Before I Sleep (28 page)

Roof's was busy, but quieter than usual tonight. They had no trouble finding a booth, and for once there was nobody from the station there. She ordered a club sandwich, and Seamus ordered a steak. Country music washed over them, and Carey found herself listening with more than ordinary attention to “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.”

And suddenly she found herself aching for the days when she'd been a prosecutor and they could sit over a midnight meal and talk about their cases freely. Now there was a gulf between them that couldn't be bridged. She couldn't ask him the questions most pressing on her mind about the killings, and he couldn't share any significant details of his day. She was an outsider now, and never had she felt it more acutely.

Their meals were placed before them, and Seamus reached for the steak sauce, pouring a little puddle of it on the edge of his plate.

“You could eat anything with that sauce on it and not know what it is,” she remarked.

He flashed her an unexpected, breathtaking grin. “That's the point. Ever try a slice of fresh Vidalia onion between two pieces of bread with a dollop of steak sauce?”

She shuddered, and he laughed.

Willie Nelson gave way to Hal Ketchum and a song about the Trail of Tears. It was a sad, wistful piece that did nothing to help Carey's mood. Nor did it help her mood any that Seamus appeared not to have a thing on his mind except the steak he was devouring with obvious gusto. One section of her sandwich had left her feeling as if she'd swallowed lead.

Seamus looked up suddenly, his expression serious. “You ought to go back to the State Attorney's Office, Carey.”

“I'd be about as welcome as a case of herpes.”

He shook his head. “I think you're wrong. I think you were in a tough position the last time you were there, and you didn't have the self-confidence to push back when the system was steamrolling you. I also don't think the justice system is as cockeyed as you say. But it
does
need people like you to keep it on the straight and narrow. If you couldn't stomach being a prosecutor again, go with the Public Defender's Office.”

“I'd go broke.”

He cocked a brow.

She shrugged, suddenly feeling old and tired. “Okay, so it's not the money. I could manage. But I don't have the fire anymore, Seamus. It got water dumped on it one too many times.”

“No fire?” He looked disbelieving. “You're charging ahead full tilt on this Otis thing, and thumbing your nose at all the powers that be. Don't tell me you've lost the fire. That's nonsense.”

She shrugged a shoulder and looked down at her sandwich, trying to find a way to end this conversation. It was making her too uncomfortable. “What do you care, anyway?”

“You're a damn fine attorney. You shouldn't waste it. Besides, that passion in you isn't going to be satisfied by arguing with idiots on the radio and you know it. I don't get the feeling that you're really happy with your life now.”

Her head snapped up, and she glared at him. “Ever think
you
might have something to do with that?”

He spread his hands and dropped the subject, going back to his steak and baked potato.

Leaving her to feel like a jerk. But she was always a jerk around Seamus, it seemed. He had just tried to say something nice and express concern for her, and she had thrown it back into his face.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

He looked up. “That's okay. But it would really help if you and I could learn to have a personal conversation without going to war.”

She wanted to ask what it would help, then decided that was a discussion that might prove to be dangerous.

So she let it lie, and tried to eat, and tried not to think about just how right he was.

C
HAPTER
16

6 Days

T
heir flight was delayed by three hours, owing to severe thunderstorms in Atlanta. Then, after they boarded, they were kept waiting for another hour. By the time they were rolling down the runway toward takeoff, it was nearly four in the afternoon, and Carey was beginning to feel seriously restless. She'd brought a novel to read, but it turned out to be less gripping than she had hoped. Giving up, she turned her attention out the window.

Seamus slept. Sometimes she thought he could sleep anywhere, anytime, and she envied him. His large frame overfilled the narrow coach seat, and every time she moved, she felt his shoulder brush against her. She wouldn't have minded, except it got her to thinking about the other ways she'd like to have him brush against her. Irritations aside, they did finally make it to Atlanta. Seamus woke just as they were touching down on the runway.

He turned to look at her, his expression sleepy and relaxed, and she felt her heart squeeze with an urge just to burrow into his arms. She quickly averted her face, wondering if she was losing her mind.

He spoke. “ I guess, considering how late it is, we should just call these folks from the airport and take a cab over to see them before we do anything else.”

“Sounds good.” At least he hadn't read her face. Sometimes it could be unnerving how much he could read in her expressions.

They waited until nearly everyone else had deplaned before taking their bags out of the overhead rack and making their way out. By the time they reached a pay phone another half hour was lost.

“Do you have the number?” Seamus asked as he dropped his carry-on on the floor beside hers. “I think I should make the call. At least you won't have to impersonate anyone.”

She quite agreed. She searched her purse until she found the scrap of paper she had written the name and number on. Waiting impatiently, she watched him dial.

“May I speak with Mr. or Mrs. Wiggins, please?”

She tried to read his face as he waited, but Seamus had always been unreadable when he wanted to be.

“I see,” he said. “Thank you very much. No, no message necessary. I'll just call back in the morning.” He hung up.

“What?” she asked. “What?”

“They went out for the evening. I gather James wasn't the only child they had. It sounded like a playground in the background. Anyway, they won't be back until after eleven.”

Carey felt her shoulders slump as expectation slipped away. She had thought her waiting was over at last, but apparently it wasn't. Time. They had so little time. Six days now.

“Hey,” Seamus said almost gently. “It's okay. We'll see them tomorrow.” “What if they're not home?”

“I'll catch them. You're talking to a cop, remember? I catch people who are actually trying to hide from me.”

She felt a smile lift the corners of her mouth, but it didn't quite reach her heart. “Time,” she said, and let the word hang.

“I know. Believe me, I know.”

Bending, he picked up both their bags. “Come on. Let's get a car and get a hotel. There's nothing else we can do right now.”

They got adjoining rooms at a motel not too far from the subdivision where the Wigginses lived. They left the door between them open, but separated anyway. Carey paced her room, trying to control the anxiety that was making her skin crawl.
Six days.
Time had grown terrifyingly short

She heard Seamus on the phone in his room, but she couldn't hear what he was saying. Probably calling work to see if anything was happening, she thought.

Nerves kept her moving, her mind spinning at top speed as she tried to find some way to pass this evening usefully. The thought of sitting around with nothing to do until morning made her want to scream.

Finally, desperate to find some relaxation, she went to take a hot shower. The heat
did
have the effect of relaxing her muscles, but it did nothing to slow down her mind. It was going to be a long, long night.

When she came out of the bathroom, wearing a robe and toweling her hair dry, she found Seamus sitting on the end of her bed, reviewing some notes on his ever-present pocket notepad.

He looked up and smiled at her. “Dinner in the room? Or would you prefer going out?”

Neither option really appealed to her. “Let me think about it.” Opening her suitcase, she looked for her hair dryer and brush.

“Sure.” He leaned back on his elbows, watching her paw impatiently through her belongings. “Getting uptight isn't going to help, Carey.”

She threw up a hand. “I know that. I'm uptight anyway.”

“No kidding.”

She could have screamed at him; she was certainly irritable enough, feeling as if everything was rubbing her the wrong way. But when she looked at him, reclining there with a pleasant, almost hopeful smile on his face, something inside her let go.

Plopping down beside him on the bed, she held her blow-dryer in one hand and her brush in the other. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm so on edge right now that everything is just irritating me past belief.”

“I got that feeling. Is it just that you're worried about Otis's execution? Or is there something else going on here?”

She looked at him, taking in his rumpled hair, the unbuttoned collar of his white shirt, the way his shoulders stretched the fabric. Broad shoulders. He'd always had broad shoulders, both physically and emotionally. Even in the midst of all his guilt about his wife and daughter, he'd been willing to shoulder as much of her burdens as she was willing to share.

Why hadn't she realized that before, when it would have mattered? Why had she insisted on focusing on his guilt and grief, as if they were somehow an offense to
herl

“God,” she said suddenly, “I'm such a selfish twit!”

His brows lifted. “Huh? What did I miss?”

“Never mind. I'm just reflecting on my own shortcomings.”

“What good will that do—except to evade my question?”

“You damn cops. You never forget a thing.”

“Same goes for you damn lawyers.” he said it jestingly, but there was real concern in his gaze. “Carey, just tell me. You're about to fly right off the handle, and I don't think it's just that we're running short of time. It's getting close, but tomorrow morning still isn't too late. It's just a little dicier.”

“I know.” She looked down at her hands. “I know.”

“So tell me what's really eating you.”

When she didn't respond, he sat up and took the blow-dryer and brush from her, leaning over to put them on the nearby chair. Then he drew her down so that she lay with her head on his shoulder and his arms around her. He didn't even seem to mind that her hair was wet.

Nor did she feel any danger in the embrace. He was holding her to comfort her, and it had been a long time since anyone had wanted to do that. She let herself relax into his embrace, and soaked up what comfort she could.

“Tell me,” he said.

His voice rumbled deeply in his chest, and the sound of his steady heartbeat was reassuring against her ear. “I don't know how,” she said. “It's too stupid.”

“So tell me,” he said, “are you more afraid that we won't find anything useful at all, or that we'll find something that incriminates John Otis?”

Shock stiffened her. “How did you know?”

“I know you,” he answered, his hand running soothingly down her arm, stroking her as if she were a cat. “You've had too many illusions destroyed, haven't you, sweetheart?”

He shouldn't call her that. She tried to marshal a protest, but the words wouldn't come past a throat that was suddenly tight with tears she didn't want to shed. It was all she could do to breathe and hold it all in.

“When I met you,” he continued, “you still had ideals left. It was one of the things that drew me to you. You believed in justice, in truth, in lightness. You thought you could make a difference. Your belief was wavering—I could see it—but you hadn't lost it all yet. I watched it get stripped from you in the time we were together. I watched you get crushed by your job—and by me. I take my full share of the blame.”

He was laying her soul bare and she wanted to crawl away into some dark place and hide, but somehow she couldn't make herself move. She needed his comfort too much.

“Part of you still wants to believe,” he continued in the same deep, slow tone. “Somewhere inside you that idealist still exists. You've developed a good shell of cynicism, but a true cynic wouldn't care whether John Otis is innocent.”

She pressed her lips tightly together, unable to deny it.

“The way I see it, you crawled out of your shell when you got word Otis was going to be executed. You crawled out, and you dared to believe again, just one fragile little hope. You went to see him, and you came away daring to believe he was innocent. That takes a lot of faith, sweetheart. A lot of faith.”

“It's nuts,” she said thickly.

“Most people would say so. That doesn't make it wrong. But now you're in a real bind, aren't you?”

She sat up suddenly, looking down at him. The tears she didn't want to shed, tears that came from an aching, frightened heart, hung on her lower lashes. “No kidding,” she said thickly.

He reached up and touched one tear with a gentle fingertip. “Seems to me you've got as much to lose here as Otis. What if we find out he's guilty? You'll never believe in anybody again, will you? And what if we can't find anything at all, and he gets executed? Will you ever believe in the justice system again? I doubt it. You're close enough to that already. And the worst possible outcome of all is that we find out to our own satisfaction that he's innocent, but we can't save him. How are you going to live with that?”

She shook her head, looking away, her vision blurred by tears.

“You've put an awful lot of your hopes and dreams in one leaky little basket, Carey. And that's why you're coming apart now. Because we're getting so close to the death of the last little flickering hope that's never been quite stamped out by life.”

She dashed away her tears with the back of her hand and drew a shaky breath. “I'm an open book, huh?”

“Not exactly. For some reason I've been doing an awful lot of thinking about what happened between us before. What you told me recently about what was really going on when you were having all that trouble at work—well, it made me start reevaluating my perceptions of what had happened. Things are always clearer in hindsight, aren't they?”