The Hidden Years Read online

  Cassidy finished off her last spicy shrimp. “Before you came over to my house, did you look through the stuff I brought?”

  Jake washed his blackened-grouper sandwich down with sweet tea, then pushed back from the table. “I haven’t read the three diaries my mother left yet. There are several photographs that don’t mean anything to me, but the copies of my sisters’ birth certificates and my parents’ marriage license will provide my chief investigator with a good place to start looking for information.”

  Just as Cassidy finished her coffee, Jake’s cell phone rang. He checked the caller identification, then answered. “What have you got, Harrison?”

  Cassidy couldn’t hear the other man’s reply, but Jake’s face lit up. “You do? That’s terrific. Hold on.” Jake whipped a pen from his pocket and furiously wrote names and addresses on a napkin. “Has the lady at the telephone company come through? Okay, keep working on it.”

  Jake hung up, his face flushed with success, the color high on his sharp cheekbones. “After you left my house, I faxed Harrison copies of my sisters’ birth certificates. He’s traced the adoption records.”

  “But they’re sealed.”

  “Harrison knows people everywhere. It’s his job to dig out information not readily accessible.”

  “So tell me,” she prodded, not in the least surprised by his assistant’s ingenuity. She was sure that Jake ran a sharp operation. That he’d become so successful after starting from nothing made her feel a great deal of pride. And Jake had a gift for friendship. Look how easily she’d accepted his help, just as the orphans had so long ago.

  Jake was a natural leader, but he also held himself apart. Sharing had always been difficult for him.

  “I have my sisters’ current addresses.” Jake’s voice was infused with happiness and excitement and wonder. “I never expected my search to end so soon.”

  “Are you going to call them?” Cassidy asked, enjoying his pleasure and the sparkle of amber light in his eyes, emitting a warmth that wrapped her like a soft blanket. Jake’s sharing anything with her after all these years and showing her his pleasure were a gift. A gift of part of himself.

  Jake sighed and threaded a hand through his hair. “I think a letter would be best.”

  Such extraordinary patience. That he would be willing to wait to introduce himself to his sisters surprised her. “Why write when you can call?”

  “News that my sisters have siblings may come as a shock. A letter will let them adjust gradually to the idea before speaking with me.”

  He sounded as if he’d thought through every potentiality. For Jake’s sake, she hoped his sisters responded positively and soon. In his place, she didn’t know if she would be so patient or thoughtful or understanding.

  “I’ll leave it up to them if and when to contact me.”

  He’d waited so long. She couldn’t believe he didn’t intend to pick up the phone and just call, even if only to hear their voices. Jake also had extraordinary composure. In his place, she would have dialed, too excited to consider the consequences. While Jake had never forgotten his boyhood promise to his father, hadn’t given up his search all these years, he was methodical, careful. But she just couldn’t comprehend how he could bear to wait until they contacted him now that he’d found them. However, Cassidy realized this decision had to be his. She had no right to try to change his mind.

  Jake’s eyes narrowed, and he suddenly stood and tossed money on the table. “Let’s go.”

  Alarmed by his sudden reversal of tone and demeanor, Cassidy looked past Jake toward the parking lot. Her stomach tightened.

  Two men had just pulled up in a four-door sedan. She watched them exit the vehicle. Each man sported a suit and tie.

  Jake grabbed Cassidy’s hand. “The bulges beneath their armpits indicate they’re carrying.”

  “Carrying?”

  “Guns.”

  Jake shouldered his way past customers eating with enjoyment, waitresses carrying plates of lobster tails, crab claws and grouper sandwiches, and headed for the rear of the restaurant. Without hesitation she followed, allowing him to pull her into the kitchen.

  They hurried past gleaming stainless-steel countertops, a stove with a huge cauldron of soup and a kid sweeping the floor. Jake swiped a bottle of wine off a wire rack and tossed the chef a twenty-dollar bill. The surprised cook shook his head at their crazy antics.

  Fear lodged in her throat, Cassidy hurried to keep up with Jake’s long strides. She took a moment to look over her shoulder for their pursuers and slammed into Jake’s broad back. “Sorry.”

  He’d halted to open the back door. “Hurry.”

  She scooted through the door, realizing now was not the time to ask questions. But Jake had parked his vehicle out front. They’d have to go around the building to reach it, and they’d likely be seen by the men in suits. Cassidy wondered if they were FBI, the mob, hired guns or if one of them was the same man who had tied her to her kitchen chair. She didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out.

  She slipped behind the restaurant, next to a Dumpster, and the scent of rotting fish slapped her in the face. The empty lot behind the restaurant provided extra parking for weekend overflow, but she saw no place to hide. Before she could turn and ask Jake where to head next, he’d whacked the neck off the wine bottle, stuffed a handkerchief into the now-open neck and down into the red wine, then urged her around the corner.

  “Be ready to run to my car on my signal.” He spoke as calmly as he’d previously ordered their dinner.

  How could he remain so calm when her pulse was beating so hard that she had trouble hearing him? Breathless, she inhaled deeply and frowned. “What signal?”

  “I’ll tell you. Just be ready.”

  When the men in suits reached the back door, Jake lit the handkerchief with a lighter and tossed it toward the Dumpster.

  “Now! Go.”

  Cassidy raced along the side of the restaurant toward the parking lot and Jake’s car.

  Behind her, the bottle shattered. Wine must have spilled everywhere, spreading flames inside the Dumpster. The noise, louder than she’d expected, urged her feet faster while a smoky haze wafted on a stiff breeze and spread over the lot. She worried that fear would root her feet to the pavement, but adrenaline thrust her watery knees onward.

  Jake’s diversion would buy them only seconds. But all they needed were seconds to reach his car. His remote starter had already warmed up the engine by the time she slid into the passenger seat and locked her door.

  Before she could fasten her seat belt, Jake joined her, and they peeled out of the parking lot, heading north. Stomach lurching, she looked over her shoulder and cringed. The men were already in their sedan and right behind them.

  “Don’t worry, this Mercedes will outrun them.”

  The speed of his car was the least of their problems, she thought.

  “Just watch out for the snowbirds,” she reminded him. The retired folks who flocked to Florida to avoid the harsh winters in the northern U.S. and Canada tended to drive slowly. Traffic often crawled along the highway at twenty miles an hour. Jake’s speedometer was hitting sixty.

  “Who are those guys?” Cassidy asked as she peered back at the silver sedan.

  “I have no idea. Can you see the driver?”

  “They’re too far back,” Cassidy told him.

  Jake passed a water truck, a motorcyclist and another car before hanging a right.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “They might have another vehicle up ahead ready to cut us off. I thought I’d take the bridge.”

  The barrier islands along the coast of St. Petersburg were connected to the mainland by a series of bridges over the intracoastal waterway. Tourists skated and fished along the sidewalks, and vendors hawked ice cream. If they could make it off the island and onto a major highway without being intercepted, they stood a good chance of eluding their pursuers.

  Cassidy prayed the bridge wouldn�
�t be held open for a sailboat to pass under and back up the traffic for half a mile. Gritting her teeth as Jake passed another car, she finally snapped her seat belt into place. But she didn’t feel any more secure.

  “Maybe we should just drive to the police station.”

  “Then they’d know where we were, and they could wait until we left, and we’d be sitting ducks.”

  “Why do you have so little confidence in the police?”

  Jake swerved around a truck. “They’re undertrained, understaffed and underpaid. That’s why I’m in business.”

  “Jake?”

  “Yes?”

  She swallowed hard and shut her eyes as he steered to avoid a cyclist. Bravely she opened her eyes and looked at Jake. “Do you think the same man who attacked me is following us?”

  “Maybe.” Jake cocked his head to the side as he considered her suggestion. Hands relaxed on the wheel, he could have been out for a Sunday drive. By just looking at him, she never would have guessed they were being pursued. Jake drove up to the tollbooth and tossed change into the basket. “I wish Harrison could trace that phone number you found so we’d have an idea who we’re dealing with.”

  “They’re organized. That man showed up at my house less than half an hour after I made the phone call.” Cassidy swayed to the left and pointed to a woman pushing a baby carriage along the bridge. “Watch out!”

  Jake veered, then sped over the bridge to the other side just before a three-deck yacht honked its horn to signal the bridge master it needed passage and an opened bridge. Behind them, blinking red lights on bars came down across the road, stopping traffic and the silver sedan. The bridge started to open and traffic had to wait, allowing Jake and Cassidy at least a fifteen-minute advantage.

  She breathed a sigh of relief as Jake slowed their speed to normal and merged with the regular flow of traffic. “Now what?”

  “I want to find a print shop.”

  She glanced at Jake, wondering what he was up to. He seemed unperturbed by their close call or by the ease with which those men had found them at the restaurant. He’d come a long way from the boy she’d once known. She wondered how many dangers he’d faced and how they had shaped him into the man who sat beside her so calmly and competently, the man who displayed no fear. His steady hands kept them moving forward. In the dusky reddish-orange of the setting sun, his face looked darker, his chiseled cheekbones honed from granite. She knew that look. Jake was thinking about his sisters.

  To be safe, Jake made several turns over the next thirty minutes, exited a freeway and reversed his course before taking the ramp and heading into one of those twenty-four-hour print shops. Opening the trunk, he took out a briefcase stuffed with the items she’d brought him this morning.

  Had it been only this morning? It seemed like days. And Jake had slipped back into her life as easily as he had once before. She didn’t mind his silences or even his brooding. She didn’t mind the way she often had to pull answers from him. And she didn’t mind that he shared his thoughts so reluctantly, because it made them all the more precious when he did.

  But the man at her side was different in several respects from the boy she’d known. He no longer had the spontaneity he’d once had. Instead, he chose his words carefully, weighed his actions with an intensity that made her wonder if he’d suffered some tragedy during the intervening years.

  Jake held open the door for her to the beckoning bright lights of the print shop. “I want to copy everything you brought me and send it to my sisters with a letter.”

  Cassidy stepped inside the print shop. “But you haven’t had time to go through the material thoroughly.”

  “I know. But if anything did happen to us—not that I believe it will—I’d want my sisters to know about each other.”

  She understood his reasoning and didn’t question him further. “I’ll be happy to talk to the clerk about the copying while you write your letters,” she volunteered, knowing he’d want to word his letter carefully. Or had he already planned what he wanted to say? She wouldn’t be surprised if he’d already written the letter in his head, just so he would be set for this moment. Jake was that methodical and thorough. Perfect characteristics for a detective.

  While Jake bought stationery and took up residence at a desk to write his letters, Cassidy made copies of the diaries on the self-service machines. It was slow-going. Although she could copy two pages at once by laying the diary facedown on the copier, she had to turn the pages by hand. Thirty minutes later Jake still hadn’t finished his letters, so she asked a clerk to copy the photographs on a specialized machine in the back. The clerk, a student studying for a calculus test, put down his notebook to wait on her. When the clerk returned, he’d done such a good job that, except for the heavier paper on the originals, Cassidy couldn’t tell the old ones from the duplicates.

  Jake was done. He helped her pick out mailing supplies, added his letter to each sister’s package and then carefully addressed them. Jake finished paying with his credit card just in time for the printer’s evening parcel pickup. And thoughtfully, he gave the helpful clerk a healthy tip, making Cassidy wonder if he was remembering when he’d worked two jobs to get through high school.

  Back in Jake’s car, Cassidy turned to Jake, ready to go wherever he chose next. “Now what?”

  “My house. Since our pursuers have my tag number, it’s very likely they’ll be there waiting for us.”

  “Why don’t we just go to a hotel?”

  Cassidy had no fear of spending the night alone with Jake. In fact, she’d feel better if he would hold her through the dark hours, because she doubted her ability to sleep. How could she close her eyes when her safe environment had suddenly become populated with strangers who wanted to harm her? And what made it all so bewildering and frightening was that she had no idea why.

  “I want to sneak up on them if they show. Figure out who they are,” Jake explained with patience.

  Yesterday her life had been ordinary. She’d awakened, eaten breakfast and gone to work like the rest of the world. In the space of twenty-four hours, her home had been invaded, and she’d been threatened, almost killed.

  And that man, now with a partner or employee, was still after her. How had they followed her to the restaurant? Despite the police at her home, had someone been watching, waiting for her to leave?

  A shiver shimmied down her spine, and the hair on her neck stood on end. What would have happened if Jake hadn’t eluded those men back at the restaurant? Would she once again be tied to a chair, facing an inquisition and helpless because she didn’t have the right answers?

  “Jake?”

  “Yes, Sunshine?”

  Cassidy fought to keep her voice even. “How are we going to find out who’s after me? And why.”

  “Maybe Harrison’s trace of that call will give us a clue.” Jake turned off the highway and into his neighborhood. “Maybe the crime team will find evidence at your home that will nail the guy.”

  Cassidy frowned. “But he wore gloves. There won’t be fingerprints.”

  “Clues can often come from both strange and very ordinary places. Maybe one of your neighbors down the street caught the car’s license plate. Or maybe he left a footprint outside or a hair on your floor. The only problem with DNA evidence is that it takes weeks to come back from the labs and it’s useless without a match. And normally, the police aren’t willing to share their evidence with a P.I.”

  Cassidy shoved her hair off her forehead and sat up straighter. “I think we need to go through the information in the box more carefully. All the problems started with my phone call.”

  “Good idea.”

  Cassidy couldn’t decide whether or not Jake was humoring her. He looked so serious and spoke as if his mind were a thousand miles away. But his eyes moved back and forth, scanning the scenery and checking the rearview mirror with a wariness that revealed he remained alert.

  He noticed her fidgeting. “It’s going to be okay.”
r />   Something in the deep timbre of his voice made her realize Jake was much more comfortable with the prospect of someone hunting them than she was. When she thought of detective work at all, she thought of stakeouts, picture-taking with a telephoto lens and lots of digging through computer files to find hidden information.

  “You’ve had problems like this before?” she asked.

  Jake kept his tone light as if he wasn’t truly worried. “You never know when an angry ex-husband might show up ready to blast me away because I found the assets he’d thought were hidden from his wife.”

  “Is that mostly what you do?” Cassidy was curious how he spent his days. And his nights.

  “I specialize in finding missing persons.”

  That piece of information shouldn’t have surprised her. Jake had started looking for his sisters the day he graduated from high school. Clearly he’d become good enough to make a fine living at it. She realized that he’d diverted her worries about danger by answering her questions yet keeping the details to himself.

  Jake had never been gregarious, but he’d grown up to be a regular clam. She wondered if he had any close male friends. Or, for that matter, a lady friend.

  “What happens after we check at your house?”

  “We hole up somewhere safe for the night.”

  “Will anyone mind us spending the night together?”

  He drilled her with a stare, then shook his head.

  “There’s no hotshot lady detective after the boss?” she teased.

  Jake shrugged. “I only employ men.”

  “Not even a secretary?”

  “My detectives answer their own calls. I believe in personalized service.”

  “You sure you haven’t turned into a male chauvinist?”

  “You know better.” He cocked a haughty brow. “No woman has ever applied for a job, but if one was qualified, I’d hire her in an instant. Good employees are hard to find.”

  So were good men. But Cassidy kept that thought to herself. Over the years she’d dated on and off. She’d had one serious relationship in college, another during law school, but neither had worked out. Lately she’d had more fun going out with her girlfriends than dates she’d been on with men.