Out of Time Read online

  It was clear her dad had had time to process that she was alive and had moved on to the “I want answers” part.

  “I’ll tell you everything as soon as I can,” she said.

  Her eyes widened a little at what her father said next. “Uh, he’s sleeping.”

  She eyed Scott apologetically, and he guessed her dad wasn’t taking that for an excuse.

  “It’s fine,” Scott said, holding out his hand. “I don’t mind talking to him.”

  Natalie dragged her teeth on her lip a long time before handing the phone to him.

  “This is Scott,” he said.

  From what Natalie had told him about her father, Scott expected the voice on the other end to sound weak and sickly. But the deep baritone laden with steel sounded more like a two-hundred-pound linebacker who was coming at him headfirst and didn’t care about a targeting penalty.

  “I don’t know who you are and what’s going on, but if anything happens to my daughter, I’m holding you responsible.”

  Make that two-hundred-and-fifty-pound linebacker. Natalie’s dad didn’t need to explain how he’d do that—the gist was implicit in his tone.

  “Yes, sir,” Scott said. “I understand.” He looked at Natalie—who was clearly embarrassed—and held her gaze solely. “I’ll protect her with my life.”

  “See that you do,” her father said. “Or you will wish that you had.”

  That was explicit enough. “Understood.”

  Scott handed the phone back to Natalie and waited for her to finish her conversation. It didn’t take long.

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said with an apologetic wince, as she disconnected and handed Scott back the phone. “My father is a little overprotective, and he is like a mama bear when Lana and I are in trouble or threatened. Which I guess we are.”

  “You don’t need to apologize for anything. I’d feel the same in his shoes.” He paused for a minute. “Your dad didn’t happen to play football, did he?”

  It was kind of a joke.

  Her brows shot up. “How did you guess? He was an offensive lineman in high school and was recruited by the University of Minnesota, but his father wouldn’t let him go. He needed help on the farm.”

  Scott tried not to groan. Offensive lineman? “He must be a big guy.”

  She nodded. “He’s heavier now after the heart attack, but he’s six-six and about two-eighty.” She smiled, wistfully. “My friends were always scared of him because he looks so mean, but he’s a teddy bear once you get to know him.”

  Right. A six-six, two-eighty, mean-looking teddy bear. Those totally went together.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you when I got out of bed,” she said. “But I wanted to try to get ahold of Lana before they sat down to eat dinner.” She frowned and tilted her head to look at him. “Was something wrong? You looked upset when you came in here.”

  “No,” he said, not wanting to confess to his moment of doubt. “I was just wondering who you were talking to.”

  “I hope you don’t mind that I used your phone, but I thought it better than using your . . .” She stopped and he guessed she was about to say the F-word. In this case, “father.” “The senator’s landline.”

  “It’s fine,” Scott said. “Is everything okay with your sister?”

  She sighed. “I think so. But it’s always hard to tell with Lana. With her cognitive issues, she seems to take good news and bad news in stride.” Her mouth quirked. “She didn’t understand why I missed her birthday party if I wasn’t at the cemetery, but she mostly wanted to talk about the computer games and YouTube videos she’s been watching. It was good to hear her voice and nice to talk to someone who didn’t want explanations.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Twenty-six. We’re two and a half years apart.”

  “What happened to her? You mentioned something in the orphanage?”

  He hadn’t wanted to ask before, fearing it would make him too sympathetic toward her. But clearly that cat was already out of the bag. Besides, it could be helpful. He knew Kate was still looking into the adoption agency, but she hadn’t come up with much beyond the link with Mick.

  Natalie stiffened and her gaze dropped. She brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them as if she were cold. He wasn’t sure she was going to respond, but then she said, “It was a long time ago. We were both so young. I was three when we went into the orphanage and Lana was only six months old. Just a baby.” She smiled wistfully. “She was so beautiful. My mom called her Kukolka, which is something akin to baby doll. It’s one of the only memories I have of her—and one of the few Russian words I remember.”

  “What happened to them? Your parents?”

  “They were ballet dancers. They tried to defect during a performance but were delayed in waiting for Lana and me to be brought to them after the show. One of their watchers found out and reported them. They were imprisoned and shortly after I was told by one of the supervisors at the orphanage they’d died. The irony, of course, was that the Wall came down, and the USSR dissolved not long after they were arrested. If they’d waited a few months maybe . . .” Her voice fell off, and he knew she was thinking of all the things that would have been different. “It’s funny. I have so few memories of them—bits and pieces or flashes here and there—but I remember being happy and loved. Maybe that’s why what happened afterward stands out so sharply in comparison.”

  Scott found himself tensing—as if bracing himself. “They were cruel to you at the orphanage?”

  After seeing what the Russians had called a prison at the gulag, he didn’t imagine a late Cold War orphanage was much better.

  She thought for a moment and shook her head. “No. That’s the thing. They weren’t cruel, just indifferent. Although in retrospect maybe it amounted to the same thing. But if you are envisioning Dickensian characters or Nurse Ratched, the women who took care of us weren’t like that. They were just cold and efficient—sterile like the orphanage itself. I remember thinking when I got there that the world had suddenly gone gray. The orphanage was colorless and joyless. In that respect I guess it was like you picture in the movies—some kind of asylum but with kids.”

  “Sounds pretty bleak.”

  “It was. But when I read about it later, I realized that at the time they thought they were doing the right thing. The doctors and child specialists thought it would be easier for us to form attachments once we left the orphanage if we didn’t form them while we were there.”

  Scott remembered seeing something about this in the papers when there were some problems with Russian adoptions. Maybe the caretakers at the orphanage hadn’t been intentionally cruel, but it had led to some kids with severe emotional-attachment issues.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, not knowing what else to say. “That must have been horrible.”

  She shrugged. “We were only there a little over two years. And Lana and I had each other.” He suspected there was a lot behind that statement. “We were lucky the Anderssons were patient. Actually we were lucky in more ways than one. At first they wanted only one child. They picked me, but I went crazy when they tried to take me away from Lana. Instead of throwing me back like most people would have done with a hysterical child, they agreed to take both of us.” Tears were shimmering in her eyes when she looked up at him. “I loved them with everything I had from that moment on. To take any child from an orphanage requires a generous heart, but to take a toddler with special needs . . . that requires generosity of an entirely different kind.”

  Scott had never met her parents, and her father had just threatened him on the phone, but from that moment they’d earned his gratitude, respect, and loyalty, too. He’d do his best to make damned sure nothing happened to them. Natalie had put her trust in him, and he wouldn’t let her down.

  He waited for her to continue, aware that she’d