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  Cause for Alarm

  Erica Spindler

  Kate and Richard Ryan have the perfect marriage, except that they cannot have a baby, until Julianna Starr gives her child to them, but when Julianna molds herself in Kate's image-trying to steal Richard-the nightmare begins.

  Erica Spindler

  Cause for Alarm

  Dear Reader,

  Adoption has come a long way in recent years. No longer is it considered something to be hidden, as if it's a shameful secret. It is acknowledged for what it is- an incredible act of love for all concerned.

  As an adoptive mother myself, I know firsthand the immediate and overwhelming love and possessiveness an adoptive parent feels for their child. I understand the adoptive parents' irrational fear of their baby's biological family, and the uncertainty born of having opened life and heart to the unknown. And I know the lengths and depths they, like any parent, would go to keep their child safe from harm.

  I used this knowledge as a starting point to create this work of fiction.

  My novels have evolved over time, from the rags-to-riches relationship story Red to the pure suspense of my newest book, Killer Takes All. It's been an exciting journey, and each novel I've written represents a step in that journey. I hope that you enjoy Cause for Alarm.

  Best wishes,

  Erica Spindler

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I wish to extend a special thanks to Detective Quintin Peterson, Metropolitan Police Department, Washington, D.C., not only for answering my questions about the M.P.D., but for bringing it to life.

  Special thanks also to Vicki and John Faivre for information on fly-fishing locales. A picture really is worth a thousand words. I'd also like to offer a huge hug of gratitude to Dianne Moggy and the amazing MIRA crew for helping me pull a rabbit out of a hat with this one.

  Time was definitely not on my side. Thanks also to Chuck and Evelyn Vangier, Cover to Cover bookstore, Mandeville, Louisiana, for helping me locate all sorts of out-of-the-ordinary research materials. And finally, thanks to my incomparable agent, Evan Marshall, and my ever-helpful and always-understanding husband, Nathan.

  For my sons

  Prologue

  Washington , D.C. , 1998

  The fashionable Washington neighborhood slept. Not a single light shone up or down the block of high-priced town homes, the only illumination the glow from the streetlamps and the three-quarter moon. The November night chilled; the air was damp, heavy with the scent of decay.

  Winter had come.

  John Powers climbed the steps to his ex-lover's front door. He proceeded purposefully but without fanfare, his movements those of a man who depended on not being noticed. Dressed completely in black, he knew he appeared more shadow than man, a kind of ghost in the darkness.

  Reaching the top landing, he squatted to retrieve the house key from its hiding place under the stone planter box to the right of the door. During the spring and summer months the planter had been filled with vibrant, sweet-smelling blossoms. But now those same flowers were dead, their stems and leaves curling and black from the cold. As was the eventuality of all living things, their time had come and gone.

  John slipped the key into the lock and turned it. The dead bolt slid back; he eased open the door and stepped inside. Easy. Too easy. Considering the parade of men who had come and gone through this door over the years, using this same key, retrieved from this same hiding place, Sylvia should have been more careful.

  But then, forethought had never been Sylvia Starr's strong suit.

  John closed the door quietly behind him, pausing a moment to listen, taking those valuable seconds to ascertain the number of people in the house, whether they were sleeping and where they were sleeping. From the living room to his right came the steady ticking of the antique mantel clock. From the bedrooms beyond, the thick snore of a man deeply asleep, a man who had probably drunk too much, one no doubt too old and out of shape to have spent the evening with the ever-enthusiastic and sometimes gymnastic Sylvia.

  Too bad for him. He should have gone home to his fat, dependable wife and their ungrateful, cow-faced children. He was about to become a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  John started for the bedroom. He took his weapon from its snug resting place-the waistband of his black jeans, at the small of his back. The pistol, a.22 caliber semiautomatic, was neither powerful nor sexy, but it was small, lightweight and at close range, utterly effective. John had purchased it, as he did all his weapons, secondhand. Tonight he would give it a watery grave in the Potomac.

  He entered Sylvia's bedroom. The couple slept side by side; the bed rumpled, the sheet and blankets twisted around their hips and legs, only half covering them. In the sliver of moonlight that fell across the bed, Sylvia's left breast stood out in relief, full, round and milky white.

  John crossed to where the man slept. He pressed the barrel of the gun to the man's chest, over his heart. The direct contact served two purposes: it would muffle the sound of the shot and assure John a swift, clean kill. A professional took no chances.

  John squeezed the trigger. The man's eyes popped open, his body convulsed at the bullet's impact. He gasped for air, the gurgling sound wet as fluid and oxygen met.

  Sylvia came immediately awake. She scrambled into a sitting position, the sheet falling away from her.

  The man already forgotten, John greeted her. "Hello, Sylvia."

  Making small, squeaky sounds of terror, she inched backward until her spine pressed flat against the bed's headboard. She moved her gaze wildly back and forth, from John to her twitching, bloody companion, her chest heaving.

  "You know why I've come," John murmured. "Where is she, Syl?"

  Sylvia moved her mouth, but no sound escaped. She looked only a breath away from dissolving into complete, incoherent hysteria. John sighed and circled the bed, stopping beside her. "Come now, love, pull yourself together. Look at me, not him." He caught her chin, forcing her gaze to meet his. "Come on, sweetheart, you know I couldn't hurt you. Where's Julianna?"

  At the mention of her nineteen-year-old daughter, Sylvia shrank back even more. She glanced at her bed partner, still and silent now, then back at John, working, he saw, to pull herself together. "I…I know…everything."

  "That's good." He sat beside her on the bed. "So you understand how important it is that I find her." Sylvia began to shudder, so violently the bed shook. She brought a hand to her mouth. "H-how…young, John? How young was she when you began leaving my bed to go to hers?"

  He arched his eyebrows, amazed at her outrage, amused by it. "Are we feeling maternal suddenly? Have you forgotten how only too happy you were for us to spend time together? To let your lover play daddy? How eager to let me care for her so you could be free?"

  "You bastard!" She clutched at the sheet. "I didn't mean for you to defile her. To…to take my trust and-"

  "You're a whore," he said simply, cutting her off. "All you've ever cared about was your parties and men and the pretty baubles they could give you. Julianna was nothing but a pet to you. Another of your baubles, a means for the tired, old whore to buy a bit of respectability."

  Sylvia lunged at him, claws out. He knocked her backward, easily, the heel of his hand connecting with the bridge of her nose. Her head snapped against the headboard, stunning her. He brought the barrel of his gun to the underside of her chin, pressing it against the pulse that beat wildly there, angling it up toward her brain.

  "What Julianna and I share isn't about fucking, Sylvia. It's not so base as that, though I doubt you could understand. I taught her about life." He leaned closer. He smelled her fear, it mixed with the scent of blood and other body fluids, earthy but very much alive; he heard it in the small feral pants
that slipped past her lips, the squeaks of a terrified mouse facing a python. "I taught her about love and loyalty and obedience. About commitment. I'm her everything…father figure, friend and mentor, lover. She belongs to me, she always has."

  He tightened his grip on the gun. "I want her back, Sylvia. Now, where is she? What have you done with her?"

  "Nothing," she whispered. "She…went on her…her own. Sh-she…" Her gaze drifted to the dead man beside her, to the ever growing pool of red, creeping across the white satin coverlet. Her voice shuddered to a halt.

  With his free hand, John grabbed a handful of her hair and jerked her face back to his. "Look at me, Sylvia. Only at me. Where did she go?"

  "I…I don't know. I…" He tightened his grip on her hair and shook her. "Where, Syl?"

  She began to giggle, the sound unnaturally high, otherworldly. She brought a hand to her mouth as if to hold the giggles back; they bubbled from her lips anyway. "She came to me…you wanted her to have an abortion. I told her…you're a…monster. A cold-blooded killer. She didn't believe me, so I called Clark." Her giggles became triumphant, bizarrely so, given her situation. "He showed her pictures of your handiwork. Proof, John. Proof."

  John froze, his fury awesome, glacial. Clark Russell, CIA grunt man, former comrade-in-arms, one of Sylvia's lovers. One who knew too much about John Powers.

  Clark Russell was a dead man.

  John leaned toward Sylvia, the gun forcing her head back, her chin up. " Clark sharing classified information? I guess you're a better lay than I thought." He narrowed his eyes, disliking the way his heart had begun to hammer, his palms to sweat. "You shouldn't have done that, Syl. It was a mistake."

  "To hell with you!" she cried, her voice rising. "You won't find her! I told her to run, as fast and as far as she could…to save herself and the baby! You'll never find her. Never!"

  For a split second he considered the horror of that possibility, then he laughed. "Of course I will, Sylvia. It's what I do. And when I find her, the problem will be eliminated. Then Julianna and I will be together again, the way we're supposed to be."

  "You won't! Never! You-"

  He pulled the trigger. Brains and blood splattered across the antique white headboard and onto the pretty rose-patterned wallpaper beyond. John gazed at the mess a moment, then stood. "Goodbye, Sylvia," he murmured, then turned and went in search of Julianna.

  PartI. Kate and Richard

  1

  Mandeville , Louisiana ,

  New Year's Eve, 1998

  Light blazed from every window of Kate and Richard Ryan's grand old home on Mandeville's Lakeshore Drive. The house had been built nearly a century before, at a time when gracious southern living meant something, a time before MTV and the breakdown of the American family, before it was okay for politicians to cheat on their wives and before the evening news calmly recounted grisly murders as if the daily occurrence of such events wasn't a horror in and of itself.

  The house, with its double, wraparound galleries and floor-to-ceiling windows, spoke of wealth, of status, of solidity. Of family. The family Kate and Richard would never have.

  Kate stepped out onto the house's upper gallery, shutting the French doors behind her, muffling the sounds of the New Year's Eve party in full swing inside. The January night, bitter cold and blustery for southern Louisiana, slapped her in the face. Crossing to the gallery's edge, she gazed out at the black, turbulent lake. She curled her fingers around the rail and leaned into the wind, unconcerned at the way it tore at her hair and cut through her thin, shirred velvet gown.

  Across Lake Pontchartrain, connected by a twenty-sixmile causeway, lay New Orleans, a decaying jewel of a city, home to Mardi Gras and jazz and some of the best food in the world. Home, also, to the privilege of St. Charles Avenue, the poverty of the projects and the soaring crime rate that went with such explosive extremes.

  Kate imagined the party happening on that shore, one celebrating not only the new year, but the last year in the century as well. A turning point, the end to an era, a door closing.

  For her, too, she thought. And Richard.

  Before the holidays, she and her husband had been forced to face the fact that they would never have children. The results of their last tests had been conclusive: Richard was sterile. Up to that point they had assumed their inability to conceive had been the result of her many, varied but correctable, problems. But when none of those corrections had done the trick, the doctor had insisted on testing Richard.

  The results had devastated them both. Kate had been angry-at the world, at God, at all the people who had babies so effortlessly and with such little care. She had felt betrayed. Useless. Cast adrift.

  And then she had felt better. For even though they hadn't gotten the answer they'd wanted, at least they had one. She could give up the exhausting and emotionally draining quest for pregnancy and get on with her life; they could get on with their lives.

  Infertility treatments had taken their toll. On her personally. On her and Richard's marriage, on their professional lives. A part of her felt nothing but sweet relief at getting off that roller coaster, at being able to finally let it go.

  If only she could let go of her longing for a child, her longing to be a mother. Some nights she lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, the ache inside her so great she couldn't sleep.

  Strong arms circled her from behind. Richard's arms. "What are you doing out here?" he whispered, bending his head close to her ear. "And without a coat? You'll catch your death."

  She shook off her melancholy and smiled over her shoulder at her husband of ten years. "With you to keep me warm? I don't think so."

  He grinned, and his eyes crinkled at the corners. At that moment he looked as boyishly handsome at thirty-five as he had at twenty when she met him. He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. "We could get naked and do the wild thing. Right here. Right now."

  "Sounds kinky." She turned in his arms and looped hers around his neck. "I'm game."

  He laughed and leaned his forehead against hers. "And what would our guests think?"

  "Hopefully they're all too well-mannered to wander up here uninvited."

  "And if they're not?"

  "They'll see a side of us they never have before."

  "What would I do without you?" He dropped a kiss on her mouth and drew slightly away from her. "It's about time for me to make my announcement."

  "Nervous?"

  "Who me?" He laughed and shook his head. "Never."

  He meant it, Kate knew. Her husband's self-confidence never ceased to amaze her. Tonight, he was announcing his intention to run for St. Tammany Parish District Attorney, yet he wasn't nervous. He wasn't anxious or plagued by self-doubt and second thoughts.

  Why should he be? He expected his announcement to be applauded by their family and friends, by his business associates and the leaders of the community. And he expected not only to win the race, but that the run would be nearly effortless.

  Of course he did. Richard had always lived a kind of starred existence. Had always been the chosen one, the one voted most likely to succeed, the winner. He wore success as comfortably as others wore ten-year-old athletic shoes.

  "You're certain Larry, Mike and Chas are one hundred percent behind this?" she asked, referring to his law partners at Nicholson, Bedico, Chaney & Ryan.

  "Absolutely. What about you, Kate?" He searched her gaze. "Are you one hundred percent behind me? If I win, our lives will change. We'll be scrutinized, constantly under the magnifying glass."

  "Trying to frighten me off?" she teased, leaning against him. "Well, it won't work. I'm one hundred percent behind you and your decision. And you might as well forget about ‘If you're going to win,' because you are. I'm certain of it."

  "With you at my side, how can I not?"

  When she tried to laugh off his words, he cupped her face in his palms and gazed into her eyes. "I mean it. You have magic, Katherine Mary McDowell Ryan. You always have. Thank you for sharing it w
ith me."

  Tears stung her eyes. She chided herself for her earlier melancholy and silently counted her blessings. The girl who'd worn shoes with holes in the soles and hand-medown school uniforms to St. Catherine's, the girl who had never known the security of a comfortable home, the one who had attended Tulane University on a scholarship, squeaking by borrowing books and waiting tables at night, had come a long way. In no small part because Richard Ryan, favorite son of one of New Orleans' first families had unbelievably, miraculously, fallen in love with her.

  "I love you, Richard."

  "Thank God." He leaned his forehead against hers. "Now, can we please go inside?"

  She agreed and within minutes they were swept back into the party, surrounded, then separated by their jubilant guests. Richard made his announcement and, as expected, his news was greeted by those not already in the know with cheers of approval.

  From that moment on, the party became almost manic. As if all in attendance had been struck by a strange sort of energy, a sense that life as it had been was about to change. The year 1999. The fin de sie`cle. The stuff of the future, of science fiction, of uncertainty and the unknown-not of the now. Not of everyday lives.

  Midnight came. Confetti and streamers flew and horns sounded. Hugs and kisses were exchanged, more champagne drunk. The caterer served a buffet brunch. It was eaten and enjoyed then finally, one by one, Kate and Richard's guests began to leave.

  As Richard walked the last out, Kate began picking up even though they'd contracted a cleaning service to take care of the mess first thing in the morning.

  "God, you're beautiful."

  She looked up. Richard stood in the doorway between the dining room and front parlor, watching her. She smiled. "And you're flushed with success. Or alcohol."