by Kylie Brant
And now it appeared as though she’d deceived herself yet again. Because it was becoming glaringly apparent that she couldn’t be near Dare McKay for any length of time without her defenses crumbling, one tiny bit at a time. A man who could so easily dismantle her careful guard, thread his way past her resistance, was more dangerous than any criminal she’d ever prosecuted. More dangerous, at least, to her.
Wearily she raised her head. Thunder rumbled ominously. The lone woman passing by on the sidewalk sent a wary glance skyward and increased her pace. With conscious effort, A.J. pushed aside the emotions that troubled and taunted, and reached for that cool logic that served her so well. The memory of how McKay could shatter it so easily was a troubling thought better saved for another time.
Movements jerky, she got out of the car and approached the hospital. She needed to have herself firmly under control when she saw her mother. When she was alert, Mandy could be incredibly attuned to, and affected by, the emotions of others.
Nodding at the nurse on duty, she walked by without pausing to visit. When she got to the doorway of the room, her mother looked up, and the recognition on her face sent waves of relief crashing through A.J. It had been like this for too long. A constant roller coaster between hope and despair. Even once she’d convinced her mother to leave Rich Jacobs, especially then, she’d never been completely certain what she would find when she went home. A sad, broken woman huddled in a corner of a room, weeping for the man who’d beaten her, nearly killed her. Or one calmer, but gradually slipping farther from reality.
“I painted today,” Mandy told her. “Sister Jean wanted me to paint the fruit, but I painted a picture of her instead. Do you want to see?”
A.J. admired the painting, and some of the tension seeped from her limbs. At times like these, she could almost let herself believe they were a normal family. A daughter stopping by after work to visit her mother, while both shared their days. It was a normalcy she’d longed for desperately all her life, one she’d never achieved.
But it was a milestone of sorts that her mother was speaking again, responding to those around her. And as the minutes stretched into an hour, A.J. focused on the change in Mandy’s condition. And if more troublesome thoughts of Dare McKay and her inexplicable attraction to him were merely held at bay for the moment, she could at least enjoy the reprieve while it lasted.
It lasted exactly seventy-five minutes. The discreet bell sounded, signaling that visiting hours had ended. A.J. replaced the brush she’d been using on her mother’s hair and bent to kiss her goodbye.
When she straightened she saw the man standing in the doorway. Protectiveness rose to war with apprehension. “Leo.”
“Called your office and your house. Figured you’d be here.” He sauntered into the room, his gaze landing on his mother for a moment before shifting away. “I need to talk to you.”
Of course. A surge of old bitterness rose. He normally surfaced when he needed something. She hadn’t heard from him since the last time they’d met here, and from what the nurses told her, he hadn’t been back to visit their mother since then, either.
“Rich?” Mandy’s words were a thread of sound, a note of wonder in them. A.J. almost felt guilty for being compelled to shatter it.
“No, Mama, it’s Leo. Remember? He came to see you before.”
“Not Rich.” The woman in the chair smiled tremulously, clung to A.J.’s hand. “Of course. It’s Leo. Leo’s here.”
Leo moved forward, bent, dropped a kiss on their mother’s cheek. “Ma. How ya doing?” Almost immediately, he looked back at his sister. “I need to talk to you now.”
“Leo was such a good tree climber. Remember?”
Startled, A.J. took her eyes off her brother to look back at the older woman. “Remember what, Mama?”
Her mother’s gaze was faraway. “You both climbed such tall trees. Your dad would get angry. He didn’t like you in the trees, but you climbed them, anyway. He couldn’t keep you out of them.”
A.J.’s gaze flicked to her brother, saw understanding, and an all too familiar resentment in his eyes. One small house they’d lived in had had a postage stamp yard, containing two huge trees. Only one had had branches low enough for nimble children to scramble up. They’d sought refuge there when their father, in drunken fits of rage, had chased them from the house. It had been terror that had them scrambling up the trees, rather than any sense of childish adventure.
“You fell out once, A.J. Remember? You weren’t as good a climber as Leo.”
Bitterness twisting her lips, she answered, “Yes. I remember.” She recalled the time Leo had shoved her from the tree, as her father had stood at its foot and screamed up at them. Remembered the ground rising up to meet her, the air crashing from her lungs.
But most of all she remembered the whistle of her father’s belt as it sang through the air, lashing her again and again until exhaustion or intoxication had slowed his movements, sent him stumbling back in the house. She recalled every moment of pain. Every second of furious resentment that had tasted too much like hatred for an eight-year-old child.
Suddenly driven to move, she patted her mother’s shoulder and reached for her purse. “The nurse will be coming soon to put you to bed, Mama. I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“You’ll come back tomorrow,” her mother repeated. Her hands twisted tightly together on her lap. “And Leo will come back tomorrow. And Rich will come back tomorrow, won’t he.” She turned her face up to her daughter’s pleadingly. “Tomorrow we’ll be a family again. Won’t that be nice?”
Nausea snaking through her stomach, A.J. squeezed her mother’s hand, tried for a smile. “Good night, Mama.” The oxygen in the room seemed to vanish. She almost ran for the hall, where she collapsed against the wall and fought air into her strangled lungs.
Old memories could rise at any time and still throb like an open wound. She swallowed hard. It was so much easier not to feel at all. So much easier to shield oneself from all the pain and misery that vulnerability could bring. She hadn’t been vulnerable since she was a child. She’d sworn that she never would be again.
“Can’t see that she’s getting any better.” Leo strolled out, pointed his index finger toward his head, made a circling motion. “Hope you aren’t paying these doctors too much. All you’re getting here is a fancy nuthouse.”
Gritting her teeth, A.J. counted to ten. “She’s progressing.” The doctor had told her that, and she clung to the assurance with a kind of desperation. She knew too well that for every month of progress, there could be two of deterioration. That the barriers could come up, and Mandy could be back in her own world at any time. It was easier to focus on the hope offered by the doctor’s prediction rather than to dwell on her mother’s past history.
Leo lifted a shoulder. “Whatever. I hear you talked to Coulson. What’d you tell him?”
It took a moment to search her memory. She’d almost forgotten the brief conversation she’d had with her brother’s parole officer. He’d called a couple days ago to inquire about Leo’s whereabouts. She’d had little to tell him.
“What should I have told him? That I had no idea where my brother was? That he must have acquired a taste for prison because he sure seems bent on landing back there again?”
“I missed one lousy meeting.” His voice was sullen. “And he’s acting like I went on a crime spree. Making threats about revoking my parole.”
She sighed, considered banging her head against the wall. “What do you expect, Leo? The meetings with Coulson are a condition of your release. If you screw up, you go back to prison and finish out your term. Is that what you want?”
“That’ll never happen.” His eyes, his voice, were flat. “I was doing a little traveling for my job and didn’t get back in time.”
“Well, here’s a bit of advice. Next time you need to reschedule, call him first. Save yourself some headaches.” She pushed away from the wall and began walking away.
“Wait a minute
. I wanna know what you told him when he called you.” Menace was stamped on his face. “You didn’t screw me over, did you? Because if you badmouthed me to him…”
She whirled around, frustration mounting. “I didn’t tell him anything, Leo. How could I? I don’t know where you live. Where you work. I don’t know anything about your life, so how could I even begin to guess where you might be when he couldn’t reach you? I just promised to tell you he was looking for you if I saw you.”
A little of the suspicion left his expression. “That’s all?”
She folded her hands together, afraid reaction from the day’s events would cause them to tremble. “Like I said, I don’t know anything I could tell him. What traveling did you have to do, anyway? What kind of job do you have?”
His gaze skated away from hers. “I’m a salesman. Gotta meet clients at some odd hours, sometimes.”
She blew out a breath. “Fine. Just don’t mess this up for yourself.” She continued out of the hospital, him trailing after her.
“You know, this is some place.” He seemed inclined to chat. “Does it cost extra for her private room?”
“It’s included in the package,” A.J. said shortly, her steps brisk. An expensive package it was, too, but she was determined to keep the best possible care for her mother.
“She knew me today, huh?”
Slowing, she glanced at him. “Yes, she seemed to. She…it comes and goes, but I think she’s becoming more lucid all the time.”
He snorted, stuck his hands in his pockets. “Lucid. Hell of a word for someone still waiting for the husband who threw her out to come back to her.”
She shouldn’t have reacted. She knew it at the time, but he was too intimately entwined in her childhood and knew just what bruises still throbbed. “He didn’t throw her out, we left, remember? I finally convinced her to get out before he killed her. Killed all of us.”
“Yeah, that was a real cushy life you took us to, wasn’t it?” he drawled, face twisting. “A stinking women’s shelter with not enough food and people crying all night.”
“The only difference between it and home was that we were safe there,” she shot back. “And you didn’t wait around for a better place to come up, did you?” He’d gone back to live with their father within days, and in the ensuing years she’d seen him only intermittently. Usually when he wanted something.
“I was old enough to take care of myself.” At seventeen, she supposed he had been. And she’d been old enough to take care of her mother, to find them a room above a diner and arrange for jobs for both of them. Old enough to understand that her mother’s grasp on reality slipped a little more every year, and that the doctors at the free clinic had been able to do little to help her.
They’d reached the double front glass doors, and she saw that the promised storm still hadn’t transpired. “Ever see yourself in a place like this, A.J.?
His words stopped her, even as her hands were on the door. She turned her head, regarded him impatiently. “What do you mean? I am here.”
He shook his head. “No, I mean in here. Or a place like it.” He watched her with a careless little smile on his face, but his eyes were as cruel as his words. “Ever wonder if craziness is inherited? If you’ll find yourself losing your grip, a little at a time, until someone takes pity and locks you up so you can sit and rock like that old lady in here?”
She wanted, quite badly, to hit him. To force him to retract the words, the thoughts, the ugly possibility. It was shocking to feel that level of violence, causing her vision to haze and her limbs to tremble. “Shut up, Leo.”
“C’mon.” He threw a companionable arm around her shoulders. “You can’t say it hasn’t occurred to you? It has to have. You’ve seen how she is. Probably started slipping at about your age, ever think of that?” He laughed, as if the idea amused him. He leaned closer, lowered his voice. “Ever ask yourself if crazy can be inherited like blond hair and brown eyes? Ever wonder who would take care of you like you take care of the old lady?”
She shoved away from him savagely, taking him by surprise, so he fell back a couple of steps. “You are a sick sadistic bastard, you know that?”
He eyed her then, bared his teeth. “Yeah, well, that’s inherited too, right? With our parents, we’ve got both to pick from. Which would you choose? Sadistic or crazy? Think about that one for a while.” He turned, pushed open the door and exited.
She didn’t follow him. She couldn’t. Not while his words, those careless mocking words, still echoed in her head.
Ever wonder if crazy can be inherited, A.J.? Ever wonder if you’ll end up in a place like this someday?
Icy fingers trailed down her spine, chilling the skin. Because of course he was right. Late at night, when sleep refused to come and she had only memories for company, she frequently wondered those very things.
Thunder crashed around the city, swords of lightning scoring the sky. Icy splinters of rain drenched the skin, chilled the bone. Frothy whitecaps dashed wildly against the moorings as the wind whipped across the lake. But through it all, it wasn’t nature’s threat that paralyzed limbs and struck terror to the heart. It was the threat emanating from the man in the limo.
The storm faded to insignificance as the figure on the dock faced judgment.
“I warned you about disappointing me.”
Later it might occur that the voice had been audible despite nature tantruming around them. Danger had a way of honing the senses. “I’ve been providing you with the information I promised. Didn’t I tell you that Jacobs acquired some notes Delgado kept that she’s tracing to old homicides?”
“You did. But her continued zeal for this case leads me to believe you’ve failed to adequately distract her.”
A familiar large shadow loomed closer, and the figure shifted uneasily. “I arranged a distraction. But she’s not the type to scare easily. She’d die before failing her job.”
The voice was smooth, the flat side of a blade. “An excellent suggestion.”
A wild gasp of breath was drawn into strangled lungs. “Not a chance. I didn’t sign on for murder.” The huge man stepped closer, raised his gun silently.
The voice from the car sounded again. “No? Then you’d best find a way to keep your commitment to me, hadn’t you?” The distinctive sound of a safety being released punctuated the words. “My patience is running out. The next time you fail me, you won’t walk away from our meeting.”
The cold gun barrel pressed into flesh, exerting vicious pressure. Pride forgotten, the figure cringed. “It wouldn’t be quick.” The gunman’s voice was low, rough. “It wouldn’t be easy. I’d kneecap you first. A person can live a long time with both knees shot out. Before it was over you’d beg me to finish it. And I would.”
He pressed the barrel harder, then lifted it away, stepped back. “With pleasure.”
“I’ll…I’ll think of something.” Never had a promise been made so rashly, fear motivated by self-preservation. “You can count on me.”
“For your sake, I hope so.” The meeting was over. The message had been delivered, the figure dismissed.
As the limo rolled through driving sheets of rain, the large man spoke. “If we’re not getting the results you want, maybe it’s time to look elsewhere.”
“Nonsense, Peter.” Long graceful fingers reached out, adjusted the back-seat stereo until strains of a favorite concerto filled the interior of the car. “You’re too quick to resort to violence. I believe we provided adequate motivation to convince our associate to follow through.”
Unused to explaining himself, the man in the luxurious back seat fell silent. It would be most efficient to get rid of Jacobs for good, but discretion must be exercised. He could ill afford the scrutiny a homicide would generate right now. He’d have to be satisfied with diverting the attorney from the case to shake her concentration, and distract McKay, as well.
The music melted into a solo piece, and he closed his eyes to better appreciate the weepin
g of the harp. All would go according to plan, he assured himself, despite the fact that he seemed surrounded by incompetents. Delgado, the bungler, had deviated from his instructions by not killing Patterson immediately, and then compounded his error by allowing himself to be caught. At least Paquin could be depended upon to follow orders to the letter.
He was an inordinately patient man, and firmly believed in the satisfaction brought by revenge served cold. He smiled slightly, eyes still closed, his hand rising in an imaginary conduction of the exquisite music. There would come a time, when this was over, when they would all pay. Each who had cost him time, money, resources. The anticipation was sweet. Connally, who’d proved to be a conspicuous thorn in his side, would certainly be taken care of. As would Patterson, who’d caused this unpleasantness, and even the esteemed assistant state attorney if she continued to prove meddlesome.
But it was the thought of McKay’s demise that gave the most pleasure. His death would necessitate a bit more finesse. It would include profound suffering. Crafting his end would be almost as entertaining as the act itself.
The music faded, and he drew in a breath, savoring the final strains. Taking a handkerchief from his breast pocket, he dabbed a tear from his eye. The concerto never failed to move him.
It was such a lovely piece.
Chapter 9
Dare awoke in a sweat-soaked tangle of sheets. A restless night filled with dreams of an unattainable woman had left him aroused and frustrated. An ice-cold shower relieved the first condition but not the second. With an uncertain temper and no one to take it out on, he had to content himself with his thoughts. They made for unpleasant companions.
He couldn’t imagine what had made him think that last night with Addie would be any different from the times before. That she wouldn’t turn tail and run. That she’d let herself want, to need, without that incomprehensible fear taking over. He was, he figured, ten kinds of fool. Why else would he let himself continually get ambushed by this pointless bolt of lust?
