Last Breath (15 page)

Tingles started up my spine. In a half daze I walked to the kitchen's door and stared at the phone, as if it would tell me who was calling. But somehow I knew.

My head whipped back toward Gary and his grandmother. She was leaning down close to him, talking.

Our answering machine kicked on. I listened to my mother's voice invite the caller to leave a message. My body tensed.

“We
let
you leave, you know.” The hated voice came through the recorder. Low, menacing. Grandma Donovon cut off mid-sentence. Gary's hand jerked.

“I got to go out tonight and take care of some business, Gary. Come see me tomorrow.”

Click
. The answering machine fell silent.

Grandma Donovon, Gary, and I looked at each other.

My mind is vague about the rest of that evening. I felt too wrung out to listen with a clear head as Gary and his grandmother talked. What could they do? Going to the police—
if
they connected with one that wasn't on the take with Bart—would mean waiting for weeks or even months to testify against Westrock. By that time they'd be dead. Going home meant putting themselves under Bart's thumb again. It would only be a matter of time before Gary took the fall for one of their drug runs.

One unspoken answer hung in the air. The more they talked, the heavier it hovered over our heads and weighed our shoulders.

Around midnight Mom came home. We told her everything—we had no choice. Mom stared at Gary, appalled, then ran around fixing him food, doing anything she could to make him comfortable. But a moment came when she edged me aside and gave me a look that seared my heart. An accusing expression that said
this has been going on with Gary for months, and you've said nothing? Don't you see the danger you've put us in?

Gary, by now sitting up on the couch, saw the unspoken exchange. The horrible knowledge of what he must do flattened his face.

He couldn't be with me anymore.

No.
My stomach flipped over. There would be another way—The phone rang. It was Bart.

“Look forward to seeing you tomorrow, Gary.”

Click.

Mom's eyes lasered mine. There wasn't a single thing I could say in response.

We all needed sleep. Grandma Donovon was given our spare bedroom. Gary would stay on the couch. I drifted into my room, numb and sick to the core. Somehow I drifted off.

Until a pounding rattled my door at four o'clock in the morning.

33

I
jolted awake, heart banging. Before I knew it I'd jumped from bed and thrown back the door.

Gary swayed on his feet in the hall.

I gasped.

He jammed his forearm against the wall and leaned into it. His mouth hung open, air stuttering down his throat and a wild glaze in his eyes. “Rayne.” His mouth quivered.

My legs started to shake. Never had I seen Gary cry. “What?”

His eyes closed. “The house. It's burned down.”

“What? What house?”

“My … grandma's house. They burned it.”

I stared at him. Had he gone out of his mind?

Gary dragged his eyes open. He wouldn't look at me. “I drove over there … Wanted to sneak in … get a few things. It's gone, Rayne. Everything's gone.”

Footsteps sounded from the guestroom. Grandma Donovon appeared in her doorway, still in her clothes. “What's going on?”

Another door clicked. Mom scurried into the hall, a frightened look on her face.

“Grandma.” Gary pushed up straight. His face twisted with sick determination. “Get in the truck. We're leaving.”

“What? We—”

“Get. In. The truck.” He turned to her, bruised hands on his hips. “We have to go. We have to get out of town. Now.”

“
Why?
”

“Our house is burned to the ground. We've got nothing left but our lives. And I'm not letting them take yours.”

Grandma Donovon's eyes rounded. “My house is
gone
?”

Gary nodded.

“Ohhh!” She swooned. Mom ran to her.

Gary looked back to me. “Rayne—” His voice pinched off. He held up a hand, struggling to speak. “If Bart ever calls you again, tell him exactly this: ‘After you burned down Gary's house, he and his grandmother left the state. He's never coming back. And nobody's going to the police.' You tell him that, and he'll leave you alone.”

“Gary,
no
!” I reached for him, my whole world dropping away. “You can't go!”

He stepped back and held up both hands, palms out, as if to protect himself from me. But his eyes told the truth. If he faltered now, if he hesitated one little bit, he'd lose his resolve—and stay.

And the four of us would never be safe.

“Grandma.” His gaze held mine. I thought I would die. “Get in the truck.”

She threw a shocked look at me and started down the hall.

“Gary—” I wanted to scream that he'd change his mind in a day or two. He'd come back. Somehow, some way, we'd work this out …

But my heart caught in my throat, and my knees turned to water.

“Rayne.” His voice caught. “I love you.”

He turned away and walked down the hall.

A cry wrenched from me. Gary's back stiffened. For a second he slowed. Then he pushed himself forward once more.

I gripped the doorway, deep sobs punching out of my mouth. This couldn't be happening. None of it was real.

Gary disappeared around the corner.

My legs gave way. I sank to my knees on the carpet.

The front door opened and closed.

Only then did I realize the sound I heard from our driveway. The engine of his truck, already running.

No!

Sudden energy surged through me. I shoved to my feet and pounded down the hall. Mom yelled at me to stop, but I paid no attention. I careened around the corner, flung myself through the front door and out on the porch.

“Garyyyy!”

He'd just finished backing out of the driveway. The truck surged forward.

My last view of Gary Donovon was through the driver's window. I glimpsed his steel profile, every finger clenched around the wheel as though any minute his brittle body would break.

Then he was gone.

Part 13

Monday 2009

34

I
stared at Mom in shock. Her face twisted in pain—more from the memories, I thought, than from her injuries.

“That's
it
?” I leaned toward her. “He just … disappeared—like
that
?”

She nodded then turned her head toward the window. The trail of a tear glistened on her temple.

“Did he ever call you?”

“No.”

“What about Bart? Did he call you, demanding to know where Gary went?”

“Yeah, for months. But I truly didn't know. Gary proved right about that. As long as Bart could sense I wasn't lying, there was no point in coming after me.”

I sat back, rubbing my forehead. “But it's still so hard to believe. How could Gary just leave you like that?”

“He wanted to protect me, Shaley.”

Yeah, or maybe he started robbing stores right away. “He could have called. He could have at least told you where he'd gone.”

Mom shifted her focus back to me. She looked so very tired. “I kept thinking he would. Day after day I kept believing he'd show up on my doorstep one night. But … nothing.”

“He loved you.
How
could he leave?”

“I think he loved me enough to leave. And he had to protect his grandmother. Those gang members—they never would have left the three of us alone if he'd stayed in the area. He had to get far away, far enough that they'd know he wouldn't be a threat to them.”

“But why didn't he call?”

She shook her head. “I think he … couldn't. If he called, if he heard my voice, it might be too much for him to take, and he'd come back.”

“That doesn't make sense.”

“It's the only sense I can make of it. I
know
he loved me. I know he didn't want to go. Besides, there were the roses. The first came a week after he'd left. Then, like clockwork, they arrived twice a month. Always with the same message as before:
You are a white rose to me. I love you. Gary.
”

I thought of what she'd said—that they stopped coming eight years ago. Only then did I realize what that meant. “That means he sent them for
nine years
after he left.”

“Yeah.”

I frowned. “You'd be twenty-five by then. I was eight. I don't remember anything about white roses.”

“They came to my mom's house, Shaley. That's the only address he knew. She would call and let me know. She'd read me the words on the card. Then she would keep the rose until it wilted.”

“Why didn't you bring them home?” We lived near my grandmother until her death from breast cancer when I was nine.

Mom lowered her gaze. “I didn't want you asking questions.”

What
? “I
was
asking questions. I've been asking you about my father for as long as I can remember.”

“Exactly. It was easier to tell you I didn't know where he was. That was the truth. How to explain the flowers to you, how to tell an eight year old the story I've just told you?”

I looked away, betrayal sloshing around inside me. To think all those years when I was little, she'd still had a tie to my father. A long-distance tie, but it was
something
. She told me
nothing
. How unfair, that I couldn't at least have known what she knew—he was out there somewhere, thinking about us.

I closed my eyes, fighting the emotion. I didn't want to go there now. “Did you ever call the florist that delivered them? Try to find out from them where he was?” I'd done the same thing just a few days ago, after I received my own white rose …

“He paid by credit card and ordered over the phone. They wouldn't give me his address.”

“And then they just stopped coming?”

“Yes.” Mom fingered the top of her covers. “I didn't even notice for a couple months. By then, after so many years, I was busy with you and the band. I'd moved on. When I realized it, I told myself he'd found someone else.” Her mouth curled in a bitter smile. “It was easier to think that than believe something had happened to him.” She sighed. “Now I know something did. Prison.”

My heart panged. “Are you surprised he did that?”

She focused across the room. “Those gang members taught him crime, Shaley. Not that he wanted to do those drug runs. But once he ran away, and he and his grandmother had to build a new life … maybe he thought back to all the thousands of dollars he watched them rake in, selling drugs. Maybe he figured there were easier ways to make money than earn it.”

“But he wasn't caught selling drugs.”

“Doesn't mean he didn't do it. Who knows how many crimes he committed before he was caught?”

My gaze fell to the floor. She was right—who knew? If Jerry hadn't whispered in my ear, we wouldn't even know my father had sent him to us.

May 1993—my birth month. I counted back nine months from then. “When he left you didn't know you were pregnant.”

Mom's face softened. “No. I found out about a month later.”

One month
. “What if you had known? If you'd told him—maybe he never would have gone.”

“Don't think about that.” Mom's voice flattened. “I wished the same thing—if only the timing would have been one month different. But that would have made things worse. He
had
to leave. If he'd stayed because of you, who knows what would have happened to him?”

But
one month
… My lifetime of questions for a single month.

“Yeah. I guess.”

We'd never talked much about her pregnancy with me. Except that she'd told me not to make the same mistake. It wasn't a good thing to do—sleeping with boyfriends. And I hadn't.

The light in Mom's eyes dimmed, exhaustion creeping over her face. Too many memories and too much pain. “Think I'll take a nap now.”

“Okay.” I squeezed her hand and stood.

Mom lolled her head to one side and immediately drifted to sleep.

I stood in the middle of the room, feeling lost and purposeless. All the years I'd begged to hear my father's story. Now I had. But I wasn't satisfied. It brought only more questions.

Why
had he never called Mom? Why had he turned to crime?

Deep disappointment churned within me, thickening into bitterness. So what if my father had once loved Mom? He'd turned out to be a rat. Left her in the dust. Held up a store and gone to prison. Then even sent a murderer to kill people on our tour and try to kidnap me.

Why?

Jealousy. Had to be. Rayne O'Connor became famous while he'd gone nowhere. I could just imagine him seeing her on TV in jail, gritting his teeth. Did he brag to all the prisoners that he used to date her?

Or maybe he wanted to kidnap me for ransom. Figured he'd take Mom for all the money he could.

My shoulders slumped. The tiredness I'd been holding back washed over me. I walked over to my bed and lay down on top of the covers.

Tears bit my eyes. I felt lonely and worn out, and I hated this hospital room. I just wanted to go
home
.

Turning on my side, I curled into a ball. Sleep pulled at me. I closed my eyes and gave in to it …

The next thing I knew my cell phone was ringing me awake.

35

F
ranklin's plane landed in Denver at five thirty. With no baggage to worry about, he was up the ramp and out of the airport in five minutes.

Outside, the air felt hot but nothing like Phoenix. The lanes teemed with cars, doors slamming, people scurrying with luggage. Franklin looked around, getting his bearings. He spotted the area for taxis and walked over.