Diamond Bay (Page 65)

It was as if part of her had been torn away. Losing B.B. had been terrible, but this was worse. She had been young then, and perhaps she hadn’t been as capable of loving as deeply as she was now. Grief had matured her, had given her the depth of feeling with which she loved Kell. There wasn’t a minute of the day that she didn’t miss him, that she didn’t live with pain because he wasn’t there. She couldn’t even find out about him from Jane; no information was available on Kell Sabin, ever. He had returned to his gray world of shadows and been swallowed up by them, as if he’d never been. Something could happen to him and she would never know.

That was the worst, the not knowing. He was there, but unreachable.

Sometimes she wondered if she’d dreamed it, that he’d come to her in the hospital and bent over her with his heart in his eyes as she’d never seen him before and whispered that he loved her. When she had awoken again she had expected to see him, because how could a man look like that and then walk away? But he had done exactly that. He’d been gone.

Sometimes she almost hated him. Oh, she knew all his reasons, but when she thought about it, they just didn’t seem good enough. What gave him the right to make decisions for her? He was so damn arrogant, so certain that he knew best, that she could have shaken him until his teeth rattled.

The fact was that she had recovered from her wound, but she wasn’t recovering from losing Kell. It ate at her day and night, taking away her joy in living and extinguishing the light in her eyes.

She wasn’t pining awayshe was too proud to let herself do thatbut she was merely existing in limbo, without plans or anticipation. Walking the beach, staring out at the incoming waves, Rachel faced the fact that she had to do something. She had two options: she could try to reach Kell, or she could do nothing. To simply give up, to do nothing, went against her grain. He had had time to change his mind and come back, if he’d been going to, so she had to accept that he wasn’t going to do it… not without incentive. If he wouldn’t come to her, she’d go to him.

Just making that decision made her feel better than she had in months, more alive. She called to Joe, then turned and walked briskly up the beach toward her house.

She had no idea how to reach him, but she had to start somewhere, so she called telephone information to get the number of the agency in Virginia. That was easy enough, though she doubted it would be that simple to get put through to Kell. She called, but the operator who answered the phone denied that anyone by that name worked there. There was no listing for him. Rachel insisted on leaving a message, anyway. If he just knew she had called, perhaps he’d call back. Maybe curiosity wouldn’t let him ignore the message.

But days went by and he didn’t call, so Rachel tried again and received the same answer. There was no record of a Kell Sabin. She began contacting all the people she had done business with years ago when she was a reporter, asking for advice on how to get through to someone protected by the secrecy of the intelligence network. She sent messages to him through five different people, but had no way of knowing if any of them actually reached him. She continued to call, hoping that eventually the operator would get so frustrated that she’d hand the message on to someone.

For a month she tried. Christmas came and went, as well as the New Year celebrations, but the focus of her life was on somehow contacting Kell. It took a month for her to admit that either there was no way of getting a message to him, or he’d gotten them and still hadn’t called.

To give up again, after trying so hard, hurt almost more than she could bear. For a while she’d had hope; now she had nothing.

She hadn’t let herself cry much; it had seemed pointless, and she had really tried to pick herself up and keep going. But that night Rachel cried as she hadn’t cried in months, lying alone in the bed she’d shared with him, aching with loneliness. She had offered him everything she had and was, and he’d walked away. The long night hours crawled by, and she lay there with her eyes wide and burning, staring at the darkness.

When the phone rang the next morning she still hadn’t slept, and her voice was dull when she answered.

"Rachel?" Jane asked hesitantly. "Is that you?"

With an effort Rachel roused herself. "Yes. Hello, Jane, how are you?"

"Round," Jane said, summing it up in one word. "Do you feel like coming up for a visit? I warn you, I have ulterior motives. You can chase the boys while I sit with my feet up."

Rachel didn’t know how she could bear to see Jane and Grant so happy together, surrounded by their children, but it would have been small of her to refuse. "Yes, of course," she forced herself to reply.

Jane was silent, and too late Rachel remembered that nothing got by Jane. And being Jane, she went right to the heart of the matter. "It’s Kell, isn’t it?"

Rachel’s hand tightened on the receiver, and she closed her eyes at the pain of just hearing his name spoken. So many people had denied his existence that it stunned her for Jane to bring up the subject. She tried to speak, but her voice broke; then suddenly she was weeping again. "I’ve tried to call him," she said brokenly. "I can’t get through. No one will even admit that they know him. Even if they’re giving him my messages, he hasn’t called."

"I thought he’d give in before now," Jane mused.

By that time Rachel had gotten herself under control again, and she apologized to Jane for crying all over her. She bit her lip, promising herself that it wouldn’t happen again. She had to accept his loss and stop mourning.

"Look maybe I can do something," Jane said. "I’ll have to work on Grant. Talk to you later."

Rachel hung up the phone, but she didn’t let herself dwell on what Jane had said. She couldn’t. If she got her hopes up again only to have them dashed, it would destroy her.