She’d come to see that Armando accepted very little in the way of information without further examination.
“What makes you think you can make it?” he asked.
She was prepared. “I can walk four miles without tiring, nothing hurts and I’ve gained five pounds. My recovery time is over.”
“Are you getting anxious to go home? I would expect you to care more about that rather than going back to the scene of the crime, as it were.”
She tried to figure out how to answer as she sat down in the chair in front of his desk, one of Zue’s wide, colorful skirts—all she had to wear—pooling around her feet. She’d had several conversations with her father since the initial one and his message had not changed. He wanted her to return to Dallas as soon as possible. But she didn’t want that.
“My father has asked me that same question, numerous times as a matter of fact.”
“And?”
“And I don’t know. I guess I should want to go home but…”
He seemed to read her mind. “But you feel no urgent need.”
She met his steady stare. “That’s awful of me, isn’t it?” she asked. “He’s clearly worried and upset. I need to reassure him, but I feel like there are more answers for me here than there are back in Dallas.”
Armando came from behind his desk to perch on the edge. “Why do you think that is the case?”
“You’re the shrink,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“I should never have let you see my diploma,” he said with a roll of his eyes.
“Maybe,” she agreed. “You know my father is one, too.”
“I know,” he said.
“Don’t you find that weird?” she asked. “That you’re both psychiatrists?”
“Not really,” he said with an engaging smile. “There are quite a few of us, you know. We’re not a rare breed.”
“It just seems strange to me,” she said. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“How do you know?” he asked softly.
She blinked in surprise, then said, “I just do.”
“You’re remembering more and more,” he noted. “That is good.”
“I guess it is,” she agreed, “but it’s like putting a giant jigsaw puzzle together. I remember I like purple, but what shade? I know I lived in Peru as a child, but I can’t recall our home. The pieces are all there but they don’t quite fit.”
“They will eventually.”
“I don’t intend to wait for ‘eventually.’” She stood and they were eye to eye. A shiver she wasn’t expecting went down her back at their nearness. She pushed its appearance aside and concentrated on the moment at hand. “Visiting the bridge will speed things up.”
“I do not believe you are ready. Your strength is much better but traveling to where the bridge is located…” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Well, I do,” she said stubbornly. “I’ve been exercising and I want to go. If you won’t take me, then I’ll find a way to get there on my own.”
Their gazes met and this time the impact was even more noticeable. Armando wasn’t a man who could be ignored but Lauren couldn’t allow physical attraction to dictate her actions.
“You are a very stubborn woman,” he said.
She looked at him unblinkingly. “Will you take me?”
He gave a Latin sigh, then spoke with resigned acquiescence. “All right. You win. We will go in the morning. Wear pants and bring a sweater.”
ARMANDO CALLED MEREDITH that night on his encrypted cell phone and told her about the upcoming trek. She quizzed him about Lauren, asking why she simply didn’t come home now that she knew her true identity.
He repeated Lauren’s comment.
“What does that mean?” Meredith demanded. “Why would she feel there are ‘more answers’ for her in Peru? Answers to what?”
Armando spoke with uncharacteristic hesitation. “I’m not sure. She said something else that concerned me even more.”
“And that was?”
“She said she didn’t believe in coincidences.”
“So?”
“I think she came here for a reason, Meredith. I have a feeling her magazine article was just a cover for something else.”
“And I think you must be getting paranoid on me.”
“Maybe,” he conceded, “but I agree with her. I don’t believe in coincidences, either. She did not come to Peru just to wander about the ruins and write some pretty essay.” He’d given the facts a lot of thought and he’d decided there was only one real reason for her appearance. He told Meredith that reason now. “We’d be foolish to think her mother’s death has nothing to do with her trip here.”
Meredith’s pause echoed down the line, her voice puzzled when she spoke. “You don’t think she suspects you had anything to do with that, do you? Wasn’t she shot by an intruder?”
“That was what the embassy’s press release said but I always wondered. My gut feeling told me something else went on there that night.”
“But how could Lauren have been involved? She was…what? Ten years old?”
Armando closed his eyes but the image in his brain didn’t go away. “She was ten. Officials in the States believed there was a mole inside the Peruvian embassy and they thought Margaret Stanley might be it. I was sent there to eliminate her.” He paused until his pulse steadied. “But I arrived too late. She was already dead, supposedly killed by a burglar. No one was ever arrested and eventually the matter was dropped. The press moved on to its next tragedy.”
“That’s convenient. Was Margaret Stanley the mole?”
“The problems at the embassy stopped after her death, so it was assumed so,” he answered. “The father took Lauren and departed the country right after Margaret’s death. I had developed a contact on the inside, but he had no idea who I really was, of course. I couldn’t call him up afterward and ask.”
“Who was he?”
“His name was Daniel Cunningham. He was Margaret’s attaché. I arranged to play squash beside his court one day and we struck up a conversation. He invited me to the embassy’s Christmas party and that’s how I gained access.”
“Who do you think killed her? And why cover it up?”
“Why is any crime covered up? To hide another one, I would presume. As to who actually pulled the trigger, I don’t know, although I always wondered about the father.”
“He is a nervous fellow, kinda strange.” Meredith’s voice lightened. “Then again, he is a psychiatrist. You guys are all pretty weird.”
“Cunningham had said the man was little more than a fixture but Stanley definitely had the motivation if he’d wanted to kill her. He was very unhappy. He didn’t want to be in Peru and I could understand why. He’d had a large practice back in the States and he’d sacrificed it to come with his wife.”
“Could he have been the mole?”
Everything had pointed to J. Freeman Stanley as the guilty party, but to Armando that fact alone was enough to make him suspicious of any conclusion. “I wondered about that, too,” Armando replied, “but no one wanted my opinion on the matter. I was only the hired help.”
Promising