Cord sighed, ran his cuffed hands through his still-damp, shoulder length locks. For the first time he began to see the seriousness of it all. “Look, I had five whiskeys. Up to about three hours ago, I hadn’t had a drink all week.”
“And when you do you don’t know when to stop.” Nick let out a sigh of his own in frustration. “I care about you, Cord, so does Jordan. You and I, we’ve been through a lot together, something we shared while we trained, and once we got to Iraq that bond got stronger in war. But I need you to understand you can’t treat people like crap wherever and whenever you want. We understand you’ve had a rough two years. But until you decide we aren’t the enemy…” Nick’s voiced trailed off as he started to pace up and down the wooden porch.
“I had a momentary lapse in judgment and made a mistake. Everyone’s acting as though…”
Nick lost it then. “Getting drunk isn’t the only issue at play here. And you know it. Jordan and I understand you’re grieving. And we’ve formally offered our support by giving you a job and a place to live to get you through this rough time, but you have to decide just how far downhill you want to go. You have to take that first step to change your life. We can’t do it for you. We won’t babysit you anymore, Cord. Think about it while you spend the night in county lockup. Get your act together or don’t bother coming back to Promise Cove or the farm.”
“Let’s go.” Ethan took Cord by the arm and pushed him back toward the cruiser. To Nick he said, “He’ll get a hearing in the morning, probably see the judge on call for the weekend. I’ll make sure they order him to talk to a psychiatrist as a part of his release. Until then what should I do with him?”
“That’s up to Cord. Let me know what he decides.”
As soon as the police car disappeared down the driveway, Jordan stepped out onto the porch beside her husband. Six months pregnant, due in June, Jordan rested her head on Nick’s shoulder and ran a hand over her nice, round, baby bump. “Tough love is always difficult.”
“So you think I was too hard on him?”
“I didn’t say that. You’ve tried everything else. Who knows, maybe he’ll come to his senses sitting in a cell. It won’t be the first time though. Maybe we should’ve gotten tough a lot sooner. You sounded as if you were practicing for when we have teenagers.”
Nick paled. “God, I hope not.” He placed a hand over the one that rested on her belly, rubbed gently in a circular motion and said, “I’m not putting this little guy or Hutton in jeopardy by hoping Cord finally sees the light enough to change. He’s a ticking time bomb. Trying to commit suicide woke me up. Hell, I didn’t even know he had a gun. I knew he was messed up, but... What if Keegan hadn’t been around to pull him out?”
“Don’t think like that. Keegan was practically raised out on Smuggler’s Bay. What is the likelihood she’d be right there when Cord went in and needed help?”
“I don’t even know how she got the guy to shore. She must be a helluva swimmer.”
“I don’t know that much about her really. She was still in college when Scott first brought me back here. Then when Scott left for Iraq, I wandered around town one day and found myself inside the center. Mary Fanning gave me a tour. But let’s face it, both Keegan’s grandparents had their hands full with so much to do. Even then, they were well into their seventies so I’m certain they were preparing to hand off the reins to her to run the place. The only other time I was inside the center, Hutton was about a year old. I took her to see a couple of baby seals they had at the time. Noisy things, but Hutton loved watching them play.”
Nick grinned at that. “I forget that checking out a couple of seals passes for entertainment in Pelican Pointe.”
Jordan laughed. “Don’t knock it. When it’s gray and chilly and you need something to pass the time just to keep from going crazy, you’ll get creative. Do you think Cord’s crazy, Nick?”
“I honestly don’t know. They say PTSD can do a number on a person. I know it did on me. But that was before I met you.” He gave her a quick kiss and went on, “What if he’d done something like that over at the farm, Jordan? What if you or I had gone into the barn or the house and found him…like that?”
Nick shook his head at the thought and couldn’t finish. “I’ll have to call Ben Latham and let him know. Maybe he can make a trip to Santa Cruz while Cord’s locked up, talk some sense into him. God knows, I’ve tried—and failed.”
She laid a hand on his heart. “It’s okay, you’re upset and you’re afraid for your friend. But really, Nick, I doubt Cord will be locked up that long. I think Ethan’s determined to get him some help. Ethan might want to be a famous author one day, but he takes his duties here as deputy very seriously. He cares for the town.”
“True, but I’ve also got a responsibility to you, to my family. I don’t think Cord would hurt anyone but then I didn’t think he’d get desperate enough to try and kill himself either.”
He leaned over kissed her cheek. “Besides, thinking about our kids growing up, they’ll be perfect and not give us a day of distress.”
Jordan wheezed out a laugh. “You just keep thinking like that, daddy. Let’s not spend time dwelling on the terrible twos or what we have to look forward to during their teen years down the road. With kids, you do your best and hope it’s enough for the right outcome. The same has to be true for Cord Bennett. Do you think he’ll get out tomorrow?”
“Probably. I think Ethan hopes spending the night in the drunk tank will wake Cord up. But whatever time he has there, Cord will have some decisions to make. The ball’s in his court.”
Two hours later Cord had been fingerprinted, booked and stripped. He found himself dressed in an orange jumpsuit and locked away in a solitary cell under suicide watch. Cameras hung above his bunk, watching every move he made, which included taking a piss.
He spent the first couple of hours in rage mode, angry with the world, which of course did him little good. But goddamn it, he was not wallowing in self-pity. For God’s sakes he’d lost someone he loved in a violent shooting. Hell, he’d watched her not twenty feet away as she lay dying, watched as she had taken her last breath.
And what the goddamn hell had he done about it?
An image of his beautiful Cassie as she was in life smiled down at him. Lying there drunk and sick on his bunk, he wanted to believe, no, he needed to believe her appearance was real. Instead of the camera, he saw her angelic face.
“What have you done to yourself, Cord? You don’t even look like the same man I fell in love with. What’s with the hair? If you were back in Leesburg…Daddy would give you grief about wearing it that long and insist you get it cut.”
Cord dismissed the criticism as he always had. “I miss you. I want you back. You were the only good thing that ever happened to me in my whole miserable life. You know that.”
“Yes, I know that. But I’m gone now, Cord. You’re still here among the living. Get on with your life. You need to stop wishing you were dead and find what you’re missing. It won’t be me. It will never be me. But that’s okay. I’m happy here, Cord. And remember, you made me happy while I was there—with you. Life was too short for me but you, you still have a chance at what you want. Don’t blow it, okay?”
Cassie started to fade away.
“Don’t go. Don’t leave me alone again.”
“I’ll always be with you, Cord.” She placed her hand over her heart. “I’ll be there in yours. Always. But you need to let me go now. You have a good life, Cord. Don’t stop looking for possibilities. Your destiny was never to be with me in Virginia. Your destiny’s here, Cord, not where you started out, not in San Diego, but in that little town. Put down roots, Cord. Okay? Don’t blow it. You always have a tendency to blow it.” “No, no, don’t go. Cassie!”
Whether it was Cassie’s ghost, the image of her as an angel or something else, it dissolved into nothing.
Surrounded by raw smells of sweat and urine with a little stale cigarette smoke thrown in for good measur
e, he wished he’d never left the farm. He thought of the tidy rows of the vegetables he tended, the cherry and apple orchards just beginning to blossom and realized he wanted more than anything to be outside.
He missed the earthy smells of hay and cows, the views of the Pacific Ocean from the cliffs. He longed to see the stars, to sit outside in the old porch swing that creaked no matter how many times he oiled it during the week.
He decided then and there if he ever got out of this place, he’d do whatever Cassie wanted him to do to straighten out his life. He never wanted to think of Cassie disappointed in him.
Closing his eyes, he drifted off to sleep and dreamed about a woman for the first time in two years who was not Cassie Spearman.
Tall, she stood at least five-eight with a mass of titian hair and a spattering of light freckles across the bridge of her nose. She looked a lot younger than his thirty-four.
She had saved him.
Her eyes were so huge and azure, like pools of gleaming sapphires. Penetrating, is the way he would’ve described them. They had bored holes in him. If he thought about it long enough, he might even describe them as glaring. They had shot daggers at him when she’d caught him in a lie. Those eyes of hers had shone coldly blue, then furious.
But her lips, she’d had the softest lips. He might not remember her mouth on his but he could imagine what it felt like.
She’d breathed life back into him.
Her name was Keegan. That’s what Nick had called her. What kind of woman had a name like Keegan anyway? She’d acted as though she actually cared—cared about a stranger, a worthless piece of shit like him who wanted to end his useless existence.
God. He did need help.
He had to wonder if it was too late to make that change everyone kept talking about. He had to hope it wasn’t.
Cord sat up on his cot and looked around. Jesus, he scrubbed a hand over his face and remembered now that Ethan Cody had locked him up, caged him, like one of the barn animals at the farm.
His eyes scanned upward to the camera overhead.
Okay, Bennett, you need to get real serious about convincing these people you are one hundred percent sane and very, very sorry for ever taking a short walk into the ocean.
Chapter Four
Three thousand miles away, locked inside Sandhurst State Mental Hospital, Robby Mack Stevens worked on his escape plan.
For the past year and a half he’d done everything he could to convince his own lawyer, as well as the mealy-mouthed judges he’d stood in front of using his hang-dog persona, along with a variety of head doctors, that he was a schizoid.
What fools they all were for believing that. Robby Mack was as sane as the rest of America.
Though they’d sealed him away in a mental ward and put him on meds he didn’t need and that he often spit out, Robby kept up his ruse. He religiously attended his anger management classes three times a week, even though it pissed him off to do so. Old Robby Mack was no fool. He made sure he maintained his cool throughout the sessions. He even made sure he pretended remorse and contrition.
The suckers always wanted a decent member of society to show regret and remorse for what they’d done. Robby knew the drill—by heart—and was more than willing to play his part.
At least he wasn’t forced to wear an orange jumpsuit at Wallens Ridge State Prison near Big Stone Gap where they were prone to putting murderers in solitary confinement and throwing away the key. Nope, the con he’d been running for the past eighteen months had prevented that from happening.
Here at Sandhurst, Robby Mack simply bid his time in this crap of a hole-in-the-wall until he found a way out. He’d been scouting the best possible way off the floor each and every time they made him take the walk down the hall to spend a little more time with the shrink.
It was only a matter of time until he found a way out. He did, after all, have someone willing to help him.
Blonde bimbo, Terri Lynn Cranston was a little on the fat side for his tastes, but she didn’t need to know that, at least not yet, not until he was done with her. A born charmer, the six-foot-tall Robby liked to think he could talk his way into any woman’s panties, on any given day of the week. Once there, as long as he could bend her to his will, women were of use to him. Terri Lynn was no exception. The woman was desperate for some attention. And ol’ Robby Mack intended to be around to give her whatever she needed every time she needed it.
Whatever sob story worked, Robby would hone in on the poor woman’s weakness, manipulate her to do whatever he wanted then keep her on a tight tether. Women needed guidance and a schedule. That’s what they understood. Without it they were adrift in a world not suited for the weaker sex.
As the orderlies walked him to an elevator that would take him down to the first floor and to the therapist, Robby once again checked out the layout. Thanks to chunky Terri, she had given him a better idea of the hospital’s design.
He intended to make the most of her generosity.
He figured it had to be his trusting, gray eyes. Women seemed to always comment on his eyes. But Robby knew. His eyes hid his dark, cold side, the predator side like a shark.
It wasn’t his fault he had never been able to connect to the pain of other people, especially females.
He shook his head. A guy could only put up with so much before he had to take a stand. Women seemed to forget their place in his world. They were there to do a man’s bidding—his bidding.
And in getting women to “bend to his thinking” department, Robby always won first prize. Even locked up, he could recognize a woman suffering from low self-esteem from two miles away. No one could ever accuse Robby Mack of not knowing how to play on a woman’s insecurities like a drum.
Oh, yeah, he was excellent at telling a woman like Terri Lynn what she wanted to hear. Robby Mack was a sweet-talker who could and would get a woman to believe every word out of his lying set of lips.
Women were so gullible when it came to believing his compliments.
All you had to do was make it sound sincere and bam—you were in like Flynn.
In the meantime, Robby Mack would do what he did best.
He would work plump Terri Lynn Cranston into a frenzy believing he had been wrongly accused, wrongly charged so that she would continue to help him plan his escape from this nasty godforsaken place.
Because when he got out, he intended to make his freedom count.
He might’ve put an end to that bitch Cassie Spearman, for that he could be proud. But as soon as he could, he intended to go after more, much more. He’d only taken out six that day. If given the chance, he knew he could do better. He’d go after that bastard, the one who had gotten away. He wanted, no, he needed to finish what he had not been able to do eighteen months earlier.
Because Cord Bennett had survived, he intended to remedy that fact. And in that, Terri Lynn had already come through for him.
He knew exactly where the son of a bitch lived now. But first he had to find a way out of the loony bin.
Chapter Five
At five-fifty-five the next morning, a guard woke Cord up by sliding a plastic tray with runny scrambled eggs and stale toast through an opening in his cell door. The whiskey from the night before had his brain fuzzed and pounding like someone had decided to hammer some sense into his hard head.
He rolled over on the uncomfortable cot in time to see a very large cockroach crawl across his breakfast. The insect pushed the urge to barf over the edge. He barely made it to the metal toilet in time to throw up.
Of course there was nothing in his stomach but nasty-tasting, alcohol-induced bile.
More determined than ever to get out of this place, he bided his time with the pounding in head getting worse by the minute. He would’ve given five hundred dollars for one lousy aspirin.
Four hours later Ethan appeared at his cell door with a piece of paper in his hand. Cord waited impatiently as the door slid open and realized he was never so glad to see a friendly face
than now.
“Come on, Cord. The judge is waiting.”
“What does that mean?” he asked as he got in step beside Ethan as they walked down a long row of cell doors. “Listen, I’ll agree to anything to get out of this place. Anything, Ethan. I’ll go to AA. I’ll go to grief counseling, just get me the hell out of here.”
Ethan stared at him, did his best to determine if Cord was playing him again or whether this time, the man might be serious about getting his life straightened out. Deciding maybe spending the night here had been well worth it after all, Ethan nodded and told him, “Good, because I hear this judge is a real hard-ass when it comes to suicide attempts in a public place carrying a gun. If you’re lucky, she might just kick your ass all the way back to Pelican Pointe.”
Judge Helen Harrington was indeed a no-nonsense lady. But lucky for Cord Bennett, she was also willing to waive confinement pending the evaluation from a qualified psychiatrist.
Her lecture on the preciousness of life made sense even though he only caught about half of what she said. Either he was way too hung over, or too humiliated.
It might have been the still-pounding ache in his throbbing head that caused his lack of focus. But whatever the reason, he got the gist of her speech. He willingly agreed to see a board-certified psychiatrist, ten sessions to start which meant twice a week trips back and forth to Santa Cruz. At that particular moment though, he would have willingly agreed to anything just to get outside. So he nodded his head at the appropriate time.
Just when he thought she was done with her sermon though, Harrington hit him with attending mandatory AA meetings. She even assigned him a sponsor. Reading through his paperwork, wearing her glasses, the judge didn’t even look up when she calmly asked, “You’re from Pelican Pointe, right?”
She didn’t wait for Cord’s response but instead flipped a few more pages in his file, made a few more notations and then added, “Ethan Cody says here that Patrick Murphy heads up the Pelican Pointe chapter and that Pete Alden has agreed to be your sponsor. The AA chapter there meets at the community church Sunday afternoons at three o’clock.”
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