So he studied the photographs the way soldiers going into battle studied a terrain map—carefully and thoroughly, because it all depended on knowing what you were going to face.
The photograph had to date back to 1995 at the latest. Prescott hadn’t been linked to any particular woman since the Colonel found him. So this obsession he had was with someone he’d met in 1995 or earlier. The date on the newspaper clipping was October 15, 1995, so maybe the photograph was from that period.
He studied the high-school photo. Staged, like they all were. Deaver hadn’t had one. The old man wouldn’t spring for it, but he remembered everyone else’s at the high school. For most of them, it was their first formal portrait, and they had fixed grins, or at least the ones whose teeth were good enough to show did. The girls had slapped on the makeup with a trowel, and the boys had worn dress shirts instead of tee shirts, some for the first time in their lives.
This girl’s smile was natural, not stagy. Maybe she was used to being photographed. She looked like a million other pretty teenagers, though prettier than most. Long, strawberry blonde hair with a little curl to it. Straight, even, white teeth. Some kind of pink sweater with a pearl necklace. No indication of what her body looked like, only a general impression of slenderness.
Deaver switched his attention to the photograph of her playing the piano, dressed in a sweater and a long skirt, showing off a great body, though the face was in profile.
He looked again at the newspaper heading. ville Gazette.
Well, he had a state to start with, Washington. Why would Prescott head straight for Seattle if what he wanted wasn’t in Washington?
Deaver called up all the townships in Washington state. Seventeen cities, ninety-two townships. Four ending in—ville. None of them had a newspaper called the Gazette.
Deaver sat back, thinking furiously.
This whole exercise might be futile. Maybe he was barking up the wrong tree. Caroline Lake had been a pretty girl. If she’d grown into a beautiful woman, she’d be married by now. Hell, she might be on her second or third marriage, having changed names a couple of times. She could be Caroline Warner in Las Vegas, or Caroline Yoo in San Francisco or Caroline Steinberg in New York.
Fuck.
Maybe he should start looking for Jack, who wasn’t bothering to hide his tracks. Maybe he should just hole up here for as long as Axel’s credit card lasted until the next time Jack used his credit card.
Idly, Deaver Googled “newspaper + Gazette + Washington + 1995” and bingo! There it was. He leaned forward, surprised at the hit. Goddammit, bless the Internet because there it was in black and white, cursor blinking gently, just waiting for him to connect the dots. The Summerville Gazette, local rag for a small city called Summerville, defunct since 2002, but alive and well in 1995.
Eyes narrowed, Deaver leaned over the keyboard, Googling Caroline Lake + Summerville, Washington, and came up with ten hits, all concerning a Caroline Lake who ran a bookshop, gave prizes and played the piano in church. To be on the safe side, he clicked on images and gazed at about fifteen photographs of Caroline Lake. Prescott’s Caroline Lake. Still beautiful, still unmarried.
Jack Prescott was there, right now. He’d bet his left nut on it.
Deaver started furiously looking for online sites to book a flight immediately to Seattle, cursing because there was no way he could get there before 9:00 P.M. tomorrow night. Most flights were booked solid till after the New Year. The flights he finally found would take him twelve hours from Newark to Atlanta to Chicago to Seattle. It was the best he could do.
Well, at least he’d be there on Monday morning.
He looked once again at the photos of Caroline Lake, a truly stunning woman.
Prescott would still be in Summerville on Monday. Oh yeah. He wasn’t going anywhere.
Eleven
Summerville
They never did have that big Christmas meal Caroline had planned.
After the crying storm, Caroline had fallen into the deepest sleep of her life, almost a coma. When she woke up alone in her bed, it was pitch-black outside, and she had no idea how long she’d slept.
It was dark, the only light coming from the hallway outside. Caroline lay in bed, staring at the black ceiling, sorting through her feelings, so mixed it was impossible to know which was the strongest—shame, embarrassment or relief.
There was some shame, but not much. It was true, she should be feeling ashamed for crying like a baby on Jack’s shoulder—a man she barely knew, even if they had had sex. And she did feel ashamed. Then there was embarrassment. That wild crying jag after—not even while coming—wow, that was beyond embarrassing.
But there was also such a great sense of…peace. It was as if the tears had washed away something black and foul inside her, leaving her depleted, exhausted, empty—but not sad. The sadness was gone. Sadness had been her constant companion for years now, and she almost didn’t recognize herself in its absence.
She felt rested, refreshed and…hungry. A quick trip to the bathroom to put a cold compress on her eyes, a quick shower, pulling on cherry red sweats, and she was out the door.
Caroline was halfway down the staircase when Jack appeared suddenly at the bottom of the stairs, though she hadn’t seen him move.
When their eyes met, her heart gave a massive thump in her chest.
His dark eyes checked her over quickly, impersonally, like a soldier checking a comrade for wounds. Then his gaze turned warm.
“Hi.” His deep voice was calm, quiet.
“Hi.” Caroline’s voice sounded breathless to her own ears.
He started up the stairs, taking them two at a time until he came to a stop on the step below hers. It put her face almost on a level with his.
His face was fascinating—so deeply unequivocally male. “How are you feeling?” His eyes searched hers.
“Better, believe it or not.” She shook her head slightly. “Though a little embarrassed at bawling all over your shoulder.”
“Anytime.” That hard mouth lifted in a half smile. He took her right hand, lifted it to his mouth, placed it on his left shoulder. “Consider my shoulder yours.”
It was an interesting notion. It was an interesting shoulder. Caroline kneaded the hard muscle under the soft cotton of his sweat suit. She’d held him in her arms a couple of times now, and it never failed to astonish her—the absolute iron feel of him, as if he were made of something harder than mere human skin and muscle.
Her hand danced lightly from his collarbone to the huge ball of his shoulder, and she remembered very vividly the feel of him naked under her hands. Without the softening effect of clothes, he was almost frightening in his power, the strongest-looking human she’d ever seen.
She watched his face as she smoothed her hand over the broad, deep muscles. It was a mystery how a man who wasn’t handsome could be so attractive. He was wearing his long, black hair loose instead of tied back, and it framed that strong, narrow face, softening its harsh features. It was almost impossible to guess how old he was, though she suspected he was about her own age, but without the benefit of moisturizer, which she used religiously. The skin was weather-beaten, with faint white lines fanning out from the corners of his dark eyes.
He’d shaved this morning—she’d heard the electric razor buzzing—but he already had a five o’clock shadow. Had he grown a beard in Afghanistan? Many of the photographs of the men guarding the president showed them with beards.
What was his background? Jack Prescott—it was a perfectly ordinary name for an unordinary man. His skin and eyes were so dark, there must have been Hispanic or—considering his high cheekbones—Native American blood somewhere in his ancestry.