To Trust a Stranger

To Trust a Stranger

Lynn Bulock

MILLS & BOON

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To Joe, always

And

To Cheryl, my friend and encourager

contents

PROLOGUE

Chapter ONE

Chapter TWO

Chapter THREE

Chapter FOUR

Chapter FIVE

Chapter SIX

Chapter SEVEN

Chapter EIGHT

Chapter NINE

Chapter TEN

Chapter ELEVEN

Chapter TWELVE

Chapter THIRTEEN

Chapter FOURTEEN

Chapter FIFTEEN

Chapter SIXTEEN

PROLOGUE

Twenty-four years ago

Jessie Barker sat in the backseat of her parents’ car, staying as quiet as possible. Mouse quiet. Falling-leaf quiet. So quiet they wouldn’t hear her breathing and know she was awake while they had another argument.

As the station wagon rolled along the dark country road Mommy and Daddy were arguing in the front seat. In the backseat Jessie curled up against the door as much as she could with her seat belt still on and pretended to be anyplace else besides where she was. She looked through slitted eyes at her little sister, Laura, sitting next to her. Laura just looked down at the floor, but then Laura was brave, or maybe too young to understand.

Jessie wanted to yell back at Mommy and Daddy and tell them how to do their job. If she was a mom she would never yell at her kids and she’d let them watch cartoons on TV, and sometimes she would buy the good kinds of cereal from the store, the ones with marshmallows. Then Jessie and her kids would eat it straight out of the box. Mommy never bought the marshmallow kind of cereal because she didn’t like it.

They were still yelling in the front seat. It was the same thing again. This time it went on so long that Laura finally leaned over and whispered to Jessie. “Why doesn’t she just try it? They make us try at least three bites of everything at the dinner table, even gross, slimy asparagus.”

Jessie knew she looked at her sister as if she was stupid. Jessie felt bad when she did that, but she couldn’t help it. She looked at Laura a lot that way. “Try what?”

“The tea. The fackle tea. Daddy said if Mommy was the right kind of fackle tea wife we could stay here for ten years. That’s a long time.”

Jessie sighed. “There’s no tea, Laura. That is not what he means. You are so dumb.”

“It’s still a long time,” Laura said. She turned her face toward the other door so Jessie wouldn’t see her cry. Jessie ignored her as she spread her fingers out in front of her, looking at the little bit of Hot-Hot Pink nail polish she put on her right pointer finger yesterday before Mommy caught her and made her stop. Laura was right about one thing. Ten years was a long time. If they could stay in the nice apartment they had now for ten years, maybe Laura could go to Jessie’s school when she was old enough to start kindergarten in the fall.

“And I still don’t see why we had to take this route—” Jessie could hear Daddy mutter “—middle of nowhere.”

Did nowhere have a middle? If you were nowhere, how did you know when you got to the middle of it? Jessie wanted to ask somebody about that, but her parents were still fighting so she kept quiet. Jessie was still thinking about the middle of nowhere when she really drifted off to sleep.

That was when the bang came.

The loud noise startled Jessie awake. She felt hot and sweaty and didn’t know where she was. Rough hands pulled her out of the car, making her cry out because they didn’t unhook her seat belt first, only unfastening it when she yelled. Where were they? What was happening?

It was dark and scary and she couldn’t see anybody else at first, not even Laura. Once she was out in the night air she wasn’t hot for very long; she only had a sweater on instead of a coat and the wind was cold. Then Laura started to whimper. Jessie spied a patch of tall weeds and pulled Laura close to her into it, feeling the need to hide. “Be quiet,” Jessie whispered.

When her eyes got used to the dark Jessie could see some more things. A strange man was talking to Mommy. The man was big and loud and he looked mean. Laura shrank away from the noise and for once Jessie just hugged her and patted her. She couldn’t see Daddy anyplace, and nobody was paying any attention to two little kids, even the other man who had dumped her out of the car. Laura cried without a sound, shivering in Jessie’s arms.

After a while Laura struggled free and she called out softly, even though Jessie dragged her back even farther in the weeds. “Mommy? Daddy?” Nobody noticed either of them. Jessie couldn’t see much of what was going on.

The big man said something else and Mommy started screaming louder than she had been when she and Daddy were arguing in the front seat. “No. Not the babies. That wasn’t the way it was supposed to go.” What babies? Did they mean her and Laura? Jessie was a first-grader and her sister was almost five. Neither of them were babies.

The big man standing with Mommy looked mad. “What are we supposed to do? We can’t take them. You want us to leave ’em on the side of the road?”

Mommy stopped screaming. “Yes. I do.” She looked at Jessie but something about the look on her mother’s face made her stand still where she was instead of running to Mommy the way she felt like doing. Jessie had let go of her sister but Laura wasn’t moving, either.

Why didn’t Daddy get out of the car and check on them? Daddy was always the one who checked when Laura had a fever or Jessie skinned her knee or anything. Mommy looked worried sometimes, but Daddy gave the hugs and said “It will be all right” when he was home.

Laura looked as though she could use a hug right now. She was crying harder, and her nose was running. Jessie was just trying to stay as quiet as she’d been in the car. Something told her that making noise would be a very bad thing right now. Jessie grabbed Laura’s hand again and she could feel her sister trembling.

The big man who was the boss, the one dressed in black with a leather jacket, was saying things to the other men. One of them walked over and shoved the girls roughly far away from the car and Laura sat down hard in the rocks and grass by the side of the road. The big man took Mommy by the arm and said, “Come on. Let’s go.” She didn’t even look back at the girls. Laura started to wail then. Jessie tried to cover her mouth, but it didn’t matter. Nobody paid attention to either of them.

The big man and Mommy got in another car, a big black one. They drove away. Where were they going? Did they really mean to leave them here all alone?

Jessie started to run toward Daddy’s car, hoping that he would help them. She stopped after taking only a few steps. A man was dragging a lady across the ground. She looked funny, all limp, and she wasn’t moving. He stuffed her in the front seat of the car where Mommy usually sat and slammed the door. Jessie could see Daddy still sitting behind the wheel but he didn’t look right, either. He wasn’t moving and he slumped over toward the middle of the car.

Then the other men did something to Daddy’s car and it rolled down a hill. There was a loud noise and fire and then the men got into the other car and it drove away. Daddy never came back. Laura cried so hard she threw up.

For a long time it was just the two of them out in the dark. Then the fire truck and the police cars came and there was a lot of noise. Nobody would believe Jessie about Mommy and the big man in the black car. And through it all, Laura just howled.

No matter how many times Jessie told the story in the coming days through the hospital and the offices and the foster homes, nobody ever believed her. The grown-ups in charge acted as if she was making stuff up. One of them even told her that she had to face the fact that Mommy and Daddy died in the car accident and act like a big girl about it.

It all made Jessie want to quit talking altogether, as Laura had done. After she quit howling in the dark, it was four days before Jessie heard her sister talk again. By the time she did, she wanted to talk to Jessie about what they’d seen and heard. By then all Jessie would tell her was “Forget it ever happened.” If nobody believed her, why should she keep telling the same story? Jessie was only six, but already she had learned that the world was a dark and scary place and there was nobody in it who wanted to help her.

ONE

“He’s late,” Jessie Barker said to her sister. “You said he was going to be here by eleven.”

“Well, he isn’t here, is he?” Laura rolled her eyes the same way she had when they were kids. “Not everybody can be as punctual as you. Maybe his car broke down, or the traffic is backed up on the bridge, or he overslept or something.”

Jessie sniffed. “Those are all excuses I don’t let my students get away with. Why should I take them from a Web site designer?”

“Because he’s willing to work cheap and give us a decent product. And stop shaking your head at me like that, unless you want to hear my opinion on your hair color.”

“I don’t. I like my brown just the way it is. And I don’t see why a beautician needs a Web site.”

Laura sighed in her dramatic way. “Esthetician, sweetie. I’m not a beautician. Leave it to you to look down your nose at my business and get things wrong at the same time.”

Her attitude made Jessie want to stick her tongue out at her sister. Why did they always argue like this? Probably because neither of them had anyone else to turn to. Laura wasn’t ready to let it go yet. “Having my own Web site would be a great help for my business. I could link it to the day spa’s site and get more clients. Besides, I figure I could interest some people with a few beauty hints. That would reach a lot more women on the Web than a newspaper ad.” Unable to sit still while she talked, Laura dusted the coffee table.

“So the print medium is worthless now?” Jessie looked over her glasses at Laura, who looked as though she could feel a headache coming on.

“Nuts, Jessie. Why do you always make me feel like I’ve said the wrong thing? I’m twenty-nine years old and around you I still feel like a kid. And not a very smart one, either.”

Jessie melted a little. She always did when Laura looked hurt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to growl at you, but you hit a nerve with that newspapers-are-worthless comment.”

Laura waved a hand. “Now I didn’t say they were worthless. You know I wouldn’t ever say that. In fact, I thought you’d want a Web site to promote your new book and link to online bookstores. It would sell a lot more copies that way, wouldn’t it?”

Jessie shrugged. Laura might not have been labeled the “smart one” when they were kids, but she’d always been creative. “If you think that many people would be interested in a history of urban legends published by a small university press.”

Her sister’s face lit up, showing how beautiful she was. “Of course I do. You could probably get a spot on the radio or even get interviewed by one of the TV features reporters just by promoting your book on the Web.”

It sounded good, but first things first, Jessie thought. “If you say so. But to do that I’d have to have a Web site. And to have a Web site your Web designer would have to show up, now wouldn’t he?”

Laura pressed one hand to her temple. “Couldn’t you be something other than logical and literal just once in your life?” Then she laughed. “No, probably not. You wouldn’t be Jessie then.”

Before Jessie could respond, Laura was grabbing her purse. “Look, if it’s such a big deal I’ll go looking for him, okay? Give him a break, anyway. He’s not a whole lot older than most of your students. He probably just overslept or something. Computer geeks keep odd hours.”

Jessie tried to still the aggravation she felt. “I’m not all that familiar with them. They don’t speak up in class.” Not even in the “pop culture” class that was her favorite, where she got a lot of responses from most of the students.

Laura grabbed her car keys and headed for the garage. She called over her shoulder to her sister. “I’ll call you if there’s any kind of problem. Otherwise I’ll be back here, probably with Adrian in tow, in the next hour, okay?”

“Fine.” Jessie tried to look interested in a stack of papers she had to grade. Anything so that Laura didn’t see the look of worry she knew crossed her face as her sister left. Laura was an adult. There was no sense in treating her like a child.

Cassidy stood in the shadows across the street from Adrian’s town house and watched as Laura Barker knocked on the door. To Cassidy, Laura looked more like a teenager than a woman in her late twenties, with her bouncy step and the way she rapped on the door. When the door opened, the man answering looked far older than Laura Barker, mature and wary in a way Laura wasn’t, even though he was years younger.

After Laura went inside, Cassidy pondered how much time to give the two together. It all depended on how much Adrian Bando had connected the dots with the information he had. Cassidy knew the young man was bright; if he’d worked things through and now shared that information with Laura, everything could fall apart even after all these years of careful concealment.

Cassidy knew that timing could be everything. One wrong decision made life collapse like a row of dominoes. Suddenly there was another figure at the door and Cassidy scrambled for even more cover. Being seen now was a bad idea. The figure at the door stood impatiently, checking the street. Then he made a quick motion at the lock, and the door opened without anyone on the other side. Half a block away the noise of an idling engine stopped. The driver of a black sedan opened the door and stepped from the car.

Fifteen minutes later the driver slipped back behind the wheel of the car. The engine purred to life and he pulled away from the curb, slowly turning the corner to disappear from view. If the town house had a back door onto the alley behind it, the car could stop there without being seen.

Ten minutes later Cassidy stood at the front door of the town house, listening for clues to the situation. It was too quiet for more than one person to be in the place. The woman Cassidy found was surprisingly still alive. In fact, if anybody came to her aid now, she might live. That would mess up everything, Cassidy thought. But it was easy to fix.

Thirty minutes later an unidentified person made a 911 call from the pay phone across the street from the town house. By then the fire had been burning long enough that the woman inside would be no trouble to anyone. In the chaos of the arriving fire trucks, no one paid any attention to the nondescript person in jeans walking away from the complex.

Where was her sister? Jessie was at the pacing stage. Laura was usually really good at calling if she was going to be late. Of course she wasn’t quite as good at remembering to charge her cell phone, so she might have had the best of intentions and not followed through. That was Laura. Still, most of the time she showed up when and where she said she would.

Living with Laura’s quirks and habits was such a part of her life Jessie knew them all by heart. And they hadn’t changed that much since Jessie’s junior year in college. That was when Laura had turned eighteen and aged out of foster care. At the ripe old age of twenty Jessie gave up her brief taste of the carefree life on campus to find an apartment for the two of them and make a home for them.

Even that long ago it had been Laura who’d concerned herself with the niceties of things. Jessie would have been content with “starving student” decor like bookshelves from planks and cinder blocks and a couple of mattresses on the floor if she had to have it that way. Their finances didn’t allow for much more. Still, Laura was always filling a jelly glass with wildflowers, or scrounging around in thrift stores for something else to give the place a little lift.

The doorbell rang, jarring Jessie out of her thoughts. “Finally.” She went to the condo’s incredibly small front hall and looked through the peephole. The man on the other side of the door was alone and he didn’t look the way Laura had described the Web designer. Maybe he had gotten a haircut for the occasion.

“Adrian?” she asked, opening the door.

“No, I’m afraid not. Were you expecting him?” In the light of day it was easy to see this definitely wasn’t Adrian. This man was taller, lean in a fit way and his hair was a lighter brown than Laura’s description.

Laura had called Adrian sort of different looking. “He has long black hair, usually tied back, and he’s very pale. Looks like the black belt martial artist that he is, somebody you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. But so far he’s been this big teddy bear to me.”

This man was older than her students, probably older than her for that matter. Sharply dressed in a dark suit, the set of his jaw said he was definitely no teddy bear. He’d asked her a question and Jessie wasn’t sure how much information she should give a stranger, no matter how good-looking or nicely dressed he was. She decided to go with the minimum. “Yes, I was expecting someone. We had an eleven o’clock appointment.”

“If it’s Adrian Bando, he won’t be keeping it. I’m Stephen Gardner with the St. Charles County sheriff’s department. I’m looking for Jessica Barker.”

“I’m Jessica. And I’d like some proof you’re with the sheriff’s department.” He nodded and took out his identification as if he expected it. She looked it over quickly, trying not to panic. “Nobody who knows me calls me Jessica except for something very official. What’s wrong?”

The man on the doorstep shook his head slowly, looking even more serious than before. “If you don’t mind, let’s do this inside.” He looked like Jessie knew she did when she had to tell a kid they were on academic probation. So the news wouldn’t be good. She asked him in then because she was afraid that if she stood there in the doorway talking to Stephen Gardner any longer she might pass out.

“Something’s happened to Laura, hasn’t it?” Jessie didn’t usually get flustered easily but there was an air about Gardner that sounded alarms in her head. “Tell me she’s not dead.”

He looked a little relieved then but his dark eyes were still somber. “She’s not dead, Ms. Barker. But she is in Mercy Hospital thanks to Adrian Bando or somebody who was in his apartment. And it’s bad. Quite bad.”

Jessie felt her heart in her throat. “How bad? Are you saying she might not make it? She’s only been gone a little while. What on earth happened?”

“There was a fire. And something happened to your sister even before that. I don’t think the doctors know yet how serious her other injuries are. But I know we need to hurry. If you get your things I can take you to the hospital.”

Jessie got ready faster than she’d ever done anything in her life. Only halfway to the hospital in the unmarked sheriff’s department sedan did she notice that she wore two different tennis shoes. She hoped against hope that once she got to the hospital she could laugh with Laura about the shoes. Then she worried the rest of the way there that she might not get the chance.

TWO

Was this her sister? Jessie knew the still figure on the hospital bed had to be Laura, but her brain couldn’t process what she was seeing. The woman on the bed could have been anybody the same height and weight as her sister. The one eye not swollen shut was the same bright blue as Laura’s, but it wasn’t focused. Most of her hair was gone, burned in the fire that consumed far too many other things for Jessie to hope that her sister would live. But the hair that was left was the same dark gold Jessie knew. She’d envied it for years, knowledge that sent pain knifing through her now.

“Her lungs filled with smoke from the fire. That’s why she’s on the ventilator, and partially sedated so that she doesn’t fight the machines,” the nurse explained softly.

“Is there anyplace that I can touch her? Can I hold her hand?” Tears blurred Jessie’s vision and clogged her throat. It was hard to find a patch of skin on her sister that wasn’t burned, bandaged or had medical equipment attached.

“You can sit here next to her. She’s going to drift in and out some, given the amount of pain medication she’s on. If she gets more lucid she’ll probably be glad to see a familiar face.” Jessie nodded numbly and found the hard plastic chair, pulling it as close to the bed as she could without getting in the way of anything attached to Laura.

At least she wasn’t alone. The man from the sheriff’s department was still there, just outside the cubicle. “How did you know who she was, or how to get in touch with me?” she asked him. What was his title, anyway? In all the upheaval she didn’t remember any of that, if he’d even told her. Was he a deputy or a detective, or something else altogether?

His voice sounded only a little less choked than hers. “Her purse was in the entryway of the apartment on the floor. It apparently wasn’t a robbery, because her money and credit cards were there along with her driver’s license.”

Her sister had hated her last driver’s license photo, Jessie remembered. Laura said it made her look “goofy.” Staring down at the puffy, unfamiliar face Jessie ached. What she wouldn’t give right now for her sister to look merely goofy.

“There was one more thing. What does this mean to you?” Gardner held out a snapshot, faded and worn with one corner ripped off.

“That’s us,” Jessie said, wondering why on earth Laura had it with her. The two little girls smiled out at the camera, sitting on a blanket in the park. Memories rushed in as she saw the image. She could almost feel the hot sun on her shoulders and taste the tart lemonade they’d taken on the picnic. “It’s the only picture we managed to keep of the two of us before…our parents died.” There was no sense in getting into their tangled history with this man. Better to just stick to the official version that everyone else insisted was the truth anyway.

“You must have been awfully young when that happened.” Jessie didn’t know when she’d heard such compassion in someone’s voice without pity. In the short time she’d known him, this man struck her as unique. She only wished she’d met him under different circumstances.

“I was six and Laura was four. The picture was taken about a month before the accident.”

He looked at the photo again. “Can you think of any reason for your sister to have this with her?”

Jessie shook her head, listening to the machines whoosh and beep around them. “Not really. Maybe later she can explain that.”

His pained silence said more than words would have. He didn’t think there was going to be a later for Laura. And looking at the still figure in front of her, Jessie was afraid he might be right.

“What do I call you, anyway?” It had been hours since she and Steve Gardner had really conversed. He’d gotten them bad coffee from a vending machine or the hospital cafeteria, and a couple of apples. Even though she was hungry, Jessie couldn’t imagine eating much else with the trauma going on around her. She was still hoping that someone would come out of Laura’s cubicle and tell them that things were dramatically better; that she’d turned the corner and then Jessie would go eat something.