One Scream Away (30 page)

It hadn’t taken long to figure out once Chadburne’s identity had been cracked. She was registered in attendance at all the exhibitions on those same weekends Bankes took days off from work. At the Dallas show, Chadburne had maligned Kerry Waterford and cultivated a budding relationship with Beth, who was only too willing to save a novice buyer like the poor widow from a shark like Waterford. On and off for the past year, Beth had spoken to Chadburne in person and on the phone, never knowing she was talking to Chevy Bankes. Even Neil had crossed paths with him, twice, in Beth’s house.

With Rick.

Grief welled up in a tidal wave, and Neil almost went under. He held it back with rage so sharp he could taste it, hot and sour on the back of his tongue.
Gonna get you now, you bastard.

At midnight, when Rick’s kids were finally asleep and neighbors nursing Maggie, Neil drove back to the safe house. He dismissed the interior guard and went upstairs, not hesitating to push Beth’s bedroom door open and look inside. Abby and Beth were there, curled together spoon-fashion. Neil’s eyes blurred as he bent to kiss first Beth’s temple, then Abby’s.

Beth stirred.

“It’s me, honey. I’m back.” He’d tell her in the morning about the fire. He didn’t think he could go through it right now.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she whispered. She pressed Abby a little closer. “Abby was dying to see you.”

“Soon.” He paused, then shook loose the words that were lodged in his throat. “I’m not leaving again. I’m staying with you now.”

The realization made him sway on his feet. To hell with Beth’s secrets. To hell with his ego. None of that mattered. Maggie had convinced him of that tonight, without speaking a word, just by clinging to his lapels and weeping for her loss. A person had to have something worth weeping over when lost.

Neil tucked the covers over both pairs of shoulders and forced himself back downstairs. He stood in the shower for fifteen minutes, the hot water mixing with tears, then emptied his briefcase onto the coffee table. Through the paper. Again. And again. The key to catching Rick’s killer was in here, somewhere.

He looked up. Not because of a sound or even a movement. It was just… a presence.

“Hey.” He stood, looking at Beth. “You okay? Did you have a nightmare?”

“No, no. I just… Well, I wanted to talk to you. I hope it isn’t too late.”

She wasn’t talking about the clock, he realized, and ten kinds of tenderness flooded him. “It isn’t too late,” he said, his throat tight. “I’m still right here.”

“Uhm… I’ve been thinking, and I think I figured it out. I know what you want from me now.”

Neil was almost afraid to move. “It doesn’t matt—”

“You want the rest. You want it all.”

Her voice had cracked, as if the words themselves were cutting her in two. Guilt clawed at Neil’s chest. Jesus, he didn’t need for her to do this now; he was sorry he’d ever demanded it. He didn’t need for her to rip out her heart and expose every last shred to him. He’d take her heart just the way it was, all wrapped up in pride and independence. Even secrets.

“You don’t have to tell me anything more.”

“I do. It might help you understand what’s driving Bankes. And… it might help you decide how you feel about me.”

“I already know how I feel about you,” he said, but when he glanced at her hands, they were wringing the flesh from the bone. His heart crumbled. “Okay, sweetheart. Tell me what’s tearing you up inside.”

“I… I promised Adam I would never tell. I swore to myself I would never tell—”

“That Abby is Bankes’s biological daughter?”

She froze, dumbfounded. “ Y-you knew?”

“I had the lab check hair from one of Abby’s hair bands.” Neil was careful to keep his voice low and calm, but the rage climbed on top of him. “Bankes raped you the night he killed Chaney. He got angry after Anne died, hit you with his gun, and he raped you.”

There was no color in her face. It took a full minute for her to say anything at all. “How?”

He stepped closer. “Things didn’t add up. The way you wouldn’t talk about the moment
after
Bankes hit you with his gun. The way Adam convinced you not to go to the police, like there was something more to hide than an accidental shooting.” He looked at her cheek, at the pale white scar that had needed stitches and instead had been treated with a Band-Aid and lies. “The way you flinched when…”

“When what?”

“I came in your room when I heard you having a nightmare. I touched you and you just about came out of your skin.” He could still feel the white-hot fury that had gripped him when he realized what Bankes had likely done to her, when he realized she was still afraid. Not just of Bankes, but of
him
. “And I knew you had to have a reason for not giving us Bankes’s name the first time we talked. There was only one thing I could imagine so important that you would risk handling Bankes yourself rather than let it out: keeping Abby from ever knowing who her father is. Keeping Adam’s family from ever knowing.”

“They still can’t know,” she whispered. “If his parents knew Abby was…”

“Was what?”

She shook her head as if trying to understand it herself. “Look, in the Denison world, it’s about bloodlines, reputations. Unimpeachable character… Those are the things that matter.”

“Unimpeachable character?” Neil had to repeat her words to believe she’d really said them. “It’s a flaw in Abby’s character that she carries Bankes’s blood? It was a flaw in
your
character that you were raped by a lunatic?”

Her puzzlement hit Neil like a two-ton wrecking ball. In one brutal second, he understood. He’d heard of it before: abused women taking the blame for their husbands’ tempers, people stricken with serious illnesses feeling guilty about being sick, rape victims thinking the attack was their fault.

Jesus, he’d been one blind, stupid son of a bitch. “All these years, that’s what you’ve believed, isn’t it?”

Tears collected along the line of her lashes, glowing like quicksilver. “Adam always said—I mean, I know it was an accident, but I did everything wrong.”

“What did you do wrong?”

“If I hadn’t called out when I first saw Bankes. If I hadn’t just walked into the woods when he told me to. If I hadn’t attacked Bankes, or if I’d done it sooner…”

Neil stared, astounded that she could spin hindsight so casually. Everything she did was wrong; everything she didn’t do was wrong. “Is that what Adam told you?”

“He was a lawyer; he knew how it would look.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Beth. Adam should have helped you deal with it, not make you bury it. Jesus, you should never have had to carry this around for seven years.” He had the strange desire to pummel a man who was already dead. “The rape isn’t something you caused, Beth; it doesn’t define you. It doesn’t define Abby, either.”

The quicksilver ran down her cheeks. “Chevy Bankes is her father.”

“He’s her sperm donor. Abby doesn’t have a father.” He paused. “But she could.”

Neil met the surprise in her eyes with a gaze steadier than even he expected. The image of Maggie’s upended world wrenched through him, the almost desperate, clawing need to love and care for Beth and Abby rubbing raw against his grief. “I’ve told you before, there’s more than one person in the world willing to help you. There’s also more than one man in the world willing to love you and father Abby.”

Her voice was a whisper. “I wasn’t sure you’d still want me. Adam never t-touched me again. And when I turned up pregnant…”

She paused, but Neil was speechless.

“He wanted me to have an abortion. Oh, God, Neil,” she said, nearly choking, “I almost did it. I went to the appointment and everything. But I couldn’t go through with it. Then Adam filed for divorce.”

That stupid, unfeeling son of a bitch. Neil tamped back the rage and closed the distance between them. “I’m not Adam,” he said, as certain of his next words as he’d ever been of anything in his life. “And I want you. I want you in my bed and in my brain and in my blood, and I want to go to sleep every night holding you and wake up every morning making love to you.”

A smile quivered on her lips. “It’s been so long… I’m not sure I know how to be with a man anymore. I don’t think it’s like riding a bike.”

He cupped her cheeks with his hands, his muscles straining with the need to show her how he felt. “I won’t let you fall, Beth. Trust me.”

“I do. It’s just that… sometimes the memories come when I don’t expect them, and I know there are men who don’t want to stop after a certain point—”

“I’ll stop at any point if you ask me to.” He said it with such conviction he almost believed it himself. “I’ll probably have to put a bullet in my head to relieve the pressure, but I’ll stop if you want me to.”

She freed a tiny smile and rose up on tiptoe, her lips brushing his. “I don’t think I’ll want you to,” she said.

S
he didn’t. Neil scooped her up and carried her into the spare bedroom, kissing her firmly enough to make her stop trembling, gently enough that she knew he would honor her body with tenderness. He took his time with her body, bringing every nerve to life, and Beth returned each stroke and kiss and caress with rising passion. When the moment came that he nudged between her thighs, he kissed her, murmuring, “It’s me, Beth. Only me.”

Not Bankes. Not Adam or Evan. Only Neil.

The sense of freedom was astounding, the response of her body a source of continuous, intoxicating amazement. The legacy that had stripped her of her sexuality and her womanhood dissipated, slowly and steadily. In its place a new legacy exploded, spiraling through every nerve and chasing tendrils of raw sensation through her limbs as Neil laid claim to her, inside and out, body and soul.

Only Neil.

Afterward, she lay in a daze, sated, her breast glowing as his tongue curled lazy circles around her nipple. “I should get upstairs,” she whispered, touching his hair.

“Mmm.” He released her nipple and dragged his lips lower, scorching a path down her ribs, her belly.

“I don’t want Abby to find us together,” she croaked.

“Then you’d better keep your voice down.”

His hands slid beneath her hips, and his mouth made that first shocking contact. She made a sound in her throat, and he lifted his head. “Is this when you tell me to stop?”

“God, no,” Beth muttered.

She woke in the wee hours of the morning, her body oddly boneless. Beside her, the bed was empty.

She sat up, blinking. Neil stood at the window, staring out into the darkness. She padded over to him. “Neil?” she whispered, and he turned to her. The look on his face backed her up a step. “Oh, God, what is it?”

He told her about the fire, and Beth’s heart seized with pain. She hurt for the lieutenant who had taken care of Abby. She hurt for the four children who had lost their father, and the warmhearted redhead who had loved him.

And her heart nearly broke for the man who had been Rick’s friend and colleague and brother-in-law. A man who followed Beth back to the bed and wept silent tears onto her lap as the rain began to fall, the world weeping with them.

Wednesday dawned wet, spitting a miserable mist that reminded Chevy of Seattle. He left Mabel’s house early, wearing his Englishman’s jacket and driving Mabel’s car. He swung through a McDonald’s for breakfast and headed out to work on the next step of his plan: the dog.

He felt sorry for the mutt, actually. Heinz. The letters were etched into a bone-shaped tag on his collar that Chevy had removed as soon as he took him. He was one of the friendliest dogs he’d ever met, big and fuzzy and just plain lovable. Chevy hated leaving him tied up so much, but he couldn’t risk having someone else discover him. Not when he was this close.

Things were moving now—so said the television. The faces of Margaret Chadburne and the crime lab technician, along with every other disguise the FBI could come up with, had popped up in the news overnight. Except for the old English gentleman, Chevy thought with a sly smile. He still had a few tricks up his sleeve.

He worked his way through the pasture and up to the dilapidated shed, carrying a bottle of Aquafina water and a couple of Egg McMuffins in a bag. He could tell the moment Heinz heard him approach, the dog whining in excitement.

“Hey, boy,” Chevy said, ducking into the shed. Heinz wagged the entire back end of his body. Chevy rubbed his fur, the dog sniffing the McDonald’s bag enthusiastically. “Hungry, are you?” A little dog chow was left in one bowl, and about a half-inch of water in the other. “Not too much, I see. But I bet you’ll like this.”

He poured the waters into the dish and broke out a sandwich. He took the leash off and made Heinz do the normal doggie-things for a few bites of meat: sit, shake, roll over. Beth had taught him well. Then he worked on a whistle for “Come.”

It was the only thing the dog really had to know.

The sky was still spitting in the morning. Abby woke Beth early, worrying about Heinz, oblivious to the fact that the previous night had held a cruel combination of bliss and despair.

How many more people would die before Chevy Bankes was satisfied?

“Mommy,” Abby whined, “you aren’t even trying.”

Beth glanced up. She looked around at the toys Maggie had delivered to Quantico for Abby, and her vision misted. Maggie’s kindness had saved her own life, and the lives of her children. Apparently Lieutenant Sacowicz hadn’t known that.

Abby gave a dramatic huff, and Beth forced herself back to the racetrack in her hands. A degree in engineering was needed to put the thing together, a second degree in electronics to make it work. Abby had given up about fifteen minutes earlier and was now coloring with scented magic markers, while Beth sat on the floor trying to figure out where the tab should be inserted so wire B-14 made contact with steel rod C-8.

“There he is!” Abby cried, charging across the room. Neil appeared, unshaven, with a grimness on his face that hadn’t been there the day before. A sad smile for Beth.

“How’re you doing, sweet pea?” he asked Abby, catching her in a bear hug so fierce Beth could almost feel it herself.