Evidence of Mercy

  Paige’s face took on a guarded look, and she started twisting her hair into a pony tail. “Okay.”

  Lynda sat down on the couch and glanced around, making sure no one could overhear. No one sat nearby. “Paige, they’ve found out that someone sabotaged my plane and caused my crash.”

  “How awful!” she said.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty awful,” Lynda said. “But the really awful part is that this person might have been trying to kill me. We don’t know.”

  Paige twisted her hair harder. “Do you know who it could be?”

  Lynda shook her head dolefully. “I’ve thought and thought. But the bottom line is, if someone is out to get me, then anyone with me is also in danger.”

  Paige let her hair fall. “You want us to move out.”

  “No, that’s not what I want. I just wanted you to know the danger. You have to know that living in my house might be putting you and Brianna in jeopardy.”

  Paige considered her child for a moment, then brought her gaze back to Lynda. “Are you scared?”

  Lynda tried to find honest words to express what she felt. “I think . . . that maybe . . .” She failed and tried again. “I don’t know. It could have been just a fluke that he picked my plane. But that’s really just what I want to believe. If I’m wrong . . .”

  Paige sat slowly back down on the couch, the look on her face telling Lynda that she couldn’t take much more. “You don’t need the stress of having us around anyway.”

  “I’d love to have you around, Paige. You know that’s not it. And if you still want to stay, you can. You just had to know.”

  For a moment, she watched Paige’s big blue eyes wrestle with the decision. Other visitors waited on the couches or milled through the lobby. The elevator bell kept ringing every few seconds, and on the intercom doctors were paged and codes were recited. In the corner across the room, a television was on, and a few children sat transfixed in front of it.

  When Paige finally brought her eyes back to Lynda, Lynda fully expected Paige to thank her, then say that she would find another place to stay. But Lynda had underestimated the girl’s desperation.

  “Well, Lynda, I guess I see it like this. If I go home, I’m in absolute, inevitable danger. And if I stay with you, I may be in danger—but I may not. And since I don’t see any other possibilities right now, I think Brianna and I will stay.”

  Lynda hadn’t realized how much she had hoped Paige would say that until she heard the words. “Good,” she said. “I’m glad.” She reached out and squeezed Paige’s hand. “We’re in God’s hands, Paige. I believe that. We’re going to be all right.”

  And as they left the hospital, Lynda believed it more than ever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  * * *

  Today. She was going home today. Thanking the nurse who’d given him the information, he hung up the phone, leaned back, and laughed.

  So much for patience. He didn’t have to wait even one more day.

  But he had a lot of work to do if he was going to take care of things tonight. He’d heard every word that she’d said to the police that day in her hospital room, and the knowledge empowered him, even while it created a new urgency. He had to do this quickly before they managed to stop him.

  Grabbing his car keys, he dashed out of his apartment, his spirits higher and more hopeful than they had been since the day of the crash.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  * * *

  The airport looked just the same as it had the morning of the crash, and as Paige pulled her car into a parking place facing the fence—and beyond that, the runway—Lynda found herself reliving that morning. It had been windy, like this, and she remembered thinking she should have postponed the test flight. If only she had. But that wouldn’t have helped, would it? The crash would have happened anyway the next time she took the plane up, and she might not have survived the landing if she’d been alone.

  “Are you all right?” Paige asked quietly.

  Lynda shook herself out of her reverie. “Yeah. Fine. It’s just kind of weird, coming here after what happened.”

  Paige crossed her arms over the steering wheel. “Is it really necessary? I mean, I’m sure Jake’s car is fine.”

  “I just have to get his hotel key out of it,” she said. “And I want to get Mike to move it someplace where Jake doesn’t have to worry about it.”

  Paige checked the back seat where Brianna was sound asleep in her car seat, and she patted Lynda’s hand. “You go on in and do what you need to. I don’t want to wake her up. Take your time, okay?”

  “Okay.” Wincing against the pain in her ribs when she twisted, Lynda got out of the car and went inside.

  The small airport was just as she remembered: the blue couches forming a square in the middle of the floor; the line of vending machines against one wall; the posters of exotic places; the rest rooms; the tall desk that looked like a concession stand but was really Mike’s version of a control tower.

  Mike sat there now, sipping on coffee and going over paperwork. He looked up when she started toward him.

  “Lynda!” Spilling his coffee, he blotted it up quickly then came around the desk to meet her. “What in the world are you doing here?”

  She hugged him, careful not to test her ribs, and he led her to a seat and made her sit down. “They sprang me this morning.”

  “You should have called me,” he said. “I would have picked you up. Are you okay? Do you need a wheelchair? I have three.”

  She couldn’t help being amused. “Mike, relax. I’m fine. I may look like Frankenstein’s daughter, but I’m really okay.”

  “But you aren’t supposed to drive this soon after your surgery, are you? And shouldn’t you be at home—?”

  She touched his arm to stem his rambling. “I didn’t drive. I have a friend out in the car waiting for me. I just came to make some arrangements about Jake’s car and get some things out of it for him.”

  “Oh. Well, okay. I have it parked in the hangar.”

  Getting to her feet, she tried to look stronger than she was. “Do you have the keys?”

  “Yeah. He left them in the ignition that day. I locked it up and put the keys in my safe.” He hurried around behind the desk and unlocked the safe.

  “Here they are.” He handed them to her. “I’ll walk out to the hangar with you.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s okay. You need to stay here. Who knows? Somebody’s landing gear might fail.”

  He hesitated then looked at the controls behind his desk and realized she was right. “All right,” he said. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

  “I’ll be great.”

  She pushed through the glass door of the airport, and the wind immediately whipped her hair into her face. Shoving it back, she peered across the concrete to runway 4. She wasn’t sure exactly where her plane had ended up—the crash was such a blur to her now—but she remembered waking up and seeing Jake crushed and twisted and bleeding, and she remembered sliding him to the door. . . .

  Shivering, she started to the hangar.

  It was open, as it usually was this time of day, and planes sat lined up, waiting to be flown. There was a big space where she had occasionally parked Solitude, and tears came to her eyes. But she reminded herself that she hadn’t come here to mourn, and she blinked the tears away. She had things to take care of.

  She saw the red Porsche parked at the back of Solitude’s empty space, and slowly she started toward it.

  “Lynda? How are you doing?”

  She looked up; one of the mechanics was standing on the wing of a plane. “Hi, Mac. I’m great.”

  “You sure look a lot better than I expected you would after I saw that plane hit.”

  She smiled. “It’ll take a lot more than a little ole plane crash to get me down.”

  He laughed. “It’s good to have you back.”

  But her smile faded. She wasn’t back. Not really.

  She went to Jake’s car
and unlocked the door, but as she did, she heard footsteps behind her. She turned and saw Gordon Addison.

  Though she waved, a shiver went through her again; quickly, she got into the car and locked it shut. Trembling, she looked back at him through the windshield, wondering whether he knew she had given his name to the police or whether they’d caught him leaving the hospital and interrogated him about why he’d come. He was standing half in the shadow of his plane, staring at her as if surprised to see her. That look frightened her, and she found it hard to breathe. She had to calm down. He probably wasn’t the one who’d done this to her, and she had no reason to be frightened. Besides, there were witnesses all around them here in the hangar—mechanics and maintenance people, other pilots—and he couldn’t do anything to her here.

  When he disappeared behind his plane, she calmed down. He wasn’t going to approach her. She was just being paranoid.

  She tried to relax in the sleek interior of Jake’s car, smelling the spearmint scent of the gum he kept on the dashboard. Opening his glove compartment, she found the hotel key just where he’d told her it would be. She pulled it out, along with the hairbrush he kept there, the sunglasses, and the ID tag that identified him as a TSA employee.

  Putting them into the bag she’d brought with her, she looked around for anything else he might like to have. There was an aviation magazine on the passenger’s seat—probably the same one in which he’d seen her classified ad—and she stuffed it into the bag to throw away. She flipped down the visor over the driver’s seat and saw his checkbook. Slipping it out of the pocket that held it, she dropped it into the bag, and looked around for anything else. Only the gum, she thought, and he might like that.

  She got out, opened the small trunk, and saw some of the bigger items he’d put there during his move—things he’d decided to bring to Florida himself rather than turning them over to the movers since he might need them before he found a place to live—and she took out what she thought she could carry and made a mental note to ask Mike to unload the other things and take them to Jake. The more personal items he had around him, the better he would feel.

  Taking one last inventory, she reached for the trunk, wincing at the pain in her ribs, and closed it.

  She jumped, startled—Gordon Addison stood leaning against the car, staring at her with his arms crossed. “You scared me, Gordon.”

  “What did you tell the police?” he asked.

  She swallowed and looked toward the plane where Mac had been working. He was gone.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, starting to back away.

  He stayed where he was. “They came here this morning asking all kinds of questions. Where I was the night before the crash, what my relationship with you is, why I came to the hospital yesterday—”

  “Well, they interviewed everybody here. They weren’t singling you out.”

  He pushed away from the car then, the frown on his face revealing a deeper anger than she could hear in his voice. “I want to know what you told them.”

  “I told them something about everybody here, Gordon. Not just you.” Again, she searched around for Mac or one of the other mechanics, and though she could hear some of them on the other side of the hangar, none was in sight.

  “If you think I had anything to do with that crash—”

  “Of course not,” she cut in. “What reason would you possibly have?”

  As if he turned that question over in his mind, he left it unanswered.

  Lynda started to walk away. She half expected him to catch up with her, grab her, and stop her, but as she stepped out into the wind again, she turned back. He hadn’t moved from where he was standing, and he was watching her.

  With more energy than she could spare, she walked faster until she was all the way to Paige’s car.

  Later that night after Paige had cooked her the best meal she’d had since her mother died, Lynda walked outside to sit on the massive deck attached to the back of her house. The cool night air felt good on her face as she lay on a white wicker chaise lounge chair and gazed up into the stars. Somewhere, under these same stars, an enemy lurked with deadly intention. God knew who it was.

  Maybe it wasn’t Gordon Addison at all, she thought. Maybe it was some kid caught in a game, and now that he’d seen the results of his actions, he was remorseful and repentant. Maybe it was just an accident.

  Or maybe not.

  But the face of Gordon Addison, angry and pensive, staring at her in the hangar today still chilled her.

  Across the deck, a cricket chirped, and she could hear the sound of the leaves in the oak tree whispering over her head. The breeze had grown cooler while she was in the hospital, but she knew it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Soon the temperature would rise, and it would feel like summer again. Summer didn’t let go easily in Florida.

  The back door opened, spilling light out, and Paige looked startled. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were out here. I was just going to take the garbage out, but I’ll do it later.”

  “No, it’s all right,” Lynda said. “I was just thinking.”

  Paige set the garbage bag in the vinyl can next to the deck and took a step toward the chair. “Really, if you want to be alone . . .”

  “Sit down, Paige,” she whispered. “Brianna’s asleep, everything’s put away—you deserve to rest.”

  “Oh, I’m not tired. Really. I love doing household things. And I’m so thankful that you’ve given us a place to stay.”

  “You don’t have to wait on me hand and foot just because you’re grateful. I think I’m getting a lot more out of this deal than you are.”

  Paige was quiet for a moment. “I just want you to see that I’m . . . decent. I don’t want you to think I’m just trash.”

  “Why would I think that?”

  Paige had trouble meeting her eyes. “I don’t know. That’s what people think about women who have to hide from their ex-husbands. Things like this don’t happen to ‘nice people.’”

  Lynda touched her hand and made her meet her eyes. “I’ve never thought you were trash, Paige. If anyone is, it’s me, for not giving your case the priority it deserved.”

  “Well, why would you? I couldn’t pay—”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Lynda said. “You needed help, and I just became another problem.”

  Paige walked out to the railing of the deck and leaned back against it. She sighed and rubbed her eyes wearily. “Sometimes, I look back on the dreams I had growing up and all the promises I made myself, and I can’t figure out how I got into all this.”

  “What promises, Paige?”

  Paige turned her back to Lynda and looked out over the night. “Promises that I’d have a different kind of life when I grew up.” She laughed softly, but there was no joy in the sound. “You know, the picket-fence promises. The ones about the knight in shining armor who would protect me instead of threatening me.”

  Lynda tried to listen beyond Paige’s words. “Paige, did you come from an abusive home?”

  Paige was silent for a while, and Lynda wondered if she’d heard her at all. When she finally spoke again, her evasion told Lynda what Paige couldn’t. “Keith seemed like just the kind of man I needed. Strong and smart—have I told you that he has a genius IQ?”

  The turn in the conversation surprised Lynda, but she tried to follow it. “Really?”

  “Yeah. But he still keeps failing. He’s a computer whiz, but he has trouble keeping a job because of his temper. I think he expected to really be somebody. But his IQ hasn’t helped him much. That only adds to all that anger boiling inside him. I really don’t think he means to let his temper blow up the way it does. He’s just so used to being in control. Every time I leave him, it just sends him into a rage.”

  “You’ve left him before?”

  Paige turned back. “Yeah, a few times.”

  Lynda sat up. “And you went back?”

  Paige turned to the night again. “He convinced me to, every t
ime. Told me how sorry he was, that he’d change, that he’d never lay a finger on me again. He really did love me, Lynda. I know he did. And I worried about him. Nobody understands him like I do.”

  Lynda got up then and went to stand beside Paige. She turned Paige to face her and saw Paige’s tears. “You sound like you still love him.”

  Paige shrugged. “I just get so mixed up. Sometimes I hate him, and sometimes. . . .”

  “But he hurt you, Paige. He hurt Brianna. How could you find any rationale for that?”

  “He never means to, Lynda. It just . . . happens.”

  Lynda tried hard to keep her expression from revealing her amazement—or her judgment. “Paige, abusive husbands kill their wives all the time. They kill their children.”

  “I know that,” she said. “That’s why I’m here. That’s why we’re divorced. I’m just trying to explain to you why I’m in this position. I’m not stupid, you know. Things happen to people sometimes that are out of their control.”

  “I know that more than anyone.” She reached out to stroke Paige’s hair and wished she had the wisdom that Paige needed right now. “But Paige, you did what you had to do to protect yourself and your daughter. It took a lot of courage, but you did it. Don’t back down now.”

  “I’m not,” she said adamantly. “Besides, Brianna’s scared to death of him. Whenever I get weak and think of going back, I remember that.”

  Lynda stared at her, wanting to blurt out that she was crazy if she’d even considered going back to Keith, that she needed to go to counseling and get help, and that she needed to step back and start looking at things realistically.

  But then she realized that Paige didn’t need to be condemned right now. She needed patience and understanding. And she needed someone she could count on. Maybe that was the reason God had forced Lynda to rearrange her priorities: so that she’d be here for Paige. Not as a judge but as a friend.

  She only hoped she had the grace to put friendship ahead of her own personal biases.