Duplicate Daughter

“Your mother’s new husband is my biological father. I’m sorry your family got mixed up with him. But again, I haven’t seen the man in over two years and if my luck holds, I’ll never see Bill Thurman again.”

“My mother married a man named Bill Swope.”

“Seems as though Dad got himself a brand-new name.”

“Why would he do that?”

More memories of Patricia invaded his head, but this time her own blood soaked her blond hair. Looking over Katie’s shoulder, Nick pulled on his gloves. “Toby is gesturing like crazy, the weather is about to close in, you have a plane to catch,” he said in a clipped voice.

Avoiding her gaze, he tugged on his hat and pushed open the door. The weather had further deteriorated in the few short minutes he’d been inside and the blast of cold air streaming into the truck had his visitor shivering again. He darted around and opened her door, anxious to get this woman into Toby’s plane before it was too late. She sat in the seat looking down at him, her scarf still in her lap, her pretty face puzzled.

“Come on,” he said, reaching up for her. Time was up.

She bit her bottom lip, then shook her head. “No.”

The wind was howling; he must have heard her wrong. He glanced at the plane. Toby had rubbed a clear space on the inside of the windshield and could be seen holding up one finger.

“I’m not leaving,” she yelled. “You have to help me.”

“I told you—”

“Listen,” she said, her voice still loud but her tone somber. “I get it. You don’t like your bio dad. I couldn’t care less what your problem with him is, all I know is he’s disappeared with my mother, a woman I haven’t seen since I was a few months old. My sister is lying in a hospital with a gunshot wound, worrying herself sick. My mother and your father never showed up in Seattle where they had reservations at a downtown hotel. I’m going to find our mother and take her to my sister, and if that means I have to stay in this frozen wasteland till the blasted daises pop through the snow, then so be it.”

He stared at her with disbelieving eyes. She couldn’t be serious. On the other hand, there was something about the stubborn tilt of her chin that suggested otherwise and it came to him with a jolt: Katie Fields wasn’t bluffing. Or budging.

He slammed her door and approached the DeHavilland, gesturing with his arm for Toby to take off. Toby disappeared for a moment and then opened the door and threw out a small brown suitcase that landed with a thud. After Nick retrieved the bag, he stood there in the freezing snow as Toby started the engine and taxied down the runway, gaining momentum, lifting to the sky and almost instantly disappearing. Being a pilot himself, he knew Toby would make it to Skie within an hour, and that Skie’s weather was never as bad as Frostbite’s.

Then he turned to look back at his truck and the woman sitting inside.

He’d have to take her home with him.

As he labored through the gathering snow, Katie Fields’s suitcase clenched under his arm, Nick swore at his father, wherever he was, and at the woman trusting enough to fall for his lies and marry him.

Bill Swope?

What was going on? Just exactly what had his father roped Katie Fields’s mother into?

Hopefully she wouldn’t pay for her naiveté with her life.

Chapter Two

Judging distances in the blizzard surrounding the truck was almost impossible for Katie, though there did seem to be some distant mountains looming ahead. She’d spent her life on the Oregon coast, where it seldom snowed; this experience was like being immersed in one of those bleak Christmas cards that are supposed to look cheery.

No one could accuse Nick Pierce, however, of looking cheery.

She wrapped her cold hands in the folds of her scarf and wished she’d thought to swallow a couple of aspirin before debarking the plane. The coma she’d recently suffered still left her with headaches, and her injured leg throbbed despite the fact the doctor said it was mending well.

She sneaked a peek at Nick, who gripped the steering wheel with both hands, brow furrowed in concentration as he expertly handled the big truck. She could feel tension emanating from him like the warm blasts shooting out of the heater. She doubted his stress had anything to do with the driving and everything to do with her presence in his life.

Truth was, she was almost as perplexed by her behavior as he seemed to be. Sure, she was tenacious. Anyone who knew her knew that. But she was also driving in a snowstorm with a stranger. Once back in the truck, he’d announced she had no choice but to accompany him and he was headed home before he got snowed in at the airport. He didn’t equivocate or wait for her permission. It was as though she’d abandoned all free will the moment she let the plane leave the ground without her, and though she understood now that was exactly what she’d done, it didn’t make swallowing it less alarming.

Still, she’d do it again in a flash. This man knew things about his biological father that she needed to know, and one way or another, she was determined to worm them out of him.

She couldn’t explain why she was so sure something was wrong; like she’d told Nick, she hadn’t actually seen her mother in twenty-six-and-a-half years. Maybe it was her newly discovered twin sister’s certainty that their mother was in danger that had communicated itself to Katie, planted itself deep in her subconscious, making Tess’s distress as real as her own. After all, Tess had grown up with their mother and knew the woman as well as Katie had known their father.

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 determined 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.