Sam reached for Taylor’s hands and wiped the blood off with a tissue, then handed her a bottle of antiseptic gel from her purse. Taylor rubbed her palms together vigorously, then grabbed her coat from the asphalt and shrugged back into it, settling the warmth around her in consolation.
Death surrounded them. Again.
Taylor’s eyes met hers and Sam could read the thoughts of her best friend clearly.
That was no accident, the look said.
CHAPTER NINE
It took two full hours to get the scene under control. Taylor had remembered the license plate on the Jag, but a quick search revealed that the plates had been stolen off a truck that had been left out on Eastland Avenue overnight. East Nashville—half beautifully gentrified, half crime-ridden and dangerous. Taylor knew who’d win in the end. The stubborn landowners would force the drug dealers and prostitutes and ruffians out and be left with a quiet little oasis with excellent restaurants and cool shops. They were probably sixty percent there already.
The family of the woman, if that’s who they were, had clammed up. They wouldn’t say why they were coming to the courts, or who the woman was. Their faces were pinched, eyes darting, tawny skin white with fear, and Taylor knew without asking that they were probably all illegal. A search of the afternoon’s court docket revealed nothing that would explain the woman’s presence; no outstanding warrants matched her description, and no one had a Hispanic woman her age on their current case lists. She wasn’t on the rolls for jury duty. She was a mystery, and Taylor felt the stirrings of life at the idea of figuring out the story. But she wasn’t allowed. Without batting an eyelash, Huston gave the case to Marcus.
Dejected, Taylor let Sam drive her home.
They didn’t talk on the way. The horror of watching a woman die in front of them was enough to steal Sam’s tongue as well.
Taylor’s head was pounding. She palmed a Percocet from the bottle in her pocket. Sam usually had a juice box or two lying around in the backseat, but there was nothing today. She dry swallowed the pill, hoping it started to work quickly.
When they were close to Taylor’s neighborhood, she put a hand out and signaled to the side of the road. As Sam pulled to the curb, Taylor wrote her a note.
Memphis invited me to Scotland.
Sam took one glance at it and turned to her in horror. “Surely you’re not thinking of going? That’s insanity!”
Taylor shook her head.
I just think a break would be good.
Sam put the BMW into Park and adopted her most exasperated tone.
“Taylor Bethany Jackson, you are a first-class fool if you think that running into the arms of the Viscount of what’s its-name will solve anything.”
Dulsie.
“Fuck Dulsie. Don’t fuck Memphis. That will ruin your life, I guarantee it.”
I’m not planning to fuck him. I’m thinking a little time apart would be good. Baldwin and I aren’t exactly getting along.
“So you run off to Scotland, to the man who’s desperate to make you his own? Girl, are you out of your mind? Are the drugs they’re giving you addling your brains?”
Sam’s voice was going up an octave with each declaration. Her face was turning red, and Taylor had to fight not to laugh.
He won’t be there. I’ll be alone at the estate.
“Ooh, the ‘estate.’ Don’t you mean his castle? He is the son of an earl, isn’t he? They do have a castle, don’t they? You can go play Rapunzel.”
Cobwebby. Hard to heat. At least that’s what he said.
Sam slapped the steering wheel. “Don’t get smart with me, girl. And don’t pretend like you’ve never looked it up online, either. Taylor, this is a mistake. A huge, huge mistake.”
I haven’t looked it up. What’s the point in that? Besides, I’ll ask Baldwin to come.
“Brilliant, kiddo.”
Sam took three deep breaths through her nose, shut her eyes for a moment. Taylor waited her out.
“Good grief. I called you for an escape, and now look at me, yelling at you. And you can’t yell back. That’s not fair.”
Sure it is. I deserve it. Sam, I’m so sorry.
That did the trick. Sam burst into tears, and Taylor took her in her arms.
She couldn’t say the words aloud, so she stroked Sam’s hair and thought hard at her, hoping she could at least feel the energy.
I’m so sorry, Sam. I failed you. I won’t let that happen again. I think I should go away. I have to get my head straight, too. I think this might fix me. Please be happy again, Sam. It breaks my heart to see you cry.
Sam started to snuffle and regain control. She pulled a tissue out of the box in her dash and wiped her eyes.
“You’ve already decided?”
Taylor nodded, realizing as she did that, yes, she had. She wanted to go. She wanted to get away from everyone, everything. To escape into a world that wasn’t her own, just for a little while.
“Just don’t do anything stupid, okay? Memphis can be dangerous, on too many levels to count. I love you too much to see you fall apart again.” Taylor wrote I promise then opened the car door.
“You want to walk in?” Sam asked. “It’s freezing out there.”
Taylor nodded again. She needed to stretch her legs and try to get the smell of death out of her head.
“Don’t stay out in the cold too long, okay?” She touched Taylor on the cheek, a butterfly caress. Taylor got out of the warm car and breathed deeply. She felt so much better. They’d needed to have that fight. Things weren’t fixed, not by a long shot, but at least she knew Sam still cared.
And now, she needed a few minutes alone to figure out what to tell Baldwin.
Taylor walked in the cold, chilled to the bone. She didn’t want to capitulate to the weather and head inside, not just yet. One foot in front of the other. Again and again and again.
She’d always been stubborn, a true Taurus, bullheaded, as her mother would pointedly say. She knew deep inside that it was her stubbornness that would get her out of this mess and back to normal, even though she barely believed the small voice inside her who promised all would be well.
It was a blessing that she lived in Nashville, where many people’s livelihoods depended on their supple voice box, and all the hospitals have occupational therapists that specialize in voice therapy on staff. As she walked, as each step unfolded, her mind spinning, she did the basic exercises they’d given her at the hospital: strengthening her vocal cords by letting her tongue lie flat against the bottom of her mouth, then rolling the edges together, sounding out a single syllable. Having found that Mmm was easiest, for some unknown reason, she’d been going about her days humming the Campbell’s soup song.
“Mmm, Mmm Good.”
“Mmm, Mmm Good.”
On her friend Ariadne’s advice, she approached her recovery from the holistic side as well, with herbs meant to soothe and relax her throat. She drank green tea with honey. She took the Percocet to relieve the pain. Sometimes, she even took her Ativan. Dutifully exercised and followed most of the doctor’s instructions.
She had felt like an idiot, getting Botox in her throat. It had helped, but only temporarily. The minute she started to talk again, during a conversation with Baldwin about the shooting, she clammed up. Literally felt her throat close. She’d had a cat once who would have coughing fits—almost as if it couldn’t breathe and began to choke. That’s exactly how she felt, constricted, no air, no way to scream.
The nightmares were the worst. They were fever dreams, which amplified and grew simple situations far beyond their proportions—a dark room turning into a cold grave with dirt thrown on her head, figurines who came to life and threatened to strangle her, Sam’s baby talking to her, though it wasn’t bigger than a speck of dust. She’d wake in the night, body rigid, hair clinging to her head, chest covered in sweat, mouth open, nothing coming out. She couldn’t scream in her dreams, either, and she couldn’t help but think if she could just let loose t
here, this would all stop. She’d get her voice back.
But the dreams were worsening.
She knew she needed this change. She’d been clinging to the thought that work would be the solution, but she’d felt so…helpless this afternoon.
The accident, the woman being run down right in front of her—she’d tried so hard to call for help, and nothing had come.
She’d seen the doubt in Huston’s eyes. One of the guys must have reported in about her visit that afternoon. It was readily apparent that she wasn’t ready to go back to fieldwork. If she wouldn’t be allowed to do anything but drive a desk, that would make her stir-crazy.
Getting away, being alone, appealed so much. She was tired of people trying to help. Of being babysat, and chauffeured, and looked at with pity. And suspicion. She couldn’t help but read the subtext of her day—Taylor, we love you, but you’re just not ready. Maybe they had a point. And face it, people got hurt when she was around, whether they were strangers, friends or lovers.
Some time alone might help her find a way to forgive herself. And maybe, find a way to forgive Baldwin. At this point, she was prepared to try most anything.
How to tell Baldwin that she wanted to go to Scotland without him—that was the problem. She didn’t feel right about it. She knew Memphis was interested in more than friendship, and that was the biggest thorn in the plan.
Memphis. With his ridiculously blue eyes and obvious hunger for her.
If she could just let go of the idea of them together, none of this would matter. She could go to Scotland, conscience clear, and get some much-needed away time from her life.
Memphis was the only one who treated her like she was still Taylor, not some shell of a being. It was…nice.
He’d be a gentleman. She’d make sure of it. Besides, she was a big girl. She knew how to handle herself. If Memphis got frisky, she’d knee him in the balls.
The thought made her laugh.
She was shivering now. Reluctantly, she about-faced and headed for the house. Back to reality. Baldwin would be waiting, a hopeful expression on his face. He would make her food, ply her with wine. He had gotten her drunk one night and made love to her, and she’d said his name at the end, softly, but there, full in her mouth, and he’d held her so tight she could barely breathe.
Things weren’t right between them, not at all, but she needed him. He was a part of her soul, as important to her as her hands. But she needed him to understand her hurt, to understand her desire for a little time apart. She loved him desperately, but looking at him just reminded her of his betrayal. If she hadn’t been shot, hadn’t been through the horror of the surgeries and the dysphonia, she would have cut off her nose to spite her face and stopped talking to him. This seemed a better punishment, forcing him to watch her struggle.
She had faced the abyss, and turned away, not accepting its lure, and yet here she was, still being penalized.
Two words. That’s all she really needed to hear from him. Two words that he danced around.
God, if he would just say I’m sorry.
CHAPTER TEN
Baldwin watched Taylor walking down the street toward the drive. Why she was on foot, he didn’t know, unless she and Sam had words and Taylor bolted from the car. Which was entirely possible. Taylor was a cactus with everyone these days.
He thoughtfully chewed the end of a pencil. She was truly struggling, and he’d tried everything. She wasn’t letting him in, and after four weeks of begging and pleading to let him help her, he was still getting the big brush-off. He was getting tired of her obstinacy, but didn’t know what else to do. And he had his own demons to wrestle.
He watched her stop and glance up at the window. He waved and she waved back. She looked almost happy for the first time in weeks. Maybe things would be all right tonight. He smiled at her, then went back to his desk. Felt like he was turning his back on her. Maybe he was.
His chest was heavy. He was losing her. And after watching her get shot, going down on the floor in a bloody heap, then praying for days that she’d wake up, that she’d be normal, then the constant fighting…all the tension had drained him. She wasn’t exactly giving him a lot to work with—the occasional smile, a laugh here or there. Some emails and handwritten notes.
She’d pulled into herself, shut him out. He knew she was angry and upset. Hell, he didn’t blame her. But he also felt like she was being unfair. She was fighting her own battle, and not giving him any consideration. He was beginning to have his doubts that she loved him enough to forgive him. He should have told her, yes. But she was carrying the grudge like a mantle, swinging it from end to end with bull’s horns.
She couldn’t experience the emotions he was feeling. How could she? It was his son that was missing.
His son. He’d only found out about him last year, when the child had just turned four years old. The boy’s mother, Charlotte Douglas, was dead. Their affair was a momentary fling during a high-pressure case, and when she’d gotten pregnant, she told him she’d aborted their child.
And he, damn himself, had believed her. Stopped speaking to her, fled to Nashville. He hadn’t seen her in years.
Charlotte had carried and delivered the child in secret, gotten him adopted out, and never told Baldwin of the boy’s existence. All Baldwin wanted was to find his son and bring him home.
Charlotte hadn’t named the boy on the birth certificate. Another slap. Baldwin knew he shouldn’t be getting so emotionally involved—this was the kind of situation that often ended badly, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d never wanted kids, but suddenly felt the need for family. For permanence. For marriage. Three kids and a dog, no. But something to anchor him to an otherwise elusive world.
He thought Taylor wanted that, too, but the shooting seemed to shake something loose inside her.
Baldwin needed to let that all go for the time being. He had an emergency meeting to attend. Atlantic had sent word that he needed Baldwin, immediately.
His contact was currently eight hours ahead of him, and an early riser. He got into his address book and started dialing numbers. Getting in touch with his handler was a process—phone calls, codes, paging services, emails—all designed to bounce off multiple servers and systems and be nigh on impossible to track.
Atlantic wasn’t CIA, or MI-6, or Mossad, or any other official agency. Atlantic ran people from them all from behind the scenes, an agent here, an agent there. Covert missions that were performed by operatives from all branches of the intelligence services across the world on a need-to-know basis. Missions that were so top secret that they simply didn’t exist.
Baldwin finished dialing, then sat back and listened to the bells and beeps and whirrs that told him he was being routed through a secure line. The computer screen came to life, and Atlantic popped up like the Wizard of Oz, his disembodied bald head pixilated into submission.
“Good evening, M,” Baldwin said.
“Being a smart-ass will get you nowhere, my boy.”
Atlantic’s gaze was as cold and frigid as the ocean, a genetic anomaly that made his blue eyes abnormally light, like a Siberian Husky. Baldwin had finally figured out Atlantic’s heritage: he’d thought the man Belgian for a time, but moving farther east into Eurasia gave him what he was looking for. Baldwin was convinced Atlantic was a full-blood Ainu, the indigenous Japanese, who are often mistaken for Caucasians. The blue eyes were the giveaway; they couldn’t belong to any creature that wasn’t half-tied to the beginnings of the earth. Atlantic was a big man, broad through the shoulders and torso. His fingers were like sausages, with precisely trimmed and buffed square nails. Baldwin had no doubt that Atlantic could choke the life from a man with one hand while examining the other for hangnails. He was ice.
“We have a problem. One of our specialists has gone off the grid. Julius. I need you to look into it, let us know where he may be headed.”
Baldwin was a reluctant member of one of Atlantic’s more covert groups, known as Operation Angel
maker. He profiled the men and women Atlantic had on call to do wet work, the assassins tasked with keeping the world a safer place. Atlantic’s world, at least. Baldwin was responsible for determining their mental status using thorough psychological examinations and his own special talent for profiling. When one started acting up, Baldwin’s job was to predict just how bad the situation might get.
The problem was he had to immerse himself in the case, and he wasn’t sure that taking on a job of this proportion, with Taylor so strung out, was such a good idea.
“I assume you’ve already cleared this through Garrett?”
Garrett Woods was Baldwin’s boss at Quantico. He was the one who’d gotten Baldwin wrapped up with Atlantic in the first place.
“Yes. You’re teaching at a private enterprise for the week. Substituting for another profiler who got sick at the last minute. The cover is secure.”
“Fine. I’ll do it. But Taylor…if I have to travel, I’m worried about leaving her alone.”
“You have to stop worrying about that girl. She’s tough as nails. Now get to work. The files have been sent to you. I expect a briefing Wednesday morning.”
The screen went black. Atlantic was gone.
Well. Dinner was certainly going to be interesting.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Taylor went around to the back of the house, through the gate, so she could steal one last moment of peace before she went inside. She stopped midway through the yard and stood looking out over the woods. She’d seen a deer the other night, and the damn owl that had taken up residence in their river birch had hooted in alarm. The doe, soft-footed and sweet, seemed utterly unconcerned with the frantic owl and nibbled delicately at a dried corncob Taylor had thrown out for her.
Where All the Dead Lie Page 6
