Her smile began to fade as she saw Paul behind them. She put aside her sketchbook. “What’s happened?”
John took a seat in front of her, leaning forward, hands clasped before him. “Remember how I said some news you hear and then later feel? I need you prepared to do that now.”
She slowly nodded.
“A photo has shown up of you from back then. A man’s hand on your shoulder. It’s proof a third man was there, Charlotte.”
Her hand still holding a pencil trembled violently. “I need to see the photo,” she whispered.
Paul offered an envelope.
Bryce squeezed her shoulder gently, steadying her, took the envelope from Paul, and handed it to her. She pulled out the photo, flinched, then went totally still. She studied the image carefully, thinking hard. “I don’t remember the photo being taken, or the man.” She looked at John. “I don’t remember.”
“Okay.”
She rubbed at her forehead. Shook her head. “I don’t remember.” She pushed it back into the envelope and returned it to Paul.
“We’ve identified him from the hand injury, Charlotte,” Paul said quietly. “His name is Christopher Caleb Cox.”
She lost even more color. “Tabitha’s Christopher.”
“Yes.”
She pushed out of the chair, then surprised Bryce by moving into his space, securing a tight grip on his hand. “Tell me the rest of it.”
“He is wanted in California in connection with the homicide of a young woman who worked at his law firm,” Paul replied. “The FBI also wants him for the theft of five million dollars from an escrow account controlled by the law firm. He’s been missing for nine years now. It’s believed he arranged a new identity for himself using the expertise of one of his criminal clients and disappeared. He’s never resurfaced.”
“You can’t find him.”
Bryce heard the faint panic ripple into her words. “Easy,” he murmured, trying to reassure, wishing she could accept a hug right now so he could do a better job of it.
“Give me a few days to better evaluate the search that has been done before I try to answer that, Charlotte.” Paul said.
“You have his photo, John?” Bryce asked.
“Everyone around Charlotte and Tabitha knows what he looks like.”
Charlotte studied the paving stones, her jaw working as she fought to keep the emotions in check. She finally looked over at Paul. “You can’t tell Tabitha he was using her. That the man she trusted, had a crush on, was involved in this. It destroys Tabitha if you say that. You’ll make her his final victim.”
“I’ve got people looking at the homicide case and seeing how strong it is,” Paul said, “someone looking at the embezzlement case. If we can put him in jail for life on those crimes, we can leave this photo in the secure files and not pursue it as a trial matter. But Gage has the image. He’s the one who found the photo. Christopher Caleb Cox is on video with your sister numerous times. Gage will figure it out, eventually find a name the same way we did.”
Charlotte rubbed her eyes. “I can divert Gage from using it.” She looked back at Paul. “Gage leaves the specifics about the third man out of his book in return for an interview about what happened to baby Connor.”
“It’s your butterfly pin.”
She simply nodded.
“I’d like to hear those details as well,” Paul said. “It’s doubtful Gage will take that deal.”
“It’s worth asking him. Could you prosecute Christopher for his part in the baby Connor case, for his part in mine, based on what you have today?”
Paul thought about it and finally shook his head. “Not without your testimony, and even then the evidence is thin.”
“Then please file the photo and don’t pursue it. There are reasons I don’t talk about what happened. My sister leads that list. I can’t testify.”
“Let’s take this one step at a time. We find him. And you find out if Gage will keep the information quiet.”
Charlotte looked over at John. “Christopher changed his name, he disappeared. But I bet he left at least one person alive who knows something about his new name or where he is, who might talk for the right dollar amount. Bryce can write some very large checks.”
“I’ve already got tickets to California,” John said. “I’m hopeful, Charlotte. But this isn’t going to be quick. You need to brace for several weeks of waiting, if not longer.”
“I know how to wait.” She glanced around the group. “If that’s all, I’d like to take a walk with Ellie.” She took Paul’s nod as agreement, then left with Ellie.
Bryce showed the last of their guests out, then locked up the house and reset security. He noted two more security personnel now visible on the grounds, the first of a wave of tightened security John had warned him was coming—around their home, his family, Charlotte. He would have to call his parents tomorrow, figure out something plausible for an explanation.
Bryce took two mugs of hot chocolate upstairs with him. Ellie and Charlotte had walked for over an hour before Charlotte had returned and headed upstairs. It had shaken his wife more to realize she couldn’t remember the photo than the terrible memory of what that day must have been like.
He tapped on her door and leaned against the doorjamb. She was painting her toenails. He recognized the concentration of a woman trying to focus on the totally mundane. “You could have been drunk, Charlotte. That’s why you don’t remember. It might not be anything worse than that.”
“Do you believe that’s all it is?”
He wished he could lie to her. “No.” The truth was probably something much more ugly.
“Neither do I.” She rose to come get the mug. “Thank you for the hot chocolate.”
“Do you want to call Tabitha?”
“I can’t. She would hear in my voice that something is wrong. Best case, Tabitha never hears even a whisper about this.”
“They will find him.”
“The one thing I am certain of,” she replied, trying to smile, “is that the FBI wants him, so do the California cops, and it’s personal with John. I pity the man in a way. John isn’t a man you want coming after you.” She carefully sipped the hot chocolate. “You knew about the photo. You weren’t surprised when John told me.”
“They’ve had it for a couple of days while they verified its authenticity and who he was.”
She absorbed that news, nodded. “Thanks for giving me some days without having to know it was out there.”
“Sure.” Bryce could feel the politeness of the conversation, knew it was the last thing they needed, but didn’t know what he could say that would get her to shift to give him more. “Charlotte, I wish I could make this go away, not have it be part of your history.”
“That makes two of us.”
“You want to talk awhile?”
She tipped her head toward her nightstand. “I’m planning to finish that book and then turn in. I’m tired enough that sleep is not going to be a problem tonight, Bryce. It feels like I got punched. I just need the time to wear it off.”
“This is going to be over—fully over the first time in nineteen years.”
“You know, I believe it will be.” She set aside her mug. “I’m going to go see Gage in the morning.”
“Want company?”
“For the drive over. It needs to be a private conversation.”
“I disagree with Paul’s assessment. I think he’ll take the deal.”
“We’ll know tomorrow.”
His bedside table clock said two a.m. Bryce added a sweatshirt to the jeans, put his phone in his pocket, slipped on socks. He went downstairs to find his wife.
“Scoot over.” He made room for himself on the couch and wrapped his arms around her. She had come downstairs so he wouldn’t hear her crying. “I love you,” he said.
“Don’t say that,” she whispered achingly.
“It’s an explanation, not an expectation. I love you, and I have chosen to spend my lif
e with you. I don’t want to be somewhere else. So as hard as life gets for you, as tough as the emotions are to deal with, you and I are okay. I don’t need you to try to keep up a good front for my sake. If you need to come apart, if that’s the fastest way through this grief, then loosen that grip of control you’re trying to keep, and let the grief come. It won’t last forever, Charlotte, and life will be better on the other side. You and I will be fine. Trust me on that.”
She was already on the edge of losing it, and his words intensified her struggle. He kissed her hair. “Do me the favor of going ahead and crying until you can’t cry anymore. Okay?”
She curled herself into him, and sobs shook her whole body.
Bryce refolded the cold washcloth he’d gotten to rest across her eyes. “Better?”
“Getting there.”
He shifted to make it easier for her to stretch out on the couch.
“I want to love you.”
His heart skipped at her soft words. He brushed back her hair. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever told me.” He smiled. “You’ll love me one day. I’m a pretty loveable guy.”
She half smiled back. “I’m numb, Bryce, even for me. This is survival mode. Emotions ice over for later. Tears aside, it’s hard to feel much right now.”
“It will pass. Once they find him, you’ll start to breathe again. This will be fully over for the first time.”
“I need it to be.” She was silent for a long time. “I don’t remember him,” she whispered. “The photo being taken. The man.”
He heard the fear in her voice. “If you ever do, we’ll deal with it.” She couldn’t take any more tonight, and he desperately needed to yank her out of the past for a while. He ran his hand down her arm. “Hungry?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Poached eggs and toast with strawberry jelly would do you a world of good right now.”
“Better start with just the toast.”
“I’ll be right back.” He kissed her forehead, then went to get them some breakfast.
Bryce thought life entered a kind of limbo while they waited. Ellie came over every day, tugging Charlotte into conversations about her sketches, the gallery, the direction she wanted to head next with her art. They started discussing the logistics of a wall-sized image, fitting together various sketches like a patchwork quilt into one mosaic. The idea absorbed a few days of Charlotte’s attention, but then was set aside as something she didn’t want to attempt this year.
Bryce started taking Charlotte running every morning, letting her steadily run for an hour on the track before waving her in to cool off. They both struggled with trying to ignore the more visible security around them everywhere they went.
Charlotte threw him a birthday party and final coin celebration, inviting his family and friends over. Paul and Ann brought a gift of the final coin, framed, in sequence with a set of wedding pictures they’d arranged with Ellie’s help. Bryce hung it in the entryway near the housewarming-gift sketch Charlotte had done of Bishop Chicago.
Bryce enjoyed the party more for the fact it gave Charlotte a distraction than a celebration that he was a year older. For one of her wedding presents he had bought her a custom-made pool cue, and she’d named it Elizabeth since the ivory in the cue was engraved with English ivy and roses. She now returned the favor for his birthday, giving him a pool cue with a pattern she’d sketched that melded together his favorite cuff-link designs. They had played an hour’s worth of pool together to try out the gift, both content to end the play when the score of games won was tied.
They talked briefly about her upcoming conversation with Gage. The reporter had agreed that if Christopher was charged only with the California crimes and the FBI didn’t pursue the photo, he would keep Christopher’s involvement in the Bazoni case out of the book—on the condition Charlotte talked with him not only about baby Connor, but also would discuss her thoughts about that first day and her impulse to push Tabitha out of the van. Charlotte took the deal to further protect her sister.
And they waited for word that Christopher Caleb Cox had been found.
Charlotte tapped on his office door. “Want some help?”
Bryce saw in a glance the restless energy that refused to let her stay with anything for very long. He took a stack of checks off the printer. “Why don’t you sign for a while?” He offered her the checks and a pen. He’d automate the signature process eventually when the sheer number of checks became an issue, but for now he liked this hands-on final step.
She pulled her chair up to the edge of the desk and began to neatly sign checks. “How much money is left?”
Bryce realized it was the first time she’d asked. He clicked over to the account balance of that morning. “Eight billion three hundred eighty-nine million.”
“We’ve still got some work to do. At least you do,” she offered.
He smiled. “A little.” He slid checks into envelopes. “Let’s go to the gallery for an hour this evening. Ellie is putting Florist at Work on display, along with Lava Flows. We should go enjoy how they look in a gallery setting.”
“Maybe tomorrow. I think I want us to go for a drive tonight.”
“Anywhere in particular?”
“Let’s find an all-night diner with great cheeseburgers somewhere. I’d like to just people-watch for a while, have some time to clear my thoughts.”
“We can do that.”
The drive home was peaceful, music on low, the conversation drifting into long stretches of silence.
“I love you, Bryce.”
His heartbeat skipped. He looked over at her.
“I don’t know what that means exactly, if anything can change, but I wanted to say the words,” Charlotte said softly.
He reached over and took her hand in his. “The words matter. A lot.” Emotions were rising so quickly they were overwhelming him.
“I was going to wait until we got home to say it, but it seemed easier when you’re driving and I don’t have to wonder what you will do in the next few minutes.” She gave a sad smile. “I’m sorry about that.”
Her words tempered the joy he felt, but only at the edges. “It’s okay, Charlotte.” He smiled and rubbed his thumb across hers, feeling her nerves. “Take a breath. Relax. One day it’s not going to send nerves skittering around to say those words.”
“I still can’t sleep with you.”
He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “Do you trust me?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Trust me to understand this road we’re on. I love you, Charlotte. Over time we can go a very long way with small steps. Tonight is going to be like last night, tomorrow night will be the same. But you can give some thought to kissing me good-night. Why don’t we start there?”
“I don’t know where the triggers are going to be.”
“You don’t need to be afraid to find them. We both know they are there. We’ll deal with them together when they appear.” He looked over. “Relax. Life just got less complicated, not more.”
“I’m afraid it’s done the opposite.”
Bryce smiled. “Trust me. You’ll see.”
Paul answered a call shortly after midnight, listened, leaned over and turned on the bedside light, reached for a pad of paper. “Thanks, John.” He hung up the phone.
Ann rested her chin on his shoulder.
“John has a name. Simon Legard. Possibly Seattle.”
“How much did it cost him to get that name?”
“Five million.”
“Bryce will consider it a bargain.”
THIRTY-ONE
Bryce moved the phone toward the front of the desk. “Go ahead, John. You’re on speaker. Charlotte’s here.”
“He must have heard we were looking for him. He left Seattle in a hurry. My guess, we missed him by less than an hour. Fingerprints confirm we’ve got the right guy. The FBI will soon be running his photo on the national news, along with a hefty reward we’re putting up for information
. I’d rather you didn’t watch it, Charlotte—you’ll hear directly from me when there’s something that is new.”
Bryce glanced over at her, curled up in her chair. “We’ll avoid the newscasts and wait for your call, John.”
“We assume he’s running under a different name, and odds are good he headed from here north into Canada. We’ll either have him within the next twenty-four hours or this could take another detour and take a few more days. He tried to burn the papers he didn’t take with him, but he was short on time. There will be emails and phones to trace and documents to work and people who know him as Legard—he won’t be able to run for long. They’re locking down accounts under the Simon Legard name, and even with other cash he can get to first and move, there’s going to be a trail.”
“You’ve put a name and face to him once, you’ll do it again,” Charlotte said confidently.
“I will,” John promised. “Hang in there, Charlotte. Bryce, I’ll give you a call when I have more. Expect an update in about three hours.”
“We’ll be here, John.”
Bryce hung up the phone, looked over at his wife.
She got to her feet and restlessly paced the room. “I think I’ll go for a walk. Come with me?”
“Sure.” Bryce picked up his phone and keys. “This is going to take a few days, I think. An hour head start is substantial when he already had a plan in place for running.”
“I’ve been waiting nineteen years. I can last a few more days.”
“You’re practically climbing the walls,” he said lightly, draping his arm around her shoulders.
“So it might be a kind of wired few days.”
Bryce laughed. “Come on, Mrs. Bishop. I might even be talked into buying some ice cream, so we can make this a longer walk than normal.”
“I’ll take every distraction I can get.”
Bryce bought her ice cream, and they perched on the empty bleachers of the high school football field to enjoy the cones.
“This was one of the things I missed most during those four years. A sunny day outside. Ice cream.”