Coming In Last

by Shiloh Walker

  Hell, he had caused it.

  “I’m not going back to Indy,” he told her. “Not without you.”

  One reddish brow arched and a humorless smile tugged at her mouth. “So is that a yes?”

  “No. We haven’t gotten the proof.” He drew the slim recording device from his back pocket and hit the play button. “Once I heard this, I couldn’t keep doing this.”

  Before the voices started, Andi slashed out, knocking it from his hand. It landed on the hardwood flooring in the foyer, sliding a few feet before coming to rest against the base of a large potted plant that stood just by the beveled glass door.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” she whispered, her voice starting to shake. The mask was falling from her face and tears stood in her eyes. “You went around telling lies about me, having your partner point fingers my way. Do you have any idea how many times someone from upper management dropped by the daycare the past few weeks? They’ve been spying on me, damn it.”

  God, she’d already figured it all out. All of it. “I know,” he said, his eyes haunted.

  “You know,” she repeated sarcastically. “How far down did it spread that Booth Industries suspected me of embezzlement? Did you spread that?”

  “No.”

  “Mick did.” Turning away, she rubbed her hands up and down her chilled arms. “Unofficially, I was off the list,” she whispered, echoing the words he had told her only a few weeks earlier. “Unofficially, as in only you and Mick knew the truth. Everybody else thinks I’m a damn thief. Jeb, Sam?”

  When he turned away, Andi closed her eyes. Amy’s sweet, gentle mom, and funny, protective Jeb—two people she admired with everything in her. And they thought she was little more than a crook. She dashed away a tear with a shaky hand and asked in a cold flat voice, “How much longer?”

  “What?” he asked, his voice low and rough. How much longer until what?

  “How much longer is this going to go on? How much longer until you can get what you need on him?”

  Jamie was silent and she whirled on him, her hands closed into tight, small fists. “How much longer?” she demanded.

  “A few days, maybe two more weeks,” he said, his eyes darker than she had ever seen them. “He’s planning something big. Planning on splitting the money with Mick for helping point the arrow in your direction. But—”

  “Fine. Two weeks. I’ll wait two weeks. And then I’m turning in my notice. And you get the hell out of my house.” She turned away and left the room. Moments later, the door upstairs slammed behind her as she curled up on the bed, eyes closed tight, arms wrapped around her cold body.

  Downstairs, Jamie flinched as the slamming door echoed in his head. A broken sigh escaped his lips and his shoulders slumped. The only thing he had taken into consideration was that she’d be upset when she realized he had started coming around for a reason.

  Why hadn’t he thought about how much it would hurt to have your name dirtied?

  Especially when it had taken most of your life to build that name.

  Gathering his papers up, he left the house, leaving the spare key on her coffee table. He paused with one hand on the locked door, staring down the hall at the steps. It was silent, completely silent.

  As he started his car, he remembered what he had thought less than a month earlier, when Mick had convinced him to do this.

  Either way I lose, he had thought.

  With a squeal of his tires, he whirled the car around and punched it. Hell, had he been right or what?

  I lost.

  But so had Andi. And he hadn’t been counting on that.

  ♥

  It was after noon before Andi left the empty bed. She couldn’t sleep. The sheets, even her damn pillow, smelled like Jamie.

  She rooted through her closet, unearthed a heavy fisherman’s sweater she had bought in Ireland and tugged it on over her chilled flesh before heading downstairs. Her eyes were puffy and red from tears and her throat hurt from crying so much.

  She stood staring into the refrigerator, with half a mind to eat something, but she couldn’t take comfort in food. Her throat tended to lock up when she was upset. So, Andi figured, in about three or four years, her broken heart would fade and eventually, she’d be able to eat again.

  Arms folded around her middle, she wandered the house, kicking at the carpet, pausing to rub her finger over a nonexistent mark on the wall. “I’m trying really hard here to deal with the life you’ve given me without complaining, God,” she whispered. Her voice broke and she pressed her lips together, reaching for composure. “It’s getting harder though.”

  There was no answer, of course. Andi really hadn’t expected one.

  She retreated to the living room, tugged the throw blanket off the back of the couch and wrapped it around her chilled body as she thumbed the remote. Deliberately, with great effort, she blanked her mind.

  In a little while, she’d be able to deal with this.

  Not yet, though.

  Not yet.

  ♥

  Sweat flowed freely as Jamie pounded the heavy bag with gloved hands. A snarl was etched onto his face and the guys who had joked with him only a few days earlier steered clear. He had no idea what time it was, didn’t care. The air in his lungs seemed to burn and his muscles were starting to feel it as well.

  But he kept pounding.

  “Wondered where you were,” a familiar gravelly voice said. “I dunno why it took me so long to check here.”

  “Go away, Mick,” he panted, ignoring the throb that was developing in his right shoulder. When his right arm began to feel too heavy to lift, he switched sides, going from a right jab to a left without breaking speed.

  “You keep this up, you’re gonna punch a hole through the bag,” Mick observed, noting the heavy sheen of sweat. He’d seen the sheet where Jamie had signed in. Nearly two hours earlier.

  “Get the f—” he paused, bending over from the waist to catch his breath. Roughly, he said, “Mick, just get away from me. You don’t want to be around me right now.” With a shrug of his stooped shoulders, and his best hangdog expression, Mick said, “I’ve seen you at your best and at your worst. Nothing you do or say will surprise me anymore. And you look like you need a friend.”

  A humorless laugh escaped and Jamie straightened, stripping the gloves off his hands and tossing them aside. “Need? I can’t have what I need. I can’t have what I want. Go away,” he repeated.

  What he needed was locked up in her house. What he wanted was crying and hurting and hating him.

  “I take it you and Andi are having problems.”

  Jamie’s face went blank and his eyes went cold. “Drop it,” he ordered, brushing past Mick on legs that were starting to shake.

  “Why? So you can pound on something until you keel over from exhaustion? Talk to me, kid. Tell me what’s happened and what it’s gonna take to fix it,” Mick demanded.

  Jamie paused, glancing at Mick over his shoulder. With a small shake of his head, Jamie said, “There’s nothing left to fix, buddy. It’s over.”

  He collapsed in the steam room, a towel hooked around his waist, his muscles alternately throbbing and going numb. His shoulders, arms, and chest were on fire and the knuckles of his hands were reddened and slightly swollen, despite the protection the gloves had provided.

  He realized there was a good possibility Andi wouldn’t return to Booth Industries after the weekend. But he couldn’t work up the nerve to care. Even though they wouldn’t get their last shot at Letcher. It would keep the bastard from being able to come down on Andi, though. That wasn’t such a bad thing. And maybe Jeb would be happy with a little old-fashioned justice. Jamie would be more than happy to help with that.

  How in the hell could he expect her to go back? God, why hadn’t he thought this through before he continued with it? He never had. How many lives had he ruined by doing something exactly like this, letting somebody else carry the blame w
hile he boxed the crook into a corner? He’d done it before.

  And the person had been left to deal with suspicious glances and a sullied name.

  He’d done that to Andi.

  She was so proud, almost arrogant.

  Closing his eyes, hardly even aware of the heavy heat, Jamie damned himself to hell and back, his chest aching at what he had thrown away.

  “What do you mean, she may not come in?” Mick repeated, his voice low and hushed.

  “She knows,” Jamie said simply as he tossed his briefcase on his borrowed desk and turned, prepared to deal with the fallout. Mick stood there, his face red and furious, his mouth working even though no words came. Jamie held up one hand and said, “Before you say anything, are you aware of what we did? Every single person who knows about the embezzlement is thinking Andi’s the one who did it. Did you stop to think about how degrading, how insulting, how cold that is? If somebody did it to you, how easy would it be for you to hold your head up?”

  “She didn’t do a damn thing, and she knows it. If I was her, I wouldn’t give a damn. Aw, hell, Jamie. It was almost over.” Mick’s pugnacious jaw dropped, lowered and he scrubbed his face with his hands.

  “The people here that she cared about think she’s a damn thief. You expect me to believe that wouldn’t bother you?” Jamie asked, lifting one brow. He stood in Jeb’s office, staring over the parking lot, looking for the familiar teal green car to turn in. Nearly eight o’clock. She wasn’t coming. “We dragged her name through the mud, Mick. On purpose. And for what?”

  “To catch a thief?” Mick suggested with a dry look.

  Turning, Jamie asked, “Is it worth it? To catch one crook, is it really worth ruining the life of an innocent person? A damn good person who never once hurt another soul?”

  “Fuck, Jamie.”

  “We humiliated her. I used her,” he snapped, jabbing a thumb at his chest. “And worse, even though I knew what was going to come down, I slept with her.”

  Silence fell. Agitated, Mick pulled out his cigarettes, then, shoved them back into his pocket, muttering, “Fucking regulations. So what in the hell are we gonna do? We’ve got a job to do, damn it.”

  Jamie lifted his shoulders, and said, “I really don’t give a damn, Mick.”

  As if he hadn’t heard him, Mick paced back and forth. “We’ll think of something, damn it.” Muttering under his breath, scratching his thick, silvering hair, he thought the thing through. “Maybe we can—”

  Jamie straightened, his arms dropping from his chest, his hands sliding into his pockets as he shoved off the desk. Moving closer to the window, he said, “Chill out, Mick. She’s here.”

  “What if she says something, damn it? It could put her in danger,” Mick pointed out as he tried to convince Jamie to go to the daycare.

  “She won’t say anything. She wants him nailed as badly as you do,” Jamie said. Looking his old friend in the eye, he said, “I’m not going down there. She made her wishes clear. I’ve done enough damage.”

  “For crying out loud. Take her some flowers or something. She’s a woman. Women forgive anything. You were just doing your job!”

  Jamie ignored him, his eyes following the screen. He had set it up to relay everything that took place on Letcher’s screen. Letcher was currently forging documents that looked rather official—juvenile records, the kind that tended to be sealed.

  Documents with Andi’s name on it. Letcher was building her a bad rep, inventing one out of thin air.

  Once they were completed, Jamie saved a copy to disk as Letcher logged online in his office upstairs. Then Jamie got a peek at his finances, as Letcher couldn’t resist admiring his bank accounts online.

  “You’ve completely lost it,” Mick was muttering on his way out the door. “Over a girl you hardly know.”

  Quietly, in an echo of what Jeb had told him weeks earlier, Jamie said, “Mick, if you knew her, you’d understand.”

  ♥

  Andi had known it would be hard, walking into Booth, but she hadn’t known how hard. The security at the gate eyed her as she entered, and she passed by the night-shift manager, feeling his eyes on her every step of the way. Encountering Sam in the hall, when she went to greet Amy, she got a shoulder in her face and a cold look.

  All the little things she had been noticing for weeks, but not really paying any attention to. Of course, it was worse now than it had been. Even Johnson, the VP who always paused a few minutes to speak with her when he saw her in the hall, looked at her as if she were slime.

  But Andi kept her chin up and pretended not to notice.

  She’d be damned if she left before she was good and ready.

  Of course, the minute Letcher slipped up, that was it.

  It wasn’t just her paranoia. Ever since Jamie—God, it hurt to even think of his name—had told her what was going on, pieces starting falling together and the odd looks she had been receiving and ignoring now made sense. Now it made sense why so many of the upper management had become so interested in her daycare.

  It even made sense why Jamie had paid attention to her at all.

  Oh, it all made sense.

  It was also making her sick.

  Once she had escaped into the daycare, she paused a moment in the dark, leaning against the door, one hand pressed to her belly. Nausea rolled through her in greasy waves and it took a moment before she was sure she wouldn’t be sick.

  A week, maybe two.

  Andi flicked on the light and moved to her office, trying to perk herself up a bit.

  Girl, you lived in hell for years. You can handle two weeks of people talking about you behind your back, she told herself.

  Of course, she had thought, had hoped she had left that life behind. Maybe blood really did tell. Maybe she would never be free of it.

  The door opened outside her office and she heard familiar, friendly voices. Pasting a smile on her face, she steeled herself to walk into the childcare area and pretend there was nothing wrong.

  Several hours later, Angie reached out, touched her hand to Andi’s and asked, “Are you okay?”

  Glancing at the younger woman, Andi offered a tired smile and said, “I’m fine. Just didn’t sleep well this weekend.”

  “You look like you don’t feel well,” Angie said.

  “I’m just tired. Thanks for asking,” Andi said, turning her back and clapping her hands to get the kids’ attention.

  She worked through lunch, feeding the kids, changing diapers, laying weary little bodies down for an afternoon nap. She yearned to stretch out beside them and sleep, but forced herself into her office, taking Amy with her. Amy sat in her bouncer, staring with solemn eyes while Andi booted up the computer and started the monthly inventory of the medical supplies. On the side, she had a half-eaten sandwich on a plate. The other half sat like a stone in her belly.

  She checked on the order she had placed early last winter for the flu vaccine and went ahead and made the flyer that she’d distribute next month.

  No, which her replacement would distribute. She’d spent the weekend drafting her job description and writing out a help-wanted ad that Jeb’s people could put out once she had turned in her notice.

  “God, Amy. I don’t know if I can do this,” she whispered.

  The baby reached out, cooing. When Andi held her hand out, Amy clamped tight to a finger and laughed.

  “I’m going to miss them. All of them,” Andi said, touching the baby’s downy cheek, blinking away the tears that threatened.

  Glancing up, she saw Angie sitting in a chair, studying. Becky was outside on her smoke break and the only person paying Andi any attention was the baby. “It’s not fair, you know,” she said conversationally, as if waiting for Amy to reply. “I worked damned hard here, bent over backwards trying to make this place work, make sure Jeb understood that hiring me on was a good decision.”

  The baby cooed and started waving her arms up and down, exc
ited.

  Andi smiled and leaned back in her chair. “I wish…hell, who am I fooling? I know better than to go wishing for things,” she murmured. Reaching up, she wiped away a tear.

  Amy just laughed and kicked her little feet.

  Andi shoved her self-pity aside, dashed away tears and settled down to work.

  ♥

  Jamie rounded the corner, frustrated, lonely and bored out of his mind.

  He froze in his tracks when he saw Andi standing in front of the bank of elevators, her hands tucked into the pockets of her jacket. She rocked back on her heels, reached up to brush a wisp of hair out of her face and turned her head.

  Jamie’s heart did a slow twist inside his chest.

  She stared at him over the short distance that separated them. Her hazel eyes were blank and her face showed little emotion. Slowly, she turned her head back to the elevators, waiting, ignoring Jamie.

  When the car arrived, she stepped inside, the doors sliding closed at her back, not even glancing at Jamie. He felt the blood, the life, slowly drain out of him and he turned blindly, walking back to his office.

  “Jamie.”

  For half a second, his heart started to beat again, but then he realized the voice he heard wasn’t Andi’s. It was only vaguely familiar. He stopped in his tracks and lifted his head, looking into the cool blue eyes of Samantha Dowers, the head of human resources, the woman who Andi had considered a friend.

  “Ms. Dowers,” he said, inclining his head, even though all he wanted to do was go into his office and lock the door.

  Glancing around, she made sure the hall was empty before she asked quietly, “How much evidence do you have on her?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “On Andrina Morrow. How much evidence? I want this matter solved, quickly. After today, my mother will take care of Amy until she is gone. But Andi shouldn’t be around any of the kids in that daycare.”