Mother by Fate

So maybe the chance meeting by the pool hadn’t been his best move.

“It was mutual.” Mutual in that neither he nor Shelley had chosen to end their marriage. Neither of them would ever have done so. But this wasn’t about truth. It was about answers.

And it was time to get them.

With his degree in psychology, Michael knew a thing or two about human behavior, body language and how to use interpersonal communication to his favor.

Manipulation, his sisters called it. Of course, they also claimed they were immune to his skills. And were proud of the work he did. The way he used his “gift” as they’d termed it.

His sisters were nuts. Mostly.

“You happy to be back home?” She smiled. And for a brief second, no more than a breath, he wanted that smile to swallow him up.

“Yes,” he told her. The plan had always been to move home when he finished medical school. Shelley, his beautiful, funny, sexy wife, had loved Santa Raquel. She’d loved his garbage-collector father, stay-at-home mother and four younger, nosy sisters, too...

Shelley. He had a job to do.

“What about you?” he asked, determining that he’d spent enough time establishing the parameters of this seemingly chance meeting. He was there to get information. The sooner he did that, the better. “You like Santa Raquel?”

“Very much.”

“So you’ve lived here since your divorce?”

Michael was a hunter of people. Sara Havens was going to lead him to his target.

“Yes,” she said, holding his gaze. Her eyes were blue.

He allowed his eyes to express his appreciation of the woman he was just meeting. Feigning an interest that wasn’t supposed to be real.

He asked her about her favorite restaurants. Pretended that one of the three she named was his favorite, too.

“We’ll have to go sometime,” he said without thinking. What the hell? Conversations didn’t usually get away from him.

“I’d like that.”

“You free tonight?” If not, he could ask where she’d be, with whom, and possibly get what he needed so he could scram.

Her pause gave him hope. That he’d have a dinner date with the first woman who’d made him think twice about sleeping with someone who wasn’t Shelley? Or that she’d give him what he’d come to retrieve?

“Or we could do it another night,” he suggested, rescuing them both.

“Another night might be better.”

Because she was harboring a dangerous criminal? A woman on the run whom bounty hunter Michael Edison was going to catch.

“I’m...uh...possibly working tonight.” She smiled again.

She wanted him to know she wasn’t brushing him off. He wanted inside the door she’d just opened. He’d seen her on the street with his perp the day before. He’d asked around the area—at a thrift shop, a car maintenance garage, a computer repair shop—and finally found a young girl, a shop clerk, who, when he’d described his target, had replied, “Oh, you mean Sara? Sara Havens?”

He’d gotten a name. After which the girl, while still congenial, had clammed up completely in terms of giving him any pertinent information.

Everyone on the block had been that way. They couldn’t have done better if they were trained. Impressive, really, that the general public of Santa Raquel was that aware. Or scary that they had to be.

“What do you do for a living?” Using her lead, Michael turned his conversation in the direction he needed it to go.

His online national reporting service told him Sara Havens was a licensed professional clinical counselor. He knew her address. Her former address. The fact that she’d once gone by the last name Stover and her phone number was unlisted.

“I’m a counselor.” She hesitated, a somewhat tentative expression on her face, as though she expected some kind of negative reaction. On another day he might have been curious.

“A therapist?” She and Nicole Kramer, an unstable and armed felon, could be old friends, he supposed. Ones who hadn’t been in touch for many years. They’d both grown up in LA.

If they were friends, did Sara Havens even know who and what Nicole had become? Sara could be in danger and not even know it.

If he showed his hand to her, and she did know what Nicole was up to, he’d lose his only real lead...

“I...counsel women,” she said slowly, clearly choosing her words.

“Only women?”

“And children.”

“But no men?” He tried for a smile. Maybe to tease her. His mind was too busy assessing what she’d just told him to pull it off. What kinds of counseling services excluded men?

She looked away and then back at him. “I counsel victims of domestic violence.”

His mind played a fast-motion visual of all the people he’d met on the street where he’d seen her the night before. There’d been men about. But a lot of women. Women who’d crossed their arms when he’d approached them, or looked over his shoulder instead of meeting his gaze. He should have noticed then. And would have, if he hadn’t been hell-bent on nabbing Nicole before she got away.

No wonder those women had been so reluctant to give out any information to strangers. They were protecting their own.

“Do you work at a shelter?” he asked.

Her pause this time told him what he needed to know. He could hardly stay still long enough for her to finish her innocuous comment about being part of a high-risk team that included police, medical personnel, parole officers and other professionals. “The team’s sole purpose is to prevent domestic-violence deaths,” she explained, deftly not answering the question he’d asked about her place of employment.

She wasn’t going to tell him where she worked. He no longer needed her to. What a perfect place for a woman on the run to go—a shelter where the personnel were trained to hide and protect.

“I run a shelter for abused animals,” he said, intent that she not become suspicious of him. If she and her people were hiding Nicole, they could all be in danger. If he said anything and they didn’t believe him, if they chose to believe, instead, whatever story Nicole had concocted to get them to take her in, they’d whisk her so far away he’d never find her.

The only way for him to keep all of them safe was to get his job done as quickly as possible. The women and children at a women’s shelter weren’t Nicole’s target. Her own two-year-old son was. But desperate people took desperate measures.

Nicole would be in need of a fix soon. And that would make her desperate.

“A rescue shelter?” she asked, leaning forward, her eyes wide.

“Yes.”

“I... Wow... That’s cool.” She’d been about to say something else.

He could, too. With very little provocation. Talking about the dogs and cats and occasional bird that ended up at the shelter came easily to him. But he was supposed to have just bought a condo in her complex. He couldn’t be living in the little house on several acres he’d bought when he’d brought Mari home to grow up surrounded by family. He stood. “I have to get back to my unpacking,” he said. “But it’s been... I’m Michael Edison, by the way.”