by Jan Coffey
“One more step and I’ll blow your brains out right here.” His hand was inside his jacket.
At that instant Sarah realized that there was not much difference dying now or later.
As she turned, he grabbed at her, but Sarah tore out of his grip, running as fast as her legs would take her along the line of cars that was forming.
Sarah hadn’t gone ten steps when his rough grip on her arm yanked her back. With one frenzied motion, she turned around and kicked him on the shin, wrenching her arm free.
She ran. Everything around her was a jumble of madness. Sky and road and the bay all blended together in one confused scramble.
She recognized the black car after she was already past it. As she turned, she saw Owen swing the door open hard, driving Evan Steele sharply into the center of the road.
Sarah dragged herself back along the Range Rover, trying to catch her breath as the two men struggled on the concrete highway.
“Help him!” she screamed, pushing herself away from the car and toward the fight.
Steele was armed, she remembered, panic washing through her. The sound of sirens from both sides of the bridge and the beating roar of a helicopter descending upon them, muted her cries.
Suddenly, Owen fell back against the hood of the car, and for one insane moment, Sarah looked on a scene of absolute clarity. As if the moment had been frozen in time. Steele lifted his gun, pointing it at him.
There was no hesitation in her action as she threw herself between the two men. Steele fired.
Turning, she saw the blood on the hood of the car just as the police cars came screeching in around them.
“Owen!” She ran to him, her heart in her throat, unable to tear her eyes away from the blood pumping from his shoulder.
He pushed himself away from the hood and reached for her as she came near.
“My God! Please, Owen…please don’t die…let me see…”
Sarah knew she was hysterical, but she couldn’t help herself. Her arms wrapped around him. He tried to straighten up, but she felt him putting his weight on her for support.
His voice was strained. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
“No! My God…Owen…please…!”
She pulled his bloody hand away from the wound. The front of his shirt and his sleeve were soaked and red already.
An ambulance came to a stop right behind them. It seemed to be mere seconds before medics were sitting Owen against the car and checking his shoulder. She stood and looked at the activity behind her. Already handcuffed, Evan Steele was being pushed into the back seat of a police cruiser.
Sarah turned around and found the medics laying Owen down on a stretcher. In a minute, they were wheeling him toward the back of the ambulance.
“Come with me?”
Tears were coursing down her face, but she didn’t care. She could only see his outstretched hand.
“Mad senators and armed mercenaries couldn’t keep me away.”
Chapter 34
It was well past dark when Scott Rosen pulled into the long driveway of their home. As he drew near the house, his heart sank as he noted the darkness in every window. It was just the ghost of a structure against an empty landscape. Even the lights on either side of the front door—lights that Lucy always left on when he was late—were dark.
Instead of pulling the car into the garage, Scott parked in the driveway and sat for a moment staring at the expensive home that he’d once thought would fill the void that his long hours of work had created in their marriage. He’d been stupid enough to think that the right car, and the right house, in the right neighborhood would be enough. Later on, when they’d talked about having children, he had never considered what might be required of him in raising them. In fact, it had occurred to him that it might be another positive thing in filling Lucy’s life, easing the pressure on him a little more. Guilt gnawed at him now for even thinking it.
Well, having this baby had been a feat Lucy had accomplished successfully and without him. Scott knew, with her usual courage and independence, his wife would quite capably raise their daughter without him, if need be.
But Scott wanted desperately to be part of this.
He’d had the best of intentions on Monday of making everything right. But all hell had broken loose. And here he was, two days later, and all he had seen of his wife and daughter had been glimpses of them sleeping, during the few short hours that he’d come home each night to catch some rest before getting back out there.
This morning, before he’d left the house at dawn, Lucy had come down with the baby. Without mincing words, she had told him that she was thinking of taking their daughter and going away to her sister’s house in Connecticut for a while.
Scott knew this was the first step—the first step in the dissolution of a marriage.
He took his briefcase and dragged his tired frame out of his car and headed toward the house. He wanted to fight this. He desperately wanted to win back his family. But he didn’t know how much of a chance his wife would give him after the way he had neglected her over the course of their marriage.
Instead of going in through the garage, he used his key and walked in through the front door. The house inside was as dark and empty as it looked from outside. He didn’t even bother to turn on any lights. Instead, he loosened his tie and tossed it with his jacket and briefcase on a chair. He went straight to the phone.
He was dialing Lucy’s sister in Connecticut when the sound of voices in the background stopped him. For a crazy moment, thoughts of contract killers and Evan Steele raced through his mind. But before rage and panic could translate into action, the sounds registered in his brain as coming from the television in the den.
It was too much to hope for, but Scott forced himself to dream. Turning on lights as he went, he made his way through the house.
He stopped at the sight of his sleeping wife on the leather sofa, the baby nestled on her shoulder. The light from the television cast a soft glow on Lucy’s face. A love, so long ignored, stirred and beat strongly in his chest. The baby moved, and Scott saw Lucy’s eyes open. Immediately, she spotted him.
“You’re back.”
“You didn’t go.”
Scott knelt beside her and embraced her. How do you pour the affection of a lifetime into a single embrace? You can’t, he thought, trying anyway.
“I’ve been watching the news all day. I can’t believe it. The senator…and then the helicopter shots of the bridge and the shooting. I was so afraid you were there.”
“I’m so sorry, honey…for all of this. For leaving you alone and—”
“Don’t.” She touched his lips with her hands. “I was so insecure during this last month of my pregnancy. I thought you were…maybe…that there was another woman.”
He’d never expected this. “Lucy, I’ve been guilty of many things, but cheating on you has never crossed my mind.”
“I know.” She blushed. “I was so messed up that I actually started checking on you. Checking the numbers of people who were calling you here, calling your office to make sure you were there. I think my hormones were at it, full force.”
“No. It was me. I know I’ve been acting differently with this case. I had accepted the case. I was committed to it. But at the same time, I was torn by the layers of lies that kept surfacing.” She turned her feet on the sofa, and Scott sat next to her. “I’ve never been more confused about a case than I was with this one.”
“Why?”
“Because the judge wasn’t telling the truth to me, and I knew it. He was hiding something, hiding many things. Nothing jived. He would tell me there were no problems between Sarah and him, but ten other people would tell me they’d been fighting. And as I started spending more time with him, I realized that the respect I had for him for so long had been misplaced. He was innocent of the crime he’d been accused of, but in many ways, he was responsible for much of what happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t have all the answers until today. But tomorrow morning there will be a statement made by the D.A.’s office about the complex situation surrounding these homicides. There were two people trying to engineer Sarah Rand’s murder. Senator Rutherford and Hal Van Horn.”
“But I thought Van Horn loved Sarah.”
“He had become so screwed up and bitter since his mother’s death that he decided murder was the way to get what he believed was his and get revenge at the same time. The judge had been on him for a long time, and Hal finally got tired of it.” Scott’s fingers caressed the soft fuzz of hair on the baby’s head. “Thirty years of pressure can do it to anybody, I suppose.”
“But what about Rutherford?” Lucy asked. “The news said the senator was being held for a number of murders—including his wife’s murder eighteen years ago.”
“Though it’s doubtful, that first one may have been accidental. The others were murder.”
Lucy winced as she tried to move the baby on her shoulder.
“My arm is asleep.”
Scott took the baby. He stared down at the sleeping face of the angel in his arms, and a knot the size of a fist formed in his throat.
“How was the judge involved?”
“At the time when Julia Rutherford was killed, her husband was on the cusp of making it big. He was on his way to the Senate, and the big time. He panicked and called his partner and friend, Charles Arnold, for help.”
“If it was an accident, they could have called the police and been honest about it.”
“I know. In the statement that the judge gave Ike Bosler on Monday, he claimed that this was his recommendation to Rutherford when he received that phone call in the middle of night. Interestingly enough, an answering machine had initially answered the call, but then the judge had picked up the phone upstairs. The entire conversation was taped.”
“And Arnold drove to Philadelphia that night?”
Scott nodded. “He says by the time he got there, Rutherford had gotten himself together. He’d even sought the help of Andrea Beck, a young lawyer who worked for him and Arnold. Anyway, the judge’s story is that the other two overrode his advice, and he ended up being the third person in a conspiracy to hide the accident—except he had his suspicions that it may have been a murder instead.”
“He could have turned Rutherford in. He had the tape.”
“I don’t know what stopped him. Maybe it was a ‘good old boy’ thing, or maybe Rutherford had something against him that would affect his standing with Avery. I don’t know. But he claims he didn’t realize the extent of his mistake until Andrea Beck was killed. He immediately suspected Rutherford. Then, to save himself—in case Rutherford had other ideas—he told the senator that he had a tape and a letter explaining everything. And he also told him these things were tucked safely away where, if anything were to happen to him, they would be turned over to the police.”
“So Rutherford backed off.”
“For eighteen years.”
Scott went on and explained how Sarah mistakenly taken the letter, how it had ended up in his own briefcase without his awareness and about how Owen Dean and Sarah had gotten the letter back.
“But how did Rutherford know that the letter was missing?”
“After his wife’s death, the judge told Evan Steele that there was a certain important letter missing—without divulging its contents—and asked for his help in locating it. Steele had been paid by Rutherford for years to keep a close eye on his old partner. Steele passed on the information to the senator, who used the occasion of Avery’s death to question the judge about the safety of those documents. Everything pointed to Sarah Rand. That started a chain of actions in which Steele hired people to find the letter and kill her at the same time.”
“But what about Andrew Warner’s murder? The news said that was connected.”
“We don’t know that yet. Dan Archer thinks Steele’s men tracked Sarah’s car to the Warner property, and thought they were hiding her. If Mrs. Warner survives, maybe we’ll find out for sure.”
“Why did they have to go through all that at the senator’s mansion today? Wasn’t the tape incriminating enough?”
“It would have been, if they had it. The problem was that Sarah called Steele on Sunday evening, telling him that she had misplaced a letter and she needed to get to the office. Then Steele put two and two together and figured the letter might not have a tape in it. He guessed that the tape might have been with the old files in the storage facility. So he torched the place.” His fingers caressed the baby’s soft hair. “This was the same night I got a call from the D.A.’s office. They were already sweating what I would do about the mishandling of this case. They told me that Sarah was alive, and that the feds were planning a sting operation where everything would get cleared up. Because of the delicacy of the operation, they asked me not to reveal the info to anyone, no matter what their level of involvement with the case.”
Lucy turned on the light beside the sofa. “And to think all these people seemed so normal to me. I must be a horrible judge of character.”
“No. You’re not.” He reached out and stroked her cheek. “They fooled everybody.”
“Now what’s going to happen to the judge?”
Scott shook his head. “Nothing. He made a deal with the D.A., and he is home free.”
He looked down at his daughter’s face as she began to make little noises of complaint.
“What is going to happen to us?” he asked quietly before lifting his face and looking at his wife.
She touched the cleft in his chin. “Nothing, so long as you make a deal with your wife and daughter never to shut us out again. Never to forget us. Never…”
He leaned over and kissed her mouth. “Whatever your conditions…I’ll sign.”
Chapter 35
Owen was dressed and ready to go when he heard a soft knock on the partially open door. A second later, Sarah peered inside the hospital room.
“May I come in?”
“You’d better.” He couldn’t help himself from smiling at the change in her. She was wearing the antique earrings that had once been her signature accessory. Her hair was back to her own natural color again. The jade-green suit matched the color of her eyes, serving to bring out the brilliance of them. “Wait a minute, do I know you?”
Before she could answer, he had taken her hand and was pulling her toward him. She wrapped her arms around his waist, giving plenty of room for the sling holding his arm in place.
“I thought I was escorting a sickly creature out of here today. Wounded, weak, someone who needed to be taken out in a wheelchair.”
“You’re back to being a blonde. The Sarah I got to know was a brunette. Are you sure I know you?” he asked again, drawing her closer.
She kissed him deeply.
“Well, do you?” she asked, pulling back.
“I’m not sure. Want to run that by me again?”
She laughed and was about to kiss him again when a knock on the door made her leap out of his embrace. He smiled and held on to her arm.
Joanne Emerson poked her head in the door. Tracy Warner’s older sister had come to visit Owen a couple of times during his stay at the hospital, and he had made a point of introducing her to Sarah the day before.
“I heard you’re on your way out.”
“That’s right. How is Tracy?”
“She is awake.”
Owen was speechless for a minute. As recently as last night, she’d still been in a coma.
“I told her you were here. She wants to see you.”
Her second comment stunned him more, for Owen knew that Tracy, on her best day, never had any desire to see him. He looked at Sarah.
“I’ll wait here.”
~~~~
Although the bullet wound in his shoulder had nothing to do with his legs, an attendant escorted him to Tracy’s room. Before going in, he was warned that she’d been awake for only brief intervals this morni
ng, and that he shouldn’t be surprised if she drifted off in the middle of his visit.
Owen entered with all the apprehension that he’d had as a young boy meeting the woman for the first time. Unlike that time, however, when he’d been suffering from his mother’s death and from fears about his future, this time a different kind of concern was gnawing at him.
He wanted to let go of the past. He wanted to let go of the hard feelings. He wanted to forget whatever had been. Whatever should have been. He held no grudge against anyone, and he wanted no one holding any grudge against him. A tall order, considering the history the two of them shared.
Monitors and IVs still crowded the wall by her head. Tracy’s eyes were closed. Her age was more pronounced than he’d ever noticed before. He walked next to the bed and, on an impulse, placed his good hand on top of hers. Her skin was cold. She appeared to be sleeping.
Just as Owen thought there was little chance of her awakening now, he felt the slightest movement of her fingers beneath his. He wrapped his hand tighter around hers.
“Tracy?”
The eyes were slow to open. When they did, he wasn’t really sure that she was focusing on him.
“Tracy. It’s me…Owen.” He felt the muscles in the fingers tense, and he cursed himself for coming up. She had enough to deal with, right now. “I’m sorry. I misunderstood. I’ll go away.”
He paused before letting go of her hand. “Before I do…I just want you to know that I am sorry for what happened to Andrew. I’m sorry for what you’re going through now. I’m…well, I’m also sorry for all the heartache that having me around caused you in your marriage.”
“I don’t know what Andrew was about. I don’t know what he wanted from me. And I don’t know why he went to such lengths to make life miserable for you, knowing how you felt about me. I want you to know that even before…before all this, I was sick and tired of the game that he was continuing to play. To him, everything was your fault or my fault, never his own doing. In a way, I think he wanted you and me to continue holding the other one responsible, hating each other, so he would never have to face up to his own mistakes. His own failings.”
