Second Chance - 04 - Broken Wings

  She gazed up at him, her amber eyes melting under his. “Then why did you pull back yesterday? The choice seemed so hard for you.”

  Addison’s hands framed her face, stroking back her hair. “I was a wreck, Erin. That bolt thing pushed me past my limit, and then Sid’s stupid ultimatum…I didn’t know what was right anymore. It was like when you couldn’t fly. You didn’t trust your power to do anything. I knew I loved you, but I didn’t know if that was enough.”

  She laid her head against his chest, feeling his heartbeat on her cheek. “Did you resolve it?” she asked, holding her breath. Whatever his answer, she thought, she would be there for him, help him work through it, as he had done with her. Nothing seemed as bleak now that she knew he truly loved her.

  His sigh drew the breath out of her. “I had to think about my job, Erin. It made me miserable to think about going back to Washington and then Albuquerque and then who-knows-where else. I couldn’t face little secret fragments of time with you, so that I could have my career and our relationship. I wanted more. And I was so confused about my job. It’s been my whole life for a long time, Erin. I didn’t know if giving it up was the right thing. Sid made me feel like I was turning my back on Amanda if I walked away from the NTSB to be with you. But he was wrong, Erin. He was wrong.”

  Erin turned her face up to his, confusion widening her eyes. “In the cockpit, you said you were an ex-NTSB official. You don’t really have to quit, do you? Couldn’t you go over his head, tell somebody what he did to you?”

  Addison shook his head. “I’m quitting,” he told her, and the sudden peace in his eyes told her he’d made the only choice he felt good about. “Sid gave me a choice, and I made it. Amanda wouldn’t have wanted me to be alone, or to chase after vengeance for the rest of my life. I’ve had enough of the depression and the digging and the drilling of victims’ families and friends. I want to feel good about what I do, and I haven’t felt good about this for a long time. It’s an important job, but there are others who could do it justice. I want to be with you, Erin. And after seeing you work today, seeing your competence and control, I want to get back into piloting.”

  Erin caught her breath as she pressed splayed fingers over her mouth.

  “I want you to marry me, babe,” he whispered, pressing his lips against her forehead. “Be my wife. God gave us a gift. Let’s keep it.”

  “Marry you?” She stepped back and looked at him through a blur of tears. The strength of his sincerity was there in his eyes, as binding as her own. “Oh, Addison, yes!”

  Crushing her in his arms, he smiled down at her, knowing that they were safe together in each other’s love. For the rest of their lives, they would be there for each other, whenever broken wings needed mending.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Terri Blackstock is an award-winning novelist who has written for several major publishers including HarperCollins, Dell, Harlequin, and Silhouette. Her books have sold over 6 million copies worldwide.

  With her success in secular publishing at its peak, Blackstock had what she calls “a spiritual awakening.” A Christian since the age of fourteen, she realized she had not been using her gift as God intended. It was at that point that she recommitted her life to Christ, gave up her secular career, and made the decision to write only books that would point her readers to him.

  “I wanted to be able to tell the truth in my stories,” she said, “and not just be politically correct. It doesn’t matter how many readers I have if I can’t tell them what I know about the roots of their problems and the solutions that have literally saved my own life.”

  Her books are about flawed Christians in crisis and God’s provisions for their mistakes and wrong choices. She claims to be extremely qualified to write such books, since she’s had years of personal experience.

  A native of nowhere, since she was raised in the Air Force, Blackstock makes Mississippi her home. She and her husband are the parents of three adult children—a blended family which she considers one more of God’s provisions.

  Terri Blackstock, a New York Times bestselling author, has sold over six million books worldwide. She is of author numerous suspense novels, including Intervention, Double Minds, the Restoration Series (Last Light, Night Light, True Light, and Dawn’s Light), and other series such as the Sun Coast Chronicles, Cape Refuge, and Newpointe 911. (www.terriblackstock.com)

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to the commercial pilot in my life—my father, Sam Ward—for spending hours and hours answering my endless questions about commercial-airline piloting, crash investigations, industry problems, and so on.

  This book could never have been written without his patience and enthusiasm.

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  ENJOY THE FIRST BOOK IN THE SECOND CHANCES SERIES

  Never Again Good-bye

  Chapter 1

  Kidnappers don’t look like criminals, Wes Grayson thought as he moved closer behind the young woman he’d been watching for the last half hour. At least, that was what he’d told his daughter so many times. They looked trustworthy and pleasant, and that was how they deceived.

  Why, then, was it so hard for him to believe that this five-foot-three, hundred-pound woman, who looked barely old enough to qualify as a legal adult, was about to strike?

  Yet he’d seen her behavior himself, and it was suspicious, if not threatening. Moving closer without making a sound, he held his hands poised to catch her if she tried to run when she realized she’d been seen. The shutter of her camera clicked, and she stepped deeper into the shade of the pine trees that edged the park, adjusted her lens, and focused again.

  With eyes narrowed in a natural squint from years of construction work in the harsh Louisiana sun, Wes followed her aim to the children scaling the monkey bars and watched the camera pan to the right as his seven-year-old daughter left the cluster of her friends and went to her baby-sitter. A vein in his temple throbbed with the pressure of waiting. Why had the police department taken so long to respond to his call? Did they think she’d hang around indefinitely?

  As if in reaction to his thoughts, a Shreveport PD squad car pulled up and two uniformed officers got out, hiking up the waists of their pants and glancing around as if wondering which tree to settle under for their afternoon nap. The woman spotted them and snapped her camera back in its case. As she took a step back, Wes moved within grasping distance.

  She smelled of apricots, he thought as the early spring breeze rustled the black wisps of hair that had escaped from her long braid. Criminals didn’t smell like apricots, did they? And they didn’t have that look of vulnerable fragility or wear designer jeans and silk blouses. But this one did. Drawing his brows together, he watched her partial profile as she looked across the park at his daughter.

  Her suspicious interest in Amy sent a chill of panic through him, and Wes clenched his teeth, silently willing the policemen to hurry. But when they stopped at his baby-sitter, who had no idea that he had been standing in the shadows behind a potential kidnapper for the last half hour, Wes had no choice but to take matters into his own hands.

  Carefully he reached out and grabbed her arm.

  She jumped and tried to jerk free. “Let me go!”

  “Why?” he asked through his teeth. “So you can keep stalking innocent children?”

  The depth of her dark eyes as they searched his was unexpected, and for a fleeting second, he wondered if a criminal would really look so scared. Wouldn’t there be some harshness in her eyes, some cold glint of evil intent that couldn’t be concealed?

  “Stalking?” she asked quickly. “Is that what you think?”

  “You tell me,” he said, remembering the woman who had wept when her child was kidnapped from a park across town the previous week. He and other members of his church had joined the effort to search for her, but to no avail. “I want some answers, and they’d better be good.”

  “Answers to what? I haven’t done anything.”

  He smiled at the gu
ilt in her voice, guilt that told him he was not making a mistake. “Tell it to the cops,” he said.

  “The cops?” Her voice was high and incredulous, and the woman swung around, this time managing to free her arm. “You called the police?” A look of terror sprang to her eyes, and her lips trembled. “Why? What did I do?”

  She was backing away, trying, Wes realized, to gain enough distance to break into a run. Before she could get far he grabbed her again and, in one swift movement, twisted her arm behind her back, immobilizing her completely.

  “Let go of me!” she hissed again. “And tell me what I’ve done!”

  His voice was equally harsh. “You’ve been sneaking around here snapping pictures of my daughter.”

  “Your—your daughter?” Her voice caught, and her gaze snapped to the child on the playground. “She’s your daughter?”

  Her question was as close to an admission of guilt as he needed. His lips grew taut against gritted teeth, and he jerked her arm harder, heard her gasp, and told himself that he was right: She was after his daughter. Amy had almost been the next child to go. Roughly he pulled her out of the shadows and toward the growing crowd of people at the center of the park.

  “Wait!” Despite the grueling twist of her arm and the pain it inflicted, the woman held back. “I don’t want to go over there.”

  “Well, that’s just too bad, isn’t it?”

  But she ground in her heels and refused to move without being dragged. “Please,” she bit out. “Make the policemen come over here. I don’t want to frighten the children.”

  Wes stopped at her words and studied her curiously. What did she care about frightening the children? Was she afraid of blowing her cover, ruining her chances of earning their trust so she could take them of their own free will? Or was it real concern? Did she care about their ability to sleep easily at night, about tainting the joy they found in the park?

  Still holding her against him, Wes glanced toward his daughter and considered the woman’s request. She was right. The children would be told. Things didn’t need to be confused by creating an uproar. He saw his baby-sitter stand up, spot him, and point him out. The policemen started toward them.

  “I haven’t done anything,” the woman muttered, looking over her shoulder with eyes that could have convinced him of her innocence if he hadn’t witnessed her actions himself. She seemed more afraid than he was. “They can’t arrest me for taking pictures.”

  “They can if they connect you with the kidnapping in town last week.”

  He felt her shiver under his grip.

  “It’s not what you think,” she choked. “I’m not a kidnapper! I’m a photographer. I’m working on a photo layout about Louisiana youth.”

  “Save it,” he said. “Photographers don’t sneak around and hide in shadows to get their pictures. And they don’t single out one child and use three rolls of film on her.”

  Sending a beseeching look toward the sky, she gave up the argument, lifting her chin defiantly as the policemen approached. Compressing her quivering lips and hardening her eyes, she listened as Wes related his suspicions.

  “Have any identification?” one officer asked in a long southern drawl.

  “Identification?” she asked. Her eyes flashed nervously to Wes’s, and her throat convulsed. “Yes…I have it here.” Wes let her go, and her hands trembled as they dug into her camera case. She pulled out her driver’s license, studied it a moment with worried eyes, then handed it to the officer.

  “Elaine Fields,” the officer read aloud.

  Wes felt her eyes assessing him with a fear that went deeper than the obvious. She seemed to be anticipating trouble, almost as if she expected him to recognize her name.

  “Laney,” she said, her eyes still on him. “They call me Laney.”

  When he didn’t respond through word or expression, her shoulders seemed to relax. Did he know her? he wondered. Was he supposed to?

  Before he could wonder further, his daughter saw him and shouted out a joyful “Daddy!”

  The child bolted toward him, and Wes saw the woman close her eyes then open them again and focus on the top of a pine tree. She turned away from him as he swept the child into his arms and hushed her by whispering into her ear.

  “You can’t arrest me for taking pictures,” the woman repeated in a barely audible voice. “I haven’t broken any laws.”

  “No,” one of the officers agreed. “But we can take you in for questioning. And Mr. Grayson, we’ll need you to come along to fill out a complaint.”

  “What did she do, Daddy?” the girl asked in a hushed voice.

  Before he could answer, the woman swung toward the police officers. “Fine. Let’s get this over with. Take me in for questioning.” Without waiting for a response, she started toward the police car.

  Wes stood frozen for a moment, amazed at her sudden acquiescence. Why was she being so compliant? He set his daughter down and stared at the woman climbing into the backseat of the police car. The proud lift of her chin was at odds with the pain in her dark eyes. Who was Laney Fields? he wondered as he took his daughter back to the baby-sitter.

  After arranging for the sitter to take Amy home, he went to his own car. Laney Fields’s eyes said she was an innocent prepared for the worst, but her actions said she was a criminal preparing to do the worst. His mind said she was up to no good; his gut said his mind might have led him wrong again. Bracing himself for the remote possibility that he’d made a mistake, Wes went to the police station to file his complaint.

  Amistake, Laney thought as she sat in the questioning room at the local precinct. She should never have been caught. He might have recognized her name, might have realized who she was. But apparently he hadn’t. She realized now that he had never heard the name Laney Fields, had never known what connection it had to his life or to his daughter’s. Glancing down at her fingertips, she noticed she had absentmindedly scraped a layer of skin off with her nails. She looked up at Wes Grayson, who sat across from her with his written complaint form on the table in front of him, his green eyes imprisoning her before she had even been charged with a crime. She didn’t blame him at all. He had every right to suspect her of being a kidnapper. Had she been in his position, she probably would have jumped to the same conclusion. Why had she believed she could blend into the background and watch the girl from a distance without being noticed?

  The silence seemed heavy, making the room insufferably hot. A fan in the corner circulated the stifling air with a low, maddening hum. The clock on the wall ticked off agonizing seconds, its slight clicks reminding her of dripping water in a torture chamber. Her father would have had a field day with this, she thought, if he had lived to see it. His disappointing, stubborn daughter detained in a police station. Whether she had broken a law or not, he would have been sure that such punishment was well deserved. And arguing with him would have been pointless, for doing so would have only made her more derelict in his eyes.

  But he wasn’t here, she thought. Just an uninterested, perspiring policeman, who seemed on the brink of exhaustion, and her accuser, whose probing regard made her feel unbearably trapped. She glanced across the table, noted his short clean fingernails as they drummed out a judgmental rhythm on the table, the rugged texture of fingers that had known physical labor and thrived on it, the lack of male jewelry, either rings or watch, that would have offered clues to the man. He watched her with fathomless green eyes, eyes that would have drawn her in if they hadn’t been frightening her away, eyes that seemed to wonder and question and, above all, accuse.

  The door opened, momentarily halting the maddening thrumming of his fingers, and the officer who had gone to check out her story came back in. “Seems she’s telling the truth. She’s a photographer, and Heritage magazine confirmed that she’s working on a layout for them.”

  Laney tried to keep the overwhelming relief from her sigh. She would have to thank her editor the next time she spoke to him. Better yet, she thought, she’d
go ahead and do that job. As yet it had been only a vague idea mentioned in passing on the phone.

  Wes was not appeased, however. His finger came up to stroke his lips and his eyes narrowed. “The fact that she’s a photographer doesn’t mean a thing. She’s obviously good with a camera. I want to know why she was taking pictures of my daughter.”

  Laney felt her stomach churning. It was time for explanations, time for control. Time to hold herself together and make her lie sound true. “Mr. Grayson, she’s a beautiful child. I thought she represented what I was trying to capture.”

  “Exactly my point.”

  She leaned wearily back in her chair and wished that someone would open the window so she could breathe. “I mean pho-tographically. You can’t argue that she stands out in a crowd.”

  Not flattered, Wes turned to the policeman, raking a hand through hair the color of mahogany, streaked with blond where the sun had favored it. He wasn’t going to give up easily, she realized. “How can you be sure she isn’t the one who kidnapped that child last week?”

  “Two good reasons,” the officer said. “One is that her alibi checks out. She’s been in town for only four days.”