Texas…Now and Forever Read online

  “Luke wasn’t drunk! I don’t care what the tests showed. He was completely in control of himself that night.”

  “He’s going to have to prove that in court. I don’t know what kind of hold your uncle Carmine and Frank Del Brio have over the county D.A., but the idiot’s upped the charges against Luke and the three others to manslaughter. They’ve been put on administrative leave from the marines and are being held in the county jail without bail until their trial.”

  “Oh, no!” Shattered by the unforeseen consequences of her deception, Haley searched desperately for a way to clear the four men. “What about DNA tests? They’d prove the corpse isn’t me.”

  “They would if we had a sample of your DNA to use for a comparison. Your mother’s kept your room just as you left it, but she’s had it thoroughly cleaned. We couldn’t find so much as a hair caught in a comb or an old toothbrush to take a sample from.”

  How like her mother. Isadora Mercado wouldn’t allow a single mote of dust to settle on her precious daughter’s belongings.

  “I’ll catch the next plane home, Judge.”

  “Now hold on a minute, missy.”

  “I won’t let Luke and the others take the blame for my death!”

  “Those boys aren’t going to take the blame. I know more about the law than any six attorneys in this state, including that pea-brained D.A. I’ll step off the bench to represent them and I’ll get them off,” he promised with utter confidence. “I’m only telling you about the fuss because I know you have the Mission Creek Clarion sent to a fake name at a post office box. I didn’t want you to see the headlines and have a spasm.”

  “I’m pretty close to a spasm now!”

  “Look, if it’ll make you feel any better, go down to a newspaper kiosk tomorrow morning and buy a paper from Berlin or Hong Kong or anyplace but London. Take a picture of yourself holding up the paper and overnight it to me along with those before-and-after photos the plastic surgeon took of you. If worse comes to worst, I’ll produce proof that you’re still alive. I won’t tell anyone where you are, though. You’ll still be safe.”

  “I will, but will you? If Frank finds out you helped me escape, he’ll kill you.”

  The judge huffed. “I’m an ornery Texan, missy, and tough as shoe leather. What’s more, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve Frank Del Brio never thought of. You just send those pictures and don’t worry about Luke and the boys.”

  The sensational trial dragged on for months.

  Haley followed its progress in the Mission Creek Clarion. The local paper remained sympathetic to the war heroes, but the Corpus Christi and Dallas dailies played up every scandal from the defendants’ past.

  Old feuds were resurrected, including the longstanding battle between Flynt Carson’s great-grandfather and his former ranching partner, J. P. Wainwright. Tyler Murdoch’s youthful brushes with the law after his mother abandoned him made for juicy copy. Spence Harrison’s pre-law degree came into play as he assisted Carl Bridges in his own defense.

  The tabloids may have had a field day with Flynt and Tyler and Spence, but they went for Luke’s jugular. They seemed determined to paint him as rich and shamelessly indulged by the absentee uncle who’d acted as his guardian. Several papers ran disgusting, tell-all interviews with women Luke dated both before and after he’d joined the marines. Instead of a healthy young bachelor with normal appetites, he came across as an oversexed playboy who’d plied his best friend’s sister with beer and coaxed her out on the lake so he and his buddies could take turns with her.

  Despite the sensationalism, or maybe because of it, Judge Bridges made good on his promise to Haley. He got the four men acquitted.

  The trial left its mark on all four defendants, though. They soon separated from the marines. Flynt took over management of the vast Carson ranching interests. Infuriated by the spurious charges brought against him, Spence went on to law school, spent his time in the trenches as a prosecutor, then campaigned for and won the D.A.’s job. Tyler disappeared into some shadowy, quasi-military organization. And Luke seemed determined to live up to the reputation as a playboy he’d gained during the trial.

  Haley’s heart pinched every time she read another story about the jet-setting millionaire. Invariably, he was photographed with some toothpick-thin supermodel or overendowed starlet hanging all over him. Once, she read that he was in London, attending the opening of a new musical he’d backed. She’d been tempted, so very tempted, to pay the outrageous sum the scalpers were asking for the sold-out performance to search the audience for a glimpse of Luke. But she didn’t. She’d wreaked enough havoc on his life. She refused to take even the remotest chance that she might cause more.

  That fierce resolve kept her in London for almost a decade.

  Waves of homesickness attacked often during those years, especially at night. Determined to immerse herself in her new identity, Haley refused to give in to the despair that seeped into her heart whenever she thought of her family and friends.

  Gradually the cosmopolitan city took her to its generous bosom. She grew to love the pigeons and the parks and the bright lights of Piccadilly Circus. She even acclimated to the cold, foggy winters. Slowly she began to feel safe in her new identity. Carefully she built a small, intimate circle of friends.

  She’d just returned from dinner with those friends when another call from Carl Bridges plunged her back into danger…and into Luke Callaghan’s arms.

  The call came on a muggy July evening. The phone was jangling in that distinctive European way when Haley unlocked the front door.

  “Your mother’s been beaten,” the judge informed her with the closest thing to panic she’d ever heard from him. “Brutally beaten. The doctors…”

  His voice wavered, cracked.

  “The doctors aren’t sure she’s going to make it.”

  Haley caught a flight home that same night.

  Four

  The desperate need to reach her mother’s bedside dominated Haley’s every thought during the long flight from London to JFK, then on to Dallas and, finally, Corpus Christi. Exhausted but coiled tight as new barbed wire, she stepped off the jet to the rippling palms and ninety-nine percent humidity of the Texas Gulf. Too tense to even notice the sweltering heat, she rushed through the airport to the rental car desk.

  Years of living under an assumed identity had honed her self-preservation instinct to a fine edge. Her altered features should give her anonymity, but just to be sure, she made a brief stop at a costume shop before leaving Corpus Christi. Improvising hastily, she explained that she’d been invited to a party that night, thrown by officers from the nearby naval air station. She left the shop with a nun’s habit and wimple tucked under her arm. The convent of the Sisters of Good Hope was located just a few miles north of Mission Creek. Since the sisters made frequent visits to area hospitals, Haley would hide under their mantle until she determined just what the heck had happened to her mother.

  The moist air of the coast followed her out of the city as she headed west on Highway 44. Soon the marshy flatlands of the coastal plains gave way to rolling hills cut by dry arroyos and dotted with mesquite, cacti and creosote. With the wind whipping her hair, Haley breathed in the hot, dusty air for almost an hour. At Freer, she turned left onto Highway 16 and headed home.

  Home.

  Her chest squeezed tighter with each familiar landmark. As much as she’d grown to love London’s lights and glitter and sophisticated aura, Texas was home. In her heart, it would always be home.

  She pulled off the road some miles north of Mission Creek to exchange her slacks and sleeveless turquoise silk sweater for the dove-gray habit. The long-sleeved dress raised an immediate sweat in the hundred-degree heat. Haley had to struggle with the wimple and short, shoulder-length veil, but finally got them right. The little makeup she’d had on when she’d answered Carl’s call had long since worn off. Inability to sleep during the long flight had added a hint of grayness to her olive-hued skin. Satisfi
ed that she more than looked the part, Haley slid back into the rental car and turned the air-conditioning up full-blast.

  She kept her head averted when she passed Lake Maria. The memory of that awful night almost a decade ago still seared her soul. Mission Creek’s historic downtown called her hungry gaze, however. The old granite courthouse looked exactly the same. So did the bank, founded in 1869 and still serving the local community. She flicked quick glances at Jocelyne’s fancy French restaurant and the Tex-Mex favorite, Coyote Harry’s. Her taste buds tingled at the remembered fire of Harry’s Sunday special—huevos rancheros topped with mounds of French fries, all drenched in his award-winning chili. As hungry as she was, she had no thought of stopping. Her one goal, her one driving need, was to get to the Mission Creek hospital.

  Luckily she arrived post-afternoon visiting hours and pre-supper. The staff was busy getting ready to feed the patients, and the visitors had all departed. Haley took the elevator to the second floor and picked the most harried candy-striper to ask directions.

  “Excuse me.”

  The aide flicked her a quick glance. “Can I help you, Sister?”

  “Yes, please. Which is Isadora Mercado’s room?”

  “Three-eighteen. Around the corner, at the end of the hall.”

  “Thank you.”

  Tucking her hands inside her loose sleeves in imitation of the nuns who’d taught her during her Catholic grade-school days, Haley glided around the corner. Halfway down a long corridor that smelled strongly of pine-scented antiseptic, she stumbled to a halt.

  A heavyset man lolled in a chair at the far end of the hall, his nose buried in the paper. Haley guessed instantly he was one of the mob’s goons. He had the disgruntled air of a man who’d rather be out shaking down pimps and two-bit dealers than spending empty hours in a hard, straight-backed chair.

  What was he doing here? Why did Isadora need a guard? Swallowing a sudden lump in her throat, Haley lifted her chin and glided past the man. He gave her a curious glance and went back to his paper.

  The door to Room 318 whispered open, then whooshed shut behind her. For a moment she thought she’d stepped into a hothouse. Glorious arrangements of gladioli, long-stemmed roses, and irises occupied every horizontal surface and filled the air with a heavy scent. Gaily colored balloons bobbed above the baskets. The room was such a riot of color that it took a moment for her to focus on the petite, slender woman hooked up to the bank of monitors beside the bed.

  Despite Carl Bridges’s warning that Isadora Mercado had been brutally beaten, the sight of one side of her mother’s bruised, battered face had Haley reeling in shock.

  “Oh, my God! What did they do to you?”

  She couldn’t hold back the soft, broken cry. In her horror, she forgot to color her voice with the light British accent she’d deliberately cultivated over the years. For that brief, paralyzing moment, she was Haley Mercado, ripped apart by anguish for her mother.

  With agonizing slowness, Isadora’s head turned. Bandages covered part of her face. What was exposed showed mottled bruises. Both eyes were swollen shut, but evidently the beating hadn’t affected her hearing. Swiping her tongue along dry, cracked lips, she croaked out an agonized whisper.

  “Haley? Is…is that you?”

  Tears streamed down Haley’s cheeks. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. She hadn’t planned beyond this moment, hadn’t formed a coherent strategy beyond just seeing her mother.

  “Please,” Isadora begged brokenly. “Please don’t play this cruel game. Are you… Are you my daughter?”

  Haley couldn’t deny her mother’s need, any more than she could deny her own. Sinking into the chair beside the hospital bed, she groped past the IV lines for her mother’s hand.

  “Yes, Mom. It’s me.”

  A fierce joy lit Isadora’s battered face. “I knew it! I knew all along you weren’t dead.”

  Her fingers gripped Haley’s convulsively. Tears squeezed through the swollen lids. Her throat worked, forcing out each hoarse, joyful word.

  “Johnny kept insisting we had to accept the brutal truth. Even Ricky gave up and took out his grief on Luke and the others. But I never stopped believing you’d come home, Haley. Not for one minute!”

  “Oh, Mom, I’m so sorry. So very, very sorry.”

  Overcome with guilt, Haley dropped her forehead onto their joined hands. For a moment the only sounds that filled the room were the soft beep of the IV pump and Isadora’s quiet sobs.

  As if seeking assurance, her mother reached across the bed with her other hand and patted her daughter’s cheeks, her chin, her nose.

  “What’s happened to you? Your face, your bones. You feel so thin. So different.”

  “I’ve lost weight. And I had surgery, Mom. Just around the cheeks and eyes. And here. Feel my nose.”

  Her fingers trembling, Haley guided her mother’s hand down the smooth, elegant slope the cosmetic surgeon had crafted.

  “Our little bump is gone,” Haley said, smiling through her tears. “I miss it. Almost as much as I’ve missed you and Daddy and Ricky.”

  “Oh, Haley!” Her bruised face contorting, Isadora gripped her daughter’s hand with both of hers. “What happened that night, out on the lake? Where did you go? Where have you been all this time?”

  She answered the easiest question first. “I’ve been in London.”

  “Why didn’t you let us know you were all right?”

  The anguish in her mother’s voice cut her to the quick.

  “I couldn’t, Mom. I had to let you and Frank believe I was dead.”

  “Frank? Frank Del Brio is the reason you disappeared?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you accepted his ring. You were engaged. I never understood why, but I thought…we all thought you must have seen something in the man the rest of us didn’t.”

  “I did. His utter ruthlessness.”

  She debated how much to tell her mother. She wasn’t sure whether Isadora knew about her husband’s involvement with the mob. Her parents had never talked finances or business affairs in front of their children. Haley herself would never have known about the shady side of the family business if curiosity hadn’t made her dig deep during those two summers she’d worked in the offices of the Mercado Brothers Paving and Contracting.

  As it turned out, Isadora was all too aware of her husband’s involvement in his brother’s schemes. Her fingers gripped Haley’s brutally as she pinpointed the reason for her daughter’s flight with uncanny accuracy.

  “Frank threatened to expose your father, didn’t he?”

  Still, Haley hedged. She’d given up her family and the only home she’d ever known to protect her dad. It went hard against the grain to admit the truth, even now.

  “Tell me, Haley.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “I knew it had to be something like that. You wouldn’t just disappear without good reason. Thank God you got away from that bastard. At least you’re safe. Frank can’t beat you to bring your father into line.”

  Haley reeled in shock for the second time in less than ten minutes. “Frank did this to you?”

  “Oh, it was made to look like a mall parking lot mugging, but Frank was behind it. He wanted to let your father know he couldn’t disobey orders from the family anymore.”

  No wonder one of Frank’s goons sat outside the door. He was there to make sure Isadora Mercado didn’t tell her story to the police. Resolve hardened inside Haley. Cold. Unwavering. Lethal.

  “I’ll see he pays for this. Whatever it takes, I’ll see that he pays.”

  “Frank, or your father?”

  The bitterness in her mother’s voice shocked Haley into silence.

  “Your father dragged us into this mess,” Isadora said, baring her soul to her daughter for the first time. “You. Me. Ricky. All of us. I’ve been telling him for longer than I can remember that anyone who swims with barracudas will eventually get bloodied. Your father’s in deep now, Haley. Too deep fo
r you or Judge Bridges or anyone else to save him.” Pain that had nothing to do with her bruises crossed her face. “So is Ricky.”

  “Oh, no! Ricky’s working with Uncle Carmine?”

  “I think so. He won’t talk to me. He won’t talk to anyone. He’s turned so hard and distant since he broke off his friendship with Luke and Tyler and the others.”

  “This is all my fault. I should never have tried to get away by faking my death. I’ll come home, Mom. I’ll make things right.”

  “No!” Isadora’s voice rose to a frightened croak. Clutching her daughter’s fingers in agitation, she protested vehemently. “No, you can’t come home. I can’t bear it if Carmine and Frank sink their claws into you like they have Johnny and Ricky. Please, Haley. Please go back to London. Today. Tonight. Let me know at least one of my family is safe and happy.”

  Haley tried to calm her.

  “I’ll be careful, Mom. But I need to try to straighten out the mess my disappearance caused.”

  “You can’t. Don’t you understand, it’s too late for you to save your father. Too late for Ricky. Go back to London. Promise me you’ll go back to London.”

  In her heart Haley knew her mother was right. If she came home now, Frank would wreak a diabolic revenge for her attempt to escape him. Not just on Haley, but on her family. She was caught in a trap of her own making.

  “All right,” she promised, her throat aching. “I’ll go back to London.”

  “Today?”

  “Tomorrow. Today I’m going to spend as much time with you as I can.”

  Mother and daughter said goodbye at nine-thirty that evening, with whispered promises to meet in Paris in the fall. It broke Haley’s heart to leave Mission Creek without seeing her father or Ricky, but her mother had pleaded with her not to reveal herself to either. They were too close to Frank Del Brio and might let something slip.