Never Trust A Lady Read online

  But no, there she sat, soaking up sunshine, enjoying the view, apparently waiting…for what? Or who? He couldn’t decide whether she was waiting for a contact, carrying out some sinister agenda, or whether, with the instinctive cunning of a hunted animal, she was merely seeking high ground in order to sniff the wind, to see who might be on her trail.

  Campbell had spooked her badly; she had to be wondering whether he was still out there somewhere. Hawk was wondering about that, too. He hadn’t spotted him yet, but that didn’t mean much. Unless the guy was a complete idiot, he wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

  One way or another, intentionally or not, Jane Carlysle was proving to be a lot better player at this game than he’d expected.

  And why couldn’t he make up his mind about her? After giving himself a severe talking-to this morning, he was pretty sure he had the lust thing under control, but still the picture in his mind labeled Jane Carlysle remained cloudy and out of focus. His usually keen instincts didn’t seem to be functioning where she was concerned. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out who she was and where she fit in all this. And that worried him. In fact, it was driving him crazy.

  For a long time Hawk sat still, hands resting on the GPS monitor lying open in his lap, with The Wall there at his back and the sun soaking into the leather of the old brown bomber jacket, like a warm hand resting on his shoulder.

  Finally, like someone coming out of a doze, he shook himself, checked the monitor one more time to reassure himself that Mrs. Carlysle was still keeping her enigmatic vigil, then shut it down, and closed and locked the briefcase.

  A young couple was moving down the paved walk in front of The Wall, close together, hands linked. Hawk watched them, for a moment envying their closeness. He wondered if it made it any easier, having someone there. Or if it was a thing better done with only one’s own ghosts for company.

  Seeing as how he had no choice in the matter, he squared his shoulders, walked over to the directory, peeled back the pages and ran his finger down the endless list of names. Rapidly, at first, but then his trailing finger slowed…and paused. He felt a tremor deep in his belly.

  He drew a long breath, then did an about-face and walked quickly down the slope, into the long black gash in the earth’s green skin known as The Wall.

  He moved along without pausing, part of him noticing the details of his surroundings, as was his ingrained habit, taking in the tokens left here and there along the base of the black granite wall-American flags, flowers, photographs, hastily written notes-and the subdued presence of park security. He noticed that the casual visitors tended to keep a certain distance, strolling by quietly, almost reverently, on the outside of the walkway, now and then pointing, like polite strangers in church. Mostly it was those on a more personal quest who moved in close. Who seemed to feel a need to reach out and touch.

  He found the name he was looking for at The Wall’s highest point, where the names were thickest, the numbers the most overwhelming. He was glad that it was only a little above head height and easy to reach. Slowly he lifted his hand and traced the letters: Walter T. Hawkins. Then the diamond that designated KIA-killed in action. He opened his fingers and placed his palm flat against the polished granite. He hadn’t expected it to feel so warm, almost like a living thing instead of polished stone.

  In that moment something swelled and burst inside him, as unpreventable as an unexpected sneeze. It was a few minutes before he was able to mumble the words he’d waited so many years to say.

  “Hey, Dad. I guess I should have come before. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long…”

  Jane lost track of how long she sat on the cold marble steps of the Lincoln Memorial, watching the tourists come and go, seeing watchers in the shadows, a terrorist behind every tree. So she wasn’t sure exactly when it was that she began to get angry. When she came to realize that the intruder in her hotel room might have stolen something from her that was of greater value than any painting, even a real Renoir. When she became determined that if it was the last thing she ever did, she was going to get that something back. No art thief or petty burglar was going to run her life!

  What was it that nice young instructor in the self-defense class she’d taken in those first nervous, vulnerable months after the divorce-what was his name?-Shing Lee, that was it. What had Shing always said?

  Take control, take action!

  Yes, that was it. To get over this awful fear and sense of violation, she had to take back control. She had to take action. It was all up to her.

  The first thing she made up her mind to do was what she’d planned to do in the first place-see the sights of Washington. Later on, if she felt like it and it was convenient, she’d take the painting to a gallery and have someone tell her what she already knew: that it was an undistinguished Impressionist-style painting, not especially good, but it would look quite nice hanging over her piano.

  And if, during the course of the day, anyone tried to push her down, step on her back and render her unconscious, well…thanks to Shing Lee, she had a trick or two up her own sleeve.

  Just let them try, she thought as she rose somewhat stiffly and started down the steps. Riled and ready, she was almost disappointed not to catch a glimpse of Aaron Campbell lurking in the trees between the Lincoln and Vietnam Memorials.

  But as she made her way slowly down the walkway past the rows of makeshift tent stalls manned by disabled veterans in their long hair and beards and tattered camouflage fatigues, selling memorabilia and souvenirs of a war they couldn’t leave behind, she found the incident in her hotel room, and all her fears and unanswered questions slipping into the back of her mind. As always when confronted with reminders of that war and those times, she developed an irritating little itch of guilt.

  At the height of the dying and the turbulence and dissension, she’d had other things on her mind. In the early years of a marriage that had been troubled even then-though she’d never have admitted such a thing-she remembered feeling only a mild sense of sorrow and regret when her mother had called with the news that a boy Jane had gone to school with was MIA-missing in action in Vietnam. In recent years, though, she’d found herself thinking quite a bit about Jimmy Hill, though she’d never known him well at all. He’d been two years ahead of her, and in a different crowd altogether. But still…she had known him. She could recall his face even now. Where would he be today if he’d survived the war? Might he be like one of these men, with their maimed bodies and nightmares, their grizzled faces and haunted eyes?

  So it was partly to scratch that little itch of guilt that Jane decided to look up Jimmy Hill’s name in the directory, partly to try to feel some sort of connectedness to a period of history that had inflicted such grievous injury on an entire generation, while leaving her virtually untouched. Beyond that, she had no idea what she hoped to accomplish by finding Jimmy’s name on that wall of so many thousands of names. Touch it, maybe? Say a little prayer for his family? She didn’t know. But it seemed important, somehow.

  Her heart began to beat faster when she found the name in the book, followed by a cross that, according to the directory, meant MIA. But the awe didn’t hit her until she was approaching The Wall itself…until she saw the first of the names. So many names. That was when she knew that she should not have come alone, and that she would leave something of herself behind.

  What was it about the place? She vaguely remembered controversy when it first opened…probably the statues added since had assuaged any disappointment that might have lingered. But it wasn’t the statues people came to see. It wasn’t the statues that made strong men cry.

  Like that one there, the tall, lean man in the brown leather jacket, standing with his palm pressed against the mirror-like surface of the monument, head bowed, shoulders hunched with pain.

  Chapter 6

  She halted as if the wall itself had suddenly shifted to block her path, while her heartbeat stumbled and then lurched on, like a drunk running downhi
ll.

  Tom Hawkins. Yes, it was-and she’d have known him at once in spite of the old, worn-looking bomber jacket, baseball cap and aviator sunglasses he was wearing, and the oddly out-of-place briefcase he was carrying, if it hadn’t been for the grief that seemed to weigh him down like an invisible net.

  For a few moments she stood motionless, in shock not so much at seeing him Here-she was beginning to half expect him to turn up “coincidentally” wherever she happened to be-or even at the giddy lift she’d felt beneath her ribs at the moment of recognition. But seeing him like this. Hurt and suffering, and so dreadfully vulnerable. It seemed almost indecent that she should see him like this, like surprising a stranger in the shower.

  And yet it was her nature to comfort and nurture, and the urge to go to him and offer what solace she could was all but overwhelming. Or…maybe after all it would be better if she just turned and walked away and left him his privacy and solitude.

  How long she stood there in breathless indecision she didn’t know, but in the end he looked up and saw her, and the choice wasn’t hers to make.

  “Well,” he said in a cracked-sounding voice, “we meet again.”

  Jane mumbled something equally inane and was rewarded with his crooked smile, which seemed to her even more heartbreakingly poignant than usual in that context.

  “Are you-” he gestured toward the scrap of paper on which she’d written down the coordinates for Jimmy’s name “-looking for someone?”

  “What? Oh, well, yes, sort of. Just a…” The guilt flooded her, filling her cheeks with warmth. She shook her head, erasing that self-conscious denigration, and said firmly, “A friend. He’s officially MIA.”

  “His name’ll be here,” Tom said, his tone dry, the curve of his lips becoming even more ironic. “It’ll just have a little cross after it.”

  “Yes, that’s what… And then, I guess, if they’re ever found, they just chip out the rest.” Jane watched her finger trace the diamond after a name and was astonished that her hand could appear so steady when she felt so jangled inside.

  With that same soft irony, Tom drawled, “I don’t think they’re gonna be doing much more of that, do you?”

  Uncertain what he meant, Jane glanced at him, but was unable to see anything at all of his eyes, just her own reflection in the sunglasses. She looked away again, down at the paper in her hand, and muttered distractedly, “I think…it should be somewhere near here.”

  They weren’t the words she’d meant to say. Where were those words, the words of motherly comfort and sympathy she’d meant to offer a wounded and grieving stranger? They seemed impossible to utter now. He didn’t seem at all wounded, and she felt not the least bit maternal. What she felt most like was a girt-a very young girl, shy and awkward and out of her depth.

  He took the paper from her, slipping it from between her nerveless fingers, asking permission with a quirk of his eyebrows. Silently she watched him as he moved along the walkway, scanning the list of names. She could see him reflected in the polished granite, along with the other visitors, a small V of American flags and the Washington Monument.

  “Here,” he said, pointing to a spot about two feet from the base of the wall. “Is that the one?”

  Jane nodded. Lowering herself to one knee, she slowly traced the letters with her fingertips. James P. Hill. And then the cross.

  From behind her, his voice came, dry as the sands that blew day and night across the California deserts of her childhood. “Was he somebody close to you?”

  She looked up, startled by the gruffness and by the unmistakable compassion in the voice, to find a face as unreadable as stone, the lenses of the sunglasses that gazed back at her as opaque as the face of the wall itself.

  She shook her head, surprised to find that her throat was tight, and that for those few moments, at least, the denial she was about to utter was a lie. “No,” she murmured. “Just somebody I went to school with. A long time ago.”

  “Yeah, but I’ll bet you remember his face.” Tom’s smile twitched off center as he held out his hand to help her up.

  He saw it come, then, that lighting deep in her eyes, that little flare of gladness and recognition.

  “Yes-yes, I do. How did you know?”

  He shrugged and felt her hand warm his as he steadied her to her feet. The sun struck reddish highlights into her dark hair and tipped her lashes with gold. For the first time he noticed the faded ghosts of freckles across the tops of her cheeks and on the bridge of her nose.

  She took a deep breath as she brushed off her slacks and looked sort of sideways at him, and he knew it was coming. He braced himself, but she said it so softly, so gently, that the question didn’t seem an assault at all. “And you…the name you were touching…he was someone close to you?”

  He tried to take some of the pressure off his chest by releasing air in a short little laugh. It didn’t help much, and neither did the deep breath that followed. “Yeah, you could say that,” he said finally, focusing his gaze somewhere above her head, on the white puffy clouds racing across the blue spring sky. How had it got to be so beautiful, he wondered irrelevantly, after such a crappy day yesterday?

  “A friend?” she persisted. “Or…”

  “My father.”

  “Oh. Oh dear, I’m so sorry.”

  He could see that she was startled, that it was a possibility that hadn’t occurred to her. He didn’t know if it was that or the genuine compassion in her eyes that made him explain, in a drawl that tried hard to be casual. “Yeah, he was a naval aviator-a commander at the time of his death, promoted posthumously to captain, which I guess made a difference to someone-my mother, maybe. He was stationed on a carrier in the South China Sea. Flew one too many missions, I guess you could say. And…” he could feel his face cramp with his attempt at a smile as he touched the name he’d located for her, and the MIA cross that followed it “…I guess you could say we were one of the lucky ones. We got a body to bury- It’s over there-” he made a gesture with his hand “-in Arlington.”

  He could feel her eyes on him, hear even the tiny throat-clearing sound she made before she said, “That must have been very hard for you.” And then, again so gently he didn’t even notice that she was chip-chipping away at his carefully constructed barricades, “How old were you when it happened?”

  And again he was mildly surprised when he heard himself answer. “I was sixteen.”

  “A difficult.age.”

  He shrugged. “I guess. It was for me, anyway.”

  They were strolling along the paved walkway now, close together but nowhere near touching. In spite of that, he was aware of everything about her, the clothes she wore-same slacks and blazer as yesterday, but a different turtleneck, teal blue this time-every movement she made, no matter how slight. Aware that once again she’d turned her head to look at him. He wondered what she saw when she gazed at him like that, so thoughtful and silent. Wondered why it made him so uneasy. And why he allowed it.

  “I was pretty difficult at all ages, if you want to know the truth,” he said, taking a breath. “My dad was gone a lot, and I didn’t get along with my mom. Hell, nobody did-including my dad, which was probably why he was gone a lot.” He glanced sideways at Jane to see if she’d smiled at his poor attempt at humor, and was inordinately pleased to see the laugh lines deepening at the corners of her mouth and eyes. He found himself relaxing, at ease with her in a way he couldn’t remember being with anyone in many, many years.

  “Anyway, I was already mad at my dad for going to ‘Nam-he’d volunteered for the duty, he didn’t have to go. And I was mad at my mother, blaming her for making him so miserable he’d rather be in that hellhole than home with his family. After he was shot down, well…I was one pretty angry, messed-up kid. Truth is, I don’t know what might have happened if it hadn’t been for-” He stopped, quivering with shock at what he’d almost said.

  She glanced at him and, instead of pursuing it, asked, “Do you have any brothers and
sisters?”

  “A brother.” He said it on an exhalation, relaxing again, with a chuckle that was more fond than ironic. “Jack. He’s navy, too, a real chip off the old block-lives somewhere in Texas, at the moment. Has a wife and three…no, four kids.” His mouth twisted in a way that was familiar to him; afraid of what his companion might read in that expression, he looked over at her and turned it into a grin. “As you’ve probably gathered, we don’t see a lot of each other.”

  For a moment, those thoughtful, compassionate eyes seemed to bore right into his, though he knew they were safely hidden behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses. But she didn’t say anything, and he shrugged and went on, “Jack was pretty much the only one who could get along with Mother, so of course he always took her side. He was at the academy when Dad died. Naturally he came right home-we were living here in Washington then. And needless to say, that didn’t help my attitude any. Like I said, I don’t know what I would have done…” he took a deep breath and this time let himself finish it “…if it hadn’t been for…a friend of mine.”

  “A friend?” The prompt was so soft it seemed almost to come from inside his own mind.

  He nodded. She’s good, he thought; really good. She could dig the life story out of a stone. “Their house backed up to ours. She was…I guess you could say she was my best friend.”

  My best friend. How odd it was to hear the words, not like anything that might have come from him, but like the vibrations of chords played by some unseen musician and left hanging in the cool, winy air. He paused for a moment to listen, thinking that if he only listened hard enough…

  “It’s good that you had someone,” Jane said gently. So much pain, she thought, watching his averted profile, the strange, almost expectant tilt of his head. So much grief…but not all, I think, for his father.

  She said nothing more, but settled onto a vacant bench with a little sigh and pulled her tote bag into her lap, leaving it to him whether to tell her about the friend whose name he couldn’t bring himself to utter.