The Witness

by Dee Henderson

  “And I love him most of the time he’s not winding me up this way,” Tracey added, pushing Marsh aside and turning back to her sister. “But we’ll talk about him later. What happened? Start at the very, very beginning and don’t leave out a comma.”

  Marie saw the stress Mandy was under reappear and squeezed her hand. “You want that coffee first?”

  “I think I’d better.”

  Marie got up. “What do you want to drink, Tracey?”

  “A soda is fine.”

  Connor had poured the coffee and the iced tea. He opened a soda for Tracey as Marie joined him to take the tray. She looked at him, at the steady gaze he gave her in return, at the quiet way he was watching the reunion, and she knew then something of what was coming. She was starting to think again and to put together the pieces. The most striking of which that the cops had felt this reunion needed to be held on a gated estate with rock walls well after dark.

  “Thanks.” She refused to let her smile change as she took the drinks back to her sisters. “Don’t feel like you have to hurry with the answers, Mandy. I know they aren’t going to be easy, and we’ve got all night. But why don’t you start with what happened the night Greg was shot?”

  Mandy smiled in thanks at the quiet opening and sipped her coffee before she moved to settle into the chair across from her sisters so she could face them both, and then she nodded. “Do you two remember where I used to live, the apartment block?”

  Marie nodded.

  “Greg lived north, more uptown, but we had a favorite restaurant that we went to on Friday nights down near my place,” Mandy began, and Marie reached over to take Tracey’s hand. One or both of them were going to end up crying before this was over—Marie just knew it. From the corner of her eye she saw Connor follow Marsh and the chief into the next room.

  “We were talking about where we would live after we were married, laughing over our clashing styles for colors and carpet and my dislike of having a housekeeper. It was late when we finally paid the bill and walked back to the car. Greg drove me home.” Mandy stopped her narrative, and Marie just waited.

  “Did you see the shooter?” Tracey asked quietly.

  “I think it’s best if I not answer that,” Mandy replied finally. “One of the bullets that hit Greg came through him and struck me in the side.”

  Marie closed her eyes. God, don’t let this go where I know it’s going. She’s not really back, is she?

  They talked about New York. They talked about the missing years. Marie listened to Mandy and to Tracey and couldn’t find words to ease the ache in her own heart. So many years lost and gone forever.

  “They want money; they can have the money,” Tracey said, insistent, bitter, her anger growing.

  “It’s not going to be that simple, Tracey. Oh, how I wish it could be,” Mandy replied. “Listen to the guys and stay within the protection they provide. Please don’t take chances.”

  “You’re not coming home.”

  “I can’t, Tracey. The world thinks I’m dead, and it has to stay that way. For all our sakes.”

  “When will we see you again?” Marie whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Mandy said quietly in return. “Tonight is already a huge risk.”

  “The cops can’t do anything?” Tracey pushed.

  “They’ve been working to make it better for a long time, and it is getting better. But it’s more dangerous now than ever before as they try to bring it to an end. I don’t want you two being dragged into my troubles.”

  “You should have called us; you should have let us help you. We’re family,” Tracey insisted, pacing away from the couch.

  “I did what I thought was best.”

  “Like you are now, disappearing again? You’re my sister; I want you in my life. You could have at least picked up the phone and called me once in a while.”

  Marie watched Mandy take the charge and saw the flicker of emotion cross her face before it went still. “There’s more. Isn’t there, Mandy? There’s more than what you’ve told us.”

  She hesitated but finally nodded. “They killed a cop who had knowledge of where I was at. They beat him to death in his own home just to find out what he knew.”

  Tracey paled.

  “I can’t be in your life again, not until I can do it safely. I can’t. My worst nightmare is that they go after the two of you to get to me.”

  Marie leaned forward. “We’re not going to increase that burden on you, Mandy. We’ll listen to the guys, and we’ll follow their advice. You do not have to worry about us,” she promised, knowing she’d push Tracey toward that somehow. “What do they have in mind to keep you safe? Is everything that can be done being done?”

  “Yes.”

  “There must be some way we can safely see you and talk with you,” Tracey persisted. “I don’t care if we have to book a flight to Alaska and meet you in an igloo somewhere. It matters that we be able to see you again. The money ought to be able to buy us the means to do at least that much.”

  “The reporters around the new money make it risky for a while. When it calms down more—”

  “Let the reporters—”

  “Tracey!” Marie cut her off. She had been the one Marie thought would best be able to adapt, and she was absorbed in the anger of it, the unfairness of it, and the bitter hurt.

  “Sorry,” Tracey muttered, walking back over to the windows.

  “I understand the anger and the pain of this,” Mandy offered softly. “It’s not what I want either. But caution is how I’ve learned to live, and that doesn’t change easily.”

  Tracey turned, her arms folded across her chest. “So we see you a year from now, another night when the guys don’t take us home, but instead take us to some out-of-the-way place where you are?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re my sister! I want my family back. Why don’t we buy a secure house like this one and a small army of guys to secure the grounds and travel with us so we can be a family again? If the threat is that severe, then let’s attack the problem, not just try to hide from it.”

  Marie found the thought appealing. “Could you consider that, Mandy? Coming home to somewhere very safe? I know you’re worried about us, but there have to be options better than your disappearing again. Please, there have to be better options than that.”

  “I don’t want to be burying one or both of you,” Mandy cried, lifting her hands to cover her face for a moment and fighting for her composure, then tucking her hands back around her waist. “You have to understand Richard Wise. He wants money and he wants me dead. Anyone around me just becomes targets, and I can’t live with that. I don’t want to be gone and lonely like the last eight years, but I can’t live with the fact my presence puts your lives at risk. Don’t ask me for that.”

  “Then find something in the middle that works. Use the new money to find somewhere safe to stay and then let us come visit. It can’t be that impossible to arrange for us to safely get to where you are. It can’t be, Mandy. We’re family and we’re not going away this time. We’re not letting you disappear.”

  Marie didn’t want to be the one mediating between Mandy and Tracey. She wanted to be the one curled up in a chair crying over everything she’d heard and the pain Mandy had lived through in the last years and the tragedy of all those years on the run. But something had to give or she was going to watch her sisters tear each other apart. The emotions were too broken, the pain too deep, on both sides. She ached for Mandy while she understood and felt the same as Tracey.

  “Talk to the chief, Mandy. You trust him? You must or he wouldn’t have been able to set this up. Talk to the chief and see what he can work out. If the risk is too great, we’ll stay away, we won’t search to try and find you, and we’ll let you go back into the shadows again. But if there is a way—please, you owe it to Tracey and me to try it and see. We need you in our lives. We love you so much, and our lives have been hollow with that void of your being gone. Don’t ask us to
endure that again if there is any way to avoid it.”

  Mandy gave in abruptly, a nod of consent, but clearly afraid. “I’ll talk with the chief. But it’s all I can promise, Marie. I can’t put you two in danger even if that means I have to break your hearts.”

  Marie offered a broken smile and reached over to squeeze Mandy’s hand. “I know, Sis.” The dilemma Mandy was in was unsolvable, and Marie understood, even as it cut, why Mandy had stayed away so very long. “It’s a plan then. We’ll see what the guys say is possible.” Marie looked around. Connor, Marsh, and the chief had not returned, but they had to be somewhere nearby.

  Tracey came back over from the window and nudged Mandy to slide over on the chair more so she could sit on the armrest. “I’m getting engaged whenever Marsh finally gets around to asking, and I want you here to share that,” she offered, trying hard to stop the pain they were both in and to explain the anger.

  Mandy hugged her. “I love you. I desperately want to be here for that. Don’t ever think I don’t want to be here. It’s just got to be safe; it’s the only thing left I’ve got to give you.”

  Tracey cried and Mandy held on to her. Marie knew it was going to break Mandy’s heart to walk away tonight, but she’d do it because she thought it had to be done. Somehow this had to turn out right again. They were family and it had to turn out right.

  Tracey eased back. “I need a mop for my face.”

  Mandy laughed. “I think I do too.” She rubbed at her own wet face.

  Marie reached up and slid free the fine chain and pendant she wore. “I’ve got something you might want to have back. This is yours, I think.” She had given Mandy the locket before she entered the army, and Mandy had taken it with her everywhere she traveled and even worn it into combat. The locket had been a connection to home.

  Marie slid the chain and locket back around her sister’s neck and carefully latched the clasp. “I knew you never took it off, so it did its job. Sam used it to convince me you were really gone. I gave up looking after that. It’s good to have it back where it belongs.”

  “I’m sorry, so sorry I had to do that.”

  “I understand now why you did.”

  Mandy hugged her hard. “Thank you, Marie.”

  “We’re sharing the money with you equally—you do know that, Mandy, don’t you? No half sister and other protests getting shoved toward us. We’re a family, and it’s going to be handled the way it should have been all along.”

  “You don’t have to do that, please. I’ve lived with the reality that money has been the source of so many problems in my life that I honestly don’t want it.”

  “It’s not open for debate. Let it sit in trust for your kids if you like, but we’ll be telling Daniel our decision tomorrow.”

  “No. For now, for lots of reasons, just let it be. To the world at large I’m dead, and it’s easier to stay that way for now. I’ll let you help with what I need and gratefully accept that, but we’ll talk about anything else only after this situation is ended.”

  “It can sit for now, but know it’s going to be there. I’m not going to wade through the dilemma of how to be wealthy without also watching you figure it out too.”

  Mandy smiled. “Tell me about college, Tracey. And about Marsh,” she said, trying to shift the conversation.

  Tracey moved to settle back into the couch cushions, not wanting to follow the change of conversation, but at Marie’s soft look in warning, she picked up the topics. “School is school. I’d rather talk about Marsh,” she offered lightly. “We met over at the college when he came to take a refresher course in criminal law. I overheard him registering and decided it was worth auditing the class.”

  “You did?” Marie asked, surprised, having not heard that before. “I thought you said you met him in class, that it was an elective that fit your schedule.”

  “So maybe it was a bit more than that … ,” Tracey conceded.

  Mandy laughed. “You never were one to hesitate when you thought a guy was interesting. How long before he invited you out?”

  Tracey rolled her eyes. “Forever. I ended up taking Criminal Law II the next semester just to wear him down. He was nice and all and would buy me coffee at the breaks, but forget a date. He thought I was a nice college kid and half his age.”

  Mandy was having a hard time subduing her laughter. “Ten years between you?”

  “Nine, but he’s the only one counting.”

  “I gather you got past that eventually.”

  “He’s not such a bad guy once he admits he likes you,” Tracey replied, smiling.

  Marie refilled her drink as she listened to Mandy and Tracey, and a smile lightened her mood. They were going to be fine. Somehow, they were going to be fine.

  Two hours ago, God, I didn’t know she was still alive. There aren’t words for this joy. There aren’t even emotions deep enough to touch it. Mandy is alive. I can’t say an adequate thanks. For the rest of it—I’m afraid we’re in a situation that will take a miracle to resolve. She has to be safe.

  “Tell her about your recent ski trip, Tracey,” Marie suggested, folding herself back into the cushions of the couch. She didn’t want this night to ever end.

  Chapter Twelve

  MARIE HUGGED MANDY, trying to share a final time with a touch just how much her sister meant to her.

  “I know,” Mandy whispered.

  Marie felt Connor’s hand rest against her shoulder and reluctantly released her sister. “Good-bye, Mandy.” Tracey had already left with Marsh, her farewell the hardest thing Marie had ever watched. She memorized her sister’s face one last time and let herself step back.

  “Good-bye, Marie,” Mandy whispered.

  Connor’s hand urged her to step away. She lost sight of Mandy as they cleared the doorway and stepped outside, aware the chief had been moving across the room to join her sister.

  “Marie?”

  “Give me a minute,” she choked out, fighting the tears wanting to consume her. She feared to the depth of her soul that she had just seen Mandy for the last time.

  “She’ll be okay. The chief is going to make sure of that.”

  The confidence Connor had in that man came through, and Marie let herself nod, let herself hope.

  “We’ve got to be going. Anyone watching you and Tracey will be expecting the date to be over and you to be home soon. It’s best not to disappoint them.”

  “Yes.”

  She walked with Connor to his car, and when he unlocked and held the door for her, she slipped inside.

  Marie cried for most of the trip back to town. Connor didn’t know what to say that might help the situation so he didn’t try to talk about it, just held Marie’s hand to remind her she wasn’t alone in this.

  He’d sat with Marsh and the chief in the great room while the sisters talked, and when the voices had raised, they’d heard enough to know the stress going on in the next room. The night had gone better than he expected in some ways and been so much harder in others. They hadn’t been distant sisters in the early years; they had been the kind of sisters living in each other’s space and doing it with shared love, together in the best way for sisters to be. Having Amy vanish from that had torn open so much of their lives. Having her return as she had—it hadn’t ended the hurt; it had just opened a fresh new chapter.

  “The apartment is the other way,” Marie whispered. “And I don’t think I can take another surprise tonight.”

  “I know.” He turned east on Elm Drive. “You need a few minutes before you see Tracey, I think, and a few more minutes to catch your breath. We’re going by my place.”

  He waited for a protest, for a problem with the intimacy of that so late in the night, but Marie didn’t bother and part of him relaxed inside. She trusted him. In the midst of all this madness and chaos, Marie was trusting him without thinking about it first. That helped.

  “When did you know?”

  He swallowed before he answered, not sure how she’d handle th
e truth. “I recognized her photo—the one you have on your desk. She was in town three years ago keeping a quiet watch on you and Tracey, making sure you were okay and none of this trouble she was in had come to brush against either of you.”

  “Three years ago? She never got in touch, never wrote, never called, never said hello.”

  “She was honestly afraid you would be dead if she did come forward or be put in the situation where you had no recourse but to spend your life on the run as she had. She didn’t want that, Marie. Not for you and Tracey. And I can’t say I would have decided it differently than she did given the situation then.”

  “The oldest sister, protecting the rest of us.”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish she hadn’t been so noble. Eight years of this—the best years of her life, all gone in an instant of madness.”

  “There’s still time to recover some of it.”

  “Who did she call when she came back to town this time?”

  “The chief. We were expecting her to get in touch with Sam, but there was some reason to think Sam might already have guys watching him. This worked out the cleanest, I think.”

  “How did she meet Granger?”

  “That’s an answer for another night. Please.”

  She nodded.

  He could see the sharp fatigue overwhelming her, the sadness so deep it made the tears flow without her thinking of them. She wiped them away again, and he wished for a box of Kleenex in the car. She’d eaten a little from the buffet of food set out tonight, to give Amy a reason to eat, to give Tracey something to do with her hands, trying to mother the sisters a bit, and Connor understood it. Marie needed to be able to help, and there was so little she could do.

  “Do you know where Mandy is staying tonight?”

  “Granger will try and talk her into staying right where she’s at, at least until she’s had a few hours of sleep, but I doubt she’ll agree. She hasn’t told him what name she’s using now, where she’s been staying. And after so many emotions tonight I guess I’d rather have her stay in profile and go hibernate for a few days and just think. Your sister is a wise lady, Marie. Give her time to look at options.”