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The last house on this dead-end street looked better than the last time he’d seen it. The door and shutters wore a fresh coat of lipstick-red paint. But not even the bright color could erase the tired slouch of the roofline or the defeat of the sagging siding. The wipers taunted him, coward, coward, coward.
Now that he was here, he wasn’t quite sure what to do. The last time he’d talked to Brynna, she’d screamed at him to never call her again and had slammed down the phone. All of his calls after that were screened through a voice box, and she hadn’t returned any. But then Bryn had never played by anyone’s rules; she’d made up her own. That’s what got her kicked out of the police academy. Last he’d heard she’d gotten a P.I. license. He couldn’t imagine that business was booming for her here.
Maybe she was right. Maybe he was a coward for not pushing the issue. Maybe he had run from his responsibility to her. But only an idiot went where he wasn’t wanted.
Rain drummed impatiently on the ragtop of his Corvette, reminding him of his mother’s red nails clicking against the cracked kitchen table. Are you just going to sit there? Her shrill voice taunted. For heaven’s sake, Grayson, grow a spine. Do you want to end up like your father?
Don’t know. That might be a good thing.
The imagined smack of his mother’s slap stung his cheek.
He twisted off the ignition and, rounding his shoulders against the pelt of rain, trotted across the street to the red door. For a second his hand hovered above the glossy red paint, then he knocked.
A volley of small yips answered him. “Quiet, Queenie!”
Bryn. Yet not Bryn. Something was off in her voice. “Bryn, it’s Gray. Open up.”
The silence on the other side of the door was so deep, it seemed to suck the breath right out of his lungs “Bryn. Please.”
“Go away.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a decade too late.”
“Open the door, Bryn.”
“I can’t.” The broken tone of her voice tore him apart. What on earth had happened to her? Why was her hatred of him so deep? He was the one who had been all but driven out of town. What could she possibly hold against him?
Something slid down the other side of the door, rattling the wood on its hinges. “You left me, Gray. You left me with her.” Her voice, low on the other side of the door, hardened. “You left me with them.”
Gray swore silently and slid down the front side of the door. They sat back to back with the door between them. “I couldn’t take you to basic training. You know that.”
“You left me, Gray.”
Rain blitzed his face, soaked his suit and sank into the Italian leather of his shoes. “You liked it here. Mom always took your side. Mama’s baby never had to do anything. You and Abbie, you were the toast of the town. Queen of this. Princess of that. Brynna Reed and Abrielle Holbrook. Everybody’s friends. Why would you want to leave that?”
“Things change.”
Hands draped over his knees, he closed his eyes and leaned his head against the hard wood. “Talk to me.”
“It doesn’t matter. You should leave now.”
He thought he heard tears in her voice. What the hell was he supposed to do with that when she wouldn’t talk? “This isn’t about me, Bryn. It’s about Abbie.”
“Abbie’s safe wherever she is.”
“No she isn’t. Someone within WITSEC is selling her out. If I don’t find her, she could die.”
Silence, except for the sting of rain spiking against the concrete stoop and rattling against the siding.
“She’s already lost so much,” Gray said. Noncriminals paid a higher price than criminals in WITSEC. Loss of identity, self, dignity. Abbie was a woman of her world. She belonged here in the same way he never had. Losing her father, her life, her world, he couldn’t imagine how she’d survived it all. “She doesn’t deserve to die for a mistake her father made.”
“Elliot died to protect her.”
“What makes you say that?” That tidbit wasn’t in the briefing notes.
“I’m not going to betray her.”
“It’s not betrayal when you’re helping her.”
“She’s safe.”
Stubborn. Hardheaded. Foolish little witch. It wasn’t her life she was playing with; it was Abbie’s. But he swallowed the barbwire of anger and talked to his sister as if logic would make a difference. “People on the run tend to go back to the familiar. I need to know if she came to you for help.”
“She’s safe.”
“Did you know that her safety was compromised three times in the past three weeks? That three deputies died trying to protect her? That right now Raphael Vanderveer is negotiating with teams of lawyers and that, if Abbie chooses not to testify at the trial, he could end up out on the streets again.”
“Like you said, she’s lost so much. Maybe she feels she has nothing more to lose.”
“There’s her life.”
“What’s the point if she always has to live in fear? Maybe she’s tired of running, Gray. Did you think of that?”
A skewed barb? “I couldn’t take you with me, Bryn. And even if I could have, you wouldn’t have come. You fit too well here.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right.”
Nothing he could say would change her mind. “I care about Abbie. You know that. I have to find her before Vanderveer’s snitch does. In your heart you know that, too. Where is she?”
But Bryn didn’t answer. The push of her body against the door yielded a loud creak.
He sprang up and pounded on the door. He wrenched the doorknob, but the lock wouldn’t give, and he’d long ago lost the key. “Bryn, you have to help me. Please. I don’t care if you hate me till the day you die. But you have to care that Abbie’s life is in danger.”
Bryn’s footsteps padded away. The dog’s toenails clicked on the linoleum as it followed its mistress.
A moment later “Stayin’ Alive” blasted from a stereo.
He wasn’t stupid. He got the hint. As always in this town, he was on his own. He turned and strode toward his car. His being here was causing Bryn grief, and whatever he represented to her was a threat. Too bad she couldn’t think of her friend. He needed to find Abbie to help her stay alive. Couldn’t Bryn see that? He yanked the car door open and fumbled in his soaked-through pocket for his keys. With one last look at the sad house that looked like a tired, made-up whore, he cranked on the ignition.
As the engine growled to life, a smile cracked his lips. He reached into the glove compartment for the holey gym sock he kept there to wipe fog off the windshield and dried his sunglasses.
“Stayin’ Alive.” From the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever. Maybe Bryn hated him, but she did care about Abbie after all.
DON’T THINK OF IT, Abrielle. Nobody knows where you are. Nobody can find you. Still, the edge of her peace started to curl at the sound of the ferry’s horn. Once a day it brought supplies, mail and possibly people. And a troop of fear. That was the one chink in this otherwise perfect armor.
Out here in her refuge of growing fog, she listened for Bert’s footsteps on the rocky path that were the pre-arranged all-clear signal. Only the gentle lap of water against rocks reached her. Was there a problem this afternoon? Had someone suspicious gotten off the ferry? She fiddled with the aperture ring on the camera Bert had loaned her. Let it go, Abbie.
Bert wouldn’t spill her secret.
Strains of “High Noon” crept into her mind as Abbie imagined five-foot-two Bert in a showdown with one of Rafe’s thugs. She laughed out loud and the fog swallowed her voice, replacing it with the quiet push and pull of water on rock.
After the chaos of the past year, this quiet was a blessing. She lifted the camera and forced herself to relax into the calming rhythm of nature around her. Back to basics, Abbie. The first essential of a good photograph was awareness. What personal statement did she want to make today?
“Part of finding your God,” Bert had said when Abbie first showed up on the convent doorstep begging for sanctuary, “is finding yourself.”
And here in the cool afternoon air, with a pale white haze on the horizon, Abbie could almost believe she’d have a chance at connecting with her lost self—and surviving for another eight days.
Though the Sisters of Sacred Heart were in the midst of their summer tourist season, Bert—Sister Bertrice Storey to everyone else—had found a room for her in the old granite convent. People came to Retreat Island at times of transition—divorce, death, milestone birth-days—that made one want to look deep into oneself or beg some higher source for answers to questions that really had none. But the quiet did heal and it had a way of leading one to some sort of peace.
There were no televisions here, no mad schedules, no hectic running from one appointment to the next. There was room for a dozen overnight visitors to find their own voices in the silence. They could join the sisters in their daily prayers. They could work in the gardens. They could walk in the woods. If someone needed to talk, a sister was there with a willing ear. Chapel bells woke the residents at six every morning, and small signs on the walls discreetly reminded guests that their silence was their gift to their companions.
Though Bert had insisted they had a full house, the island was big enough that Abbie hadn’t run into any of the other guests. They, like her, were seeking solitude. And two days into her ten-day retreat, that sense of peace was starting to envelop her as thickly as the fog bank tucking in around the island.
Fear retreated and she lost herself in the beauty of nature around her. Viewpoint and composition. Light, form and tone. Texture. Pattern. Through the lens of the camera she searched. The scent of spruce and sea air and damp earth connected her to the here and now and grounded her to her surroundings. Crouched among the rocks and boulders that lined the western shore, she aimed the camera at the departing ferry that was moving into the fog like some sort of spaceship and snapped the shutter.
Fog folded in around the ferry’s departing bulk, swallowing it whole. Bert’s footsteps crunched on the path. All was safe for another day.
Her sigh filled the night air. With a smile she straightened, threw her head back and spread her arms like Julie Andrews at the beginning of The Sound of Music, then twirled on her rocky perch to meet Bert. Before she could start singing, the sight of a wind-carved spruce bending over a ledge of rocks caught her eye. She lifted the camera and focused on the image that gave the impression of a pointy-hatted gnome stroking its long, bristled beard.
Bert’s footsteps stopped on the trail.
“What took you so long?” Abbie asked, moving one foot to a neighboring boulder in order to accentuate the spruce gnome’s nose. “I was starting to think something happened.”
“Your Sister Bertrice is one tough cookie. It took me a half hour to convince her I was one of the good guys.”
At the sound of the male voice Abbie jerked around, lost her footing on the wet rock and landed hard on her backside. Fear serpentined through all of her limbs, setting them shaking. How could Bert have trusted anyone after what Abbie had told her? Men—all men—were a threat to her. No matter how charming—especially if they were charming—they belonged to Rafe, and the only thing Rafe wanted from her was permanent silence. Scrambling, she managed to get up and over the rock, away from this threat.
“Abbie! Hey, wait, no!” The dark shape scurried after her, swearing as he slipped on the slick rocks. “It’s me. Gray.”
“Gray?” Heart hammering, she froze, holding the camera against her heart like a pitiful shield. Gray had once had a way of making her feel as if her mere presence in this world made it a better place. What teenage girl didn’t want to see herself as a goddess in a handsome boy’s eyes? Then she’d ruined it all with just a few words. “What are you doing here?”
“Can we climb down from here?”
“No.” She needed distance. This was too unexpected, too startling. Gray, here, now. Wrong time. Wrong place. She shivered and wished she’d worn a sweater over her sleeveless blouse. He detached himself from the fog, and she sucked in a breath.
Familiar features formed as he drew closer, and the sizzle she’d thought of as teenage infatuation stirred her blood. His sandy hair now sported a salon do instead of the home-butchered bowl cut. His high cheekbones still begged for a camera’s attention. His lips were still tempting. He still wore the mirrored shades he’d taken up in high school. Cool then, scary now because she couldn’t read his intent in his eyes.
Her hands tightened around the camera and she struggled with her desire to inch it up to her eye to capture this ghost from her past. That sleepy smile. That careless pose. That air of endless time on hand. They were all a skin he wore to protect himself and hid a steely determination. She’d admired that survival instinct in him, that fire to succeed that no one could douse no matter how much water they threw at him. That relentless ability to pursue suited his job, but it would also return her to a captivity that doomed her to die. “Stay where you are.”
“I’m here to help you, Abbie.”
“I was safe until you showed up.” She stepped up to the next boulder and away from the frustrating tug of outgrown teenage hormones that had once made her do crazy things like swan dive into the quarry to get his attention.
Balancing himself on the slippery soles of his leather shoes, he followed her. “I don’t work for Vanderveer. I don’t work for the Marshals Service. I work for a private firm. I’m here to help you. You know me, Abbie. Trust me.”
“I can’t. Leave me alone.” She continued putting distance between him and her on the path of rocks she’d traveled time and again over the past few days. She couldn’t trust him. She couldn’t trust anyone. She was learning that lesson blow by painful blow. Look where trusting Bert had gotten her. Where would she go now? “How did you know where to find me?”
“A lucky guess.”
“Brynna.” Tears blurring the path, Abbie reached out to steady herself on a neighboring boulder, then continued her upward climb to the stand of spruce. How could Brynna have sold her out? Even to Gray? Especially to Gray?
“She didn’t say a word.” Gray puffed too close behind her. “Why won’t she open the door for me?”
“You left her.”
“I had no choice.”
“You asked me to go with you.”
He slid and mumbled a curse. “That was different.”
“Not to her.” Not when Bryn knew her only protection from her mother’s hard life was Gray. But he couldn’t know, and it wasn’t Abbie’s place to tell him. “How did you find me?”
“It wasn’t that hard. People tend to go back to what’s familiar. Your parents are dead. Brynna’s too obvious and too close to home. Who else could you trust? Then I remembered your mother’s college friend who used to take you to see all those musicals in Boston when you were a kid. Had a hell of a time tracking her down. Who would’ve thought a theater major would end up in a convent?”
She’d hoped no one. Her mother had died so long ago and Bert hadn’t been an active part of Abbie’s life since then. Abbie had assumed Bert wouldn’t show up on anyone’s radar. Except Gray’s. Because he knew her so well. What if Rafe’s hired goons had followed him? “Please, Gray, if you ever cared for me, go away.”
“You know, between you and Brynna, my ego is taking quite a beating.”
“Then you shouldn’t have come back to the people who can hurt you.”
“You have to testify. I can keep you safe until then.”
Rain started, pecking at the fog. She reached the stand of spruce and looked down at Gray’s dark shape struggling for footing on the rocks below. She’d missed him. But after the way she’d hurt him, she had no right to expect him to put his life on the line for her. She wasn’t the old Abbie, and he wasn’t the old Gray. Too much had happened to both of them. “Go, Gray. Please leave me alone.”
“I can’t, Abbie. Not this time.”
She didn’t wait to see if he made it safely over the last muddy stretch of cliff. She ran through the woods, following not path but memory. Something moved to her right? A deer? She turned her head but saw nothing in the soupy murk. Gray had her imagining Rafe’s minions all around her.
“Abbie!” The alarm in Gray’s voice froze her. A moment later he tackled her to the ground. The hard knock jammed the camera into her chest, stealing her breath. A second later something bit into the tree at her side, drooling chunks of bark onto her arm.
“Stay down,” Gray said, then took off after whoever had shot at them. He disappeared into the fog she’d counted as a blessing only moments ago.
Desperately trying to rasp breath into her lungs, she clawed at the earth at her side. This could not be happening. Not here. This was a safe place. Drops of rain splattered around her. She’d been wrong. Rain didn’t wash away the fear. It was still there. Big and immovable. Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head. She shook her head. Don’t go there. Not now. She had to get away. Tonight. She had to disappear again.
“Can you stand?” Gray’s hand reached down to help her up.
She nodded and sat up, finally getting air into her lungs. “I’m fine. Did you get him?”
“No. He got away.”
She hadn’t realized until then that she’d counted on Gray to catch him and give her a chance for a safe getaway. The bitter hiccup of tears joined her lung-filling breaths. “I have to get back. Bert’ll worry.”
Gray’s hand didn’t let go of her arm. “Abbie.” He opened his left hand. There on his palm rested the proof that her safety was nothing more than illusion.
Chapter Three
