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“Thanks.” As he began to walk toward the policeman, it was clear that he and the woman he’d stopped were bound in opposite directions. “By the way—” he tossed the words over his shoulder “—you look good. Electric-blue was never your color.”
Her mouth dropped open. That was twice he’d caught her off guard.
She was definitely slipping, Rayne thought as she hurried down the corridor toward the elevator. But then, as she recalled, Cole Garrison had that kind of an effect on people.
Some things never change.
“Three-ten, not bad for you.”
The lush green grass hushed her quick steps as she’d hurried across the field toward her father. His back was to her and he was kneeling over his brother’s tombstone. She could have sworn he hadn’t heard her approach.
The man still had ears like a bat, Rayne thought. But then, he’d always been one hell of a cop. It had taken her years to appreciate what she and the others had taken for granted.
“Not bad for anyone,” she corrected as she reached him, “considering that the city’s fathers in their infinite wisdom are rerouting Aurora’s main thoroughfare, making it almost impossible to get across town. I’ll have you know I left on time.”
Andrew nodded. There was a chill in the air but he was bareheaded as he kneeled over his brother’s grave. His hands were folded in front of him.
“I believe you.” He looked down. There were two headstones there. Diane Cavanaugh was buried next to her husband. They were side by side, at peace in eternity the way they’d never really been in life. “It’s not like Mike’s got anywhere to go.”
The depth of sorrow in her father’s voice seemed immeasurable. At a loss as to what to do, Rayne placed her hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”
Reaching back, Andrew covered her hand with his own, remembering when that same hand had been so small, almost doll-like.
“Yeah, thanks for asking.” Swallowing a groan, he rose from his knees, deliberately ignoring the hand she offered until he gained his feet. Only then did he glance at it. “You know, I can remember when you used to jerk that same hand away from mine. Wouldn’t let me hold it, wouldn’t let anyone steer you.”
She pushed her hands into her pockets. The January wind was getting raw. She should have remembered her gloves. “Had to find my own way, Dad.”
He nodded. There was no arguing with that, although he’d tried. “I’m glad you did, Rayne. And that when you finally found it, it was here, with us.”
She knew what he wasn’t saying, that he’d lived in fear that she would wind up in this lovely little cemetery, buried beside her relatives, years before her time. There was a period when she’d thought she would herself.
“Hey, why would I go anywhere else? Can’t beat the food,” she quipped.
Meals weren’t what kept her home. She felt she owed it to him. Owed him for years that were lost, years that she’d turned his hair gray and brought his heart to the brink of an attack. Truce was a good thing. It brought understanding with it.
And right now, she ached for what she knew he was feeling. It was hard to stand here and not feel the tears well up. Without realizing it, she laced her arm through his.
“Hard to believe it’s been fifteen years already,” Andrew murmured, still looking at the tombstone he and Brian had bought. Mike had left debts as a legacy to his family. The pension helped provide for Diane, Patrick and Patience, but pride had necessitated that they provide the burial for their fallen brother. “It feels like yesterday…” Andrew looked at his daughter. “Mike was a good man, Rayne. In his own way.”
She wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince her or himself. Of the three Cavanaugh brothers, Mike had been the one who’d made waves, who hadn’t been satisfied with his life. Ever. Outshone by both his older and younger brothers, he’d let it eat at his self-esteem. He’d sought absolving comfort in the arms of other women and in the bottom of a bottle. Though Rayne was the youngest, she knew that there were times her uncle had taken his feelings of inadequacy out on his children and his wife. Which was why Patrick and Patience looked upon her father with far more affection than their own. He, along with Uncle Brian, had had more of a hand in raising them than Uncle Mike had.
She felt close to her father right now, vicariously sharing a grief with him she didn’t entirely feel on her own. “He was kind of like the black sheep, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah.” The word came out with a heavy sigh.
It was a term she’d silently applied to herself more than once. “You know,” she said in a voice that was barely above a whisper, “there are times when I’m still afraid that I’m going to wind up just like him.”
Andrew looked at her sharply. “Oh, no, not you, Rayne. He was the black sheep, or maybe just a gray one,” he amended. “You were the rebel. Still are in your own way.”
The look he gave her seemed to penetrate down to her very soul. It was all she could do to keep from flinching. She withdrew her arm, shoving her hands into her pockets again.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Look at me as if you had X-ray vision and could see clear through to my bones.”
To lighten the moment, she pretended to shiver. But the effect of her father’s steady gaze was no less real. The way he could look at any of them would easily elicit a confession to some slight wrongdoing when they were growing up. She used to imagine that her father could force confessions from hardened felons just by giving them that look.
“It’s not your bones that tell me what you’re like, Rayne,” Andrew told her gently, “it’s more of a case of memory.”
“Memory?” She felt a familiar story coming on. As much as she’d bristled over hearing stories when she was younger, she’d come to welcome them now. They were a comfort to her and a way of bonding with her father.
“Your mother was just like you,” he recalled fondly. “Always bent on doing her own thing. Always had to find her own way to the right conclusion.”
This was nothing she hadn’t heard before. As was the note of bittersweet sorrow in her father’s voice. For a second she was tempted to put her arms around him and hug tightly. But there was still a small portion of her that resisted.
“You miss her a lot, don’t you?”
He sighed and nodded. “More than words can say, Rayne. More than words can say. I miss them both a lot.” He looked down at the tombstone. “The difference being is that I know Mike’s gone.”
She shut her eyes, knowing what was coming. It was a path she walked herself more times than she cared to think, but to hold on to irrational hope wasn’t healthy. He was the only parent she had left and as much as she declared herself to be full grown and independent, she didn’t want to lose him.
“Dad—”
He laughed softly to himself. “You’re going to tell me not to start again. But I’m not. I’m just maintaining the same steady course I always have over all these years.” He looked at her, debating. Then he made his decision. She needed something to make her a believer again. And maybe he needed someone else to believe besides himself. “I haven’t told the others, but I found your mother’s wallet.”
She stared at him, dumbfounded. “What? When?”
He fell into police mode, giving her the highlights. “A little more than a month ago. Just before Thanksgiving. Homeless man had it in his shopping cart. He was dead, so he couldn’t be questioned. I don’t know where he found it and the lab couldn’t get any readable prints off it, but it was your mother’s.” He saw the doubt returning to Rayne’s eyes. “It had her license and pictures of all of you in it. She had that in her purse on the day she left the house.
“I went to see that homeless man in the morgue. He didn’t look like any deep-sea diver to me, which meant that he found the wallet on dry land.”
“Which means what?” Rayne asked. “That she was mugged? That her purse washed up on shore?” She took hold of her father’s shoulders, desperately wanting to get through to him. This was killing both of them by inches. “Dad, just because you found her wallet doesn’t mean that you’re going to find her, or that she’s even—”
He cut her off sharply. “It means exactly that, Rayne. She is alive and we’re going to find her. It’s as simple as that.”
He made her want to scream. “Dad, you have to move on with your life.”
“I have moved on.” He struggled not to raise his voice. He’d moved on from one day to the next, accumulating fifteen years. Getting things done. “I’m not sitting in any closet, or staring out the window for days on end. I’ve raised five kids, had a hand in raising a couple more and even now make sure that everyone’s fed, warm and thriving to the best of my ability.”
He looked down into her eyes, fighting to keep his voice from cracking. “But don’t ask me to stop believing that someday I’m going to see her, see your mother walking toward me. Because the day I stop believing in that is the day I stop breathing. She was my life, Rayne, my every breath. My mistake was in not letting her know that.”
A smile played along her lips. “You don’t make mistakes, remember?” And then, breaking down, Rayne embraced him. “God, Dad, I hope that someday someone loves me just half as much as you love Mom.”
For a moment he held her to him, just as he had when she was small. A lot of time had gone between then and now. “They will, Rayne, they will. Or I’ll personally fillet them.”
He was rewarded with her laugh. Andrew stepped back, glancing over his shoulder. He saw three men walking in their direction.
“Okay, dry those tears, here come your brothers and Patrick.”
Straightening, she wiped away the telltale signs of rebellious tears before turning around to face the approaching threesome.
She tossed her head, her hair bobbing about her face like golden springs. “You’re late,” she declared with no small amount of glee.
It earned her a shove from Clay.
“There’ll be no fighting at the grave site,” Andrew informed them.
“Yes, Dad,” Clay and Rayne dutifully chorused before they grinned at one another.
Chapter 3
It was a room that reeked of desperation and despair. Furnished only with two chairs squared off on either side of a scarred metal rectangular table, its gray walls—the hue of an old buffalo nickel—provided the only color within the small area. There were no windows, only a single door. A door with a guard standing on the other side.
Cole watched as his younger brother was brought in. Clad in a faded orange jumpsuit, Eric rubbed his wrists the moment the required handcuffs were removed.
He looked bad, Cole thought. A mere shadow of the laughing, carefree boy he’d once known.
Anger welled within his chest. Anger at his parents who should have stopped this years before it happened. Anger at Eric for choosing the path of least resistance, for squandering his life and allowing himself to be devaluated this way.
Cole had pulled strings to see his brother inside this room. Ordinarily the room was used only by lawyers for consultations with their jailed clients. Anyone else was required to meet with prisoners in a communal area with a soundproof length of glass separating them and words echoing through a phone line.
He knew Eric. Eric had trouble dealing with restrictions. The very thought of bars around him fed his claustrophobia.
It surprised him to see how old Eric looked. He’d left a boy behind. The person standing uncertainly before him was a hollowed out man.
They’d always been worlds apart, he and Eric. He’d been born old. Eric, he’d thought, was destined to be eternally young. His brother was more childish than childlike, but it had had its appeal, especially among the kinds of women Eric gravitated toward.
For Kathy Fallon, the appeal had apparently worn thin. Cole knew without being told that Kathy’s leaving had been difficult for Eric to accept. His brother was accustomed to people liking him, seeking him out for a good time. Eric always had an endless supply of money and loved parties.
There was no party for Eric here.
There might not be one for a very long time if all the wheels he was trying to put into motion ground to a halt, Cole thought.
The expression on Eric’s face was equal parts surprise and relief when he looked at him.
Cole pulled his own chair out and nodded toward the other chair, indicating that Eric do the same. The metal legs scraped along the floor. Eric fell limply into his chair. His eyes looked eager as they fastened themselves to Cole’s face.
“You came.”
“You’re my brother,” Cole replied simply, hiding the fact that a wealth of emotions, too many to count, were tangling up inside of him.
It had been that way ever since Eric’s lawyer had called to tell him that Eric had been arrested and was asking for him. He’d booked the next flight out of New York and spent most of the time on the phone, planning, gathering what information he could. By the time he’d landed late last night, Cole had had as much of a handle on things as he could.
Long ago, he’d learned to rely first and foremost on himself.
Eric’s knuckles were almost white as he clenched his hands into impotent fists in front of him on the cold table. “I didn’t do it. I swear I didn’t do it.”
His brother’s voice was almost quivering as he begged to be believed. Cole shook his head. “I’m not the one you have to convince.”
Eric’s eyes widened. The brown orbs were badly bloodshot, a testimony to the recreational drugs that had found their way into his system. He was in withdrawal and it was taking a toll on him.
“Then you believe me?”
Cole knew his brother was many things, many of them unflattering, to say the least. But a murderer wasn’t numbered among them. He’d known that even as he’d listened to the lawyer’s recitation of the police report. “Why do you look so surprised?”
“Because everyone thinks I did it.” Eric’s voice nearly cracked with hopelessness. “Mother and Dad think I’m guilty.”
Cole hadn’t been by to see his parents yet. He was putting off a visit until it became absolutely necessary, or until he had the stomach for it. Other than giving their seed, neither Lyle nor Denise Garrison had ever been parents in any real sense of the word.
He didn’t have to see them to know how they felt about all this. If there was any doubt in his mind, the fact that neither had put up bail for Eric was proof enough.
“They only think you’re guilty of bringing shame to the almighty Garrison name.” An ironic smile twisted his mouth. “Something great-great-granddad beat you to in his youth, but they don’t want to acknowledge that.” The fact that the family money had been accrued by a robber baron was never spoken of. Cole took a deep breath, bracing himself. “So, what happened?”
Shoulders that were far less broad than Cole’s rose and fell haplessly beneath the orange jumpsuit. “The police arrested me.”
“Before then.”
The expression on Eric’s face was tortured as he tried to remember. “I was at a party. I think.” Frustration ate away at the thin veneer of his confidence. “I don’t know, I passed out.”
“At the party?”
Eric looked as if he was taxing his brain. “No, alone I think. There was this girl—but she wasn’t there when I came to,” he concluded helplessly.
“Where did you come to?” Cole enunciated each word slowly. In a way, he thought, he was dealing with a child, a child that was too frightened to think. Whenever Eric became afraid, he made less and less sense. He remembered that from their childhood.
Eric screwed his face up as he tried to think. “At my place.”
So far, Eric’s story didn’t sound promising. The lawyer, an old family friend with tepid water in his veins, had warned him off the record that the facts looked pretty damning.
“Did you see Kathy anytime that evening?” When Eric didn’t answer, Cole leaned forward across the table. “Did you?”
Like a child caught doing something he knew he shouldn’t, Eric hung his head and stared down at his hands. “Before I went to the party.” Then his head jerked up. “But she was alive when I left her. She was screaming at me.”
“That’s because you weren’t supposed to come around anymore,” Cole reminded him. “She’d gotten a restraining order against you.” It had happened less than two months ago, after Kathy had broken it off with his brother. Quinn, the detective he’d hired, had told him that Eric hadn’t been able to reconcile himself with the fact that they weren’t together anymore.
“I didn’t think she meant it.” An urgency rose in his voice as he tried to make Cole understand. “This is the first woman I ever really cared about. I loved her, Cole. And then just like that, she said it was over.” Color flooded his cheeks. “It couldn’t have been over. I didn’t want it to be over. Why did she have to call in the police?”
“You were stalking her, Eric.” Quinn had been very thorough in his summary, faxing him the details rather than wasting time with a phone call.
“I wasn’t stalking her, I was trying to win her back. I don’t have any practice with that,” Eric lamented. “I never wanted anyone back before.” He hit his chest with his outstretched hand, the reality of it all not making any sense to him. “This was me, Cole, everybody likes me.”
Eric honestly believed that, Cole thought. In some ways, his brother was still very much an innocent, not realizing that what most people gravitated toward was Eric’s money, not his company.
“Not everybody, Eric,” he said quietly.
A storm cloud filtered over his face. “You mean, Mother and Dad?”
