Sidney Sheldon - Chasing Tomorrow

The voice in her head was calm and insistent. It sounded like Blake Carter’s voice. Darling Blake! Was he here? He was repeating the same words, over and over.

Let go, Tracy. Let go.

Tracy trusted Blake. She did as he asked.

She closed her eyes and tumbled backward into the mist.

CHAPTER 28

COLORADO

THREE MONTHS LATER . . .

TRACY STOOD AT HER kitchen window, chopping carrots for the soup. Outside, the ranch looked more beautiful than ever. Fall had bathed Colorado in a warm amber glow. The leaves on the trees shimmered in every shade of brown and gold and ocher, contrasting beautifully with the vivid green pastures and white wooden fences, which Blake had lovingly repainted.

Since Tracy had come home from Bulgaria, emotionally exhausted and physically weak—she’d barely noticed, but she’d lost fifteen pounds during those grueling two weeks and was badly bruised after her encounter with Daniel Cooper—Blake Carter had taken care of everything. He drove Nicholas to school while Tracy slept. He cooked meals and made sure Tracy ate them. He’d done laundry and booked doctors’ appointments and kept the rhythms of life on the ranch going when Tracy could not. He’d held Tracy when she wept, racked with sobs that confused him deeply. Blake could see that her tears were only part sadness. There was also some sort of deep release going on, a necessary reaction to post-traumatic stress of some kind, like a soldier returning from battle. Most important of all, from Tracy’s perspective, Blake Carter hadn’t asked her a single question about what had happened on her “cooking trip” to Europe. He simply assumed that she would tell him when she was ready. Or perhaps, he thought, she might never be ready. Blake could accept either scenario, as long as she was home safe and staying home.

“You won’t leave again, will you, Mom?” Nicholas asked on Tracy’s first night back.

His tone was light but Tracy could hear the anxiety underlying it. She’d explained away her injuries as the result of a minor car crash, but her appearance when she’d first walked through the door had clearly frightened him.

“No, my darling. I won’t leave again.”

“Good. You’re so thin. Was the food in Europe really disgusting?”

Tracy grinned. “Yeah. It was pretty gross.”

“We should go to McDonald’s tomorrow.”

“We should.”

That was three months ago. Today, Tracy felt like a different person. Not her old self exactly, but a new self. Content. At peace. Reborn. It was Nicholas, more so even than Blake’s kindness, that had brought her back to life. She watched him now, horsing around in the yard with Blake on their way in for lunch. The two had become inseparable recently, and Tracy noticed that Nick was starting to take after Blake more and more. The thought made her happy.

“Something smells good.”

Strong male arms snaked around Tracy’s waist from behind. She turned around, unable to stop a broad smile from lighting up her face.

Jeff Stevens smiled back. “When’s lunch? I’m starving.”

CHAPTER 29

YOU KNOW IT’S NOT often a man dies on the cross and then miraculously comes back to life.”

Jeff’s surgeon, Dr. Elena Dragova, an attractive woman in her late forties, beamed down at her patient. As well she might. The case of “the man on the cross” had made headlines all across Bulgaria. Jeff’s recovery was being hailed as a modern miracle and Dr. Dragova was about to become a household name, along with the rest of the staff at UMBAL Sveti Georgi, Plovdiv’s largest and most prestigious hospital.

“So I hear,” Jeff quipped. “Every couple of thousand years or so, isn’t it? If I start my own religion, will you join?”

“I don’t believe in God.”

“Nor do I. Only in beautiful women.”

Dr. Elena Dragova laughed. She didn’t know what to make of Jeff Stevens, or of the strange, hauntingly beautiful woman who’d brought him to Sveti Georgi, insisting that she’d seen renewed vital signs in the ambulance and demanding that the emergency room staff make another attempt at resuscitation. Jeff Stevens’s heart had started again, against all the odds. But he’d needed surgery afterward, for eight grueling hours. His condition was so severe he’d been placed in a medically induced coma. Through it all, for three straight nights, the woman had sat by his bedside, barely eating or sleeping, just watching him breathe. She’d refused to leave him, for anything. Even getting her to allow the nurses to dress her own wounds, or put her in clean clothes, had been a battle. She’d told them her name was Tracy, but beyond that, nothing.

Policemen came and went. As well as Mr. Stevens, the hospital was housing another gravely injured American, Daniel Cooper, believed to be the madman who had tried to crucify Stevens up in the hills. Cooper had been found in the amphitheater with his skull smashed in the same night that Stevens was rescued. Rumors swirled that he was in fact a serial killer and rapist, that the woman at Jeff Stevens’s bedside had narrowly escaped becoming his next victim. But no one knew the truth and “Tracy” wasn’t talking.

Then one day, without warning or any words to the nurses, Tracy suddenly left. It was a day Dr. Dragova would never forget, for many reasons.

At around seven in the morning, another group of Americans had arrived—this time it was the FBI—and the scene at UMBAL Sveti Georgi’s main reception area had rapidly descended into farce.

A very rude and obnoxious agent by the name of Milton Buck burst in as if he owned the place, demanding loudly and repeatedly to be allowed to interview Daniel Cooper.

“We have an international arrest warrant,” Agent Buck hissed. “This man is wanted in connection with a string of jewelry and art thefts. He is sitting on stolen property worth hundreds of millions of dollars and I will speak to him!”

Having first taken his frustration out on Cooper’s surgical team, who point-blank refused to allow him anywhere near their patient, Buck turned his ire on Jean Rizzo.

Aside from one brief trip back to his hotel to shower and change, Rizzo had been at the hospital constantly since the night Jeff Stevens was brought in. He’d come to formally charge Daniel Cooper, monitor Jeff’s progress and to check on Tracy, whom he no longer trusted to be let out of his sight.

“ You spoke to Cooper!” Milton Buck glared at him accusingly.

“Early yesterday, yes. There was a brief window when he was still lucid. He was quite forthcoming about the Bible killings.” Jean smiled. “Of course, that was before the second stroke.”

“Why wasn’t I informed! I heard about Cooper’s arrest on the goddamn Bulgarian radio news! My case—”

“—is not important,” said Rizzo. “Not compared to what’s gone on here. Not compared to thirteen lives lost. Besides, you’ve got Elizabeth Kennedy, haven’t you?”

“Elizabeth only took half the money. Daniel Cooper had the other half. If we don’t recover those assets—”

“What? You won’t get your promotion?” Jean gave Milton a conciliatory pat on the shoulders. “That’s too bad, man.”

“The case isn’t closed!” Milton Buck said furiously. “If Daniel Cooper can’t help me trace the missing McMenemy Pissarro, or the Neil Lane jewels he stole from the Chicago store, then your little girlfriend Tracy Whitney’s going to have to fill in the gaps.”

Rizzo’s eyes narrowed. “Leave Tracy out of this. She knows nothing.”

“She knows how these scumbags think.”

“You made a deal,” said Jean, “when Tracy delivered Elizabeth Kennedy to you on a platter. She had immunity. Remember?”

“ ‘Had’ is the operative word, I’m afraid. You didn’t seriously think the federal government was going to wave good-bye to hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of stolen goods just to stay in the good graces of a wanted con artist, did you?”