A Kiss in the Dark (Sam and Rick #2)

Chapter 7

7

Wednesday, 10:43 p.m.

A box of cats would have been easier to manage than Samantha Jellicoe—Sarah Martin—Richard reflected. His arse was asleep, the arm he had wrapped around Samantha was halfway there, and from the dropping temperature they would have snow in Central Park at any moment. Before bloody Thanksgiving.

The weather and his blood supply, though, were the simple bits. He couldn’t even imagine what was going on in Samantha’s agile mind right now, just as he couldn’t imagine what he would do if suddenly confronted with a parent he’d thought both long gone and uninterested. Martin Jellicoe had spun some tales in his life, but the one he’d told his daughter about his wife and the circumstances under which he had left home had to be the cruelest.

The lie had certainly made things easier on Martin, or so Richard assumed. Make up a villain, a reason to flee, and there would be no reason to look back. Not for Samantha, anyway. And if as a side effect, her memory had become more precise, well, a thief could make good use of that, too.

He’d used her to grift, taught her to pick pockets before she could ride a bike, showed her how to follow in his footsteps without ever giving her a choice in the matter. And then, when he’d realized that she’d not only surpassed him in skill, but that she was a better human than he was, Martin had left her behind, too.

The thing that had tickled his brain about Anne Hughes, the thing that he couldn’t put a finger on, had been that he did know her. Or at least he knew who some of her physical traits, her undercutting humor, reminded him of. The moment Tom had said it, everything had snapped into place.

Generally, when he figured something tricky out, he felt at least momentary triumph, or satisfaction. Not this time. His first thought had been that he needed to tell Samantha, and his second thought had been that he had no idea how he would go about doing so.

If he’d needed a measurement of how much his life had changed over the past year, the fact that how to give someone information bothered him more than sitting in the middle of Central Park on a moonless night made for a pretty large yardstick.

He could keep talking to Samantha, point out things she’d probably already realized, but she didn’t need him for that. Other than Martin and Walter Barstone, she’d spent most of her life on her own. She dealt with—or she had dealt with—most of the traumas in her life alone. Well, she wasn’t alone any longer, even if the most effective thing he could provide was his presence and a hug.

“How the fuck do I tell her something like this?” Samantha muttered, her breath fogging in the cold, damp air. “Oh, hi, Anne. I brought you some coffee, and by the way, Bradley Martin is my dad, which makes me your daughter. I’m a crook, too. Creamer?”

God, he loved her sense of humor, the way she used it with equal effectiveness as a weapon, as a coping mechanism, and to offer support to her small, odd circle of friends and family. “You could lead her to the answer, so she figures it out herself.”

Her shoulders shrugged. “Tell her my dad is Martin Jellicoe, and that he sometimes goes by other names, that he always told me my mom didn’t want us, and we left home when I was four? That could work, but man, if there was a way to soften the blow…especially if she turns out to be the innocent party in all this, I’d kind of prefer that.”

“ You’re the innocent party in all this,” he pointed out. “Stop putting Martin’s actions on your own shoulders.”

“I was his partner.”

“You’re his daughter, you were four years old, and he didn’t give you a choice.”

“That’s debat—”

“Hey, you dudes up on the rock,” a voice called from the darkness around them. “You having a party up there?”

“Yeah. Are we invited?” another voice added.

Shit . Just what they needed. He opened his mouth as Samantha’s spine stiffened beneath his hand.

“‘Dudes’?” she repeated, scoffing. “That’s kind of dated, isn’t it? What about ‘dawgs’ or ‘peeps,’ or ‘youse guys’?”

“Hey, the bitch is a comedian. Get the fuck down here.”

“Come the fuck up here, so I can kick you in the face,” she retorted, the touch of a Bronx accent in her speech now.

“How about I shoot you in the face?” came from below.

“‘How about I shoot you in the face?’” she mimicked. “How stupid are you? We’re not here for you tonight, but if you make me climb down from this rock, I will kick your ass and break your arm before I cuff you. Or you can go away, try to avoid the asshole I am after before he shanks you in the spine like he did the three guys in the ICU at Mercy, and try your luck somewhere else. Your choice.”

“Shit,” came the muttering from the shrubbery around them.

“She ain’t a damn cop.”

Richard took a breath. “She is a bloody cop. I’m Interpol. And you don’t want the shit I can send your way, either. Trust me.”

“Man, they’re lying,” a third voice announced.

“It ain’t worth finding out. Come on.”

A bit of rustling and cursing faded into the distance, replaced by the steady background murmur of car horns and engines and, somewhere faintly in the distance, a mariachi band. Richard let out his breath. “Do you at least have a weapon on you?” he breathed, leaning over to kiss Samantha’s auburn hair.

“I’m holding a pretty sharp rock in one hand,” she murmured back, the faux Bronx accent gone from her voice again. It wasn’t just foreign languages she spoke; she was hell with regional accents, as well. “You?”

“I have my Glock in my pocket. I do try not to use it, though. Christ, Samantha.”

“Oh, come on. They wanted some cash, with no fuss. I gave them fuss.”

“You impersonated a police officer.”

“Nope. I never said ‘cop.’ You did. So it’s your ass that would be busted, Mister Interpol.”

Personally, he thought he’d added a certain gravitas and believability to her statements, but saying anything would probably only encourage her. “I was being your backup.”

She straightened her legs, pointing her toes. “You did a good job. Two people telling the same lie makes it fifty times more believable.” For a second, she leaned her head against his shoulder. “I’m getting cold. Let’s go home.”

“Yes.” Standing, he offered her a hand and helped her to her feet. He’d be lucky if he didn’t break his neck climbing down from the boulders, but he had no intention of admitting that. Instead, he watched her descend, then put his feet precisely where hers had been and held on with his fingertips until his shoes touched dirt again.

“I think it’s going to snow tonight,” Samantha observed, breathing into her cupped hands.

He tilted his head, taking her hands in his to warm them. “That’s your takeaway from this evening? You just stopped three men from robbing us, you know.”

Her gaze met his. “Do I lose points if I admit I was kinda hoping they’d come after us so I could punch some people? I’m glad you didn’t have to shoot anybody, though.”

Yes, they’d definitely grown up in different worlds. And yet there they were, together. “I love you, Samantha.”

“I love you, too. My name’s apparently Sarah, though.” She made a face. “This is so freakin’ fucked up. I need to call Stoney.”

“Do you think he knows something?” Shifting, he kept one of her hands in his and started them toward the nearest line of lights.

“I’ll kill him if he does and never told me. I’d bet he had a couple of puzzle pieces but no way to put them all together, but I’m going to make him tell me that. If he passes that test, I want his take on this.”

Little as Richard cared for the degree of influence Walter Barstone had on Samantha’s life, he did at least make for a more concerned and caring father than Martin Jellicoe or Bradley Martin or whatever the man called himself these days did.

“I can speak to Anne on your behalf, if you prefer,” he offered.

“You’d probably be more delicate about it than I would be,” she returned, leaning into his arm as they walked, “but no. It’s my gig. I’ll do it. You’re going into the office tomorrow.”

“That was the plan, yes. But things have changed. You don’t have to—”

“I know I don’t have to,” Samantha interrupted, heading them more to the left. Perhaps she was using the stars to guide them, because he couldn’t see any landmarks there in the dark. “It’s my mess; I’ll sort it out.”

He left it at that, however little he agreed with her statement. All the blame for this plus some additional bullshit went to Martin Jellicoe, as far as he was concerned. How like Samantha’s wayward father, to let her fall into a mess, perhaps even pull some strings to get her tangled into it in the first place, and then leave her to sort it out and face the consequences while he ran off to make snide remarks from the shadows.

For all they knew, Martin might have done some nudging to set up the meeting between Samantha and Anne to begin with. If this was his idea of being a good guy, though, Richard didn’t look forward to seeing him being a bad one. A worse one than he’d already proven to be.

They reached the street just half a block south from where they’d jumped into the park, so he could mentally add “wilderness guide” to Samantha’s list of accomplishments. If she’d decided to lose him in the park, he would probably still be in there, tangled in the bushes at the bottom of some ravine. But she hadn’t tried to lose him. She’d wanted him there. And that in itself took some of the chill off the night.

“Do I have leaves in my hair?” she asked, as they approached the apartment and Vince pulled open the front door for them.

“No. You look as gorgeous as you always do.”

She squeezed his fingers. “If I wasn’t dreading tomorrow so much, I’d say you were going to get lucky tonight.”

“I am lucky. I’m with you.”

“Damn.” Stopping just inside the lobby, she slid her arms around his shoulders, lifted up on her toes, and kissed him on the mouth.

“Though if you do want to get lucky, I’m available,” he murmured against her mouth as she released him.

With a half grin she led the way to the elevator. “Vince was all googly-eyed. He probably wishes he had his phone out.”

“Is there lots of money in selling photos of us kissing, then?” Richard asked, leaning back against the side wall of the elevator.

“Probably. I’m going to hit the treadmill after I call Stoney. I’m still squirming inside my skin. And yes, sex would burn off some adrenaline, but I need to think, too. I’m still not sure how I feel about all this, much less how I’m going to approach Anne. If I approach Anne about it.”

He wanted to be close by, somewhere he could be certain she wasn’t just pretending to be dealing with all this. Somewhere he could make sure she was well, physically and mentally. As he’d been learning, however, strong, independent women required space. Nodding, he tapped the pad for the penthouse. “I’ll be about, probably not sleeping, either.”

She walked in with him, heading straight for the great room and the wall of windows that overlooked Central Park. “I knew—know—Martin’s a liar. Why would I just…accept that he told me the truth about my mother?” she muttered.

“Because you were four years old and he was not only a trusted adult, he was your only means of safety and support,” Rick retorted, his tone sharper as he considered. She was formidable now; as a youngster, she’d needed people about her that she could trust. Martin Jellicoe had most certainly not been that person.

Shaking out her hands, Samantha leaned her forehead against the glass. “This could still be a mistake. Martin could be trying to wrap me up in something to distract me while he lifts the shiny stuff.”

“Triple-checked. Tom Donner.”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay. Is it too late for us to run away and join the circus? I could work the trapeze, and you could be the ringmaster.”

“Thank you for including me. Call Walter, love. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

It was gratifying that she wanted him included in running away to the circus, but since he’d met her and her odd circle of friends, he frequently felt like a ringmaster already. Every bit of him that controlled companies, set agendas for hundreds of employees, wanted to hear the conversation between her and Walter. If the fence had had even an inkling that Samantha had been stolen from her mother, things were going to get brutal.

And yet, this was still all her play. He would be included as far as she would allow, and as far as he could shove himself into the proceedings. With that firmly in mind, he headed into the kitchen and made himself a strong, hot coffee. Regardless of how that conversation went, this was going to be a long evening.

* * *

Samantha called Stoney on Facetime. It was against their general policy of avoiding exposure, but she wanted to see his face, his expression, when she told him the news. He and Martin had worked together for years before she’d come along. That didn’t mean he knew Martin had stolen her; her dad had fed her the “your mom kicked us out” story for as far back as she could remember, after all. But Stoney wasn’t a kid, and he might have figured out some things that had flown right over her head.

“What the fuck, Sam?” he said, holding the phone so it showed just the edge of one ear and the corner of his kitchen ceiling. “Call me back off video.”

“Nope. This is a face-to-face conversation,” she replied, glaring at his ear. “Your face. Put it on my phone.”

With an audible growl he shifted the phone so she could see both of his dark brown eyes glaring back at her. “I liked these fucking things better when they were just phones,” he muttered. “What is it, then?”

“Anne Hughes,” she said, her tongue tasting the words all over again. Did they sound familiar? Were they something she should have remembered?

“The Sotheby’s woman? What about her?” Stoney’s frown deepened, lining his forehead all the way up his bald scalp.

“Are you sure you don’t know that name from somewhere?”

“Honey, it’s after ten o’clock. I’m watching Law and Order , and I just took a melatonin because I have a dawn-hour phone call to make in the morning. What do you want?”

She took a breath. “Did Martin ever mention Anne Hughes to you? Ever?” The questioning was tough, both because she wanted him to answer in a particular way, and because she didn’t want to lead him to that answer. “Think about it, really carefully.”

“Martin? Why him?” he asked. “Is he tangled up in this?”

“Yes. Anne Hughes, Stoney. Focus.”

“Fine. Don’t tell me shit.”

“Okay. Martin challenged me to a duel over the Sotheby’s stuff,” she snapped. “Anne Hughes.”

“The…crap. Okay, okay. Anne Hughes,” he repeated, his frown flattening a little as his eyes lost focus. “Anne Hughes. And she definitely has something to do with Martin?”

“Yes. Do you know the name from back in the day?”

“Back in the day Anne Hughes. That at least narrows it down a little.” After a long moment he shook his head. “I know a lot of people, Sam. And Martin and I had a lot of conversations over a lot of beers. If you could give me a situation, or a place, or…” His dark face turned ashen, and the phone jumped in his hand, making his image jiggle. “Annie. I remember an Annie he had a thing with. Was— Is—” The room behind him shifted as he sat up straight. “Good God, Sam, is that the same Annie?”

Abrupt tears pushed at the back of her eyes. “You knew? You knew ?”

“No! I mean, I knew your mom was named Annie, and that she got tired of Martin’s lying ass and kicked you guys out. That’s when you came and stayed with me for a few weeks. The first time I met you.” He stared at her hard through the camera, his eyes wary, and abruptly sympathetic. “From the way you’re asking questions, Anne Hughes is Annie. Jeez, honey. That must have been awkward. You didn’t punch her, did you? I mean, Sotheby’s is a nice gig for your straight-and-narrow plan.”

“No, I didn’t punch her.”

“Smart. But how did you know—and how did she know it was you?”

“She doesn’t. I only know because Martin sent her a stupid note, which is why she wanted to hire extra security, and then Rick had Donner do some digging into her past because Rick’s nearly as paranoid as you are.”

“Christ.”

She kept her attention on him as best she could through the tiny screen, his expression, his body language, and the way all the blood had left his dark face. It looked legit, even if she factored in that she wanted it to be legit. He knew the same story she did, except that he’d had a first name—one he probably hadn’t heard uttered in twenty years.

“She filed a missing person’s report on me,” she said. “And they were married. Did you know that?”

“No.” Stoney shifted again. “Of all the…Your dad was a wild man when we were younger. From what he said, they moved in together, but he was ready to go when she booted him—you two—out.” He shut his eyes for a second. “He stole you? If I’d known that, I would’ve…I mean, I work with thieves for a living, but that’s too damn much, even for me.”

“Which is probably why he didn’t tell you. He needed you to help watch me while he went around doing cat burglar things and figured out how to get me out of the country. Until I was old enough for the ‘take your daughter to work’ sessions, anyway.” Sam grimaced. “Apparently my name is Sarah.”

His head cocked, and he sank back on his blue couch. “Oh, shit. You know, I thought you had a speech impediment at first, because you kept saying ‘Samantha’ more like ‘Samara.’ Jeez. Things make a lot more sense, all of a sudden.”

“In a crazy, one-way-trip-to-the-Upside-Down kind of way, yeah.”

Stoney pulled the phone closer to his face. “Do you want me to fly up there? I volunteer to kick Martin’s ass if he shows his face.”

“I’m never going to say no to you offering me backup,” she said after a moment. “But I can kick his ass myself.”

“Okay. I’m going to hang out here for a bit, then. See if I can maybe turn over some rocks and find out exactly what Martin is after.”

Nodding, she ended the call and tossed her phone on the couch. On top of this evening’s news, Stoney brought up a good point. What was Martin after? Not only was he messing with an ex, he was messing with an ex-wife and the mom of his one kid. And he’d stepped it up after said kid stepped into the story. Why?

Bare feet padded up behind her, and a shiny can of diet Coke appeared reflected in the window. “I didn’t eavesdrop,” Rick said, handing her the soda when she turned around. “I just glanced into the room and saw you toss the phone.”

“He didn’t know,” she said, understanding what he was very carefully not asking. “With some prodding he remembered there was an Annie who dumped Martin and me, but that’s it.”

“And we’re relieved, yes?”

“Yes. We don’t have to kick Stoney’s ass after we kick Martin’s ass.” She closed her eyes, leaning her right temple against Rick’s chest. God, she was tired, all of a sudden. Like she wanted to sleep for a year. “Evidently I had trouble with my name change, and he thought I had a speech impediment because I kept saying ‘Samantha’ as ‘Samara.’”

“Your father is a wanker.”

In his educated, cultured English accent, the insult sounded even worse. An arm slid around her, just below her shoulders. Holding her up, as much as holding her. And that was good, because she was just about done. She wasn’t finished yet, though, damn it all. “I still have to figure out how to tell Anne. No, I have to figure out how to tell Anne without her a) firing me, and b) calling the Feds on my ass.”

“What say I pop some popcorn and we watch Godzilla fighting other monsters while we figure that out?” Rick suggested.

“I like it. Might even give me a few ideas. Godzilla’s good in a fight, after all. Plus, atomic breath.”

As much as she wanted to sleep, that was her brain just wanting all of this to go away and her body being exhausted from the multiple adrenaline punches she’d been taking all evening. She needed to think and to just…absorb everything. The movie would be good for that, because she’d seen all of them a bunch of times and could just tune most of it out. And Rick would be there, quiet unless she needed to bounce an idea off him, because he knew when to give her physical space and when to give her thinking space, and this was definitely the second one kind of night.

His phone chimed in its boring generic text tone as he sat down beside her and set the popcorn on the coffee table. “Tom,” he said, looking at it. “He wants to know how you took the news. Actually, he’s asking if we’re both still alive.”

She picked up the TV remote and called up the movie. “Tell him we ninja-fought muggers and then I started spinning really fast and burst into flames.”

Rick tapped his phone keyboard, then held it so she could see what he’d typed. “‘We’re managing; both still alive. Call you tomorrow,’” she read aloud. “That’s good, too. Plus you spelled out ‘you’ instead of using the letter U , so he’ll know I didn’t murder you and answer in your place.”

“That would be kind of a lame secret safety code, wouldn’t it?”

“It’s so lame that it would be brilliant. You should think about using it for real.”

“Mm-hmm. Start the movie.”

Sam kicked off her shoes, hit play, and curled up beside him to eat popcorn, watch a giant lizard fight a giant spider called Kumonga and a giant hedgehog named Anguirus, and figure out how to tell Anne Hughes that her daughter had been found.

* * *

Stifling a yawn after a long night of not sleeping, Richard stood up as the door to the small, neat office he’d been sitting in opened. “On television, all of the police detectives work in one low-ceilinged room and have their desks smashed together so they can trade insults and hamburgers while they solve crimes,” he observed, reaching out a hand to the tall, aggravatingly attractive man who had stopped in the doorway to stare at him.

“Well, shit,” Detective Sam Gorstein said, shaking hands before he set down a cup of steaming coffee and took the seat on the business side of the spare wooden desk. “For your information, detectives credited with stopping full-blown smash-and-grabs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art get their own offices. Ms. J’s not in trouble again, is she? Because I kind of used all my influence to get that window, there.” He jabbed a finger at the small window beyond his right shoulder.

Samantha seemed to be in trouble a great deal, Richard reflected, but she was also more than adept at getting herself back out of most of it. This, though, was somewhat different. “I am going to remind you, once, that you wouldn’t have this office or that window if Ms. J hadn’t decided to give you certain bits of information a couple of months ago.”

Gorstein sniffed, sitting back a little. “Oh. This is one of those conversations. I’m not breaking the law for anybody. And I’m not looking the other way while anybody else breaks the law.”

“I’m not asking you to. In fact, I’m going to give you a few bits of information, and all I’m going to request in return is that you show some subtlety and demonstrate some patience.”

Running a hand through his close-cropped dark hair, the detective eyed Richard. “We can do this dance all morning, but my coffee’s getting cold and I have about thirty-six pawn shops to visit today to find some other rich guy’s stolen antique firearms.”

Richard nodded. “Martin Jellicoe is in town.”

“Huh. He’s still not dead, then? Fuck. He’s Interpol’s boy, though. They made that pretty damn clear.”

“I don’t think Interpol has the slightest idea where he is right now. Aside from that, he’s planning to rob a Sotheby’s exhibit before the items can be auctioned off. Lewis Adgerton’s items.”

“The tech guy? That’s a lot of bling you’re talking about. But why are you talking about it? He’s Ms. J’s dad.”

Richard didn’t particularly like the “Ms. J” moniker, but considering that Gorstein and Samantha were both Sam s, he did understand it. “She’s the one installing the security systems for the exhibit.”

“Wow. The Jellicoes are one fucked-up family.” Gorstein blew out his breath. “She doesn’t know you’re here, does she?”

Almost immediately upon meeting Samantha, Richard had noticed that people with whom she had contact, she almost inevitably charmed. Along with that came a need for them to see her protected, even if generally she was the most self-sufficient human he’d ever met. “I am anonymously reporting that a known high-end cat burglar is in Manhattan, and that a high-end exhibit is about to open.”

“I get it, Addison. I’ve received your anonymous tip.” He sighed. “Which I guess means you can’t tell Ms. J that I said hi. Just one Sam to another.”

Richard stood. “No, I can’t.” Detective Gorstein had proven to be helpful in the past, but Richard wasn’t insane enough to want Samantha to have law-enforcement types as friends. Not for another six years, anyway. Aside from that, Gorstein had more than a passing resemblance to Captain America, and he didn’t want that around his woman.

Benny met him at the curb, and Richard directed him to a café a block away from Samantha’s project. Yes, he was supposed to be at the Addisco offices doing studly work things, but she meant to catch Anne Hughes up on some things this morning. That meant he would be close by, just in case, even if he had to order five hundred dollars’ worth of coffee and muffins while he sat and twiddled his thumbs and checked his phone obsessively.

This was the part of their relationship he didn’t like. The part where they both didn’t just know she was a strong-willed, capable, independent woman, but she forced him to the sidelines while she did the heavy lifting. He hated the sidelines. Until he’d met Samantha, he’d never even met the sidelines. And now he was about to spend several hours there, and possibly return to the office or the apartment without ever having been brought into the game.

As he sat down at a table, coffee, donut, three folders, and a copy of the Washington Post in front of him, his phone rang. He wanted it to be Samantha, but it was Tom Donner’s name that popped up on the screen. “Tom,” he said, keeping his voice beneath the general level of conversation and cutlery around him.

“You said you’d call me,” the lawyer responded in his Texas drawl. “It’s like…Okay, it’s only 8:15, but still. How’d she take it? Really?”

“Not well. She’s spent most of her life relying on a nearly faultless memory. Discovering that the earliest things she remembers are untrue, and on top of that to realize that she had an entire life stolen away from her—well, she managed it better than I would have. And we did get to threaten some would-be muggers in Central Park, so that helped.”

“Christ, Rick. Don’t tell me stuff like that. What about Anne Hughes? Have you talked to her yet?”

“Samantha is planning on doing that this morning,” Richard said, keeping his tone flat. Tom didn’t need to know how very annoyed he was by that circumstance.

“ She’s doing it?” Donner returned. “Alone? Wow, you must be annoyed.”

“I’m being supportive.”

“So, what are you doing, lurking down the street, ready to lend her a shoulder to cry on?”

Perhaps he should have gone into Addisco, after all. “Why yes,” he replied, deciding to go with sarcasm. “I’m knitting, too. Samantha’s perfectly capable of dealing with this however she sees fit. I have three contracts and a lawsuit to review.”

“Okay, okay. I get it. You’re enlightened. But it’s still weird to think of Jellicoe having a mom. I always figured she sprang fully formed from a wall safe behind a Rembrandt somewhere.”

“Or perhaps you’ve been helping Olivia with her mythology too much,” Richard said dryly, though he could imagine the very same thing. “I’ll call you if and when I have any new information for you. In the meantime, I would appreciate it if you would ask Katie to give Samantha a call sometime this afternoon.”

“Women bonding and all that? Will do.” Tom sighed. “Between you and me, Rick, I’m glad for her sake that you were the one to tell her. Finding that out on her own would have been crappy. Or not finding out at all. Jeez.”

“Thank you. I’m glad I was here, too. Talk later.”

“Bye.”

He was glad he’d flown to New York, and that he’d been nosey and cautious enough to look into Anne Hughes. Because Tom made a good point; if it had been Samantha alone here, she might never have discovered the truth. Or worse, it might have been Martin Jellicoe deciding to drop that particular atomic bomb at just the moment it would hurt her the most.

In fact, that might well have been Martin’s plan. Could still be his plan. Which meant that he and Samantha were at least one step ahead of her elusive father for once. And he meant to keep it that way.