The Daughter's Return Read online

  “Why?”

  “It all seems too easy, too wonderful.”

  “I think I heard a yes in there somewhere.”

  Steve’s eyes had grown suspiciously bright. “You heard it, all right.”

  “Then we have a deal?” She put out her hand.

  He gripped it hard. “I don’t know how to thank you, Maggie.”

  It was her turn to chuckle. “You shouldn’t have let me hear that. It can get crazy around here, especially when I’m gone on foundation business. At times I’ll probably lean on you too much.”

  “I want to learn all I can.”

  “You’ve already proved that. Since you still have the key to the condo, you keep it.” She rummaged in her desk drawer. “Here’s a key to the office door. You can move in whenever you like.”

  He put it in his pocket. “I’ll drive up in a few days and get settled before the reception. That way the family can stay with me.”

  “Perfect. Now I’d better get you to the airport.”

  Steve checked his watch. “You’re right. Four o’clock already. What’s the traffic going to be like?”

  They both got up from the table and started out of the room.

  “No problem. It’s Sunday. I’ll get you to the terminal within twenty minutes.”

  “That’s what I love about Salt Lake.”

  “Wait till you’re stuck on I-15 at four-thirty in the afternoon on a weekday. You’ll think you’re back in L.A.”

  He grabbed the suitcase he’d left near the front doors of the law firm and followed her down to the underground parking lot. Once they were seated in the car and she’d turned on the air-conditioning, they drove out and headed for North Temple, which would take them directly to the airport.

  She turned on State Street. Jake Halsey lived on the hill a little farther up.

  Considering that the heat had spiked to 102 today, it was absurd to think he might be taking a walk until much later in the evening. Yet she found herself looking for his hard-muscled frame. He would definitely stand out from the other people milling around downtown.

  Her mind was still on Jake when they reached the entrance to the airport. As if thinking about him had conjured him up, her cell phone rang. With her heart racing, she glanced at the caller ID. It was ridiculous how disappointed she felt when she didn’t see his name.

  “Hi, Mom,” she said after clicking on.

  “Has Steven left yet?”

  “Almost. I’m driving toward the Delta terminal right now.”

  “Let me talk to him, will you, dear?”

  “Just a minute.” She handed him the phone. “Mom wants to tell you something.”

  “Hello, Ellen.”

  A few seconds of silence passed before Maggie heard him say, “You’re welcome. After that delicious meal, I wish I’d been able to give you a lot more than a box of candy.”

  There was another pause, then he said, “Yes. I made the decision a few minutes ago, but I’m still in shock. Here’s hoping your daughter doesn’t live to regret it.”

  Maggie pulled up to the curb.

  “The family will be staying with me at the condo. Mom will call you the second they arrive. See you again soon. Here’s Maggie.”

  She took the phone from him. “Mom? Got to go. I’ll call you later.”

  “Come on up to the house after you drop him off. I want to hear everything.”

  I know. “We’ll see. Bye for now.”

  Steve turned to her. “You’ve got a great mom. She told me I could eat dinner with her and Reed every night while I worked for you.”

  “She means it, too,” Maggie murmured. “But of course you’re not going to take her up on it or your life won’t be your own. Trust me on this one.”

  He sobered. “I do.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. I adore her, but she’s needy. Now that Kit and your family have come into her life, she’ll want to mother you, so be careful.”

  “Maggie! Don’t worry. I know exactly what’s going on here. I lived with a needy mom, too, and recognize all the symptoms. Thanks for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime.”

  That was what was so nice about Steve. He did understand. “California’s loss is my gain.”

  He kissed her cheek, then got out of the car. After pulling his suitcase from the back seat, he waved to her before disappearing inside the terminal.

  A lot of cars had let off passengers at the same time. She waited for the next car to leave her room to break in, but the Chevy Tahoe came right up alongside her and stopped.

  The driver’s rudeness prompted her to flash him an irritated glance. He was wearing sunglasses, but she recognized him immediately.

  Jake. Suddenly her heart rate took off like a rocket.

  He was alone. When she noticed the front passenger window go down, she lowered the window on her side.

  “Ms. McFarland?”

  “Hello!”

  “By coincidence I just came from Express Air to pick up a package and saw you driving the loop. Since I planned to phone you the minute I got home, I decided to catch up with you instead. As long as you’re here and your boyfriend’s gone, why don’t we go someplace where we can talk. I have information.”

  Her first thought was to tell him he’d gotten the wrong idea about Steve, but this wasn’t the place to carry on a private conversation. “I’ll meet you at the Red Iguana. It’s—”

  “I know where it is. I like Mexican food, too.”

  He drove off. To her surprise, the car behind him left a space so she could pull away from the curb. She gave the other woman a friendly wave and followed Jake.

  The drive to the restaurant took less than ten minutes. As he left his car and came around to escort her inside, she noticed he wore khaki cargo pants and a white T-shirt. Both items of clothing molded to his well-defined chest and body. She’d never met a more “male” male in her life.

  He asked the waiter to show them to the overflow room off the main dining area, which was darker and less crowded. Within seconds they were seated at a corner table with a basket of warm, homemade chips and salsa.

  The waiter handed them menus. “Would you like to order drinks first, then decide on your meal?”

  “I won’t be eating, but I’d like a virgin strawberry daiquiri, please.”

  “I’ll have the same,” Jake stated. He handed back the menus. “You didn’t want something stronger, Ms. McFarland?” he said to her after the waiter had left.

  “Please call me Maggie.”

  “If you’ll call me Jake.”

  She nodded. “To answer your question, I don’t drink except for the rare occasion.”

  “Now that I’m in physical therapy, I’ve sworn off alcohol myself. You’re not hungry for something besides chips?”

  “No. I ate earlier with the man you saw getting out of my car. He’s my new law clerk.”

  “Law clerk—you’re an attorney?”

  “Yes. Bankruptcy and family law. My firm is located on the ground floor of the plaza across from the foundation.”

  He shoved his sunglasses on top of his head. His eyes looked almost navy in the dim light. “You’re full of surprises.”

  “We worked at my office all day and ordered in a big lunch.”

  “Do you always get kissed by your latest law clerk?”

  “Only if he’s my brother-in-law.”

  When Jake suddenly smiled, she smiled back.

  “His name is Steve Talbot. His sister Melissa was kidnapped twenty-six years ago, almost at the same time as my sister. Our family’s search ended up in her being united with her birth family. It’s been a time of joy for them.”

  After a pause Jake said, “Kit Talbot?”

  She blinked. “Yes. She married my brother, Cord. How do you know her name?”

  Jake whistled. “I’ve learned a lot in the last couple of days.”

  By now her adrenaline had kicked in for another reason besides the thrill of seeing him again. “Did you find an
y Buric relatives living in New York?”

  The waiter served them their drinks. After he left, Jake took hold of the glass stem, but he didn’t drink yet. “Not in New York.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Through my various sources I’ve discovered Franz Buric has a brother named Antonin Buric. He’s the elder brother by two years.”

  She was stunned. “How did you come across that information? Agent Simpson, the FBI agent working with our family, never said anything about that.”

  “In my line of work the rule of thumb is to find out if the person you’re searching for has ever been in trouble with the law.”

  “But she already did a background check.”

  “Sometimes it takes another person to think of another angle to get at the truth. I happened to get lucky.”

  “Where does this brother live?” Maggie asked. “I want to know anything he can tell us about Frankie.”

  Jake was slow to respond. “That’s not possible yet because no one knows where he is. His police record is as long as Franz’s. Over the years this man has been operating under half a dozen aliases, too.”

  Maggie remembered the day Agent Simpson gave her, Kit and Cord the list of Frankie’s fake names. “They’re a real pair.” Her voice trembled.

  He nodded. “Between the Burics’ many crime sprees, they’ve worked mostly in various hotel laundries across the country, including one in Venice Beach, California.”

  “Venice Beach… Then Kit’s mother told her the truth when she said she’d met Frankie at a hotel doing laundry.”

  Jake swallowed part of his drink. “The pieces are starting to fit together. Tell me about Kit’s mother.”

  “Rena Harris was an alcoholic from Venice Beach who raised Kit alone after Frankie abandoned them. She did housecleaning, but when she met Frankie, she was working for a hotel doing laundry. Kit thought Frankie was her father, but now we know differently. Before Rena died of a diseased liver, she told Kit to go to Salt Lake where she would find the McFarlands, her birth parents.

  “After the funeral, Kit came to Salt Lake, not knowing what to think. She met Cord first and they fell in love before she realised he might be her brother. Until it was determined that she wasn’t a member of our family, the situation was very painful, to say the least. But that’s all over now and they’re happily married.

  “Naturally Kit still can’t understand why Rena lied to her for years about being her mother. We all have questions we’d like to ask Rena, but that isn’t possible. Only Frankie can give our family information about Kathryn, but he’s not talking,”

  Jake studied her intently. “Three months before your sister was kidnapped, both brothers were working in laundry on a Cunard cruise ship traveling from San Pedro, California, to Acapulco and back.

  “According to the personnel records while they were onboard, they were known as Tom and Mickey Franks. Their last name sent up a red flag. Agent Kelly checked out the pictures on their work applications. They matched other mug shots of the Buric brothers.”

  Maggie had just started to take another sip, but at that revelation the drink slipped from her fingers. Fortunately the glass didn’t break and she was quick enough to keep most of the slush from spilling.

  Jake’s right hand moved like quicksilver to clean up the excess with a napkin. “What did I say to cause that reaction?” he asked in a voice of barely suppressed urgency.

  “My parents—they went on a New Year’s cruise to Mexico three months before Kathryn was born. Daddy hoped it would help Mother to relax and bring down her blood pressure, which had started to elevate late in her pregnancy. He wanted her to rest and keep her legs up. Do you know the exact dates?”

  “December twenty-ninth to January ninth.” When he mentioned the year, she gasped.

  “That’s the year Kathryn was stolen. I’ll check with Mom and Dad on the dates, but we have to be talking about the same cruise. My grandparents tended us while they were gone.

  “Of course I don’t remember any of it, but I’ve always heard the story about Mom when she came home and her blood pressure was worse. The doctor ordered her to bed until Kathryn was born so her toxemia wouldn’t get any worse.”

  Jake’s well-shaped brows formed a black bar. “If you can verify the dates and the specific ship, then there’s no doubt the Buric brothers heard talk that the multi-millionaire Reed McFarland and his pregnant wife from Salt Lake were onboard. I would presume that had to be the moment the men decided to target your parents.”

  His eyes held a faraway look. “It was a premeditated kidnapping thought out in elaborate detail. They would have had to get to Salt Lake earlier than the abduction and study the lay of the land weeks before they struck.”

  “The thought of two predators casing my family’s home sickens me.”

  Jake’s expression hardened. “They only worked for that cruise line for one sailing. Then they collected their pay packets and didn’t show up for work again.

  “If you think about it, Kit Talbot’s abduction took place on April eighteenth, less than a month before your sister was stolen on May third. They must have run out of money and decided to rob the bank in Rosemead to fund their activities.”

  Maggie couldn’t keep up with his brilliant reasoning. “I still find all of it unbelievable.”

  “The criminal mind is a dark place,” he murmured. “According to the newspaper, it sounded as if Frankie, who held Kit’s birth mother at knifepoint, snatched the baby on the impulse of the moment. Yet it hardly makes sense when they were already planning to steal your parents’ baby after she was born,” he said more to himself than to her.

  Maggie shivered again. “They might have been stalking the Talbots, too. But they couldn’t have known what moment she would choose to go to the bank unless they had sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment and listening devices.”

  He shook his head. “Since neither family ever received a ransom note, it sounds like the Buric brothers could have been part of a well-organized illegal baby-adoption ring.”

  Maggie stared at him. “What if they kidnapped a lot of babies?”

  Their gazes held. “It’s entirely possible. Twenty-six years ago one white baby could bring payoffs from thirty to fifty thousand dollars. For a bunch of criminals like the Buric boys, that was big money back then.”

  “What they did was inhuman.”

  He eyed her with compassion. “Let’s pray it’s true.”

  “Why do you say that?” she whispered.

  “Though Kit wasn’t adopted, for which reason we don’t know yet, she is alive and has been united with her family. That means there’s a good chance your sister was adopted.”

  Tears prickled behind Maggie’s eyelids. “I’ve always believed she’s alive somewhere.”

  He finished off the rest of his drink. “Given time, we’ll find her.”

  We?

  Who was this man who’d found out Franz Buric had a brother Antonin, that they’d operated under different aliases aboard a ship? How had Jake come up with this kind of information when it had eluded the FBI for twenty-six years?

  Why did he care about what had happened to Kathryn, to her family? He was on medical leave from the police force doing work as a genealogist. This wasn’t his problem.

  On top of everything she knew about him so far, he hadn’t said, “if Kathryn’s alive,” like so many of the media people prefaced their statements. That alone raised her trust level to an unprecedented high.

  “Before I allow myself to become too optimistic—” before my attraction to you becomes too obvious “—I need to talk to my parents about that cruise. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go talk to them now.”

  “The sooner you give me that information, the sooner I can do more searches.”

  She nodded. “I’ll find a way to get the information without them becoming suspicious. Mom especially will be better off not knowing about this development, or she’ll brood. That’s when her d
epression gets worse and it drags Dad down.”

  He sat back in his chair. “Your parents have been through enough grief in their lives. For now I think you’re wise to keep this information to yourself.” He pulled some bills from his wallet and laid them on the table. “I’ll walk you out.”

  Quite apart from her excitement that he might have discovered the most vital piece of evidence in her sister’s case, she had a growing awareness of him as a flesh-and-blood man.

  With the slightest contact of their bodies accidentally brushing against each other, feelings of desire whipped up inside her like wind fanning sparks to flame.

  Maggie averted her eyes so he couldn’t read her thoughts. “Thank you for the drink,” she said after he’d helped her into her car. “Once I’ve talked to my parents, I’ll call you.”

  “You’ve got my cell-phone number. If I’m not able to answer, leave the message on my voice mail and I’ll get back to you.”

  She nodded to him before driving off.

  It shouldn’t have upset her that he didn’t even mention trying to meet up with her later. He obviously wasn’t interested in her that way. After the many men who’d thrown themselves at her over the years, why was it she wanted this particular man to pursue her?

  You know why, Maggie McFarland, and you’re a fool.

  JAKE WITHDREW THE infrared goggles from the packing box. For dual use, with a twist of the eyepiece, they could change from day to night vision. State-of-the-art issue. Without their ability to pick up the heat and shape of moving targets, his life would have been snuffed out long ago.

  He had called Dan earlier to thank him for the package. There was still no news of Kamila’s whereabouts. More than ever, he was thankful for Maggie McFarland’s entry into his life. Her presence was already helping him push his own family’s nightmare to the back of his mind while he dealt with something where it might be possible to make an immediate, positive difference.

  To test out his new toy, he opened the doors to the terrace, which had an eastern exposure, and made a slow sweep of the foothills with the day-vision adjustment. Superman himself would be amazed by what he could see through these.

  Jake intended to be prepared for his volunteer job should he be called to go out on a search. When everyone else had to quit at dark, he could keep on going.