Never Too Late

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Suddenly she again remembered the child that had died along with Dru Ferrin, the child Hunter had believed was his.

  “I’m sorry, Hunter.” She wished she could slide right into the upholstery and disappear. “I wasn’t thinking at all. I made you hold that baby, completely forgetting that it was probably painful for you after the child you lost.”

  His fingers stiffened around the steering wheel. “Most people would say I didn’t really lose anything. The baby wasn’t born yet and he wasn’t even mine.”

  “I would never say that. I know what you lost.”

  He looked surprised by her words. “This is horrible to say but I think I grieved more for that baby than I did for Dru, even after I found out I wasn’t his father. DNA tests weren’t important to me. He was my son, in every way that mattered.”

  “Of course he was.” Kate curled her hands in her lap from reaching out to him in comfort at his blunt confession. Given the tension between them, she didn’t think he would welcome her touch right now.

  She wondered if he was remembering, as she was, those months before the murders. To his sister’s surprise, Hunter had been ecstatic about the baby. He had read baby books and gone with Dru to Lamaze class and showed off ultra-sound pictures to anyone within reach. She could still remember trying to smile woodenly and look excited for him.

  She knew he had begged Dru to marry him when she told him she was pregnant and that she had continued to refuse, right up to her murder.

  Kate had watched Hunter become more thrilled about the birth of the child—and increasingly frustrated with Dru’s refusal to marry him—and she had wanted to grab the woman and shake her until her teeth rattled out for the careless, callous way she treated him.

  “You would have been a wonderful father,” she murmured.

  “Maybe then. Not anymore.” As soon as he said the words, he looked as if he regretted them.

  “Why not?”

  He gazed out at the desert. “I’m a different man than I was then. Harder. Less forgiving. Doing time on Death Row has a way of taking away all the good and leaving a man with nothing. I’m not a good bet for a father anymore. Or anything else.”

  His last words were pitched so low she had to strain to hear them over the humming of the tires on asphalt. Was that some kind of warning? she wondered.

  If so, she was afraid it was coming far too late to do her any good.

  Without the weather to slow them down, they made good time once they passed through Albuquerque. Traffic was relatively light and they didn’t hit any delays.

  All night as he had stared at the textured ceiling of the motel room berating himself for losing his head and giving into the heat, Hunter worried things between them would be tense and uncomfortable for the rest of this journey.

  It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. Though he couldn’t stop remembering their kiss and the hot and urgent hunger that still gnawed at him, with every mile he drove more of the thick tension seemed to seep away.

  He wasn’t sure he would ever feel completely comfortable around her, not with this constant attraction simmering beneath his skin. But he could at least try to be polite.

  Prison might have distilled his psyche down to the bare elements of raw survival but he wasn’t a wild animal in a cage anymore. It was time he started acting like a civilized human being again.

  Between Albuquerque and Amarillo, she seemed content to listen to the radio—country music stations, mostly—and read her brother’s book. They made only one stop to gas up and exercise Belle.

  She offered to drive again when they finished their pit stop but he was wary about relinquishing the wheel. The last time she drove, he had spent the time in the middle of a hot, erotic dream that had most likely contributed to his boorish behavior later in the evening.

  When they were back on the highway, Kate picked up her book again but she seemed restless. He was aware of every move and knew when her attention wandered. Though the book was still open on her lap, she spent more time looking out the window, her expression pensive.

  What forces had shaped her into the woman she had become? He wondered. Strong and gutsy, brave enough to delivery a baby under relatively primitive conditions yet nervous about confronting her painful past.

  He wanted to know about her, he realized. The information would be helpful for finding the woman she had always believed to be her mother. It might also help him understand the woman Kate had become.

  “How old were you when this Brenda Golightly turned you over to the system?”

  She looked as startled by his question as if he’d suddenly pulled over and started eating road kill. “Where did that come from?”

  “Just wondering. Trying to figure everything out. I like to have all the pieces of the puzzle in front of me so I can see how they fit. I guess it’s the detective in me.”

  He thought for a moment she wasn’t going to answer him. She took a deep, steadying breath, the fingers of her left hand clenched on the armrest. He couldn’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses but he thought he could guess at the emotions in them. Remembering her past obviously wasn’t a gleeful skip down memory lane.

  “Seven. I was seven years old.”

  “You spent four years with her then, after you were kidnapped from the McKinnons’ front yard.”

  “Right.” Her voice was terse.

  “Why then, do you think? Why keep you only four years?”

  “It wasn’t like she made some kind of conscious choice in the matter. She went on a three-day bender and left me alone in a motel room with no food or running water. After two days when I couldn’t bear the hunger pains anymore, I finally ventured out looking for something to eat. A cop found me rooting through a garbage can outside a doughnut shop.”

  Hunter’s own stomach twisted at the cool, almost clinical way she described what must have been a terrifying childhood, full of hunger and fear and uncertainty.

  “It was a stupid mistake,” she went on in that same eerily calm voice. “I knew better than to go anywhere near a cop hangout. Brenda taught me early to avoid cops and social workers and anybody else who might ask too many questions. When I grew old enough to figure out that wasn’t normal behavior, I just thought it was just because of our transient lifestyle. But knowing what I do now, I can’t help thinking there was likely a more sinister explanation. She was probably afraid of someone finding out about Charlotte McKinnon being kidnapped and somehow link the two of us together.”

  She spoke about her true identity as if Charlotte McKinnon was a completely different person. He supposed in a way, she was.

  “What happened after you were removed from her custody?”

  She shrugged and adjusted her sunglasses higher on her nose. “Foster care. I moved around a lot at first. Nine placements in five years.”

  His own childhood hadn’t exactly been easy, but he couldn’t imagine what it would have been like never knowing stability. Even when his mother was at her worst shortly before her death, he always knew he had a home. The same four walls, the same bedroom furniture, the same grandfather clock ticking away in the hallway.

  The Judge had been a harsh, autocratic father in many ways, but Hunter had never doubted his father loved him, even if that love had been more controlling than kind most of the time.

  He couldn’t imagine being seven years old, living with strangers, shuffled from place to place.

  “Why so many?”

  “My fault, mostly. I was confused, angry. Unmanageable. I guess you could say I didn’t play well with others.”

  “Why not?”

  “What did I know about other kids? Brenda always kept me away from anybody close to my own age. I didn’t have any friends and of course I never went to school.”

  “At all?”

  She shook her head. “Teachers and principals tend to ask nosy questions. We were never in one place long enough for school officials to come after us and drag me to class. So there I was a seven-year-old kindergar
tner. Luckily I’d taught myself to read—cereal boxes, mostly. The Kellogg Corporation was responsible for most of my nutrition during those years. Thank the Lord for fortified cereal.”

  “You must have caught up, education-wise. You’re only, what, twenty-six, and you’ve already finished med school.”

  “I skipped a couple grades later and finished my under-grad work in three years. Those first few years after I was removed from Brenda’s custody were tough, though. I had no idea how to interact socially with others. I lied, I stole from my foster parents, I beat up other kids at school and at home. And that was on my good days.”

  He couldn’t quite swallow the idea of delicate, lovely Kate Spencer battling it out on the schoolground.

  “Hey, don’t laugh,” she said at the amused look he sent her. “I was a tough little scrapper. I made up for what I didn’t have in size in sheer evil ingenuity. One time I was mad at a foster mom for making me pitch in and help with laundry so I gleefully emptied a whole gallon of bleach on four baskets of clean clothes. That little tantrum of mine ruined just about every stitch of clothing in the house. Not a pretty sight. I was out of there by dinnertime.”

  “You were in pain and children in pain lash out.”

  “Oh, I lashed out with a vengeance.” Her features softened. “Finally when I was twelve I got lucky. I was placed with Tom and Maryanne Spencer. They were an older couple who never had any children of their own. I was the third foster child they had taken in. The other two were both in college when they accepted me.”

  “They were good to you?”

  Her smile was soft, tender, and gave her such an air of fragile beauty that Hunter had to remind himself to keep his eyes on the road. What he really wanted to do was bask in the glow of that smile, even if it wasn’t directed at him.

  “Wonderful. Maryanne is the most gentle, patient woman I’ve ever known. No matter how hard I scratched and clawed and fought to keep them away, she always returned my anger with love. And Tom’s a doctor. Family medicine.”

  “That where you got the bug?”

  “Yeah. I guess so. Whenever I had a day off from school, he would take me to his practice with him to file paperwork or stock supplies. The summer before my senior year in high school he took me on a three-week medical mission to central America. It was an incredible experience to watch this humble, unassuming man change people’s lives. I watched the rapport he had with his patients, both in Central America and in his regular practice, and knew I wanted to be just like him someday.”

  “Looks like you’re on your way.”

  She shook her head. “I have a long journey ahead of me if I want to follow in the footsteps of Tom Spencer.”

  “They must be proud of you. Taylor told me you went on your own medical trip to Guatemala last month.”

  “Whatever I’ve become, I owe to them. I don’t know where I would have ended up if not for them. Probably just like Brenda—an addict on the streets. They saved me.”

  She didn’t give herself nearly enough credit, he thought. All the best intentions in the world mean nothing if they don’t find receptive ground to take root.

  Despite the insecurity and trauma of those years with Brenda Golightly and her first few years in foster care, Kate had become a remarkable woman. He wanted to say so but the words clogged in his throat.

  “You still keep in touch with the Spencers?” he asked instead.

  “Oh, yes. We e-mail all the time and I go back to St. Petersburg as often as possible. I spent Thanksgiving with them a year ago but I haven’t been able to schedule another visit in a while.”

  “Maybe if we have time, we could stop on the way back through.”

  She lowered her sunglasses for just a moment but the delight in her eyes sent warmth trickling through him.

  “That would be great!”

  He was in trouble, Hunter thought as they once more lapsed into silence. Deep, deep trouble. Every moment he spent with her not only added fuel to the fire of his growing desire for her but made him think all kinds of tender thoughts he had no business entertaining.

  She had been through enough in her life. She didn’t need the added complication of a bitter ex-con who had no idea where he fit into the world anymore.

  To her relief, her few answers about her history seemed to satisfy Hunter’s sudden curiosity. He turned his attention back to the road and the easy, rolling hills of West Texas. After a while she pulled out her brother’s book again.

  She was having a harder time focusing today. Despite Wyatt’s intricately crafted story, the words seemed to blur on the page and she couldn’t seem to concentrate. Images from the past seemed to crowd everything else out and she once more felt like that skinny, frightened seven-year-old with an empty stomach and a two-day-old bear claw in her hand, facing down that bald, fatherly looking cop.

  What she had told him was ugly enough but she wondered what Hunter would say if he knew she had whitewashed some of it.

  She hated thinking about that time in her life before she went to live with the Spencers.

  Kate was sure all the well-meaning social workers thought they were rescuing her from a horrible fate when they took her from Brenda Golightly. She had no doubt they were, but some of the situations she had been thrust into during those first five years in foster care had only been slightly less terrible.

  Ugly things could happen to a young girl with few social defenses, things that made her feel sick inside to remember.

  In her first foster home, a fourteen-year-old sexual predator-in-training had seen a frightened little girl as a convenient victim.

  The first few times he touched her, she had been too stunned and sickened and too afraid to do anything to defend herself. The next time he came to her room, she had been ready for him with a kitchen knife she had carefully hidden in the folds of her nightgown when she went into the kitchen for one last glass of water before bed.

  When the little bastard tried his funny stuff again, she had pulled the knife out from beneath her pillow and stabbed him in the leg. She hadn’t been strong enough to shove the blade in very deep but he had screamed and cried and bled all over her room until his parents came running to the rescue.

  Nobody believed her version of events, of course. Why should they? She was just the white-trash troublemaking kid of a junkie who attacked an innocent boy without provocation.

  After that, she was labeled a Problem Child. And she had done her best to live up to that reputation. She became suspicious, wild, angry, rejecting anybody who tried to reach out to her.

  The Spencers had been her final chance, the last-ditch whistlestop before she was shipped to juvenile detention. She fought their efforts to help her as hard as she had everyone else but they never gave up.

  For a long time, she thought she deserved everything that had happened to her. The abuse, the beatings, the vicious cruelties that children—and sometimes adults—show to anyone weaker than they are.

  As far as she knew, she was Katie Golightly, the bastard kid of a junkie and a whore who had basically thrown her away.

  After she finally came to trust the Spencers, counseling had helped her shake off that victim mentality. She had worked hard to put those dark, ugly years behind her, to see herself as more than the sum of where she had come from because that was the way the Spencers saw her.

  She wasn’t sure even the best counseling in the world would help her now.

  Her anger was like sulfuric acid eating away at the edges of everything she had worked so hard to become. She had lived through hell not because she’d been born to it but because someone had stolen her away from something else and thrust her into it.

  If not for Brenda, she would never have been scavenging through Dumpsters or fighting off fourteen-year-old perverts with a kitchen knife. She would have been safe, happy, loved, living a far different life with the McKinnons.

  She couldn’t seem to get that image out of her head of a loving father and mother and two older br
others she knew would have fought to the death to protect her.

  Brenda had taken all of that from her. Family vacations and Christmas mornings and Fourth of July picnics. She had taken an innocent little girl from her happy life and shoved her into a nightmare, and, damn it, Kate wanted to know why. She had to know why.

  Maybe then she could finally put that past behind her and move forward.

  Chapter 8

  Rain found them in Oklahoma and followed them across Arkansas where they had stopped for the night, and now to northern Mississippi.

  Kate didn’t mind. She found the steady, hypnotic rhythm of the windshield wipers and the rain sluicing under their tires soothing, relaxing. It was almost cozy driving along through the rain, safe and warm in their car with B. B. King and Buddy Guy wailing out the blues on the stereo.

  “Good choice,” Hunter had said when she’d dug through her CD collection for her favorite bluesmen that morning when they’d passed the Arkansas state line an hour or so earlier.

  “We have to listen to the blues in Mississippi. I think it’s the law.”

  “If it’s not, it should be,” he had answered. She could swear he had almost let loose with a smile that time, but he’d poker-faced it before she could be sure.

  He smelled wonderful, as usual—soap and expensive aftershave and just-washed male. In the close confines of the SUV, she couldn’t take a breath without inhaling the scent of him. She found it erotic and disturbing at the same time.

  What would he do if she closed her eyes for the next few hours, just listening to the rain and the music and filling her senses with his smell?

  Oh Kate. What a fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into.

  The ultimate goal of this trip was certainly something she wanted, to make her peace with what had happened to her, or at least to gain understanding. As she had feared, though, she was discovering an unfortunate side effect.

  Hunter.

  More precisely, her feelings for him.