Convicted (24 page)

"Believe me, Lisa," Deacon said, ignoring Terry as the man ignored him. "Look inside yourself and decide if you can really believe I'd ever try to hurt you."

Lisa shook her head, wanting his words to go away. "You can't trick me this time, Deacon."

"I don't want to trick you," Deacon said.

Terry jerked him upright. "Shut up, Campbell. You'll sit out in the patrol car until someone gets here."

As he was being dragged away, Deacon struggled only to call over his shoulder. "Someone stole my helmet and jacket, Lisa! I didn't lie about that! They took them from my office. Check the video!"

Then Terry had yanked him through the doorway. Lisa sat back in her chair, unable to move. Her ankle throbbed, as did a dozen places on her body she hadn't noticed were in pain until just now. From upstairs, she could still hear the faint sound of running water.

She heard the crackle of static from Terry's radio, then the burst of voices. Someone would be here soon to sit with her while Terry took Deacon to the station and threw him in a cell. Someone would protect her even as the man who'd assaulted her was locked away.

Chill doubt still assailed her with its skeletal fingers. Something was not right. It was not right. She ticked the fingers of one hand against the palm of the other, before looking down and stopping the motion with a shudder. That was Allegra's nervous habit, not hers.

Lisa shook in the kitchen chair, wishing for a sweater and unable to force herself to find one. Something was not right. What was it? What still nudged at her brain?

Deacon had said she called him. She didn't. Terry said she'd paged him...and she hadn't done that either. Lisa got up from the table so fast she knocked over her chair. She didn't call and she didn't page. But someone did.

Someone wearing a helmet and jacket attacked her. Deacon said those items had been stolen. Check the video, he'd said. Barely aware she was moving, Lisa grabbed her keys and headed for the back door.

Check the video.
The video would tell her the truth. About everything.

Terry hadn't put the lights on his patrol car on, but there had been enough commotion to get the neighbors peeking through their blinds. Lisa paid them no attention, focused on her mission. The car keys bit into her palm as she slid behind the driver's seat.

"Lisa!"

She heard Terry calling, but ignored him. She could see the dark outline of Deacon's head in the back seat of the patrol car, and Terry began heading her way. Lisa yanked the gear stick into reverse and backed out of the driveway. She didn't bother to see if Terry ran after her.

Her mind raced along with her car as she sped down the dark and narrow streets. She should not believe Deacon, not after finding her purse under his bed. Not after she'd seen the figure in his helmet and jacket looming up, outlined by the light from Allegra's room.

Her foot twitched on the gas, making the car buck, as she remembered the kick. Even though she'd connected with force, her assailant had been too easy to shove away. Too light, not heavy as she knew Deacon's weight to be.

Her cheeks flushed hot as she thought of exactly how well she knew the weight of Deacon against her. Lisa's fingers tapped nervously on the wheel as she waited for the light to turn green. Checking the videotape would only take a few minutes. One way or another, it would set her mind at ease.

Her mind whirled as she thought back over the past few months. While she had been falling back in love with Deacon, could it be possible that he'd been the one behind all the strange things? He had a motive as her family and Terry kept reminding her. But could he really have done those things?

"I don't want to believe that," she said aloud.

The group of kids out joyriding in the car beside her looked over and started laughing. They'd been singing along with the radio, but apparently talking to oneself wasn't the same thing. Lisa shot a glare their way, not in the mood for teenage games. One of them flipped her the finger as the light changed and they revved their engine to beat her.

She rolled her window up and punched the air conditioner button. Her earlier chill had been replaced with an almost feverish heat. She forced herself to maintain the proper speed limit, though she was dying to race through town. She didn't want to get into an accident or get a speeding ticket on her way to The Garden Shadd.

"I don't want to believe it," she said again, not caring who saw her lips moving.

She had not made the decision to go to bed with Deacon lightly. Despite their past, the last few months had proven him to be a man of talent, integrity and kindness. Had she been wrong about all that? Was Deacon the liar she'd accused him of being, and such a good one he had fooled her into falling in love with him?

The brakes squealed as Lisa jammed her foot down. Thank God there was nobody behind her. She eased up on the brake and took deep breaths to steady herself as she pulled off to the side of the road. She was suddenly shaking too much to drive.

Love.
She loved him. All at once it seemed so clear. The way his touch made her tremble was more than just chemistry, more than hormones rushing through her body and urging her toward sex.

Lisa thought back over the past several weeks and one thing stood out startlingly clear. Deacon's face was the first thing she thought of in the morning when she woke, and the last thing she thought of before she slept at night. She loved him.

She let out a small groan, letting her head rest against the steering wheel. Her entire body ached, and now, so did her heart. She'd fallen in love with a man, who at the minimum, was a thief. At worst, he was the man who'd just attacked her.

She had gone her entire life without encountering danger until Deacon moved back to town. Everything had started with the kids in the parking lot who tried to steal her underwear. If so much had not happened since then, she might now be able to look back on that and laugh. As it was, that night had been only the beginning.

He had come to her rescue--a dark knight on his rumbling metal steed. Why would he have saved her only to continue harassing her? Only someone mentally unsound would do something like that... Lisa gasped.

Allegra.

Lisa had come to believe Deacon when he declared he had not robbed The Circle K. If she believed that, she could not believe he'd been behind the phone calls, the thievery, the subtle but frightening harassments she been subjected to. If she did not believe it to be Deacon, she had to believe it was her sister.

"Allegra is special," she whispered, feeling tears stinging at her eyes. "Oh, no. No."

What would be worse? The man she loved or her only sister? She didn't always like Allegra, but blood would always be thicker than water.

Lisa checked traffic and eased back out onto the street. The office was only a few minutes away. She kept her attention fixed firmly on the road, but she couldn't force her mind to stop its whirling.

The pantry, with its eerie arrangement of cans, was a sign she should not have ignored. It had been too easy to go along with the doctors who'd said Allegra was fine. Admitting her sister was not just special, that perhaps she was sick, was something Lisa had not been prepared to do. Until now.

Now, when her love for Deacon was the one bright and shining thing in her life. He might be a thief and might not love her as she loved him. He might even have only been wooing her to seek revenge for the past three years he's spent incarcerated because of her.

Lisa discovered it didn't matter. Because she loved him, she had to find the answers. She'd risk a broken heart to face the truth.

Just ahead The Garden Shadd sign beckoned. Though the sign was lit, the building was dark but for the pair of lights on each side of the front door. Lisa pulled her car into the parking lot, then around back to the employee's spaces. It was even darker back here.

She parked the car and sat in the dark, her breath coming fast in her chest. She was scared. The air-conditioned air which had been a welcome breeze against her face now sent chills capering over her spine. She shivered and switched it off.

Silence filled her car making her thoughts seem too loud. Lisa yanked the keys from the ignition, tucking one between each knuckle until her hand bristled with metal. With her other hand, she opened the car door, then got out.

She squared her shoulders, breathing in the scent of mulch and flowers that permeated the air. She had been here a thousand times, even after hours, even in the dark. Tonight should be no different, but it was. She felt it on her skin and the way her eyes leaped to search out the faintest of noises. Something was different here tonight, and maybe it was only her imagination. Or maybe it was not.

She crossed the short, sloped ramp and unlocked the gate leading into the outdoor nursery. Inside, even the faint glow from the street light was masked by the multitude of lush, growing things. The plants seemed to whisper as Lisa stood among them, and in their familiar presence, she had a moment of comfort. Surely no harm could come to her here.

The feeling of unease returned, however, as she stepped out of the friendly rows and unlocked the door into the back offices. The key jittered coldly in the lock, betraying the trembling of her fingers, and Lisa paused a moment to get control. Then she tucked the keys back between her fingers and stepped into the dark hallway.

A glowing exit sign lit her way to Deacon's office. Even from this distance, she could see the door stood open. What she needed to find, though, was not in Deacon's office, but her father's. That was where Doug kept the surveillance equipment that was part of The Garden Shadd's minor security system.

Instead of turning left, though, Lisa went to her right toward Deacon's work space. She had no idea exactly what she was looking for. It wasn't until she actually reached the doorway that she realized she had not yet turned on any lights.

Her hand instinctively went to the switch on the wall before she stopped herself. Her decision to stay in the dark had been unconscious, but it made sense. The dark was her ally as well as her enemy.

Lisa closed her eyes, envisioning the layout in Deacon's small and cluttered office. To her right, just inside the doorway, would be a battered chair. To her left along the wall was a workspace with computer equipment. Behind that and along the back wall, the rows of shelves were filled with supplies and the video camera.

When she opened her eyes, the room wasn't any brighter. With no window to let in the outside light, it wasn't going to be any brighter unless she turned on the lights. Lisa nudged her foot carefully in front of her until it connected with the chair's edge. She had her bearings.

With her hands out in front of her, she took one hesitant step forward. Immediately, she felt something beneath her fingers that had not been in there in her imagined perusal of the room.

It was a face.

"I don't give a rat's ass about your excuses," Hewitt spat into Deacon's face. "Save it for the judge."

Deacon's wrists ached from the biting metal of the handcuffs, but he couldn't stop himself from lunging uselessly forward. "You have to listen to me!"

Hewitt's laugh was cold. "Shut up, Campbell."

"Aren't you even going to go after her?" Deacon asked, slumping back against the seat, ignoring the pain that bit at his wrists as he did. "She's in danger!"

"From what?" Terry asked. "I've got you right here."

Deacon gritted his teeth and fixed the officer with a look that would have made a lesser man flinch. To give him credit, Terry's gaze didn't even flicker. Under other circumstances, Deacon might even have felt a certain grudging admiration for his rival.

"I am not the one who attacked her."

"How'd you get that bruise?" Terry asked again. "It looks like a hand print."

Deacon didn't want to tell Terry the truth about the wound, not now when the other man would just think he was bragging. He didn't have a choice, though. "She slapped me. But not here. At my house earlier tonight."

Now the other man's gaze flickered, just a little. Terry smiled thinly. "So Lisa did hit you. In self-defense."

"I wasn't attacking her," Deacon gritted out. "She was running away and I tried to catch her, to get her to listen to me--"

"Why was she running, Campbell?" Terry interrupted. "Though I think in light of the Miranda warning I read you a while ago, you'd want to keep your mouth shut at this point."

"She's in danger, damn it!" Deacon's yell echoed through the dark street. He saw the curtains shake from the window across the street, and he bit down on his tongue to keep from yelling again. "Just check it out, man. This is Lisa! Don't you even care?"

"Of course I care," Terry hissed. "And if I thought you weren't full of shit, I'd be after her in a heartbeat! But I have a job to do here, and based on what she and you both told me, it's my job to take you in and see you remanded into proper custody."

"I love her," Deacon said, his voice low and his head hung lower.

"What?" Terry asked, bending low to hear him. "What did you say, you scumbag?"

Deacon lifted his head, no longer caring about competing, or about being more of a man. Lisa was in danger. He felt it in every cell of his body. "I love her. I would never have hurt her."

Terry sneered, though it seemed forced. "Shut up. Keep your filth to yourself. You can't love her. You don't have it in you. She deserves better than you!"

The other man's voice broke even as it rose and Deacon heard the truth in it. "If you love her, too, you'll get behind the wheel and take us both to The Garden Shadd. Before it's too late."

Terry closed his eyes briefly, sagging against the car door. All at once the shine seemed to vanish from his badge. When he opened his eyes, his expression was grim.

"You'd better be right or I'll kick your ass," he said. "With or without permission of the court."

Then he slammed Deacon's door and slid behind the wheel, gunning the engine and turning on the sirens.