Blind Trust

  “What are you so mad at me about?” he asked when they rounded the building, out of sight of the others, and found the pay phone.

  “Do you really not know?” she asked. “It hasn’t occurred to you that I could feel just the tiniest bit betrayed because you lied to me and let me suffer all those months when you knew the truth?”

  “I wasn’t the only one, Sherry. I was just doing my job. And your father insisted.”

  “I’ll deal with my father!” she cut in. “Just get him on the phone. I didn’t come here to talk to you.”

  Blowing out a frustrated breath, Gary slipped in a quarter and dialed the number. She listened as he got orders from her father, then explained that she was waiting to talk to him. Then, with an appeasing pat on her shoulder, Gary handed her the phone.

  “Hi, honey.” Her father’s endearment only infuriated her, and she bit her lip.

  “Dad, I want you to put a stop to this madness right now. I don’t want Clint to testify. I want Breard to find some other way to win your case.”

  Eric cleared his throat. “Honey, you don’t understand. We don’t even have a body. All we have is Clint’s word. There is no case without him.”

  “Then drop it!” she said. “It’s not worth his life. Someone just tried to kill him.”

  “I hear you were in that barn too.” His voice was tighter than before.

  “Yes, Dad. Think about that. You’ve gone to great lengths to protect me for the past eight months. If I get killed right beside Clint, all those lies were wasted.” Her face reddened. “All that energy trying to look sympathetic. All the satisfaction for letting me think, again, that I wasn’t worthy of being loved! That I was abandoned for the second time in my life, without any explanation at all. If you can’t see Clint as a human being, then think about me. Enough people have died, Dad.”

  “We won’t let anyone else die,” he said with little conviction.

  “You can’t stop it as long as this trial is going on!” she rasped. “You’re murdering him a little bit at a time! I don’t understand how you can do it!”

  “You’re under a lot of strain, honey. You’re nervous, and I don’t blame you.”

  “I’m scared,” she said. “More than I’ve ever been.”

  “So am I,” he admitted. “Especially now that you’re there. If I could stop it now, I would in a minute. But I can’t.”

  “All that power,” she mocked. She pressed her forehead against the phone mounted on the wall and squeezed her eyes shut. “All that power and you can’t save the man I want to marry. It’s ironic that justice over one man’s life is probably going to cost so many more. Or is it justice you’re really after, Dad? Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just a little glory. A little more recognition. A little more power.”

  “Sherry …”

  She couldn’t bear to hear his denial, or his declaration of his love for her, or his pleading that it was out of his hands. So she hung up the phone and kept her forehead pressed against it. There was no one she could turn to to make Clint stop. No one who could be trusted.

  “It’ll be all right, Sherry,” Gary said. He set his hands on her shoulders and pulled her back against him.

  “Get your hands off of me,” she warned. “I can’t trust you.”

  “You can trust me,” he said. He turned her around to face him and bent his head down to hers.

  She met his eyes defiantly. “No, I can’t. You were the first person I turned to, and you lied to me.” She gave a mirthless laugh as the memories came back to her. “You even tried to get things started up between us again. When Clint was fighting for his life!”

  Gary’s face hardened. “If it weren’t for him, we’d still be together. You can’t blame me for trying to get back something that he took from me to begin with.”

  “He didn’t take me from you!” she retorted. “It just wasn’t working out with us, Gary. We didn’t love each other.”

  “I loved you,” he blurted, his face intense. Maybe he really had, she thought, but that didn’t excuse things. His hands tightened on her shoulders, and he pulled her closer.

  “Let go of me,” she said cautiously. “Gary …”

  “We were good together,” he whispered. “We could be again, Sherry. Your father knew it. That’s why he let me come. That’s why I was one of the only officers he kept informed on what was happening, so I could step in if I had to. He knew that I could protect you better than Clint or any of those others, because of how I feel about you.”

  “Let go of me.” Her voice wobbled. “Gary, it was over for us a long time ago.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” His mouth came down on hers, not forcefully, but not gently either. And before she could pull away, she heard running footsteps. Gary let her go as he was slung to the side, and she saw Clint lunge for him, grasping him around the throat, throwing him to the ground and straddling him with death in his eyes.

  “Clint, stop!” she shouted, and Sam tore around the corner.

  “Jessup! Rivers!” He tried to pull Clint off of him, but met with resistance.

  “You scum!” Clint railed. “If I ever catch you touching her again—”

  Sam jerked him loose, and Gary scrambled to his feet, blood clotting at the corner of his mouth. “I look forward to seeing you dead, Jessup!” he spat. “And I probably won’t have to wait long. Grayson’s calling you to the stand tomorrow!”

  The angry statement hit Clint like ice water, and he dropped his hands to his sides. Sherry caught her breath and took Clint’s arm, but he jerked it from her and started back toward the car, leaving her feeling accused for something she hadn’t done.

  She and Clint didn’t speak during the long ride to the airstrip where the plane waited to take them to their next hiding place, even though Sam was now driving their car and Gary was in another, but she couldn’t help wondering what went through his mind. Not doubts about her relationship with Gary, she hoped. And not anger and judgment. He knew her better than that—or he should. But hadn’t they both changed enough not to completely trust the other anymore? She shook off the thought and looked out the window at the trees whizzing by again. He needed to be concentrating on staying alive tomorrow, when Gary’s cruel premonition of his death would be tested. He needed to try to relax.

  Her throat knotted as she watched his fingers dig into his thigh, watched the other hand finger the gold chain at his neck, watched the subtle nervous habit of him shaking his foot, and heard the intermingling of shallow and deep breathing that told her of his frustration and dread. He stared, unseeing, out the windows, shutting out tomorrow, shutting out yesterday. She reached for his hand, but he recoiled and a muscle in his temple twitched, revealing the anger he held in check. A shiver went up her spine as she withdrew her hand and vowed to clear the air as soon as they were alone.

  The plane was waiting at another small airstrip out in the middle of nowhere, and Erin was waiting at the door as they all piled on. The flight was short, and as Sam and the others got off of the plane to make sure their cars awaited, Erin came back into the cabin. She saw Sherry sitting more complacently beside Clint, and she smiled. “Are you two speaking again?”

  Sherry didn’t find it amusing.

  “Off and on,” Clint said.

  Madeline got up and sat on the arm of a chair. “So, Erin … you said you worked for a commercial airline. How can you just take off any time these people need to go somewhere?”

  “The FBI hires me through my airline. I have security clearance.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of having your head blown off?”

  Erin looked at Clint, then at Sherry. “Somebody’s got to do the tough stuff. I’m not married, I don’t have a family, and everybody else does. I’m the most likely choice.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “Not really. I feel like I’m helping the good guys.”

  Sherry couldn’t help softening the look on her face. She looked over at Clint. He was, indeed, one of the
good guys, despite what she had allowed herself to believe.

  Sam came back in and ushered them all off. Tucked away in armored cars again, they headed to the new hiding place.

  When they reached it, Sherry vaguely noticed that it was on Lake Bisteneau, about an hour’s drive from where Clint would be taken to court. She was only dimly aware of the subtle wealth sanded into the grain of the luxurious weekend home on the water. It probably belonged to a friend in a high place. But the new location did nothing to soothe the look of despair in Clint’s shadowy eyes, and she intended to set things straight before he even got into the house.

  The door slammed behind him when they were all out of the car. Ignoring Sherry, Clint went to the trunk to get his suitcase and started toward the house.

  “Clint,” she said, catching up to him. “Clint, we have to talk. What happened back there was not my fault. You know it wasn’t.”

  His throat convulsed as he reached the front door, and he opened it and stepped inside. Sherry was getting angry.

  “Clint, stop and look at me. We have to talk.”

  “Not now, Sherry.”

  Setting his mouth in a tighter, grimmer line, he started up the stairs. He was going to blame her, she realized with alarm and the initial sting of fury. “Clint, I didn’t do anything wrong. Don’t you dare shut me out!”

  Clint flung his suitcase to the top floor, its loud crash resounding throughout the house as he swung around to face her. Color climbed his neck and seeped under the stubble darkening his jaw, and a cord in his neck swelled. He held the banister and leaned toward her. “You think I like playing these games with you, Sherry? You think I like wondering what mood you’re going to be in from one minute to the next? Whether you’re going to love me or detest me? Whether you’re going to support me and stand behind me or fall into some jerk’s arms?”

  “That’s not fair!”

  “Fair?” A dry, chilling laugh tumbled out of Clint’s throat, his mirthless eyes slashing her heart. And then he turned and started back up the stairs, and retrieved the suitcase that had opened with the impact of its fall. “You’re right. It’s not fair, Sherry,” he said over his shoulder before he disappeared into one of the bedrooms.

  Sherry dropped her face against the banister. She wasn’t strong enough for this. She was crumbling, and it was affecting him. But she didn’t know what to do about it.

  He came back to the head of the stairs a moment later, clad in a pair of red jogging shorts and a white tank top that revealed the straining definition in his arms and chest and the stiff set of his broad shoulders. His skin glowed with a bronze hue, but his face was pale, strained, distant. He didn’t even acknowledge that she still stood there as he started for the door.

  “Are you going to run?” she asked in a flat, metallic voice.

  “Obviously.”

  She swallowed and started up the stairs. “I’ll change and run with you.”

  Setting her mouth in a stiff line, she ran up the stairs and searched the five bedrooms for the one with his suitcase. When she found it, she riffled through it and pulled out a pair of his shorts. So they’re a little big, she thought, wriggling out of her jeans and slipping the shorts on. They were better than anything Madeline had brought for her.

  She glanced out the window and saw that Clint was already beating a trail around the large house, and that most of the cops that had come with them were pacing around the grounds checking its security.

  Madeline was coming up when she bolted down the stairs. She stopped and grabbed her friend’s arm. “Can I wear your tennis shoes?”

  “I’m wearing them,” Madeline said.

  Sherry rolled her eyes as if the observation was irrelevant. “Madeline, it’s important. I have to go run with Clint.”

  Brushing her fingers through her hair and sweeping it behind her ears, Madeline eyed Sherry’s feet. “Well, at least you’re wearing socks …”

  “Madeline, please!”

  “All right.” Expelling a long-suffering sigh, Madeline set down the duffel bags she had carried in and jerked off her shoes.

  “Thanks,” Sherry said, and slipped them on as fast as she could. Then she rushed out, and waited for Clint to come around before she joined him.

  She started to run beside him, though his pace was faster than she was used to. “Clint, think about it,” she said. “You know how upset I was today. You know the last thing I wanted was for Gary to touch me.”

  Clint didn’t answer, but he sped up, as if doing so would cause her to fall back. But summoning all the strength she had built up over her years of jogging, she managed to keep his pace, at least for a while.

  After several laps without slowing down, however, Sherry realized that Clint was running with fury, with rage, with the need to purge himself of his pain, and the intent to hurt himself worse than anyone else could. His arms and legs were red, as blood pumped furiously through his body.

  “Clint, slow down,” she panted. “Please. I can’t—”

  “Then stop, Sherry!” he said between breaths. “Nobody’s making you run with me.”

  “I’m not stopping until you talk to me!” she shouted. “I’ll pass out first.”

  He kept running and she followed, though every muscle in her body rejected another step.

  “Clint, I love you.” She wiped the perspiration out of her eyes and forced herself to keep up with him. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  He kept pounding the packed dirt, remaining a wall of numbness that she feared she could not penetrate.

  Tears escaped her eyes and mingled with the perspiration. “Clint, please. I can’t do this much longer.”

  “You can stop anytime you want to,” Clint rasped.

  She stumbled, and he slowed a degree and looked over his shoulder. The simple gesture gave her hope and enough strength to catch up to him again.

  “Not on your life,” she said furiously. “I’m going to keep this up as long as you do, Clint. I’m going to collapse with you!”

  “Leave me alone, Sherry!” He bolted ahead of her, picking up speed again, and she saw blood on the heel of his shoe, but still he ran. She followed as fast as she could for several laps, but finally he stumbled and lost his momentum. Seizing the opportunity, she lunged forward. He tried to pick up his speed, breathing furiously, but she reached out and grabbed the back of his T-shirt.

  “Stop, Clint,” she cried. “Please …”

  He tried to shake free, but she caught his arm. The force made him trip again, slowing him enough for her to throw her arms around his waist. And then, with all the strength she possessed, she flung herself to the ground, pulling him with her.

  He caught her before they hit the dirt, then let her go and rolled away from her to his back. His breath came in gasps, and his arms hung idly at his sides. She sat up and looked down at him, tears in her eyes.

  “I love you,” she grated through her teeth. “I love you no matter what you do to me or yourself. And you can’t run from that.”

  His shoulders quaked, and he sat up and buried his face in her neck and held her, coughing as his lungs screamed for oxygen. The pink of his skin drained to a pallid gray, suddenly matching hers, and she wanted to sit there and comfort him until their breathing settled. But he pulled up and coaxed her to her feet. “Get up, baby,” he told her. “Come on, get up. We have to walk.”

  Wiping at the perspiration on his face with the back of his hand, he draped his other arm across her shoulder and pulled her beside him. They walked at a brisk pace for a lap, then two more, slowing until their pulses were normal. And when their breath settled and their hearts were no longer threatening to resign, he pulled her against him and again dropped his face into her shoulder. “I can’t do it without you,” he admitted in a forlorn whisper. “Not any of this.”

  “You won’t have to,” she returned, in spite of what it would mean. “Not any of it.”

  Then he pulled her into the house, into one of the back rooms. She sat him
on the chair, and carefully worked his jogging shoe off of the injured foot, then the other. One tear dropped onto the bloody spot as she looked at it, but Clint cupped her chin and brought her face to his. His kiss was gentle, grateful, tender. “The foot will heal,” he whispered. “The heart needs a little more care.”

  And Sherry knew that she had no choice but to mend the heart that needed her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Pretty night,” Madeline said as she came upon Sam. He was sitting on a chair on the porch, guarding the front door.

  “Pretty lady,” Sam returned, smiling. “But I thought you were avoiding me for dear life after what you saw this morning.”

  “You were the one who didn’t come to dinner,” she pointed out softly.

  He smiled. “You call slapping a piece of bologna between two slices of bread dinner?”

  Madeline shrugged. “We’ve all got to eat.”

  “Yeah, well. Guess I wasn’t hungry.”

  Madeline sat down on the bench next to him and braced her elbows on her knees. Cupping her chin in her hand, she looked out over the dark water rippling in the breeze. Tree frogs exchanged mating calls in the distance, accompanied by chirping crickets and an occasional splash of an acrobatic fish. Overhead, the stars shone clearly, and the air was cool, lacking the usual southern spring humidity. The atmosphere gave one the deceptive feeling of permanency, and though she knew it was deceptive, Madeline clung to it. Fear was something that erected barriers, and she had no time for those.

  “What I saw this morning shook me,” she admitted finally. “It made it all real. It made your job real, and that gun you wear, and that enemy I’d been hearing about but hadn’t really cared much about.”

  Sam tipped back his chair, leaned his head back against the wall, and looked at her, the humor in his eyes gone. “You saw me shoot a man. I didn’t want you to see that.”

  Madeline swallowed, but kept her eyes locked with his. “I really didn’t think you were capable of such a thing,” she said. But in her eyes there was no accusation. Just a deep, gnawing need to understand.