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make the museum famous and she'd gone to South Dakota to acquire it. In fact. Senator Holden
thought so highly of that project that he'd even paid her airfare!
Armed with that tidbit, Tate went storming into Matt Holden's office, past his affronted secretary.
"It's all right, Katy," Holden told the young woman.
"Close the door, will you?"
She did, with obvious apprehension. Tate looked like a madman.
It was the first time they'd seen each other face-to- face since Matt Holden had learned that the man
across the desk from him was his son.
He studied Tate's face intently, seeing resemblances, seeing generations of his people in those black
eyes, that firm jaw, the tall, elegant build of him. Tate wouldn't know that he had French blood as well
as Lakota, that his grandfather had been a minor royal in Morocco, that his grandmother had been
French aristocracy. Tate was the continuation of a proud line, and he couldn't tell him. If things
worked out in South Dakota Tate would never have to know at all. The thought saddened him. He'd
made so many mistakes. "Well?" Holden asked, trying to sound as antagonistic as he usually did,
despite the faint crack in his heart.
"Why did you send Cecily to South Dakota?"
Holden caught his breath. He looked around the room, certain that the office had at least one bug,
even if he'd had some agents search it with sophisticated electronic equipment. He didn't dare say
anything here.
Tate intercepted that concerned look. With a curt laugh, he retrieved some complicated electronic
device from his inside pocket, opened it, activated it and put it on the desk in front of him.
He leaned back.
"Set a spy to catch a spy, Holden," he said easily.
"You can talk. It's safe. That" -he nodded at the device "--will give anyone listening a hell of a
headache."
Holden relaxed a little.
"I can't tell you much," he said.
"It's complicated, and there are innocent people involved." Certainly there were; Tate was one of
them.
"Tell me what you can," Tate said after a minute. Odd, that hesitation in Holden, that utter lack of real
hostility. He'd changed. Tate wondered why.
Holden sat back in his burgundy leather chair and stared at his son.
"There's a little cloak and dagger stuff going on at the reservation. I promised someone I'd have a
look around, so Cecily's asking a few questions for me."
"That would be a tribal matter, so why are you sticking your nose in?"
Tate said with a scowl, looking so much like his father that, to the man across the desk, it was like
looking in a youthful mirror.
"You don't have any influence there."
Holden's high cheekbones flushed ruddy. He averted his dark eyes. His jaw tautened so that the
muscles moved involuntarily.
"It's a personal matter. A delicate personal matter. Cecily is...
finding out a few things for me. Watching some people, that's all.
Nothing dangerous."
Tate leaned forward abruptly, eyes flashing with anger.
"If you wanted somebody watched, why didn't you come to me? I've got contacts everywhere! I could
have done an investigation for you, without involving Cecily."
Holden closed his eyes.
"You don't understand. I couldn't... have you involved."
This was getting stranger and stranger.
"Why not?"
He stared at a portrait of Andrew Jackson on the wall of his office.
Absently he thought of the scandal Jackson had endured over his beloved Rachel.
"I can't tell you." He turned his attention back to his son. "You have to keep right out of this. You can't
become involved in any way, not even casually!"
Tate's scowl grew blacker.
"You aren't making sense."
"Damn it...!" He pushed back a stray strand of silver hair and ran his hands over his face. "All right,
it's a political threat," he said slowly, choosing every word.
"There's something in my past that I don't want known. It involves an innocent woman whose life
would be destroyed. Some people are threatening to go public with it if I don't do... certain things for
them."
"I can be discreet," Tate said, puzzled.
"I know that." He drew in a breath that sounded painful. He searched the face of the other man with
concern in every line of his own.
"But I can't involve you. I won't. If you have any respect for me at all, honor what I'm asking of you. I
want you out of this. As far out as you can get!"
The oddest sensation washed over Tate. He felt a sudden strong bond to this man, this enemy. He
didn't understand it. It was almost as if Holden were trying to protect him. But why would he need
protection?
"I worked for the CIA," Tate pointed out.
"I know how to take care of myself."
"I know that. It has nothing to do with survival skills." Holden put his broad face in his hands again.
"I've never been in a situation like this, never had my hands tied like this. I deserve whatever I get. I
brought it on myself. But I can't let her pay for my sins. I have to protect her, whatever the cost."
Tate had never thought of the terse senator as a sensitive man. His voice was vibrant with pain, with
loss.
"You still love her."
"Of course I still love her!" he bit off, raising his worn face.
"I've always loved her. But I was so damned ambitious. I had to be powerful, rich, a world-beater. I
married money and sacrificed everything for this office. Now, here I sit, with my sins spread out
before me, waiting for the ax to fall. And I've got nobody to blame for it except myself."
Tate stared at him for a long time.
"Does this have something to do with the reason you backed out of the security upgrade you asked me
to do for you?"
Holden didn't look at him, but he nodded, a quick jerk of his head.
"None of this makes sense."
"I hope it never will," Holden said solemnly. He leaned back wearily in his chair, his big hands
gripping the arms until his knuckles went white.
"I haven't sent Cecily into any danger, I promise you. I have friends she doesn't even know about who
are watching out for her."
This was puzzling.
"You have friends at Wapiti?"
Holden's eyes averted again.
"My mother taught school there when I was a boy while my father was serving in the military, so she
wouldn't have to drag me all over the world to be educated. I grew up on the reservation."
There was something. Tate could almost bring it out of his mind, but not quite. There was something
he remembered hearing, something.
Holden got to his feet, interrupting the flow of thoughts.
"Don't go to South Dakota," he said.
"Don't get mixed up in this. You may do irreparable damage if you do.
It's a... delicate situation."
Tate got up, but he didn't move toward the door.
"It was a woman on the reservation," he said suddenly.
Holden didn't answer him. "Were you ashamed of her, is that why you kept it secret?"
Holden's dark eyes met his.
"She isn't the sort of woman a man could be ashamed of," he said softly. "Quite the contrary. But I
made bad choices, and lost her."
Tate was surprised that the man would confide in him. It didn't make sense. Of course, nothing else
Holden had said made sense, either.
Tate lifted a hand to his forehead. The big silver turquoise ring caught Holden's eye. Funny, it was
almost as if the man recognized it.
"My mother gave it to me after my father died," Tate told the other man, who was obviously curious
about the piece of jewelry.
"She said it had been my father's. She gave it to him when they first started going together. I hated
him. But I wear it to honor her. It was obviously something she cherished."
Holden remembered the ring. She'd given it to him, the day before he was forced to confess to her
that there was no chance for them to be together. He'd given it back to her when he confessed. She'd
given it to their son. Their son. He could hardly bear the pain.
Tate wondered at Holden's reaction to the story. His eyes narrowed.
"Did you know my mother?"
Holden looked at him with determined blankness.
"Cecily talks about her. Her name is Leta, isn't it?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]