Her Last Chance

by Terri Reed

  “Be safe,” she said as if she really meant it.

  For some reason her concern warmed him to his very soul. But as he drove away he reminded himself he wasn’t anybody’s hero.

  Especially not a beautiful brown-eyed girl accused of murder.

  Leah couldn’t believe that someone had tried to take her child. Little Sarah must be so traumatized. Her heart ached for all the child had suffered because of her mother. “Please, Lord, keep Sarah safe.”

  Colleen calling from the bedroom forced Leah into action.

  She helped Colleen to the kitchen table and then made a breakfast of instant oatmeal. After they had eaten, Colleen found a stack of old magazines in the bedroom and was busily reading through them from her place in the recliner. She seemed content to relax with something to do.

  Leah, however, paced the house, desperately trying to decipher her dreams while waiting for Roman to return.

  When she’d first arrived at Colleen’s house, she’d had nightmares but never could remember anything concrete when she awoke, only a vague sense of danger.

  Now, she wore a path in the carpet of the parlor, trying to figure out the significance of the bird in her dream. She closed her eyes, conjuring up a picture of the creature. Long-beaked with a wide wingspan. Dark and forbidding. Scary. She shuddered as a wave of fear crashed through her.

  Opening her eyes, her attention snagged on Roman’s computer, which he’d left on the coffee table in front of the couch. The sleep mode light still blinked.

  Tired of wandering aimlessly and needing to do something productive, she opened the lid and was grateful to find the desktop screen appear.

  She used a search engine for the description of the bird and clicked through all the sites that came up. She mentally made a list of possible birds. Condor, vulture, pelican. Then she put each type of bird into the Web search engine until she finally found one that most closely resembled the bird in her dream. The brown pelican which happened to be the Louisiana state bird.

  But all the resources stated that the bird nested on the shore, never more than twenty miles inland from the ocean. Had she been down to the seashore?

  Was this memory even connected to the murders?

  So many questions. But no answers. Frustration raised her blood pressure until she thought her temples would burst.

  She brought up the Loomis Gazette and searched for anything on her daughter’s kidnapping. She found a short piece about the need for more security around the Loomis Preschool after a devious man had tried to lure a toddler to the fence. Leah could only guess Sarah had been that preschooler.

  Not finding anything else noteworthy about Sarah, Leah reread the articles that Roman had found the night before. The first article was about Earl Farley’s death. He was found shot inside his pawnshop on the morning of December thirtieth by his wife of three years. Leah.

  Her. Again, nothing she read felt like it had happened to her.

  Leah studied the headshot photo of Earl Farley beside the article. Dark, close-cropped hair, a goatee, brown eyes and a charming smile. A handsome man to be sure, but Leah had no recollection of him at all. This was her husband? A man she’d vowed to love and honor until death.

  Had she killed him? If so, why? If not, then who did? She blew out a breath, releasing some of the tension that crept into her shoulders.

  She searched through the newspaper’s Web site and found the article on Dylan Renault and a full-length photo of the Renault heir and CEO of the Renault Corporation. He, too, was a handsome man with a killer smile.

  His hazel eyes gazed at the camera as if he were staring into the eyes of a lover. His honey-blond hair was swept back off his forehead in a casual style that belied the sharp tailor-made power suit hugging his athletic frame.

  She could have been looking at any male model for all the emotion Dylan’s photo provoked. Yes, he was attractive, but in a too-good-to-be-true way that didn’t appeal to Leah. She much preferred the natural rugged handsomeness of Roman.

  Forcing aside that errant thought, she read the details of Dylan’s death. FBI agent Sam Pierce had received an anonymous lead and found Dylan’s body on the grounds of the abandoned old Renault Plantation. He’d been shot in the back. At the time of the article the authorities had yet to name a suspect.

  Leah scrolled through to another article. This one talked about Leah’s shoe and the other bodies found in the underground railroad tunnel. There were interviews with people who apparently knew Leah. A woman named Jocelyn Pierce was quoted as saying, “This shoe only confirms that something has happened to my friend.”

  Leah shivered with dread at the accuracy of the woman’s words and because there were more dead people associated with her name. She continued to scroll through more articles, then stopped on one that identified the deceased found in the tunnels as Amelia Pershing Gilmore and Perceval Peel.

  Apparently both were locals who had been having an affair and had disappeared twenty-five years ago. The man’s wife, local boardinghouse owner Vera Peel, had confessed to the murders and been arrested.

  Relief oozed through Leah’s veins. At least she hadn’t killed those two people. That was something. But why had her shoe been found there? Had she discovered the tunnel? Had Vera Peel known and tried to silence her?

  Possibly the first time someone tried to kill Leah, but not this last attempt. Vera was in jail now so she wouldn’t still want Leah dead. Then who would?

  The headache brewing behind her eyes grew teeth, sharp and vicious. She sat back against the couch cushions and closed her eyes to rest.

  The big, black bird bore down on her. Closer and closer. Its wings spread wide, blocking the light. Its sharp talons ready to rip her to shreds. A blur of red crossed her vision. Blood? She screamed and screamed and screamed.

  Leah jolted awake. Her breath came in gasps and her heart beat fast in her throat. She dropped her head into her hands. What did the images mean?

  Shaking off the residue of her daytime nightmare, she resumed searching the Internet for anything connected to the murders. She came across a third murder. A woman named Angelina Loring had been found dead in the swamps outside of Loomis. Though the murder occurred well after Leah had disappeared, the article stated that Ms. Loring had been seen arguing with Leah Farley only days before Earl Farley’s death.

  Were the murders connected?

  Leah studied the snapshot of Angelina. Her flaming red hair struck a chord. Leah concentrated on the red images in her dream. Had the red been hair?

  Where was Roman? Leah glanced at the clock in the corner of the computer screen. Three hours since he’d left. How long could buying sundries and food take? But he was doing more than that. He was going to see if he could look at the police reports. Would there be some clue that would exonerate her? She hoped so.

  Needing to move, Leah checked on Colleen in the next room and found the woman dozing in her chair, a magazine open on her lap. Not wanting to disturb her, Leah went back to the parlor.

  On a whim she searched the Web for Leah Farley. It was strange to see her name, a name that felt foreign, come up with so many links. Most were the news articles she’d already read, but one link was to a gossip column she hadn’t seen. Murderer or murdered? the headline read.

  Leah’s lips curled. She didn’t like either scenario.

  The article was more a bio on Leah, and as she read, tears gathered in her eyes because she didn’t remember the parents who had died when she was in high school. Her heart ached with loss, yet there was no sense of self in the loss.

  She hated the not-knowing. Suddenly she felt stifled and choked. She ran out of the house and into the swampy woods, needing the fresh air. Space.

  “Oh, please, Lord, help me to remember,” she cried aloud, and then sank to her knees beneath a large crape myrtle, sobs racking her body.

  A noise behind her raised the hairs at her nape. Had the person who tried to kill her found her? Would she die here and now without knowing the
truth?

  Run!

  Fear, sharp and demanding, speared through her, staking her feet to the ground.

  Move!

  Before she could conquer the knife-edged terror enough to make her limbs cooperate, strong arms wrapped around her. She struggled, twisting and turning.

  She wasn’t ready to die.

  THREE

  “Shhh,” Roman soothed, as he tried to calm his own racing heart. “It’s me.”

  For a moment Leah froze, then sagged against his chest, her body melting so that it seemed as if his arms were the only thing keeping her upright.

  He liked the feel of her within his embrace, liked the way their heartbeats melded together. For a second he gave in to the need to just hold her, but doing so reminded him that getting emotionally attached would only jeopardize his judgment. He needed to keep a clear head and keep his heart from going soft. Guilty or innocent, she was just a job.

  He set her from him and turned her to face him. “I told you not to leave the house. You scared the daylights out of me. Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head.

  With the pad of his thumb he wiped away her tears. “Then why are you cryin’?”

  “I just couldn’t be inside anymore. I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” she whispered.

  The turmoil in her beautiful brown eyes attested to that. He couldn’t imagine not having any memory, yet in some ways, for him it would be a blessing not to have to remember the horrors of the past. “You’re not going it alone. No matter what happens, what we find out, the truth is better than living a lie.”

  “I hope that proves to be true,” she replied.

  He led Leah through the trees and across the yard back to the house. “I bought you a change of clothes and the other items you requested. The pharmacy wouldn’t turn over Colleen’s meds, so I had to go back to the house. I just threw all the bottles in a bag and brought them. Colleen is changing now. Does she need your help?”

  Sniffling, Leah nodded. “Thank you for getting everything. I’ll go see to her.”

  Roman watched her walk away, the skirt she’d been wearing since yesterday now caked with dirt from where she’d been sitting on the ground when he found her.

  Man, he’d about come unglued when he’d walked in and discovered she was missing. His first thought was she’d reneged on her promise not to run away, but then a more horrible thought had chomped through him. What if the would-be assassin had found the house and taken her?

  His heart had jammed in his throat when he’d seen her sitting on the ground sobbing. Now, he had to get a grip. She was safe and he had a mystery to solve.

  But first he had to feed his guests. He made sandwiches and put out a tray of prepared fruit he’d bought from the store.

  Going into the parlor to wait on the ladies, he noticed his laptop was open. Leah had obviously been using his computer. Good thing all of his files were password protected. Judging by the article on the screen, she was doing a little digging herself.

  Interesting.

  None of the other articles he’d read mentioned Leah had been a secretary at city hall right before she’d disappeared. Roman knew she’d worked at Renault Corporation before she married Farley and that the police considered that enough of a connection to name her a suspect in Renault’s death.

  “Did you find out anything when you were in town?” Leah asked, joining him in the parlor. She’d rid herself of the skirt and tank. The black jeans and dark red, scoop-neck T-shirt he’d bought for her fit her well. He thought he had not looked too closely at her, but apparently he had. That was a sobering realization.

  The red of the shirt deepened the contours of her cheeks and emphasized her pretty brown eyes. He could look at her all day long.

  He shook his head to give her a negative response, as well as to clear his vision. “Not much. I didn’t want to draw attention by asking too many questions. The FBI is still looking for you and the sheriff has a bad case of wanting to nail you not only on Farley and Renault’s murders, but also for the murder of a woman named Angelina Loring.”

  “I read that she and I argued on the town green a few days before I disappeared.”

  “Do you remember about what?”

  She shook her head. “No. Nothing. Though while you were gone, that same image came to me.”

  “The bird?”

  “Yes. Only this time there was a streak of red. Brighter than this shirt. I think maybe it was hair. Someone with red hair?”

  He sat forward. “Did you see the person’s face?”

  “No. Just the hair. But it wouldn’t matter because I wouldn’t recognize them even if I knew them.”

  Seeing the frustration in the tight lines around her mouth, he changed the subject. “Did you read here where it says you work for city hall?”

  “I didn’t.” Her eyebrows drew together as she peered at the text on the screen. “It says I worked for the mayor.”

  She sat back, her expression arrested with thought. “Do you suppose I saw or heard something that I wasn’t supposed to? Could that be why I left my daughter with my brother? To keep her safe?”

  The desperate and earnest expression on her sweet face did something to him. She so wanted to believe there was a logical reason why she had abandoned her child. He’d reserve caring until he knew the truth. “That is definitely a possibility. One I’m sure the feds have thought of but it’s worth our checking out. And I’d like to know why you and this Angelina woman were arguing. My gut tells me her death is connected somehow to the other two.”

  Colleen shuffled into the room with her walker. “My bread basket needs a fillin’,” she groused.

  Leah jumped up to take the older woman’s arm.

  Roman rose, liking how solicitous Leah was with the elderly lady even though the woman wasn’t actually related. “I’ve made sandwiches.”

  “Thank you, young man,” Colleen said, allowing Leah to lead her into the kitchen. Leah flashed Roman a grateful smile as he stepped closer to follow them.

  For the second time they sat to share a meal together like a family. An uncomfortable disquiet stole over Roman. Last night, he’d been too preoccupied with the situation to take note of how nice it felt to be sitting with the ladies. Now, he realized how much he missed being a part of a family.

  Colleen said grace before they started eating. After a few moments, she peered at Roman over her half-eaten ham-and-Swiss sandwich. “Don’t you have someone wondering where you are?”

  “No, ma’am,” he replied, wondering how she’d picked up on his thoughts.

  “A good-lookin’ boy like you must have a girl. Or two.”

  Roman choked on a chip.

  Leah patted him on the back. “Grandmother, that’s not very polite.”

  “I’m old. I don’t believe in wasting my breath with pleasantries,” Colleen countered. Her gray eyes narrowed on Roman. “So. Do you?”

  Somewhere between wanting to ignore the woman’s prying and the need to bust a gut with a laugh, Roman shook his head. “No, ma’am. I’m too busy with my job.”

  “Humph. Men and their jobs.”

  “Grandmother,” Leah said, her voice holding a note of reprimand.

  “My dearly departed husband, Ed, always put family first. A man should put family first. Don’t you think?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I do.” An unexpected dart of sadness shot right to his heart. He could barely remember his father. But Roman was sure he’d have been a man who put his family first. Though he’d been six when his father died in a sugar-mill accident, Roman could still picture his father’s big, burly shoulders and easy grin. His parents had been so happy even though they hadn’t had much.

  Even after his father’s death, his mother had tried to give Roman a good life. Until one fateful night…

  Colleen arched a graying eyebrow. “And just how come you’re helping us, young man?”

  He darted a look into Leah’s eyes, remembering her after her ni
ghtmare. So scared and vulnerable. He decided to give an honest answer. “I want to see justice done, ma’am. Seeking the truth is the only way to ensure wrongs are paid for and the innocent aren’t unjustly condemned.”

  Clearly impressed, Colleen nodded sagely. “I like you.”

  Oddly pleased by her pronouncement, Roman said, “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Now that I’ve had my fill, I’d like to go back to reading my magazines. I don’t know half these young stars anymore, but it sure does make for juicy reading.”

  Leah helped Colleen back to the living room while Roman cleared away their plates. A few minutes later, he met Leah back in the parlor.

  He grabbed a paper bag off the counter and pulled out a notepad, pens and a map of Loomis. Spreading the map out, he said, “I thought we’d see where all of these events took place and then after dark tonight we’d go see if we can jog your memory.”

  “Good idea,” she said, and picked up the pad. “I’ll start a list of what we know so far.”

  “Great thinking.” He watched her for a moment as she wrote, her eyebrows drawn together in concentration.

  He really hoped she wasn’t guilty because he really liked her. Liked how determined she was to know the truth, liked how she cared for those around her. If she wasn’t guilty, he really wanted to reunite her with her daughter.

  He could only imagine how confused and lost her child must feel. His mother hadn’t physically gone away when he was a boy, but she had checked out emotionally and mentally long before she died.

  Clenching his jaw against the tidal wave of fury that always rode his back whenever he thought of that night, Roman took out his BlackBerry and sent his normal weekly text to one of his buddies, Karl, still on the Baton Rouge police force. As always, Roman asked to have the latent prints of the man who was responsible for his mother’s death run through AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

  One day, the system would come up with a name. And when that happened Roman intended to make the man pay. Because, as he’d explained to Leah, justice was the only thing he lived for.