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  The Soul Mate [130-4.6]

  By: Carly Bishop

  Synopsis:

  "Who are you?"

  Robyn's eyes fastened on his lips. A fris son skated over her skin.

  "An avenging angel," Kiel said.

  "Of course. Did you leave your wings at the door?"

  "No." His brow rose. "I don't do wings, except under extreme

  circumstances."

  She smiled. "I don't fall into bed with strange angels, either. I'm a

  widow," she confided, then frowned. "But I guess you know all that if

  you're an angel?"

  "I know, Robyn."

  The firelight behind him set a halo about his hair. Or maybe,

  expecting angel accoutrements, she was only making that up. Kiel was

  way too sexy to be an angel. The way he made her feel was how only one

  man on earth had ever made her feel her husband!

  Dear Reader:

  The word angel conjures up chubby cherubs, not men who are virile and

  muscular and sinfully sexy. But you're about to enter the Denver

  Branch of Avenging Angels to meet some the sexiest angels this side of

  heaven!

  Whenever there's injustice, the AVENGING ANGELS are on the case.

  Carly Bishop brings you another irresistible angel in The Soul Mate.

  Sexy Kiel faces an assignment unlike any other he has to avenge his own

  death!

  We know you'll love Kiel -- and all the AVENGING ANGELS. We hope you

  haven't missed any of this super-special quartet!

  Regards,

  The Editors

  SILHOUETTE Intrigue

  DID YOU PURCHASE THIS BOOK WITHOUT A COVER?

  If you did, you should be aware it is stolen property as it was

  reported unsold and destroyed by a retailer. Neither the author nor

  the publisher has received any payment for this book.

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the

  imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone

  bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired

  by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents

  are pure invention.

  All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in

  part tn any form. This edition is published by arrangement with

  Harlequin Enterprises H B.V. The text of this publication or any part

  thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any

  means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

  storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the

  written permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of

  trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated

  without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or

  cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar

  condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent

  purchaser.

  Silhouette and Colophon are registered trademarks of Harlequin Books

  used under licence.

  First published in Great Britain 1997

  Silhouette Books, Eton House, 18o24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey

  TW9 1SR

  Cheryl McGonigle 1996

  ISBN 0 373 22370 6

  46-9704

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham PLC, Chatham

  To my dear Aunt Sody for your grit and grace under a lifetime of

  fire

  Chapter One

  "You guys ever asked yourselves why a mine shaft collapses on a

  particular day after standing there for a him-tired-and-six years?"

  Robyn Delaney Trueblood blanched. Before the comment she and her

  friends had been swapping gossip about the decadent life-styles of the

  Aspen, Colorado, rich and famous. Now her laughter died in her throat,

  and for a moment, a pin dropping would have rocked her condo.

  Her husband, Keller, had died one year ago tomorrow in the collapse of

  a shaft of the Hallelujah silver mine, and her friends had gathered

  together tonight at her place to help her finally lay Keller's memory

  to rest. To celebrate his life, not to wallow more over his loss.

  Robyn's best friend and local TV News producer, Jessie Blahnik, glared

  at Mike Massie, a Denver criminal defense attorney. "Stow it, why

  don't you," Jessie snapped.

  "Because I want to know," Mike persisted, undaunted by Jessie's raised

  eyebrows. "I mean, look. Keller was winding up his prosecution of

  Trudi Candelaria. The dame murdered her lover, the internationally

  famous ski jumper, Spyder Nielsen. One day, Keller goes poking around

  in a mine shaft with Robyn that has withstood the test of time,

  marauders, hikers and mining fiends for well over a century--"

  "Mike, everyone who grows up in Colorado knows old mines collapse.

  Besides, the last thing Robyn needs is your--"

  "No... Jessie. It's okay," Robyn interrupted. "I've asked myself the

  same question a million times. Why that mine shaft? Why that day? Why

  did Keller have to die and not me?" Her head dipped low. She hadn't

  exactly come out of the Hallelujah unscathed, either, but losing Keller

  had nearly killed her where the old, rotted timbers had failed.

  She straightened her shoulders and finished her wine. She no longer

  needed to cry about it. "It was more dangerous than we knew, or we

  went too far beyond where there were any modern reinforcements. But

  the only real answer I know, Mike, is that there is no answer. Things

  just happen, things we have no control over."

  "Exactly," the third and last of her remaining guests, Scott "Kline,

  put in. A writing buddy and colleague of Robyn's, Scott wrote for the

  Denver Post. It's like asking why the Challenger had to blow up. "Or,

  why did the Titanic'have to sink? Or, why didn t Abe Lincoln sneeze?

  "Other than that Mrs. Lincoln... how did you enjoy the play?" Mike

  muttered darkly, nursing his tequila lime. "This one ain't over,

  folks."

  "Massie, what are you talking about?" Jessie demanded.

  "The murder of Keller Trueblood, Esquire, special prosecutor in the

  case of Colorado v. Candelaria."

  A chill swept over Robyn's flesh. "Murder?" The pit of her stomach

  dropped like a stone. She stared at Keller's oldest and best friend.

  Cocksure, arrogant, full of himself--maybe. He'd probably had one too

  many margaritas but Robyn had never known Michael Massie to indulge

  paranoid, unlikely, off-the-wall crime theories.

  Massie slugged down the dregs of his tequila and lime. "What would you

  say if I told you that Smart Willetts put his condo in Aspen on the

  market yesterday?" "How about, "So what?"" Jessie jibed.

  '54nd," Mike went on, "the day before that he moved in with Trudi

  Candelaria--right into Spyder Nielsen's

  "I'd say you're so far out in left field you might as well be in the

  Rock Pile," Jessie retorted, referring to the cheap seats in the Denver

&
nbsp; Rockies baseball park. "How do you know any of this?"

  "Because I grew up in Pitkin County, Jess," Mike snapped. "Because I

  know people. The regular live-in maid, Frau Kautz, who spent twenty

  years with Spyder, is on a week's holiday. Candelaria has hired

  temporary help, and people I know know other people who've witnessed

  Willetts's possessions be' rag moved in. I'm telling you, as far as

  Candelaria and Willetts were concerned, Keller had to die."

  Jessie shook her head, put down her drink, picked up her purse and

  stood up. "Come on, Michael. It's late. I'll drive you home and you

  can sleep it off."

  But however easily Jessie tossed off Mike's query, Robyn couldn't.

  Murder was her stock in trade. She wrote true-crime novels--which was

  how she'd met Keller in the first place, interviewing him almost four

  years ago in the course of researching her book, Where Angels Fear to

  Tread. Keller had been the prosecuting attorney in that murder trial.

  They married fourteen months after Keller brought in a stunning

  conviction, and a few weeks after Robyn's book hit the stands.

  So Robyn knew murder. She'd spent hundreds of hours over the course of

  her career in maximum security pens, interviewing murderers. Even more

  hours went into poring over transcripts and research with the families,

  friends and associates of killers and their victims. She had a Ph.D.

  in sociology and three true-crime bestsellers to her credit.

  No one could ever know what was in another person's heart, but Robyn

  understood that most people didn't get to be killers overnight, or

  without passions and masons and rages that drove them to commit such

  terrible, final acts as murder.

  Stuart Willetts had been Keller's second chair--his assistant-in the

  prosecution of Trudi Candelaia. If Stuart and the accused, Trudi

  Candelaria, were now involved, as Michael Massie was suggesting, the

  question begged to be asked--had Trudi and Stuart conspired to get rid

  of Keller so the murder indictment against her could be scuttled?

  "Jessie, wait. Sit down for another minute, okay?" She waited until

  her friend gave in and sat back down before posing her question to make

  absolutely sure she understood his point. "Mike, are you saying

  Keller's chief deputy prosecutor is having an affair with the

  defendant, with Trudi Candelaria?"

  "That's exactly what I'm saying. Yes. I'd bet Willetts had the hots

  for the Candelaria dame from day one--and she damned well knew it."

  "Wouldn't Keller have seen that kind of thing going on?" Robyn asked.

  "I can't believe he wouldn't have taken Willetts off the case in a New

  York minute if he thought there was any impropriety like that."

  "Maybe." Mike shrugged. "I'm not knocking Keller, Robyn. Not at all.

  But Willetts swims with the rest of us sharks. He knows how to present

  himself and how to play his cards close to the chest. Tip his hand? I

  don't think so. That's why Keller picked him in the first place."

  Jessie shook her head. "Mike, you're making shark bait out of minnows.

  How could Stuart Willetts possibly have known that Keller and Robyn

  were going to that mine on that particular Sunday? What could he

  possibly know about making a mine shaft collapse?"

  Robyn grimaced. "He knew we were going, Jessie. He was at dinner with

  us at Planet HollYWood in Aspen that Friday night. I wanted to go see

  the Hallelujah. I was working on a story about the silver miners,

  remember?"

  "Of course. It was Mike who put you in touch with Lucinda Montbank."

  "Yes." Montbank was a well-known name in Aspen. The Montbank fortune

  was made in silver mining a century ago, before gold became the

  standard. Now, of the Montbanks, only Lucinda remained, and the rights

  to the Hallelujah remained in her possession. She also possessed

  substantial real estate holdings in a town where multimillion-dollar

  homes were the norm.

  "I asked Keller to go with me to the mine. I remember this all very

  distinctly because Willetts was giving me a hard time about not going

  hang gliding with Keller and him instead."

  "Okay," Jessie granted. "Supposing that's true, what about the

  technical knowledge? How could anyone be sure Keller would die in that

  mine? How would you even go about making a mine shaft collapse?"

  "Come on, Jessie." Mike got up to pour himself a cup of coffee. "This

  is Aspen we're talking. That kind of information qualifies as local

  lore. There's the library, the Historical Society. Hell, some crusty

  old miner living in a shack up by Marble could do it for a few bucks on

  a bet."

  Scott Kline plunked his cocktail glass down on the table. "I hate to

  admit it, but this scenario is beginning to make sense. Willetts had

  to know that if Keller died, the defense would lobby for the charges

  against Trudi to be dismissed or for a mistrial at the very least."

  "Which is exactly what happened, isn't it?" Robyn asked.

  Mike nodded. "Willetts beat the land-speed record for conceding to a

  mistrial. At the time, I thought he was just being cagey. That he

  would reinstate the murder charges and start over."

  "He never did, did he?" Robyn asked. It seemed hard to believe, now,

  that she hadn't followed the news after the mine collapsed, but she had

  been in a Denver hospital undergoing the first of three operations to

  restore her leg to some semblance of working order.

  Even if she hadn't been knocked out for weeks on end with pain

  medications for the operations, she and Keller had agreed it would be

  vital to both their careers to keep their professional paths from

  crossing after they married. She'd made a point of steering clear no

  matter how juicy the Spyder Nielsen case became, and to pick up the

  threads after it was all over, after Keller died, wasn't in her

  heart.

  "That's right," Mike concurred. "Willetts never reinstated the

  charges. He bailed out on the pretext that the evidence against Trudi

  had proven too shaky to make the charges stick."

  "Maybe it wasn't a pretext at all," Robyn protested. "Maybe Stuart

  Willetts just knew when to cut his losses. I overheard Keller on the

  phone one night in a pretty heated conversation with the main

  detective. Maybe the case wasn't stacking up."

  "Yeah, well, you can put that spin on it," Mike said, sitting back. He

  hung both arms over the back of his chair. "But now Willetts has moved

  in with the merry widow. Lover, I guess," he corrected himself, "since

  Trudi and Spyder weren't married.

  "I think," he concluded darkly, "you have to ask yourself this

  question. If you were an obscenely wealthy jet-setter like Trudi

  Candelaria, why would you give a guy like Willetts the time of day

  -unless he was the one who kept you out of the slammer?"

  "Love?" Robyn suggested.

  Massie gave her a look. "Get a grip, Robyn. You and Keller may have

  been soulmates unto eternity, but the only person Trudi Candelaria

  gives a rat's ass about is Trudi."

  THE FOLLOWING AFTFERNOON, Monday, on the anniversary of Keller's death,

  Robyn departed the Rocky Mountain Re
habilitation Center for the last

  time.

  Her outpatient treatment program had run its course, though her leg

  wasn't back to one hundred percent. The prognosis said it never would

  be. Most nights a numbness around her foot and ankle kept her awake,

  and in the mornings she would awaken feeling as if she hadn't slept

  very well.

  Last night she hadn't slept at all.

  After a year spent in a hellish round of operations and physical

  therapy, she could get around without her cane for most of the day. She

  could drive, take small hikes and even manage an hour on a stair

  stepper. As for her emotional fitness, she was making do with a little

  seashell night-light plugged into the wall, where for months she hadn't

  been able to endure the lights being turned off at all.

  There was no darker place than a mine shaft that has collapsed, and

  before her rescue was effected, more than the pain of her leg, the

  blackness had invaded her heart, mind and soul, leaving her unable to

  cope with the dark at all.

  That was passing, too. The tiny light of the seashell kept her

  rational in the dark now.

  What she couldn't seem to do, what had motivated the small party last

  night, was to get over losing Keller.

  She didn't buy into New Age anything. Not crystals, not dream