It was Travis, his voice soft and worried in her ear, bringing her back to the present. She tried to shake off the horror that had engulfed her, then realized she was already shaking so hard it was a lost cause. She met his troubled gaze, her eyes wide with wonder.
"You didn't do it," she whispered.
"I know. So did you, remember? You knew, in spite of everything." A note of pride, of joy, crept into his voice beneath the worry. "Come on, snap out of it, honey."
"Don't believe it!" She heard Richard vaguely, through the mist that still clouded her mind. "You fell right into his bed, didn't you? You bought it all. I suppose he told you he loved you, and you believed him."
Nicki shook her head, clearing away the last of the vivid memories.
"No," she said softly, "he never told me that."
She felt Travis stiffen beside her. "I never—?" He stopped, realization of the truth of her words striking home. "Oh, God, I thought you knew—"
"Of course I knew," she said. She turned wide, pained blue eyes on him. "But I can see why you'd think I didn't. I haven't been very smart at all, have I?"
"Shh, it's all right. It doesn't matter anymore."
She reached up to touch his face. "God, Travis, you're so strong. How can you love me? After the fool I've been?"
Travis stared at her, sensing that the shock in her face, the pain in her eyes, went far beyond the events of this night.
"Nicole—"
"You make me sick," Richard burst out. "Look, he's guilty, we caught him at it, and I'm calling the sheriff."
"Please do, Richard."
Nicki's voice was ice over the heat of anger, and it made Richard take a step back from her as she rose to her feet. Slowly, using the hand she subtly offered in support to steady himself, Travis rose beside her. Carl took one look at his face, dropped his bat, and took off running.
"Stop him," Nicki said to the guard. The man didn't question her, but turned and went after the sprinting Weller.
Richard looked uneasily at them both. "Look, maybe we don't have to call the cops. We can work something out." He put on his best wheedling tones as he turned to Travis. "You just sign back your percentage, and we'll forget everything."
"No," Nicki said before Travis could speak, "I think we'd better call the sheriff."
Richard gaped at her. "You want to call them?"
"Yes."
"I don't understand," Richard said, that whiny undertone creeping back into his voice. "I do. At last."
"What are you talking about?" Richard sounded bewildered now.
"I'm talking about," Nicki said coldly, "who really killed our father."
Nicki crossed the room to stand in front of the wide expanse of glass, staring out into the morning light where the white curls of foam marched in long lines onto the beach. She sensed his presence, felt his heat close behind her before Travis spoke, handing her a small glass filled with a rich brown liquid whose sweet aroma tickled her nose.
"Martha's private stock of Amaretto. You need it."
She took the glass and sipped, the honeyed warmth burning its way down her throat to her stomach, where it expanded and made her muscles shiver with the outer chill.
"Sit down, Nicole. Before you fall down. It was a long night."
She did, had to, and when he dropped down beside her, she looked at him through eyes bright with moisture. "I should be taking care of you," she said, looking at the cut on his head he'd done little more with than clean and cover with an adhesive bandage.
"I'm fine. You're the one who's been through the wringer."
"How—" Her voice broke, and she had to swallow and blink rapidly before she could go on. "How can you say that? My God, Travis, we took two years of your life from you!"
"It's over and done with. It doesn't matter."
"But it does! God, I can see now, it's just what I should have expected from Richard. Why didn't I see it then, I should have known—"
"Honey, you were just a child. Too smart for your own good, but a child nevertheless. Believing me would have meant hanging your own brother."
"And hating my own mother," she said bitterly.
"Nicole—"
"She lied!" It burst from her on a despairing cry. "She supposedly cared about you, I thought she loved you, and she betrayed you! God, I wish she was alive so I could—"
"Nicole, no." He reached for her, pulling her over next to him across the soft cushion of the couch.
"Yes! I hate her for what she did!" She pulled her knees up and huddled against him like some wounded wild creature burrowing for shelter. He just held her, gently, crooning soothing words she barely understood. It was a very long time before she spoke again.
"Travis?"
"What?"
"After … the accident … they told me you never said another word about it, after that night. That you never tried to defend yourself. I think that's why I … thought you must have really done it." She looked up at him, eyes wide and dark. "Why didn't you fight it?"
He gave a mirthless chuckle. "A Halloran against the almighty Lockwoods? Who was going to believe me?"
"But the police—"
"By the time they got there, I was the only one there." He looked away suddenly, his voice dropping. "I tried to get him out, Nicole. I really tried. But—"
"I know you did. They said they found you trying to…"
When she trailed off, he took a deep breath and went on. "Next time I looked up, Rich was gone and the sheriff was there. I told them I hadn't been driving, but once the deputy recognized me, it was all over but the paperwork."
And the betrayal.
He didn't have to say it, Nicki knew it, and it stung viciously. The fury welled up in her again.
"Especially when my sainted mother swore before God you'd been driving. God, I will never forgive her for that."
"Shh," Travis soothed, gathering her close. He stroked her hair, then, with the backs of his fingers, her cheeks. He felt her tremble, and held her silently until the quivering stopped. When at last he spoke, his voice was as soft and soothing as his touch.
"Don't hate her. She did what she thought she had to do, to protect her son."
"Richard," Nicki grated out in repugnance, remembering how her brother had crumbled when the truth had come out. How he'd blubbered out his confession, both about the long-ago accident, and the assault on Travis. Carl had told him about their late arrival that first morning, looking, he'd said, like they'd been making love all night. Carl, of course, had a much cruder word for it. Richard panicked, thinking that the sister he'd always envied for her quick mind and the man he'd wronged so long ago were going to unite against him. He'd told Carl to get rid of Travis once and for all, and to hell with how he did it.
"Forget Richard," Travis told her gently. "He doesn't matter. He never did."
"No," Nicki agreed unexpectedly, "he doesn't. All he did was run true to form. But my mother… All that preaching about what it meant to be a Lockwood, how we had to be better… And then she … she … I hate her! I hate her, and I wish she was alive so I could tell her!"
"Nicole, don't. You don't mean that."
"I do!"
"You might think so now, but later you'll understand—"
"I'll never understand!"
"That's what I thought. Before I knew … how far someone will go for someone they love."
Nicki sat up sharply, cutting him off. "How can you sit there and defend her, after what she did to you?"
"Because," he said simply, "her hell was worse than mine."
"How can you say that?"
Nicki's voice was incredulous.
He shrugged. "I got out of my jail. She never did." Nicki frowned, puzzled.
"She had to live with what she'd done. The kind of woman she was … it ate at her, every day of her life."
"How can you know that?"
Travis gave her the look of a teacher whose cleverest student hasn't yet made the final leap of logic. "She left me h
alf of Lockwood," he said gently.
Nicki gasped, realization and chagrin filling her eyes. "God, I didn't— How stupid can I be? Of course…" Then, with a sudden return of anger, "Did she really think that could make up for what she did?"
He shrugged again. "It was the best she had."
"It isn't enough," Nicki exclaimed bitterly. "She only did it out of guilt. She lied, she pretended to care about you, then threw you into hell … and for Richard!"
"Nicole—"
"I wonder if anything she ever felt was real. If she ever really loved anyone. If she ever really loved me—"
"Stop it! You know she loved you!"
"Do I? I thought she loved you, too, but it was a he. She never felt a thing, or she couldn't have done it. I don't think she ever felt anything, for anyone. She didn't love you, and she didn't … love me. It was all lies, all of it…"
She looked at him, agony darkening eyes that were more devastated than he had ever seen them. It ripped at him with glowing hot claws, deep into that last solitary place he'd kept sheltered and hidden for so long. He couldn't stand it. He'd tried to keep from destroying her image of her mother, and had wound up doing something even worse, making her doubt that mother's love.
He knew what he had to do, as surely as she knew he didn't dare do it. But he had to. He couldn't bear to see her like this, not his brave, beautiful Nicole. He had to do it, and—God help him—trust that she would understand. Trust. Such a small word. Such a damn small word to strike such terror inside him. But he still had to do it. Even if he lost her forever, he had to make that look in her eyes go away.
He made himself move, made himself cross the room. His hands trembled as he reached for the book, the rich green leather feeling oddly cool beneath his unsteady fingers. He took out the letter and turned back. Nicki was staring at him, as if something about the way he was moving had penetrated even her raging grief and anger.
"Travis…? What is it? You look…"
"Scared? You bet I am." It was barely audible, but it was taking all his strength to come back to her, to hand her that folded paper. Nothing in the two years of hell he'd spent in prison had prepared him for this kind of fear.
He handed her the letter. "What your mother felt was real," he said, not quite able to hide the tremor in his voice. "Don't ever doubt that. Or that she loved you."
Nicki unfolded the letter slowly, her eyes never leaving Travis until it was open before her. She began to read, and Travis knew his time of joy was down to moments. When he heard her gasp, he knew it was over.
She raised haunted, tortured eyes to him. "She wrote this … all this time you had this … you could have shown me … but you let me go on thinking you were…"
With a strangled cry she stood up, the letter fluttering to the floor. He took a step toward her. She whirled, and ran out of the room. He raced after her, but by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, all he could hear was that echo of the slamming front door.
She couldn't have gotten far, he told himself. She hadn't taken her purse, so she had no cash, or even identification. And she'd been on foot. Not, he thought grimly, that that had stopped her from disappearing thoroughly.
Panic welled up inside him as he tried to quash the image of never finding her, never seeing her again. Tried to quash the little voice inside him saying that he'd been a fool to think that anyone could really trust him, that someone might really love him. His mother, his father had both loved their alcohol more than him. Emily Lockwood had loved Richard so much more she'd sent him to hell. Why did he think Nicki might be different?
The world seemed forbiddingly silent, except for the sound of some kids shouting over an odd, rolling sound coming from just out of sight around the corner. Maybe, he thought. He started that way at a run.
The sound was composite rubber wheels on plywood; a large, ingeniously built skateboard ramp was taking up most of the dead end of the narrow cul-de-sac. The group of five boys, all about fifteen, he guessed, stopped their racing, flying stunts and eyed him suspiciously.
"You guys been here long?"
"What's it to you?" the tallest one asked, glaring at him from beneath a fall of blond hair that reached almost to his nose.
Travis recognized that defiant tone. Halloran, meet yourself, he thought as he took in the boy's defiant stance.
"I'm not going to rat you off for cutting school, if that's what you mean."
The boy looked taken aback, then a grin flashed across his face. "It's a holiday."
"Sure. It's, er, National Ground Squirrel Day, right?"
The grin again, genuine this time. "You got it."
The others laughed, and Travis felt them relax. "I just need to know if anyone went by here in the last few minutes."
"Why? You lose somebody?"
"God, I hope not," Travis muttered.
"Uh-oh." The boy chuckled. "Must be a girl, huh?"
"Not just a girl. The girl."
For a moment the boy looked oddly mature, as if he'd taken on years with Travis's frank, man-to-man admission.
"She about my height, great bod, hair about Timmy's color there?"
Travis glanced at the boy who groaned at the attention; fiery strands of dark copper lit his hair in the sun. His eyes shot back to the blond.
"Yes. Exactly."
The boy jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Toward the beach. A while ago."
Travis let out a sigh of relief. If she was on the beach he'd find her, somehow.
"You tick her off or something? She looked pretty stressed, man."
"I," Travis said fervently, "am the biggest idiot this side of the Pacific." He started to move, then stopped, glancing once more at the cleverly designed, curving ramp. "You build that thing?"
The boy nodded. "I drew it, cut the pieces, and Timmy helped me put it together."
"Remember Willow Tree."
"Huh?" The boy looked at him blankly.
"That's my company. When you need a job, come see me."
Then, leaving the boy gaping after him, he took off at a run toward the beach.
It didn't take long for him to realize that a couple of miles of running every other day did not condition one for long treks in soft sand. He turned to walk closer to the water, where the sand was damp, and harder. And empty, except for a few morning walkers.
He kept on, the number of people dwindling the further he went. His feet were wet, and the bottom of his jeans halfway to his knees, a souvenir of his misjudgment of an incoming wave. He was thinking of all his misjudgments in general when he spotted the lone figure.
Something about that figure tugged at him, something about the way it was huddled in the sand made him think of a slim, trembling body drawn up next to his, seeking shelter. He stopped, staring at the windblown hair, and how the sun lit it with bright fire.
Then he was racing up the beach, forgetting his tired muscles. He was half afraid she would run, but she never even looked up as he dropped to his knees beside her. He searched for the words to say, to make her understand, but all he could manage was an inane, "I'm sorry."
She looked at him then, and he saw the traces of tears on her cheeks. "About what? That I know now that you could have proved your innocence since the day of mother's funeral?"
"I didn't—"
"I went through hell, Travis. I felt like I was being torn in half. I knew … thought I knew you'd killed my father, but I still couldn't stop myself from caring about you. I felt like I was betraying my father's memory, and my brother, the only family I had left, every time I even talked to you."
"I know."
"But most of all I was confused. I didn't understand why my mother had done this thing. She had to know how hard it would make things for me. I even wondered if she'd been angry at me, at the end, for something I didn't know about—"
"Please, don't."
"You could have saved me all that, Travis. You could have just shown me that letter, and I would have understood."
> "I… Oh God, Nicole, I'm sorry. I wanted to, at first. Hell, I wanted to shove it in your face that first day, under the tree. I wanted to force you to read it, just so you'd stop looking at me like I'd crawled out from under a rock."
"Why didn't you? It would have saved so much pain…"
He sighed, and shifted in the sand to stare out at the ocean. Finally, in a voice barely audible above the steady sound of the incoming surf, he spoke.
"Pride, Nicole. Damned, stupid pride. I told myself you should have known that I hadn't killed your father. That if you didn't believe in me then, you sure as hell wouldn't now. Especially if you hadn't changed your mind in fifteen years."
Travis let out a compressed breath. "I was wrong, then. I wanted you to trust in me. God, you knew me better than anyone in the world, but you still believed I was guilty. Knowing you believed it hurt more than anything else. I didn't realize … maybe I was too young to realize that I was expecting too much."
"Too much?"
"You were only fourteen. To expect you to jettison your brother and believe your mother a liar, when you'd just lost your father…" He shook his head.
"You wanted me to trust you … but you didn't trust me enough to show me my mother's letter. Or to tell me about Willow Tree."
He dug a hole in the sand with a taut fist. "I just didn't realize … how unfair it was."
"You want to talk about faith and trust? Well, remember, I loved you even when I thought you had been responsible for my father. And when I still suspected you might be behind the accidents at Lockwood."
"I know that. God, I know."
"I loved you so much that none of that mattered. But that still wasn't enough, was it?"
Pain twisted his face at the deadly finality of her words. "Nicole—"
"I had to believe you on faith alone to satisfy you."
His jaw tightened, but he held her gaze steadily and nodded. "I admitted that. I know it was pure pride. But when you've been down to none at all, pride is a precious thing."
His words made her eyes sting with more tears. He saw it, and it seemed to give him the drive to go on.
"And later … when it started to seem like you didn't hate me so much after all, I was afraid to show it to you."
SUSPICION'S GATE Page 23
