Now You See Her Page 0,57

was considering coming after her.

“We might have found Devon,” she said again, hurrying down the remaining stairs toward the front door.

“Who’s ‘we’?”

Was that the reason she hadn’t told Vic where she was going? Because she didn’t want him to see her with Liam? Or was it because she didn’t want Liam to see her with Vic?

Sadie Doyle suddenly appeared in the small foyer, a bright green apron completely covering the front of her blue, flower-print dress, a large wooden spoon in her hand. “Good morning, Mrs. Taggart. Lovely day out there this morning. Will you be joining us for breakfast?” Her glance drifted toward the stairs, her face registering both surprise and amusement at the sight of a half-naked Vic Sorvino. “Oh. Hello.”

“Give me a minute to get dressed,” Vic urged Marcy, ignoring Sadie Doyle’s salacious gaze. “I’ll come with you.”

“No. Please. I don’t know if there’s room.”

“You understand that there’s an extra charge for overnight guests,” Sadie Doyle said to Marcy, her eyes remaining firmly on Vic.

“Fine. Whatever.” Marcy’s hand was already reaching for the door.

“Marcy, wait.”

“I can’t,” Marcy said. “I’ll call you later.” Then she opened the door and rushed out onto the street.

“Marcy …,” she heard him call after her.

The street was already congested with heavy morning traffic. She didn’t even know what kind of car Liam drove, Marcy realized, peering into the front window of each passing automobile. “Where are you, Liam?” she cried, looking up and down the busy street. Damn it, where was everybody going so early?

She checked her watch. Not quite twenty minutes had passed since Liam’s surprise phone call. In that time she’d washed, brushed her teeth, pulled on a pair of jeans and a gray sweater, and tucked her uncombed hair into a jeweled clip at the back. Stubborn tresses were now pushing against the clasp, rebelling against their confinement. Several maverick curls had already wormed their way to freedom, shooting off in a number of different directions, like a fireworks display. There’d been no time for makeup, just a hastily applied streak of lipstick as she was tiptoeing from the room.

What difference did any of that make? Marcy told herself. They’d found Devon. She was less than an hour away from seeing her daughter again.

She wondered again why she hadn’t told Vic about Liam’s phone call and where she was going. What had stopped her? She’d felt so safe, so comfortable, so secure in his arms. Her breath had come freely and without pain for the first time in months, maybe years. Despite everything that had happened, despite everything experience had taught her, she’d actually found herself starting to relax her guard.

And wasn’t that when disaster always struck?

Maybe that was why she hadn’t told him.

“Come on, Liam,” she muttered now. Every minute counted. A minute could mean the difference between finding her daughter and losing her again. They couldn’t afford to waste any time.

I could call him, Marcy thought, reaching into her purse for her cell phone, then deciding against it. She was overreacting. She had to calm down. If there was a problem, Liam would phone.

In the months after Devon’s supposed drowning, Marcy had often dreamed her daughter had phoned and asked to meet her somewhere—at Starbucks in the Spadina Village, beside the Carole Tanenbaum vintage jewelry collection at Holt’s, at the ferryboat entrance to the Toronto Island. And always something kept coming up that stopped them from reuniting. Marcy would wake up day after day in a pool of frustrated tears. Eventually Peter stopped asking what her dreams were about. He soon gave up trying to comfort her altogether.

And he had tried, Marcy realized, pacing back and forth in front of the Doyle Cork Inn. At least for a little while. Until her pain had proved too much for him to bear. Until her grief had threatened to overwhelm them both.

And then he’d run.

Like I’m doing now, she thought, hearing a door open behind her and turning to see Vic, now fully dressed, step outside onto the inn’s front landing, his blue eyes searching out hers, his kind face full of questions. “Marcy,” he said, and she felt herself swaying toward him.

A series of loud, staccato honks filled the air as a small black car suddenly pulled to a stop beside her, its passenger door opening, a hand beckoning her inside. A handsome face with sleepy green eyes suddenly filled her frame of vision. “Get in,” Liam said, taking off before she was fully seated, before she’d even