Sophie’s lips quivered into a half-tearful smile. ‘That’s so kind of him . . . typical Vlad! But all the same, I wish to God he had not told my mother about the accident in New York.’

‘It was not an accident, Sophie. Someone tried to kill you and they’ve tried again since then,’ Steve said flatly. ‘Wake up to the danger you’re in! These people are not going to give up – they’ll try again.’

‘Not under my roof,’ Cathy said, and winced as Steve looked at her with irony and pity.

‘You’re almost as naive as your sister!’

My sister, she thought, looking at Sophie, and Sophie smiled at her.

‘My sister,’ she said, echoing Cathy’s thought again. She was still having trouble believing that this was Anya, not dead, but alive.

The village was busy with traffic and people shopping when Don Gowrie’s helicopter appeared on the horizon. Villagers halted in the street to watch briefly as it flew towards them, then hovered over Arbory House, but they were used to seeing Paul coming and going by helicopter and soon went about their business. The rotating blades on the chopper made it impossible for Gowrie to hear the faintly cracked note of the church clock when it chimed ten o’clock, but looking down into the village he got a clear view of the warm, golden stone of the houses, the grass, the trees, the blackened, twisted metal shape of the car in which Emily had died.

Having caught one glimpse, he looked away, his face stiff and cold as a carved statue. He wouldn’t think about her. It wasn’t his fault she had been killed – she had been the one who crashed that car, not him. In the office she had been a miracle of efficiency. Why, when it came to killing Sophie Narodni, had she failed again and again? He couldn’t understand it, unless she had not really wanted to kill the girl at all.

Or maybe it had been a run of bad luck. He had been having a run of bad luck ever since that damned girl showed up in the press conference.

Luck was something you couldn’t manipulate or bribe. It had its own rules and its own logic. Random, unpredictable, blind – it struck out of the blue.

In his mind’s eye he saw the remains of the car again – had they got Emily out yet, or was there nothing left to . . .?

He shivered. He wouldn’t think about that – there was too much on his mind, far more important things to think about; he had no time to dwell on her death. First, he had to survive, end Sophie Narodni’s threat to him. After that he could think about . . . about other things.

He glanced over his shoulder at Jack Beverley, who was as calm as a bowl of milk. Gowrie envied him his temperament. But then, what had he to lose?

In the house they all heard the sound of the chopper coming down to land.

‘He’s here,’ Cathy told Steve, who nodded, watching Sophie, who had turned pale and was trembling a little. Paul had not put in an appearance, but none of them had mentioned him. They had left the breakfast-room and gone into a small, sunlit sitting-room with a view of the landing pad and had been listening for the chopper while they sat around the fire in ancient, sagging leather armchairs.

‘Maybe I should go back up to my room? If the senator finds me here he’ll be very angry.’

Sophie was white with nerves. She was terrified of seeing Don Gowrie again. Last night was still alive in her memory. The way the car had come out of nowhere and hit her; climbing on to her knees just as it turned and drove straight back at her; then the driver swerving away and hitting the tree, the explosion, the roar of flames, the great red light illumining the darkness. In her dreams she had heard the woman in the car screaming; but that had not happened, she had not heard that. Or had she? She didn’t want to remember if she had.

Steve saw the fear in her eyes, and put his arm round her. ‘You’re safe with me, don’t worry. He won’t dare touch you under this roof. He’d have to kill all of us. And even Gowrie hasn’t got the neck to try anything like that. No, he’s stymied, and he knows it. I’m just curious to know how he’s going to handle all this. What sort of excuses is he going to come up with? I wonder, has he got his speechwriters to write that script? Or has he worked it up by himself?’

The sarcasm and contempt made Cathy flinch, and the sight of Sophie in Steve’s arms angered her too. She needed his comfort too, but he was only concerned with Sophie, it seemed.

Fiercely, she burst out, ‘Once word of these accusations leaks out – and it will, gossip like this always does – he’s finished as a politician, he may even have to face some sort of proceedings. He certainly won’t get the presidential nomination. The money men will desert him. Grandee will be so furious he won’t want to know him either.’

‘Don’t waste your pity on him.’ Steve’s face turned grim and scathing. ‘Can’t you see yet what sort of cold-hearted bastard he is? He deserves everything that?

?s coming to him. And it will come, Cathy. Sooner or later someone will launch an investigation into what he’s been up to, and I just bet they find all sorts of skeletons buried in his backyard. Somebody once said that Washington is filled with two kinds of politicians – those trying to get an investigation started, and those trying to get one stopped. But once a can of worms is opened you can’t get the worms back into the can.’

Cathy was white, her eyes shadowed with dark rings. ‘For God’s sake, you’re talking about my father!’

‘No, that’s the whole point. I’m not,’ Steve curtly said. ‘Your father is dead, and Gowrie took you away from your mother just when she needed you most, needed you to hold on to. What if she had lost the baby she was expecting? She’d have been left alone with nothing in the world to love. God knows what would have happened to her then.’

Cathy stared at him, realizing that the sick, sad woman she had called ‘Mother’ all her life was, perhaps, not her mother at all, that the strange distance between them which Cathy had felt all her childhood, could be because they shared no blood, were not mother and child at all. She had thought it was because her mother was always sick that she had not really loved her. She had felt guilty because she didn’t care for her mother the way other people seemed to love their parents. She could remember many times when she had watched Steve with his mother, seeing the warmth between them, the easy, relaxed affection, and envying him.

Somewhere in a strange country she had never visited there was this other woman who might be her real mother. What was she like, this other mother? How would it feel to see her, get to know her?

‘It’s time you faced all that,’ Steve said, more gently, seeing the haunted look in her face and intensely sorry for her. ‘You have a lot of re-thinking to do, Cathy.’

Yes, he was right – if Sophie’s story was true her whole life had been a lie and it would take her a long time to think it through, come to terms with it. She would be losing everything she had ever thought so secure.

If it was true. If it was true.

Sophie’s voice made her start. ‘What will happen to him?’ Sophie was feeling guilty. She had set out on this quest with a driven instinct to find her sister, to rebuild the family shattered even before she herself was born, and above all to bring Anya home to their mother before she died. She had not meant to ruin Don Gowrie’s chances of becoming president, she hadn’t meant to tear Cathy’s whole world apart. She should have stopped to think all round the situation before she made a single move, but she hadn’t, and now it was too late to say, Sorry, I didn’t mean this to happen, this wasn’t what I meant.

Tags: Charlotte Lamb Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net