Deadly Christmas Secrets Page 11

  Had he?

  That was the question Logan wanted an answer to.

  It was just a matter of time before he got it. Nothing could stay secret forever; nothing could remain hidden. The truth would come out, and whoever was after Harper would be stopped.

  Logan just hoped that Harper wouldn’t be hurt in the process.

  NINE

  Harper wasn’t sure what she was hoping to see when Sandra took a folder from the cabinet and handed it to Gabe. Definitive evidence that proved Amelia was alive? Some hint at the truth?

  Her pulse pounded at the thought, her muscles tightening with the need to do something. If Amelia was alive, she had to have some memories of her mother, her father, her family, friends and school. Had she wondered why no one had come for her? Had she cried for the people she loved?

  The thought was heartbreaking, and Harper tried to push it away as Gabe opened the folder and took out several sheaves of paper.

  “This is it. Not much. Just the photo and picture of the piece of blanket I was sent. The police took it as evidence earlier this evening.” He handed the papers to her. “There’s also the police report from four years ago, and a report from a private detective I hired after I got the package. He wasn’t able to discover anything more than what the police have.”

  “Which is?” Logan asked as he reached for the papers.

  “The package was mailed from a post office in Silver Spring. The employees don’t have any memory of the person who sent it, but security footage collected by the police captured the guy paying cash to mail it.”

  “Have the police identified the person?”

  “No. Although they called me this evening and said they might have a lead. They stopped by and took the piece of blanket, said they’re running some tests on it, looking for DNA. I’m going down to the station in the morning to meet with Detective Willard. You remember him, Harper?”

  “He would be difficult to forget,” she murmured, her gaze focused on the picture Logan had handed her. She’d seen the resemblance between her sister and the girl in the texted photo. The resemblance was even more obvious in the larger version of the picture. The green of the eyes, the tiny dimple in the cheek, the shape of the chin... They were so much like Lydia’s, Harper’s breath caught, her heart skipping a beat and then another.

  “Breathe,” Logan whispered in her ear. She sucked in a deep breath and dropped into a chair near the desk.

  “This could be a photo of Lydia when she was this age,” she managed to say, her voice thick with tears.

  She wasn’t going to cry, though.

  She’d wept buckets of tears after Lydia’s body was discovered, a bucket more after police had closed the missing-persons case on Amelia and said she’d most likely died with her mother.

  She’d cried, and it had done her no good.

  Now she felt hollow eyed and tired.

  “I thought the same,” Gabe said quietly, his voice rough edged and gruff. “I have all those old photos from when you two were kids. I took them out after I got this, because I didn’t want to think...” He shook his head.

  “That she was alive?” Harper finished, because that was how she felt. “And we gave up on her?”

  There. It was out. The words hanging in the air, ugly and horrible and so true they’d had to be said.

  “Yes.” Just that one word, but there was a world of brokenness and hurt in it, four years of struggles and pain.

  All the anger Harper had, all the suspicion, all the feelings that somehow Gabe was to blame seeped away.

  “There was nothing you could have done, Gabe,” Sandra said, touching his arm, her nails long and painted deep red. They seemed out of place right then. Garish. She couldn’t have known she’d be pulled out of bed before dawn, brought into a situation that would open old wounds, but still...

  Those nails.

  Harper looked away—she didn’t want to see the glossy nails, the sympathetic expression that seemed almost overdrawn in the quiet that had descended.

  “You’ve gotten the FBI involved, right? What are they saying?” Logan asked, breaking the silence and refocusing the conversation. Away from the guilt. Toward something productive.

  Gabe nodded, stepping away from Sandra’s hand. “Detective Willard contacted them. They’ve run facial-recognition software, comparing the photo I received to old photos of Amelia and Lydia.”

  “And?” Logan prodded.

  “And they think there’s a good chance the girl in that picture is my daughter.”

  “What?” Harper jumped up, nearly tipping over the chair as she swung around to face him. “You didn’t tell me that!”

  “I didn’t know until after we spoke.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but they both knew it did. “I knew you were already on the way. I figured it was the kind of news that should be given in person.”

  “Maybe you should have given it a little faster,” she snapped. “I’ve been here for—”

  “Let’s not go after each other. We have bigger fish to fry,” Logan said, his hands settling on her shoulders, his thumbs brushing against her neck. She shivered and almost stepped back into his arms, let herself get a little closer to his warmth.

  “Like whoever took my daughter,” Gabe spat, his eyes flashing with anger. “And the police who screwed up so much that they thought she was dead. I’ve missed four years of her life. Four years!”

  “If she’s alive,” Sandra broke in, her perfectly lined and mascaraed eyes darting from Gabe to Harper. “He’s absolutely convinced she is, but facial-recognition software—”

  “Is pretty accurate.” Gabe raked a hand through his hair. “She’s alive. I’m going to find her.”

  “How do you plan to do that?” Logan asked, his hands still cupping Harper’s shoulders.

  She could have stepped away, but she didn’t.

  For the first time in more years than she could remember, she wanted support. Needed it, because her legs felt shaky, her stomach twisting with a terrible mix of hope and fear.

  “Tomorrow morning, national news stations are running stories on Amelia’s disappearance. The police and FBI arranged it. Someone, somewhere has seen that little girl.” He jabbed his thumb toward the photo. “Someone knows who she is, and I’m praying that whoever it is comes forward. If they don’t...it won’t matter. I’m hiring another private detective. I’m combing this entire country, putting all my resources into finding out where she is.”

  “You’ve got a wedding to plan,” Sandra pointed out, and Gabe shot her a look that was so dark and hard, she took a step back.

  “Do you really think I care about a wedding when my daughter may be alive?”

  “I think—” Sandra began, but footsteps in the hall cut off the words. Not the soft pad of Adeline’s rubber-soled shoes. This sounded like the clack of heels on tile.

  Seconds later, a tall, dark-haired woman appeared at the office door. Green scrubs. Hair pulled back from a pale face. Maggie Johnson looked as if she’d just finished a long shift at the hospital. Somehow, she still managed to look pleasant, her soft prettiness something that Lydia had often mocked.

  Harper had never had a problem with it or with the woman. Maggie had always been pleasant and kind to her, to Lydia and to Amelia. As far as Harper had seen, there’d been no jealousy, no hint of wanting what someone else had, nothing that would have indicated she was having an affair with Gabe.

  Yet now, four years after Lydia’s death, the two were a couple.

  Did it mean anything?

  Harper didn’t know, didn’t think she was objective enough to figure it out, because losing Lydia still hurt. Losing Amelia...

  She lifted the photo of the girl, her heart pounding, then eyed the photo of the piece of blanket. It looked exactly like the one sh
e’d received.

  Maybe they hadn’t lost Amelia. Not for good anyway.

  “Maggie!” Gabe said, rushing forward to take his fiancée into his arms. They looked good together, both tall, lean and attractive.

  Harper didn’t want to notice, but she did.

  She also didn’t want to be standing there, watching the kiss the two exchanged. She’d told Logan that the relationship didn’t bother her. It hadn’t. Until now. Until she was face-to-face with it, looking at the man who’d once passionately kissed her sister sweetly kissing someone else.

  There was a lot of love in that kiss. A lot of tenderness. A lot of things she’d never seen between Gabe and Lydia, and maybe it did hurt. Maybe it did make her a little angry, a little sad, a little melancholy.

  She turned blindly, nearly walking into Logan’s chest.

  “Careful,” he said.

  “Sorry,” she murmured, stepping past him and running from the office.

  He was following. She could hear his footsteps on the tile, but he didn’t say anything as she rushed through the hallway filled with memories and ran to the front door. She jerked it open, lunged out into the cold, crisp November morning, took deep, shaky breaths of air.

  It didn’t help.

  Nothing could.

  Not the predawn silence. Not the Christmas lights sparkling on trees that lined Gabe’s driveway. Not the moon dipping low in the sky, or the soft call of a mourning dove.

  Lydia was dead. Gabe had moved on.

  And somewhere out in the big, wide world, Amelia might be alive, living with strangers.

  Not strangers anymore, her mind whispered, and that was awful, too. What if the girl in the picture had moved on the way Gabe had? What if she really was Amelia, but she’d forgotten the mother who’d raised her for four years? The father who’d adored her? The aunt who’d made her chocolate-chip pancakes on snowy winter mornings?

  What if she had a new family she loved? People who loved her?

  Would that be better than the alternative—Amelia being abused and mistreated? Amelia missing her mother, her father, her aunt, her friends?

  “Time to go,” Logan said, his arm suddenly around her waist, his words ruffling the fine hair near her ear.

  “I still need to—”

  “You can do it tomorrow.”

  “But—”

  “It’s time to go, Harper,” he said again. “Because there’s nothing you can do here that can’t be done at the safe house.”

  “There’s nothing I can do at the safe house that I can’t do here. Except talk to Gabe and work on figuring this out.”

  “He’s talking to his fiancée.” He moved down the porch stairs, and she was moving with him. The truth was, she didn’t want to be in the house with Gabe and Maggie.

  “Eventually he won’t be.”

  “Eventually the sun will come up,” he responded. “Eventually a new day will begin. Eventually the news stories about your niece will air, and someone somewhere will see them.”

  “And call the police?” They’d reached the SUV, and Harper didn’t have the energy to argue about where they were going or what they would do.

  The fact was, Logan was right.

  There was nothing she could do at Gabe’s place.

  Not now.

  Tomorrow, though, after the story aired, she wanted to talk to him more, talk to Detective Willard, the FBI, the post office employee who’d accepted the package with the photo in it.

  “I’m praying that’s what happens,” Logan said as he opened the back door and gestured for her to get in.

  Malone was already there, sitting against the far door, the kitten in his lap.

  He met her eyes and gave her a brief nod.

  “Where’s Stella?” Logan asked as he climbed in beside Harper.

  “Walking the dog.”

  “She’s been doing that for a while,” Logan said, reaching for the door handle. “Maybe I’d better go check on her.”

  “Don’t think that will be necessary.” Malone gestured to a dark shadow moving around the side of the house. “Looks as if she’s back. Good thing. I’m beat, and sitting here doing nothing isn’t making me any more energetic.”

  “Would you rather there be some action?” Logan asked, and Malone shrugged.

  “I’d rather be sleeping, but since I can’t have that, I’d rather be driving somewhere I can sleep.”

  “Have you heard from Chance?” Logan asked as Stella opened the back for Picasso. The big dog scrambled in, shoving his head over the seat to nuzzle Harper’s hair.

  “Did you miss me?” she asked, rubbing his muzzle as Stella hopped into the driver’s seat.

  Picasso whined in response, his tail thumping rhythmically.

  “He missed you,” Stella grumbled. “I missed you. We all missed you, because we all want to get to the safe house, get some food in our bellies and get to sleep.”

  “I didn’t mean to hold things up. My brother-in-law took his sweet time making an appearance.”

  “Bet he’s usually like that, isn’t he?” Stella asked, backing down the long driveway, her short hair brushing her nape as she glanced over her shoulder.

  “Like what?” Harper asked.

  “Like making people wait for him but not being all that patient about having to wait. Like wanting other people to be more conscious of his time than he is of theirs.”

  “That’s how my sister described him,” she responded. Lydia had complained that Gabe was a hard taskmaster, that he wanted things done a certain way and wasn’t happy if they weren’t. She’d complained about Gabe making her late and about him forcing her to be early. No rhyme or reason. Just his timing or he didn’t participate.

  But Lydia had complained about a lot of things, and Harper had learned to listen with half an ear, not always giving her full attention to whatever the day’s gripe was about.

  “How would you describe him?” Malone asked.

  “Probably the same way. He likes to be in control, and he likes to be the one to call the shots.”

  “I like to eat. At regular times. I also like to not have to walk an oversize dog through someone’s flower beds,” Stella muttered.

  There was nothing to say to that, so Harper kept her mouth shut.

  Up ahead, the wrought iron gates that separated the community from the world beyond stood closed, huge Christmas wreaths hanging from brick posts beside them. The fence that surrounded the neighborhood had been hung with garlands and decorated with white lights, the entire display elegantly festive.

  Christmas was just around the corner.

  How would the little girl with blond hair be spending it?

  With a family that loved her?

  With memories of Christmases past?

  With haunting nightmares of a mother who’d been murdered?

  Harper shuddered, and Logan pulled off his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders. It smelled like masculinity and strength, felt like the warmth of home. She burrowed in deeper, trying desperately not to think about Amelia and all the years that might have been lost.

  “You okay?” Logan asked, and she nodded, because the truth was too complicated to speak.

  She was okay and she wasn’t, and that was a difficult thing to explain. An impossible one.

  For as long as she could remember, she’d known that God had a plan. That He’d work things out. That no matter what, everything would be okay.

  Her mother hadn’t been much of a parent, but she’d brought her girls to church and taught them to thank God for their blessings, go to God with their burdens.

  It had taken a long time for those old habits to become outpourings of faith. Harper didn’t think they had until after her sister’s murder. In the past few years, t
hough, she had relied more on her faith and less on herself.

  No more striving for success. No more frantic scrambling to get ahead. Now she prayed and waited and tried to trust that God’s will would be done.

  Tried.

  But, right now, all the old disappointments flooded her mind, all the times that she’d prayed and not gotten what she’d hoped for lingered there.

  She wanted to scramble and work and try and fight. She wanted to do everything in her power to learn the truth.

  She wanted, more than anything, to bring Amelia home.

  If Amelia was alive.

  If.

  The gates swung open, and Stella navigated the SUV through, pulling onto a main thoroughfare that led to the Beltway.

  Harper had been down this street dozens of times. Nothing had changed. The lawns of outlying properties were still immaculately kept. Mature trees still lined both sides of the road.

  To the left, a large church jutted up against the night sky, the churchyard filled with old tombstones. The cemetery had closed years ago, but the church remained open. Gabe and Lydia had gotten married there, had attended services there every Sunday.

  The memories were right at the back of Harper’s mind—the wedding, Amelia’s birth, her first Christmas, the sweet blue velvet dress Lydia had put her in, the shiny black patent leather shoes that had fallen off her feet.

  Harper was so caught up in the memories, so filled with what had been, that she almost missed Malone’s subtle movement, his shift from relaxation to tension.

  Almost, but she felt the shift, heard Picasso whine softly.

  The hair on the back of her neck stood on end, and she glanced at Logan, saw that he was staring out the side window, his gaze focused on the cemetery.

  Did he see something?

  She wanted to ask but was afraid of distracting him.

  Whatever was going on, Stella must have sensed it, too. She stepped on the gas, the SUV shooting forward.

  “Get down,” Logan barked, and she was suddenly leaning forward with someone pressed against her back.