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After watching clips for almost two hours, Trapper paused a video on a close-up of her face and stared at the beauty mark, the giveaway, the thing he’d seen ten thousand times, but had never really looked at until it had been magnified ten thousand times on his computer screen.
Though he hadn’t known her name until today, he had resented her since he was eleven years old when she had replaced him as the most beloved child in his father’s heart.
Because of her, Trapper had lost his dad to the world.
Because of her, his life had become one long game of catch-up at which he continually lost.
Because of her: the little girl his father had carried from the burning ruin of the Pegasus Hotel.
Chapter 3
Kerra was switching between networks to get a sampling of the morning news shows when her cell phone rang. “Hello?”
“I’m outside.” Those two words, and Trapper hung up.
Kerra tossed her phone onto the bed, muttering, “Rude jerk.”
She had already showered, so it didn’t take her long to dress. But she dawdled an extra five minutes, not wanting it to look like she’d rushed down in response to his ill-mannered summons. She should ignore him altogether and find some other way to breach The Major’s self-imposed seclusion.
But she’d already lost another day. Between now and Sunday, every minute counted.
Besides, she couldn’t let Trapper think that he’d intimidated or scared her off with his manhandling last night.
The condo building’s revolving door emptied her into brilliant sunlight and a frigid north wind that made her eyes water. Even so, she couldn’t have missed Trapper. Directly across the street from the building, he was leaning against the passenger side of his car, recognizable by the deep dent in its grill roughly the size of a parking meter post. He exuded supreme confidence that she would appear as summoned.
He was dressed as he’d been the night before except that, beneath the leather jacket, today’s shirt was blue chambray, and he’d added a pair of sunglasses. Ankles and arms crossed, he looked impervious to the wind whipping his dark hair.
She amended her earlier summation: He was a sexy rude jerk.
She waited for a delivery truck to lumber past, then crossed the street mid-block and walked straight toward him. “Isn’t Texas supposed to be hot?”
“Not in February.”
“I moved here from Minneapolis–St. Paul to get away from winter.”
“Live here long enough, you learn we have weather extremes.” He opened the passenger door and motioned her in, then went around. In order to get in on the driver’s side, he had to squeeze past a no parking sign.
Kerra called his attention to it. “Your car could get towed.”
“They’re welcome to it. Smoke has started coming out from under the hood. I figure the radiator’s busted.”
“It fared better than the parking meter.”
He didn’t comment on that as he propped his left shoulder against the driver’s window and turned toward her. After looking at her for what became an uncomfortably long time, he said, “For twenty-five years people have been trying to identify the little girl in that picture.”
“You were so annoyed last night, you never told me exactly how you discovered the birthmark.”
“I took a picture of the picture with my phone, downloaded it onto my computer, and enlarged it to the max. I went over it a square inch at a time with a freaking magnifying glass. Twice. More than half your face is buried between The Major’s chest and arm, but in the part that’s visible you can see the speck near your eye.”
“Eureka!”
“That wasn’t my first reaction,” he said. “My first thought was that you’d doctored the print.”
“You doubted my integrity?”
“Doubted? No. You drop out of nowhere and hit me with this? I was sure you were a fraud.”
“What convinced you otherwise?”
