After Caroline

by Kay Hooper

  Scott came forward, but stopped with one foot on the step of the gazebo, his gaze fixed on his daughter. “Regan?”

  Joanna felt the child shudder against her, felt those thin arms tighten around her, but she didn’t say anything. This was between Regan and Scott; they had to do this alone.

  “Regan, honey … please look at Daddy.” His voice was low, more gentle than Joanna had ever heard it.

  Regan turned her head a little, looking at him from teary eyes. “You said you weren’t,” she murmured.

  “No,” he said. “I said I thought I wasn’t. For a long time, I thought I wasn’t your daddy. But I was wrong, Regan. I am your daddy. Please let me make it up to you.”

  She didn’t move, though Joanna felt her arms loosen. She just looked at him, confused, still shocked by what had happened here. She was just a little girl, and she couldn’t take in everything she had seen and heard. What she needed was love and comfort, and when her father held out his arms to her, every instinct in her small body urged her toward him.

  “I love you, Regan,” Scott told her huskily.

  Regan let go of Joanna and took a jerky step. Then another. Then, with a broken cry, she threw herself into her father’s arms. He held her tightly, his eyes closing for a moment. Then, looking past her at Griffin, who had reached the gazebo, he said, “I’m taking her home.”

  Griffin nodded, and stood watching until Scott carried his daughter through the woods toward their house. Then he came into the gazebo with a deliberate step and with a jerky movement pulled Joanna into his arms.

  “Christ, you scared the hell out of me,” he said thickly into her hair.

  Joanna felt the most marvelous and profound sense of homecoming in his embrace, and she snuggled closer, glorying in the feeling as she murmured, “Scared myself too. I should have waited for you, I know, so you don’t have to say it. I was an idiot and a four-star fool and possibly a moron, and I’m sorry, but I just didn’t think—”

  Griffin raised her head from his shoulder and kissed her. Hard. “Just don’t do it again,” he said at last, his voice ragged. “I earned my first gray hairs in the last ten min.”

  She smiled up at him, conscious of faintly unsteady knees and a slight dizziness and not sure if it was him or the shock. “I’m sorry. Really. But at least it’s over, isn’t it?”

  “More or less,” he said.

  They found the little antique box in Regan’s “hidey-hole” beneath a loose board in the floor of the gazebo. The brass key Scott had found fit perfectly, and inside was the small computer diskette containing the details of Dylan’s greed.

  It would require, Griffin guessed, Scott’s entire team of accountants as well as a lawyer or two to get everything figured out, but it seemed that Dylan had found a way to “cook” the books so adroitly that he had been able to siphon off almost two million dollars over the years without leaving evidence behind. A price Scott had paid for putting too much authority in the hands of one man.

  As for Dylan, because his schemes had been so intricate, he had been forced to keep the details on some kind of personal record, a practice that had cost him. From what he had said to Joanna there at the end, they could only assume that Caroline had somehow discovered what he was doing. She had been at his place frequently, since they were lovers, and had one day, perhaps, stumbled over the information.

  In any case, she had taken the disk. She may have gone over the information at her leisure at home, slowly realizing the scope of Dylan’s embezzlement. Of course, she should have gone to Scott immediately, or to Griffin, and they could only speculate as to the reasons she didn’t.

  Somehow, without physical abuse—which would surely have been noticed by Scott and others—Dylan had managed to intimidate Caroline, to keep her more than a little bit frightened of him. Whether by threats of some kind or simply the domination of a stronger mind, he had held her in thrall to him. At some point, it must have occurred to Caroline that her lover was capable of violence, and so she had tried to work up the courage to take some action to free herself from him and expose his crimes.

  She had gone to past lovers, one at a time, seeking advice or help. But with the kind of bad timing fate seemed to delight in, she always seemed to approach the wrong man at the wrong time. Or maybe it had simply been a case of “what goes around, comes around.” Perhaps her heartless treatment of those men came back to haunt her in the end. And it was likely she didn’t go to Scott simply because she hadn’t wanted to admit to him of all people that she was involved with a man she could not control.

  Finally, she had decided to take the disk to Griffin. Perhaps she had believed she could talk him into keeping her out of it, or perhaps she had come up with some innocent reason for her to have gained access to Dylan’s personal records. In any case, she had sent the note and had gone to retrieve the disk from its hiding place in the gazebo.

  Regan, looking out the window of her bedroom where she’d been recovering from a summer cold, had seen her mother returning from the gazebo and, though not understanding perfectly, had discerned the panic and anguish on Caroline’s face. She knew immediately that she had done something wrong in removing the box from its hiding place, and the guilt of that would probably be with her forever. She never saw her mother again.

  The rest of it they had been able to put together fairly well, thanks to Dylan’s own words there at the end. And they had his confession—heard by Joanna, Griffin, and Scott—that he had killed Robert Butler “by accident” and Amber Wade with cold-blooded intent.

  So at last Griffin could offer those grieving parents a reason, no matter how incomprehensible, for their daughter’s death.

  It took the rescue team nearly two hours to bring Dylan’s body up from the jagged rocks where it lay, and by then the news had spread around Cliffside like wildfire. The curious came out to see, even in the misting rain that had continued to fall, and it naturally wasn’t long before a number of people swore they’d always thought there was something suspicious about Dylan.

  Par for the course.

  In the meantime, Griffin had finally gotten word from Cain, explaining his lie and the reasons for it. He was, Griffin told him somewhat bitterly, a bit late with the information.

  Joanna stayed close to Griffin for the rest of the afternoon, both because she wanted to and because he had announced his intention of not letting her out of his sight until his pulse and blood pressure returned to normal. Which would be a while. She knew he had been badly frightened by how close she had come to being Dylan’s fourth victim, and did what she could to reassure him that she was fine.

  Perhaps oddly, she was fine. Being held at gunpoint by a madman whom she had later seen killed was not exactly conducive to serenity, but she felt very calm, very much at peace. She had a sense of satisfaction that was not only hers, a sense of completion. It was over. Finally, it was finished.

  Lyssa stood in the doorway of Regan’s bedroom and watched silently as Scott sat with his sleeping daughter. He held one of her small hands in his, his head bent over it, and one of his long fingers slowly traced hers as if to explore the shape and texture of them. Finally, he tucked her little hand beneath the covers and just looked at her.

  Lyssa waited.

  Outside, darkness fell, and the lamp in Regan’s room cast a warm circle of light over her and her father. Scott had been sitting by her bed for nearly two hours when he rose and came to the doorway.

  “I don’t want to leave her,” he said.

  Lyssa nodded, but said, “Doc said she’d sleep all night after that shot he gave her. Why don’t you come downstairs and have something to eat? I told Mrs. Ames to keep something warm in the oven for you.”

  He hesitated, glancing back at Regan, then nodded and came out into the hall to join her. As they went toward the stairs, he asked, “Where is Mrs. Ames?”

  “In her rooms. I told her we’d call if we needed her. She’s pretty upset. She liked Dylan.”

  Scott looked
at her, frowning slightly. “How are you?”

  Lyssa managed a smile. “All right. It’s a shock, of course. I knew him a long time—or thought I did. Is it true, what’s going around? Is he really to blame for all those deaths?”

  Scott wasn’t surprised she had heard that, even though he had said nothing to her; undoubtedly, at least a few people had called the house to talk to either her or the housekeeper in the past couple of hours.

  “He’s to blame,” he replied. “Caroline lost control of her car because of him. Robert Butler stumbled back over the edge of the cliffs because Dylan hit him. And he deliberately pushed Amber Wade over, because she had seen the gun he carried, and he couldn’t risk her telling someone about it.”

  “My God.” Lyssa shook her head. “And he stole from you? Embezzled money?”

  Scott shrugged. “To me, that seems the least of his crimes. If he had only stopped with that … But murder can’t be forgotten. Or forgiven.”

  Lyssa could only agree with that. She went with him into the kitchen, where there was a small table that was rarely used except by the cook, and began pulling covered dishes out of the oven.

  “Mrs. Ames obviously didn’t want you to starve,” she noted ruefully.

  “You haven’t eaten either,” Scott said, and got two plates from the cabinet.

  They sat at the small table, companionable in a way they had never been before, and ate in virtual silence. Lyssa didn’t know where they would go from here. Or if they would go anywhere at all. Their written-in-stone script had been abandoned earlier today, and she felt somewhat rudderless without it.

  She tried to take comfort in the fact that it was her Scott had called today when he had needed to talk, her advice he had listened to before going out to search for his anguished daughter. She needs love, Scott, your love. You haven’t been able to show her for so long, now you’ll have to tell her. Just tell her that you love her.

  Judging by the way Regan had clung to him when he had brought her back to the house, it appeared that the little girl was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, at least for now. But there would probably be rough times ahead; years of neglect couldn’t be atoned for overnight.

  But Lyssa felt just as much pity for Scott as for Regan, pity and a fierce rage at Caroline for what she had done to them. She had left scars that might never fade, and all because she had been cruelly selfish.

  “I should have left her,” Scott said suddenly, staring at the glass of wine he had half finished. “Or kicked her out.”

  He seemed to be reading her mind again, but this time Lyssa wasn’t disturbed by it. “You loved her,” she said calmly.

  Scott’s gaze lifted to her face, and he smiled wryly. “I loved her. And hated her. And was … consumed by her. It wasn’t a normal relationship. It wasn’t a normal marriage.”

  “Then put it behind you. And go on.” Lyssa smiled. “You got something wonderful out of it, don’t forget that. You got Regan.”

  “It’ll take a long time to win her back. And—I don’t know how much she heard out there at the gazebo. Joanna tried to shelter her as much as possible, but some of it probably got through. Most of it she probably didn’t understand even if she heard it, but she’ll remember the words. And one day, she’ll come to me with questions about her mother.”

  “Maybe,” Lyssa said. “Or maybe, by then, she’ll know that even the people we love aren’t perfect. Don’t borrow trouble, Scott.”

  He smiled slightly. “You’re probably right.”

  “Of course I’m right. I’m always right.”

  He reached across the small table suddenly and covered her hand with his. “You’ve been very patient with me.”

  “Well, it’s been a rough day,” she began.

  Scott shook his head. “No,” he said. “You’ve been very patient with me.”

  For an instant, Lyssa was tempted to retreat, to take refuge in lightness and flippancy. But she had a sense that this was a turning point in their relationship, and that if she retreated, they would return to their scripted responses that were safe and casual and unfeeling. And she would lose him.

  She drew a breath and fought to hold her voice steady, to allow just a touch of self-mockery to filter through. “Thirty-five is old for a first love. You don’t have the illusions to cling to, the dreams to cushion you if things don’t work out. You just have patience.”

  He didn’t seem surprised by her confession, but he smiled at her, and his eyes were gentle, even pleased, she thought. “Things are going to be difficult for a while,” he said quietly. “Especially with Regan. She’ll need a lot of my time. You understand that?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then will you be patient a little longer? Give me some time to sort through things, get to know my daughter again?”

  Her hand turned under his and grasped it, and Lyssa smiled. “Take all the time you need. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Scott pushed his chair back and got up. Still holding her hand, he bent down and kissed her, lightly but with feeling. “Thank you,” he said.

  Lyssa forced herself to let go of his hand when he straightened. “Don’t mention it. Listen, why don’t you go back to Regan? I’ll clear up in here and then let myself out.”

  He hesitated, then said, “I’d like you to stay, if you would. I’d … feel better if you were near. There might be talk, but—”

  “There won’t be talk,” Lyssa said. “I’ll tell Mrs. Ames that you’re with Regan and I’m staying just in case I’m needed. I’ll even bunk down on one of those very comfortable sofas of yours instead of using one of the guest bedrooms. Don’t worry. She’ll spread the word tomorrow.”

  Scott nodded, then touched her cheek lightly and said, “Thank you,” again. And went upstairs to sit with his sleeping daughter.

  “There shouldn’t be much of a fuss,” Griffin said. “The state police will want to have a look at my files, since I shot the suspect, but since he confessed in the presence of three witnesses and then subsequently aimed a cocked pistol at me, I doubt I’ll hear anything except congratulations for getting him.”

  Joanna, sharing with him a thick quilt and a pile of cushions in front of his fireplace, looked at him gravely. “It doesn’t bother you, does it? You know you had no choice, that what you did was right.”

  He nodded. “I won’t shed any tears for him, Joanna. He caused the deaths of three people, and he was fully prepared to kill you and Regan. As for how he ended, he aimed that gun at me and forced me to shoot him because he didn’t have the guts to commit suicide and we both knew it.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Joanna set her wineglass aside with a sigh. “Will all that stuff about Caroline have to come out? I mean, that she and Dylan were lovers?”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it.” He brooded a moment. “I can’t see that her relationship with him has to come into it. She found the disk—no need to say how, since we don’t actually know. Hid it. He found out it was gone and threatened her, frightened her so that she lost control of her car. He had no idea where the disk was. Then you showed up here, and he got nervous because you were asking questions about Caroline and he was afraid you’d somehow stumble across the disk. So he tried to kill you—twice.”

  Joanna smiled slightly. “Cheated death again. Guess I’d better be careful crossing streets from now on, huh?”

  Griffin put his glass aside and leaned over her, his expression very sober. “Don’t joke about it. God knows I hope you do have as many lives as a cat, but please be careful with them, will you? I don’t want to lose you. I don’t ever want to lose you.”

  She slid her arms up around his neck, her fingers sliding into his dark hair. His eyes, she decided, were blue. A very, very dark blue. Darker than sapphires. “You won’t,” she murmured, lifting her face in a silent plea.

  Her mouth opened under the hungry pressure of his, and Joanna felt her senses heating, her thoughts spinning away because they weren’t n
eeded. All she needed to do was feel, not think, and she gave herself up to the glory of that.

  It was dawn when he woke, and Griffin sat up quickly when he realized she wasn’t in the bed beside him. He threw back the covers and got up, pausing only to pull on sweatpants and a sweatshirt. He felt a draft of chilly air when he stepped into the still-dark living room, and relaxed when he saw the atrium door slightly ajar and Joanna outside on the deck.

  She had the quilt from their bed by the fire wrapped around her, and he could see the collar of his shirt, which was probably all she was wearing under the quilt.

  He went outside and joined her, one hand rubbing up and down her back lightly as he leaned against the railing beside her. “Hey, you’ll freeze out here,” he told her.

  She looked at him, clear-eyed and pink-cheeked in the chill of dawn. “I’ve been thinking about it all,” she murmred. “But especially about Dylan. What makes a man like him, Griffin? When does greed become so absolute that killing is easy?”

  “I don’t know, sweetheart.”

  She sighed, her breath misting a bit. “It was such a miserable, unimportant crime to cost three lives. Covering up embezzlement. It was just money, Griffin.”

  He shook his head. “No, not to Dylan. It was power. It was … a balancing of the scales, giving him what he thought was his due. Of course he was willing to kill to have what he wanted. It was his own image of himself he was protecting, Joanna. Caught, he would have been just another stupid criminal; success meant he was smarter than everybody else.”

  Joanna nodded slightly and was silent for a moment. Then she sighed again. “So now it’s really over. I didn’t dream last night. It’s finally gone, Griffin. The fear. The urgency. The feeling of not being entirely alone in my own mind. Caroline is gone. I thought so last night—but now I’m sure of it.” She looked at him, her expression grave.

  Griffin touched her cheek. “I’m glad, sweetheart.”