“So your husband had criminal connections?”
“Yes.”
“And you married him?”
“I didn’t know when I married him. I found out soon after, but then it was too late.”
“You expect me to believe you married a guy, and you had no clue he was a slimeball?”
“I honestly didn’t.”
“That’s a little hard for me to swallow. You sure as hell didn’t have any trouble being suspicious of me.”
“Yes, well, I’ve learned a lot since then. I don’t trust as easily as I once did.”
That was an understatement. “So you accidentally married a hoodlum,” he capsulized. “What then? How did you get from wedded bliss to kidnapping your own child and being a target for murder?”
“It was never wedded bliss,” she said bitterly. “It was a nightmare, from start to finish! And I didn’t realize! Get that right out of your head. I would have had to be crazy to marry him if I had. Until after the wedding, I thought he was wonderful!”
Heath could see that he’d poked at a real sore spot. Knowing her—hell, maybe she actually had been that naïve. He couldn’t count the times that he’d sensed she felt out of her depth with him, and he would have wagered his last dollar that she had little experience with men.
“Hey, look,” he said gently. “I’m sorry. That was a rotten shot for me to take. Of course you didn’t realize.”
“I honestly didn’t. The only other man I knew well was my dad, and he’s so—” Her voice caught, and she looked up again, her expression softening. “He’s so good. You know? Kind and honest and God-fearing. I thought all men were like him. Now I know better. Every other man I’ve ever met has been a skunk in one way or another.”
“Ouch.”
“I don’t mean you.”
He could hope. “So you were very sheltered growing up, in other words.”
“On a farm in Mississippi. And not sheltered, exactly. It’s a world apart down there. A sleepy little place, where neighbor helps neighbor. My parents didn’t shield me. There was nothing in their little world to shield me from.”
“How about television and public school? It’s a little difficult to be all that insulated from the harsh realities these days.”
“Not down there. We were poor. A television was a luxury we couldn’t afford, and the school was small, all the kids there just like me, with folks who were poor dirt farmers. Up until November, none of the kids wore shoes. I had one store-bought school dress. My mother made everything else, when we could afford material. I was sixteen before we ever had a refrigerator. I dipped my milk from a bucket in the ice box.”
Heath tried to imagine a place so completely segregated from his reality and couldn’t. “It sounds sort of backward.”
“It was backward. Is still is. It’s also wonderful. I miss it.”
That last admission was so heartfelt that Heath knew she really did miss it. Meredith, the lady with no VCR. “You don’t strike me as backward. In fact, I’ve thought more than once that you must have quite an education under your belt.”
“I do. Computer programming.”
“No refrigerator or television, and you’re a computer expert?”
“My dad never got past the sixth grade, so he worked himself half to death to send me to college, thinking he was doing me a big favor. I attended Old Miss.”
“So what happened at Old Miss? No boyfriends to clue you in?”
She met his gaze, hers reflecting bitterness. “Forget it! Just lock me up. You’re not going to believe anything I say, so why bother?”
“That’s not true. I do believe you. I’m just trying to get a picture of who you are, Meredith. And how you landed yourself in such a hell of a mess.”
“I was an ignorant hillbilly. Does that synopsize it clearly enough for you? I thought everyone went barefoot until the rainy season, all right? As for boyfriends, I didn’t have any. They were probably afraid I’d belch and pick my nose in public. Just put me in a cell and leave me alone! I’ve lied to you about everything else. Why should you believe me now?”
Heath leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Not until I hear the story. And don’t try to snow me, honey. There had to be guys who panted after you in college. I sure as hell would have, and I wouldn’t have been put off by cultural differences.”
She avoided his gaze. “I didn’t choose to date very much. All right?”
“Why? You’ve never liked men, I take it?”
“I liked them fine. Then! It was only later I developed what you might call an avid distaste.”
“Avid distaste” didn’t say it by half. Heath couldn’t count the times when he’d entered a room and sensed that she couldn’t wait to get away from him. “So why didn’t you date back then?”
“It didn’t seem right to goof off when I knew how hard my dad was working to pay my tuition. And my mother went without. One month, she didn’t fill her blood pressure prescription to buy one of my text books. How do you think that made me feel?”
“Not very good. And obligated to study. I guess I would have been a bookworm, too. It sounds like one hell of a set of parents you have.”
“The salt of the earth. They would die for me.” She blinked. “I can’t even call them now. I’m afraid the connection will be traced. I know they must be worried. But all of this is so far beyond them, they could never comprehend. Knowing Dad, he’d drive to New York in the hay truck and knock on Glen’s front door. He’s not very savvy, my father.”
“And consequently, neither were you.” The pieces of the puzzle were starting to fit together for Heath, and the image of the younger Meredith that was taking shape in his head nearly broke his heart. Unknowingly, her father had sent her out into a world she had been completely unprepared to deal with. “It must have been one shock after another, discovering that your home place in Mississippi didn’t represent the whole of humanity.”
“I got a few shocks, yes. Dan used to say I still had straw in my hair when he gave me my first job.” The corners of her mouth trembled. “He thought I was stupid, and sometimes I wondered if he wasn’t right.”
“You’re not stupid, Meredith. Far from it.”
“I believed everything he told me when we were dating! That was pretty stupid.” She got a distant look in her eyes. “I think I was dazzled by it all—his wealth, the glitter, getting to ride in a limousine. He bought me beautiful presents. Clothes and jewelry. It was like in a fairy tale, and I was Cinderella with her prince.”
Heath tried to imagine what it must have been like for her, a naïve young woman who’d gone barefoot nearly half her life meeting a man who probably wore three-thousand dollar suits and was chauffeured around in a limousine. “Only he didn’t turn out to be a prince?”
Her expression conveyed that she was still lost in the past. “When we went to his townhouse that night, and he started acting so mean, snapping his fingers at me and ordering me around, I thought—” She gulped and shrugged. “I thought he was joking and that it was funny—right up until he hit me.”
Heath’s gut knotted. “What night was this?”
“Our wedding night.”
“He hit you on your wedding night?”
Rationally, Heath knew that a man’s striking a woman was unacceptable on any occasion, but for some reason, his doing it on their wedding night seemed even worse. His mind shied away from the pictures her words evoked. Meredith, young and naïve, with stars in her eyes, thinking she’d found her one true love, only to have the bastard turn on her. He couldn’t conceive any man hitting her. Those fragile facial bones, the slightness of her build. Heath felt fairly certain he would break her jaw if he even so much as slapped her.
“Ah, honey.” Rescinding his vow not to touch her, he cupped a hand to her cheek. “What kind of a man was he, anyway?”
“He was horrible.” She turned her cheek into his palm, looking as if she might loose control and start to weep. That she managed to h
old back the tears told him just how much steel that Mississippi upbringing had put in her spine. “He was—horrible.”
Like scatter spray from a shotgun, the rest of the story erupted from her then. The sadistic games Dan had liked to play. Siccing his Dobermans on her. Terrifying her, just for the hell of it. The beatings he had meted out to her on an almost daily basis. The threats he made on her life. His shady union dealings. His father Glen’s connections with higher-ups in a crime syndicate. The arranged killings. Her fear that she might end up dead herself.
“I couldn’t go home,” she whispered shakily. “Or even tell my dad what was happening. He would have gone to New York loaded for bear. I know he would have. And he would have ended up dead. So I just stayed. I didn’t know what else to do. It was—like a nightmare that never stopped, and I couldn’t see a way out.”
Heath’s heart caught at the anguish he saw in her eyes, and it took every ounce of self-control he had not to $$$ her into his arms. “Yet at some point, you did div$$$ him?”
She hauled in a deep, shaky breath and gazed at the ceiling for a moment. “Yes. Right after Sammy was born.”
“I’m surprised you wanted to bring a child into a mess like that.”
“I didn’t. Dan flew into a rage when he realized I was using birth control.” She laughed, the sound empty and strained. “He wanted a son to carry on in the family business. Can you believe it? He threw my pills away, and after that I was never allowed to go out alone, so I couldn’t get more. Once I realized what he was like, the last thing I wanted was to get pregnant, but I did. Within just a couple of months of our wedding.”
Heath wondered if Dan had continued to be abusive during her pregnancy. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know, so he didn’t ask. “And after Sammy was born?”
“When she was four days old, he nearly smothered her with a pillow to make her stop crying. A baby girl wasn’t what he’d yearned for, he wanted nothing to do with her, and her crying was annoying his important guests.” Her mouth twisted, trembled. “I, um…stopped him. He warned me to keep her quiet. ‘Babies just stop breathing sometimes, you know.’ That’s what he said to me. ‘They’ll think she died in her sleep.’ I knew then that I had to get her out of there. I was her mother, and it was my duty to protect her. If he found me and killed me—well, I still had to try. So I ran. And the next morning, I went directly to a lawyer and started the proceedings to sue for divorce.”
“And he never came after you?”
“I knew too much. To protect myself, I drafted a letter with dates and times and details of activities that would have put both him and his father behind bars if it ever went to the authorities. My attorney kept a copy in his office safe, I put another in a safe deposit box with instructions that, in the event of my death, it was to be sent to the district attorney’s office. My lawyer also sent copies to Dan and his dad. Dan was afraid to come after me or harm me, for fear he’d go to prison.”
Heath sensed there was far more, that she’d left out the more intimate aspects of her marriage. Judging by her timidity around him, Heath could only guess at the things Calendri might have done to her.
Carefully continuing the questioning, Heath learned that the divorce decree had awarded Dan child visitation rights, and that during those weekend visits, the man had badly abused Sammy, causing her serious emotional trauma. Terrified for her child, Meredith had taken Dan back to court, hoping to get his visiting privileges revoked. Dan had filed a countersuit for sole custody of the child, claiming Meredith was an unfit mother.
After Dan’s death in a car accident, Glen Calendri took up the litigation where his son had let off. At that point, Sammy was Glen’s only living heir, and he was determined that she would be raised as a Calendri. He brought in paid witnesses who swore under oath that Meredith used illegal drugs, engaged in lewd conduct, and that she frequently left her child unattended. It was nothing but bald-faced lies, but Glen was waging war, no-holds-barred, and Meredith found herself losing at every turn.
The court battle came to a premature end when Meredith’s attorney died suspiciously of a heart attack, and she subsequently learned that the exposé letter she had written had disappeared, both from his office safe and from her safe deposit box.
“I knew Glen had had my lawyer killed,” she whispered. “And shortly thereafter, I was nearly run down by a car. It wasn’t an accident. With the letters gone, there was nothing to stop them, and they were going to take me out.”
“So you ran,” he said softly.
“You understand, don’t you? That I had no choice? I couldn’t let Glen have Sammy. I just couldn’t.”
“Ah, Merry,” he said, his voice gravelly with regret. “Why didn’t you tell me all of this sooner? Didn’t you trust me to help you? If it hadn’t been for Goliath’s weird behavior, I might not have rushed home tonight. Where would that have left you? Do you realize you could be dead?”
“And if I had told you?” She shook her head, her eyes aching with sadness. “There were times when I wanted to, I admit it. Times when I wished with all my heart that I could. But it was just wishful thinking. I knew that.”
“Why?”
She gazed at him for a long moment, a world of hurt reflected in her expression. “I knew your job was the most important thing in the world to you. That you needed it, like I need air to breathe.”
“My job’s not the most important thing, Meredith.”
“Isn’t it?” Her eyes filled with tears. “It seems to me that tonight has proved it is. Here I am, arrested and in handcuffs, my daughter and I sitting ducks for Glen’s thugs.”
“That’s hitting below the belt. What choice did I have?”
“None, I guess. But by the same token, this isn’t exactly what I call help, either, Heath. I’m not safe here. And when I’m sent back to New York, which I will be, you’ll be signing my death warrant. Is that your idea of helping me?”
He pushed up from his chair and began to pace. After taking several turns around the room, he stopped to regard her. She looked damned uncomfortable with her arms twisted behind her back, and she continually chafed at the bracelets.
“Are those cuffs bothering you?”
“Does it matter?”
He cursed under his breath as he walked toward her. “You’re trying your damnedest to put me on a guilt trip, aren’t you?” He quickly unlocked the cuffs, removed them, and returned them to the pouch on his belt. “Do you think you’re being fair?”
“All’s fair,” she said simply, rubbing her wrists. “My daughter’s future is at stake. Dan didn’t turn out the way he did by accident. He was raised by Glen Calendri and learned to be what he was from his father. I’ll do anything to keep Sammy safe from Glen. Cheat, lie, steal. Anything. If that means playing dirty, I won’t hesitate.”
“Putting me on notice, Meredith?”
She met his gaze head-on. “Yes.”
Heath smiled in spite of himself. All along, he’d wanted honesty from her; now he was getting it. “I’m going to step out for a minute. I have a phone call to make.”
She looked startled. “And leave me alone?”
At the door, he turned to grin at her. “You won’t be going anywhere. Not without Sammy, and she’s surrounded by deputies.”
Heath went to the pay phone outside to place his call. Dumb of him, he guessed. But he didn’t want anyone overhearing his conversation, especially Meredith. It had been a hell of a long time since he’d contacted his father to ask for help.
As he dropped a coin in the slot and punched out the phone number, Heath braced himself for a proverbial kick in the teeth. His father was a self-absorbed jerk, always had been. Unfortunately, Ian Masters was also the most knowledgeable man about the law in Heath’s acquaintance. The last Heath had heard from Skeeter Pope, his dad’s ranch foreman, Ian was taking a two-week hiatus at the ranch. Heath just hoped to God he was still there and hadn’t already returned to Chicago.
On the fourth ring, I
an answered. “Masters, here.”
The way his father answered the phone reminded Heath of himself. Damn. He hated to think that he was like his dad, in any way. “Dad? It’s me, Heath.”
A long silence. Then, “To what do I owe this honor?”
The sarcastic bastard. Heath clenched his teeth. He could do this. For Meredith and Sammy, he could do it. “I, um, need some advice.”
“You’re calling me for advice? This is a new twist. You’ve never listened to a damned thing I’ve said in thirty-eight years, and now suddenly you want my advice?”
Heath almost slammed the receiver down. Almost. He undoubtedly would have if a picture of Meredith’s pale face hadn’t flashed through his mind. For her, he would eat humble pie. By the shovelful if he had to. “I need legal advice, and there’s no one I know who holds a candle to you. Are you going help me, or not?”
“What the hell have you done this time?”
That almost made Heath grin. In his dad’s mind, he was still a nineteen-year-old kid with a wild hair up his ass. “You’ll be relieved to hear it’s not me with my tit in a wringer. I’m calling for a friend.”
“What kind of a wringer?”
As briefly and concisely as he could, Heath told Ian the story. “Anyway, I’m thinking about taking her and the child into protective custody.”
“My God, son, look at the facts, here. This woman is wanted. The charges against her are serious. Everything she told you could be a pack of lies.”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s not your job to decide that. If her life’s really in danger, let them worry about it back in New York.”
“With organized crime involved? She may never reach New York, and if she does, they’ll just have her killed in prison. It’s done all the time, and from what she told me, she knows too much for them to let her live.”
“You don’t know that. And it isn’t up to you to play judge and jury,” Ian reminded him. “If you try to help this woman, it may be the dumbest move of your life! A blatant flouting of the law that may jeopardize your career. Do you have any authorization to take her into protective custody?”
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