Bridal Reconnaissance Read online

  “Who are you?” Amanda asked.

  Even her voice was different, deeper. If she had hit him square in the jaw with the solid wood, Evan wouldn’t have been more stunned.

  “Amanda…” he began.

  “I—I don’t know who you are—” Fear and confusion shook her voice and blurred her green eyes.

  Just then a diesel engine drew his attention toward the street, and she gained an opportunity to push the door closed. But then she stopped and stepped over the threshold to stand beside him, trembling in the cold.

  A yellow school bus, lights flashing, pulled to the curb. The door opened and a child skipped down the stairs and up the walk.

  Evan’s knees weakened, and his heart jumped in his chest. The boy had the exact features Evan saw when he looked in the mirror every morning.

  He’d not only found his runaway wife. He’d found a son, too. The son he’d never known he had.

  Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

  We’ve got an intoxicating lineup crackling with passion and peril that’s guaranteed to lure you to Harlequin Intrigue this month!

  Danger and desire abound in As Darkness Fell—the first of two installments in Joanna Wayne’s HIDDEN PASSIONS: Full Moon Madness companion series. In this stark, seductive tale, a rugged detective will go to extreme lengths to safeguard a feisty reporter who is the object of a killer’s obsession. Then temptation and terror go hand in hand in Lone Rider Bodyguard when Harper Allen launches her brand-new miniseries, MEN OF THE DOUBLE B RANCH.

  Will revenge give way to sweet salvation in Undercover Avenger by Rita Herron? Find out in the ongoing NIGHTHAWK ISLAND series. If you’re searching high and low for a thrilling romantic suspense tale that will also satisfy your craving for adventure—you’ll be positively riveted by Bounty Hunter Ransom from Kara Lennox’s CODE OF THE COBRA.

  Just when you thought it was safe to sleep with the lights off…Guardian of her Heart by Linda O. Johnston—the latest offering in our BACHELORS AT LARGE promotion—will send shivers down your spine. And don’t let down your guard quite yet. Lisa Childs caps off a month of spine-tingling suspense with a gripping thriller about a madman bent on revenge in Bridal Reconnaissance. You won’t want to miss this unforgettable debut of our new DEAD BOLT promotion.

  Here’s hoping these smoldering Harlequin Intrigue novels will inspire some romantic dreams of your own this Valentine’s Day!

  Enjoy,

  Denise O’Sullivan

  Senior Editor

  Harlequin Intrigue

  BRIDAL RECONNAISSANCE

  LISA CHILDS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Lisa Childs has been writing since she could first form sentences. At eleven she won her first writing award and was interviewed by the local newspaper. That story’s plot revolved around a kidnapping, probably something she wished on any of her six siblings. A Halloween birthday predestined a life of writing intrigue. She enjoys the mix of suspense and romance. Readers can write to Lisa at P.O. Box 139, Marne, MI 49435 or visit her at her Web site www.lisachilds.com.

  Books by Lisa Childs

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  664—RETURN OF THE LAWMAN

  720—SARAH’S SECRETS

  758—BRIDAL RECONNAISSANCE

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Evan Quade—He searches for his missing wife to set her free, but winds up protecting her from a killer.

  Amanda Quade—Her memory lost, she has to rely on a powerful stranger to protect her and her son.

  Christopher Quade—He’s known only his mother, but if a killer’s quest for revenge is successful, he’ll become an orphan.

  William Weering III—Amanda’s attacker stole her memory. Now he wants her life.

  D.A. Peter Sullivan—His job is to keep Amanda safe, but he fails, either by incompetence or coercion.

  Martin “Snake” Timmer—Is his warning meant to prepare Amanda, or panic her into running?

  Cynthia Moore—Evan’s secretary takes her devotion too far.

  Royce Graham—The Tracker reunites the Quade family but can’t protect them from a killer’s madness, or their unresolved feelings.

  To Priscilla Berthiaume, my hardworking,

  dedicated editor. Thank you for encouraging me

  to dig deeper into the characters and the story.

  I couldn’t have done it without you!

  This one is yours!

  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 One

  She’d lost her mind. What other reason did she have for being out at night when she so hated the dark? Of course, she’d been using that excuse for the last six years, ever since she had literally lost her mind. Or at least the part of her mind that held her memories.

  Amanda sucked in a deep breath and concentrated on the relaxation exercises the last psychiatrist had taught her. But the extra oxygen in her lungs didn’t brighten the dim lights of the parking garage, nor raise the sun in the dark sky outside the concrete barriers. So her pulse raced on.

  The stale odors of gasoline and exhaust hung in the cold night air. When Amanda exhaled her deep breath, it lingered as a wisp of fog.

  How was it her problem that the bridal shop’s deliveryman was down with the flu? She’d suffered through her flu shot in the fall. But when her employment had been threatened by her refusal to fill in, she’d had to leave her sewing machine at home and pack up the wedding gowns to drop back at the shop. Not usually part of her job. She sewed. That was it. She didn’t know how she’d learned this talent, but it was hers. Her one marketable skill.

  Or maybe she had more but didn’t remember. She clutched her key chain in a tight fist. What did the past matter when she had all she could want now? Well, everything but daylight.

  Row J. The scant light reflected off the sign posted on the cement pillar. A few spaces down, her old cargo van stood alone. From under the thin layer of dull white paint, the letters for the name of the previous owner’s business bled through. Fawn’s Flora. A florist. She smelled the cloying aroma of dried baby’s breath lingering in the interior as she fumbled the key into the lock and yanked open the stubborn door.

  No reassuring glow from the dome light soothed her frayed nerves. Only darkness reigned inside the van. Dead battery? She glanced down at the illuminated dial of her cheap plastic wristwatch.

  Almost bedtime.

  She had to tuck Christopher under the covers and pull his cartoon comforter to his little rounded chin. She had to press a kiss into the riotous black curls falling over his forehead. Mrs. Olson had been a sweetie to come over on such short notice and watch her rambunctious boy. But at bedtime he needed his mother.

  And Amanda needed him.

  She dragged in another deep breath. The burned-out dome light might mean a bad fuse, nothing more. She hopped onto the exposed foam of the threadbare seat and jammed the key in the ignition.

  None of the gauges on the dash lit up. The starter didn’t grind as usual, didn’t even click. Now she’d have to walk back across the shadowy parking garage to use the bridal shop’s phone. Would the repair shop find only a dead battery, or more?

  Her sigh shuddered out. If the van needed something major, she had precious little money saved. Long ago she had pawned the expensive watch found on her. All she had left from that forgotten past was the necklace she always wore.

  Her trembling fingers lifted
to the delicate gold chain, running down it to where the letters began. A M A N D A fashioned out of diamonds. Probably worth a fortune, if what she’d gotten for the watch was any indication.

  Could she part with her only piece of identification? But what did her name matter when she remembered nothing of the life? All that mattered now was Christopher, and she’d do anything for him. Anything.

  She lifted her gaze to the rearview mirror to admire the sparkle of diamonds. Perhaps for one of the last times. A shadow sprang up in the cargo area. Before she could open her mouth to scream, a wide hand clamped over it.

  The head of a snake tattooed on the back of that hand stared at her in the rearview mirror. “It’s okay,” a scratchy voice said. “I’m not going to hurt you. Just listen.”

  Above the hand, her eyes, wide and full of terror, stared back at her, too.

  “I’ve got a warning for you.”

  Tears threatened, but she blinked them away. She couldn’t show any weakness. She hadn’t the last time she’d been attacked. That was why she and her son were alive today. But with her memory, she’d lost that woman she used to be. Fear paralyzed her.

  “That bastard’s getting out early. This week.”

  Hysteria swam in her stomach, nausea rising up the back of her throat.

  “He’s gonna hurt you. That’s all he talked about. He knows where you are. And he’s gonna hurt you bad.” The hand slid away from her mouth, and she glimpsed the hairy forearm and the rest of the snake coiled up the length of it.

  “Who are you? And why would he hurt me?” Her whisper barely made it through trembling lips.

  “’Cuz you hurt him. You put him away. Six years. Not damn long enough. And now he bought his way into the early-release program.”

  “Why are you warning me?”

  “I got a daughter about your age. I wouldn’t want that bastard touching her. And you’re a fighter. You deserve to know, so you can be ready.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t. Just get outa town, lady. Reconnect your battery cable, get your little boy and get outa town.”

  The cargo door creaked open, the shocks bouncing back up as he jumped down. Then the slam of the door rocked the van. Through tear-filled eyes she glanced into the sideview mirror but only caught the shadow again.

  A warning or a threat? She didn’t care. She had to get out of town. He knew about her little boy. And he was getting out. Four months before the end of his too short sentence.

  She listened to the news. She had heard the politicians had passed the early-release program to solve prison overcrowding. Why hadn’t she realized that he would buy his way into it?

  Because there was so little to remember, she never let herself think about the past. Now it intended to pay a vengeful visit.

  EVAN QUADE STARED OUT over the city lights reflected in the dark water of the river below his hotel-room window. River City, Michigan.

  He liked the simplicity of the name. Amanda would have laughed at it, but then she’d laughed freely. And when she’d left him, the laughter had gone from his life. “I think this is another dead end, Royce,” he said, shaking the memory from his mind.

  In the mirrored surface of the glass, his friend, Royce, lifted a shoulder and let it drop. Then he held up his free hand as he clutched his cell phone to his ear, whispering into it. Sweet nothings, probably.

  The fool was in love. A malady that had struck Evan once and from which he’d never been totally cured. But he’d gotten so sick that he avoided the disease now. At all costs.

  And if sometimes loneliness ate at what was left of his soul… Well, his soul was a small price to pay for his sanity. He turned from the window to the table that sat before it. A glossy photo topped the loose documents spread across the cherry-wood surface.

  Shimmering blond hair floated loose and wild around her shoulders and beyond. Dazzling white teeth sparkled out of a wide flirtatious smile. Despite the twinkle of naughtiness dancing in her green eyes, he caught the ghost of loneliness looming in the opaque depths.

  Amanda had always been lonely, too. Despite her parents’ many marriages and a plethora of half and stepsiblings, Amanda had always been alone. Maybe that was why she had thirsted for attention and adventure.

  He ran a hand through his hair. In the course of treating his mother’s debilitating depression, he’d talked with enough shrinks in the last couple of years that it seemed he’d begun to think like one.

  “She’s a knockout,” his friend said.

  Evan glanced up just as Royce tapped his cell phone into his pocket. “Dragged yourself away from your bride?” Evan asked. The ex-FBI agent had married Evan’s former business partner less than a year ago.

  A goofy smile twisted his friend’s mouth. “Barely. And I had to help Jeremy with some homework. Not that he really needed it. Kid’s damn smart.” Royce’s face shone with pride in his stepson.

  “Yeah, he’s a good kid.” Another piece of his soul chipped away as Evan accepted that he’d never have a child of his own. Knowing what he did now, he couldn’t.

  But six years ago he’d wanted a baby so desperately that his need had stressed his fledgling marriage to the breaking point. If he hadn’t fallen so hard so fast for Amanda’s gorgeous face and fun spirit, he might have taken the time to discover how incompatible they’d been. The last thing Amanda had wanted was a child, at least his child.

  What kind of life did she lead now?

  The kind she’d been living when they’d met? Jet-setting? High society?

  He’d been working for his father on a business deal to sell warehouse space to a fashion designer. The deal had fallen through, and Amanda, the designer’s daughter, had broken the news over a business dinner. But things had not remained business between them for long.

  “Evan, did you hear me?”

  “What?” Evan shook off the distraction, as thoughts of Amanda often were.

  “Jeremy’s working on his purple belt. He wants you to run through the kata with him when we get back.”

  “Gladly, but I’m sure you can teach him what he needs to know.”

  “I’m not a sensei, Evan. You’re ninth degree, man.”

  “I’m not a sensei, Royce.” He’d never achieved the degree of control necessary to master the art, the control being over himself. And after what he’d discovered about himself, he doubted he ever would.

  He shook off the maudlin thoughts. “She’s not in this town, Royce. I’ve been searching for almost six years. If she’d been living this close to me, I would have found her.”

  Royce glanced toward the city lights. “River City’s just a few hours south of Winter Falls.” The small town both men now called home.

  “And a few hours north of Chicago, where Amanda and I had lived when she left. But although River City is pretty big and sprawling, it’s a world removed in culture and fashion. Amanda had never lived anywhere but a bustling city. Chicago. Milan. Paris. New York.”

  “But you checked those cities?” Royce asked.

  “I checked everywhere. Even morgues.”

  Evan sighed, remembering the frenzy of his initial search when he’d been convinced she’d needed him. At first the police had suspected his involvement in Amanda’s disappearance until they had learned of her stay at her mother’s country estate—and discovered what she’d left for him.

  Her wedding ring burned against his skin where it dangled on a chain beneath his shirt. Close to his heart, so he would remember her leaving and how much it hurt. So he would never be foolish enough to risk that kind of pain again. “I couldn’t find her.”

  “You’ve been looking a lot of years…”

  Evan understood the inflection in Royce’s voice. But even though he’d searched those morgues, he hadn’t really believed that she could be dead. Not Amanda.

  “You even hired the private investigator that found your biological mother.” A search he’d started because of the challenge Amanda had hurled at him when she’
d left. Instead of starting a family with him, she’d told him to find the one that had given him up.

  His adoptive parents had told him about the private adoption hospital in Winter Falls. He had hired the investigator to find his mother from their records. And he couldn’t reveal to Royce, an ex-FBI agent, exactly how that investigator had obtained those records. After the man had found his mother in a sanatorium, Evan had kept him on retainer to search for Amanda. But she hadn’t been as easy to find. Years had passed without any leads to her whereabouts.

  He admitted, “I never left the search for Amanda completely to him.” He’d then fired the guy when his friend and former business partner had married the notorious FBI Tracker.

  Royce narrowed his eyes. “You haven’t left it completely to me, either.”

  “She’s my wife.” Evan rubbed his hands over his face, pressing the heels of his palms against his tired eyes. He’d been looking so long, in the beginning to get her back, and now, to let her go.

  Royce sighed. “Maybe if you’d given me more to go on…like the reason she left.”

  Evan carried his burdens alone, always had, probably always would. Especially now, knowing what he knew, what his mother had revealed to him when she’d recovered. He knew who and what his father was…a violent criminal unfit to live in society. “Royce…”

  “I know. It’s not any of my business.”

  His friend stared hard at him, trying to crack him with his FBI-agent-interrogation face that Evan had seen before. Then he griped, “Jeez, man, you’re one uptight—”

  Evan laughed. Royce could always be counted on to speak his mind. The ex-FBI agent thought holding his peace meant carrying a gun. Although they hadn’t known each other long, they knew each other well.

  “I’m serious, man. You keep everything locked up inside and one day you’re going to explode. And it won’t be pretty.”

  Evan’s gut clenched, his greatest fear had been spoken aloud. “That’s my risk.”