Unspeakable (21 page)

David eventually fell asleep in Anna's lap. She carried him to another sofa and covered him with a blanket a waiting-room volunteer had provided. Jack noticed Anna chafing her upper arms and touched her elbow to get her attention. "Cold?" She indicated the air-conditioning vent overhead. He asked the Pink Lady for another blanket and when she brought it to him, he unfolded it and placed it around Anna's shoulders.

" Thank you," she signed.

"You're welcome. Would you like something to drink? Coffee? A Coke? Juice?" She shook her head, leaned back against the cushions, and, looking exhausted, closed her eyes. Jack worked his butt into a more comfortable position. It didn't take long for him to determine that bass fishing just wasn't very interesting to him. The second magazine didn't hold his interest any better.

Fact was, he couldn't read for looking at Anna. With her head resting on the back cushion, her throat was arched and exposed, reminding him of the black-and-white photo she'd taken of herself at the fence.

Pretty ingenious of her, setting up what must have been a tricky camera angle. Pretty talented to have thought of the pose and the clever usage of stark light and deep shadow. Pretty pretty. Was she pretty? Not like a fashion model or a movie star. Unlike classic prettiness, hers wasn't... predictable. Her features were more interesting, constantly changing with her mood. Hers was the kind of face that you could gaze at forever, or at least until you figured out why in hell you just couldn't take your eyes off it.

He wondered what she had thought of the incident in the barn. As she crossed the yard that night, skedaddling it back to the house like the hounds of hell were on her heels, what had she been thinking?

Maybe nothing. Maybe she'd been wondering why it didn't rain, or what she was going to cook for breakfast the following day, or if she should buy that new pair of shoes she'd seen in town. Maybe she hadn't given it any thought at all. Maybe it hadn't been an incident to her the way it had been to him. It had rocked his world, but maybe it hadn't created a single tremor in hers. For his part, he'd been on the verge of pulling her close and kissing her mouth. She had run as though afraid that was what he was about to do. But had she been skittish because she wanted him to kiss her, or because she couldn't stand the thought?

He had flattered himself into believing the former. But he could be wrong. She might have been running because he had bad breath. Or BO. Or because she didn't like his looks or find him attractive.

No one would call him handsome. His face didn't look like it had been molded from clay by a master's deft hand, but rather like an amateur had taken a chain saw to a block of wood and hacked it into shape. No, he wasn't going to win any prizes for outstanding good looks. But he'd never had to buy or beg female companionship. He would know by now, wouldn't he, if his looks were a major turn-off? He'd had women tell him they found his rugged features sexy. Maybe that was it—he was too sexy.

Anna had hightailed it from the barn out of fear. Women had an instinct that went into overdrive when their femininity was threatened. Maybe she'd been afraid that he would act on an animalistic impulse, drag her down into the hay, and ravish her.

Hell, he didn't know what she thought.

All he knew was that he'd had trouble falling asleep that night. When he finally did, he woke up a few hours later drenched in sweat despite the noisy air conditioner blowing frigid air across his naked body, and sporting an erection that could have won prizes.

***

Anna jerked awake. It took a couple of seconds for her to get her bearings. Then she remembered where she was and why, and the grim reality of it compressed her chest. The last few weeks of Dean's life, she had spent hours in a hospital waiting room. Her vigilance hadn't affected the outcome then, and it wouldn't now, but she couldn't desert Delray any more than she could have deserted Dean.

She turned her head toward the sofa on which David slept and reassured herself that he was still there and all right. She yawned and stretched and rolled her head across her shoulders to work the stiffness out of her neck. She checked her wristwatch; the next scheduled visitation period was still hours away.

She glanced over at Jack Sawyer. He was asleep, his chest rising and falling evenly. His legs were splayed, one knee slightly bent, the other straight. His hands were loosely clasped between his thighs.

She looked at his hands, remembering how it had felt to touch them. She had taught David the sign language alphabet by actually moving his fingers into place. She had used the same method with Jack Sawyer. But his hand hadn't felt like her son's.

Jack's fingers were long and strong. The tips were callused. The backs of them were sprinkled with sun-bleached hair. His nails were clipped, but some of the cuticles were ragged. David had a child's soft hand. Jack's belonged to a man who often smelled of sunshine, sweat, and hay, whose pulse had been visibly beating in the base of his throat when they stood close, whose breath she had felt against her face, whose gaze had made her feel very warm on the inside. His eyes came open suddenly and caught her looking at him.

He drew in his legs and sat up quickly. "Everything okay?"

" Yes. "

"No word from the doctor?"

" No. "

He glanced over at David. She followed his gaze and then, when their eyes reconnected, they smiled at each other. David was sleeping on his back, one arm flung over his head, the other extending beyond the edge of the sofa.

"Wouldn't it be nice to be able to sleep like that?" Jack said. "I guess he was worn out from swimming."

Swimming? Her expression conveyed the question.

"Damn! I let the cat out of the bag."

She followed his lips, but the words she saw on them only puzzled her more. He realized it and tried to clarify it for her. "That means giving away a secret. I've been teaching David to swim. We've been getting in a little practice every day. Act surprised when he shows you."

She nodded that she now understood.

"We were in the river when you rang the bell."

Jack had been shirtless and shoeless when he'd run into the house. David had been in his underwear, carrying his clothes. She hadn't thought of it until now. Jack must have gotten himself and David dressed while the paramedics were carrying Delray down the stairs and loading him into the ambulance. She had been scrambling around, making certain she had insurance cards and such. It had been a frantic time, but it would have been much worse if Jack hadn't been there seeing to David.

Taking a small spiral notepad from her purse, she wrote him a note to that effect, thanking him for his help.

"I did what anybody would have done," he said after reading her note. Stubbornly she shook her head. She wrote, "You not only helped me, you saved Delray's life." He rolled his shoulder in an awkward shrug. ".Well, I'm glad I could help out." He sat forward and propped his forearms on his thighs. He seemed to be contemplating near space, but he looked up and asked her, "How'd it happen?"

She filled her notebook with several pages of writing, and by the time she finished Jack had the whole story. Delray had been watching the local five o'clock newscast. After the story about the kidnapping and double murder in Louisiana, he had excused himself and gone upstairs. A few minutes later, feeling uneasy, Anna had gone to check on him and had found him on the floor.

"Thank God you sensed that something was wrong."

She wrote, "I could tell that he was very upset over that news story."

"Because Carl Herbold is a suspect in that crime," Jack said, filling in the rest of the sentence before she could write again.

It surprised her that Jack knew the source of Delray's distress, and her curiosity must have been evident.

"I know there's a connection there." He went on to explain. "Delray and I ran into Ezzy Hardge at the Dairy Queen the other day. He mentioned something about Arkansas, and the boy being too smart to come this way. He said Delray shouldn't worry about it. Since that prison break is the big story out of Arkansas, I put two and two together. But Delray and I had other things to talk about, so I didn't press him for information. Then yesterday I overheard that Lomax character talking about it. From what I gathered, he was saying that folks blame Delray for Carl Herbold's sins."

Anna wrote, "Carl is the stepson I told you about."

"I see."

He seemed to receive this as news, but Anna got the feeling that it wasn't news to him at all. Her communication with other people relied largely on gauging their faces and interpreting their body language. She depended on the facial expressions of others because she couldn't hear the inflections in their speech.

Jack was lying. Not by what he said, but by what he left unsaid. If he already knew the relationship between the escaped convict and Delray, why would he pretend not to? And if he was a drifter, calling no place home, how did he know about it? Carl and Cecil were sent to prison over twenty years ago. Dean had been just a boy. Not even he had known his stepbrothers, except by name. Yet a stranger out of nowhere knew about the stepsons whom Delray no longer claimed.

Jack Sawyer had arrived the day following Carl's escape. Coincidence?

It was certainly something to think about.

CHAPTER TWENTY–ONE

C
ecil Herbold felt he had every reason to be paranoid. It was his day off. Instead of taking advantage of it and sleeping late, he had awakened early, feeling jumpy even before he got out of bed. He didn't want to leave his apartment, though it seemed to be closing in on him. He couldn't sit still, but he could think of nothing constructive to do that would use up his surfeit of energy. He was hungry but too nervous to eat.

Thinking. That was his problem. He had too much time on his hands in which to think, and when he thought, he got paranoid.

He moved from room to room, peeping through the window blinds, looking for surveillance on the street, all the while realizing that if the heat was out there, he wouldn't see them. He watched from the window for several minutes but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Traffic was flowing as usual. There were no suspicious-looking vans parked at the curb, no loiterers, no conspicuous persons or vehicles anywhere. But those guys were trained to blend in. Even while in plain sight, they knew how to make themselves invisible.

All right, so maybe he couldn't see them, but he knew they were out there. Sure as God made little green apples, he was under surveillance. He would bet his left nut on it, and he was fairly fond of his left nut.

If they hadn't been watching him before, they certainly were now.

Yesterday morning he had heard on the news about the brutal slayings of the gas-station owner and his daughter in some podunk Louisiana town. Even before it was officially announced that his little brother was being sought as a suspect, Cecil had nursed his own suspicions. It sounded exactly like something Carl would do.

The son of a bitch was supposed to be lying low, staying out of sight, doing nothing that would put the authorities on his scent. That had been the plan. They had discussed it. But Carl never had taken the logical or safe route. Not in his entire life. He had come out of the womb as crazy as a shithouse rat and did what he damn well pleased, when he damn well pleased.

Had he really gone and raped a fourteen-year-old? He'd always liked them young, but Jesus!

That was sick. Yesterday at work, old man Reynolds had practically sneered at him each time he looked at him. Co-workers treated him like a leper. They were all assholes. He didn't want their friendship, but, hell, he didn't want them thinking that he approved of Carl's raping a kid. The telephone rang. Cecil's heart jumped. Letting the slat in the window blind drop back into place, he caught the phone on the second ring and juggled the receiver to his ear. "Hello?"

"Hi, honey."

"Hey," he said on an expulsion of breath. It was his girlfriend. "Where are you calling from?"

"A pay phone."

Unlike his brother, she followed directions. "Good girl."

"Whatcha doin'?"

"Oh, watching some TV, trying to relax."

"Doesn't sound like much fun."

"Believe me, it's not."

"Want me to come over after work?"

He was tempted to say yes. They hadn't known each other for very long, but he was smitten. It was said that when you fell in love for real, you knew it. Now he knew that to be true. He had never felt this way about a woman before.

She was great looking. Blond. His preference. Her figure got the notice of every man around. He loved walking into a public place with her and having every other man there scowling at him with envy.

But it wasn't just her looks that he liked. She was smart. Smarter than him, probably. Nor was she a pushover. She took no shit from anybody. Best of all, she had a real spirit of adventure when it came to sex. She didn't hold it against him that he was a con, either. In fact his criminal past seemed to enhance her sexual appetite and excitability. Just thinking about her now made him hard, but prudence was called for.

"I'd love to see you, honey, but this business with my brother... Damn fool is gonna get himself killed." For the benefit of anyone listening in, he added, "Until he's recaptured, I'm just not up to having company."