by Tami Hoag
“How's she doing?”
Still pale, Megan stood in the doorway, rubbing her eyes, her hair a mess. The flannel shirt hung to her knees.
“She's doing okay, considering,” he said. He dumped Gannon on the floor as he rose from the couch. “How about you? How are you feeling?”
She gave a small shrug. “A little woozy. I'll be okay. It's nothing new.”
Mitch tipped her face up, staring down at her with intense scrutiny. “It's new to me. How often does this happen?”
Megan turned her face away. Now that the worst had passed, she wanted to forget how helpless she had felt and how badly she had wanted his compassion. If she could have suffered through the migraine alone, it would have been easier to slip out of town and out of his life. Now there was the sticky aftermath of compassion and embarrassment to deal with. Emotional loose ends that would not be easily tied off.
“It depends,” she said. She sank down into a corner of the couch, her eyes on the television, where an ad genius had somehow managed to connect pizza with an old lady putting on lipstick in the rest room of an airplane. “Every time I lose my job or get sued for five million dollars.”
She winced inwardly at his expression. He squatted down beside the arm of the couch, his gaze that same one that had looked too deep inside her before. She refused to meet it. The feelings were far too close to the surface and she was too tired to be anything other than transparent.
“Megan, I wish—”
“Don't bother; it doesn't do any good.”
He leaned toward her. “Why won't you let me help or at least sympathize?”
“Because you can't fix it,” she said wearily. “There's nothing you can do to change DePalma's mind. You can't change the fact that Paige Price is a mercenary whore, or that I said so on television. You can't fix it and I don't want sympathy.”
His temper simmering, Mitch rose. “No, you wouldn't. You don't need sympathy. You don't need anyone—isn't that right?”
Megan stubbornly stared past him at the television. He wanted to shake her. He wanted her to need him and say so. She had asked him to hold her when she was in so much pain she couldn't see straight, but that Megan and this one were two different people—a pair of nesting dolls, one hiding inside the other, rarely coming out into plain sight.
He could have kicked himself for caring. Hadn't he told himself he liked his life just the way it was—simple, controllable, safe . . . empty?
On the television Hannah's interview was about to resume. Mitch dropped down on the couch a foot to Megan's right, forcing Friday to vacate his spot. The cat gave him a dirty look and stalked away to leap onto a box marked STUFF I DON'T USE.
Katie Couric leaned forward in her chair, eyes luminous with sympathy. “Hannah,” she said very softly. “Do you think Josh is alive?”
The camera zoomed in on Hannah's face. “I know he is.”
“How do you know?”
She took her time answering, obviously considering both the question and the implication of her answer. When she spoke, her voice was clear and sure. “Because he's my son.”
“She wasn't that certain the other night,” Megan commented, nibbling at her cuticles. “She asked me twice if I believe Josh is alive. Asked as if she needed my reassurance. What's this about?”
“It's a coping mechanism,” Mitch murmured. “She'll believe what she has to believe.”
Megan felt there was something more to it, but she couldn't say what. Not that her opinion would have mattered. Marty the Spaniel Boy was in charge now. He wouldn't listen to her if she told him the world was round. It couldn't make any difference in the case, anyway. Hannah could believe or not. Neither sentiment would help them find Josh or his abductor.
“If you knew Josh was listening right now, what would you say to him?” Katie Couric asked Hannah.
The screen was a tight shot of Hannah's face, the camera allowing no nuance of expression to go unrecorded. America saw everything—the anger, the confusion, the pain. Cornflower-blue eyes shimmering with tears. Mouth trembling against the need to cry. “I love you. I want you to know that, Josh, and believe it. I love you so much. . . .”
The close-up of Hannah faded into a shot of Josh. The school picture. Josh in his Cub Scout uniform. The gap-toothed grin. The bright eyes and unruly hair. The photo faded away and suddenly Josh was alive on the screen, thanks to videotape. Playing the part of a shepherd in a Christmas pageant, posing with Lily in front of the family tree. Linda Ronstadt's clear, sweet soprano voice sang out as the images shifted and changed. “Somewhere Out There,” the words poignant with longing, bright with hope.
Megan bit her lip hard. Damn, damn, damn. She could have made it through the interview—she had interviewed Hannah herself—but this was dirty pool. The song could just as well have been Josh himself calling out from the twilight into which he had disappeared ten days before. The video transformed him into a living boy, full of energy and idiosyncrasies and tenderness for his baby sister. His innocent face coupled with the childlike trust in the lyrics of the song swept the case far out of the realm of work and made it achingly, painfully personal.
The case that had been snatched away from her.
Never, never let it get personal, O'Malley.
Too late. The tough dictate couldn't override the emotions. Pandora's box had been pried open. She could only fight to keep all the feelings from flooding out of it. She blinked hard and clenched a fistful of the shirttail that covered her thighs. Maybe if she squeezed hard enough, she could keep from crying.
Then Mitch's hand settled on top of hers, enfolded it within his, tightened with a silent message of understanding and empathy.
Damn you, O'Malley. How can you be so stupid? Why do you have to give in? You ought to be tougher than this by now.
She took a shaky breath, her jaw rigid as she fought to keep her lower lip from trembling. “Dammit,” she said between her teeth. “I wanted to get that son of a bitch.”
“I know,” Mitch murmured.
“He's close. I can feel it. I want him so bad it hurts.”
But it didn't matter how badly she wanted it or how deeply Mitch sympathized. She was off the case. DePalma expected her to drop the ball and run back to headquarters so the superintendent could chew her out in person and then she could sit in a room with a pack of lawyers and endure their company while they made plans to do battle with Paige Price and her legal Dobermans. Just like that she was supposed to drop the life she had begun in Deer Lake. Forget about the people; they were only names on reports. Forget about the apartment; she hadn't been in it long enough to call it home. Forget about Mitch Holt; he was just another cop, and she knew better than to get involved with a cop. Forget about Josh; he was Spaniel Boy's responsibility now.
Josh looked out at her from the television screen, wide eyes and freckles, a gap in his grin where a tooth had been. What little control Megan had left snapped in the face of the frustration and fury. She shot up off the couch. Swearing, crying, she swung at a stack of paperbacks perched on top of a box, sending the books hurtling across the room. The cats scrambled down from their perches and streaked down the hall to hide. Megan turned and swung at another target. She turned again and swung her fist, connecting solidly with Mitch's chest.
“Dammit! Goddammit!” she shouted.
Mitch caught her by the upper arms and she fell against him. Her shoulders shook with the effort to hold back the tears.
“Cry, dammit,” Mitch ordered, wrapping his arms around her. “You're entitled. Let go and cry. I won't tell anybody.”
When the tears came, Mitch pressed his cheek against the top of her head and whispered to her and apologized for things that were beyond his control.
Everything was beyond their control. And all of it had been put in motion by a madman. In one moment, with one action, so many lives had been changed, and none of them could do a damn thing about it. She would lose her job, her home, her chance to belong . . . but she had
this moment, and she didn't want to let it go.
She looked at Mitch, at the lines time and pain had etched into his face, at the eyes that had seen too much. She couldn't have him forever, but they could have this night. She could lose herself in his embrace, block out the ugly world with the haze of passion.
He slid his fingers into her hair, his thumb rubbing the tender spot on her forehead where the pain had been centered.
“You should go back to bed,” he whispered.
Megan felt her heart beat against him, felt the tempered strength and gentleness in his hands, saw the longing and regret in his eyes. She loved him. As pointless as that might have been. She had to leave. He hadn't asked her not to. He hadn't asked for anything, had promised nothing, had loved someone else so deeply . . . and no one had ever loved her. But she could keep those secrets in her heart, keep her love held tight and safe. This might be the last night they had.
“Will you take me?” she said softly, her eyes locked on his.
“Megan—”
She pressed two fingers against his lips, silencing his concern. Mitch looked down at her, so fragile, so pale, her incredible strength bowing beneath the weight of the world. He was falling in love with her. For all the future there was in that. In a day or two she would be gone to try to salvage the career that meant everything to her. He would be left to the life he had built here—orderly, empty, carefully blank. The life he wanted, safe and plain.
But they could have this night together.
He took her hand and kissed it softly. She turned and led him down the hall to her room, leaving the television on to mumble to itself.
She had left the bedside lamp on to cast a shadowy amber glow over the tangled sheets. It lit her from behind as she unbuttoned the flannel shirt and let it fall back off her shoulders and drop to the floor. It cast an aura around her dark hair and gave her skin an alabaster glow. She stood before him willing to bare herself if not her soul, willing to take as much of him as he would give her. She deserved more than a night. She deserved more than life had given her, more than he had given her.
His hands shook as he slipped the wedding band off and set it aside on the dresser.
Megan's heart caught and stumbled. The possibilities raced through her mind, foolish thoughts and hopeless wishes. She pushed them all aside to grasp the one truth she could manage: They would have the night with no shadows of past loves or past sins.
Taking his hand, she raised it to her trembling lips and kissed the band of pale skin the ring had covered. Then she was in his arms and his lips were on hers.
Megan pushed Mitch's shirt back off his shoulders and he flung it aside, impatient for the feel of her naked against him. He lowered her to the bed, dragging his mouth down her neck to her breasts. She arched beneath him, inviting him, begging him to take the tight bud of her nipple between his lips, crying out as he sucked strongly at the tender point. He swept a hand down her side, over her hip, pulling her leg around him, bringing the moist heat of her womanhood against the quivering muscles of his belly.
A deep animal groan rumbled at the base of his throat as she reached down and took his erection into her hands. He closed his hand over hers and tightened her grip, bent his head down and caught her earlobe between his teeth.
“That's how tight you are when I'm inside you,” he said, sending arousal singing through her.
Mitch watched her face as he entered her. Panic seized him at the knowledge that in a handful of days and nights he had fallen in love; at the knowledge that this would all be gone in a day, in a heartbeat.
Then the need overran the fear. He thrust into her fully, deeply, the tight wet heat of her gripping him, squeezing all thought from his mind. They moved together, straining together toward a fulfillment that obliterated the bounds between the physical and the emotional and the spiritual. They reached it, one and then the other. Breathless, shaking, holding tight.
I love you . . . The words were on her lips. She held them back.
I love you . . . He held the thought within his heart, afraid to give it away.
Then it was over and they were silent and still, and old doubts crept back from the corners of their banishment. The boundaries settled back in place, the guards went up again. Hearts in armor, beating separate and lonely into the night.
8:55 P.M. -25° WINDCHILL FACTOR: -47°
Hannah sat in the dark in her room. Her room. How quickly the mind made those little alterations. Paul hadn't slept in this bed for two nights and already her brain had omitted plural references. She didn't want to think about what that meant for their future. She didn't want to deal with the feelings of guilt and loss and failure associated with the marriage she would once have called perfect. She had all she could do to shoulder the weight of the guilt and loss and sense of failure associated with Josh.
It would have been so nice to walk off the set of the interview and have the man she had married put his arms around her and reassure her and take her home. To know that she had his love and support. Instead, she had driven herself home. Kathleen Casey, who had volunteered to sit with Lily, was on the couch in the family room with McCaskill, the BCA agent, watching The X Files and eating popcorn. Paul was gone.
Paul is gone. The Paul she had loved and married. She didn't know the man who had lied to her, hidden things from her, blamed her for the act of a madman. She didn't know the man who had all but courted the media, the man who had been asked to submit his fingerprints to the police. She didn't know who he was or what he might be capable of doing.
Unwilling to consider the possibilities, she forced herself out of the chair and began to undress. She concentrated on each menial task, unbuttoning buttons, folding, putting away. She chose her well-worn Duke sweatshirt and pulled it on over her head, shaking her hair back out of her eyes. The telephone on the nightstand rang as she reached for her sweatpants.
Hannah stared at it. Memories of the last call she had taken in this room rushed through her, pebbling her skin and filming it with perspiration. She couldn't just let it ring. She didn't want to pick it up. McCaskill and Kathleen would be wondering why she didn't answer it.
With a trembling hand she lifted the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Hannah? This is Garrett Wright. I saw the interview. I just wanted to tell you I thought you were very brave.”
“Uh—well—,” she stammered. It wasn't a faceless stranger tormenting her or Albert Fletcher spouting lunacy. It wasn't Josh. Just a neighbor. Karen's husband. He taught at Harris. “It was just something I had to do.”
“I understand. Still . . . Well, for what it's worth, I think you did the right thing. Listen, if you need any help getting through this, I have a friend in Edina who specializes in family therapy. I mentioned him to Paul when he was here the other night, but I'm afraid he didn't want to hear it. I thought I'd let you know. You can take his name and call him or not, but I thought you should have the option.”
“Thank you,” Hannah murmured absently, sinking down on the bed.
She copied the name and number down on the notepad automatically, her mind busy wondering what Paul had been doing at the Wrights' house and why he wouldn't have mentioned it to her. But then, a visit to a neighbor's house was the least of his secrets. She didn't want to know what the worst might be.
The thought lingered and echoed in her mind as she hung up the phone, and a terrible sense of loneliness and fear yawned wide inside her, threatening to swallow her whole. That was the hardest part of all of this—the feeling that no matter how the people around her wanted to help, on the most fundamental level she was alone. The one person who should have been closest was drifting farther and farther away.
She stared at nothing. When the phone rang again, she picked it up without hesitation and murmured a flat greeting. The voice that answered her was a low and gentle drawl, as welcome to her raw nerves as the kiss of silk on a sunburn.
“Hannah? It's Tom—Father Tom. I thought you
might need to talk.”
“Yeah,” she whispered with a trembling smile. “I'd like that.”
* * *
JOURNAL ENTRY
DAY 10
As Shakespeare said:
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances . . .
And we are the directors, the puppet masters pulling their hidden strings.
And so, from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale.
Time for a new act and another fine twist in the plot.
We are brilliant.
CHAPTER 34
* * *
DAY 11
9:45 A.M. 22° WINDCHILL FACTOR: 10°
On Saturday the temperature rose and the sky fell. A ceiling of fat clouds the color of lead hung low above the rolling wooded countryside, sifting down a fine powder of snow. In the wake of the deep freeze and the dark moods it had inspired, the radio weathermen had fled the state, leaving the storm predictions to the weekend deejays.
Megan listened with one ear. Blizzard? Maybe if it hit fast enough it could prevent her from driving to St. Paul. If she spent enough time driving around town looking for Albert Fletcher . . . If this old piece-of-shit car would conk out . . . A dozen different scenarios flashed through her mind, like a kid desperate to cut school. If she could just have today . . . But DePalma wanted her out of Deer Lake. He would never have called her in on a Saturday unless he was desperate himself. The lawyers wouldn't be there; the hell if the bureau would pay them time and a half. This was a simple case of snatching her out of town before she could do any more damage.
She would have to go if she was to salvage anything of her career. Go and kiss ass and repent and do penance. The idea stuck in her throat like a fur ball. She was a damn good cop. That should have counted for something, but it wouldn't.
