demand six figures for his work, but couldn’t remember to pay the electricity bill.
They hadn’t worked out as lovers, but he’d given her the direction for her career. She’d loved the business part of the art world. She was fascinated with the details it took to put a show together, with discovering new talent and directing their careers. She sometimes thought of herself as the director and the artists were the actors. They got the spotlight, but deep down, she knew that a little part of their success belonged to her.
This she could do. Organize. Polish. In a way, it was a safe career. She didn’t have to prove her own talent; she simply had to show off others’.
But with the travel and the late nights, she’d never had time or any real desire to develop friendships or keep a lover longer than a season. Now, when she could really use someone she could trust, there was no one to call.
Tori must have felt that way in the airport that night. Parker knew she could be the artist’s friend, only who would be Parker’s friend?
Each night she watched the news. There must not have been much going on, because a few of the stations were doing nightly updates on Victoria Vilanie’s disappearance. They had experts saying it was obviously a kidnapping. They interviewed Victoria’s high school teachers and her first art instructor in college. All said that Tori was shy. One of the anchormen said that Victoria was one of the best young painters in the country and the world couldn’t afford to lose her.
Parker watched, knowing that when she disappeared to go check on Tori, no one would mention her on the news. More and more, she realized she had to step up and be a true friend. If she didn’t, the public would eat the shy little artist alive if they found her.
So, to be that friend, Parker had to make sure that no one followed her. No one would think that she also was vanishing. She had to make her leaving look like it was simply a business trip, nothing more.
As she planned, she forgot about how her leg felt weak and how her back often hurt. She forgot how sad the young doctor had looked when he’d stared at her. He hadn’t said she had cancer. He hadn’t had to. Parker had always known someday the curse of the Lacey clan would find her. “I don’t have time to die right now,” she said to herself. “I’ve got too much to do.”
She thought of calling Dr. Brown and telling him he’d just have to wait a few weeks before he “made her comfortable,” but she guessed he would have figured that out when he’d returned to her room and found she’d gone. She’d seen his number on her list of missed calls, but she refused to call his office back. Right now she had to convince her staff that she was traveling for work while she made plans to get away totally unnoticed by anyone who might think that she had a connection to Victoria Vilanie.
To disappear, she’d need some help from someone who either knew nothing about what she was doing or could be trusted completely. A saint or an idiot, she reasoned.
Slowly, she began compiling a mental list of all the people she’d called friends over the years. One by one she made calls.
Her lab partner in college didn’t remember knowing a Parker Lacey.
Her college roommate was eight months pregnant with her fourth kid and said she didn’t have time to chat.
Two old lovers wouldn’t take her call.
Her former boss had died two years ago.
The only neighbor she knew had moved a year ago, and Parker hadn’t noticed.
Parker paced the room like a caged lion. Surely, in thirty-seven years, she’d made one friend. She didn’t need a kidney; she only needed a favor. Someone to loan her a car or pick her up from the airport after one of her staff thought they were taking her to catch a plane.
Someone she could trade IDs with, maybe? No, that would be too much like a spy novel.
Even someone to give her a ride would be nice. Surely she knew a friend who would do a favor without asking too many questions.
As the days passed she realized she was being watched. If she didn’t plan carefully, she’d lead the FBI—or worse, the press—right to Tori.
Only Tori wanted her to come. Parker had to find a way. Once they were on the farm, they’d talk. Parker would help Tori plan; after all, planning was what she was good at.
Parker thought about how the brooding cowboy on the adjacent farm would react if press crews pulled up next to his land. He barely talked to her—or anyone else—the day she’d bought her farm.
The good thing about living next to a loner like him was that she didn’t have to worry about him spreading rumors of someone living at her place. She doubted he’d even noticed Tori there. If he had, he would have thought it was none of his business.
That one trait just might classify him as a friend in her book.
GALEN STANLEY PULLED the truck he’d rented in Liberal, Kansas, into the motel just outside Crossroads, Texas. The twilight rain was threatening to freeze over. He’d been driving for hours and was ready to stop.
The trail was cold.
His body felt every bit of his almost fifty years as he climbed from the huge rig. He could have slept in the back of the cab, but tonight, this close to the town he grew up in, he needed silence and a roof over his head.
He’d taken this assignment not because it was easy or had much chance of being successful, but because when he’d seen one of the locations he’d be checking out, he knew it was a sign telling him it was time to go back.
Back to the place he’d run from over thirty years ago. He’d been a traveler ever since.
As much as he hated to admit it, his gypsy blood sometimes whispered through his veins. He believed in signs and curses. In the past thirty years, he’d cheated death one too many times to not know that it would eventually find him. Maybe this place where it all began would be the place it all ended.
The loneliness that always weighed on his broad shoulders seemed heavier tonight. Maybe it was the knowledge that there would be no one to come home to. Not before, not now, not ever.
When he walked into the motel lobby, a sleepy old man in overalls climbed out of his recliner and limped the five feet to the counter. He didn’t look too happy at being pulled from his TV program.
“You got a room?” Galen didn’t bother to smile.
“Sixty a night for truckers. Breakfast is included.”
Galen nodded and pulled two hundreds from his wallet.
“Name?” The old man moved to a computer that looked twenty years old. “And I’ll need ID, address and an email if you got it.”
“Gabe,” Galen lied, as always. “Gabe Santorno.” He passed him a driver’s license with that name, along with an address in Denver that was simply a mail drop.
“One night, Mr. Santorno?”
“No. Two.” He hadn’t
