Heart of Gold - By Tami Hoag Page 0,50

that door, until this case was over, their future would have to wait.

Still, Shane thought as Faith cuddled close against him, he had a future, and for the first time in a long time it didn’t look bleak or empty.

NINE

“WE TRACED THE call to a phone booth in Mendocino,” Shane reported, drumming his fingertips on the computer printout that lay on the table before him.

“And?” John Banks prompted, his typically sardonic tone not made any more pleasant by the fact that he’d dragged himself out of bed and onto a plane at the crack of dawn. His thick head of steel gray hair was so unruly, he looked as though he had come through a wind tunnel. He needed a shave. His disposition was as rumpled as the dark suit that covered his sturdy frame.

“No distinguishable prints. Fiber evidence isn’t worth a damn at this point—a hundred people go in and out of that phone booth every day.”

“Wonderful.” Banks pulled off his glasses to rub at the bridge of his big nose. Replacing them, he stabbed Shane with a pointed look.

“He’s playing games with us,” Shane said. “Each of the letters he’s sent has a different postmark. Each of the calls we’ve managed to trace has been from a different town—all within a fifty-mile radius. We’ve got them on tape, but his voice is either too muffled or mechanically altered to make them of any use.”

“Suggestions?”

“I want Faith and Lindy moved to a safe house,” Shane said in a tone of voice that did not invite an opposing opinion. He took a strong pull on his cigarette and leveled his gaze at Faith, daring her to defy his plan.

They had been over this already. At three o’clock in the morning. Shane had awakened to find Faith pacing back and forth beside her bed, anxious and angry over the situation her ex-husband had embroiled her in and the feelings of helplessness that had all but overwhelmed her.

Now they sat at one of the larger tables in the inn’s dining room with afternoon light streaming in through the tall windows. The setting was different, but it was quite clear by the angle of Faith’s chin that the argument was going to be the same. Under all her sweetness, behind those gorgeous brown eyes the lady had a true Irish temper.

The door to the kitchen swung open, and Alaina and Jayne walked in, Alaina looking very official with her dark hair pulled back and black-rimmed glasses framing her arctic blue eyes. Jayne’s expression was one of wide-eyed intensity, as if she had just been thrust into a scene in a movie. Shane bristled at the intrusion, but Faith cut him off before he could voice his objection.

“I asked Alaina and Jayne to sit in on this meeting,” she said. Shane shot a burning look her way. Her slim shoulders stiffened, and she stuck her chin out a little farther. “Alaina is my attorney, and Jayne is … well … Jayne is my friend.”

“And spiritual confidant,” Jayne added, sliding down on a chair.

Shane rolled his eyes. Banks frowned, but it was hard to discern whether he was frowning at the addition to the powwow or at Jayne’s outfit—a wildly flowered dirndl skirt that hung to her dainty ankles and an oversize Notre Dame T-shirt, the end of which was tied in a knot at her waist.

“As I was saying,” Shane began in a tight voice, when the door swung open again and Mr. Fitz marched in.

“Here I am, as ye asked, lassie,” he said, nodding purposefully to Faith as he tugged on the bottom of his smelly brown coat.

The glower Shane turned on her was almost enough to make Faith swallow her bravado. “Are you the least familiar with the concept of the need-to-know basis?” he questioned in a dark, silky voice.

“Um … Mr. Fitz lives here,” she said, not wanting to admit she had wanted all these people present for moral support more than anything. “He needs to know.”

Shane’s hands clenched the edge of the table like vise clamps as he struggled with his temper. “Why don’t we just call the Anastasia Gazette and tell them everything that’s going on here?”

Faith sniffed. “You don’t have to get snippy.”

“I’m drawing the line here, Faith,” Shane said through his teeth. He turned to the bearded, bedraggled caretaker. “You can go, Mr. Fitz. You don’t need to know.”

The old man’s beetle brows waggled furiously as he gave Shane a hard stare, then turned and left, grumbling