Perth could be traced—but I phone from other cities just in case.’
He sighed.
‘Dennis is still looking. One of those PIs visited your grandmother just last week. A different firm this time. Your gran asked him to leave his card and whether his firm had contacts in the US because she hadn’t heard from you for a long time and she thought she might hire someone to find you.’
‘Good old Gran. I’m glad she knows we’re OK,’ Annie said, thinking of the tears she’d shed over not being able to contact her grandmother.
But right from the start, when a private investigator rather than Dennis himself had contacted her father, two days after she’d left the hotel, he’d been insistent she shouldn’t see or talk to anyone from her past. She’d been cared for by the wife of the policeman she’d first spoken to and then passed on to an organisation that miraculously looked after women in her situation.
Through them and, she was pretty sure, illegally, she’d eventually flown back to Australia, or rather Annie Talbot had flown back. Then a similar though much smaller organisation in Australia had helped her father disappear—though as a policeman he’d needed less help—to re-emerge in Sydney as Rod Talbot, and take up the writing he’d played at for years, scoring a hit with his first published novel.
‘But we’re off the subject. Am I putting Alex in danger by seeing him?’
She sat down on the floor by her father’s chair and rested her head on his knee.
‘I like him so much,’ she confessed quietly, ‘that I couldn’t bear for harm to come to him through me.’
Her father stroked her hair and Henry, perhaps sensing her deep need, moved so he could put his big head on her lap.
‘I can understand that, love,’ her father said. ‘But maybe it’s not your decision to make. Maybe you have to tell him all about it, and let him decide for himself.’
Annie thought about that for a while then shook her head.
‘That’s not going to work, Dad, because if we’re not absolutely certain there’s a risk to us, why would he think there’d be one to him? We don’t know
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
