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“So what are you looking for?” She shoved the icy, dewy glass into his hand.
He took a long pull, mostly to give himself time to come up with a convincing answer. Then he lowered the glass, licked his lips. “Just looking. You spend a lot of time with my grandmother, after all.”
“Oh. And you think I might be some sort of a con-artist, out to fleece her? Maybe offer to reshingle her roof and then vanish with her money, something like that?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m just…curious about a woman who lives in a small town like this for a whole year and only makes one friend. One elderly, vulnerable friend.”
“Maude Bickham is far from vulnerable. And who said she was my only friend?”
“She did.”
She lowered her head. “You done with that water or what?”
“No.” He took another drink, a slow one. He could see it was pissing her off. She wanted him out of there—now. When he swallowed, he nodded toward the punching bag. “So you box?”
“You want a demonstration?”
He blinked in surprise.
“Look, I know what you’re doing. I saw that brown car go by. It was nothing, okay? I’m fine. Perfectly safe all by myself. Have been for over a year now. No bogeymen have come calling. And if you knew your grandmother at all you’d know what she was up to with all this make-believe worry about me walking the streets alone.”
“She’s up to something?”
“Of course she’s up to something. You’re single, I’m single. She’s probably hoping you won’t even come back home tonight.”
“Oh,” he said. Then he lifted his brows. “Oh. Well, there’s no danger of that happening.”
She blinked, clearly not sure whether she’d just been insulted.
He let it hang there for a moment, then added, “Your bed is way too small for both of us.”
She snatched the water glass from his hand, turned and marched to the front door. “Very funny. Tell your son I’ll see him at noon.”
“I will,” he said following her. “And, Beth?”
She stood there, holding the door open, his glass in one hand. He was glad he’d drained it, or he thought he might be wearing it.
“What?”
“Thanks. For offering to tutor Bryan, and for the advice. I mean it.”
Her bristles softened almost visibly. “Like I said, Josh, I’m no expert.”
“That’s ten times the expert I am.”
Smiling just slightly, she nodded, and he thought he was forgiven for intruding and even for snooping. She didn’t like people looking out for her. He’d been warned about that, he thought, studying her eyes, how green they were, and the stubborn set of her jaw. Arthur had sent federal agents to protect her, but she always spotted them and sent them packing. That was why, he’d said, he wanted someone else, a civilian, and Josh had been the logical choice. Josh and his former partner had a very successful private security firm; they’d gone into business together after leaving the ATF. After the raid. After he’d shot Beth.
A wave of nausea rose and receded with the thought as he stared at her, the curve of her neck, the little pulse he could see beating there after their run. Alive. God, it was a miracle.
In truth, he thought, Arthur Stanton must have had a whole other set of reasons for sending Josh, of all people, on this mission—reasons Josh still wasn’t certain he understood.
“Do I pass inspection?”
He shook free of his thoughts and realized he’d been staring at her. Her cheeks were a little pinker than they had been just from the run. Embarrassed? Flattered, maybe?
“Sorry. You’re…you’re a beautiful woman, Beth. I got distracted there for a minute.” And he still was. Did she look this good to him because she really was as beautiful as she seemed? Or did she only look that way to him because he was so God damn glad to see her alive?
“Thanks,” she said. “I think. Goodbye, Josh.”
It was his cue to leave. Sighing, he stepped outside, and Beth closed the door.
He didn’t leave right away, though. He walked down the road a short distance, then stopped and looked back. He wasn’t used to cases where the client didn’t want to be protected, much less those where she wasn’t even supposed to be aware of her bodyguard’s presence.
Much less those where you don’t particularly want to leave the client’s side, his inner voice scolded.
He ignored it. He liked being able to have someone watching his clients 24/7. And though it was doubtful, there was always a chance that brown car might come back. Its driver could just be waiting for him to leave.
So he would spend a few minutes doing surveillance, just in case.
The brown car didn’t return. But Beth did step out onto the porch. She looked around carefully, up and down the road. And he thought maybe she was looking for the brown car, too, but he couldn’t be sure.
He could be sure, though, of the item she held in her hands. He figured any man who’d worked in law enforcement could spot a gun from three hundred yards away, just by the way a person held it, the shape of the thing, its weight. Identifying firearms in the hands of suspects was something he’d had drilled into him during his training. You didn’t want your agents shooting people for pulling out wallets or cell phones, after all.
He hadn’t lost the skill.
Beth had a gun in her hands. A large caliber semiautomatic handgun. Black, not silver. From here it looked like a .45; a damn big gun, and the scope on the top made it look even bigger. You didn’t see scopes on handguns very often. Avid hunters seldom had them, because avid hunters had much better luck with shotguns. Militarily trained snipers rarely used them, because rifles were so much more accurate. Professional killers used them, because, though huge, they were easier to conceal than a shotgun or rifle would be.
Beth Slocum meant business. She could probably take down a small elephant with that thing.
She held the gun two-fisted, in front of her body, muzzle to the ground, arms extended. She handled the weapon as if she knew how to use it.
She was nervous, he thought. But she was ready, too. Or thought she was.
Whether that readiness would make her safer or put her at greater risk remained to be seen.
Beth looked up and down the street, waiting, watching, listening. She didn’t see anyone. Probably, she told herself, the brown car had been nothing more than a sightseer or nature lover. Probably her blood pressure was going through the roof over nothing.
After several minutes she went back inside, hit the release and let the fully loaded clip drop from the hollow butt into her waiting palm. Then she locked the gun in its assigned drawer, next to the tiny derringer. The key was on a chain around her ankle. She returned the clip to the top of a bookshelf, where she could grab it fast but no one else would ever notice it.
Her telephone was ringing. She snatched it up and whispered hello, half-afraid the man she’d been thinking about—Mordecai, not Joshua—would somehow start whispering to her from the other end.
“Hey, Beth. It’s Julie.”
“And Dawn!” Dawn called from somewhere in the background. Not on an extension, though.
Beth closed her eyes against the rush of sheer pleasure hearing her daughter’s voice brought welling up inside her. God, it was heaven to hear her voice. Warm, sweet heaven. The night of that horrible raid, Dawn had been only a baby. Beth had been shot, certain she was dying, when she’d given her daughter to her best friend, begged her to take Dawn out of that place. And Jewel—Julie now—had done it. She’d raised Dawn as her own, believing, as the rest of the world had, that Beth had died in the raid. By the time Beth found them again, Dawn had been happy, thriving, and calling Julie “Mom.”
And yet…. “Are we private?”
“Yeah. Pay phone, outside a convenience store. Nowhere near us. It’s clean, don’t worry. I’ll put Dawny on after we talk.” Her next words were muffled. “Dawny, go grab us a couple of Diet Vanilla Cokes, will you?”
“Sure, Mom. Be right back. Don’t you dare hang up.”
Beth sighed, ignoring the blade she felt twisting in her heart every time she heard her daughter call her best friend “Mom.” She swallowed the pain, kept it hidden from her voice. “It’s not like it matters. Sooner or later, he’s going to find me.”
“Not necessarily,” Julie told her, just as she always did. “Beth, you have a new name, new town—”
“It won’t matter. His gift is genuine, Jewel. Even if his mind is broken, his gift is for real. He’ll track me down.”
“You have some reason to feel like he’s getting close? You sound…shaky.”
Beth swallowed. “I don’t know. It’s probably nothing. I’m probably overreacting.”
“I have never known you to overreact. Maybe it’s time you accept some of the help the government is always offering—the bodyguards, I mean.”
Beth shook her head. “I don’t trust anyone who works for the government. Hell, it was a government man who shot me.” Her and thirty other teenagers, she thought silently, in a riot that should have been avoided. She’d lost everything because of it. Her soul, for a time, as she lingered in a coma. Her memory for years afterward. Her daughter, the only one she would ever have. Her identity, her entire life. Gone, all of it, because of one gung ho soldier with an itchy trigger finger and a lousy aim. “I don’t want another one like him protecting me.”
“Then maybe you should get out of there.”
She pursed her lips. “No, Jewel. Like I said, it’s probably nothing. I’m just paranoid. Besides, I’m sick of running and hiding.”
“Yeah, and when did you decide that?”
“I don’t know. It’s been a long time coming.” She licked her lips. “When he comes, I’ll be ready. Maybe I should just face him. Only one of us would walk away, but at least the running would be over.”
“You’re scaring me, Beth.”
Beth swallowed hard. “I’m being melodramatic. I’m lonesome. I miss you guys. I miss Dawny.”
“I know. She misses you, too. She’s been begging me to let her come up there for a visit.”
Beth closed her eyes. It was strictly against the government’s rules for her to see her daughter. Then again, according to Arthur Stanton, she wasn’t supposed to communicate with Dawn by phone or e-mail, either. It hadn’t stopped her from doing so. Still…
“It may not be the best time to risk it, Jewel. Try to put her off until I can be sure it’s safe.” She didn’t think Mordecai would harm Dawn, and he probably wouldn’t try to abduct her again now that he’d surrendered his parental rights to her. But given his state of mind, there was no point putting her within his reach.
“Will do. Listen, Beth, I got wind of something at the newsroom. I don’t know if it means anything. In fact it probably doesn’t, but…David Quentin Gray—Mordecai’s ex-lawyer—escaped from Attica last week. They found him dead, shot once in the head, the next day.”
Beth got a chill that didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. “Who shot him?”
“They don’t know.”
Beth sighed. “It’s probably nothing,” she said. “He didn’t know anything about me. I mean, how could he?”
“No. It’s nothing. I’m sure of it. I just thought you should know.”
“Thanks, Julie.”
“Here’s your drink,” Dawn said. “Can I talk now?”
“Just a sec, hon. Beth, if you need us, let us know. Sean and I can be there in no time. We love you, you know. And we owe you a hell of a lot.”
“I’m the one who owes you, Jewel. Now put the brat on the phone before she has a fit.”
She heard the telephone move, then Dawn’s voice came on the line, and Beth let it wash over her like rain over a dying flower. Dawn talked about her senior year of high school, her teachers, her classes, her plans for graduation and where she might go to college. She was driving now. Her Jeep had gotten a dent from a kid in the school parking lot, and she was mortified about it, and so on and on and on.
Beth listened, commenting in all the right places, and she somehow managed to keep the tears that were sliding down her cheeks from being evident in her voice.
Chapter Four
It was Lizzie. This was her!
Mordecai’s heart had pounded, and he’d barely been able to catch his breath as he watched her running along the winding country lane. Running. Hands clenched into fists pumping at her sides. As if she were fighting.
And then she slowed and walked right up to the front porch of the very house he’d been watching: the fading, former Blackberry Inn. All night, he’d been parked in his car, keeping the boy under surveillance, just as the guides had told him to do. It had made no sense. He’d been frustrated, thinking it stupid and senseless to sit there, cold and uncomfortable, overnight. He knew where the boy lived now, so what was the point? Even if he was to be Mordecai’s heir…
Now he understood. This was the point. The boy was a beacon, pointing the way to Lizzie. Already he was connected to Mordecai, already aiding him in his work. He had led Mordecai to Lizzie. Obviously he was the one. The boy, Bryan, was the one he’d been waiting for. He should have trusted, had more faith. The guides always had a reason for everything they told him to do.
Mordecai took out his binoculars and watched every move Lizzie made. He watched her sit on the porch, sipping tea with an old woman, watched the looks, the smiles, they exchanged.
They were close. The old woman was important to her.
Then the man came out to join them, and Mordecai’s body went stiff and his nerve endings prickled. The man had to be Bryan’s father—the resemblance between the two had told him that much. But what was he doing with Lizzie?
A short while later, she was running again. But this time the man ran with her. The bastard had no business there, Mordecai thought. Lizzie was his. Always had been, always would be. Dead or alive, she belonged to Mordecai.
He let them get a good distance away before starting his car and driving a little closer. He was careful not to get too close, and he never let them spot him.
God, how different she seemed…felt. The energy he sensed surrounding her was not the same as it had been before.
She’d changed.
She thinks she’s escaped you, Mordecai. Thinks she’s above you now.
Look at her, running. Trying to grow strong. She’ll fight you this time.
“She fought me last time,” he muttered. “Isn’t shooting me in the chest fighting me?” His chest ached a little at the memory, even though the Kevlar vest had ensured he only suffered a pair of broken ribs from the bullet she had fired at his heart…even as she kissed his lips.
She was weak, back then. And she still loved you, in some desperate, dependent way. She wept when she thought she had killed you.
But she’s not weak anymore. She won’t shed a tear for you now.
Mordecai decided to ignore the voices for a while, just the way he was ignoring the presence of the man, the interloper, and simply bask in Lizzie’s presence. In being able to see her, watch her. In being this close to her. God, how he’d loved her once. Still. As he should.
Jesus had loved Judas, even after his kiss of betrayal.
Mordecai followed her to where she lived, in a cottage just at the edge of Blackberry. He knew it when they slowed to a walk, entered the house. He even saw her opening the door with her set of keys.
They’ve seen the car, Mordecai.
