She stuffed the linens she had just stripped off a bed into the hamper at the bottom of the cart.
“Working,” he repeated. “Why?”
A sharp retort was at the tip of her tongue when she noticed one of the hotel managers at the end of the hall. Jason Laird, a young man fresh out of college. His pretentious attitude grated more often than not, and he had made it clear maids were to be seen and not heard.
“For the usual reasons,” she said managing to keep annoyance out of her voice as Jason came closer. “Is there something you need?”
“Not anything you can give me here.” Micah turned around to see who she was watching.
“Good morning, sir,” Jason said to Micah. “Is everything okay?”
“Fine,” he responded.
“Enjoy your stay.” Jason raised an eyebrow at her and cocked his head toward the room she was cleaning, his unspoken message as clear as a command. Get back to work.
Rachel pulled clean sheets from her cart while Micah stood there watching her as though she were some exotic species he was studying in a zoo. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said as she brushed past him.
He followed her into the room. “If you’re going to work in a hotel, why not turn your house into a bed-and-breakfast like you once talked about?”
The suggestion frayed her temper. How could he know so much about her hopes and dreams when she had clearly known nothing about his? Once he had told her about a ranch in Wyoming, his description of a home so vivid she had imagined living there. Like everything else last spring, that had most likely been a lie, too.
She snapped a clean sheet open and it floated across the mattress. Efficiently, she tucked the sheet around the mattress and did her best to ignore Micah’s large presence.
He simply stood there, waiting with the patience that was so much a part of him. She finished making the bed and did a visual scan of the room to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. All that was left was to vacuum.
When she retrieved the vacuum cleaner from the hallway, he blocked her way back into the room.
“Rachel, talk to me. Why are you working here?”
“Because I need the job.”
He moved to the side so she could enter the room, then followed her. “This is the best job you could get?”
Mentally counting to ten, she plugged in the vacuum. “There’s nothing wrong with this job.”
“Okay, maybe that was out of line, but you’re the most capable person I know. I’ve never known anyone smarter than you. You could have gone back into banking or—”
“So why would I stoop so low?” she interrupted, turning around to face him, last spring’s events so much at the surface she trembled. “Have you ever stuck around after your investigations are concluded to see what happened next? Or is it just on to your next assignment with your carefully taken notes so when you get called back to testify you remember the…how did you put it? Oh, yes…the pertinent facts of the case.”
He took off his hat and thumbed the brim before looking at her. “I remember everything, Rachel. And I regret—”
“Regret doesn’t feed my children,” she said, the last tenuous thread on her temper shredding. “And as for going back to work at the bank, nobody would hire me to be a teller, much less a financial analyst—not after learning my business partner had been convicted of money-laundering.”
“That was Angela London, not you.”
“And weren’t you the man who once told me that the quality of a man’s character can be measured in the friends he has?”
“I’m sorry.”
“No doubt.” She looked up then, and met his gaze. “Go away, Micah McLeod. If I never see you or talk to you or—” She swallowed the lump in her throat and willed the tears burning her eyes to go away.
“What’s going on?” Jason Laird stood in the doorway.
“Nothing,” Micah said. “I’m leaving.” He slipped past Jason who watched with his arms folded over his chest.
“You come with me,” Jason said to Rachel. “Right now.”
She knew what was coming, but like so much else over the last few months, being chewed out for talking to a guest was one more thing to be endured.
“Your services are no longer needed,” Jason said as soon as he sat himself down behind his desk.
“You’re firing me?” She had expected to be bawled out—not dismissed.
“You know the rules about contact with guests,” he said, “and your behavior toward our guest just now is completely unacceptable.”
Locking her jaw so her chin wouldn’t tremble, Rachel stared at a point beyond Jason’s shoulder while he finished dressing her down. Fifteen minutes later she clocked out and left the motel. It wasn’t yet 9:00 a.m.
She got in her car and sat there a moment, feeling her debts weighing her down and the empty light on the fuel gauge taunting her with this latest failure.
She needed the money from this job, meager as it was. She couldn’t go home. Be bold as a lion, she told herself, gazing down the road where another dozen motels lined the street. She hated the idea of another maid’s job, but it was routine work that fit with the schedule for her other jobs. Bold as a lion would be to march down to the bank and apply for her old job in the trust department.
But today she was only bold as a hungry kitten so, irritated with her own lack of temerity, she headed for a motel a block away where she filled out her first application. Once more the anonymous demand for the half-million dollars flitted through her head, this time making her laugh silently. Like she would be looking for a sustenance job if she had access to that kind of money.
Even with the promise of better money that would likely come as a result of her appointment with Jane Clark, any income would be weeks to months in coming. Which made today simply another one to survive.
By the time she filled out her ninth application, any humor she had seen in her situation had long since vanished.
“Hello, Tommy,” Micah said to Angela London’s old boyfriend, surprised he had found the man the first place he looked—an upscale pool hall a couple of blocks from the historic Colorado Hotel. The clientele this early in the day was thin—Tommy Manderoll was playing alone. Waiting to score a sale, Micah was sure, since he was the one who had introduced Angela to drugs and the promise of easy money.
