The Other Daughter by Lisa Gardner

Author:Lisa Gardner
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Detective and Mystery Stories, Crime, Fiction, American, Adoptees, Suspense, Mystery Fiction, General, Serial Murderers
ISBN: 9780553576795
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1999-07-06T05:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

I N A DARK suite of the Four Seasons, just across from the Public Garden, just across from the Stokeses' Beacon Street town house, Jamie O'Donnell sat on a blue velvet sofa, brandy snifter in one hand, TV remote in another.

An old goat like him shouldn't be surfing the channels with the lights out. He should turn off the TV, go to bed. Snuggle up with Annie and savor the soft sound of her breathing. Beautiful woman, Annie. The best thing that had ever happened to him.

He remained in front of the TV, flipping the channels.

In many ways Jamie considered himself a simple man. He'd worked hard all his life, fighting his way up from poverty tooth and nail. He'd killed men and he'd seen them die. He'd done things he was proud of, and he'd done things he knew better than to think about late at night. You did what you had to.

He'd arrived in Texas at the ripe old age of thirteen. He started working the oil fields when he was just fourteen. By the time he was twenty he'd developed the broad shoulders and thick neck of a day laborer. His face was generally stained black, his nails too. Definitely not a pretty boy, but he'd never let it get in his way.

Come sunset, Jamie was always the first person off the fields, into the showers, and then into town. College campuses, that's where he liked to go. College campuses were where he could dream. And that's where he'd met Harper Stokes.

Introduced by mutual friends, they'd sized each other up immediately. Shrewd Harper had recognized that Jamie didn't fit in—no way was this thick, dark man a student. In turn, Jamie had known that Harper didn't fit in—no way was this thin, overdressed Poindexter really an aristocrat. They were the outsiders, and they both knew it. So they spent the next few months competing against each other to see who would break into the golden clique of old money. They schemed against each other and ridiculed each other and somehow, along the way, they ended up friends.

Harper liked to talk of money even back then. He was obsessed with what other boys wore, what other boys drove. Jamie understood. He'd spent enough time in the oil fields to know he wanted to be someone someday too.

Harper lectured him nonstop about the power of education, the proper way to talk and dress. Jamie figured he might have a point. He cleaned up a little. Then he taught Harper how to throw a proper right hook. Now, that was something every man ought to know.

And then on Friday nights, the mutual education delved into deeper grounds. Bookish Harper, desperate for the perfect upper-class wife, couldn't even get a date. Jamie, on the other hand, went through women by the dozen. He adored them, and they sure as hell adored him. So every now and then he'd try to send one Harper's way. It seemed the least he could do.

Then Patricia walked into both their lives.

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