“Don’t worry about the lift tickets,” Sammy said. “You’re not going skiing today.”
“What do you mean I’m not—” She looked up, her voice trailing away in midsentence as she focused on Anne.
“What are you staring at?” Sammy asked. “Don’t you recognize your own sister-in-law? Elizabeth is back with us.”
All color fled from the face of the woman—Sammy’s wife, Stacy. “What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice scarcely above a whisper.
“What kind of a question is that?” Sammy barked. “We’re her family. Why shouldn’t she be here?”
Stacy turned cold eyes on him. “I thought once she was lucky enough to get away, she’d be smart and never come back.” She turned and left the room, her boot heels hitting hard on the plank floors as she hurried toward the stairs.
Sammy mumbled an obscenity under his breath as he watched his wife leave the room. “You should be nicer to her,” Anne said—not for the first time.
“Why should I? She isn’t nice to me.”
“She’d probably respond better to kindness than cursing. And she’s your wife. She’s the mother of your son.”
He grunted, his usual response to an argument he couldn’t win.
The guards by the door snapped to attention, and Sammy rose to his feet. “What is it?” Anne asked, straining to see.
“Pop is here,” he said. “I hope you’re ready.”
Her heart pounded, and she wanted to shout that she wasn’t ready. But it was already too late. She stood also, and prepared to meet her father.
Chapter Eighteen
The trailhead that climbed the peak behind the estate where the Giardinos were hiding was a fifteen-minute drive from the road where Jake had been parked. He found the start of the trail without too much trouble, despite the snow. Fresh boot prints marked the route, and he wondered if they belonged to casual hikers or people who, like him, had come to check out the Giardino compound.
The trail was steep, but he powered up it, running until his lungs threatened to burst, then resting only long enough for his breathing to return to normal before he started up again. His legs, held together with pins in places, screamed in protest, but he ignored the pain. He had to get to Anne. No matter what Sammy said about her father being glad to see her, he didn’t trust the Giardinos. They were a family of killers, and he didn’t think they’d hesitate to kill one of their own.
After forty-five minutes of hard climbing, he came to the end of the trail at the top of the ridge, in a leveled-off area about five feet square, stamped clear of ice and snow. Someone had definitely spent time up here recently. Had Giardino sent some of his men up here to check out the approach? That would have been a smart move.
Or maybe the feds knew about this place and were keeping an eye on it. Thompson obviously knew more than he let on; Jake hoped the marshal would use his knowledge to save Anne.
He scanned the area below with binoculars. He counted four guards patrolling the perimeter, though they paid little attention to the back of the house, which was separated from a sheer natural rock wall by less than ten feet. The wall itself rose about twenty feet, and above that the mountain sloped back at what he judged to be a sixty-degree angle.
No doubt any scouts that had been sent up here to assess the situation had determined that approaching the house from this direction was impossible. Such an assault would require technical climbing equipment, not to mention nerves of steel.
Jake had been accused of having more nerve than sense, and he hadn’t come this far to give up. He turned his back to the house and carefully lowered himself over the edge, gripping what rock he could with his hands, and feeling with his feet for the next best hold. Loose rock, icy slush and chunks of snow rained down, and it was impossible to determine stable footing from useless debris in the mix of snow, mud and ice that covered this aspect of the mountain. But he managed to advance a few feet.
At this rate, it would take him hours to reach Anne—hours she might not have. He should have purchased technical climbing equipment from that shop in town. But then, he’d have needed lessons in how to use it. This wasn’t a skill the Bureau had bothered teaching in the classes he’d taken at Quantico.
It didn’t matter. He couldn’t see any other way to help Anne, so he kept on climbing, ignoring the pain and the fear and the voice inside his head that argued that no woman was worth risking his life this way.
But he didn’t listen to the voice. He had promised Anne he’d do whatever it took to keep her safe, and it was a promise he intended to keep.
* * *
S
AM
G
IARDINO
STRODE
into the room, looking more like Sammy’s older brother than his father. Anne had imagined that the ordeal of a trial, prison time and escape, plus months evading recapture, would have aged her father, who was almost sixty. Instead, he looked younger than ever, his dark hair showing only a touch of gray at the temples, his tanned skin smooth and unlined. Hair dye and plastic surgery probably accounted for his youthful appearance, but whatever was behind the transformation, it sent a clear message that Sam Giardino was a long way from being counted out. He had the vigor and intelligence—and the power—of a much younger man.
Standing next to their father, Sammy looked soft and tired. His hair was thinning, his skin sallow, and he had the beginnings of a paunch, despite the powerful musculature of his chest and arms. Worse, Sammy lacked his father’s attitude of command. He kept his gaze fixed on his father, alert for clues as to Sam’s mood, and doing so gave him the attitude of a faithful dog who was trying to avoid being kicked.
Sam stopped halfway across the room, and studied his daughter with the burning blue gaze she remembered too well—a look that said if it was possible to read another person’s thoughts, he would do so. “Elizabeth, is that really you?”
“Don’t you recognize me?” she asked. She’d meant her tone to be defiant, but it came out in the voice of a lost little girl.
Then he opened his arms, the same gesture he’d used when she was a toddler heading toward him on unsteady legs, or a weeping preteen who’d been hurt by her first middle-school boyfriend. Those arms had been her refuge, a place of certain safety, and she could no more turn away from them now than she could then.
While Anne embraced her father, Sammy paced around them. “I tracked her down,” he said. “I knew you’d want to see her.”
Sam drew away, his expression solemn, but his eyes misty. “That was a good thing for you to do,” he said. “Go tell Angie we will have an extra person for lunch. And she should fix something special. We have a lot to celebrate.”
Sam’s back was to his son, so he didn’t see the scowl on Sammy’s face when his father addressed him like an errand boy. But after a hard look at the older man, Sammy left the room, presumably to talk to the cook.
With his arm still around Anne, Sam led her to a sofa. “Come here and tell me why you stayed away a year.”
The question was so preposterous she almost laughed out loud. “Dad, you swore you’d have me killed,” she said. “I didn’t think it was safe for me to come anywhere near you.”
“And you were probably right, those first few months.” His eyes met hers, the look chilling. “You did a very bad thing. An unforgivable thing. But a man gets weaker as he ages, and I wasn’t strong enough to hold on to a hatred of you. Not having you in my life was worse than being in prison.”
“Oh, Dad.” She hugged him close and kissed his cheek. She wanted to believe his words, but doubt still nagged at her. She drew back.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“A man came to my house last week—a man who used to work for you, DiCello. He tried to kill me.”
“Frank DiCello left my employment six months ago,” he said. “He went to work for an outfit in St. Louis, closer to his mother and sister.”
“Then you didn’t send DiCello after me?”
He looked genuinely puzzled. “No.”
“He was wearing a lift ticket from Telluride on his jacket, so I thought he was here with you.”
“I haven’t seen DiCello since August.”
“After the attack by DiCello, I hid out in a cabin in the National Forest,” she said. “Someone set the cabin on fire while I was inside, sleeping. Later, on our way here, someone tried to run my car off the road.”
“None of this has anything to do with me,” Sam said. “I swear on my mother’s grave.”
This was the ultimate oath in the Giardino family, so Anne had no choice but to believe her father. “Then who is trying to kill me?” she asked.
Sammy returned. “Angie says lunch is in ten minutes,” he said.
Sam’s only reply was a nod. Tension stretched between father and son, worse than Anne remembered from before. She’d hoped, now that Sammy was older, her father would show him more respect, and give him more responsibility. But he still seemed to treat his only son like some low-level flunky.
The alarm on her phone beeped. “What was that?” Sam asked.
“I promised a friend I’d check in,” she said.
“She needs to call Jake West,” Sammy said. “You remember him, don’t you, Pop? Though I take it these days he goes by his real name, Jacob Westmoreland.”
“Jake West is dead,” Sam said.
“We believed so, but turned out he’s tougher than we thought.” Sammy gripped Anne’s shoulder, hard enough to make her flinch. “And it looks like he and Elizabeth here are still an item.”
“Is this true?” Sam asked.
“It’s true that Jake survived your attack on him. And that he came with me to Telluride.” She chose her words carefully, wary of sending her father into a rage.
“Elizabeth still thinks she’s in love with the guy,” Sammy goaded.
“Is this true?” he asked again, her father’s sharp gaze sending a shiver through her.
She opened her mouth to deny the words, but could not. Part of her did love Jake, even though she knew a relationship with him was impossible. “Jake is a good friend of mine,” she said, and hoped she wasn’t damning him with this faint praise.
“I meant it when I said I could never kill you,” Sam said. “But Jake West is someone I would gladly kill—and I will, if I see him.”
“Even if killing him hurts me?” she asked. Would she be able to live with herself if her father murdered Jake? Thinking about the possibility made it difficult to breathe.
“You’d be better off without a lying fed in your life,” her father said with a sneer.
She swallowed hard. “I still need to call him, to let him know I’m okay.”
Her father frowned, but said nothing, so she took out her phone and punched in Jake’s number. After five rings, the call went to voice mail. “Leave a message,” came the clipped recording in Jake’s voice.
“This is Anne. I’m just checking in.”
“You go by Anne now?” Her father gave her a curious look.
“Just...sometimes,” she hedged. In the back of her mind, she could hear parts of Patrick’s lecture on compromising her identity. But after today she’d have to start over again anyway, wouldn’t she? Even if her father wasn’t behind the recent attacks, someone was, and her luck against that unknown assailant wouldn’t hold out forever. She’d have to question her father more later about who he thought might be after her.
A gong rang somewhere toward the back of the house. Her father took her hand. “It’s time to eat,” he said.
He led her to the dining room, another sunny space that looked out over the valley and the side of the estate. A long table, set with crystal and china, filled the center of the room. Sam took his seat at the head of the table. Anne sat on her father’s right, across from an attractive, thirtysomething woman with long dark hair worn in a chignon, and the lithe body of a model or dancer. “This is Veronica. Veronica, this is my daughter, Elizabeth,” her father said.
Anne nodded at what was probably her father’s latest mistress. He’d had half a dozen such women in his life since her mother’s death years before. They were all cast from the same mold—beautiful, classy and quiet. They voiced no opinions of their own and seldom joined in family conversations. When one left, to be replaced by a similar model, the rest of the family scarcely noticed.
Sammy occupied the other end of the table, with Stacy on his right and their son, Carlo, in a booster chair at her side. The boy, who had blond, curly hair and a winning smile that showed twin dimples, smiled shyly at his aunt. “I can’t get over how big he is now,” Anne said, as she made faces at the boy, who giggled in response.
“He just turned three,” Stacy said. “He already recognizes some of the words in the books I read him.”
“To hear Stacy tell it, the kid’s some kind of genius,” Sammy said.
“There’s nothing wrong with being proud of him,” Stacy said. “He
is
very smart.”
“He’s a three-year-old, not Einstein.”
The diners at the other end of the table ignored the bickering. Anne suspected they were used to it.
“Levi, open a bottle of champagne,” Sam directed one of the guards by the door. “We should celebrate.”
Levi did as asked, and passed full glasses of the bubbly. Sam stood at the head of the table and held his glass aloft. “To Elizabeth.”
“To Elizabeth,” the company echoed.
Anne cautiously sipped the bubbly. After so many months abstaining, she didn’t want to end up light-headed.
Lunch was grilled steak and roast potatoes, salad and asparagus and a lemon cake for dessert. “You’re not eating much,” her father observed after a while. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s all delicious,” she said. “But I’m watching my weight.” The truth was, her stomach was in knots. Why hadn’t Jake answered his phone before? Had her father or brother sent someone after him as soon as she was out of the way? Or was he in some other kind of trouble? And was her father really going to let her walk away from here today, back to Jake and her life separate from the Giardino family?
She decided as soon as she could steal a moment alone, she’d call Patrick. She shouldn’t have come here without telling him first, even though Jake had agreed to contact the Marshal when it was time to make the arrest. Patrick wouldn’t have liked their plan and would have tried to stop her, but he had the manpower to protect her—and to protect Jake.
She turned to ask her father if he’d enjoyed skiing in Telluride, but his attention was focused on a car making its way up the drive to the house. “Who is that?” Anne asked.
“No one you need to be concerned about.” Sam turned to the guard behind his chair. “Show our guest into my office,” he said.
Anne pretended to focus on the food, but she watched the entrance to the dining room out of the corner of her eye. She could just see the front door from here. After a few moments, the door opened, and a white-haired man was ushered in. Was this the same man she’d seen at the gondola yesterday? The one Jake had identified as Senator Nordley? Had Jake been right that he was the one who’d engineered her father’s escape? And was he here now to collect his payment?
* * *
P
ARTWAY
DOWN
the rock face, Jake realized he was probably clearly visible to anyone looking up from the back of the house. A bright blue jacket was not very good camouflage. He’d originally thought he could climb down quickly enough that being spotted wasn’t much of a concern, but the rough terrain made the descent agonizingly slow. He spent most of his time clinging to the side of the mountain, plastered against the snow, freezing, his fingers aching as he clung to the barest projection of rock, praying he wouldn’t slip and fall to his death. A lot of help he’d be to Anne then.