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Contents:
Prologue
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
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Prologue
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Tallahassee, December
Staring at the house and the empty driveway, Abby abruptly braked the car. Tires squealed against brick paving stones.
Home.
But not hers, never hers. His, always.
Looking at the house in the darkness, she couldn’t draw a deep breath.
The engine idled, a low, comforting sound promising escape, freedom. But not yet. She had to do something first. Wet with sudden perspiration, her hands slipped over the steering wheel.
To the side of the brick house, arcing gracefully into heavy night, the driveway curved toward the garage.
“I’m tired, Mommy. I want to go home.”
So did she. Abby couldn’t look away from the house she’d lived in for ten years. She’d once called this place home, but she didn’t have a home. Home meant safety, security. There was no safety for her in that elegant brick mansion.
Clambering half out of his car seat, her son grunted sleepily as he nuzzled her neck. “Want to go in. Now.”
“Shh, sugarplum. Just a minute.” She curved her palm over the satin-smooth skin of his cheek. “Mommy’s thinking.”
“Don’t think.” He rubbed his nose against her ear. “Quit thinking. No more thinking.”
Abby sighed. He was more right than he could imagine.
“I’m tired and I have to go potty, Mommy. Now.”
She was tired, too. “All right, honey.” Her eyes fixed on the velvet darkness, she kissed his cheek.
Branches of the oak trees standing sentinel on either side of the driveway stirred in the gusts of wind-driven rain.
Home.
Christmas lights sparkled in iridescent dots along the slope of the roof and outlined the windows where the yellow glow of electric candles gleamed. White lights twinkled thickly in the green-black of the wreath on the heavy front door. Rain dripped from the evergreen branches of the wreath and merged into silvery rivulets down its surface.
“C’mon, Mommy. Please.”
Eyes searching the darkness, she reached for the gearshift, hesitated.
Slapping back and forth, the windshield wipers blurred the scene in front of her. Gleaming in the fitful light of the Christmas decorations, the wet streaks shimmered and glittered.
Home.
In a sudden chill, she shivered, and the hair along her arms lifted. One hand on the wheel, she rubbed her arm. Everything looked the same. The automatic timers had switched the lights on.
She was being silly. Stupid. Of course she was. Blake wasn’t expecting her. She’d been very careful not to let him find out what she’d discovered. She’d come back for insurance, for the tapes that would keep Blake out of her life, out of Thomas’s life, from now on. Blake couldn’t possibly know. He couldn’t read her mind. He wasn’t in there, waiting, like some malevolent spider spinning a web. Blake did not know, she repeated silently, reassuring herself.
But goose bumps tightened again, and she couldn’t stop the shivers running over her skin.
“Mommy, I have to pee.” Chubby fingers plucked at the neckline of her blouse.
“Shh, squirt. Sit down.” Still watching the shadows of the trees shift across the driveway, Abby patted his hand, held it.
“I got to go inside. Now.” He pulled free.
“In a second, sweetie, I promise.”
Her four-year-old son draped himself urgently over the console separating them and rose up on his knees to her eye level. Resting his chin on her shoulder, he stuck his face around in front of her, yawned and fixed her with wide, sincere eyes. “I am not kidding, Mommy. I really am not.”
“I know, sweetie. I know. Please, just a minute, and then we’ll go in.” She lifted her foot off the brake and edged the car forward toward the back of the house and the garage.
“A second is not as long as a minute.” He frowned. “You said a second.” His voice rose with temper and exhaustion. “Why we gotta wait a minute now?”
“Because.” She scanned the shrubs growing close to the long, low windows.
He scowled at her. “I don’t like because.”
“I don’t either, sweetie-pie.” Her heart was pounding, and she didn’t know why. She let the car roll slowly toward the end of the house, around and toward the wide loop that faced the garage doors.
“Well, I’m not gonna wait,” he insisted, and plopped over to the passenger side, crawling out of the seat belt.
Hooking a finger in the back of his jeans, she held him in place as he turned to stare at her over his shoulder. Sticking out his bottom lip, he glared at her as his voice dipped into mournful. “You are ruining my very nice trip. Mommy. This is not a happy day for me anymore.”
“Thomas, sit down! Now!” Her voice rose in a slide of panic. Arms folded, he sat while fat tears slid down his cheeks. “I am going to have an accident, Mommy, and I am way too big. And it is not my fault.” Like the rain on the front door, tears wobbled, slipped into shiny paths down his face. “Daddy will yell at me.” He hiccupped.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, sweetie. I’m sorry,” she whispered, watching him, watching the darkness gather and press in close to the garage door. Slipping the gearshift into Park, she wrapped one arm around him and pulled him as close as she could, flipping the console back with her free hand as she settled him on her lap. “Daddy’s not going to yell at you.”
“He will. You know he will.”
“I won’t let him,” she said, fierceness sweeping through her as she brushed back almost-baby-fine hair that stuck up in cow-licks and stubborn clumps.
“You can’t stop him.” Forlorn, unshakable truth shone in her son’s blue eyes. “He will yell.”
“No.” Abby pressed her chin against the top of Thomas’s head. “C’mon, sweetie, you drive.” Anger licked through her, chasing away the edgy fear. Thomas stuck a finger inside the bottom loop of the wheel and held on to it as she added, “We’ll go inside and you can hop out and use the bathroom off the kitchen. It’s close. No problem, honey. No problem whatsoever,” she said, and tried to soften the grimness.
“No problem,” he echoed, unconvinced.
Then, tomorrow, they would leave and never come back to this house she’d come to loathe.
Thomas’s small, sturdy body rested against her breasts as she slipped him beside her and engaged the gears, creeping forward as she tapped the garage-door opener. The doors remained closed. She pressed the black rectangular box again.
Thomas’s head was damp with sweat and tears as he lay against her, and Abby was near tears herself, fury and fear mixing in a strong brew that gave her energy after the long drive back to Tallahassee from Naples. She ran her finger along his silky eyebrow. “Shh, sweetie, don’t cry, you’re not going to have an accident. Mommy will take care of everything. Don’t worry,” she crooned as the garage door finally rose creakily, lurching up to reveal the dark expanse of the garage.
A wink of the tiny red lights of the sensor that kept the door from crashing down onto anyone who interrupted the beam, and then they glowed again, steadily, familiarly.
But the overhead lights controlled by the remote remained off. She slapped her palm against the door opener again, and the door shuddered a quarter of the way down and stopped, blocking the entrance, but leaving plenty of room for the car. When she tapped the opener again, the door remained in position, some chip in the circuitry having a snit fit. “Damn,” she whispered. “Stupid electronics.” With her palm still flat against the opener, Abby glanced down at the top of her son’s head, where the brown s
trands puffed up with her words.
“The garage is dark. I don’t like it dark.” Thomas shifted closer.
“It’s all right, honey. See, the headlights make it bright enough.” She didn’t like going into the dark garage, either, but she’d learned that turning into a mom seemed to require a certain level of bravado, and these ripples of unease were nothing more than the product of a tired brain and an overactive imagination. What kind of mother was she, anyway, to let her fear become Thomas’s? “We’ll pretend we’re explorers, going into the cave of Rani Mani Spumoni in search of the lost jewels of the empire.”
Thomas twisted to look at her. His hand rested on the steering wheel, and his eyebrows were stitched together in puzzlement.
She was talking too much.
She’d leave the car lights on. The battery wouldn’t run down in five minutes. She was overreacting. If she didn’t have to go into this house one last time, she wouldn’t. She was prepared to walk away from everything.
Except what she’d returned for. Insurance.
Steering the car with one hand while she kept the other around Thomas, she drove forward. Against the far wall as she entered, the car’s twin beams threw the darker shadows into prominence, increasing her vague sense of uneasiness as the shadows seemed to move and shift closer in spite of the headlights.
Edging the four-door sedan gingerly into the large, everything-in-its-place expanse, she disengaged the gears, punched the opener again and bent down to retrieve her purse, leaving the engine running. The heavy machinery of the door rumbled above her.
It happened so fast.
She reached to turn off the engine. Her finger brushed the smooth metal of the steering column as she reached.
Suddenly, the back doors of the car flew open, the car rocked with the weight of two enormous shapes and she shoved Thomas down, down, down, under the wide shelf of the dashboard and forced the gear lever into Reverse, slamming her foot on the accelerator. The transmission shook, whined, as the car careened toward the slowly closing garage doors.
“What theâ?” The shape behind her bobbed forward, thrashed backward. His breath was a hot wash of garlic and beer against her as he snarled, “Get her, Markey! The crazy bitch’s going to screw upâ”
Flailing with one hand at the masked figures, Abby tried to steer the car through the door. Her purse slid off the seat and back under the dashboard, lodging under the brake pedal.
In wide, manic swings, the sedan crashed backward through the garage door, metal runners screeching out of their moorings as the weight of the door pulled them with it, the car roaring free of the garage and toward the oak tree she could see in the rear-view mirror. She tried to control the wild whip of the wheel, tried to straighten the car, but she didn’t have room, didn’t have time, didn’t have a chance.
“Damn! Now, Markey! Get her, I said. Damn!”
The car spun left, right, lurched sickeningly as she finally caught one of the spokes of the steering wheel and ducked.
A pop.
Nothing more.
Such a quiet sound.
The rear bumper of the car shrieked on the edge of the tree, slewed sideways, slamming the rear of the car into the raised wall of the patio.
She fell against the wheel, her hand dangling into the space where her son cowered.
There was no pain. She wanted to laugh, but she couldn’t summon up the energy. No pain, only this warm trickle of blood into her eyes and this enormous lethargy.
But she had to move.
Thomas needed her.
From a distance, she heard the slow thump of her pulse in her ears.
From a distance, she sensed the movement of the car as the men lumbered out of it.
Close, close as her heartbeat, she heard Thomas’s plaintive whimper. “Mommy?” His small fingers closed around her hand, and she clung to him with all her strength. “Mommy? Wake up, Mommy.” He pulled at her hand. “Wake up, Mommy, it’s not all right.”
Thomas needed her. She had to get to Thomas. Thomas. She could hear her son calling as rain shivered around her, whispered against the expensive metal skin of the car.
“Mommy?”
He was so far away. She tightened her grasp around the tiny tickles against her palm. Hold on, Thomas, she thought she said. Mommy will take care of you. I promise. Hold on.
And then there was only silence and the far-off glitter of Christmas lights twinkling in a vast, empty blackness that swooped down on her.
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Chapter 1
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Palmaflora, June 30
He’d been watching her for five days. Until today, she’d always been alone. But today, she had the kid with her. That was what he’d been waiting for.
Hell of a job.
Sighing, Royal hoisted the brown-bag-enclosed bottle to his mouth and settled back on the hot sand. Allowing his gaze to drift, he let the burn of cheap whiskey slide down his throat. He could have bought a more expensive brand. He hadn’t. He’d wanted the burn, the bite. Pain was real.
Settling the bottle back into the sand against his hip, he looked out across the slick-as-glass Gulf of Mexico. If he squinted, he could see a sailboat far out in the gulf, its sails glowing dark red in the setting sun. His chin itched and he scratched it, flaking sand and salt crystals into his lap. Somberly, he contemplated the sand caked on his wet jeans, the smear of grease down one pants leg.
How the mighty had fallen.
Smudging the grease stain, he glanced back toward the woman. A sliver of long, pale legs and silvery bathing suit gleaming in the sunset, she was moving aimlessly up by the pavilion in the distance, the kid tagging along beside her, darting away. A large, floppy straw hat with its crown wrapped in a purple-and-pink ribbon hid her face. Every now and then, she turned her head casually in the child’s direction, keeping him in sight, the frivolous brim sagging and drooping with her movements.
Royal was surprised. He’d expected her to keep the boy glued to her. Her guard was down. No hurry. He had all the time in the world. The idea amused him at some basic, self-mocking level. He could see the humor in what he’d become.
A man with no place to go. No place to be.
Except he’d taken Blake Scanlon’s job, so he might as well see it through, not that he gave a good damn either way it turned out. Wasn’t his problem. Unless Scanlon decided to take the debt out of his hide. In spite of Armani-suited fastidiousness, Scanlon struck him as a man who’d take his pound of flesh if anyone cheated him.
Royal smiled. Maybe he’d just set a spell longer and watch the moon come up. Maybe go for a swim. Swim out as far as he could into the moonlight, past the sandbar and out to the mythic World War II submarine supposedly submerged offshore. To hell with the sharks. To hell with Scanlon and the three hundred thousand dollars he owed him. What could Scanlon do? Kill him?
Did he care anymore?
Apparently, Scanlon thought he cared. For three hundred thousand dollars, Scanlon thought he’d bought an expensive recovery agent. Well, shoot, why not? Three hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money to most people. Royal watched the woman and child in their slow movements through the aisles between the tables at the pavilion. That much money could make a man do almost anything. If he cared.
So, did he care? That, as the melancholy Dane had implied about life in general, was the question.
From the corner of his eye, he could see the kid’s head vanish around a corner, the child following the silvery shape of his mother.
Tipping the bottle to his mouth again, Royal swiped the back of his hand across his lips, tasting sand and the coppery tang of blood. He probed the cut on the inside of his mouth with his tongue. “Damn!” He winced. The corner of his bottom lip was still swollen.
Gingerly, Royal touched the surface, where the skin at least remained intact. Pete, the old reprobate barkeep at Surf’s End, had called the cops on him last night. The cops. There was a lovely bit of irony. And if Royal had had a m
oment of shame when one of his ex-buddies answered the callâwell, what difference did that make, either?
He’d smiled and laughed as they’d hustled him out and driven him home, waving to them as they strode stiff backed to the squad car. “Thanks, boys. So glad to see you’re ever ready to serve and protect. Sure would hate to see my tax dollars wasted.”
“Shut up, Royal.” Beau Bienvenue had placed one square palm flat against Royal’s back and hustled him down the path, not speaking until they stood at the bottom of the stairs in front of Royal’s house. There, dark eyes glittering with anger and disappointment, Beau glared at him and muttered through clenched teeth, “You gotta quit screwing up, man.”
“Really?” Royal leaned against the wooden railing of the steps. “Nope, don’t think so. No point to it, Beau. That’s what you gotta understand. Screwing up’s become my modus operandi.” He felt his mouth stretch into a smile, the muscles aching with the effort, his lip stinging. “And I’m so good at what I do.”
“This is stupid, man. It’s a waste. I don’t understand what in God’s name is going on with you, but it’s a damned shame.” Beau slapped his hat against his leg. “Hell, Royal. I hateâ”
“Ah, but I don’t. And that, after all, is the whole point. I don’t care.” Giving his most brilliant smile, Royal turned and walked steadily up the stairs.
“You’re not drunk, are you?” Beau’s soft question was puzzled, a slide of sound in the still night broken only by the low throb of the squad car’s engine. “You fooled me. I thought you were staggering-blind drunk.”
“Not yet.” Not turning around as he heard Sandor rev the engine, Royal added, “But, Beau, the night’s still young, and I’m a determined man. Hope springs eternal.”
“Go to hell, then. See if I care.” Beau stomped back down the steps, his back rigid with indignation.
With that, Royal swiveled on his booted heel to face the young cop who’d been his partner for a while, who’d idolized him until scandal had exploded in Palmaflora’s police department, trapping Royal in the debris of rumor and fact. “Don’t care, Beau. I don’t. It’s easier, not caring. Don’t waste your time caring about me. Go make Palmaflora safe, Beau.”
RENEGADE'S REDEMPTION Page 1
