Books by Fern Michaels
The Blossom Sisters
Balancing Act
Tuesday’s Child
Betrayal
Southern Comfort
To Taste the Wine
Sins of the Flesh
Sins of Omission
Return to Sender
Mr. and Miss Anonymous
Up Close and Personal
Fool Me Once
Picture Perfect
About Face
The Future Scrolls
Kentucky Sunrise
Kentucky Heat
Kentucky Rich
Plain Jane
Charming Lily
What You Wish For
The Guest List
Listen to Your Heart
Celebration
Yesterday
Finders Keepers
Annie’s Rainbow
Sara’s Song
Vegas Sunrise
Vegas Heat
Vegas Rich
Whitefire
Wish List
Dear Emily
Christmas at Timberwoods
The Godmothers Series
Classified
Breaking News
Deadline
Late Edition
Exclusive
The Scoop
The Sisterhood Novels
Gotcha!
Home Free
Déjà Vu
Cross Roads
Game Over
Deadly Deals
Vanishing Act
Razor Sharp
Under the Radar
Final Justice
Collateral Damage
Fast Track
Hokus Pokus
Hide and Seek
Free Fall
Lethal Justice
Sweet Revenge
The Jury
Vendetta
Payback
Weekend Warriors
eBook exclusives
Fancy Dancer
Texas Heat
Texas Rich
Texas Fury
Texas Sunrise
Anthologies
A Winter Wonderland
I’ll Be Home for Christmas
Making Spirits Bright
Holiday Magic
Snow Angels
Silver Bells
Comfort and Joy
Sugar and Spice
Let It Snow
A Gift of Joy
Five Golden Rings
Deck the Halls
Jingle All the Way
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
FERN MICHAELS
GOTCHA!
ZEBRA BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Books by Fern Michaels
Title Page
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Fern Michaels talks about how she created the Sisterhood series, and the long road to publication . . .
THE SISTERHOOD . . . HAVE YOU READ EVERY ONE?
CLASSIFIED.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THE BLOSSOM SISTERS
BALANCING ACT
WHAT YOU WISH FOR
Copyright Page
Prologue
Late August
Myra Rutledge sat alone at the kitchen table in her McLean, Virginia, farmhouse. The dogs were sleeping at her feet, giving her a comfortable feeling to be sure. Her husband, Charles, was down below in the dungeons of the old house, in what they called the War Room.
A pile of mail she’d just gone out to the road to pick up sat in front of her. Outside, it was raining the proverbial cats and dogs. A good day to be indoors and play catch-up on her weekly “to do” list. Reading mail was definitely not one of her favorite pastimes. Not many things these days were favorites of hers at all. When enough time had gone by, she attacked the mail with a vengeance. First, she separated the catalogs from the throwaway flyers, after which the “Occupant” and “Resident” mail went into another pile. Bills found their way into still another pile; then, finally, her personal mail, which was slim to none these days, went into the last pile. A good thing, too, she thought, because she had just run out of table space. Charles would handle the bills, so she moved them to the kitchen counter. One of these days, he had said, he was going to start paying online, an idea that Myra had nixed the moment the words were out of his mouth. She dumped the throwaway flyers, along with the “Resident” and “Occupant” mail, into the trash compactor and turned on the switch. The catalogs she added to the pile of catalogs already gracing the side of the fireplace. The stack was already almost two feet high. She either needed to look at them or toss them. Tomorrow would be time enough to think about that. She shrugged.
She was now down to the miniscule amount of personal mail. Three pieces. Two looked like invitations. She opened them and realized she’d gotten it right. One was an invitation to the wedding of the daughter of someone she barely knew. The second was a thank-you note from a charity to which she’d made a handsome donation. That left the long, legal-size letter with a return address in Rosemont, Alabama. Myra frowned. She didn’t know a soul in Alabama, much less Rosemont. She ripped at the envelope, being careful to preserve the return address. The frown stayed on her face. It wasn’t just a short letter; there were enclosures.
Myra reached for her glasses, but they weren’t where she’d left them. They were on top of her head. She finally put them on and read the letter, then the enclosures. There were tear splatters on her glasses when she removed them. She got up, walked over to the old-fashioned phone attached to the wall, and called Annie. “I know it’s raining hard, Annie, but do you think you could come over? I got something in the mail I’d like you to see. We can have lunch. Will that work for you?” Myra listened, then said, “Okay, how does tuna on rye sound? Hurry, Annie. This is really important. I think you’ll agree when I show you what came in the mail today.”
Myra swiped at her eyes as she opened the refrigerator. The tuna, thanks to Charles, was already made. All she had to do was slice the rye bread Charles had picked up earlier in the morning, peel off some lettuce leaves, slice a tomato that Charles had picked from the garden the night before, and lunch would be served.
Ten minutes later, the dogs were up and barking. Myra looked at the video feed above the door and saw Annie driving through the gates. Her luncheon guest had arrived.
The two women made a production out of hugging one another even before Annie could shrug out of her slicker and rain hat. She kicked off her shoes and padded barefoot to the table. Myra poured and handed Annie a cup of coffee. “It’s actually kind of chilly outside,” Annie said as she picked up Myra’s reading glasses and perched them on her nose. “Now, is this what you want me to read?”
Myra, tomato in one hand, a wicked-looking knife in her other, just nodded. The tomato and knife were forgotten as she watched her friend read what had come in the mail. She waited unti
l Annie was finished. She watched as Annie removed the glasses and looked across at her. “This is . . . beyond sad. We have to do something for this lady. That’s why you called me over, right?” Annie brushed at her own eyes, her lips set in a grim, tight line.
“She said she wrote to me before . . . when . . . shortly after it happened. She said I didn’t respond. Of course I didn’t respond, because I never got the letter. We were on the run then, hiding out. I never did find out where the mail went or . . . it doesn’t matter now. We can explain to her and, hopefully, she’ll understand.”
“We could call her,” Annie said. “She included her phone number.”
“Or we could go to Rosemont, Alabama, and explain why we never got in touch with her. You know, personal, face-to-face. Had I gotten this letter earlier, I would have moved whatever missions we had to the back burner and concentrated on her. Do you agree, Annie?”
“I do, Myra, one hundred percent. I think we should investigate this on our own before we call the others in.
“Now, are you ever going to make that sandwich? I think better when I eat, so get cracking, Myra.”
Myra got cracking while Annie made a fresh pot of coffee. When lunch was ready, both women looked at one another and burst into tears. “I know exactly how she feels,” Myra said as she reached for a paper towel to wipe at her eyes. She handed another towel to Annie.
“We could have helped her, Myra. We should have been there for her, and we didn’t even know about what had happened. And now look at what she’s facing. I say we call her after lunch. If I’m not mistaken, I think there’s a one-hour time difference between Alabama and here. Not that time matters. You don’t think she’ll hang up on us if we call her after all this time, do you?”
“Who’s going to make the call?” Myra asked fretfully.
“Well, the letter was addressed to you here at the farm, so I guess it’s up to you to do the honors,” Annie said.
Myra was reaching behind her for the phone just as Charles appeared in the kitchen. “I see lunch is ready. Did you forget about me? Nice to see you on such a rainy, miserable day, Annie.”
“You, too, Charles,” Annie mumbled.
“Am I interrupting something?” Charles asked as he eyed what he considered two guilty-looking women.
“No,” Annie mumbled again.
“Yes,” Myra said forcefully.
“Well then,” Charles huffed, “I’ll just make my own sandwich and take it back downstairs with me.”
“That’s fine, Charles, but would you hurry it up?”
Charles slapped together a sandwich and poured coffee into a thermal container, gave a sloppy salute, and was gone within minutes.
The two women looked at one another, and both shrugged at the same time. The shrug meant they didn’t give two hoots if they had ruffled Charles’s feathers or not.
“Well, what are you waiting for, Myra, a bus?”
“No, dear, for you to read me the number. I’m not a mind reader.”
“Oh, okay.” Annie rattled off the number, and Myra punched it in. She listened as the phone rang six times before it skipped over to an answering machine. She left what she hoped was a comforting message and ended by leaving her unlisted phone number for a return call.
What Myra didn’t know was that, at the very moment she was leaving the message on Julie Wyatt’s answering machine, lightning struck a transformer in front of Julie’s house, and all power and phones went out. There would be no messages on Julie’s machine when she checked it later after the power came back on.
“How long do you think it will take her to call us back, Annie?”
Annie started to make another fresh pot of coffee, since Charles had emptied it. “I think it might depend on how pissed off she is that we ignored her for five long years. If I were standing in her shoes, I’d be pissed to the teeth, wouldn’t you, Myra?”
“Absolutely. Well then, let’s plan a trip to Rosemont, Alabama, so we can plead our case if she doesn’t return our call. Let’s take your plane, Annie. That way we can leave on the spur of the moment and not have to worry about reservations. Fergus won’t be a problem, will he?”
“Just as much of a problem as Charles will be. That means no problem,” Annie said, picking up one of the articles that had come in Myra’s letter. “You know what, Myra? I have the perfect punishment for that bitch.” She leaned across the table and whispered her suggestion.
Myra’s eyes popped wide. “Oh, Annie, I do like the way you think. That’s just lovely. I can see it now, playing out right in front of our eyes. Do you think the others will have a problem with this? It will be the first mission of the second string. I know you and I are up to it, but the others . . . they haven’t been around when we go into action.”
“Are you kidding? They’re going to love it. And, no, I don’t think any of them will have a problem. But first we have to lay all the groundwork. How long are we going to give Julie Wyatt to call us back?”
“Tonight, eleven o’clock. No one ever calls anyone after that for fear of scaring them. It will be midnight our time if they are an hour behind us.
“If we don’t hear by tonight, then I think we should plan on heading south late tomorrow afternoon. Earlier, if you can make it. Do they have to do any maintenance on the plane before we take off? Check that out, Annie.”
Annie huffed. “My people always have the plane at the ready, so, no, it will not be a problem. Bear in mind that this is summertime, Myra. There’s every possibility Ms. Wyatt could be on vacation. Have you thought of that?”
“No, I didn’t think about that. It won’t matter; we’ll be able to find out where she is vacationing, and we’ll just go there. We can’t let that poor woman think we won’t help her one minute longer than necessary. I’m certainly up for it, Annie. I can stay as long as it takes. How about you?”
“I’m with you, Myra. As long as it takes.”
“Let’s go into Charles’s office and do some googling. We need as much information as we can get before we head to Rosemont, Alabama.”
Walking down the hall, Myra called over her shoulder, “Do you really think that punishment will work?”
“Well, if it doesn’t, I’ll just plain old shoot the damned bitch,” Annie drawled.
Myra laughed, knowing full well that Annie meant every word she had just uttered. She was still laughing when she booted up Charles’s special computer.
“By the way, Annie, how are your hacking classes with Abner Tookus coming?”
“Abner said that maybe in twenty years I might be as good as Dwight something or other. I told you about him, he’s Abner’s star pupil, and he looks like he was just hatched out of an egg.”
“Should I be impressed, Annie?”
“Hell no, Myra, but I am getting there. One of these days, I will be just as good as Abner himself. And then think of all the money I’ll save us. I work for free. If you have any doubts, think about that pole that I mastered.”
Myra started to laugh and couldn’t stop. She just loved Annie de Silva.
Chapter 1
Earlier that summer
In Manhattan, Mace Carlisle stepped out of the door of the Dakota, where he lived, and looked at the new day. A perfect early summer day, the temperature just right, he thought. Perhaps not at six o’clock in the morning but certainly by nine o’clock, just three short hours away, the day would be bright and sunny, with marshmallow clouds moving lazily across the sky. The trees in Central Park would whisper and do their dance for all the tourists, dog walkers, and joggers trying to take advantage of the golden day.
Mace stood a few minutes more to savor the early morning air before he walked to the curb and hailed a taxi. He could have driven, but toda
y was a secretive kind of day, a day when he didn’t want to be followed or watched. A Mace Carlisle day.
He was headed to the office of his lawyer, Oliver Goldfeld. Oliver was the only other person he knew who arrived at his office by six thirty, just the way he, Mace, did. For over twenty years, the two men had convened for coffee and Danish at Oliver’s office two days a week to discuss Mace’s affairs. It was something Mace looked forward to, because he always seemed to have a good day after meeting with Oliver.
Oliver and Mace weren’t just lawyer and client. They were friends in the true sense of the word. While Mace wasn’t Oliver’s only client, he was his biggest and richest client. In fact, most of Oliver’s clients had signed on with Oliver because of Mace’s endorsement of the lawyer. Goldfeld and Associates was an eight-man law firm whose specialty was corporate law.
It was six twenty-five when Mace stepped out of the elevator and walked to the plate-glass doors he knew would be open. No one else would be in the offices yet, so they would have the place to themselves.
The reception room was neither lavish nor shabby. There were shiny green plants and a lot of mahogany. The lighting was subdued and the carpeting soft. Once, years ago, Mace had told his friend that he needed to “slick up the place,” and this was the result.
Mace looked up at the sound of footsteps coming down one of the halls. He fixed a smile he wasn’t feeling onto his face and moved forward.
Some people meeting both men for the first time might take them for brothers, or at least close relatives. Both men were tall, six-two and -three. Both weighed in at one-seventy or thereabouts. Both liked to dress in custom-cut Savile Row suits. Both had gray hair, and both had summer blue eyes even at their age, which was, in both cases, sixty. Both had hawkish noses and strong chins. They had both been bachelors until three years ago, when Mace had gone off the rails and married his masseuse, a marriage he had regretted the moment he returned from his Hawaiian honeymoon.
Oliver led the way to his private conference room, where he already had two containers of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and a bag of sugary donuts sitting on the table. “Your turn next week, Mace,” he said as he handed over napkins and paper plates.