When he hung up, he remembered the note, which was written on the back of an envelope. Walking back to the hall, he found it and reread it then turned it over. All the hairs at the base of his neck lifted when he noted that the address on the used envelope was for a PI.
Walking through to his study, he found his laptop, Googled the PI and found that Zachary Hastings specialized in locating missing persons and covering domestic situations. Certain he was close to discovering exactly what was going on in Eva's life, he checked the time. Hastings's office wouldn't be open for an hour. Frustrated, he forced himself to make coffee while he tried to phone Eva again. When she refused to pick up, he left a message, asking her to call him.
He made one more call to the young detective, Hicks, who had been investigating the break-in at Eva's house. The information that Hicks provided, that they had a suspect and that Eva had made a statement to the effect that the same suspect had been harassing her, made his jaw compress.
Hicks wouldn't provide him with the name of the person they were investigating, because all of the paperwork was under Eva's name, but Kyle was willing to bet it was the stepfather. It was just another example of how Eva, with the self-sufficient streak she had, out of necessity, acquired as a child-and which he had seen as a hard, brassy confidence-was used to managing on her own.
* * *
Gabriel was grim faced as they stepped into the sterile vault that housed their safe deposit boxes. He produced the two keys required, and Kyle opened the box, which was filled with family jewelry and documents. Kyle found the adoption papers with Eva's birth name and those of her parents. He made a note of all three names and their birth dates. He flipped through the documents, which were mostly investment portfolios. At the bottom of the box, he found an envelope addressed to Mario. It was filled with Eva's medical reports.
"Bingo," he said softly.
Suddenly, he was beginning to have a glimmer of what Mario had meant all those years ago by Eva needing "protection." Eva had a genetic disorder. He didn't know what the implications of the disorder meant, exactly, but by the end of the day he would.
In amongst the paperwork was a psychologist's report. Apparently, after years of trying to fix the dysfunction in her family, Eva had, at age fourteen, chosen to walk away from her mother and her latest husband, a petty conman, choosing foster care and survival, instead of hopelessness.
Kyle's chest tightened as he began to see Eva's abandonment of their marriage in its correct context. She wasn't a quitter. She was strong and resolute and she had thrown everything she could into their marriage in an attempt to get him to love her back.
For Eva to leave meant she had given up on him.
If he got her back at all, it would be a miracle.
* * *
An hour later, Kyle sat down opposite Hastings in a small, neat office on the North Shore. When Hastings refused to divulge what, exactly, he was doing for Eva, Kyle applied a little judicious pressure. Eva was his wife and she had disappeared. If Hastings wanted his bill paid, then he needed to give the report to Kyle.
With the report in hand and the addresses he needed, Kyle started searching for Eva. Two weeks later, after a series of dead ends, he abandoned trying to find Eva through her past connections.
Although, he would find her, it was just a matter of time. Eva was pregnant with his child, which meant she needed medical appointments. More important, within the next few weeks, she would most probably be having tests to determine whether or not the baby was affected by the disorder. It wasn't the avenue he would have chosen to find Eva, but it was the only one she had left him.
Fifteen
Two months later, Eva dressed in a soft cotton shift dress and a light jacket, both of which were comfortable to wear, given that her waistline was gently expanding. After locking the tiny cottage she had rented in a remote coastal village miles north of Dolphin Bay, she drove to a specialist appointment in Auckland.
As she drove, she noticed the same silver sedan had been behind her ever since she had left the small village and turned onto the main highway. An odd tension gripped her at the thought that Kyle had somehow located her and was keeping tabs on her, although she almost immediately dismissed the thought. For Kyle to go to the effort of finding her and having her followed would mean that he cared, and she did not think that was the case. Besides, she was on State Highway 1, heading toward Auckland, New Zealand's largest city. Most of the traffic in front and behind would be heading toward the same destination.
Thirty minutes later, her small car was swallowed up in city traffic. A small jolt of adrenaline went through her when she noticed that there was still a silver sedan two cars behind her at a traffic light, but as she accelerated across an intersection with light-colored cars stretching in several directions, she dismissed the thought that she was being followed.
Minutes later, she parked her car and took an elevator up to the specialist clinic where she had booked her appointment. She had tossed up whether or not to have her baby tested while it was still in the womb. There was a small risk of miscarriage, but she had decided that she needed to know sooner rather than later. Regardless of the outcome, she would love this child with all her heart. If the news was bad, it would tear her to pieces, but she would cherish each day: she would cope.
As she sat in the upmarket clinic, the classical background music that was playing changed to a soft, lilting tune. It was the waltz by Strauss that she and Kyle had danced to at their wedding, just weeks ago. Nerves already stretched thin, she searched for a tissue and blew her nose, relieved when the tune finally changed to a light and airy piece by Bach.
She checked her watch. Abruptly nervous about the long wait, she got up to get a foam cup of chilled water from the dispenser in the corner of the waiting room. The sooner she had the procedure done, the sooner she could get out of Auckland and minimize the risk that she might accidentally bump into Kyle or someone else she knew.
She drank the small amount of water she'd dispensed, grimacing at the fine tremor of her hands, a sure sign of stress. The sound of the glass door at reception sliding open attracted her attention. Shock reverberated through her when she saw Kyle, dressed in a dark suit with a snowy-white shirt and blue tie, walking toward her.
She was suddenly glad that, evidently, she was the first appointment after lunch, so no one else was in the waiting area. "How did you know I'd be here?"
"I know you're pregnant and that you would need a specialist appointment, so I hired a security firm to find out where and when."
And that wasn't all. "You had me followed!"
"That, too. It took me long enough to locate you, and once I did, I wasn't taking any risks." He came to a halt beside her, and she noticed the dark circles under his eyes, as if he hadn't been sleeping, and that his hair was ruffled as if he'd dragged his fingers through it repeatedly. "I know why you ran."
She crumpled the cup and dropped it in the nearby trash can as she desperately tried to work out how much Kyle did know. She tried for a smooth, professional smile. "I am pregnant. And if you'll remember, you expressly stated that you didn't want children."
"I said a lot of things I regret, especially that. Will you hear me out?"
Tensing against the too-rapid pounding of her heart and the one thing she had not seen coming, that maybe, just maybe, Kyle wanted to try again, she sat and listened.
In terse sentences, Kyle outlined the raw details of the grief and guilt that had consumed him, almost to the point of losing her. "You know how much I wanted you. It practically drove me crazy, but I couldn't seem to change the way I was wired until I lost you." He grimaced. "Gabriel probably thinks I went crazy. It certainly felt like it."
Grimly, he outlined how he and Gabriel had accessed Mario's safe deposit box and found her medical reports. That Kyle had even rung Hicks and found that she was having Sheldon Ferris investigated for harassment. He had also found Hastings and pressured him into supplying a copy of the investigation she had commissioned into her stepfather.
"You know about the disorder."
"And that we could lose our child."
Our child. She met his gaze fiercely. "I don't understand. You didn't want a pregnancy. You can't stand the thought of having a child, let alone one that could die."