“Tell Mikel I’ll be home in a few days to thank him personally. You take him back to the farm now, no use you hanging around here when the cow will need to be milked. And I don’t want you scaring Eva into rushing back from Finland. I’m too ornery to die, Doc said so right out.”
As she returned to where Mikel waited, Rachel tried to tell herself he wasn’t a threat to them all with his questions. Something about him fascinated her against her will. He was attractive, no doubt about that, with his dark hair and chiseled features, but it was those slightly tilted green eyes that got to her. Hunter’s eyes. She took a deep breath. Rachel Hill was no man’s prey.
She waited until they were driving away from the hospital to invite him to stay at the farm, saying, “Aino insists. We have a guest cottage so you’ll have privacy.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Mikel told her, thinking it was just as well he wouldn’t be in the same house with her, the two of them alone, tempting fate.
“Do you mind if I stop to make a phone call on the way?”
“You can use our phone if you like.”
“Thanks, but I don’t want to trouble you.”
He’d spotted an outside phone at the gas station where he’d stopped before and so he pulled in there. Even on vacation he was expected to stay in touch, but private phones could be traced and tapped, so he never made agency calls from anywhere but a pay phone.
He was connected immediately and told his only message was from his grandmother who’d called the Riggs and Robinson screening phone number that led to the agency. She wanted him to get in contact with her immediately.
Before he hung up, he asked his researcher friend, Ed, to check out Rachel Hill, probably born in Michigan twenty odd years ago. Mikel had no reason to mistrust her, but a special agent always made sure.
He’d have to call his grandmother. He really should have taken a detour to see her on the way here—she knew he was on vacation. Taking a deep breath he started to punch in her number, then changed his mind and called his colleague Steve first instead.
“You’re where?” Steve asked.
“Ojibway, Michigan, following a lead,” Mikel told him. “No real news yet.”
“If you’re going to be there a few days, I’ve got some photos of Heidi I want to send you. General delivery?”
“I figure it might take a week or so up here to check things out. Send ’em along.”
Mikel smiled as he hung up, Steve thought his adopted baby daughter was the cutest thing on two feet. Which she was, more or less. He called Grandma Sonia then, who, as he’d expected, began to scold him the minute she heard his voice.
“What kind of grandson are you who doesn’t come to see his aged grandmother when he’s on vacation? For all you know I might be on my last legs.”
“As I recall you were wearing shorts when I last saw you,” he reminded her, “and your legs looked pretty healthy then.”
“A lot can happen in two months, my Mikel. Where have you got yourself to now?”
“I’m in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in a town named Ojibway. Sort of a wilderness area. After all, I’m on vacation.”
“Don’t try to fool me, young man. You never were one for hunting and fishing or gawking at wildlife. You’ve got some other reason for being in such a strange place. You’re not working, so it can’t be that. What is it?”
Mikel sighed inwardly. Try as he might, he’d never managed to stop Grandma Sonia from asking questions. When he was on agency business, he simply told her he couldn’t discuss what he was doing, but it was hard to discourage her natural inquisitiveness otherwise. This might not be agency business, but it was his business and he had no intention of revealing the truth. What could he say to keep her quiet?
A thought struck him, making him smile. She was always trying to marry him off to some girl or other, maybe this would stop her. “I’m seeing a woman,” he told her.
“You’re interested in some girl up there in the wilderness?”
“Yes.”
His smile broadened at the few seconds of silence that followed. Gotcha, he told himself.
“May I ask her name?” Grandma Sonia finally said.
“Rachel Hill.” The name was out before he thought to invent a fictitious one. Still, it didn’t matter, Ojibway was a long way from White Plains, New York, where his grandmother lived.
“Well, dear, I don’t want to keep you,” she told him, and hung up before he could promise to come and see her on his way back to his Maryland apartment.
Which wasn’t like Sonia, not at all. He’d been preparing himself to field a hundred questions about “his girl” but she hadn’t asked a one. Odd. He was still puzzling over it when he got back to the car and found the gas station attendant talking to Rachel through the open window.
“I sure am glad he’s gonna be okay,” the man said. “Got worried when I heard he was took bad. Wouldn’t be the same around here without old Aino.” He waved at Mikel and walked back to the building.
“News travels fast in these parts,” Mikel commented as he started the car.
“You can’t keep a secret in a small town,” Rachel agreed.
If that was true, then sooner or later someone in the vicinity was bound to know the answers to Mikel’s questions.
“I have some pasties ready to bake,” she added. “I was about to turn the oven on when I looked out and saw you there in the driveway holding on to Aino. You’re welcome to have supper with me.”
“Pasties?”
“Cornish meat pies. Except not quite, because we Finns put carrots in them, something a true Cornishman would never, ever do.”
“Since I’m not Cornish, I won’t quibble. Thanks for the invitation.”
“I’ll be putting the food on the table in about an hour and a half,” she told him.
Once they arrived at the farm, she gave him the key to the small cottage and he settled himself in, finding the place a bit chilly even though the rain had stopped completely. He decided to light a fire in the fireplace so it’d be warm when he came back to the cottage after supper, as Rachel had called the meal.
Once he got a blaze going he sank into an old armchair, propped his feet on the matching stool and relaxed, thinking it’d been a long time since he’d sat in front of a real fire. Rarely did any agency investigation lead him to such a snug and cozy spot. But this time he was on his own. Was Renee to be found here in Ojibway?
He’d come to the Upper Peninsula, following the only lead he’d been able to uncover. Victoria hadn’t been able to tell him much. She’d been eleven when her sister disappeared and vaguely remembered that Renee once had a crush on a teacher of hers—a man named Leo Saari. Then she’d given Mikel her mother’s address in Florida.
He’d flown down to see Mrs. Reynaud, who was living in a retirement village and had unearthed a few more facts. She’d told him Renee had sometimes baby-sat Leo Saari’s daughter, even though Mr. Reynaud had forbidden his daughters to go anywhere other than school without their mother. Baby-sitting was therefore out of the question unless Renee’s mother had covered up for her daughter, which she admitted having done.
Rusty Reynaud had been a mean alcoholic, an abusive type, according to both Victoria and her mother. They were all terrified of him, especially when he got out his old Colt .45 with the elk embossed on the grip and aimed it at them, threatening to shoot. If Renee had run off, it was no wonder. But it was strange the Colt had disappeared at the same time she did.
Mikel