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“My father offered a million dollars, no questions asked, for the return of his daughter. In 1974 that was a helluva lot of money.”
“It’s a helluva lot of money today.”
“But Ginny didn’t claim it.”
“She could’ve been worried about prosecution. Your father—our father—wasn’t known to be as good as his word. He had a reputation for retribution.”
“The plain truth of the matter is you might not be London.”
“There is still one motive left,” she said as she finished her beer and set the empty glass on the table.
“Which is?”
“Revenge. Witt had made more than his share of enemies, Zach. He’d walked all over people, didn’t care who he stepped on to get what he wanted. Seems to me there were plenty of people who would have loved to see him hurt. I just have to figure out who it is. I was hoping you would help me.”
“Why would I bother?” he asked.
“Because London was your half-sister and a lot of people in town thought you were somehow behind her disappearance.”
“I was a kid at the time.”
“A kid who was always in trouble. A kid who had more than his share of run-ins with the law, a kid who suffered big-time at Witt Danvers’s hand, and a kid who was involved in some kind of mugging that night.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to London,” he growled, the skin over his cheekbones stretching tight.
“Okay, Danvers, now’s your chance to prove it. All you have to do is help me find out who I really am. If I’m London, then your name is in the clear—the little girl didn’t really die, she was raised in Montana.”
“And if you’re not?”
“You’re no worse off than you were before. At least your family and the people who care will know that you tried to find out the truth.”
“Except—” he said, nudging his plate aside.
“Except?”
“Except I don’t give a shit what the ‘people who care’ think.” He settled back in his chair and regarded her with eyes suddenly smoky with desire. “Your offer’s not good enough, Adria.” His gaze drilled into hers. “I’m not interested.”
Oswald Sweeny shivered in the breeze that roared off the mountains and cut through his coat. He drew one last warm lungful of smoke from his Camel and ground the butt into the gravel lot surrounding the rooming house. In his opinion, Belamy, Montana, was about as far from civilization as he ever wanted to be. He locked the car door and shuffled up the steps to the wide front porch.
Inside, heat and the smell of something cooking—soup or stew, maybe—enveloped him.
He heard the landlady rattling around in the kitchen, but didn’t bother with any chitchat just now. He hurried upstairs, snapped on the light, and yanked off his jacket. He hadn’t found more than he’d expected in Belamy, Montana, and that bothered him because he was already tired of this little town and its straight-arrow, salt-of-the-earth citizens.
He’d suspected Adria Nash was broke, and it looked like she was drowning in red ink—hospital debts, a large mortgage on the farm she owned, college loans, doctor bills. He had to do a little more checking to find out just how desperate she was for money—Danvers money.
For the last twenty-four hours he’d trudged around this podunk town and nearly frozen his butt clean off trying to pick apart Adria’s story. There were discrepancies, but not many, and the part about her growing up as the adopted daughter of Victor and Sharon Nash was absolutely true.
But there was more dirt yet to dig. He’d seen it in a few of the good citizens’ eyes when he started asking questions about the Nash family in general and Adria in particular. Sweeny was certain she was hiding something—he just didn’t know what.
The pieces as he’d put them together from the few people in Belamy who were willing to talk to him linked into a straightforward picture. Sharon Nash had once been a pretty girl who had married Victor, a decent farmer a few years older than she. All she’d wanted in life was to be a wife and mother, but her dreams had been stolen away when she wasn’t able to get pregnant and medical research in the fifties and sixties was more interested in preventing births than helping sterile couples conceive. She’d gone from doctor to doctor, becoming more desperate as the years passed. When medical technology had swung around and fertility pills were available, she was too old. Fertility pills didn’t work. She reluctantly accepted the fact that she was barren and she convinced herself that God, in keeping her from having children, was punishing her for not believing more strongly in Him.
The farming years had been lean and no adoption agency would offer the land-poor couple a child they couldn’t afford. A private adoption, because of the cost, was out of the question. It seemed as if Sharon was destined to be childless.
As the years passed, Sharon threw all her energy into the church. Though her husband rarely attended services, Sharon never missed a Sunday or a weekly prayer meeting. As everyone here on earth—her husband, the doctors and the lawyers—had failed her, she decided to trust in God completely and became nearly fanatic in serving Him.
Suddenly her prayers were answered, though not through the church, but through Victor’s brother’s law firm. A little girl—a relative, most people thought—had become available and, if Sharon and Victor asked few questions, the adoption could be handled. Sharon didn’t need to have any answers. There were no questions. In her mind this girl was sent from heaven. Victor was more hesitant, as he and his wife were getting up in years, but as much to help out the struggling mother of the girl—a shirttail relative, Sweeny had gleaned—as to keep his wife happy, Victor agreed. In the end, Adria became the apple of her father’s eye.
Sweeny pulled a small flask from his jacket pocket and took a warming swallow. Everything he’d found out so far was all just town gossip and speculation, the idle talk of neighbors and friends. There were no public records of the adoption and Ezra Nash, the lawyer who had handled the case, was dead, the paperwork in his office in Bozeman destroyed in a fire. It was frustrating as hell. All the information fit neatly into Adria’s story and matched the testimony of the pathetic man in the video, but Sweeny could smell a rat. Something didn’t quite mesh.
