“I should’ve believed the kid. Why didn’t I?” The muscles in Jones’s jaw were clenching again. “He said he didn’t do it. I asked, and he answered me. I should’ve stuck by him. I should have trusted him unconditionally.”
Now it was Melody’s turn to gaze out at the water. “It’s hard to trust someone unconditionally,” she told him. “Even the most powerful trust has its limits. I should know.” She forced herself to look at him, to meet his eyes. “I would—and I did—trust you with my life. But I found myself unable to trust you with my heart. I expected you to hurt me and I couldn’t get past that.”
His eyes were so green in the early-afternoon light. “You really expected me to hurt you?”
Melody nodded. “Not intentionally, but yeah.”
“That’s why you didn’t want to see me again. That’s why you didn’t give what we had going a chance.”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“I probably would’ve,” he admitted, too. “Hurt you, I mean. Like you said, not intentionally, but…”
She didn’t want to talk about this. Nodding again, she pushed on, hoping he would follow. “In the same way, you expected Andy to mess up. So when it seemed as if he was lying, you went with your expectations.”
“God, I really blew it.” The tears were back in Jones’s eyes. “I thought I knew what I was doing, but the truth is, I was really unprepared to deal with this kid. I did everything wrong.”
“That’s just not true.”
But he wasn’t listening. “When we hit 175 feet, we weren’t quite on target and had to search for the object that the sonar picked up.” He was talking about the dive he’d made in the quarry with Harvard. “It took us so long to get down there with all the stopping and waiting, but once we were there, I was scared to death. I just wanted to close my eyes and sink to the bottom myself. I didn’t want to look, I didn’t want to know. And then my light hit something, and it reflected back at me, and for one split second, Mel, I saw him. My eyes played a nasty trick on me, and I saw Andy’s face down there.”
Melody didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing. She just kept holding his hand.
“Tomorrow, I’m going to have to go back down there,” he continued. “And tomorrow, I probably am going to find him.”
He was shaking. Whether it was from the wintery chill of the air or the darkness of his thoughts, Melody wasn’t sure. She did know it was time to bring him home, though.
She stood up, tugging him gently to his feet, escaping from the confines of his blanket. “Let’s go, Jones.” She paused. “Do you still have my car keys?”
“Yeah.” He gathered up his diving suit. “They’re in my pocket.”
Melody folded Andy’s jeans, putting them back on the rock. “I wonder if we should try to contact Andy’s father. Andy was running some searches on the Internet—he told me he thought he might’ve located his father at an Army base up in New Hampshire and—”
She realized what she was saying at the exact same moment Jones did.
“What did you just say?” he asked, turning to face her.
“He was looking for his father on the Net.”
“And he thought he found him in New Hampshire.”
Transfixed, Melody stared into the sudden glaring intensity of Jones’s eyes. “Do you think…?” she breathed.
Jones grabbed Andy’s jeans, searching quickly through the pockets. “Honey, did you see his watch? Was his watch here with the rest of his clothes?”
“No.” Melody was afraid to get too excited. Although Andy never went anywhere without that watch, he certainly wouldn’t have worn it into the water. So why wasn’t it here? “It’s possible Alex Parks took it. I wouldn’t trust that kid any farther than I could throw him.”
“Yeah, you’re right. It’s possible Alex has it. But…” Jones ran his hands through his damp hair. “Last week at the library, I talked Andy into checking out a copy of Tom Sawyer. He told me that he liked it—so he must’ve been reading it.”
“Oh, my God.” Melody turned to look at the quarry. “He might’ve set this whole thing up to make it look as if he’d drowned.”
Jones grabbed her hand. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’re going home. I’m going to New Hampshire.”
MELODY’S BACK WAS killing her.
Cowboy shook his head in disgust, amazed that he’d let her talk him into coming along with him. It was an hour-and-a-half drive up to New Hampshire—each way.
She was careful not to mention her discomfort. Of course not. This was the woman who had walked for eight hours across the desert, the back of her heels raw from blisters, without complaining even once. No, she didn’t say a word, but her constant shifting in her seat gave her away.
“We’re almost there,” she said, looking up from the map into the midafternoon glare.
The town was small, clearly built as an afterthought to the neighboring U.S. Army base. There were a series of bars and pool halls along the main strip, along with a tired-looking supermarket, a cheap motel, a tattoo parlor, a liquor store and a bus station with a sputtering neon sign.
Cowboy did a U-turn, right there in the middle of town.
“What are you doing? The base is in the other direction.”
“Just following a hunch.”
“But—”
“This whole thing—driving all the way up here without even being able to talk to Private Marshall on the phone—is a long shot, right?” He’d used a contact he had at the Pentagon to locate Andy’s father, Pvt. David Marshall, here at the Plainfield, New Hampshire, Army Base.
Plainfield wasn’t any kind of cushy silver-bullet assignment. In fact, it was the opposite. Men were assigned to Plainfield as a punishment just short of a jail sentence. And according to Cowboy’s Pentagon friend, David Marshall had had plenty of reasons to be reprimanded. He had a rap sheet a mile long, filled with unsavory charges including sexual harassment and use of excessive violence in dealing with civilians.
When Cowboy had called Plainfield, he was told that Private Marshall was not available. He couldn’t even get the unfriendly voice on the other end of the line to verify if the man was still stationed at the base. From the tone of the phone call, though, he suspected the elder Marshall was currently in the middle of a severe dressing-down—or maybe even in the lockup.
If Private Marshall was at Plainfield, assuming Andy had even been able to see him, it wasn’t too hard to imagine his reaction as he came face-to-face with the son he’d abandoned twelve years earlier. There weren’t going to be many kisses and hugs, that much was for sure.
Cowboy pulled into the potholed parking lot next to the bus station.
“You think Andy’s father won’t want anything to do with him,” Melody guessed correctly. “But do you really think Andy would have enough money to buy a bus ticket out of here? He probably spent everything he had getting here from Appleton.”
“I think he probably doesn’t even have enough to buy himself dinner, but the bus station’s warm and dry. He can stay here all night if he needs to. He can even sleep on one of the benches if he pretends he’s waiting for an arriving bus.”
She was watching him closely in the shadowy dusk as he pulled up the parking brake and turned off the engine. “You sound as if you’re speaking from experience.”
Cowboy gazed into her eyes. It felt as if it had been a million years since they shared a smile. The trip from Massachusetts had been a quiet one. In fact, this entire day had been the furthest thing from a laughfest he’d ever known. “I think maybe you know me a little too well.”
“How many times exactly did you run away when you were a kid?”
“I don’t know—I lost count. The dumb thing was, no one ever really missed me. So I finally stopped running. I figured I could tick my parents off more by being around.”
Melody shifted in her seat. “But you ran away again when you were sixteen, right? You told me you went t
o see a rodeo and just never went home.”
“That wasn’t running away. That was growing up and leaving home.” He managed a wan smile. “Well, maybe not growing up. I’m still not sure I’ve managed to do that yet.”
“I think you’ve done just fine.” Her eyes were soft in the rapidly fading light, and Cowboy knew with a sudden certainty that all he had to do was lean forward and she would let him kiss her. Despite everything that she’d said about misinterpretation and mistakes, with very little effort on his part, she would belong to him.
He couldn’t figure it out. Certainly if Andy was dead, but even if the kid was alive, Cowboy had proven himself to be irresponsible and incapable of dealing with a child. It didn’t make sense. He screws up and now he gets the girl? What he’d done should’ve made her want to put even more distance between them. He just didn’t get it. Maybe it was only based on comfort, on shared grief—or hope. Or hell, maybe it was only his imagination. He’d find out soon enough by kissing her again, by lowering his mouth to hers and…
It was funny. All this time, he would’ve risked damn near anything for a chance to take this woman into his arms and lose himself in her sweet kisses. But now, as badly as he wanted to feel her arms around him, he was going to have to deny himself the pleasure. They’d come here hoping to find Andy. He should be looking for the kid, not kissing Melody.
But God, he wanted to kiss her. He was drowning in the ocean blue of her eyes, wondering just how much comfort she’d be willing to give him, how much comfort she’d be willing to take in return….
“We’re stalling,” she told him, breaking the spell. “We should go inside.”
Cowboy nodded, realizing he was gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles had turned white. He pried his fingers free. “I know.” He was stalling. Truth was, he was afraid of going into that bus station and finding out his hunch was wrong. He was afraid this entire trip was just the result of wishful thinking and that Andy really was down at the bottom of that quarry.
Melody unfastened her seat belt. “I’ll go. You stay here.”
Cowboy snorted at that. “I don’t think so.”
He helped her out of the car, and as he closed the door behind her, she held on to his hand. He’d been on quite a few difficult missions since he’d become a SEAL, but this was the first time he’d had a hand to hold as he took the point. And odd as it was, he was glad for it, glad she was there.
“Please, God, let him be here,” she murmured as they started toward the door. “If he is here,” Cowboy told her, “do me a favor. Don’t let me kill him.”
She squeezed his hand. “I won’t.”
He took a deep breath, pushed open the door and together they went inside.
It was vintage run-down bus station. The odor of cigarette smoke and urine wasn’t completely masked by the cloyingly sweet chemical scent of air freshener. The bleak walls were a hopeless shade of beige, and the industrial-bland floor tiles were cracked and chipped in some places, revealing triangles of the dirty gray concrete beneath. The men’s room had a sign on the door saying Out Of Order—Use Facilities Near Ticket Agents. The snack bar had been permanently shut down, replaced by vending machines. The cheery orange and yellow of the hard plastic chairs had long since been dulled by thousands of grimy fingers.
And Andy Marshall, a picture of dejection, sat in one of them, shoulders slumped, elbows on knees, forehead resting in the palms of his hands.
Relief roared in Cowboy’s ears. It made the bus station, and the entire world with it, seem to shift and tilt on its axis.
The relief was followed by an icy surge of anger. How could Andy have done this? The little bastard! He’d had them all worried damned sick!
“Jones.” He turned and looked down into Melody’s eyes. They were brimming with tears. But she blinked, pushing them back as she smiled up at him. “I think he’s already been punished enough,” she said as if she could read his mind, as if everything he was feeling was written on his face.
Cowboy nodded. It was obvious that the kid’s last hope had been ripped from him without any anesthetic. It wasn’t going to do either Andy or Cowboy the slightest bit of good to foam at the mouth and rage at him.
“I’m going to go call Tom Beatrice,” he told Melody, knowing that he had to attempt to regain his equilibrium before he confronted the boy. “I want to give Harvard a call, too. Tell him we found Andy alive.”
She held on to his hand until the last possible moment. “Call Brittany, will you? Please?”
“I will.” He went to a row of beat-up pay phones, punching in his calling-card number and watching as Melody approached Andy.
She sat down next to him, and even then the kid didn’t look up until she spoke. Cowboy was too far away to hear what she said, but Andy didn’t seem surprised by her presence.
He watched them talk as he made his calls. Tom was quietly thankful. Harvard was out, and Cowboy left a message for him with his father. Brittany cried and then cursed the boy for his stupidity in the same breath in which she thanked God for keeping him safe.
As Cowboy hung up the phone, Andy glanced warily in his direction. The flash of his pale face called to mind that other ghastly image he’d thought he’d seen 175 feet beneath the surface of the flooded quarry.
Andy’s face looked much better with life glistening in his eyes.
And just like that, Cowboy’s anger faded. The kid was alive. Yeah, he’d made a pile of very huge mistakes, but who was Cowboy to talk? He’d made some whopping mistakes here himself.
Starting seven and a half months ago in that 747 bathroom with Melody. With barely a thought, he’d gambled with fate and lost—and changed her life irrevocably.
She looked up at him as he approached, and he could see trepidation in her eyes. He tried to smile to reassure her, but it came out little better than a grimace. Great big God, he was tired, but he couldn’t even consider slowing down. He had a ninety-minute drive back to Appleton that he had to make before he could even think about climbing into bed.
Climbing into Melody’s bed.
If she let him. Hell, if he let himself, knowing what he now knew for certain—that he had no right to be anyone’s father.
He laughed silently and scornfully at himself. Yeah, right. Like he’d ever turn Melody down. Whether it was comfort, true love or sheer lust that drove her into his arms, he wasn’t going to push her away. Not in this lifetime.
“I’m sorry,” Andy said before Cowboy even sat down.
“Yeah,” Cowboy told him, “I know. I’m glad you’re okay, kid.”
“I thought maybe my father would be like you.” Andy kicked once at the metal leg of the chair. “He wasn’t.”
“I wish you had told me what you were planning to do.” Cowboy was glad he’d made those phone calls first. His voice came out even and matter-of-fact rather than harsh and shaking with anger. “I would’ve come up here with you.”
“No, you wouldn’t’ve.” The boy’s words were spoken without his usual cheeky attitude or resentment. They were flat, expressionlessly hopeless. “You didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t mess up that house.”
“Yeah,” Cowboy said. He cleared his throat. “Lookit, Andy, I owe you a major apology on that one. I know now that you didn’t do it. Of course, now is a little bit late. Still, I hope you can forgive me.”
There was a tiny flare of surprise in Andy’s eyes. “You know I didn’t…?”
“Brittany believed you,” Melody told him. “And she figured out a way to prove you were telling the truth. The account information from her computer is going to show that someone—you—were on-line that night. And although that probably wouldn’t hold up as an alibi in a court of law, it’ll go far in convincing Tom Beatrice he’s caught the wrong kid.”
“Brittany believed me, huh?” Andy looked bemused. “Man, there was a time when she would’ve been organizing a lynch mob.” He looked up at Cowboy and squared his narrow shoulders. “Maybe I am at least
partly guilty, though. I did go into that house about two weeks ago. One of the upstairs windows was open a crack. I knew the place was empty, so I climbed up and went inside. I didn’t break anything, though, and I didn’t steal anything. I just looked.”
“And touched,” Cowboy added.
Andy rolled his eyes. “Yeah. I left my fingerprints everywhere. What a fool. Someone must’ve seen me go in and told Alex Parks. He did the spray painting and broke the windows and mirrors and stuff. He told me last night up by the quarry. He told me he’d made sure I was going to leave town. He told me he’d reserved a room for me at juvy hall.” He smiled grimly. “I scared the hell out of him when I jumped into the quarry.”
“You scared the hell out of all of us.”
“It was a stupid, dangerous thing to do,” Melody admonished him hotly. “You might have really drowned.”
Andy slouched in his seat. “Yeah, like anyone would’ve missed me. Like anyone in the world gives a damn. My father doesn’t—that’s for sure. You know, he didn’t even know my name? He kept calling me Anthony. Anthony. And he stood and talked with me for five lousy minutes. That’s all he could spare me in all of twelve years.”
“Forget about your father,” Melody said fiercely. “He’s an idiot, Andy. You don’t need him because you have us. You’ve got me and Brittany and Jones—”
“Yeah, for how long?” There were actually tears in Andy’s eyes. He couldn’t keep up the expressionless act any longer. His voice shook. “Because after this mess, Social Services is going to pull me out of the Romanellas’ house so fast I won’t even have time to wave goodbye.”
“We won’t let them,” Melody said. “I’ll talk to Vince Romanella and—”
“What are you going tell him to do?” Andy sneered. “Adopt me? That’s about the only thing I can think of that would keep me around. And I’m so sure that would go over really well.” He shook his head, swearing softly. “I bet Vince already has my stuff packed in boxes.”
Tall, Dark and Dangerous Vol 1: Tall, Dark and FearlessTall, Dark and Devastating Page 96
