Catherine Coulter – FBI 3 The Target

She still didn’t turn around. Slowly, she pulled the drapes shut over the French windows and just stood there, head down, saying nothing.

He noticed that she was barefoot. Her toes were painted a pale pink and were chipping. “When did you last speak to your father?”

“Last week.”

“And you told him what was going on?”

She nodded.

“Tell me something, Molly. When was the last time you saw your father?”

“That’s none of your business. It has nothing to do with this. Stop pushing me on this.”

“I just want us to stay alive. You’re making that difficult by holding out on me. When, Molly? I deserve to know.” He rubbed his leg.

“All right, but it doesn’t make any difference. The last time I saw him was three years ago.”

He slammed the recliner forward and stood, staring at her. “Three years ago? What’s been going on?”

She turned then to face him, but she didn’t move from her stand by the windows. “The last time I saw him was when Emma had just turned three years old. He flew to Denver for her birthday. But that wasn’t the real reason he came. He was angry at my husband. He came to Denver to see him.”

“And did he see your husband?”

“Yes, he saw him. Louey ended up with two broken ribs, a fractured kidney, and bruises everywhere except on his face, that lasted until the next Christmas.”

“What had Louey done?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. It has nothing to do with this.”

“You have no clue what does or what doesn’t have to do with anything at all.”

“Listen, as I told you, Louey is my ex-husband. We’ve been divorced for two years. I didn’t lie to Emma about her father being worried about her. Louey did call once when he heard that she was missing, which was a big surprise to me. He called me before I even considered contacting him. As Emma already told you, he hasn’t bothered to see her since he left.

“It was right after one of his concerts in Berlin. I remember clearly that he asked about Emma, said he’d heard from somebody in Denver that she’d been snatched, and wondered if I had her back yet. When I said no, he acted all sorry and depressed for about a minute. Then he sort of laughed and said that my daddy would pay the moon to get her back, and not to worry. He told me how the tour was going. He said this fraulein reporter-yeah, that’s what he called her-from the Berliner Zeitung compared him to Bruce Springsteen. He told me the Europeans had better taste than the Americans-in other words they like him better-said he just-might spend most of the year in Europe. He talked about his conquests in Europe, in great detail. I don’t think you need to know any of that. He never mentioned Emma after the first time.

“The policewoman listening with me just stared at me. She worshiped Louey, prayed he’d call so she could just hear his sexy voice. Or rather, she worshiped him until she heard what that sexy voice said. She patted my shoulder when I hung up.

“I started crying and she kept patting. She thought I was sorry about Louey leaving me, sorry that he was bragging about all these women.”

“I remember now,” he said after a moment. “There was press about the divorce, but never any details, no hints of infidelity or drugs or anything at all. Just a quiet announcement of irreconcilable differences, something like that. It was out of the public eye very quickly.”

“My father is powerful. In this instance it was a good thing. No one had much to say about anything. There were a couple of days of speculation in the tabloids, but even they dropped it. I was very grateful to my father.” She looked down at her fingernails. There was mustard from the hot dogs on her index finger. She licked it off.

“Molly?”

“Louey, her biological father, didn’t ever want her. After we split up, I think he was relieved to be out of the daddy business. A child didn’t go with the sexy footloose image he had of himself. Funny thing is, she’s probably just as talented musically as he is. Maybe more so.”

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