"Mitchell!" Her voice was sharp. Too sharp. She fought to moderate it. "Why aren't you in bed yet?"
He dragged his foot along the edge of one step. "I don't have any clean pajamas."
She raised her eyebrows. "And this is enough to keep you up forty minutes past your bedtime?"
He ducked his head and shrugged.
Ann sighed. She tried hard to provide Mitchell with discipline and routine. But he looked so endearing with his straight fair hair flopping into his face and his feet hanging over the edge of the step. He was growing. Maybe he was outgrowing the cocoon she wanted to keep him in? And it was good—wasn't it?—that her son felt confident enough now to act out sometimes.
Maybe she ought to be more like him.
"My room," she said. "The laundry basket is on the bed. Scoot."
He scooted, and she turned back to the door.
Locking up alone, jumping at noises. It was no kind of life.
She squared her shoulders. Think positive. The therapist in Chapel Hill was always telling her to count her accomplishments. After ten years of living under Rob's control, she was safe. She was free. Free from fear, free to make her own choices…
The memory of Maddox's deep voice shook the militant, upbeat cadence of her thoughts. You've got a right to your choices. My mistake for thinking you'd choose me.
Her heart squeezed. She wasn't free at all. She was still controlled by fear. Fear of the future. Fear of making a mistake. Fear that Maddox was offering her marriage as a prize for good behavior, because she fit some sort of picture he had of a new life in his old hometown.
He hadn't said he loved her.
Maybe that was her biggest fear of all.
Maybe she didn't deserve for him to love her.
But standing alone in the shadows of the hall, she thought of the way he'd said her name, his eyes burning into hers, his body joined with hers, his soul and his need naked in his eyes. You are what I want. You've always been what I want.
Why couldn't she believe him? Why should she make him wait and prove himself to her, the way he'd had to prove himself to everyone all his life?
She had never been any good at going after what she wanted. But she wanted Maddox.
Maybe it was time to confront her fear and tell him so.
Her heart was pounding, but that could be excitement. Her palms were sweating, but there was a hum in her blood now that might have been anticipation or the memory of Maddox naked and moving inside her.
She could call him. He was probably working, but she could dial 911. Let the dispatcher spread it all over town that Annie Barclay was tying up the police line chasing after Maddox Palmer.
She bit her lip. Silly. Maddox would worry if he got an emergency call to her house. She would leave a message. And if Wallace Palmer answered the phone, she would just tell him… Well, she didn't know what she would tell Maddox's father, but the older man probably knew perfectly well why she was calling his son at nine-thirty at night. The thought didn't bother her as much as it should have.
And anyway, when she called she got the machine.
Ann took a deep breath for courage and made her choice. "Maddox, this is Annie. I've been thinking about what you said and—" Dear Lord. She couldn't answer a proposal of marriage over the phone. Especially if his father picked up his phone messages. "Can you call me when you get this? Or come over? Please come over," she said, surer now. "I love you."
She hung up, feeling suddenly certain. Both breathless and sure. Amazing how making one decision could percolate through your entire attitude. She could take on anything now. She wished Maddox would hurry. When did he get off duty? Ten?
It felt like an eternity, but really it was only about twenty minutes later that she heard the sounds of a car pulling into her driveway. Expectation bubbled through her.
A car door slammed. She heard footsteps coming up the walk and hurried to catch him before he could ring the bell and disturb Mitchell.
She tugged open the door. "I'm so glad you—"
Her voice died. Her heart died. The man waiting on her porch wasn't Maddox.
"Rob," she said flatly.
Maybe she should have dialed 911 after all.
* * *
Chapter 16
«^»
"You bitch," Rob said.
Alarm prickled up the backs of Ann's arms. He's not going to do anything, she rationalized. He's not going to risk an arrest for assault, not with his trial a few short weeks away. He'd threatened her with a custody battle, not his fists.
But as he swayed in the porch light, his head lowered, his jaw thrust forward, her hand tightened on the door.
Before she could make up her mind to slam it closed, Rob smacked it out of her grip and against the wall.
Fear ricocheted through her. Instinctively, she backed away as Rob followed the door in.
"Aren't you going to invite me in?" he mocked.
She drew a careful breath. She was not the old, cowed Annie. She could handle this. She would handle this. "It's late," she said. "Why don't you go home?"
"I don't have a home," he said, speaking with the precision of the very drunk. Dread curdled her stomach. He was bad on beer. Worse on bourbon. And not close enough—yet—for her to smell which was talking for him now. "I have a house. A very expensive house. An empty house, thanks to you." He took another step forward. This time she held her ground. "Why don't you ask me how my day was, dear?"
Her glance darted to the stairs. Dear Lord, please let Mitchell be in bed and asleep.
"All right," she said peaceably, her heart beating high in her throat. "How was your day?"
"It sucked. You wanna know why?"
She felt sure he was going to tell her. He was close enough now for her to smell his breath. Bourbon. She backed toward the living room, leading him away from her sleeping child. "If you want to share."
"Brent Wilks canceled our golf game. We've been friends for twenty years. He's a client. But after your little scene at the club Saturday night, he calls off a three o'clock tee time. What do you think about that?"
She didn't know what to think. At three o' clock she'd been getting rug bums on her fanny making love with Maddox. The memory gave her a moment's courage. But certainly she didn't believe that after all this time the town had decided to take her side against Rob's.
"Maybe something came up," she said.
Rob's face was red. "That's what I told myself, too. Only then I had dinner with my lawyer. Do you know what discovery is, Ann?"
"I—no." Should she try to reach the phone in the kitchen? No. She was supposed to stay out of the kitchen in an argument, because of the knives.
But Rob was still talking, still almost reasonable. "Discovery means the D.A. can't spring new evidence on my lawyer at trial."
She felt slow, her tongue thick, her mind frozen. He wanted something, be was getting at something, and she was too stupid to follow him. "If this is about my testimony—"
"Screw your testimony. I'm screwed. You screwed me."
She didn't stop being afraid, but she started to get angry. He would never accept responsibility, but she was sick of accepting blame. "Anything you've done, you've done to yourself. And I'd like you to leave now."
Immersed in his grievance, he didn't even hear her.
"He dug up evidence against me. Mad Dog. Went right into my golf bag at the club locker room. God knows who saw him. Who heard."
Rob sounded so bewildered. No wonder. He was seeing his life unravel before his eyes. His madras shirt and belted shorts were creased and sweaty. Ann fought an absurd urge to apologize for his spoiled game, his dirty laundry, his ruined life.
"Henry said they have a direct link to the arson now," he continued, pacing her living room. He turned. "It's all your fault. And I'll see you pay."
Her heart stumbled. Don't panic. Stay calm. "Pay for what?"
"You got him involved."
Maddox. He meant Maddox.
"I didn't
." Her voice shook. The old Ann's voice. She bit her lip.
"You turned him against me. You turned everyone against me."
What did he want? Not her. To punish her. "Rob—"
He moved so fast that even though she was expecting it the blow was a shock. Pain exploded in her jaw, in her neck, in the back of her head as she flew off her feet and went down against the arm of the couch.
For a second she couldn't see anything but black with points of light, couldn't hear anything but the roaring in her ears. She started to curl—In an attack, protect your head and stomach—when something white moved on the floor into her line of vision. A sneaker.
Mitchell's sneakers.
Horrified, she dragged her gaze up to her nine-year-old son, lurching forward with his rifle at the ready, sobbing, "Don't touch her. Don't you touch her. I'll shoot you."
* * *
I love you. She'd said it first. And he'd never said it at all. Maddox shook his head bemusedly as he sat at a stoplight. What a screw-up.
But it was hard to feel too upset with the memory of her lilting voice playing on his father's answering machine. And the second he got to Annie's house, he planned on telling her anything she wanted to hear. Now that he knew she loved him, he could wait for her another twelve years.
He grinned over the steering wheel. Of course, he hoped she had something sooner in mind.
He pulled onto her street. It was just after ten, and there were already two cars parked in Ann's driveway. That would give the lady in the bathrobe something to talk about.
Two cars. The observation stuck him like a prison knife.
Ann's rusting compact … and Rob's big blue Beemer.
The front door was open.
This was bad.
His heart stopped, but his brain didn't. And that was good, that at least some parts of him were working, taking over. Maddox accepted the numbing of his emotions, welcomed the cold settling in as he prepared to do his job. Coordinate response, wait for cover, assess and stabilize the situation…
If Rob hurt them, touched them, either one of them, he would kill the rat bastard.
"Request backup on a disturbance in progress, eight-two-five Hickory, that's eight-twenty-five Hickory—"
"Mad Dog?" Crystal sounded surprised. "You at Ann Cross's place?"
He was already sliding from the car, gun in hand. "That's affirm."
"Stand by."
"I'm going in."
The radio crackled with background noise, and then Crystal's voice came back, breathless with importance. "Chief requests that you wait for cover before making contact."
"Can't. I'm proceeding."
"The chief orders—"
He left the radio squawking behind him and glided up the walk, staying out of the path of the porch light.
Assess the situation. He could do that. The damn door was open. Light spilled from the living room window, but gauzy curtains obscured his view inside. No noise. No screams.
He crossed the porch low and quiet, feeling with his foot for the doormat, holding his gun at the ready. Edged to the door, and heard Rob say contemptuously, "What do you think you're doing, boy? Put down the damn gun."
Mitchell's voice answered, high, hysterical. "No! Get away from her."
Sweat ran on Maddox's forehead, although his lungs felt frozen. A child with a gun. His worst nightmare. And somewhere inside, Annie.
Pop. Pop. Pop. The memory shuddered through him. A woman, a teacher, throwing herself down to shield the screaming child on the ground. And the boy, the shooter, weight back on his right leg, shoulder pointing toward his target…
Maddox yanked himself back. Cold sweat collected above his belt. He could not see into the living room. He moved closer.
"I'm not going anywhere till you put down the gun," Rob said.
The sickening click of a rifle lever answered him. Ann's soft voice played in Maddox's brain. Rob has a gun. Two guns, if you count the hunting rifle he bought for Mitchell.
Damn.
Maddox angled his body against the doorjamb. He could see Mitchell now through the living room arch. The rifle barrel trembled in the boy's hands, but his back was straight, his weight balanced correctly on his rear leg. At three yards, there wasn't much chance he'd miss. Hell, at that range, he'd blow a hole through his father the size of a basketball.
Maddox pushed the door open slightly with his foot, widening his view of the room to include Rob, swaying and sweating by the couch. No sign of Annie.
Stabilize the situation. Don't startle the kid into firing. Maddox flowed back down the steps, out of the line of fire. He was no good to anybody dead.
"Mitchell," he called softly. "It's Sergeant Palmer. Maddox. Everything okay?"
The rifle barrel wavered and then leveled at Rob's chest. "He hurt her. Mom's hurt."
His gut constricted. "All right. I'll take care of her. I'll call an ambulance, okay? You want to put down that gun."
"No!"
"Yeah, you do," he said gently, firmly, while everything inside him raged and shook. The kid couldn't live with his father's blood on his hands. Annie wouldn't be able to live… God, let her be alive. Maddox nudged the door open and came in, gun at the ready. "I'm coming in. You want to let me take care of it. I'm here now. Everything's okay."
The big lie.
"I want him to get away from her." Hysteria edged Mitchell's voice.
Her. Annie. He could see her now, lying on the floor, small and crumpled between the arm of the shabby couch and her ex-husband's feet. Her upraised arm shielded her face so that he couldn't see the damage Rob had done.
Cold rage steamed inside him. "Stand away," he ordered Rob in a low tone.
Rob looked from the .38 in Maddox's grip to the rifle wavering in his son's arms. "Get real."
Maddox clenched his jaw tight enough to send pain shooting through his skull. On the floor, Annie moaned and stirred. Alive, then. Thank God.
"Come on, Rob," be said. "We're the adults here. Move away from her, and Mitchell will put down the gun."
"Screw you. She's my wife, and he's my son."
Mitchell jerked.
Maddox cursed silently. "This is not what you'd call a stable situation. Let's not make things any worse."
"How can it get worse?" Rob demanded. "My life is ruined."
This moron could goad his kid into shooting him. That would make it worse. For Mitchell. And for Ann.
"You just let me handle things," Maddox said, dividing his words between Rob and Mitchell, trying not to focus on Ann on the floor. She'd raised her head and laid it down again. One quick glance showed him her split lip, her glazed eyes. Concussion? "It's going to be okay now."
He took another step into the room, Sergeant Cool, like he had an entire SWAT team at his back. Like he wasn't scared deep in his gut and his bones. Like he didn't see the ghosts of his failure, another woman's body, another child's face, swimming in front of his eyes.
"Come on, sport, put down the gun."
The barrel wavered. "I didn't want him to hurt her."
"Yeah. You were looking out for her. I know."
"Is she going to be all right?"
"Sure." God, he hoped so. "We'll get the paramedics to look at her in just a minute. Put the gun down now."
Mitchell's shoulders trembled with the weight of the rifle, with the consequences of his next choice. Maddox held his breath, willing the boy to do the right thing, praying that Rob had sense enough to keep his fat mouth shut.
Mitchell swallowed. His green eyes—Annie's eyes—turned to Maddox with a heartbreaking mix of trust and fear. And then slowly, slowly, he lowered the rifle. Maddox held the child's gaze, doing his best to broadcast confidence and reassurance while the tension inside him stretched to the screaming point.
The gun butt drifted to the floor. Relief swallowed Maddox's brief flare of satisfaction.
And then Rob lunged, ducking under the shelter of his son's body, and snatched the gun, and straightened wit
h it on his shoulder before Maddox could squeeze off a shot that wouldn't hit Mitchell or Ann on the floor.
He grinned down the barrel at Maddox's frozen face of surprise. "Thanks, MD. I knew you'd always protect the quarterback."
Maddox died inside. Very quietly, he said, "Get out of the house, Mitchell. Now."
The boy started. Moved toward the door.
The rifle jerked in Rob's hand. "Uh-uh. You stay."
"Put down the gun, Rob."
"Oh, I will. Right after I blow a hole in you. And then I can do whatever I want to the two of them. Think about that while you're dying, buddy."
Sweat greased Maddox's grip on his gun. He was going to have to shoot. Despair hollowed his gut. With merciless precision, his mind replayed a slow-motion memory of a child falling in an Atlanta schoolyard.
"You don't want to kill a police officer, Rob. That's the death penalty for sure."
"What have I got to live for? You wrecked my life, you bastard. It'll be a pleasure to take you with me."
He was going to have to shoot, Ann thought.
The knowledge sank into her, drifting through the layers of pain and dizziness and nausea to strike some buried core of compassion. She didn't want to feel. It hurt too much. Her neck, her jaw, her head burned and throbbed. She wanted to close her eyes again and have it all be over.
But with her cheek pressed to the carpet, she watched Maddox waver in and out of focus through Rob's ankles. Tanned ankles, sockless in Italian shoes. Two Maddoxes, looming dark and perpendicular above her. He was wearing his granite cop face, but she could see the dreadful weight of decision in his eyes.
He would save them. At a terrible cost. The burden he'd spared Mitchell he would take on himself, shooting his old teammate to protect her.
Her heart tore. She couldn't help him. She couldn't lift her own head. How could she help him?
Rob was speaking, his voice goading. She shut him out, concentrating on dragging her arm in, inch by inch. Under the skirt of the couch, her spread fingers brushed something rough and cool and metallic. A Droid. One of Mitchell's Droids, with spear and claws. She closed her hand around it, ignoring the bite in her palm, and rolled her head to rest her brow on the rough carpet. Pain drove a thick spike through her skull. She ignored that, too. Another inch. Two. Hurry. Help.
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