She shook her head. “I’ll be all right.”
“No, they closed the county roads,” Lien-hua said. “State Patrol did. I had to ride with a trooper just to get over here.” Despite the awkwardness of the situation, I heard genuine concern for Amber’s welfare in her words.
“If the county roads are closed,” I said, “you won’t make it home.”
“I’m used to-”
I held out the key to her. “Amber. For your own safety. Please.”
After one final objection, she accepted it. “Room 104,” I told her. I left off mentioning the obvious: that it was the room right next door.
She passed quietly out the door, into the storm, and then I was alone with Lien-hua, who stood by the bed and appraised me.
And I, her.
Asian elegance. Black hair with two curling strands that gracefully framed her face. A posture and grace that came from years of tai chi and competition kickboxing. A woman who was not only gorgeous and athletic but also had swift intelligence and deep perception, I’d fallen for her the first time I met her fifteen months ago. Since then we’d dated, faded apart, reconnected. Tried to make things work.
Ups and downs.
“How did you get a key to the room?” I asked lamely.
“The manager gave me one when I told him I was your girlfriend and that I’d come to surprise you.”
This was just not good.
“The FBI credentials sealed the deal,” she added.
I wanted to ask her about Cincinnati, how she got up here today, but a flight to Madison, St. Paul, or even Rhinelander would have been easy enough to arrange this morning. However, none of that mattered at the moment. She was here and so was I, and she’d walked in on me while I was in the arms of another woman.
“Really,” I said, “you have to believe me, this wasn’t what it looked like, here with Amber.”
Lien-hua chose not to reply.
“She came to check on me.”
And to ask you why you broke things off with “Margaret told me about everything that happened today. Now, honestly. Tell me. Are you all right? You’re on your feet, so you must be feeling-are you feeling better?”
“I am, except my ankle is having a little bit of a rough time.”
“You can sit down if you like.”
“I’m all right.”
“Really, Pat-”
“I’m all right.”
“You almost drowned. You could have died of hypothermia.”
“I just need you to know that I’m okay and that nothing was happening in here, a minute ago.” Truthfully, my ankle was throbbing, and I did want to sit down, but I forced myself to stand.
A small silence. “Why was Amber crying?”
Not the question I wanted to answer.
“Because…”
Sometimes a lie is a gift.
Always the truth is.
All right. Everything out in the open.
“Five years ago”-I finally did take a seat on the bed-“I met her when she was engaged to Sean. We connected. Neither Amber or I set out to, neither of us wanted to, but we…”
“You had an affair?”
“It didn’t end up going that far.” I hesitated, then added, “But it went farther than it should’ve.”
She was quiet.
This was even harder than I’d thought.
“I couldn’t stand the thought of hurting my brother, so I broke things off, stopped seeing Amber, stopped calling her. I still feel terrible that the relationship ever got started in the first place. It was five years ago.”
“You mentioned that.”
I could think of nothing else to say.
“Were you in love?”
I gave her a tiny nod.
“And is that what you told her tonight? That you still loved her?”
“No. I told her I was with you. That whatever we had was over.”
Profiler that she was, Lien-hua watched me, no doubt discerning as much from my pauses, body language, tone as she did from the words themselves.
“Are you still in love with her, Pat?”
“No,” I said, but even I could hear the tiny hitch in my voice, and I hated that it was there. I’d chosen Lien-hua. Chosen her! Words rang in my head, from some TV show or movie I might have seen sometime: Being in love with more than one person doesn’t mean you’re being unfaithful, choosing to pursue more than one person does.
And I was pursuing Lien-hua.
Lien-hua.
A silence broad and deep. At last she said, “So that’s why she was crying? That’s it?”
“She’s had problems with Sean.”
“I see.”
I stood once again, approached her. “I didn’t even know that they-”
She held up a gentle hand to stop me. “She drove through a blizzard to meet you in your motel room to tell you this-that she and her husband are having problems?”
“You have to believe me, Lien-hua-”
“Please, Pat. Don’t tell me what I have to do.”
I felt helpless. “Let me explain.”
“I don’t think it’s me you need to explain things to. I think it’s your brother.” Her words were sharp but filled with a delicate kind of pain.
Once again I started to respond, but she shook her head and said, “Pat, when you’re seeing someone, you set boundaries. You keep yourself from situations where you’re alone in a motel room at night with one of your former lovers.”
She was right. Everything she’d just said was true.
She opened the door to leave, letting a sharp blast of winter wind into the room. “I’m staying in 124 with Natasha.” Now her tone had taken on a remote and disheartening professionalism, just as it had in the days last spring when we’d drifted apart. The pain of hearing the coolness in her words struck me even more starkly than the chilled air rushing past her. “She told me that she was meeting with you and Jake in the lobby at 9:00 for a briefing. I’ll be there. Good night, Pat.”
Come on, figure this out!
But then she was leaving.
“We can talk about this more tomorrow, okay?” I said. “Straighten everything out?”
A small nod was the only response she gave me.
And then she was gone.
As I watched the door close, my initial thought was to go after her, but then I realized that pressing things at the moment would do more harm than good.
I sank onto my bed.
I tried to process what had just happened-the stirring of old feelings for Amber, our admissions of affection for each other, the look of pain in Lien-hua’s eyes when she found us in each other’s arms.
Man, I’d screwed things up.
I couldn’t help but think of the diamond engagement ring in the box in Denver, waiting to be offered to Lien-hua.
What a mess.
Regret swept over me, and for a while I just sat there and listened to the storm rage against the window, a frigid and angry wind pulsing through the night.
Not only had Chekov escaped, not only had our one link to Basque gotten murdered, not only had Ellory and at least two members of the Pickron family been killed, but now two of the people who mattered most to me were hurting and it was all my fault.
The wind rattled my windows, but it didn’t stop me from hearing, in the room next to me, Amber moving around, getting ready for bed.
And all I could manage to do was sit there trying not to think about what had just happened, waiting for the night to become quiet enough for me to be able to rest.
44
As Tessa was washing up, she realized she’d forgotten one of her bags, the one containing her pajamas and the pills she was using to help her sleep, in Sean’s pickup.
Great.
For months she’d bugged Patrick to teach her how to pick locks until around Thanksgiving he finally gave in. Since then she’d gotten pretty good with residential doors and even handcuffs, but cars were not her specialty, and she definitely remembered Sean locking the truck before they came inside.
So now, as quietly as she could, she eased downstairs, donned her jacket and boots, grabbed Sean’s truck keys from the keyboard beside the door, and went outside.
The snow slashed at her, and she had to use one arm to shield her face as she trudged along the path to the driveway. Although the walkway had been shoveled earlier and was bordered by piles of snow nearly six feet deep, in the light from the porch she could see that the storm had formed deep drifts crisscrossing the pathway in front of her.