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“I saw Lydia. She was over at the vegetable and flower cart.” He yelled, “Don’t!” when Sam started to get out of the front seat.
“No way. You sure?” Hamish asked.
Harper slid behind him in the second seat, set the bag and flowers down on the seat, and grabbed his cold cappuccino. “You guys stop for lunch somewhere?”
“No, the other guys are at the coffee house,” yelled Sam over his shoulder. “Explain, Harper, because I’m awfully confused.”
“That makes two of us. Now, turn around without coming around the corner, and head back in the opposite direction. Don’t turn around to look, but watch to make sure we aren’t being followed.”
“You sure it was her?” Hamish asked again.
“Would you recognize your wife if you didn’t see her for two years? Would you have recognized her in a crowd after your first date?”
“Point taken. So what are we doing? Where are his other men?”
“We drop in on the dudes and then go home. I need to see if she lives at the villa or not. You didn’t happen to shoot a picture, either of you?”
“Sorry, Boss,” said Sam.
“Probably the best. But to answer your question, she claims not to be Lydia, and that was before Lipori came over.”
“You talked to Lipori too?” gasped Sam.
“Yes. It appears she calls herself Georgie now, and I can’t help but notice how possessive he is with her. I’d have to be an idiot not to see that they’re together.”
“No fuckin’ way,” Hamish said as he pulled into a parking spot in front of the coffee shop.
“Does that mean we consider her a terrorist now?” asked Sam.
Harper’s insides were caving. That was an impossible thought, but what he’d just witnessed changed everything. He’d prayed every day to be able to just see her one more time. And now that he had, instead of pure joy, he felt nothing but dread.
Was he about to lose her again, this time to another man?
Chapter 15
Afull manifestwas waiting for Harper on his computer when he returned to the villa. He scanned the list of names. He saw Lydia’s name added to the bottom, which had probably been because they’d identified her remains last. He accounted for all the nurses and doctors. But he saw no mention of a teacher, which verified Harper’s suggestions.
So Lydia did know her killer, or the man they thought had killed her. And why was her DNA identified and here if she was walking around, fully alive? And if she wasn’t the one in the photograph, whose body was retrieved from the burn pit and sent home for the funeral?
But the biggest problem was the issue of why she’d taken up with Lipori—why she was even friends with a terrorist. It was impossible for Harper to grasp. He knew her; he knew everything about her. They shamelessly shared no secrets, except very private secrets they revealed and whispered to each other every time they made love. There was no way he could accept she didn’t love him. And if she did, how could she have ever forgiven herself to move on? Did she have a twin adopted out she never known about? These things were not real.
None of it made any sense.
His bullshit meter was stuck smack dab between empty and full. He was delighted she was alive but deflated because she didn’t appear to be free to rekindle what they had. He’d never considered that to be an outcome. All his planning had been about the mission to snatch Lipori and get him confined to a cell forever, if he was prohibited from sending him to the Source.
He hoped she’d take his card and call him. But could he trust her? What if she would tell Lipori who he was, do something to show her loyalty was now with Lipori and his men, his dirty deeds?
That was just impossible to accept.
He picked up the daisy bouquet. They had been her favorites. He hadn’t lied about that. He still kept huge clumps of them growing in his house in Santa Rosa, all generated from the seeds she’d saved and lovingly labeled, tucked away in a small envelope. He’d used them sparingly, but having those daisies made him feel they were communicating through the grave.
He ran downstairs and found a large flower vase, filled it with water, and unwrapped the flowers. He found kitchen scissors and clipped off the bottom inch of stem and leaves, picked them up in clumps, and inserted them in their new home.
As he added the last clump, a yellow lined piece of paper was stuck to the underside, folded.
It was a number. Next to it, she’d written, “Text me first.” And then she wrote her name, except it wasn’t the name he’d whispered to her in bed. It wasn’t the name of the person who wore those slippers still waiting for her tiny feet on her side of the bed, the name on her flowered water glass in the bathroom, or the name he thought of when he fell asleep on her pillow.
She’d written Georgie.
