FOR HER EYES ONLY Read online

Michelle tried to relax as they drove the short way. She caught herself twisting her wedding band around her finger, then looked at Jake's hand. He still wore his band, as well. The realization made her feel better. Not so alone, despite the unexplained somber expression he wore.

  Jake pulled to a stop, staring out the window at a two-apartment dwelling. He referred to the slip of paper he held, then looked at her. "Are you ready?"

  For a long moment, she was unable to move. This was it. If the owner hadn't received any unusual calls in the past eight weeks…

  She nodded, then reached for the door knocker, fervently praying in her native French. Please let them know something. Please…

  A woman answered the door, a cigarette hanging from her fleshy lips, her hair in steel-colored curlers, her flowered housecoat stained and faded. "Whaddaya want?"

  Jake held out his business card and introduced himself then explained the situation. Michelle held her breath, afraid to move, afraid to speak for fear that it would result in bad news or the slamming of the door in their faces.

  "French?" the woman repeated. "What do I know from French?"

  Michelle looked beyond her to where a teenage girl lay across an old sofa, the telephone receiver attached to her ear.

  "No, we haven't gotten any unusual calls."

  "Are you sure?" Michelle asked. "Maybe your daughter—"

  "That's my niece. And I'm sure. Now I've got something cooking on the stove."

  She began to turn away. Jake said, "Do you mind if we speak to your niece?"

  The woman's expression turned decidedly suspicious.

  "Yes, I do mind. Now get out of here before I call the police."

  "Good Lord, Aunt Bert, can you keep it down to a low roar? I'm on the phone!" The girl got up from the sofa and disappeared from sight.

  The woman named Bert slammed the door firmly in their faces.

  Michelle stood paralyzed. That was it. No new leads on Lili and her possible whereabouts.

  Jake gripped her arms. "Are you all right?" Michelle realized she had nearly fallen over before he'd steadied her. She slowly nodded, but when the action caused dizziness, shook it instead. "I think I'm going to be sick." He led her to the side of the house where a stand of bushes hid her from sight as she retched up what little she'd eaten at lunch.

  "Aunt Bert's gonna have a heart attack if she finds out."

  Michelle ran the back of her hand across her mouth and looked up to find the teenage girl leaning on a window ledge above her. She explained to whomever she was talking to on the phone that some woman had just hurled all over her aunt's front yard. "You drunk or something?" she asked Michelle.

  Jake handed Michelle his handkerchief. "No, she's not drunk." He eyed the girl. "That phone have a double line?"

  The girl frowned. "Double line? No. But it has call waiting, if that's what you mean."

  His smile returned, and Michelle felt her heart give a little jump in her chest.

  "You stay here a lot?"

  "I live here."

  "With your aunt?"

  "Yeah, ever since Mom went into detox. Again." She moved the receiver to her mouth. "Hold on a sec, Melinda, can't you hear I'm talking to someone?"

  Aunt Bert's loud voice sounded through the window. Michelle jumped, then realized she wasn't anywhere near. She was calling her niece for dinner.

  Jake slid his hand in his pocket and took out a small pile of dollars in different denominations he pretended an interest in sorting. "What's your name?"

  "Stacy," the girl said slowly. "Why?"

  "You answer the phone a lot, Stacy?"

  The girl's focus was strictly on the money. "All the time."

  "Probably because you don't get much by way of allowance so you can go out and … do things that girls your age do."

  "So?"

  Jake slid a twenty from the small stack. "You get any unusual calls lately?"

  "Maybe."

  Michelle's throat tightened.

  "From whom?" Jake held out the money.

  "Who? From these stupid dweebs from school, that's who." The girl tried to take the money, but Jake pulled his hand back.

  "I mean from someone you don't know, say in the past eight weeks or so, from a little girl."

  Stacy frowned again. "Let me call you back, Melinda."

  She hung up the receiver then sat with her hands resting against the body of the phone possessively. "You know, it's really weird that you ask that. Do you know her? Because like it really freaked me out, you know? I mean the first time she called, I thought it was one of my friends playing a practical joke, but then she called again, and I got this weird feeling that something was wrong with her, you know? Because she was crying and everything. Then a couple weeks ago, the calls, like, stopped—"

  A sob burst from Michelle's throat, and she put her hands over her mouth to quell it.

  "She all right, man?"

  Jake's grin was one-hundred-percent pure satisfaction. "Yes, she's all right. Thanks, Stacy. Thank you very much." He handed her the twenty, then carefully led Michelle to the car.

  * * *

  Jake glanced to where Michelle had her fist over her mouth to stop sobbing. He suppressed his desire to celebrate. Knowing Gerald's parents had had the girl was a long way from his and Michelle's chances of recovering her. Besides, Stacy had said the calls had stopped a couple of weeks back. It could have been because her grandparents had caught on to what Lili was doing. Or because she'd assimilated and no longer felt the need to call her mother. Or, worse, had given up any hope of her mother finding her. Or, worst of all, she could have moved somewhere else.

  Jake turned the corner onto the Evanses' street and immediately jammed on the brakes. He didn't have to explain to Michelle. She was also staring at the dark blue sedan parked two blocks up. Edgar.

  "Damn," he muttered.

  He put the car in reverse and he backed up until the car was completely blocked from sight.

  "What's he doing here?" Michelle whispered.

  He could have responded in any number of ways. Told her that since they'd lost him in Toledo, Edgar's best chance of finding them was by camping out here because it was likely Gerald had told Edgar of Lili's whereabouts. He could have said he didn't know. He could have told her not to worry.

  But he did none of them. Instead, he put the car in park and started to get out.

  "Listen to me carefully, Michelle. I want you to drive two blocks up then turn left. Park between two cars if you can, preferably under some trees. Wait there for me."

  She reached out and grabbed his arm desperately. "Do you think Lili's there?"

  "That's what I'm going to find out."

  He gently pried her fingers from his arm, but before he closed the door, he curved his hand over the side of her face. She instantly closed her eyes and leaned into his touch, making him want to groan.

  There were so many conflicting emotions crowding his chest, he didn't know what to do. He withdrew his hand then closed the door, motioning for her to go. She did so, slowing after she cleared the cross street, likely watching him in the rearview mirror. He turned the corner and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his sweats.

  The feel of the unfamiliar material reminded him that he should be somewhere in the backwoods of the Blue Ridge Mountains right now, devising ways to make David pay for dragging him out there. Instead, he was falling head over heels in love with a woman who was turning his life upside down. Searching for her daughter with only this one hope of finding her. And it was eating his gut not knowing what secret lurked in Michelle's past, a secret serious enough to have Edgar tailing her for two straight days.

  He didn't bother pretending he didn't see his fellow agent. He strode to the side of the car and rapped on the closed window.

  Edgar jumped, having been slumped over catching a nap. Then he scrambled to get out of the car. "For God's sake, McCoy, you could have given me a freakin' heart attack."

  "Yeah, well, consider it do
wn payment on the large debt I owe you."

  Edgar frowned at him. "Did you just crack a joke, McCoy?"

  Jake ignored him and looked at the house across the street. "How long have you known the little girl's been here?"

  "Since last night." Edgar straightened his suit coat. "Only she's not there anymore. Grandparents took off with her yesterday morning, right after you and the Frenchwoman left."

  "It's Michelle." Jake stared at him. "Any idea where they went?"

  He shrugged. "Could be just about anywhere, considering the resources these guys have. East coast, west coast. Seeing as the girl has a legal American passport, they might even have left the country. And seeing as the old man is retired…"

  Jake ran his hand over his face, suppressing the desire to hit Edgar. But coldcocking Edgar wouldn't get him anywhere, because his fellow agent was completely right. There was no telling where they'd gone, or when, if ever, they'd be back.

  Not that it mattered. If the agent next to him had a say, Michelle would be heading to France soon anyway.

  "So where's the French … Ms. Lambert?" Edgar asked, scanning the street.

  Jake shrugged. "Could be anywhere. East coast. West."

  Edgar squinted at him in the setting sun. "That would be funny except I know you never joke, and this is no laughing matter."

  "Yeah."

  "You know your ass is in trouble, don't you? mean, she's told you why we refused her extension request?"

  Jake narrowed his gaze on the other man, his chest tightening in apprehension.

  He'd wanted to ask Michelle directly about what marred her record. Wanted her to be the one to tell him, help him understand. But if the past day was any indication of how long it would take him to get around to it, he'd never find out.

  "Yeah, I know," he lied.

  Edgar's burst of laughter surprised him. "Sure you do, old boy. Sure you do."

  Jake was caught between needing to go and needing to stay. He glanced up the street. His car, of course, was nowhere in sight. Michelle would be sitting where he'd instructed her to, scared spitless, waiting for him to return.

  "So you going to arrest me?" he asked.

  "Naw, you know I wouldn't do that. Not without the woman here, anyway."

  Jake figured as much. He nodded and began walking away.

  "Hey, McCoy, during time outs, you know, from all that hot and heavy sex you're probably having with her, why don't you try asking her about Blue Earth and a bunch of highly classified naval documents that came up missing in San Francisco about ten years ago?"

  Jake forced himself to keep moving. To act as if what Edgar said didn't hit him like a blow to the gut. To pretend it didn't matter that what hid in Michelle's past was probably worse than anything he'd imagined.

  The problem was, it did matter to him, deeply.

  * * *

  Chapter 12

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  It was the following morning when Jake finally pulled into the driveway of the old McCoy place. His eyelids felt leaden, his body anesthetized as he switched the ignition off and sat staring at the transformed house. As they said they would, Mitch and Liz had erected an ornate iron archway at the end of the driveway, supported by foundations of new red brick. Spelled out at the top was Red Shoe Ranch.

  He looked to where Michelle slept fitfully next to him, her cheeks paler than ever, her curled-up position both defensive and defenseless. She'd said Lili's name several times during the night and startled herself awake, only to find that nothing had changed; they were still heading to D.C.

  Only Jake hadn't taken her to D.C. He'd brought her here. He looked at the house. He really didn't know why he'd driven here or what he hoped to accomplish by bringing Michelle. If he had a brain in his head, he'd take her to the airport and put her on the first airplane out. Then again, if he had a brain in his head, he would have found out why the INS wanted her out of the country so badly.

  If his three-year stretch in the Marines so long ago had taught him anything, it was the importance of protecting one's borders. Not just from the enemies without, but also from the enemies within. Posted for fifteen long months in a war-torn Third World country, one experience stood out starkly from the others: the day he'd watched an old lady try to cross the border. She needed the help of a cane to walk, each of her wrinkles telling a different story of hardship and pain, and appeared to pose a danger to no one. Then a search found that she carried bricks of plastic explosives strapped to her body, hidden by oversize housecoats and a shawl—explosives that would have killed people of her own country had they gotten through, all because of a difference in theologies.

  The experience had twisted Jake's gut. It had also made that much easier his decision about which law enforcement branch to work in when he got home.

  Knowing he had not only failed in his job, but had wittingly allowed someone who possibly posed a threat to his country, his home—no matter how he felt about her—to remain there for a prolonged length of time, sat like acid in his stomach.

  A voice in the back of his mind told him that he was overreacting, that the hurting woman next to him who was murmuring her daughter's name in her sleep couldn't possibly pose a threat to anybody, much less the big, bad United States of America. But he refused to lie to himself anymore, refused to continue to play the fool as he had so willingly the past few days.

  "Then what the hell are you doing here, McCoy?" he muttered, realizing that he'd brought that same threat home, straight to his family's doorstep. He should have taken her to his apartment in Woodley Park—where Edgar probably would have knocked on the door quicker than they could have closed it.

  Michelle stirred at the sound of his voice at the same time that Mitch's old dog, Goliath, spotted the car and issued a short but loud series of barks.

  "Where … where are we?" Michelle asked, her accent thick, her heavy-lidded eyes sultry. Jake tried to ignore how sexy she looked. That was what had gotten him into trouble in the first place.

  Yeah, like he had put up a fight. Not only had he given in, he'd given in over and over and over again. He didn't think there was a time in his life when he'd made love to a woman so often in such a short span of time and so … thoroughly. Not that it mattered. He was filled with the urge to press her back against the seat and have at her all over again. It was time he started thinking with his brain rather than other parts of his anatomy.

  "The house I grew up in," he said. "Come on, get your stuff. I'll take you inside so you can get some sleep."

  He felt her gaze on him, much as he'd periodically felt it on him during the long drive home. He sensed that she knew something was wrong, but she hadn't asked him what—which was just as well, because he likely wouldn't have told her. He needed time to get his thoughts together, time to get used to the idea that the woman he thought he knew so well was in fact very different. He reached for the door handle, inexplicably relieved when she did the same on the other side.

  Goliath began to jump, but one look from Jake sent his mammoth paws to the ground. He really didn't know why everyone else had a discipline problem with the pooch. Goliath always behaved well around Jake.

  Spotting Michelle, the slobber puss sprang for her, stamping paw prints over the front of her shirt, his furry butt waggling back and forth wildly along with his bushy tail.

  "Merde," Michelle said, though the smile on her face revealed her true feelings. Jake ordered the dog down, and Goliath immediately obeyed, sitting at Michelle's feet and whining.

  "Come on, let's go inside." Jake turned toward the door then stopped. It was just after dawn, and he'd hoped they could sneak in without notice. No such luck. The front steps were jammed full of McCoy males and two McCoy females.

  Jake grimaced and rubbed his forehead as he led the way toward the silent group. He really wasn't up for this. There would be questions. There would be answers. Then there would be more questions. And if he wasn't careful, his sisters-in-law Melanie and Liz would be planning a wedding for hi
m and Michelle in no time.

  He slowly moved his hand from his forehead, realizing he already was married. Worse, he was still wearing the wedding ring. Damn. The last thing he wanted was for these guys to know what was going on straight from the start. There were things he needed to do, calls that needed to be made.

  He and Michelle finally stopped near the foot of the stairs. Jake cleared his throat as seven pairs of eyes looked back and forth between them. "This is, um, Michelle," he said. "My wife."

  Holy mother of God, Jesus and Joseph! Had he just said what he thought he had? Judging by the wide eyes, dropped jaws and a couple of groans he got, yes, he very much indeed had said it. Even Michelle stared at him in openmouthed shock

  "Hi … good morning," Michelle said from next to him, pushing her purse strap on her shoulder, looking about ready to bolt.

  Not that he could blame her. If he'd been given a second, he would have been leading the way.

  "Oh, she is French!" Liz was the first to regain her composure as she jostled her way through the crowd to approach Michelle. "Hi, I'm Liz. And the other lone female over there is Melanie. It's a—" her gaze strayed in Jake, a knowing twinkle in her eyes "—pleasure to meet you, Michelle. Welcome to the family."

  Behind her, Sean cleared his throat. Jake berated himself again for having brought Michelle home, but for entirely different reasons than before. He hadn't even thought of how his family might interpret his actions. Okay, so he had never brought a woman home before, but this was different. Michelle wasn't a woman. He cringed. Of course she was a woman, but not just any woman. And now that he had introduced her as his wife…

  Ah, hell, who was he trying to kid? It was one thing being on the road with her, just the two of them. Quite another to be here, being judged by the only people who had ever really mattered in his life. Truth was, he didn't quite know what he was feeling. A part of him wanted to step in front of Michelle, protect her from curious McCoy eyes. Another wanted to take his words back, explain exactly what he meant by wife. But when it came down to it, he was completely incapable of doing either.

  Liz looked at him meaningfully, then took Michelle by the arm. "Come on. Let me introduce you to the rest of the McCoy clan. Oh, and don't let all that testosterone scare you. They may be all rough and tough when it comes to the law, but they're all just a bunch of softies when it comes to the fairer sex."