Close to Home

by Jenna Bennett

  “Rafe did.” With the gun hidden in the bedclothes. He hadn’t been quite as vulnerable as he’d looked.

  “So they were both here together, and both of them had guns, and Jorge shot my mom and my dad shot Jorge?”

  In a nutshell, yes. David didn’t need to know that his biological parents hadn’t actually been working together, and hadn’t even seen each other for more than twelve years before that night. It would serve no purpose to tell him that Elspeth had been there looking for me, so she could kill me. Much better to let him believe, as he obviously did, that his biological parents were some sort of crime-fighting superhero team.

  “That’s right.”

  “Wow,” David breathed, looking around, eyes shining. I was glad to see that he seemed to feel a little better. The blood and the deaths had been replaced, at least in his mind, with heroism and sacrifice.

  “Your parents are pretty worried about you,” I said gently. “Your mom and dad. Ginny and Sam.”

  David glanced at me, opened his mouth, and seemed to think better of speaking.

  “Your mom called me yesterday to ask if I’d seen you. I don’t think she realized you were actually trying to get down here.”

  “I wanted to see it,” David said, looking around. “Where my real parents were from.”

  “Sam and Ginny are your real parents. They’ve been there for you every day of your life. And I’m sure if you’d asked, they would have driven you here. Elspeth was only seventeen when you were born. That’s just a few years older than you are now. And she didn’t tell Rafe about you, but trust me, even if he’d known, he wasn’t in a position to take care of a baby back then.”

  David blinked. “Why not?”

  I hesitated. How much did I tell the kid? Who did I owe loyalty to here? And what would I have wanted if he was my child? Biological or adopted?

  In the end I went with the truth. “He was eighteen. And when you were born, he was in prison.”

  David’s eyes, so much like Rafe’s, widened. “Why?”

  “That’s something you’re going to have to ask him yourself.”

  “He’s dead,” David said. “Isn’t that what you told my parents? I mean, Ginny and Sam?”

  He looked miserably torn, poor kid. It couldn’t be an easy situation to be in. And it was just about to become more complicated.

  “He’s outside,” I said.

  David shot a startled look at the cloudy window. “Outside here?”

  “Right outside the window. If you want to meet him, this is your chance. He’ll probably have to go back to Atlanta tomorrow.” If not sooner. I wondered whether he’d told anyone he was leaving, or whether Jorge Pena had just dropped off the face of the earth. What was it Rafe had told me earlier? That Jorge had taken a job?

  “He’s outside here?” David repeated, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. I smiled.

  “Come on. It’s time to go, anyway. Your parents are worried sick about you. Your mom thought you’d been kidnapped; I bet she hasn’t slept all night. And I have to call Detective Grimaldi and tell her that we’ve got you so she can call off her APB. There’s been a lot of people looking for you.”

  I kept up a chatter of conversation while I steered him down the hallway toward the kitchen and the door to the outside. He listened and didn’t speak, but he kept twisting his neck from side to side, taking in the inside of the trailer. It might have been dark by the time he arrived last night, so this might be the first chance he’d had to look at everything. Or maybe he was like me, astonished by the way some people live. From what little I’d seen of David’s home, it was nicely maintained, in good repair, in good taste—everything Rafe’s childhood home hadn’t been. I wondered if David regretted his eagerness to meet his biological father now that he could see for himself where Rafe came from.

  But no, when we got to the kitchen door and pushed it open, David was first through, looking eagerly around him. “Where is he?”

  “The car is parked on the other side. He’s probably there.”

  He loped off, without even looking back at me. I scurried after.

  Chapter 13

  Rafe was leaning on the hood of my car: legs crossed at the ankles, arms crossed over his chest, and eyes hidden behind dark glasses. Except for the leather jacket, which he hadn’t needed the first weekend in August, he looked very much like he had that morning outside Mrs. Jenkins’s house four months ago, when I saw him for the first time after twelve years. Just like then, that aura of danger, of him being someone you wouldn’t want to tangle with, was very much in evidence, and David’s steps faltered for a second as he rounded the corner. Mine had done the same back in August, I remembered.

  “Is that him?” His voice was hushed.

  I nodded. “That’s Rafe.”

  David swallowed audibly before squaring his shoulders and starting forward. I watched Rafe unconsciously do the same: straighten up and take a steadying breath before removing the sunglasses.

  David stopped a few feet in front of him. “I’m David Flannery. Are you my dad?”

  Rafe shot me a look over David’s head. I nodded. “Yeah,” Rafe said, his voice husky and a little unsure, like I’d never heard it before, “I guess I am.”

  I turned away, and if I had to sniff back tears while I reached for my cell phone, I don’t think that’s anyone’s business but my own.

  “Mr. Craig is fit to be tied,” was Tamara Grimaldi’s greeting to me when she answered the call.

  “Really?” I answered. “Why is that?”

  “Turns out your boyfriend walked off the job yesterday. Just up and left. Said he’d be back, but he had something he had to do first.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I said.

  “You’re having his baby, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t talk about that!” I shot a nervous glance over my shoulder. It wasn’t as if Rafe had any way of being able to hear me, let alone hear Grimaldi—he was twenty feet away, talking to David—but just the fact that it was said out loud when he was anywhere in the vicinity was enough to throw me into a tizzy.

  “Ah,” Grimaldi said, sounding satisfied, “so he is with you.”

  “Of course he is. You called him, didn’t you? You must have known he’d drop everything and head for Nashville.”

  She made a noise of assent. “So he’s there, but you haven’t talked about it yet?”

  “We’ve had other things to do.”

  “I can just imagine.”

  I flushed. “Not that. How can you even joke about that, at a time like this?”

  Her voice changed, turned serious. “You two looking for David Flannery?”

  “We’ve already found him.”

  “Where are you?”

  I told her we were in Sweetwater.

  “He made it all the way there?” She sounded impressed.

  “He made it to Damascus first, to Elspeth’s house. He ate dinner there. Then he made it here, to the Bog. I think he may have borrowed Elspeth’s bicycle for the last bit of the trip.”

  “Resourceful kid,” Grimaldi said, and then seemed to think better of it. “Wait a second. He’s there? Where three people were shot two months ago?”

  “I found him standing in Rafe’s room looking at the blood,” I said. “And I know it’s supposed to be a secret that Rafe’s still alive, but I couldn’t lie to him. Not then. He had to know that at least his biological father survived. It looks like a small massacre took place in there.”

  Grimaldi took the news in stride. “I doubt the Flannerys move in circles where Mr. Collier’s survival will be big news.”

  I wouldn’t be too sure about that, but obviously not for the reason she thought.

  “We’ll drive David home,” I said. “We’ll probably leave here in a couple of minutes, and it’ll take us the best part of an hour and a half to get back to Nashville, with morning rush hour coming on. Would you call and tell his parents he’s OK? I’d rather not do it myself.”r />
  “Gonna spring Mr. Collier on them without warning?” Tamara Grimaldi asked.

  “I think it’s better than telling them I lied before. If they knew their son was bonding with his biological father right now, it’d only make them worry.”

  “That’s true. Sure, I’ll call them.”

  I thanked her. “By the way, I forgot about it in the excitement of David disappearing, but I spoke to the waitress at Sara Beth’s Café yesterday, and she said Sheila was on her way to a doctor’s appointment when she was there on Friday. With an obstetrician. Someone who delivers babies.”

  “I know what an obstetrician is, Ms. Martin,” Detective Grimaldi said. “Did your new best friend happen to catch the name of the obstetrician, as well?”

  “She didn’t. But there are only a handful of them within ten or fifteen minutes of Sara Beth’s. Almost half are together at St. Jerome’s Hospital. Which also happens to be where David Flannery was born.” I explained the situation with the lack of adoption papers and the fact that Sam and Virginia Flannery were listed on his birth certificate as David’s parents when they had admitted to adopting him.

  “That’s interesting,” Grimaldi said. “I’ll look into that.”

  “I’d appreciate it. Thank you.”

  “So you’re pretty sure he’s Mr. Collier’s son, I take it?”

  “It’ll take DNA to prove it,” I said, “but yes. You should see them. They look so much alike it’s uncanny.”

  “Maybe I’ll drive out to the Flannerys myself, just to have a look. And to make sure everything’s all right. There might be some fireworks when the parents realize their son’s father isn’t dead after all.”

  “We’ll see you there,” I said, and hung up.

  I ended up in the backseat on the way back to Nashville. Rafe drove and David took the passenger seat, while I curled up in the back. I missed most of their conversation, just caught bits and pieces every once in a while as I drifted in and out of sleep. Rafe had woken me up at an ungodly early hour, and with what was going on inside me, I needed lots of extra sleep anyway. It’s not easy, creating a newborn from scratch.

  When we pulled up outside the house on Pennywell, both Ginny and Sam were in the driveway waiting for us. So was Tamara Grimaldi, next to her unmarked SUV. And when the Volvo stopped and David opened his door and got out, his parents both converged on him. Or rather, they started forward and then stopped, perhaps fearful of overwhelming him. For a moment, all three of them stood there, just staring at one another, before David took a step forward. It broke the ice, and Virginia and Sam both fell on him, laughing and crying, touching and patting and making sure he was all right.

  I opened the door on my side and climbed out. Rafe did the same, and Tamara Grimaldi wandered over to join us. All three of us stood in silence and watched the reunion. After a minute, the Flannerys moved, as one intertwined, three-headed, six-legged creature, toward their front door.

  They were halfway there when Sam broke away and turned back. Ginny and David hesitated, and David stopped to look over his shoulder. His gaze locked with Rafe’s for a second, and I could feel the connection between them crackle. Then Ginny tugged on David, and he turned back to his mother.

  Sam stopped in front of us. “Thank you.” His voice and face were sincere. The remark may have been addressed to both of us, but he looked at Rafe, and when he stuck his hand out, it was Rafe he intended it for. It was obvious he’d figured out who Rafe was; the expression in his eyes when he looked at Rafe—this grown-up version of his son—was half awed, half nervous.

  Rafe hesitated for a second before taking the proffered hand. “Thank you,” he said, and I’m sure Sam caught the implication, just as Rafe had obviously caught Sam’s. There were a lot of layers to this conversation. Sam nodded once before he turned to follow his wife and child inside the house.

  After two steps, he turned back to me. “Thank you for your help, Savannah. We’ll call you, OK?”

  “OK,” I said.

  The door closed with a firm click, a sort of final statement, shutting us out of their lives, at least for the time being. I snuck a peek at Rafe. He was watching the closed door, his face impassive, but his eyes simmering with a mixture of emotions I wasn’t sure I could name. Anger? Regret? Sadness? Loss?

  “Thanks for bringing him back,” Tamara Grimaldi broke the silence.

  I turned to her. Rafe did too, and after a second his lips curved in amusement. “Afraid I’d take him and run?”

  Grimaldi shrugged, a little sheepishly. “The thought crossed my mind.”

  The smile turned into a grin. “Mine too. But I ain’t that stupid. I wouldn’t get far before some cop pulled me over and hauled my ass back to jail.”

  “They wouldn’t,” I said. “He’s your son.”

  “Parents get convicted of kidnapping their own children all the time,” Tamara Grimaldi informed me, and Rafe added, “You don’t know that, darlin’.”

  He was right, I didn’t. Not officially. It would take DNA to prove it. But I knew. We all did. Including Ginny and Sam. With the resemblance between them, Rafe couldn’t have denied David if he’d wanted to. Hopefully, after this, the Flannerys wouldn’t refuse them the opportunity to get to know one another. The relationship would probably end up being more big brother/little brother than father and son, but at least Rafe would learn to know the child he never knew he had.

  “So where are you two off to now?” Grimaldi asked, sharing a look between us.

  I glanced at Rafe. When he didn’t immediately say he had to hit the road to get back to Atlanta, I said, “I need food soon, or I’m going to pass out.”

  “Breakfast at the Pancake Pantry? My treat.” Grimaldi smiled.

  I waited for Rafe to object. When he didn’t, I said, “Sounds great.”

  “I’ll meet you there.” She headed for her car. I walked around mine to the passenger seat, leaving Rafe to get back behind the wheel.

  He was quiet on the drive to the restaurant in Hillsboro Village, and mostly quiet during the meal itself. If he noticed me eating like I hadn’t seen food for days, he didn’t comment. Grimaldi didn’t either, although she arched her brows at me. I shrugged. There was nothing I could do about it. The tiny life inside me was insistent on being fed, a lot.

  We couldn’t talk about what Rafe was up to in Atlanta—TBI undercover investigations need to be kept undercover until they’re completed—and I didn’t want to talk about David Flannery or—God forbid—my pregnancy, so we ended up talking about Sheila and what was going on in Detective Grimaldi’s investigation instead. It was perhaps strange conversation for a meal—at least the waitress seemed to think so; when the words ‘the last murder I was hired to do’ passed Rafe’s lips, she even stopped making eyes at him—but my life had become about a lot of strange things, I reflected. A year ago, you wouldn’t have found me sharing breakfast with a homicide detective and a convicted criminal, discussing a current murder case. All in all, I thought I liked my life better now, even if it wasn’t the sort of life I’d ever thought I’d have.

  “You haven’t done any murders,” I said in response to Rafe’s statement.

  He shot me a look. “How d’you know? Ain’t more than a couple hours since you asked me if I’d helped my mama kill her daddy.”

  Tamara Grimaldi arched her brows.

  “You said you hadn’t. And if you didn’t kill Old Jim, and you didn’t kill Billy Scruggs,” the man he’d gone to jail for beating up, “I don’t think you’d kill anyone else.”

  “You think those two are the biggest bastards I’ve come up against in my life, darlin’?” His smile was amused.

  “No,” I said; he had, after all, come up against Perry Fortunato and Jorge Pena, both of them bigger bastards. Or in Perry’s case, at least crazier. Jorge was just your average, run-of-the-mill hired killer. “But I think you can control yourself better now. You’re not twelve anymore. Or even eighteen. And besides, you told me you’ve never killed any
one other than in self defense.” Or defense of me.

  Rafe shrugged. “To get back to what I was saying: the last murder I was hired to do was killing a pregnant woman. She’d slept with the wrong guy, one who had a wife, and the wife wanted to get rid of the girlfriend before the husband got any ideas of leaving. Seemed there was a bit of money at stake.”

  “Oh my God,” I said, putting my fork down with a clatter, “what did you do?”

  He glanced over. “I didn’t kill her.”

  “Of course not. I didn’t think you had.”

  “The TBI told her what was going on. I went to the apartment and fired a shot into the wall. Then I left again. The ambulance showed up and took her away, with a sheet covering her face. They drove her to the hospital, where she was declared DOA—”

  “Dead on arrival,” Grimaldi translated. She had put down her fork too, and was listening with her chin in her hand and an interested look on her face.

  “—she was moved to the hospital morgue, where they put a toe tag with her name on the toe of a Jane Doe, and our girl left through the back door to a safe-house in another part of town. The TBI is putting together evidence to charge the wife with murder for hire.”

  “Sounds like you’re having fun,” Grimaldi said with a grin, one Rafe returned.

  “It has its moments.”

  “I told you earlier,” I said, “Sheila wasn’t cheating on Dix.”

  Grimaldi looked taken aback, and I turned to her. “Rafe suggested it. That she slept with the wrong guy and he killed her when she got pregnant. He suggested it might be Todd Satterfield. Or maybe you think Dix did it?”

  Rafe shrugged. “It happens.”

  “I know it does,” I said, “but not in my family. My brother didn’t kill anyone. Nor did Todd. Much as you might wish him to.”

  “A man can hope,” Rafe said.

  “So what are you two planning to do next?” Grimaldi wanted to know, sharing a look between us. She was sitting on one side of the booth, Rafe and I side by side on the other. Every once in a while his thigh would touch mine under the table, and heat would curl through my stomach, even though I wasn’t sure he was even aware of doing it. I’d always been hyper-aware of Rafe physically, long before I admitted to anyone, even myself, that I was attracted to him, and now I felt like the entire side of my body was prickling.