“No problem,” Matt said, just before he buried his face in Joe’s shoulder.
Joe carried Matt and Hank over the blood and out the laundry room door, Rich right behind him, already radioing for pickup. Matt wiggled to be put down the instant they were outside, but Joe thought Hank might be permanently latched onto him.
They stood quietly in the front drive, Matt’s hand gripping his, as the line of cars pulled up. Joe’s heart was just beginning to steady and his brain clear, and that’s when he realized that, for some reason, he was wet from his chest to his knees.
Hank raised her face from the crook of his neck. “I’m sorry, Joe. I think I peed my pants.”
“No problem, slugger.” He kissed her cheek and watched Charlotte bolt from a car door, then stumble toward them. “I think I’m about to pee my pants, too,” he whispered.
Charlotte skidded in the gravel and threw herself into them. Her hands went flying over her children, over their faces and hands and chests, as the tears ran. “Oh, please be all right. Please—”
“We’re okay, Mama.” Matt grabbed her arm. “We’re fine.”
“They’re not hurt, Charlotte.” Joe knew she didn’t hear a thing they were saying.
“Joe saved us,” Hank said. “He was totally stable, too.” “Oh, my God!”
She hurled herself against Joe and Hank, pulling Matt against her as she went. Joe used his free hand to grab Charlotte around the shoulders and hold her up. He stood perfectly still, three people stuck to him, as he observed the familiar buzz of a crime scene around him. Two ambulances wailed in the distance. Rich Baum was motioning that they had to leave.
He’d almost gotten them all killed.
Joe felt the sorrow build from below his knees, which now felt strangely weak, all the way up to his scalp. He was overwhelmed with it. Flattened by it. Rich motioned for him again. He needed to say good-bye to them all. Right now.
“I’d better go,” he whispered into the top of Charlotte’s head. She pulled her face away from him and frowned.
“Where are you going?” all three asked together.
He nodded to Rich to give him a second. “I don’t know. I just have to leave. You won’t be safe until I’m gone.”
“What?” Charlotte’s eyes were huge. Hank and Matt said nothing.
Joe decided the hell with it. He was thirty-eight. He’d proved himself as a man and a cop. He’d only loved one woman in his entire life and she was standing right in front of him for the last time. He would miss her with every breath he took for the rest of his days.
So he let himself cry.
“I am so sorry, Charlotte. I never meant to put you or the kids in danger. I only wanted… I’m so sorry….”
His voice broke and he lowered his head.
“Please don’t cry.” He felt Hank’s little arms squeeze his neck.
“I don’t blame you for anything, sweet Joe.” Charlotte touched his face with her hand. “It’s not your fault.”
“Duh! You saved our lives, dude,” Matt added.
“You said you were gonna stay!” Joe looked into Hank’s face and saw her lower lip tremble. “You promised.”
Joe didn’t think his heart could break any more than it already had. He was wrong, apparently. “I know I did, champ. I wanted to stay more than I’ve ever wanted anything. But it’s not safe for me to be here anymore. I have to go.”
“Can we come with you?”
He almost didn’t hear Matt’s question above the increasing chaos.
“Can we, Mama?” Hank was squirming in Joe’s arms. “Do you think maybe we could go with him? Can we, Mama? Can we?”
Charlotte looked up and gave him one of her smiles, the kind that warmed his insides and made him feel whole. Then she said, “Yes.”
Charlotte would not let them go. There’d been so much discussed, so many decisions being made, in that ten-minute car trip, but all she could do was hold her children in her arms and keep her eyes focused on Joe.
He wore the black cap and jacket of a DEA agent. The concept was going to take some getting used to. Along with everything else.
“It will not be easy, Charlotte.” It was Rich Baum saying it this time, like she hadn’t understood it the first five times Joe said it.
“Your life will not be your own for a long while—maybe many years—until the risk is acceptable.”
“I understand.”
“I want to hear what the kids think,” Joe said.
Charlotte had noticed how both Hank and Matt held on to Joe’s hands even as they pressed up against her chest. They were knotted together, like a family.
“Hank?” Charlotte kissed the top of her daughter’s disheveled hairdo. “You won’t be able to play in the Minton Little League again and you’ll have to leave Taft Elementary and we’ll have to get a different house.”
“It’s okay,” she said through her sniffles. “Can we take Hoover?”
Charlotte looked at Joe. The sad smile he gave her nearly made her cry again. She didn’t know all the details yet, but she knew that Joe had done what he’d said he’d do. Just moments before, he’d killed a man to save her children.
“You mean that obnoxious ice cream–inhaling moose of yours?” Joe asked.
Hank smiled a little. “Yep. That one.”
“Of course you can,” Joe said. “How about you, Matt?”
Her son raised his chin and looked calmly at Charlotte, then Joe. “Do I get any say in where we live?”
Joe and Charlotte exchanged a quick glance.
“You got someplace in mind?” Joe asked.
“Maine—it’s my favorite state.”
Charlotte let out a surprised laugh. She’d never once heard her son mention Maine. “It is?”
“Yeah. The mountains. The ocean. The snow. I want to live in Maine and learn to ski jump.”
Rich Baum cleared his throat. “I’m sure there are some nice houses in Maine.”
They pulled up to her driveway, and it hit Charlotte that what they’d just been discussing was no longer theoretical. They had ten minutes to get whatever they couldn’t live a couple weeks without, as Rich put it, and then they had to leave.
Hank ran inside in her tutu, and Matt walked slowly up the front sidewalk, letting his hands skim along the bushes and the porch railing, as if saying good-bye.
Once upstairs, the first thing Charlotte did was put on the ring that symbolized past, present, and future. She packed a suitcase with some basic clothing, the family’s legal papers, her poetry journals, and a couple photo albums.
Then she threw her vibrator in the trash.
Charlotte got Hank out of her tutu and helped her pack things other than her baseball trophies and a pile of sweaters and mittens, explaining that even if they went to Maine right away it was summer there, too. Then she made sure Matt was making progress. She found him sitting on the edge of his bed.
“Are you okay, Matt?” She sat down next to him.
“I’m thinking of Dad.”
Charlotte put an arm around him.
“I won’t be living in his house anymore. I’ll miss being close to him like that.”
“I will, too.”
“But you have Joe now.”
Charlotte hoped that what she wanted to say to Matt would come out the right way. “We all have Joe now. That doesn’t mean that we don’t love your father, because we always will, or that we won’t miss him, because we miss him very much.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Let’s just take it slow. You know that Joe’s a good man, Matt.”
That’s when Matt raised his gaze to Charlotte and nodded seriously. “He’s the way coolest man I’ve ever known—except for Dad.”
High praise indeed.
There wasn’t enough time to say everything she needed to say to Bonnie, except that she loved her. And Ned hugged her so hard she stopped breathing momentarily, and LoriSue and Justin were crying and LoriSue was promising to take care of everythin
g involved with selling the house, and Hoover was barking, and then they were in a strange car, Joe driving, and Rich Baum was in the car in front of them and two other agents in a car behind them, and Joe told them they were headed to the airport.
About fifteen minutes out of town, once the silence had almost begun to seem normal, Charlotte turned around to check on the kids. They were sound asleep, Hoover between them. Matt had a hand on Hank’s shoulder.
Then Charlotte looked over at Joe. He must have sensed her eyes on him, because he turned his head and gave her a sweet smile.
“You ready for this, Charlotte?”
She nodded. “I’m a strong woman, remember? Are you ready?”
Joe grinned. “I am.”
She reached for his hand. She’d be lying if she told him she wasn’t scared to death, but it really came down to one simple thing.
“Do you love me, Joe?”
His eyes lanced hers, and he nodded. “Infinity much. I always have.”
She smiled at that. “I love you infinity much, too.”
Joe pulled her hand to his chest, pressing her palm against his heart. “Then the rest is just detail.”
Four Years Later
Charlotte stood up to her ankles in the chilly water, thinking that while her own life had been transformed, this little piece of the world hadn’t changed a bit.
The same sycamores, maples, and oaks framed Pike Lake in a heavy green fringe. The familiar squish of the sandy bottom greeted her toes. The squeal of happy kids filled her ears.
They’d come home, and home had welcomed them back with open arms.
The mayor of Minton appeared at Charlotte’s left side, Bonnie at her right.
“I have to stop sniveling,” LoriSue said. “Mayors aren’t supposed to cry.”
Bonnie snorted. “Yeah, and until you, mayors weren’t supposed to get bikini waxes, either.”
LoriSue dug a polished toenail into the sand and slung an arm around Charlotte’s waist. Bonnie added hers and the three women were linked.
“You look so beautiful, Charlotte,” LoriSue said. “In all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you look so beautiful. So happy.”
Charlotte smiled at that assessment, pleased that what
she felt inside showed on the outside, that the world could see she was comfortable in her own skin.
“I was thinking the same about you.” Charlotte saw LoriSue blush, of all things.
“Thanks.”
The women stood without speaking for a moment, observing what looked like half the town gathered for the picnic. Charlotte and Joe and the kids had been shocked when they arrived a half hour earlier, driving underneath a huge WELCOME HOME banner suspended between trees at the park entrance.
“Glad we’re not trying to hide anymore,” Joe had said dryly.
Charlotte looked at her friends. “It’s really good to be back. I’ve missed all of you more than I can say.”
Bonnie squeezed Charlotte and leaned in to whisper, “She looks just like Joe, you know.”
The women smiled at two-year-old Tula Bellacera, propped on Matt’s shoulders as he splashed his way along the lake edge. The little girl laughed and tugged on her brother’s hair, her dark brown eyes sparkling with happiness.
Then Joe burst out of the water with a roar, and even the big kids screamed in surprise.
Charlotte could hardly believe her ears. “Good grief! It’s bad enough that Justin is like seven feet tall now, but when did his voice change?”
LoriSue laughed. “A couple months ago—scared the bejesus out of me, let me tell you, because Rich was already at work and suddenly there was this man in my kitchen!” She shook her head. “And it was my little man.”
Charlotte had missed so much, including LoriSue and Rich Baum’s wedding, which occurred about a year after the kids were rescued and just a month after her divorce from Jimmy was finalized.
She’d also missed being there for Bonnie during Ned’s triple bypass surgery, which happened right in the middle of the trial. Even if the DEA had let her return, she couldn’t have. She’d had to stay in Maine with the kids while Joe was testifying in Dallas. Not to mention she was seven months pregnant with Tula at the time.
But she’d prayed for Ned every day. Looking at him now tossing a Frisbee with Hank in the sand, she was relieved to see that he was exactly the same man, just thirty pounds lighter on his feet.
“C’mon, Henrietta—can’t you give it any more jazz than that?”
“Careful what you ask for, Ned.” Hank put one hand on her hip and flicked her other wrist so that the disk bounced off the water and nearly scalped him.
“Still got it, I see,” he said with a laugh.
They’d all stayed in contact through Rich, but the DEA had forbidden any direct communication between Charlotte and her family and friends until they determined it was safe. That had happened just six weeks ago, when Guzman died of cancer two years into his ninety-year federal prison sentence.
“Did you hear what Jimmy is up to these days?” LoriSue’s blue eyes twinkled.
“Is he still doing missionary work in Guam?”
LoriSue laughed. “That lasted only a couple months after he let me buy him out of Sell-More. He’s in cosmetology school now. He married Jolene down at the Hair You Are and they’re opening a day spa in town.”
Charlotte’s mouth fell open.
“I hear he gives a killer pedicure,” Bonnie said.
“I’ve got to hand it to him,” LoriSue said. “He’s doing great with Justin, and that’s all that matters to me.”
“So when’s the book coming out?” Bonnie asked. “Ned said something about Joe going on TV—is that true?”
Charlotte nodded, letting her gaze fall on her husband, the professional storyteller. While in Maine, Joe tried his hand at writing a suspense thriller based on his undercover years. He’d often told Charlotte it was his way of exorcising his demons, grieving for Steve and his family, and helping him get his head together about what he wanted to do next.
His therapy session ended up in the middle of a bidding war between New York publishers and was recently picked up for a movie option in Hollywood.
“It’s being released in November, and yes, he’s been asked to do a bunch of talk shows.”
Charlotte felt it then, that familiar zing of appreciation she got every time she made eye contact with her husband, now striding out of the lake and moving toward the women, a wide grin on his face and a pair of soaking wet swim trunks clinging low on his hips.
“Good gracious, it suddenly got hot out here,” LoriSue said.
“Somebody put some clothes on that man.” Bonnie fanned herself.
“So was I right, or what?” LoriSue shot Charlotte a sideways glance. “Is Joe one of those men put on earth just to make women happy?”
Charlotte watched Joe move toward them, his cropped hair sticking up in wet spikes, his clean-shaven face brown with sun, his lean, hard body streaked with lake water.
The last four years had been a roller-coaster ride, but through it all Joe had amazed her with his love of life, his passion, and his steadfast devotion to her and the kids. He truly was her fantasy man.
“You were wrong, LoriSue.” Charlotte held out her hand for Joe. She saw that familiar gleam in his eye and wondered if he’d dare kiss her in public—she sure hoped so.
“Wrong?” Bonnie and LoriSue said in unison, sounding
so disappointed that Charlotte had to laugh.
“Joe’s only here to make one woman happy—and that woman would be me.”
Charlotte got the words out just before Joe flipped her up into his arms and carried her off into the lake, kissing the living hell out of her in front of God and everyone in Minton, Ohio.
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