Duplicate Daughter Read online

  That thought jolted her. Her father had led a secret life that had damn near gotten both his daughters killed. Known him? How well does a child really know a parent? How much is an illusion?

  But she did know, or was getting to know, Tess. She could sense her sister’s moods and thoughts in a mysterious way that felt totally natural. She knew Tess didn’t understand this dimension of their relationship. They’d talked as long and as much as Tess’s precarious condition allowed before Katie flew north, and Tess admitted she’d never had an inkling she wasn’t an only child before the call that Katie had been injured came from the New Harbor police.

  On the other hand, Katie had always felt half-complete. She’d spent her life looking for something. Now she realized she’d been looking for someone. She’d been looking for Tess. She took her new cell phone out of her pocket and punched it on. The old one had been seized by the Oregon police as evidence.

  No signal.

  “We’re almost there,” Nick said, turning off what appeared to be a main highway though they’d not met a single car for a mile or two, since the buildings had stopped and Katie had all but given up hope Nick lived in the middle of a nice, bustling community. She peered through the window but all she saw were pristine white flakes, illuminated by the headlights and falling steadily all around them.

  “I’ll take your word for it,” she said, repocketing the useless phone and turning in her seat to look at him. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties, a tall man who seemed strong and healthy. He had a way of walking that suggested that beneath all those layers of clothes there was an extremely fit man who knew exactly where he was going and where he’d been, as though he plotted and planned his every move and hadn’t made a spontaneous decision in his whole life.

  His self-confidence suddenly goaded her into a small explosion. “Why do you hate your biological father so much?” she demanded. “What do you think he’s done with my mother? Is he dangerous? Should I call the FBI?”

  He deflected her outburst with a single question. “Haven’t you contacted the police already?”

  “Sure we contacted them. First my sister’s fiancé called, then I did. They said to give her a while, that a middle-aged woman on her honeymoon might choose not to stay in touch. The fact their hotel reservation was canceled tells the police they just changed their mind about their destination.”

  “They canceled the reservation?”

  She said, “Don’t dodge my question. Why is your father so…I don’t know, so loathsome to you? Do you think he purposely hurt my mother?”

  Nick glanced at her briefly before turning back to study the road. In that glance, Katie felt the full impact of his eyes. They were as green as palm trees, and thickly lashed, and why she hadn’t been knocked overboard long before this by the sheer clarity and intensity of his gaze made her wonder if her libido had frozen along with her fingers and nose.

  He had a very strong profile, all clean lines and de termined thrust of chin, a man to be reckoned with. Maybe a man who figured everyone who wasn’t with him was against him.

  She’d have to make sure she got him on her side. No trouble, right? She was a people person, a bartender for years, a Jill of all trades.

  Did she have dreams? Of course. What would life be like without dreams? But she’d learned to put her dreams on a back burner. Money was, and had always been, tight and she’d kept her dreams close to her heart, guarding them against the reality of barely making ends meet. What little she had saved she’d used up financing the search for the truth concerning her father’s death. She wouldn’t have been able to afford this trip, for instance, if her veterinarian sister hadn’t put it on her credit card.

  Katie couldn’t think about her father right now. It was still too painful. She’d get Nick to come around. She had to. All she needed was time, and judging from the weather, time was just what she had working on her side.

  What about her mother? Did Caroline have time or was it already too late?

  “Maybe we could share what information we have,” she said, attempting to calm herself down. The truck bounced through a gulley and she gritted her teeth as her leg throbbed anew.

  “Let’s just get home first,” he said, driving over a small bridge.

  At last the dark shadows of the mountains grew closer and the contours of a log house, glowing with light, smoke rising from its chimney, caught her attention. It was built on the edge of a small, iced-over lake complete with a short pier. A light mounted high on a pole beside the pier illuminated the falling snow. There were also a number of smaller cabins clustered near the main house, as well as a long building set off by itself. Every structure boasted steeply pitched green metal roofs, set in among a million trees, a setting so peaceful it should have calmed Katie’s nerves.

  But in fact, the beauty and serenity just made her more antsy. What could they possibly get done out here? She’d jumped out of a frying pan into a fire—or out of an ice chest into a freezer—pick a metaphor, any one would do. And it was her own damn, impulsive fault.

  “We’re here,” Nick said, slowing the truck.

  “You own all this?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s huge.”

  “It was built by a painter back in 1950. He used to open it up in the summer for aspiring artists with enough cash to fly in and spend several weeks under his tutelage. I bought it from him four or five years ago.”

  “Are you an artist too?” she asked.

  He replied immediately. “No. My wife was.”

  “Your wife—”

  He stilled her with a swift, intense green glance. “She died two years ago,” he said, his voice as bleak as his expression.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I.” He pressed a button on the visor above his head and the door to a large garage rolled up and out of the way. Nick pulled inside, his headlights illuminating a couple of snowmobiles and a blue van. A door opposite suggested covered passage to the house. The door was closing and Nick was out of the truck before Katie could untangle her hands from her scarf. He flipped on an overhead light and the details of winter equipment like snowblowers, boots, sleds and snowshoes came into sharp focus.

  He opened her door and once again she faced the long step down from the truck. Her leg ached at the prospect. “Are there other people here now?” Katie asked hopefully as she slid from her seat. Nick seemed to be prepared for her ungainly exit and caught her in a grip as solid as granite.

  “Not in the winter. This time of year it’s just me and Helen, my housekeeper. And Lily, of course.”

  “Nick, please talk to me about your father,” she said, gazing up into his eyes, imploring him to stop evading her questions. “Time is passing and my mother is missing.”

  “I know,” he said. “But there’s a storm coming and no one will be going anywhere for a while. We almost always lose phone service in weather like this. In short, your problem will keep. I want to see if Lily is still awake.”

  “Who’s Lily?”

  “My daughter.” He reached past her and retrieved her suitcase, then opened the connecting door to what appeared to be an enclosed porch. A row of hooks held outerwear, a tray underneath caught the drips as snow melted. Baskets lined up on a shelf were filled with mittens, gloves and stocking caps. Nick pulled off his hat and tossed it into a basket; his gloves followed a second later. He unzipped his coat and took it off, carefully hanging it on an empty hook next to a pale yellow coat with a fur collar that was so tiny it had to belong to a child.

  Katie took off her own coat and immediately missed its warm, cozy lining even though she wore a thick sweater underneath. Nick took it from her and hung it on a hook before parking himself on a bench and unlacing his boots.

  “Are your feet wet?” he asked Katie. He pointed at her suitcase. “Do you have something dry and warm in there or do you need to borrow slippers?”

  He was wearing a green flannel shirt that stretched across his shoulders as he moved.
He was built splendidly, Katie saw, broad at the shoulder, narrow through the hips, tall and straight, sent from central casting to play the role of handsome, defensive, sexy recluse.

  But he was real. Those eyes, that tenderness in his voice when his daughter’s name passed his lips, his single-minded straight-as-an-arrow determination to do things his own way in his own time—all man, all real and, probably, all obstacle.

  “My feet are fine,” she said, looking down at her own boots. She’d been traveling the better part of two days to get here. Flights from Oregon to Washington, then on to Anchorage, Alaska. Then the bush-pilot flight to Frostbite. Now she was out here in the middle of nowhere, trying to get a man to talk, a man who obviously didn’t want to talk, and just how was she supposed to ever get home again?

  And what about her mother?

  As she folded her head scarf and straightened the gray wool sweater she wore over a light blue turtleneck shirt, she admitted that her head pounded, her leg ached, she was cold and hungry and frustrated. “Nick—” she said impatiently.

  Once again he cut her off, this time by standing abruptly. He’d slipped on a pair of dry loafers. As he opened the door leading into the house, she picked up her suitcase and followed. What choice did she have?

  Aromas of roasting meat and vegetables perfumed the room they entered, a kitchen full of rough wood beams and rich dark tiles. Some kind of fruit pie—apple?—sat cooling on a wooden board. Katie’s stomach growled.

  “Mr. Nick,” a woman said, looking up from the sink where she peeled potatoes. She appeared to be in her late fifties, Katie guessed, with long black hair gathered into a low-riding ponytail, silver threads running throughout. She was short and comfortable looking, her skin winter-white, her dark eyes liquid in the subdued light.

  “I thought maybe you got stuck at the airport…” the woman began, her voice trailing off as Katie stepped from behind Nick.

  The friendly smile wavered.

  Katie was blasted with a fresh wave of alarm. Was everyone in Frostbite suspicious of outsiders?

  Nick said, “Helen, this is Katie Fields, the woman I went to meet today. Katie, Helen Delaney, the woman who runs things around here.”

  Helen raked Katie over with narrowed eyes but addressed her comments to Nick. “I thought you were meeting your father’s stepdaughter. The one who called here. Theresa Mays.”

  “Katie is apparently my…father’s…other stepdaughter,” Nick said.

  “I’m the one who called you the last time,” Katie explained, sticking out her free hand. “I’m sorry for the confusion.”

  Helen dried her hand on her apron and took Katie’s hand, her gaze averted as she mumbled a polite greeting. Katie said the first thing that popped to her mind. “That pie looks delicious.”

  “Apple rhubarb,” Helen said. “Mr. Nick’s favorite.” She turned her attention back to Nick and added, “I didn’t know you were bringing anyone back to the house. I didn’t expect company.”

  Nick said, “The weather turned. Toby had to get some medicine to Skie.” He ran a hand through his dark blond hair before looking at Katie. “Well, you’re here now and, by the looks of the weather, you aren’t going anywhere for a couple of days. I’ll show you to a guest room in a few moments, but first I need to look in on my daughter.”

  “I gave her an early dinner and put her to bed,” Helen said, darting Katie a surreptitious glance. Katie felt distinctly uncomfortable. Helen had seemed cordial enough on the phone, so why the cool welcome? And did Nick have to talk to her as it she was an intruder?

  Whoa, reality check. You forced yourself on both of them, an inner voice whispered. No one asked you to come, you just refused to leave.

  She rubbed her forehead. She’d packed doctor-prescribed painkillers in her suitcase and the temptation to down half a bottle and sleep the storm out was amazingly strong but she knew she’d settle for a couple of aspirin instead. She needed to stay clear-headed and focused.

  “I’ll be right back,” Nick said, glancing down at her.

  She grabbed his arm as he turned and felt his muscles tense beneath her grasp. “You have to tell me about your father,” she said vehemently. “I need to understand what’s going on. I have to find my mother. I know you think I’m overreacting—”

  He stared at her hand. For a second, she expected him to bat it away, but then he did something even worse. Laying his hand gently over the top of hers he said, “No, I don’t think you’re overreacting.”

  “So you do think she’s in danger.”

  “If she married my father, I’d be willing to bet on it,” he told her, his eyes intense and serious. “I’m sorry.”

  Chapter Three

  Nick loved this time of day the best.

  Lily, cheeks rosy, fair hair glistening in the subdued bedside light, smelling of soap, eyes sleepy but resolute, small arms anxious to wrap around his neck, voice soft and sweet as she asked him to read her a story.

  His Lily, a small carbon copy of her mother except for the color of her eyes, which mirrored his own, and the stubborn streak she’d picked up from his side of the family, as well. Patricia had called Lily the perfect combination of the two of them, and they had spent hours musing over who their future children would look like, be like.

  Fate had snatched away the possibility of future children. Fate in the form of his father.

  He read Lily a story about a bird that lived on top of a palm tree on the island of Maui. As Lily had been born right here in Frostbite and hadn’t left the state of Alaska once in her three years, he often wondered how she could relate to palm trees and grass skirts, green and yellow birds and brilliant flowers. When she was old enough, he’d recently decided, he’d take her to Hawaii and show her all the things the book promised, from luaus to warm ocean water.

  For now, he finished the story by gently tickling her, which was part of the ritual, and then he kissed her warm forehead and held her hand as she drifted off to sleep.

  And tried not to think about the redheaded problem in his kitchen.

  The wind had come up while he’d been busy with Lily, and he returned to the kitchen to find the lights flickering and Helen absent. He could hear naked limbs scratching against the tin roof and the sound of an unclosed gate from out near the pier.

  Had Helen been walking out there earlier today?

  After stoking the living-room fireplace, he lit a couple of kerosene lanterns in anticipation of losing the lights. His was the last house connected to Frostbite’s power lines and the first to lose electricity during bad weather. He’d start the generator if it looked like the electricity loss was going to go beyond a few hours.

  He found Katie in the kitchen standing at the sink, draining a pot, steam billowing around her flushed face. She looked over her shoulder as he came into the room.

  “Where’s Helen?” he said.

  “She showed me which bedroom to take then pleaded a headache,” Katie said, turning to face him. She held a pot of boiled potatoes in one hand and the masher in the other. “How do you feel about kitchen duties?”

  “No problem,” he said, still puzzling over Helen’s odd behavior. “She just left?”

  “She just left.” Katie leaned against the counter as he retrieved butter and milk from the refrigerator and added, “Frankly, I don’t think she likes me.”

  He crashed the masher into the pot. He found Katie’s tendency to blurt out exactly what was on her mind a little disconcerting.

  “She’s choosy,” he said.

  Katie laughed. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Don’t take me wrong,” he said, adding butter and seasonings to the pot. “Your coming to Frostbite is a reminder of a lot of things Helen would like to forget, all revolving around my dear old dad. Your coming into this house is like rubbing salt in an old wound.”

  “I’ve never even met your father!”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “For heaven’s sake. How about you? You’d like t
o forget a lot of things about your father, too, right?”

  “Like the fact he ever existed? Yeah, you’re right,” he said, whipping in the milk, his mind closing against the pain Katie’s probing caused. “I would.”

  Except for the sound of the wind howling outside, dinner was a more or less silent affair. Katie swirled mashed potatoes into her gravy, casting him occasional wary glances as though trying to gauge if she could trust him.

  The answer was yes. And no.

  It all depended.

  She could trust him to put up with her until he could get rid of her, to try to answer a few questions, but she couldn’t trust him to spring into action and solve all her problems. Since Patricia’s death, he had one blinding obligation and that was his daughter. Period.

  Besides, his action days were behind him, lost now in the haze of his Army Ranger years, his stealth and manual-combat skills as rusty as his aim though he still maintained a closetful of weapons. Hell, every man, woman and child in Frostbite, Alaska, knew how to shoot a gun. It went with the territory.

  All this justification made him uneasy, especially when he glanced at his dinner guest and met her troubled blue gaze. If her mother was half as innocent as her daughter, the poor woman was in for a lot of trouble.

  Though he tried to dissuade her, Katie helped him clear the table and wash the dishes. He wasn’t crazy about standing so close to her in the kitchen. The room had always been the warm, comforting heart of the house. Katie brought a level of tension with her that ruined this ambience and he resented her intrusion. The thought flitted through his mind that things were soon going to go from bad to worse. His level of uneasiness began to creep up off the charts.