Sweet Dreams

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Where Are They Now?

  “In one of the most remarkable where are they nows, Tatum Jackson, All-American linebacker for Penn State and first round draft pick for the Philadelphia Eagles, is back in the news after a twenty-two year absence.”

  The minute they said Tate’s name, I pushed a bit up Tate’s chest where we were lying on the couch.

  Me and my whole family were watching the football commentators doing their bit during halftime of the Sunday (the day after Christmas) game.

  Pop had called my folks the minute he had a chance after they found me. They decided not to wait for the next flight out, which was late the next morning because by that time, my Dad said, they could be halfway across Nebraska (and were). So they packed up their stuff and all the presents and took turns driving all night to get to Colorado.

  “Turn that shit off,” Tate growled, as he would, since he was in a very bad mood even though it was the day after Christmas.

  I’d been let out of the hospital on Christmas Eve.

  I’d talked to the cops in the hospital. Dalton was in bad shape from a gunshot wound and the beating Tate had given him. He’d also confessed after Special Agent Tambo explained the extent of the evidence against him which was a lot, considering he’d abducted me, cut my hair, kept trophies, didn’t dispose of his mattress that was covered in DNA and used the same knife on us all, leaving that knife in Jim-Billy’s gut.

  Not to mention, Sunny had given a partial ID.

  He’d also confessed to murdering his Mom and pinning it on her boyfriend. He was, as Tate would call him, seriously whacked. Not appreciative of the fact that his Mom had found the love of her life and especially not appreciative of the fact that she didn’t mind hiding it.

  She was, Tambo told Tate that Dalton told him, meant to be only his.

  They’d released Dalton’s Mom’s boyfriend after he spent nearly twenty years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit against a woman he adored. The State gave him restitution but, I figured, losing the woman he loved and nearly half of his life to prison, no restitution would heal those wounds.

  Tambo had also told Tate that I’d gotten loose, in a way, partially thanks to Tonia, Neeta and the other girls. They’d struggled, weakening the pipe of the radiator.

  I hated this fact, hated knowing their torture helped to save my life, but I was thankful all the same.

  And lastly Tambo told Tate that Dalton did all the girls there, at that old house, then took them home even if that meant Nevada or Utah. Dalton said they needed to go home, needed to be with their families, needed to be at rest someplace familiar. Dalton was contrite, driven to his behavior but he struggled against it. He killed in May, his mother’s birth month, and December, her boyfriend’s. That he would allow. Knowing he could give in those months kept the urge at bay the rest of the time. But, when I got to the bar and Dalton watched Tate and me falling in love, that triggered something, flipped the switch, and he lost control.

  I hated this fact too but I didn’t dwell. Tate had taught me, with what I allowed Brad to do to me, with what he felt after his Dad died, with how he acted after Neeta’s murder, that life was too short to dwell, to twist special in your head and make it go bad. Tate and I falling in love was just that, a biker and his biker babe falling in love. It was something else for Dalton and that was on Dalton. After searching my whole life, I wasn’t going to finally find special and let some psychopath twist it and make it go bad.

  No, I was going to hold it precious.

  Forever.

  As for my family, we’d had a pretty good Christmas, considering I was still banged up and in some pain. As I suspected, Mom had spoiled Jonas but she’d also spoiled Tate and me. Jonas definitely had a good Christmas, what with Mom, Carrie, Pop, Stella, Wood and me giving him his every heart’s desire (and some of them he didn’t even know he wanted). It had taken us hours to unwrap presents.

  Tate had left me to spoil Jonas and he’d just spoiled me. He’d had a silver necklace custom-made, a fall of five, exquisite silver flowers in a pendant hanging from it, the links in the chain were unusual and beautiful. He’d also had a set of five silver bangles made, two had flower pendants dangling, three had been inset all around with peridot and rose quartz. He’d also had a wide silver band made, it fit my index finger, went from base to knuckle and it was also inset with peridot and rose quartz. He’d given them to me telling me, right in front of everyone, “From now on, babe, you only wear my silver.” This, I figured, was healthy indication that he intended to add to my new silver collection and since Tate had good taste, the jewelry so gorgeous, I didn’t mind that at all.

  Even with Mom and Carrie’s great cooking, family and friends all around (because practically everyone in Carnal trooped through our house the last few days) and almost constant Christmas music being played (because I might give into Tate and Jonas not liking it much but Mom was a Christmas Music Freak and she knew I loved it too and I’d been abducted, beaten and stabbed so she was going to play my beloved Christmas music even if Tate was a badass) things hadn’t been good.

  We’d had to unplug the phone so many people were calling and not just friends and family. My ex-friends from Horizon Summit had all phoned and Tate was not very diplomatic when he’d answered these calls, usually saying something like, “You one of those who hung Laurie out to dry when her fuckwad husband was cheating on her?” Pause for answer then, “Bullshit, go fuck yourself,” then disconnect (when Carrie heard this, she burst out laughing, every time).

  We also had calls from journalists for print and television and even a production company that wanted to pitch a reality program, starring Tate.

  Not joking. A reality program starring Tate.

  “No, Dad!” Jonas shouted from the floor, taking my mind off my thoughts. Jonas was nearly bouncing in excitement and not taking his eyes from the TV screen.

  “Nittany Lions fans still feel the pain remembering Jackson’s professional football career being cut short when he was hit with an illegal tackle in the endzone after forcing a fumble, recovering it and entering the endzone in a monumental touchdown in the last seconds that won the Eagles the game against their rivals the Giants,” the commentator continued.

  “After leaving football,” the other commentator took up the story, “Jackson became a decorated police officer and is now one of the most sought after, and successful, fugitive apprehension agents in the country.” He grinned devilishly at the camera. “That’s bounty hunters to those of us not in the game.”

  “But, little would he know,” the other commentator butted in, his voice had gone grave, “that two days before Christmas Eve, Jackson would be hunting a serial killer who’d murdered his ex-girlfriend, an employee and a string of other young, innocent females over a four year period and who had, that very night, abducted Jackson’s fiancée.”

  The commentators switched. “Even with the murderer on the loose for four years, the Federal Bureau of Investigations failed to crack the case, but Jackson cornered the killer within an hour and handed him over to the local authorities, saving the life of a local, who’d been stabbed, and his fiancée, who had been stabbed and beaten but luckily otherwise unharmed.”

  “Bullshit,” Tate muttered, “total bullshit.”

  “Tate,” I whispered, “shush.”

  “Let’s take a look at Tatum Jackson’s career,” the commentator invited with a warm smile and then we were treated to a montage with a pre-recorded voiceover and sappy music playing over a variety of live action and still pictures of Tate’s short football career with some still frames of Tate’s longer bounty hunter career. These were pictures I recognized from Loretta’s stalker site, pictures I knew would mean about seven thousand new Tate Stalker Sites were going to spring up. The football footage included the tackle that took out Tate’s knee, a late tackle and dirty, made by an offensive lineman who was unbelievably huge, and, worst of all, it looked like it freaking hurt and I
could have done without seeing that.

  The montage done – with a photo in the top, left corner of the screen of Tate, looking tired, but definitely still smokin’ hot, striding purposefully toward the hospital, his eyes straight, his hand on Jonas’s shoulder, Jonas’s face blurred out – the camera closed in on one of the sports commentators as he looked soberly straight into the camera.

  “They blurred out my face!” Jonas shouted, clearly aggrieved.

  “Every Sunday,” the commentator’s voice was low and serious, “we report to you about the heroes of the gridiron. Many of those men do good deeds but not many of them save lives. Tatum Jackson, a promising recruit for the Eagles, had his football career cut tragically short. But the real tragedy would have been if Jackson had not gone on to protect the people of the town of Carnal, Colorado and the future victims of the vicious May-December murderer. Our hats off to you, Jackson. You are a true hero.”

  “Fucking hell,” Tate muttered and I giggled which was bad since it hurt my side.

  “I liked it,” Mack declared, lying on the floor with Jonas and Carrie, he rolled to his back and looked up at Tate and me, “pure drama, absolute class.”

  Tate scowled at the screen and ignored Mack. “They didn’t mention Jim-Billy.”

  “We all love Jim-Billy but, it must be said, Jim-Billy isn’t as hot as you, Tate,” Carrie noted, also turning but lifting up with her forearms in Mack’s chest. “And, as far as I know, he didn’t make the All-American team,” she hesitated before finishing, “twice.”

  “I think we should do the reality show,” Jonas chimed in. “That would be so cool!”

  “We?” I asked Jonas.

  “Bub, get that outta your head. Not gonna happen,” Tate said over me.

  “We!” Jonas ignored Tate. “You, me and Dad. You and me will be, like, the brains behind the action, doin’ searches on Dad’s computer and, I don’t know, other stuff.”

  “The brains behind the action,” Dad murmured through a chuckle.

  “Laurie would look hot on TV.” Jonas thought this was enticement but it was not.

  “Reason one not to do it,” Tate said to Jonas.

  “Why is that reason one?” Jonas asked his father.

  “Bub, it isn’t gonna happen,” Tate repeated.

  “She’d be hot, you’d be cool and I’d be famous!” Jonas shouted.

  That’s when Tate got mad, so mad, he didn’t weigh his words.

  “You think Dalton McIntyre is the only cracked fuckwad out there? You want Laurie on TV so any sick fuck can fixate on her? Bub. It. Is. Not. Gonna. Happen.”

  Jonas’s face got pale and my body got tight. Then Jonas shot up from the floor and ran from the room.

  I started to make a move, mumbling, “I’ll go –”

  “I’ll go,” Mom said over me, didn’t look at anyone, and swept from the room.

  Dad got up from the armchair announcing, “We’re out of beer.”

  “We aren’t Dad, there’s –” Carrie started but Dad interrupted her.

  “We’re out of beer,” Dad stated firmly. “Mack, Carrie, you comin’ to town with me?”

  Carrie looked down at Mack and Mack looked up at Carrie. Then without glancing in any direction but the door, Dad, Mack and Carrie walked out of it.

  Carefully, because my stab wound miraculously didn’t hit anything vital, but it still hurt like a mother, I twisted to look up at Tate.

  “Baby, you should go talk to Jonas.”

  Tate was staring at the TV screen, a commercial now on, he lifted the remote and I heard it go mute. Then he looked down at me and I held my breath at the anger still darkening his features.

  “What happened to you isn’t exciting. The aftermath of it, with those fuckin’ buzzards circling, isn’t cool. It’s fucked. He needs to get that.”

  “He’s coping,” I said softly, “the only way he knows how.”

  “And you?” Tate shot back a question that confused me.

  “Me, what?” I asked.

  “I was in that house, Lauren. When we went after Jim-Billy, I saw where he had you, I saw what you saw. I saw your blood on that mattress. Are you coping?”

  “Well…” I said, “yeah.”

  He stared at me, his jaw went hard and a muscle ticked there.

  Then he bit out, “Bullshit.”

  I turned fully to him. I was lying partly on him, partly on the couch but my movements brought me fully on him. They also hurt but I fought back the pain and put my hand to his heavily stubbled jaw (he hadn’t shaved, not since that night, he was growing back the beard, for me).

  “Honey,” I whispered, “I’m okay.”

  “I saw what you saw and I wasn’t tied to a mattress,” Tate repeated.

  “I’m okay,” I repeated too.

  Then Tate glared at me, his entire frame tensed the length of mine and he roared, “He cut off your goddamned hair!”

  I stilled and stared at him as Tate shifted out from under me and stalked out of the room. I lay on the couch continuing to stare at where I last saw him. I knew something like this was going to happen eventually. Tate had been nursing a slow burn for days and Tate wasn’t the kind of man to let it smolder and then burn out. He was the kind of man who let it explode.

  Gingerly, I got to my feet and followed him.

  As I did, my hands went to my hair which Dominic had come to the hospital to do an emergency cut and style on the day I was released which was Christmas Eve, making it seriously nice, Dom showing up like that. But he’d said reporters were outside and “no girlie of mine is gonna face the media with bad hair”.

  Dalton hadn’t got the chance to take it all, it now brushed my shoulders and it looked good because Dominic was a master. That said, I liked it better longer and, apparently, so did Tate.

  I hit the bedroom and saw Tate standing, staring out the side window to which he’d yanked up the blinds.

  “Tate –” I started the minute I hit the room, he turned sharply toward me and I stopped talking and moving when I caught the look at his face.

  “Neet’s hair was there, and Tonia’s, and Sunny’s and yours was in a bag, ready for his trophy wall. Jim-Billy hadn’t shown up, you’d have been on that wall, Lauren.”

  “But I wasn’t,” I whispered.

  “We would have been too late,” Tate ground out.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “He didn’t hit anything important with his first thrust. He had enough time to get in a second, a third, he could have cut you places, babe, places that only I –”

  “Stop it, Tate.” I was still whispering.

  “I should have killed him.”

  “Stop it.”

  “He cut your hair. He cut you. You didn’t see Jonas, babe, you were livin’ your nightmare and me and my boy were livin’ an entirely different one but, trust me, Ace, it was a fuckin’ nightmare.”

  “I know,” I whispered.

  “I don’t need that shit from the TV to remember it. I don’t need it on the phone. I don’t need it in town. I don’t need it shoved down my throat everywhere I turn which means I don’t need it from my son.”

  I moved as swiftly across the room as I could and put my hands to his abs.

  “Lower your voice, Captain,” I hissed.

  “He took you from me,” Tate bit back.

  “He didn’t, Tate, I’m right here,” I reminded him.

  “He took you from me, right from my goddamned house.”

  “He didn’t. I’m right here.”

  “I called him to take you to work, bring you home. I trusted that sick fuck to keep you safe and he took you from me.”

  There it was, the crux of his anger. Tate was blaming himself.

  I pressed into him, lifting my hands to hold each side of his head and I shook it, repeating, “Baby, I’m right here.”

  Tate closed his eyes.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” I whispered and Tate opened his eyes.

  “I trust
ed that sick fuck to keep you safe,” he repeated.

  “I trusted him too,” I told him. “I opened the door to him. So did Tonia. So did Neeta.” I fitted myself into his front and slid the fingers of both of my hands into his hair, pulling his neck to bent and his face closer to mine. “And I didn’t do anything wrong either. He’s crazy and now he’s incarcerated.”

  “It’s gonna haunt you,” he informed me.

  “It’s not me who’s not sleeping,” I reminded him and his whole body jerked.

  This was true. I’d only been home three days but every night I knew he woke because, when he did, he woke me. And when I was in the hospital, he stayed with me all day, all night, the last night climbing into my hospital bed with me and holding me close. I woke twice because hospitals were noisy and both times I saw Tate awake, eyes open, staring at the ceiling.

  I pushed up on my toes so my face was an inch from his and I whispered, “You’re beside me, baby, I’m sleeping just fine.”

  Both his hands came up to cup the back of my head as he murmured, “Laurie.”

  “I lay on that mattress and I knew you’d find me. I ran through those woods, Tate, and I knew you’d be looking for me. I was shouting because I knew you’d hear me. And I ran right into you because you were coming for me.”

  His mouth lowered to mine. “Baby.”

  “Mack’s right, that was pure drama on TV but what they said was true. You might have made a lot of money playing football but you make this world a safer place doing what you do and you didn’t even know the faceless people who’s futures you changed by putting bad guys behind bars. But now one of them isn’t faceless, Captain. She’s standing right here.”

  “Jim-Billy –”

  “Got there first,” I cut him off, “but you were not even ten minutes behind. Dalton was taking his time, he had all night. Even if Jim-Billy didn’t get there, you would have.”

  “Lauren –”

  “And you think, knowing that, knowing that four years they’ve been looking for him, four years and ten women before me, he only had an hour with me before you got to me, you think after that, I lay my head on a pillow by yours and I relive it? You think I can’t cope? You think I don’t know I’m safe, right here, beside you?”