Cut and Run(10)

“Who’s the baby’s father?”

“She won’t say. And for the record, she didn’t serve any booze tonight. That tray was her way of trying to provoke a reaction.”

“Out of me or you?”

“Me. She’s been needling me for a few weeks.”

“Why?”

“She’s looking for a lifeline. She knows she’s drowning but doesn’t know how to save herself.”

“And you’re going to save her?”

“If she’ll let me.”

The shelter director and Margaret motioned Faith forward as the local television station crew arrived to film her and a few donors. “I’ve a couple of details to wrap up. No need for you to stick around.”

“I’ve nowhere to be.”

“Suit yourself,” she said. She crossed the ballroom to the reporter, spoke on camera for several minutes, visited with the guests, and kissed Margaret on the cheek. When she was finished speaking to the hotel staff, it was past ten.

She looked around the room, but she didn’t see Hayden. His patience for the tedious side of her life had its limits. She left the ballroom and headed toward the lobby. Her heels clicked across the marble floor as she made her way to the elevator.

“Dr. McIntyre?”

She turned and saw a tall, lean man with a neatly shaved face and warm brown eyes. Midforties, smartly dressed in a gray suit and a shirt of a similar but lighter shade.

“Have we met?” she asked.

He held out his hand. “Kevin. I saw the event sign with your picture and thought you were someone else for a moment. Then I recognized the McIntyre name. I knew your father.”

“Should I apologize now?” She accepted his hand.

White teeth flashed. “No. He didn’t cross-examine me. Good thing, I suppose. He was known as a real tough nut in his time.”

If by “tough nut” he meant “ruthless legal shark,” then yes. “That he was, Kevin.”

“I just saw you crossing the lobby, and I wanted to introduce myself. Would you like to grab a drink in the bar?”

“No, thank you. It’s been a long day.”

Rejection slid off him like water off a duck. “Maybe we’ll catch up again some time.”

“Have a good evening, Kevin.”

“You, too, Faith.”

Faith sensed that under all his sleek manners and polish lurked an ulterior motive. She’d dealt with several men like him since her father’s death. Wearing nice suits, they came bearing law degrees and threats. And as she’d told them all, Russell McIntyre might have been worth a fortune once, but it was all gone. What she had now had either been left to her by her mother or she’d earned herself. Stones didn’t bleed, no matter how hard you squeezed.





What most people don’t realize about me is that I treasure all children. If I didn’t love them as much as I do, I’d never have made the sacrifices that I did to create so many.



Love, Daddy





CHAPTER FOUR

Monday, June 25, 10:30 p.m.

When FBI Special Agent Macy Crow had arrived in Austin, she’d taken a taxi directly to her father’s salvage yard. According to the Texas Rangers and the medical examiner, Jack had died in the early hours of Sunday morning under suspicious circumstances. The facts Ranger Hayden had relayed to her were grim. Jack had been beaten pretty badly before he’d suffered a massive heart attack.

Numb, Macy had thanked Hayden for notifying her as she sat in her small rented house near Quantico, staring at a picture of Jack and herself in front of the Chevrolet Impala they’d restored the summer she’d turned sixteen.

Immediately, she’d called her supervisor and cleared her schedule, stating she needed several days of personal leave. However, she hadn’t been able to get a flight out until Monday morning and after several delays had made it to Texas.

During a brief layover in Atlanta, Macy had listened to a voicemail from Dr. Faith McIntyre, the medical examiner. Dr. McIntyre explained she had conducted an autopsy on Jack and had concluded if not for the heart failure, pancreatic cancer would have killed her father by the end of the year. Macy had sat in stunned silence, wondering why Jack hadn’t called her earlier. Minutes before her flight, she had returned the doctor’s call, promising to visit her tomorrow.

Despite the divorce, Jack had always sent his child support payments, and he never missed a birthday or Christmas. Her mother had never spoken a word against Jack, but as Macy had gotten older, she realized he had lived hard and occasionally put his medical skills to work for less scrupulous men. Her mother had once described Jack as complicated and regretted they hadn’t tried harder to make it work.

Eight years had passed since she’d been in the salvage yard. It had been the spring she’d graduated from the FBI Academy in Quantico, and she had been driving to her first duty station in Denver. Austin hadn’t been on the way, but she’d wanted to see her old man. When she’d arrived at the salvage yard, Macy and her father had spent the next two days rummaging through the yard for a radio and speakers for her old Toyota sedan. Though neither was a big talker, the visit had been kind of cool.

Now as the cab drove past the piles of crushed cars, bent motorcycles, and an occasional RV on blocks, an overwhelming sense of fatigue and loss hit her with the force and the finality of the salvage yard’s hydraulic compactor.