Jean Barrett - The Hunt For Hawke's Daughter

She might have returned the compliment. His jaw was as square as ever, his thick hair as black. Only the grooves on either side of his mouth seemed more pronounced than she remembered. Not surprising that they should have deepened. He must be—what? Somewhere in his mid-thirties by now.

But she didn’t compliment him. It wasn’t safe. All she gave him was a pleasant, innocuous, “It’s nice to see you again, Devlin. Uh, sit down, please.”

She looked around for a chair for him. All of them were too dainty. She chose what was most likely to accommodate him, a gilded French fauteuil, and he settled on it. His hard, long-limbed body was too big for it, but he didn’t complain. She seated herself at the side of the desk facing him.

There was a moment of strained silence while those disturbing blue eyes of his captured her gaze and held it. She caught her breath and fought the memory of the incredible six weeks they had once shared.

He leaned toward her suddenly, his expression rigid. “I’m not going to waste words, Karen. This isn’t a social call. I’m here on business. Serious business.”

Here it comes, she thought, tensing to face the blow he was about to deliver.

He surprised her when he reached inside the breast pocket of his suit jacket and withdrew a photograph, which he placed on the corner of the desk with a brusque, “Will you identify this man for me, please?”

She stared at Devlin. This wasn’t the accusation she’d been expecting. What on earth—

“The photograph,” he reminded her.

She turned her head and lowered her gaze, her bewilderment deepening as she looked at the photograph. It was an informal shot of her husband, Michael Ramey. Not a very good one because the camera must have caught him when he was unaware of it. Like many people, Michael objected to having his picture taken, though he had no reason to mind. His features were good ones, if unremarkable, and he kept his body in trim condition.

“It’s your husband, Michael Ramey, isn’t it?” Devlin prompted her.

Then he already knew about her marriage to Michael. How had he learned of it? More importantly, why? “I think so,” she said cautiously.

“You’re not certain?”

Actually she was, though afraid to admit it. There was something wrong here, something she sensed she didn’t want to hear. “I’ve never seen this photograph before. If it is Michael, it was taken several years ago before I met him. He’s different here, a little more weight maybe and wearing the mustache. Where did you get this picture?”

“From my client, a woman back in Denver who hired me to find the guy you’re looking at. The man who calls himself your husband.”

She lifted startled eyes to Devlin’s face. “He is my husband.”

“Yeah, I know. I wasn’t idle while I waited for you to get back from wherever it is you went. I checked the records here in the city and learned Karen Howard married Michael Ramey two and a half years ago. It wasn’t what I wanted to discover.”

“I have to tell you,” she said slowly, “that you are beginning to scare me.”

“I wish I didn’t have to do this to you, Karen, believe me. But there’s no way around it. Michael Ramey, who was known as Kenneth Daniels back in Denver, was married to my client. Trouble is, he never bothered to divorce her when he walked out on her and disappeared three years ago.”

Jolted, Karen resisted his shocking allegation. “This is preposterous! You’ve got the wrong man! A—a look-alike!”

“Do you have a recent photo of Michael Ramey in your wallet, Karen? We could compare pictures.”

She shook her head. No, she had no pictures of Michael. The several that had existed, mostly from their wedding, had been destroyed. It happened when Michael cleaned out the closet in his study. By mistake, along with the other rubbish, he had carted the box of their photos stored there out to the trash. Karen had the uneasy feeling now that this accident, about which Michael had been so contrite at the time, might not have been an accident at all.

“But we really don’t need to compare photographs, do we, Karen?” Devlin pressed her solemnly. “Because there is no mistake. Kenneth Daniels and Michael Ramey are the same man.”

“Do you know what you’re telling me?” she whispered.

“Yeah, I know, and I’m sorry about it. But there’s no avoiding it. The man you thought you were legally married to is guilty of bigamy.”

Karen felt as if the floor under her chair was no longer solid, as if it had been rocked off its foundations. Bigamy was the kind of thing you saw in tabloid headlines. It always involved strangers in other places, never anyone you knew. So how could it be happening to her?

“Why?” she appealed to Devlin. “Why would Michael do such a thing?”

He shook his head. “I have no idea.”

She hadn’t really expected him to know, any more than she understood it herself. Michael Ramey, the man to whom she had been a loyal wife for two and a half years, was suddenly a complete stranger.

But she needed to understand what was happening to her. Questions swarmed into her mind. “This woman back in Denver, this—this other wife, has she been looking for him all this time?”

“No, it was only last week that she hired me to find him. Actually, she’d been granted a divorce from him almost two years ago on the grounds of desertion. But it still makes him a bigamist, since he married you before that divorce.”

“Then why is she trying to—”

“She has a successful fitness center in Denver, and she’s in the process of selling it. It’s her business, but Daniels, Ramey—whoever he is—was somehow involved in it. Her lawyer has advised her that, to avoid possible litigation, she needs him to sign away any claim.”

“Only last week,” Karen murmured, struggling to sort it out, “and already you’ve located him.”

“Sometimes you get lucky, and sometimes you have the right mother. She’s wicked when it comes to computers. Handles a lot of that end of the business for all of us. I sent her a copy of this photograph, and she did the rest.”

Karen remembered Devlin once telling her how his parents, who had founded the Hawke Detective Agency, managed the home office in Chicago, networking with all of the other nationwide branches of the firm operated by Devlin’s brothers and sisters.

“Ma posted the photograph, along with an inquiry, on the Internet,” he went on to explain. “We didn’t have to wait long for results.”

“Another agency responded?”

“Uh-uh. It was a teenager, one of your neighbors down the block. Kids like him live on the Internet. He recognized our man and contacted us. I flew into Minneapolis and spoke with the kid and his parents first thing this morning. I didn’t know then you were involved, Karen. I didn’t guess until the kid mentioned Michael Ramey had a wife of almost three years named Karen and that she was an interior designer. And after he’d described you…well, there didn’t seem to be much doubt, though I had to make sure of your marriage in the records.”

“So you came to Dream Makers. Why here, Devlin? It’s Michael you want. Why didn’t you go straight to Michael?”

“I tried. He wasn’t at your house or his office.”

“He’s away from the office a lot. He handles commercial real estate, which you probably learned, and that means showing properties to clients. His assistant, Bonnie, should have told you as much.”

“She wasn’t there either. Place was locked up.”

“Then she’s probably with Michael. Sometimes, when the deal is a complicated one, she goes with him. Why, Devlin?” she persisted. “Why come to me at all, when there’s the risk I’ll let him know you’re looking for him? When you could lose him before you’re able to reach him?”

Their eyes locked while she waited for his answer. For a breathless moment Karen felt the memories she had tried to resist flow between them like warm honey. Far too many of those memories were sensual ones. They might not have been a problem, had they remained just memories. Instead, they triggered an awareness of his potent presence. She could almost feel the heat of his solid body as he leaned toward her earnestly, could detect his clean masculine scent.

That she was capable of acknowledging an attraction that still existed, that she could recognize its potential sizzle, shocked her. How could she be experiencing such wildly dangerous emotions at this, of all times?

His voice was deep, almost gruff, when he finally answered her. “Learning it was you and not some stranger…well, it would have been pretty rotten of me not to warn you. I owed you that much.”

“Thank you.”

She watched him as he reclaimed the photograph and returned it to his inside breast pocket. His business suit was trim and dark blue. It gave him a dynamic image, but it seemed strange to see him clad so formally. The Devlin she had known had never dressed in anything but jeans and ski outfits. When he had worn anything at all, that is, but that was another memory she had to bury.

Perhaps Devlin, too, had memories he needed to tame, because he was all business again as he got to his feet. “I don’t have the right to ask you not to confront Ramey with everything I’ve just told you before I get the chance to see him,” he said, his voice almost curt, as if he didn’t trust himself to be sympathetic again. “I hope you won’t, but if you feel you don’t have a choice, then please make sure he understands I’m not a cop. I’m not here to arrest him, and I’m not interested in making any charges. All my client cares about is having him sign her papers I’ve brought with me.”

“And if he decides instead to disappear?”

“Then I’ll find him again,” he promised, and she knew he meant it.

Karen stood, and there was another precarious moment when the forceful blue eyes under the heavy black eyebrows sought hers. All out of nowhere the thought struck her that she need no longer consider herself a married woman. It was a treacherous idea. It even felt like an immoral one, and she quickly smothered it. She was suddenly anxious for Devlin to leave. But, maddeningly, he lingered.

“Did your assistant give you my business card?”

“Yes.”

“My cell phone number is listed on it. Use it if you need me.”

“Yes.” Why didn’t he just go? She wanted to be alone so she could try to deal with this monstrous thing.

“It may be necessary for you to sign a deposition. You’ll have to consult your lawyer about just what your situation is legally.”

“Yes.”

There was another uncomfortable pause. What was he waiting for now?

“If we had to go and meet again, Karen,” he finally said, his voice raspy with emotion, “I would have wished for it to be anything but this.”

HE WAS FINALLY GONE. She was mercifully alone again. Too dazed to go on standing, she sank back into her desk chair. She sat there, struggling to accept what she had just learned. Devlin was too careful an investigator to have brought her anything but the truth. She could no longer question it.

Bigamy! Michael was guilty of bigamy, and she was his victim!

Whatever had vanished from their relationship, it was a cruel blow to learn that her marriage to him had been nothing but a lie. Which meant everything he had shared with her about his past—and she realized now it wasn’t all that much—must also be a lie. Then exactly who was Michael Ramey, and what other secrets might he be guarding?

Whatever the explanation, she would no longer need to seek a divorce since it seemed she had never been legally married to him in the first place. It occurred to her there was a terrible irony in that.