cheese?” she asked.
He knew she was trying to change the subject, but he was unwilling to let it go.
“Yes, please.” His mind was racing, trying to think of a way to keep their conversation going. He remembered what the desk clerk had told him about the place. Maybe that would work. “So, have you always lived in Montana?”
She nodded.
“This is quite a place. Did you build it?”
She turned. “No, it’s quite old, actually. My father bought it over thirty years ago. It’s been in the family ever since. I was born here.”
“Really?”
She nodded.
“So you are following your father’s footsteps into the hotel business.”
Her chin trembled, and at that moment he hated himself for continuing with the charade. To his intense relief, she answered without any more coercion.
“The hotel was only a sideline,” she said softly. “My father was a doctor. He and Uncle David and Uncle Jasper founded the White Mountain Fertility Clinic in Braden.”
Jack quickly picked up on her use of past tense.
“Your father is no longer living?”
Isabella bit the inside of her mouth to keep from crying. She had to get used to talking about this. It was now a hard fact of her life.
“No. He died a little over a week ago.”
“So it was his memorial service today?”
Isabella shook her head as her eyes filled with tears. “No, today was for my Uncle Frank. He was on vacation. Someone killed him.” She took a quick breath and then turned around.
“I’m very sorry,” Jack said. “That’s got to be tough…losing two members of your family so close together.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
There was a long moment of silence as she completed the sandwich. He watched without comment, noting the methodical movements of her hands as she cut the sandwich at an angle, creating two triangular halves. Then she placed it on a plate, added pickles, olives and a handful of chips, and set it on a tray. Without wasted motion, she laid a white linen napkin beside the plate, then took a glass from the cabinet and turned to him, the glass held lightly in her hand. But there was nothing casual about the look she gave him. He felt pierced through by her stare.
“What would you like to drink?”
“What do you have?” he asked.
“This is a hotel. You can have pretty much anything you want.”
“Any soft drink will do.”
She took a can of cola from the refrigerator, added some ice to his glass, and then put them on the tray before handing it to him.
“Here is your food. I hope it will hold you until morning. We begin serving breakfast at six o’clock.”
Jack nodded and smiled. “It looks great. Thank you for going to so much trouble.”
Isabella folded her hands in front of her and tilted her head to one side. For a moment Jack had a vision of a certain teacher who used to chastise him for being tardy when he was a child.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “Have a good night.”
He’d been dismissed. Without a reason to linger longer, he picked up the tray and started out of the room. He was almost to the door when she spoke.
“Forgive my emotional outburst,” she said softly. “The wound is still so fresh.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” he said, then looked at the tension on her face. “Will you be all right? I mean…I’d be happy to wait and walk you through the lobby.”
The offer was unexpected, and because it was, it was that much more precious.
“No, but thank you just the same, Mr….”
“Dolan. Jack Dolan.”
She tilted her head in the other direction, as if fitting the name to the man, then nodded, as if to herself.
“Good night, Jack Dolan.”
He hesitated, then nodded.
“Good night, Miss Abbott.”
She turned her back on him to pour a serving of milk in a pan and set it on a burner to heat. At that point he remembered that she’d told him she’d been unable to sleep.
As he started up the stairs with his tray, he glanced at the portrait. The resemblance between mother and daughter was uncanny. No wonder he’d thought she was a ghost. He glanced down at the tray full of food and grimaced. If he ate all of this, he would be sleepless, too. And even if he slept, he suspected his sleep would not be dreamless—not after the encounter he’d just had.
He shook his head and tore his gaze from the painting.
Ghosts indeed.
4
Vasili Rostov stood with binoculars held close to his face, watching as the downstairs lights went out inside the hotel in the valley below. He watched until a light appeared at a second floor window before he dropped the binoculars onto his backpack and crawled into his sleeping bag. Whatever had been going on downstairs was obviously over.
He cursed softly in Russian, taking comfort in the familiar roll of the words on his tongue. Before they’d pulled him out of his anonymous existence, he had been able to convince himself that he was still as good as ever and that age had no bearing on his abilities. But now that he’d been on the move going on two weeks, he had to admit he was getting too old for this work. He missed his bed and his easy chair, where the cushions sank in all the right spots. And he missed his vodka. He always had a couple of shots before going to bed. Since he’d come to Montana, he’d been forced to endure cold camps and dried foods. The novelty of being back “on the job” was wearing thin. Couple that with a continuing urge to forget everything he’d been sent to do and get lost in America, as Vaclav Waller had done, and Vasili Rostov was an unhappy man.
He looked back down the mountain at the roof of the sprawling three-story hotel and grimaced. He needed to find a way to get inside without anyone knowing. It was the only place he knew to start looking for answers. But how to do that without arousing suspicion was, at the moment, beyond him.
The night sky was clear and cool, but despite the beauty of the stars, he would rather have been in a bed and under a roof. A pack of coyotes began to howl on a nearby hillside. He jerked in reflex and reached for his gun, cursing the fact that the only place to offer rooms on this forsaken bit of earth was the hotel below.
At the present time there was only one paying guest at Abbott House, a man who’d arrived earlier in the afternoon. Vasili had considered the wisdom of staying there himself and then discarded
