Homestands (Chicago Wind #1) (19 page)

Mike slumped against a cabinet. She was alive, at least. Alive but in bad shape.

He surveyed her again, but the only other bleeding he could see was beneath her head. The puddle was small, and he knew better than to move her to see what had caused the damage. Probably couldn’t stomach it, anyway. He looked around the room, halting when he found a smear of blood on the counter’s edge above her.

Anger leapt up inside him. Fresh. Fierce.

“Ben!” He rose to his feet. A knife block sat beside the coffee maker. Mike pulled out the largest knife, just in case. “Ben!” he shouted again, the rage in his voice not lost on himself. “Where are you?”

Silence met him.

He slid down the refrigerator and watched Dana’s chest rise and fall. The least he could do was stay and defend her if Ben showed his cowardly self.

A minute passed, then another.

Still Dana breathed, and Mike kept his eyes on her, as if watching kept her alive.

“Sir?”

He jumped at the voice at the kitchen door.

Three police officers stood at the bottom of the steps, the first one training a gun on him. “Sir,” the cop repeated, “I want you to set the knife down.”

Knife? Mike stared at his hand, startled to see his knuckles white around the handle. They thought—

“No, it’s not me.” He laid the knife on the ground and slid it toward the back door. “It was her fiancé. I got the knife in case—”

“Keep that hand up, sir. We’re going to come in and take a look, okay?”

“Fine.”

Two of the officers entered the room, their eyes on him. “Mike Connor?” one asked.

“Yes.”

“You and your wife found her?”

“Yes, my ex-wife. This woman—Dana… her fiancé did this.”

“Why don’t you go outside. Officer Rowand will take your statement.”

“Sure.” He pushed himself to his feet, one leg tingling. He glanced Dana’s way again as he left the kitchen.

How much had this woman endured? And for how long?

Outside, Officer Rowand led him to a squad car parked in the street.

Mike followed and leaned against the vehicle’s hood, his legs shaky. After Betsy, he knew the routine.

Ben turned off Northwest Highway and into his subdivision.

The moon was bright, the neighborhood quiet and still. He drove slowly, just in case—

No. He couldn’t think that way. Things would be fine. He’d panicked, that’s all. When Dana had fallen against the countertop and slumped to the floor, he’d experienced the same gush of fear he’d felt two years ago. And he’d gone through the same motions, the frantic packing of his clothes and stash of money before leaving.

But the hour of driving had calmed him. By the time he reached the town of Aurora, he’d finally separated the two incidents—no matter how uncannily alike they were—and knew that Dana was not dead. He’d return and take her to the ER if needed. Then he’d spend whatever time it took repairing the damage he’d done.

Dana would come around.

Ben flicked on the turn signal as he approached his street.

Police lights flashed halfway down the block. Four cruisers sat in the street. Right outside his house.

Ben turned off the signal. Slowed the car to a crawl. It was a coincidence. It had to be.

The headlights of a police car dimmed as an officer walked from the driver’s side toward…

Ben craned his neck.

The cop opened Ben’s front door, inside light illuminating the front steps.

They were at
his
house. Which meant… Dana had called the cops.

He pounded the steering wheel. She’d called the cops? She’d destroy everything he’d rebuilt. Everything! How could she? How could she be such a traitor?

He pulled over where he could watch undetected, then turned off the engine and lights, waited for his breathing to slow. In another day or two, he’d call Dana. She’d change her mind about pressing charges, and if the cops hadn’t found out about—

A large SUV backed out of Ben’s driveway. The vehicle turned toward him, its lights sweeping across houses and lawns and curb.

Ben fell flat across the front seats and held still as the headlights swept over his car window. The lights grew brighter, closer, then passed.

Ben sat up. Turned. Looked.

That wasn’t just an SUV. That was a Range Rover, a big, black Range Rover.

Dana hadn’t called the cops—he knew she wouldn’t.

But Connor would. Connor was the problem, again.

And if the police found out the truth, Connor would regret he’d ever returned to Ben’s house.

Mike spent the night at Meg’s house.

She fought him on it, as he’d expected, but he’d been right about Ben. Plus, after what Meg had seen, she might have nightmares.

He still did.

He lay across one of her living room sofas—the color was pumpkin, she’d told him, not orange—while night shadows faded in and out as clouds drifted past the moon. Sleeping upstairs in the guest bedroom she’d finally offered didn’t seem right. For some reason he needed to sleep here, as if he were on guard.

He flopped around, trying to find a comfortable position. He couldn’t lie flat since he’d discovered, too late, that he was a few inches longer than the couch. He’d already tried lying on his side with his legs bent, but then his knees hung off the edge. Between their weight and his casted arm trying to balance on a pillow, gravity threatened to go into effect.

He gave up and stretched out on the floor between the coffee table and the couch. Meg needed a recliner, a giant La-Z-Boy he could get comfortable in.

He stretched the blanket over his legs and, lifting himself to adjust the pillow, banged his head on the edge of the coffee table.

He bit back words of pain until the throbbing faded. “I’m dying down here,” he muttered, rubbing his skull with his good hand. He’d never be able to sleep like this. The floorboards beneath the area rug pressed into his stomach. The upstairs bed was becoming more and more—

Something creaked in the foyer.

Mike jerked still, eyes trained on the small square of the living room doorway that he could see.

Some guard he was.

There it was again, definitely someone creeping through the foyer.

Slowly he pulled himself up and, in his bare feet, tiptoed to the other end of the living room where the kitchen, family room, and living room doorways converged. If this person was going toward the stairs, he’d catch them from behind. If he was headed Mike’s way—

A floorboard creaked on the other side of the wall, and he pressed himself against it, almost missing the soft intake of breath. Was that— He flicked on the lamp beside him. “Meg?”

With a yelp, Meg flattened herself against the foyer wall. “What are you scaring me for?” she hissed.

“Keep it down,” he hissed back. “What are you doing, sneaking around your own house?”

“Since someone refuses to sleep upstairs in a bed, I have no choice but to sneak around
my
house.” She marched past him into the kitchen, pulled open the refrigerator, and grabbed a pitcher of orange juice from the door. She set it down hard on the counter.

Juice surged from the spout, splashing onto the counter and floor.

Mike hid his smile.

She sent him a side glance before jerking a towel from the refrigerator handle and wiping the counter, then bending to clean the floor. She pulled the lapel of her cream robe closed with one fist—

He stilled. Looked away, even though she was plenty covered up with the robe over pale blue pajama pants. It had been a long, long time since he’d seen her… like this. At night. In her home.

He sucked in a slow breath.

And here he stood, shirtless, wearing only the shorts he’d worn that day. He had to go… somewhere. Or this would not end well.

Mike turned for the living room.

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere.”

In the living room he pulled his T-shirt over his head and fought his cast through the stretched-out armhole, then stood there and stared blankly at a wall. She hadn’t asked him to stay; she’d fought against it. She wouldn’t welcome his advances. Nope, not at all, not like other women had.

Meg might be in pajamas—and yes, they might be the most modest pajama-and-robe combo known to mankind—but that didn’t matter. She didn’t want him here. Didn’t want…
him
. Instead, he’d talked her into letting him stay.

For all the right reasons.

He nodded, agreeing with himself. Yes, his reasons had been purely honorable then. But right now…

She’d been his wife. His high school sweetheart. His first love. He’d fallen in serious like with her before he could even drive. Long before he’d gotten up the nerve to ask her for a date.

Any asking he’d do now would get him nothing but a slap to the face.

She doesn’t want you here, Connor. She doesn’t want
you.

“So now what?” he whispered to himself.

“Mike?” Meg called softly.

He blew out a breath, ran a hand over his hair, swallowed, and traced his steps back to the kitchen.

Meg sat in his usual spot at the table, drinking from a coffee cup. She’d left a second coffee cup by the orange juice pitcher, a vague invitation to join her that he refused to let himself read into.

But a coffee cup? For orange juice? He glanced around her upper cabinets.

“What do you need?”

“A glass.”

“Cabinet above the dishwasher.”

He grabbed a tall glass and filled it, then joined her at the table. He eyed her mug. “You drink OJ from a coffee cup?”

She shrugged.

“Couldn’t sleep, huh?”

“No.” She set the mug down and stared at it. “I keep seeing her, lying there all—all beat up like that.”

“Not an image you forget.”

She toyed with the mug’s handle. “You still see Betsy?”

“Yep.” He drank long and slow from his glass, watching the window frame’s silhouette on her kitchen table fade to nothing as the moon passed behind another cloud.

Too bad the clear image of his sister didn’t fade away too.

Meg’s voice broke through the memory. “How does something like that happen?” Darkness covered her face, but when she looked up, tear tracts glistened on her cheeks. She shook her head, tangled strands of hair falling across her shoulder. “How does that happen to Dana? I feel so stupid. That dumb softball story—”

“Don’t, Meg. I suspected. I should have said something.” It had been the same with Betsy, the signs that had dawned on him later, so obvious after he’d found her.

“I’ve thought of a handful of times I should have known something wasn’t right.” She dragged her thumb and forefinger across her eyes. “But she seemed happy. She talked about him all the time, about how great he was. I never imagined…”

“I know.”

Meg’s shiny eyes locked onto him.

He watched her right back, ready to comfort her if she asked.

“Well. Get some sleep, Mike.”

“You too.”

“You’ll never sleep on that couch.”

Probably not. “I want to make sure you’re safe.”

Her mouth curved. “No one’s coming here.” She pushed her chair back. “And if they do, God’s here.”

She moved past him, out of sight. He listened to her cup clank against the sink, to her soft footsteps fading away, to a lone creak in the foyer. To the silence that Meg’s parting words filled.

Words that disturbed and appealed at the same time.

She trusted God more than she did him.

Was God really that strong?

He watched the silhouetted frame fade away again.

The night dragged on.

Somewhere before dawn, Mike managed to doze with his head propped on the couch’s armrest, but when he woke to sunlight streaming in the windows, his neck stung and his arm throbbed.

He stumbled into the kitchen, expecting to find Meg and Terrell, but a quick walk through the downstairs found no one there but himself.

He returned to the kitchen. The microwave clock greeted him.

Not even six-thirty.

“When was the last time I was up this early?” he asked the refrigerator’s contents.

After five more silent minutes, Mike left Meg a note saying he’d gone home. He needed a shower and clean clothes and ibuprofen. He couldn’t find hers.

Not until he’d showered and dressed and felt the Advil kicking in did the previous evening’s thought return to him, the one that had made him drive Meg to Ben’s place. There’d been something about the guy’s name—hadn’t it been different in the article covering his first Triple-A game?

Holding his arm close to his chest, he jogged downstairs where the scrapbook lay open on the coffee table. He flipped through it until he found the article and ran his finger down the yellowing page. There it was—Ben Raines.

Was it a typo? What was his real name? Raines or Reynolds?

He stared out the French doors at the lawn sloping down to the pond. Would Dana know if Ben had ever gone by a different name?

Maybe someone who’d played with Ben.

The thought barely entered his mind before Adam Destin’s face flashed before him. Adam’s time in the minors corresponded to Mike’s years there. And if he remembered right, Adam and Reynolds—Raines, whatever—had played for the same organization.