Read the book: «The Hunt For Hawke's Daughter»

Chapter One

Minneapolis-St. Paul—the present day

“Good-looking sonofagun!”

Karen, who was having difficulty concentrating on anything but the collapse of her marriage, stared at the young assistant employed by her interior design firm. “Who?”

“This sexy guy I’ve been telling you about,” Robyn explained. “The one who was in here first thing this morning asking for you. He must be awfully anxious to see you because he stopped by again at noon, even though I told him we had no idea when you were arriving from Atlanta. Anyway, I promised him I’d give you his card the minute you walked in the door, which is what I’m trying to do if I can just find where I laid the danged thing….”

Robyn’s bright chatter was accompanied by her busy hands searching though the clutter on her desk. Karen was too hot and emotionally drained to be interested.

I should have gone straight home from the airport, she thought. Not come here. But the idea of being alone in the house with her defeat was unbearable. Soon enough to deal with all of that tonight when she faced Michael with her decision.

Besides, she had needed the reassurance that she knew Dream Makers would offer her. Its showroom, with the traditional fabrics and furniture that were a specialty of the interior design firm, told her that at least she could count this part of her life as a success.

Her friend and partner, Maud Dietrich, was on the phone occupied with a client. She had lifted her hand in welcome when Karen stepped through the door of the turn-of-the-century yellow brick building located off Hennepin Avenue. And that, too, was a comfort.

“Here it is!” Robyn announced triumphantly, handing her a rectangle of cream-colored pasteboard.

Karen, who had impatiently started to edge away from Robyn’s desk, accepted the card and glanced at it casually. The prominent logo of a golden hawk on its face leaped up at her. Clutching the card, she could suddenly hear the blood pounding in her ears.

“I’m having trouble imagining that this P.I. has come looking for you to redecorate his office,” Robyn said, too busy closing drawers she had opened in her search to notice her employer’s distress. “Not when that office is way out in Denver, anyway. Hey, maybe you’re a missing heir he’s trying to—” The sight of Karen’s face finally stopped her. “Are you okay, Mrs. Ramey? You look kind of flushed.”

Karen snatched at an excuse. “It’s the heat out there.”

True enough. The Twin Cities were wilting under a blast of summer heat, and it had been a long walk with heavy luggage to where her car had been parked at the air terminal.

Robyn nodded, but she continued to eye her with curiosity.

I must look as shaken as I feel, Karen thought, gazing again at the business card. The Hawke Detective Agency, it said. She had never told anyone about Devlin Hawke, neither Maud nor Michael, and she had no intention of trying to explain him now, and certainly not to Robyn.

“I have no idea why this P.I. wants to see me,” she said.

But Karen had a fearful suspicion of exactly why Devlin Hawke was here in the Twin Cities. His arrival, with what she already had to contend with regarding her marriage, couldn’t have happened at a worse time.

“Is he planning to show up here again today?” she asked Robyn.

The young woman shook her head. “He didn’t say. He sure looked like he had questions on his mind, though. I’m just glad he didn’t try asking them, because it would have been awfully hard not giving him whatever answers he wanted to hear.”

Yes, Karen thought, she knew all about Devlin Hawke’s rugged appeal and what it could obtain. But she didn’t want to remember that. Nor did she want to deal just now with his sudden reappearance in her life. Her mind and heart were already too heavy with the burden of her failed marriage.

She was tucking the business card in her purse, trying to bury it along with the image of the man it represented, when Maud got off the phone. The tall, attractive blonde rose from her desk and came forward to greet Karen.

“Sissy Baldwin,” she said, explaining the call with the slight trace of the accent she still bore, though she hadn’t lived in Germany since her childhood. “She was trying to reschedule that canceled visit you were going to pay her in Savannah after the trade show. I told her we’d have to let her know.”

Sissy Baldwin was a good client, Karen thought, but she could be a problem.

Head tipped to one side, Maud considered her. “So, how was the trade show?”

“Well, you know how exhausting they can be, and Atlanta was no exception.”

Maud didn’t press her for an explanation, but Karen knew that she had to be aware of her anguish. Her face always seemed to betray her emotions, even in moments when she was convinced she registered the look of a perfect stoic.

Maud deserved to know that she had used the trade show as an opportunity to get away on her own for some serious thinking, and that the tough decision she had reached had brought her home ahead of schedule. Karen would tell her everything, but not until after she faced Michael tonight.

“You do look beat,” Maud observed sympathetically. “Why don’t you just collect Livie from her sitter’s and go on home?”

Her partner’s suggestion was a strong temptation. She would have liked nothing better than to be with her daughter, but she resisted. “She’s scheduled right about now to go down for her nap, and I don’t want her routine upset.” This whole thing was going to be hard enough on Livie as it was.

Maud nodded understandingly, but Karen knew that her friend thought she was overprotective. Well, Maud wasn’t a mother, and even though Livie hadn’t suffered an asthma attack in months, Karen needed to be careful with her.

“Besides,” she added, “I have all these dealer quotes from the show that I want to log into the computer.” It was another excuse. She needed to keep busy.

The phone rang. Robyn answered it. “It’s the salvage outlet about that Victorian fireplace mantel,” she said.

Maud went to take the call. Karen used the opportunity to flee into the office off the rear of the showroom. Despite the air-conditioning, her face still felt warm. She didn’t know whether to blame it on shock or the sweltering weather.

Slipping into the bathroom that adjoined the office with its clutter of catalogs, wallpaper samples and designs in progress, she splashed cold water on her face. Then she spent several minutes at the mirror, combing her casual-style, jaw-length auburn hair and repairing her makeup.

Her wide hazel eyes stared back at her, a troubled expression in them. Well, why shouldn’t they look haunted? Dissolving a marriage was a painful prospect. Not that she expected Michael to object to her request for a divorce. He no longer seemed to care about anything.

What happened? Karen wondered. In the beginning Michael Ramey had been a loving husband and the perfect father for Livie. But in these last months he had turned into a glacial stranger.

Michael had refused to discuss their problem, wouldn’t agree to counseling. He just kept pulling away from her, becoming someone so remote she was no longer able to reach him. She had wondered at first if he was having an affair, but somehow that didn’t seem to be the explanation.

Maybe it was all her fault. Maybe she had deceived herself that she’d loved him because she had wanted so much to have a father for Livie. She had tried to be a good wife, needing perhaps to compensate for the passion that was never fully there in their marriage. And if Michael ultimately resented that…

She just didn’t know, but she refused to remain in an empty marriage.

Leaving the bathroom, Karen resolutely seated herself at the desk. She eyed the telephone while she waited for the computer to bring up the program she needed. Should she call Michael at his office, tell him she was no longer in Atlanta? No, bad idea. He would want to know why she was home ahead of schedule, and she didn’t want to risk getting into anything over the phone. They needed to be face-to-face for this.

She spent another moment struggling with the urge to call Livie’s sitter, longing for the reassurance that her three-year-old daughter was thriving but eager to see her mother. But that also wasn’t a good idea, not when she had called so often from Atlanta that first day and a half to check on Livie that Mrs. Gustafsson must have considered her a nuisance. Livie was in safe, capable hands, and she would be with her in another few hours. Karen could wait.

She began to enter her trade show data into the computer. When she found herself making repeated errors, her fingers drifted from the keys. It was no use. Though she was able to put Michael and Livie on mental hold, there was someone else who refused to go away.

Devlin Hawke. Why was he here, when in all this time he had never tried to contact her? Why now?

She tried to persuade herself she had nothing to worry about. Since Devlin was probably in Minneapolis in a professional capacity, he’d decided to look her up. Just wanted to say hello.

Yes, maybe. But then why had he visited Dream Makers twice in the same day? As if it was imperative that he see her. She didn’t like it. She kept remembering he was a private investigator, that collecting information was his business, and if he had somehow—

As if on cue, the office door opened. Robyn slipped into the room, a look of warning in her eyes. “The persistent P.I. is back.”

Karen’s heart sank. Devlin Hawke was about to intrude on more than just her thoughts.

“Do you want me to stall him?”

She knows I don’t want to see him, Karen thought, aware that her face must be guilty of its usual treachery. She had to be careful. She didn’t want either Robyn or Maud to start wondering why she was so reluctant.

“No, send him back.”

Robyn left. She got to her feet, willing herself not to be nervous. As she faced the door, she folded her hands beneath her breasts, fingers laced together. It was a familiar, unconscious pose meant to convey serenity. Only those who knew her intimately understood how deceptive it was, masking an inner turmoil.

Devlin found her like this when he entered the office seconds later. The first thing she noticed was that he wasn’t wearing the warm smile of an old friend paying a casual visit. His lean, good-looking face with its wide mouth and strong nose was as sober as a condolence. Not a good sign.

After that, she was aware of how his rangy, six foot body overwhelmed the small room. There had always been a latent power in him that she had found a little daunting. And that hadn’t changed.

She could see that those riveting blue eyes of his were busy reacquainting themselves with her in turn. He nodded slowly, as if satisfied by her slender figure and a face she had always considered as rather ordinary but which, to her secret pleasure, he had once insisted was eye-filling. His husky voice said as much.

“Looking good, Karen. I guess I forgot how good.”

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.”