Table of Contents
FLOTSAM
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
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
OTHER TITLES BY LORETH ANNE WHITE
In the Barren Ground
In the Waning Light
A Dark Lure
Angie Pallorino Novels
The Drowned Girls
Manhunter
Cold Case Affair
Shadow Soldiers
The Heart of a Mercenary
A Sultan’s Ransom
Rules of Engagement
Seducing the Mercenary
The Heart of a Renegade
Sahara Kings
The Sheik’s Command
Sheik’s Revenge
Surgeon Sheik’s Rescue
Guarding the Princess
“Sheik’s Captive,” in Desert Knights with Linda Conrad
Snowy Creek Novels
The Slow Burn of Silence
Romantic Suspense
Melting the Ice
Safe Passage
The Sheik Who Loved Me
Breaking Free
Her 24-Hour Protector
The Missing Colton
The Perfect Outsider
“Saving Christmas,” in the Covert Christmas anthology
“Letters to Ellie,” a novella in SEAL of My Dreams anthology
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2017 by Cheakamus House Publishing
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542047975
ISBN-10: 1542047978
Cover design by Rex Bonomelli
For those who work so tirelessly to give the nameless back their names.
CONTENTS
FLOTSAM
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
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
EPILOGUE
SNEAK PEEK: THE NEXT ANGIE PALLORINO NOVEL
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FLOTSAM
MONDAY, JANUARY 1
“Ty, dammit! Get your butt away from there, will ya!” Betsy Champlain, all of eight months pregnant, stood on the verge of the road and yelled into the wind for her son to come back from the water’s edge. It was raining, clouds low, dusk rolling in fast with a fog from the sea. She could barely see him now, chasing their little family Maltese into the gloam along the strip of dark, pebbled beach. Panic licked through her stomach.
She spun around. Behind her, along the manmade causeway that jutted out into the water, ferry traffic was lined bumper-to-bumper for miles. Four sailing waits long and then some. Most of the earlier sailings between the mainland and the island had been canceled throughout the day because of the storms that had ridden into the polar jet stream on the coattails of Typhoon Shiori, blasting the Pacific Northwest with a roller coaster of foul weather. Plus, it was New Year’s Day—a holiday in this part of the world. Which meant tomorrow was the first day back at work in the new year, and everyone was trying to get home. She was never going to make it from the Vancouver mainland back to the island tonight. Frustration ate at her. She shouldn’t have come solo to visit her mom with the two kids and the dog. Ferry traffic was always insane over the holiday period.
They’d been cooped up in the car for hours, and Chloe, their little dog, had needed a bathroom break. Betsy had left the Subaru in the lineup with the window down and Emily, her three-year-old, inside, sleeping. She’d crossed over the road to where she could watch her eight-year-old take the dog down the riprap embankment to pee.
But Ty had been busting with frustrated energy after being imprisoned in the vehicle all day. He’d scuttled down the riprap, slipping and dropping Chloe’s leash. Chloe had hightailed it straight to the water. Ty chased after his pet.
“Ty! Get back here! Now!” Conflict stabbed through Betsy. She shot a look back at the Subaru, then glanced at Ty’s little ghost-shape vanishing into the mist. She spun around and waddled fast back to the car.
“Emily,” she said, shaking her baby girl. “Wake up. You have to come with me.”
Betsy grabbed her half-asleep child’s hand and dragged her at a run back over the road. They negotiated the wet, slippery riprap down to the beach. Emily began to fall and cry. On the beach Betsy scooped Emily up onto her hip and stumbled over the rocky strip to where Ty had vanished. She was breathing hard. She also needed to pee—her bladder felt like it was going to burst.
“Ty!” she yelled. She couldn’t see him. “Tyson Champlain, you get your butt o
ver here right now, or—”
“But Ma—” He popped up from behind a rocky outcrop, holding a driftwood stick. Relief cut Betsy like a knife.
“Chloe’s found something—I’m just taking a look.” He disappeared again behind his rock knoll.
Heaving out a sigh of exasperation, Betsy readjusted Emily’s weight on her hip and negotiated her way across a carpet of small barnacle-encrusted rocks. She came around to the seaward side of the knoll. The tide was far out, revealing a wide expanse of silt covered in slime and scalloped with brown foam. Along the lacework of foam lay lengths of seaweed as fat as her arm along with other detritus that had been tossed up in the storm. A stench of rot and brine and dead fish filled her nostrils.
Ty was crouched over something, poking it with his stick. Chloe growled, trying to wrestle the object away from him. Unusual for the dog.
She frowned, a sense of foreboding creeping into her bones.
“What is it, Ty?”
“A shoe.”
Betsy set Emily down, took her hand, and came closer to see. The mist was thicker down here. Emily stopped crying and peered with interest.
“It’s got something inside,” Ty said, trying to shove Chloe away as he jabbed the contents of the shoe with his stick.
A memory chilled Betsy to the core—a news show she’d watched recently about severed feet in sneakers that had been washing up all over the BC coast and in Washington. Sixteen in all since 2007. No other body parts to match.
“Leave that alone!” She grabbed her son by his jacket and yanked him back. “Pick up Chloe’s leash—now! Get her away from that shoe.”
Ty’s eyes went round at her tone. For once in his life he obeyed quickly and silently. He grabbed the dog’s leash.
Together they stared at the shoe. It was pale lilac in color beneath the grime and seaweed that entangled it. Small. Stubby. A high-top sneaker with a fat, air-filled base for a sole.
Betsy turned back to look up at the rows of cars, now blurred behind a screen of rain. What should she do? Run up there and bash on windows to see if anyone could help her? Help her do what? Police. She needed to tell the police.
“Hold on to your sister, Ty,” she said, fumbling in her jacket for her cell phone. “And grab on to my jacket with your other hand. Don’t let go, either of you.”
He didn’t.
Betsy had never called 9-1-1 before. No need, thank God. But … did this constitute an emergency? Or would she look dumb? Her gaze shot to the little shoe lying in the silt. There was definitely something inside—like the photos she’d seen on the news.
She knew about the hoaxes, too. The running shoe that had been found with a partially skeletonized animal paw inside. Others stuffed with raw meat. But the cops would want to know, too, if this was a hoax. Right?
“Mom?”
“Quiet.”
Fingers shaking, she pressed 9-1-1.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
“I … uh, I …” Betsy’s voice stuck suddenly on a ball of phlegm. She cleared her throat. “I found a shoe. I think there’s a foot inside. I think it washed up in the storm.”
“What is your location, ma’am? Where are you?”
“The causeway beach at the Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal. About … halfway up, I think.”
“What is the number you are calling from?”
“Cell phone.” She gave her number.
“And what is your name, ma’am?”
“Betsy. Betsy Champlain.” The pressure on her bladder was suddenly intense. She needed a washroom badly. For some reason she also needed to cry. She swiped the back of her hand across her nose, sniffed.
“Are you safe? Everything else all right?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m out here with my kids and my dog. In the rain. My dog found the shoe, and there seems to be a bit of old sock and something inside. I know there are hoaxes, but—”
Up on the causeway engines started growling to life, headlights going on. The line of cars began to move. Someone honked at her stationary Subaru.
“Oh God, I need to go move my car—the ferry lineup is moving.”
“Ms. Champlain, Betsy, could you please stay with the shoe? I’ve got RCMP on their way. There’s a police vehicle in your vicinity now. They’ll be there shortly.”
“My car is in the lineup. They’re honking—”
“We’ll contact BC Ferries. They’ll get someone out there to direct traffic around it. Betsy?”
“I’m here. I’ll wait.” She paused. “I … know about the dismembered feet,” she said quietly, her attention returning to the little lilac high-top. “But this one … it’s not an adult shoe.” She reached down and gathered her children closer. “It’s a child’s. A size eight or nine.”
“Does it show the size?” said the operator.
“No. But it’s about the same as my daughter’s shoes.”
Betsy hung up, shivered, rain soft against her cheeks. She sat down on a rock and clutched her kids tight to her body. Too tight. So tight—because suddenly everything that was precious was right here in her arms. She stared at the kid’s shoe lying in the silt. “I … I love you, sweethearts.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.” Tears glittered in Ty’s big brown eyes. “I—I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”
She sniffed and rubbed her nose. “Not your fault, Ty. It’s not your fault—it’s going to be okay.”
“Whose shoe is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where’s the rest of her?”
Betsy glanced at the shadows of land barely discernible through the mist across the bay—Point Roberts in the United States. Behind her traffic inched along the causeway that stretched a mile into the ocean to the ferry terminal, which lay just five hundred yards short of the US water border. The ferries crossed through American waters each time they traveled from the mainland to Vancouver Island.
That little foot could have come from anywhere. Off a boat maybe? Washed from land out into the sea during the storm?
“I don’t know,” she said. “They’ll find her.”
“Who will?”
“I don’t know, Ty.”
CHAPTER 1
It all goes back to the beginning …
TUESDAY, JANUARY 2
Angie Pallorino snapped several photographs of the shadowed service entrance at the back side of the hospital. Her flash flared white against raindrops that fell soft and insidious. It was already dark in this Pacific Northwest city of Vancouver on the second day of the new year. And cold. The kind of dank cold that burrowed deep into bones and made it feel as though the chill were emanating from within.
She stepped back under the shelter of the eaves and checked her watch. 4:51 p.m. Her appointment was running late. Angie wondered if the woman would even show. Perhaps she should have arranged to meet the retired nurse someplace other than outside this service entrance in an old brick alley across from the stone cathedral. But it was here that it had all begun, and Angie needed to go right back to the beginning to find the answers about who she was, where she’d come from. It had started on a night not unlike this. Black. Wintery. Except on that night thirty-two years ago it had been Christmas Eve and it had just started to snow. Big fat flakes.
Across the alley Saint Peter’s Cathedral loomed—an ominous shadow of gray rock, Gothic spires vanishing into the dense mist. Shivering slightly, she raised her camera and shot a few images of the arched windows and stained-glass panes that glimmered with hesitant light. Her father’s words from a fortnight ago crept into her mind …
That Christmas Eve in ’86, while your mother was singing with the choir at Midnight Mass, some kind of violent gang fight erupted downtown. From inside the cathedral we heard gunshots, screaming, and tires screeching. They found you in the cradle … long red hair. You had no shoes. It was winter, and you had no shoes—just a little pink dress. Like a party frock but old and torn and covered in blood.
Inhaling deeply, Angie returned her
camera to her sling bag and gingerly massaged her left upper arm. It was tender where a bullet had ripped through flesh two weeks ago. Thankfully, the slug had missed bone and critical nerves and tendons, but just the act of raising her arm to shoot photos was making her muscles ache. She heard footsteps on the brick and jerked around.
A woman approached from the direction of Front Street where traffic was busy and lights were bright. Stocky, average height, the female wore a coat to her knees and carried a black umbrella overhead that glistened with rain. Slung across her shoulder was a large black tote. Anticipation balled in Angie’s throat.
“Mrs. Marsden?” she said as the woman neared.