Shadows Of Truth

“Oh, that’s rich,” she said. “Just how are you going to do that?” She turned away from him.

“Look, I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness,” he said.

“No, you don’t,” she agreed, lifting her chin.

He stopped in front of her, lifted a hand. “Rachel…”

“Go,” she whispered on a ragged breath. “Just go.”

Micah stepped onto the porch, and she closed the screen door. He stood there facing the sun that burned into his eyes, his fingertips in his jeans pockets. Finally he cleared his throat. “You have no idea how much I regret what I did to you,” he said.

But she was already gone.

SHARON MIGNEREY

After living most of her life in Colorado, Sharon recently moved to the Texas Gulf coast, where Southern hospitality lives up to its reputation for being warm and welcoming. She wanted to be a storyteller since she learned that spelling words could be turned into stories. Sharon’s first book was published in 1997 after winning RWA’s Golden Heart Award in 1995. That same book went on to win the National Reader’s Choice Award. In addition to writing novels, Sharon has had several articles published by The Writer Magazine. She says the accolades are wonderful, but the only lasting satisfaction comes from serving the work. When she’s not writing, you can find her being happily involved with her critique group, learning how to garden in the Texan heat or playing with her two rescued shih tzus.

Sharon loves hearing from readers. She can be reached through her Web site www.sharonmignerey.com or in care of Steeple Hill Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279.

Shadows of Truth

Sharon Mignerey

Consider my affliction and my travail.

Forgive all my sins.

—Psalms 25:18

My deepest gratitude to Barbara Harrison,

Judythe Hixson, Sue Hornick and Pamela Nowak—

you each are amazing lights.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

ONE

Busting a gang of drug dealers would be easier than going to the door to ask for Rachel Neesham’s forgiveness. Even so, Micah McLeod was back in Carbondale, Colorado, a scant hour’s drive from Aspen. Last spring, he had left town to follow a trail of evidence, first to Aspen, then to Cabo San Lucas, all the while pretending his undercover assignment here hadn’t rocked his world.

In truth, he had run.

In truth, he wasn’t sure he would have come back now if not for the threat he knew was hanging over Rachel’s head. That thought shamed him. She had deserved far better from him than he had ever given her.

Taking a deep breath, he opened the wrought-iron gate in front of Rachel’s big, two-story Victorian house and stepped onto the brick walkway that led to her front door. He squared his shoulders and climbed the two steps, each scrape of his boot against the wood echoing in his conscience.

The late-afternoon sun burned into his shoulder blades like a laser. The heavy oak door with its oval etched glass stood open, implying welcome. Once, he had been, and now he hoped she would give him the second chance he had failed to give her.

Her safety depended upon it, though he didn’t have hard evidence to prove it. Yet.

A month ago, Rachel’s old business partner, Angela London, had started leaving him messages from prison. Since she was a proven liar and a convicted felon, he’d figured she was simply working an angle, and he hadn’t been in any hurry to see her. Now, he wished he had answered her summons the first day she had called. The case that had put Angela behind bars had taken one more unpredictable turn, and Rachel was once again caught in the crosshairs.

He frowned, staring into the house beyond the screen door. Given the threats she had received, Rachel should have the house locked up. As it was, anyone could walk right in.

The fragrance from brilliant flowers overflowing the huge terra-cotta pots framing the door assaulted his senses and ratcheted up his unease. Through the screen, the foyer was gilded in sunlight, his own shadow stretching down a hallway that he knew led to the kitchen.

The house always made him think of home, and he realized that was because of the woman and children who lived there. They represented everything he thought a home should be. Welcoming. Generous. Loving. It was like the one he’d grown up in. As an adult, he’d never had that for himself.

He rang the bell, the chimes echoing through the house.

“I’ll get it, Mom,” a childish voice called, as light footsteps clattered down the stairs that framed one side of the entryway.

Sarah. The seven-year-old who looked so much like her mother. In the next instant she appeared, looking taller than she had last spring. Her honey-colored flyaway hair framed her face like a halo.

“Micah!” The little girl’s face lit, and she unlatched the screen door and pushed it open, then skipped forward. “You came back. I kept telling Mom you would. She didn’t believe me.” She took him by the hand and led him into the house.

He should have turned tail and run while he could. Leaving last spring without even telling Rachel’s children goodbye had been nearly as difficult as leaving Rachel. Behind him, the door slammed shut.

“Mom.” Sarah pulled him toward the kitchen while his courage fled like a rat. “Look who’s here.”

A dish towel in her hands, Rachel appeared in the doorway, one of those long skirts she favored swirling around her calves. She looked wonderful…she looked too thin…tired. A half smile curved her lips. When her gaze lit on him, shock and outrage replaced the smile as she gasped.

“You.” Her voice was just as cold as he had been afraid it would be.

“Hello, Rachel.”

She opened her mouth—to order him out of the house, he was sure—then composed her face into the expressionless mask she’d worn the day he had taken her in for questioning. “Sarah, sweetie, go play with your brother.”

“Mom.”

“Now.” Rachel’s tone was as firm as he’d ever heard it.

Last spring when they had first met, Micah hadn’t thought her capable of being this stern. Then, she had been his prime suspect, odd as it seemed now, odd as it had been then. An antique dealer with wealthy patrons, providing cover for drug-smuggling and money-laundering, a business owned by two women who had been childhood friends. Neither were the sort of scum he was used to dealing with. He’d been drawn to Rachel’s softness, sure it was a facade. He hadn’t understood until it was too late what an essential part of her nature that gentleness was.

Sarah let go of his hand and gave him a long considering look before climbing the stairs. Rachel stared at the floor while they both listened to the child’s retreating footsteps. The high cheekbones that gave Rachel’s face an exotic cast were more pronounced than ever, undoubtedly because she was thinner than she had been last spring.

The month he’d spent ignoring Angela’s calls had been a month too long. Oh, he’d told himself that he was too busy, but that would have been only half-true—he was always overworked. The simple truth was, Angela reminded him of Rachel, and thoughts of the awful things he had done to her in the name of his job kept him from sleeping at night. How could he ask for God’s forgiveness when he had done the unforgivable?

He studied Rachel’s bent head, hating that she looked so drawn, hating that his actions were undoubtedly the cause. The instant Sarah’s voice carried to them as she said something to her brother, Rachel lifted her head and advanced on him like a mama bear protecting her young.

“You…” Her finger was pointed at him, carrying every accusation he believed he deserved. “…Turn yourself around and get out of my house right now. You’re not welcome here.”

“Rachel.” This was every bit as bad as he had feared.

“Don’t you ‘Rachel’ me with your sweet voice and your lies.”

“I came to…” Ask for your forgiveness. Except that he didn’t deserve it. “…Explain.” True, as far as it went.

“I heard all the explanation I needed at Angela’s arraignment, Agent McLeod.” Rachel swept past him, the top of her head barely reaching his shoulder, her light-brown hair gleaming in the sunlight as she headed for the front door. “You used me. You lied to me.”

“Not intentionally.”

“You know that old saying about good intentions paving the road to hell.” She held open the door and motioned for him to leave. “You abused my trust.” She sucked in a shuddering breath, then stilled while she waited for him, the dish towel clenched so tightly that her knuckles were nearly as white as the cloth.

He slowly walked toward her, wishing she’d look at him. She didn’t.

“I had no choice,” he said. “The job came first.”

“And it still does, doesn’t it?” Her eyes finally met his.

Holding her gaze tore a hole inside him. Once he’d thought the luminous green of her eyes contained all the colors of life. Now they were as cloudy and dull as a ruined emerald.

He couldn’t give her the outright denial he so wanted to. Striving for as much of the truth as he could manage in this instant, he said, “I heard about the threats and the demand for—”

“Still checking up on me, Agent McLeod?”

“Angela called me after you went to see her.” Micah stared at Rachel, echoes of his questioning of her last spring ringing through his head. Then he had still been half convinced Rachel was involved in Angela’s criminal activities, and he had threatened her. I’ll be your shadow, Rachel. You won’t be able to sneeze without me knowing about it. That had been a lie, too, since he had left, figuring she’d be better off. And look at where that had gotten her.

Rachel’s face paled even more. “I don’t have the money.”

“I know you don’t.”

“I don’t know where it is.”

“I know that, too.”

“If you come back, it had better be with a warrant.” Once again she motioned toward the door.

“You’re not a suspect, Rachel.” Reluctantly Micah moved toward it, sure he was about to lose his one chance. Though he was sure she wanted anything from him as much as she wanted a snake bite, he said, “I want to help.”

“Oh, that’s rich.” She let go of the door, and it slapped closed. Once again she advanced on him, all righteous fury despite the quivering of her chin. “And just how are you going to do that? Are you ready to call on my customers and assure them that I’m not peddling drugs to their children?” She snapped her fingers. “I have it. The bank that called due my loan. It’s a little hard to pay back money on a business that isn’t in business any more. Can you fix that?” When he didn’t answer she rushed on. “No, I didn’t think so.” Her eyes took on a shimmer. “Can you restore my reputation, Agent McLeod?”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Save it for someone who cares.” She turned away from him and again opened the door.

“I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”

“No, you don’t,” she agreed lifting her chin.

He stopped in front of her, lifted a hand. “Rachel…”

“Go,” she whispered, her voice ragged. “Just go.”

Micah stepped onto the porch and she closed the screen door. He stood there, his back to the door, his fingertips in his jeans pockets. Finally he cleared his throat and said, “You have no idea how much I regret what I did to you.” He raised his head but she was gone, both doors shutting him out. His heart heavy with loss, he turned back around, crossed the porch, and went down the walk.

Away from the woman he hadn’t known he loved until after he had ruined her.

From behind the sheer curtains in the parlor, Rachel watched him drive away, her fist pressed against her mouth to keep from crying out. For a single heartbeat, she had been glad to see him because the truth was she missed her friendship with him, grieved for it every bit as much as she grieved for her friendship with Angela. In the next heartbeat she remembered that he hadn’t been her friend at all and that she had been his suspect.

You’re not a suspect. Did she dare believe him?

The sharp pain of loss filled her all over again. For her best friend who had betrayed her. For her business that she had loved so much and sunk her life savings into. For the dreams that Micah had inspired. For the loss of it all.

“Mom,” came Sarah’s tentative voice from the doorway.

As she had done so many times over the last few months, Rachel straightened her back and forced the muscles in her face to relax into an expression that hid her grief and her anger.

“Yes, sweetie?” she said, turning around.

Sarah stood uncertainly in the doorway, rubbing her finger against her thumbnail as she often did when she was thinking.

“Why are you so mad at Micah?” she asked.

Rachel weighed that part of the truth she was willing to tell her daughter. She couldn’t tell Sarah that she had been falling in love with the man, that for the first time since her husband had died she’d felt alive and young and happy. Sarah wouldn’t understand that Micah’s friendship had been a sham. How could she? Rachel herself didn’t understand it.

Remembering the day she had hired Micah, she stared at her daughter. Never in Rachel’s wildest dreams had she imagined the carpenter with his competent hands and his dark, gentle eyes would turn out to be an undercover agent with the DEA, sent to investigate her as a possible drug dealer.

He hadn’t been her friend after all, which made her impulse to call him after the threats started all the more stupid.

The first demand for a half-million dollars had come via an e-mail, and she had deleted it, sure it was spam. The next demand had come in the mail, the plain white paper in an equally plain white envelope with no return address containing a single sentence. She’d thrown that away, too, sure that it was an awful prank, playing on all her new vulnerability. Then, a rock had been thrown through the living-room window one night, but the police had dismissed it as a random act of vandalism, probably by neighborhood kids.

Rachel had known it had something to do with the demand for money. She had been so certain of it that she had gone to see Angela in prison. Since she had been convicted of using their business to launder drug money, Rachel assumed the demands had something to do with Angela’s old activities. She had told Rachel she didn’t know a thing about a missing half-million and Rachel had left the prison that day, sure an overactive imagination had piled on top of her recent catastrophes and made her fear the very worst. She’d decided it all had to be some hideous prank, and that it was perfectly safe to let her children ride their bikes up and down the block without seeing a bogeyman behind every bush.

Rachel’s heart pounded as one realization after another sank into her. Angela had lied…again. The demand for money wasn’t some outrageous practical joke—it was real. Micah was back, which had to mean she was once again a suspect no matter what he said. His nicely put apology had to be merely for show. And somebody wanted money she knew nothing about.

“Mom?” Sarah asked, drawing Rachel’s attention away from her bleak thoughts.

“He lied to me,” she finally said. “A huge lie that I don’t think I can forgive.”

“Did he tell you he was sorry?” Sarah asked with the direct logic reserved for the very young.

Rachel nodded.

“Then, you’re supposed to forgive him,” her daughter said. “That’s what Mrs. Berrey says in Sunday school.”

It was also the advice of Rachel’s father, a retired minister.

If only forgiveness were that simple. Rachel crossed the room to her daughter, gave her a quick hug, and wondered how to answer. From the beginning she had taught her children to live by the lessons passed on to her by her father. At the core of her being she had believed, really believed, in everything she’d learned. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. What you ask for in faith shall be given to you. Until last spring, she had been so sure those beliefs were as much a part of her as her next breath.

She’d been wrong. She had played by the rules, had lived the kind of life expected of the daughter of a minister, and she had been happy with it. But as it turned out, faith had been as hollow as promises made by her lifelong friend, Angela. Faith hadn’t protected her or her family, and it hadn’t provided an iota of comfort.

“If a person says they’re sorry, you’re supposed to say that it’s okay,” Sarah said.

“That’s very good advice.” She brushed Sarah’s bangs off her forehead and pressed a kiss there. “But it may take me a while to accept his apology.”

“I told you that he’d come back,” Sarah said.

“Yes, you did.” And each time her daughter had made the prediction, Rachel had prayed she would never see the man again.

More than ever, she knew God had turned a deaf ear to her prayers, a knowledge she had confessed to her dad one bleak night. The deaf ear, he had told her, was hers, not God’s. They had argued, and she’d felt battered by the notion that she had abandoned God when it was clearly the other way around.

Over the last few months she had lost nearly everything that had been important to her. Her business. Her reputation. Her ability to provide a comfortable living for herself and her children. Prayer hadn’t helped, and the platitudes offered by well-meaning friends cut to the quick. As for God—that serene Presence she’d felt all her life was gone as though it had never been.

She kept that to herself, though.

The last time she had voiced that thought, her dad had told her that life came down to only two choices. Move toward your Source or away from it.

“The reason you don’t feel God,” he had told her, “is because you’ve locked your heart up tight, and you’ve moved away from Him.”

“And I came here to talk to my father, hoping he’d understand at least a little bit,” she had replied. “Instead, once again, I got the minister, who doesn’t understand at all.”

That had been a long-standing argument between them, but now it seemed insurmountable. All she wanted was for her dad to comfort her, because she was still just as scared as she’d sometimes been when she was a child. The ensuing rift felt as deep as Glenwood Canyon to Rachel. Now, they no longer spoke except as it related to Sarah and Andy. She wouldn’t deny him access to his grandchildren since the three of them were his only living family.

Dragging her thoughts back to the moment, she looked down at Sarah. “Want to help me finish making dinner?”

“Okay.”

Rachel forced another smile. “Okay.”

And for an hour, she could pretend that making dinner was the biggest challenge she faced.

TWO

The following morning, Rachel headed for work, hearing her father’s voice in her head. “Be bold as a lion, Rachel,” had been his advice right after Angela’s arraignment last spring. “Only the guilty have reason to hide in the dark.” Except, she felt guilty, even if only by association.

As her dad had said to her recently, the words didn’t offer comfort. Though she still heard his voice in her head, she no longer confused it with God. Though her loss of faith had hurt her father, she couldn’t pretend to believe.

These days she related most to Job’s trials. Like the biblical figure, Rachel was sure there could be no purpose to all she had endured over the last several years—the death of her husband when an aneurysm had burst in his abdomen, the betrayal by her best friend, the loss of her business. Unlike Job, she thought of fleeing, though she had no idea where she would go or whether she would be able to make things better for her children.

“As with Job,” her father had told her, “all this is a test of faith.”

“Is that the category for your visits to Angela? A test?”

He’d looked genuinely shocked. “Of course not. She’s in need of my care, of spiritual guidance.”

“Even though she betrayed me?”

“Especially because of that.” And, as he’d said a thousand times before, he had told her, “My ministry to another doesn’t lessen my love for you.”

“Your visits to her feel like another betrayal,” Rachel had confessed angrily.

He’d looked at her sternly, then, in the way that had always, always made her obey him. “You know better than that. Prayer and study will show you that that is as ridiculous as your assertion that God has abandoned you. I’m so disappointed in you.”

Like the Look, his “I’m so disappointed” speech usually guaranteed she’d strive to please him even as the phrase cut her to the quick. But for the first time in her life, she had retreated, feeling lost and confused and emotionally abandoned. Now she no longer called her father except to make arrangements for her children to visit him.

She felt as though the support, understanding and compassion she wanted for herself had been given away to others, especially Angela. And, her dad seemed to believe she was asking him to choose between his ministry and her. Yet she had simply wanted some of his boundless compassion for herself. Maybe the wanting made her selfish, but she hadn’t been able to banish it.

Seven blocks from her home, she drove past the brick-front building that had housed Victorian Rose Antiques. The green awning shaded the front window, which still posted the sign that the business had been closed by the DEA. Since their merchandise was tainted by the drug trade, it had been seized. The day Angela had been arraigned, the bank had called in the loan that had secured the purchase of all that merchandise.

And now it was all her problem.

Rachel’s daily refrain echoed in her head. What in the world had Angela been thinking? Even Angela herself hadn’t been able to answer. All Rachel knew was that Angela had plea-bargained the charges against her and provided the names that had led Agent Micah McLeod to the bigger fish he had really been after.

But was that bigger fish now after her?

Rachel’s hands grew clammy with the memory of the rock shattering the window and bringing her out of a restless sleep. Since she no longer had the e-mail or the letter with their simple, one-line demands—I want my $500,000—the police had no reason to think the rock was anything more than a prank. She had told them about the notes, immediately knowing how lame her story sounded.

“Call us,” the investigating officer had told her, “if another note comes.” A month had passed since then, and until Micah McLeod had showed up yesterday afternoon, she had hoped the police were right about the rock and notes being a prank.

The fear was back, and she hated it.

Think about today, she told herself. Today would be a good day because of the appointment she had after work. Jane Clark, one of her best—and wealthiest—clients from the antique shop, had a referral for Rachel. The whispered promise of returning to the work that she loved sang through her. Today, she reminded herself, was a new day.

After a half-hour on the road, Rachel parked her car behind one of the hotels that lined I-70. She went through the service entrance, clocked in and went to work for the first of her three jobs—this one as a maid.