“Then attending the opera should take your mind off the wait.”

Ginny stared at him incredulously. “I have no intention of attending the opera now! How could I?”

“It won’t change anything to stay here in the room and fret all night. Besides, if we’re being watched, we need to act as if everything is normal.”

To her horror, huge tears welled in her eyes and slipped down her face. She began to weep in great, gulping sobs, like a broken-hearted child. Steve drew her into his arms, held her against him as she wept, his hand stroking her hair with clumsy attempts at comfort.

“Nothing will be normal until we have our children safely with us, Steve,” she whispered between sobs. “Nothing!”

His hand tightened in her hair. “I know. We’ll find them soon. If I have to string Brandon up by his heels and beat it out of him, we’ll find them. I swear it to you, Ginny.”

There was an unfamiliar break in his tone that she had never heard before. Ginny realized that, beneath Steve’s carefully intact composure, he was as anguished as she about their children. There was a barely controlled sense of violence in him, in the way his hand fisted in her hair, in the clipped enunciation of his words.

Steve would find them. She knew he would. And God help William Brandon when Steve found him….

44

Galveston Bay was hot, the air thick with humidity and the rank smell of rotting marine life. Out in the gulf, huge stacks of towering clouds rolled toward land, bringing the daily summer thunderstorm ashore.

Steve ignored the rain pelting him. A crash of thunder shook the ground and vibrated the dock, lightning hitting so close he could smell the acrid stench of burned earth.

“What did you find out, Paco?”

Paco Davis wiped a hand over his wet face and stepped under the protective eave of a wooden shack that leaned precariously over the water. His black hair was plastered to his skull, dripping rain into his eyes and down the bridge of his nose.

“Lost my damn hat,” he muttered, then shrugged. “You were right. They were on the ship when it docked, and the ticket master said he thought there was a carriage waiting for them. No one else seems to know anything.”

“I can’t imagine Ginny’s aunt going off with anyone she doesn’t know. She’s too convinced America is full of cutthroats.”

“Looks like she’s been proven right. I guess whoever met them at the dock could have given her a letter of introduction. That would be easy enough to forge. And if Brandon told her who would be meeting them—”

Steve’s jaw clenched. “I still can’t figure out what he hopes to gain from this other than vengeance against me. He has to know I’ll hunt him down.”

“Maybe he thinks his money and power will save him.”