Free Twisted Shadows by Patricia; Potter Page A

terminal, then on the plane. She knew she was overreacting but better to err on the side of caution.
    Her mother’s philosophy. How many times had she heard those words? Now they held new meaning.
    Sam sat back and closed her eyes as the plane took off. Ten minutes later, when the expected announcement came about passengers being able to use electronic devices, she turned on her notebook computer and went to her Merritta file again, lingering for a moment on a news photo of her father. She compared that with the one she carried, the photo given her by the “messengers.” He wore a proud smile as he loomed above his wife and children. He was handsome and confident-looking and had a possessive hand on her mother’s shoulder. The later news photo showed a man putting on weight, his face not as sharply handsome but still possessing magnetic eyes.
    She wished she had pushed her mother for more information. Had she been physically abused? She hadn’t said so. But would she? Her mother was a proud woman.
    What had scared her so badly that she had left a child behind?
    Why was she—Samantha—so determined to open Pandora’s box?
    She usually didn’t question her decisions. She learned that didn’t help anything. But now she did question.
    Was she making a terrible mistake?
    Should she have contacted the police? The FBI? Anyone?
    And tell them what? That a father wanted to see his daughter?
    She swallowed hard. She’d come this far. She couldn’t turn around now. She would meet her father, ask him to leave her mother in peace. Surely if he cared enough to want to see his daughter, he would agree to her one request of him.
    And perhaps her brother would agree to meet their mother. Sam knew that would mean everything to her mother.
    Sam tried to still her spasms of apprehension. And prayed she wasn’t opening a door that would plunge both her and her mother into something neither could control.

six
    As Sam deplaned at Boston’s Logan Airport, she looked around for what she thought of as wiseguys for want of a better description. Then she remembered that nonpassengers were no longer allowed on the concourse.
    She was still wary. Her Boston visitors had said they had nothing to do with the burglary of her home. Then who had? The coincidence was too hard to believe, though she’d tried.
    The thought of another party involved haunted her.
    There were a few loiterers in the gate area. She supposed they had departed the plane before she did or were waiting for a flight.
    Her attention focused on a tall, lanky man who stood next to an airline customer-service representative. Since it was past eleven at night, most airport personnel—if not all—were headed toward the exit and home.
    The stranger’s gaze had lingered on several passengers—all women—who preceded her. She’d noticed with wry resignation—men always scoped out the female of the species, just as he was doing now.
    He was lean to the point of thinness, but there was an aura of strength about him. Strength and barely controlled energy. His sandy blond hair looked as if it had been combed by fingers, if at all. His face was all angles. Not handsome, but arresting. She saw battles in his face—in the firm line of his mouth, the wariness in his eyes. The straightness of his bearing suggested he was guarding something and would never surrender it.
    Himself, perhaps?
    Their gazes met and she felt an odd sense of recognition, of attraction, a quickening of her senses. Her breath stopped for a moment, then came a bit too fast. Something about him touched her—the utter stillness that overtook him as he stared back at her, the starkness in his gaze.
    The utter sense of aloneness of it.
    She forcibly shook off the spell as he seemed to take in a choppy breath. Her hands trembled as she leaned over to rearrange her carry-on and purse. When she straightened, he had turned away from her, only his