The little box where I’d kept all those emotions suddenly burst at the seams. It all came back to me, the tears late at night, the arguments. Andrea begging me to spend more time with her, to be the man I’d promised I would be. She couldn’t handle taking care of the baby alone. She couldn’t deal with my mother’s demands, her inability to care for herself. She couldn’t be everything to everyone when there was no one there for her.
I ignored her. I was so overwhelmed with my own problems—holding Matthews Shipping together in the aftermath of my father’s death—that I didn’t see how deep hers ran. I should have taken the time, but I was so convinced that if I didn’t spend all my time at the business that it would fail, I didn’t see what was right in front of me.
Until it was too late. Until she used one of my father’s old-fashioned razor blades to slice her wrists open.
“I couldn’t be what she wanted me to be. I couldn’t give her the life she needed, and she suffered for it. She would still be here if I’d been a different man. If my priorities hadn’t been fucked up.”
“How do you know that?”
Again that need to indulge in hysterical laughter filled me. I even opened my mouth to laugh and made a soft chuckling sound.
“She’s not here.”
“Neither is my mother. But her inability to survive had nothing to do with me.”
“You don’t understand.” I pushed her back, needing to force her to see what I was saying. “She killed herself, Joss. She took her own life because I wasn’t there to help her deal with the baby, with my mother, with her grief over my brother’s death. I wasn’t there to help her face everything life dumped in our laps in the course of just one year!”
“And she wasn’t there for you!” She grabbed my wrist as I started to pull away, forcing me to look at her. “It goes both ways. She couldn’t handle the pain, but you could? Why was she special? Why was she allowed to take the easy way out?”
“She’s dead!”
“But you were both in the same situation. And it wasn’t even her brother, it was yours. When were you allowed to grieve?”
My head was spinning. Her words…I didn’t want them to make sense. I’d held on to my guilt for so long, I couldn’t let it go. It was my fault. It had to be. It was the only thing that made the whole thing comprehensible.
“You can’t punish yourself forever.” She touched my face, her fingers lingering on my jaw. “You can’t beat yourself up for the rest of your life, be alone for the rest of your life because of something that wasn’t your fault. It’s not fair to you. It’s not fair to McKelty. And it’s not fair to whatever woman you were meant to live your life with.”
She touched my bottom lip, pain and sadness filling her eyes.
“I love you,” she said, laying everything out on the line. “But I won’t do this again. I went through this after my mother overdosed. I won’t go back down there.”
She reached up and kissed me, the saddest kiss I think I’ve ever experienced.
“Goodbye, Carrington,” she whispered.
I watched her go, telling myself it didn’t matter. It was for the best.
I told myself that. But I don’t know if I ever really believed it.
Chapter 21
Joss
I packed my things quickly, trying not to indulge in the tears that were a hard lump in my throat. I needed to get out of there. I could fall apart later.
I stepped out into the hallway, then stepped into the bathroom, locking myself in until I felt like I had control. I was about to slip out. I had my route all planned so that I wouldn’t run into Carrington unless he’d come up the hallway, which I didn’t think he would have. But then Kirkland—damn, he always had the worst timing—texted me.
Please promise me you’ll never get married again. All these wedding plans and tuxedos and flowers…it’s driving me insane!
Such bad timing!
I’m coming back to Santa Monica. Can you pick me up at the airport?
Sure. What time?
Don’t have a flight yet. Will let you know.
What’s up, kid?
I didn’t want to tell him. He would never say, “I told you so,” but it would still be there in the undertone. I didn’t want his sympathy. He warned me, and I didn’t listen.
Case over, was all I said.
I slid the phone into my back pocket, not really in the mood to talk anymore. I picked up my bag, slung it over my shoulder, and opened the door. I immediately knew there was something wrong.
I don’t know what it was. Everything was exactly as I’d left it. Yet, there was a vibe about the house that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I silently dropped my bag on the floor and made my way slowly down the hall, careful not to allow my sneakers to squeak on the stone floor. I pushed open the door of McKelty’s room, but I could immediately see that she was no longer in her bed. The room looked undisturbed, the child was just missing.
I backtracked, careful in my movements, and knelt beside my bag. I took my sidearm out, checking the clip to make sure it was fully loaded. Then I pulled out the extra clip.
You could never be too careful.
Slipping the extra clip into my back pocket, I made my way to the master bedroom door. It was closed, as I’d left it when I finished packing. I peeked inside anyway, wishing I had the benefit of David’s cameras as I would have back in Los Angeles. But there was no point in dwelling in regrets.
I heard voices as I turned toward the other side of the house.
An older male voice, said, “My boy’s going to prison because of you, because of your high sense of morals.”
My heart sank. The cartel boss.
I should have known he wouldn’t turn the other cheek after his son was arrested. A man like that didn’t care about a Department of Homeland Security investigation when it came to family. I might have been the same way if I was a crazy, drug-dealing career criminal.
I needed to know how many there were. I thought about the layout of the house. They were likely in the living room. That room was to the left of the hallway where I stood. There was nothing between the hallway and the living room as it opened directly to the front door. There was nothing to hide behind, no way to keep covered while I checked out the situation. However, there were windows at the back of the living room and the door from the back porch had glass panels. If I could get outside and go around the back…
I again retreated, making my way to one of the guest bedrooms at the back of the house. Thank God the house was only one level. I climbed out the window, careful to make as little noise as possible—both in opening the window and slipping out. The grass was dying, but it wasn’t that crunchy consistency yet that might have given my footsteps away. I walked slowly, all my senses hyperaware, as I walked toward the lights at the back of the house. My shoulder ached. The stitches were ready to come out, but the pain was still almost constant. Duller, but still constant.
I hoped it wouldn’t interfere with what came next.
I stepped up onto the back porch, wishing it was stone like the one on the back of Carrington’s Los Angeles home instead of wood. The porch creaked a little under my feet. I stopped, listening.
“Let my daughter go,” I heard Carrington say. “She has nothing to do with this. I’m the one who refused to help you. I’m the one who called the police.”
“Yes,” the older voice said, “but it is my son who is paying the price. And doesn’t the Bible say an eye for an eye. In this case, a child for a child.”
“No!” I heard Carrington scream.
That single syllable forced me into action. I clearly didn’t have time to indulge in recon. I needed to stop this now.
I ran up onto the porch, taking out one man who stood in the shadows near the barbecue. Another came out the back door, his gun not even raised yet. I heard gunfire inside the house, but I couldn’t be sure from where it was coming. I burst through the back door, assessing the situa
tion in less than a second. Tall, gray man in the back corner, gun raised. Young, smaller man on the right, fingers buried in McKelty’s hair. McKelty screaming. Carrington fighting with another tall man, a dark-haired man with a small ponytail.
Whom did I take out first?
The imminent danger seemed to be coming from the older man with the gun. I bent my knees, raised my gun, and fired just as he did. I hit my target, swung to my right, and fired at the man holding McKelty. Then to the left, waiting for my chance. Get out of the way, Carrington! And then…he was down.
“Are there more?” I hissed as I knelt and lifted McKelty into my arms.
She was crying. She couldn’t answer the question.
Carrington was down. I couldn’t tell if he was injured or not, but I had no time to check. I had to get McKelty out of there. I ran to the front door, pausing before stepping out, checking for more bodies. There didn’t appear to be any. And then flashing lights came rushing up the drive.
The cavalry had arrived.
***
I woke the next morning to find Ash sitting beside my bed. It took me a minute to remember where I was. An IV was running into my hand, the needle irritating the sensitive skin. I rubbed at the tape, my head pounding as I tried to sit up.
“Don’t,” Ash said, pushing my shoulder to get me to lay back down.
“Where’s McKelty? Carrington?”
“On a plane back to Los Angeles.”
I nodded, laying back and allowing my eyes to slowly close.
I remembered seeing the first police cars, the shouting as the cops confused me briefly with the assailants. I dropped to my knees, setting McKelty carefully on her feet as I did. But she wouldn’t let me go. She wrapped her arms around my neck in a stranglehold, her sobs picking up volume. One of the uniformed cops came over and tried to pull her away, but she wouldn’t allow him.
“Put her in cuffs,” another officer called.
“No!” Carrington stepped out of the house. “She’s the only reason my daughter and I are still alive.”
“And you are?”
There was a great deal of confusion, especially since there were five dead bodies in and around the house and another two men hiding in the bushes behind the house. I was on my knees for nearly an hour, my head beginning to spin before anyone even bothered to speak to me. And then my vision went dark. I’d never passed out in my life, but suddenly I was out cold, waking sometime later in the emergency room with a stranger taking blood from my arm.
“The cops responded quickly.”
Ash cracked a smile. “Amazing what happens when a Los Angeles Police Department detective calls the small-town sheriff.”
I nodded, regretting the movement as pain shot through my head.
I had sent a text to David, a code word that only someone at Gray Wolf would understand, before I dug my gun out of my luggage. I wasn’t sure it would do me much good, but I was glad it had worked.
“You tore your stitches,” Ash said. “And you took another bullet.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Just a grazing wound to the side of your head. But it looked pretty gnarly when they brought you in.”
I reached up and touched the bandage I hadn’t even noticed on the side of my head. “That one will leave an interesting scar.”
“You’ll have a headache for a couple of days.”
I shrugged. “I’ll survive.”
He took my hand and held it loosely between his. “Kirkland’s outside. He was pacing, making me nervous. I had to send him out.”
I smiled. “My knight in shining armor.”
“Your knight in tarnished armor. None of us shine much anymore.”
I nodded, forgetting the pain until it tightened like a belt around my head.
“I think I’ve earned some time off, boss.”
“You have. What are you going to do with it?”
I didn’t answer him, but my conversation with Carrington suddenly filled my mind. Here I was accusing him of not letting go of the guilt and the grief of his wife’s death when I was still struggling a little myself. Again, my hypocrisy was baring its ugly head. I needed to do something about that.
“How long are you going to keep searching?”
Ash jerked back as though I’d stung him with a needle or something.
“How did we get on this?”
“Everyone’s worried about you.”
“There’s no reason for that.”
“Of course there is. You’ve been searching for her almost as long as I went without talking. Don’t you think it’s time for both of us to move on?”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
I took his hand back in mine and squeezed it gently. “You’re always looking out for us. You pushed Donovan to take Kate’s case because you knew he needed to deal with his friend’s death. You forced David to get in a car and meet with Ricki Dennison because you knew he needed to stop hiding. You made me take this case. You did all that, knowing what we needed, what would make things better for us. What about you?”
“I appreciate your concern—”
“Don’t give me that crap, Ash. I know you too well for you to brush me off that way.”
There was anger in his eyes as he focused on me again. “I need to know what happened to her.”
“So let David help you. You know he has resources—”
“This is my problem. She was my fiancée.”
“You know what I think?” I asked, risking his wrath, but knowing it was something that needed to be said. “I think you’re afraid to learn the truth because you already know what it is.”
And, as I’d suspected, he jerked away, jumping to his feet.
“I’ll send Kirkland in.”
Yeah. Funny how alike most men were.
Chapter 22
Joss
I pulled the rental car to the side of the road and lay my head on the steering wheel. I wasn’t sure I was ready to do this, but I couldn’t imagine it was something I would ever truly be ready to do. It was so odd to be back here, to see familiar places that had barely changed in the last two years. We used to joke that nothing would ever change in this place because it was lost to time, and I was beginning to think that was true. The same convenience store was still at the turn off to downtown, the same dark, tired buildings lining the main street. Even the farmhouses that dotted the countryside were basically the same.
“You would laugh if you could see it, Esteban,” I whispered.
I slowly stepped out of the car and waited for another vehicle to pass before I walked to the side of the road where a small, white cross made of simple sandstone stood. Esteban’s family had erected a permanent memorial on the side of the road where the accident had happened. I was told that Esteban’s former students came to this place quite often to leave gifts: pencils and apples and poems. They were all things Esteban would have appreciated in the classroom. People remembered him with such affection that my heart swelled with every story I heard.
I’d been here nearly a week now. I’d visited with his family, cried with his mother, gone to Mass with his grandmother. I even went to the NICU and spoke to a few of the nurses who’d worked so hard to keep Isaac comfortable.
I’d thought this trip would be the hardest thing I’d ever done. But it wasn’t.
This…this was hard.
We went to the cemetery my first day in town. I placed flowers on Esteban’s grave, a little truck on Isaac’s. But that…their bodies were there, but their souls had gone long ago.
“You’re moving on,” Esteban’s mother said to me last night.
I nodded. “I think so.”
She touched my hand and smiled. “He’d want that.”
It was as if a weight was removed from my shoulders. I had thought she would resent my choices. I thought she’d want me to grieve her son for the rest of my life. But she understood more than I’d given her credit for.
I had chosen not to come here.
It brought up the memories of that night, of passing in the police cruiser and seeing the blood on the crushed windshield. Of all the things that happened from that night forward…that was the one thing I tried not to remember.
“I love you,” Esteban said, as the baby cried in his arms and my frustration level began to ratchet.
“Just go,” I’d said.
Those were my last words to my husband. And I stood there, watching him put Isaac in the car seat, watching him wave as they drove away, and I couldn’t even wave back. I knew, deep in my heart, that he understood. But it still didn’t take away the shame.
I touched his name on the sandstone, then Isaac’s.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I should have been more patient. I should have remembered that it wasn’t your fault that I was feeling so overwhelmed. You did the best you could.”
Being a mother was so demanding. I wasn’t prepared for all the time Isaac would require. I didn’t know that his cry would be so harsh, so arduous, and so immediate. I’d watched women in the grocery store, in the mall, saw babies lying contently in strollers and parents stealing kisses. I thought it would all be peaches and cream. I hadn’t realized that real life was never the way other’s made it look. And in my delusions, my inadequacies, Esteban just smiled and told me he loved me.
“I used to think that God had played a cruel trick, that he’d taken the wrong person. It should have been me.” I touched his name again. “You were so kind. Your students loved you so much. No one would have missed me but you.”
Tears wet my cheeks. I brushed them away.
“I did love you. I should have said it every chance I got. I’m sorry for that.” I took a deep breath. “You taught me so much, and I will be a better person because of it. I’m grateful.”
I stood there a moment longer, my hand resting on the top of the cross. Then I took a deep breath and walked back to the car. It was time to go back, time to face my life in Santa Monica with a new outlook on life.
Donovan was getting married in a week. There were all these things we had to do, rehearsal dinners and bachelorette parties and bachelor parties and showers and breakfasts and things I wasn’t even sure what the purpose was. But it was a happy time and I was so ready for something good to happen.
JOSS: A Standalone Romance (Gray Wolf Security) Page 14
