New tears sprang into Madeline’s eyes to replace those she had wiped away, but she blinked them back. “Don’t envy me, Sherry. It’s a defense mechanism. And it’s slipping. Because I’m very worried right now.” Her voice cracked with the admission.
Sherry gazed solemnly at her for a moment. “Are you in love with him?”
Madeline swallowed. “All I know is that when I’m with him, I’m shriveling up inside. His eyes make me warm. And when he kisses me …”
“He kisses you?” Somehow, Sherry’s image of Sam didn’t fit that role.
Madeline gave a soft smile. “When he kisses me, I burst all over. And now that he’s gone, I ache.”
Sherry didn’t know what to say, for Madeline had never been quite that serious. “How long have you known the guy, anyway? Three days?” Sherry asked.
Madeline shrugged. “It could have been three years.”
“Maybe it’ll be three more decades,” Sherry ventured.
“Or three more minutes,” Madeline whispered.
Sherry’s face contorted, and she covered her mouth to hold back the onslaught of despair. “Don’t, Madeline. I need you to tell me that we’ll be all right. That things will be great. I need you to get my mind off of it. You’re so good at that.”
“I need the same things.” The words were spoken on a gasp of restraint, but big tears spilled over her lashes and rolled down her cheeks.
Sherry stood up and set her arm around her friend’s shoulder. It was time to return the favor Madeline had granted her for the past eight months. It was time to swallow back her own self-pity, to move past it, and to help her friend through this horror. “Could I interest you in some bologna?” she asked.
Madeline smiled through her tears. “I’m not hungry.” She wiped her eyes and pushed her hair back behind her ears.
“They’ll be all right,” Sherry said, and she tried to believe it. “They’re strong, and Sam is the best bodyguard Clint could hope for.”
“But bodyguards have been known to stop bullets for the body they’re guarding,” Madeline said. “And Sam feels a big responsibility to Clint.”
“They aren’t the only two out there,” Sherry went on. “They may be as close as you can come to being heroes, but they aren’t stupid.”
“No, they aren’t stupid,” Madeline agreed. She looked at the ceiling, as if tipping her head back could waylay the tears. “I should have brought my camera. I should have gotten a picture of him. I should have taped one of those ridiculous songs he kept singing. I should have …”
Sherry pulled her against her shoulder and hushed her like a mother hushing a child. It had to be purged, this misery. This was Madeline’s purging time. She only hoped she could hold herself together long enough to see her dearest friend through this.
Chapter Twenty
Wes sat in front of the television set in his living room, his eyes transfixed on the news as it unfolded regarding the Givanti trial. Laney stood behind him, rubbing his shoulders. “Honey, don’t you need to get to work?”
“No,” he said. “I have to see what he’s up to.”
“He? He who?”
“Eric Grayson,” he said coldly.
“Your father.”
He took in a huge sigh. “He’s not my father. He’s just some man whose genes I happen to have.” He got up and paced in front of the television. “They’re bringing the mystery witness today. Clint will be a sitting duck as he goes into that courtroom, and I’ll bet you anything that Sherry will be right there with him.”
“There’ll be protection for them,” Laney said. “Wes, you have to trust your father’s office to provide what they need.”
“Forget it. Why should he care if my sister’s life is in danger? It’s not like he has any emotional attachment to her. Easy come, easy go.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Wes. Why don’t you call and talk to him, just to give you peace of mind? Find out what he intends to do to protect Sherry? Maybe he’d listen to suggestions.”
“I don’t want to talk to him.”
“Maybe for Sherry’s sake, you should anyway. Maybe it’s time to swallow all that pride.”
“This isn’t about pride, Laney,” he said, defeated. “It’s about history … experience. He doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to taking care of his own.”
“Then go over there … be in court … make sure that he knows you’re watching. Maybe there’s something you can do.”
Wes stared at her for a moment, turning the idea over in his mind. “You know, I think I will.”
He grabbed his keys, and started toward the front door.
“Wes?”
He turned back. “Yeah?”
“I love you. And I’ll be praying.”
He wilted and came back to her, pulling her into a tight hug. “Thanks. That’s what I should have been doing, but I’ve been in knots over this, worried sick, and I’ve just … I’ve forgotten to pray about it.”
“Well, I haven’t.” She kissed his lips, then wiped the lipstick from them. “Be careful, Wes.”
Wes felt that he walked a little taller as he headed out to his truck.
Chapter Twenty-One
The sound of Sam’s lamentably off-key singing tempered the low roar of the ambulance’s engine, his slow voice coming across like a dirge rather than a pick-me-up as Clint was used to. He sat with his legs crossed on the stretcher, his head swaying slowly against the wall.
“How much farther?” Clint cut in uneasily. The technician’s seat felt like a vibrating slab of concrete, and his heart raced in anticipation of something he couldn’t even name.
The driver, adorned in a bulletproof vest with the navy blue hooded jacket over it, glanced back over his shoulder. “About thirty more minutes. So far, so good.”
So far, so good. Why did that sound like a countdown to doom? Clint wondered. And why the feeling eating at his gut that something terrible was going to happen—not to him, but to Sherry?
“How well do you know those three cops we left back there?” he asked Sam.
Sam stopped humming. “Enough to know I can trust them. You don’t have to worry.”
Another moment of silence followed, this time without Sam’s singing. Clint watched him glance out the window, his eyes distant and full of thought. “She was really worried, you know,” he said finally. “She pretended not to be, but she was.”
“Sherry?”
“No, Madeline. It’s been a long time since anyone worried about me.”
A soft smile tugged at Clint’s lips. “Becoming attached to her, are you?”
Instead of the usual quip, a pale shadow intruded on Sam’s eyes, and he shrugged. “As much as a man like me can become attached.”
His grin faded, and his gaze gravitated back toward the window. “I’ve gotten attached before. It nearly destroyed two pretty decent people.”
“What? Your marriage?”
Sam swallowed and slid his hood off of his head. “Yeah. I watched her turn from a levelheaded, independent, cool woman into a basket case whenever I walked out the door. She was sure that one day I wouldn’t come back.” He sighed and shifted on the stretcher. “We both got bitter. I felt smothered and guilty, and she got angrier and angrier. The best thing we ever did for each other was call it quits.”
Clint watched Sam gaze out the window, watching the trees whirring by.
“Madeline seems different, though.” Sam’s observation was set on the edge of hope, but couched in caution.
“Sherry says she’s had a tough life. Both parents died when she was pretty young. She takes things in stride, and doesn’t dwell on things that would break most people.”
“And she’s beautiful,” Sam tacked on. He reached to the oxygen cylinder and tapped it thoughtfully. “That silky, curly hair, and those eyes …”
Clint couldn’t suppress his laughter. “Man, you’ve got it bad.”
Sam cocked a half-grin and leveled a look on hi
s friend that held no denial. “Seen any of her cartoons?”
“Yeah. She’s pretty good. She’s one of Justin Pierce’s top animators.” He thought about Madeline, and how they had behaved toward each other, as if they each disapproved of the other’s way of caring for the common person they loved. Clint’s eyes grew serious. “I get aggravated with her, but she’s been good for Sherry. Helped her through a bad time. Sherry has a short fuse, and she explodes emotionally just as quickly as she pulls in the reins. She can’t stand to sit still and let things go by without her. That’s why it was so hard on her when I left and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. Madeline’s get-on-with-life attitude was helpful to her.”
“What do you think?” Sam’s smile left his eyes, and a shadow of doubt crept into them. “You think a woman like Madeline could be attracted to a deviate like me?”
Clint grinned. “What do you think? Has she run kicking and screaming away from you?”
Sam laughed. “Not since that first day.” His laughter died in a sighing expiration, and he looked down at his callused hands. “Matter of fact, she’s gotten pretty close to me a time or two. Pretty darn close. I don’t know, maybe there is hope.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised, buddy,” Clint assured his friend. “There’s always hope.”
Hope became the thin thread that pulled Madeline from the quicksand of her depression almost as quickly as she had plunged into it. After washing her face and brushing her hair, she came into the kitchen and informed Sherry that it was time for them to look at the positive side.
“Is there one?”
“Of course.” Madeline took a deep breath and began the recitation as if she’d rehearsed it. “The chances of anyone getting through that security barricade to either Clint or Sam are pretty slim. And I trust your dad. He’ll make sure that nothing happens to them on the way out, either.”
“Give it up, Madeline,” Sherry moaned. “I’m furious at my father, and I’m not interested in hearing how good and kind and conscientious he is. He had no right to do what he’s done.”
Madeline sighed and sat on the table. “All right. We won’t talk about it then. Let’s just go watch television.”
“Television? There’s nothing on television in the middle of the day.”
Madeline cast her a disbelieving look. “Surely you can’t be serious. I realize that you spend most of your waking moments working for your brother, but you can’t have completely missed the soaps in all these years.”
“I hate to break this to you, but …”
“Then don’t. Some of the greatest stories ever woven are on the soaps. On this one I watch, there’s a girl who’s a KGB agent, but she has amnesia and thinks she’s a hairdresser. Only Russia has a little disk in her tooth, and they record everything she says or does with her CIA husband. Where do you think I get my cartoon gags? Come on, it’s great. I’ll narrate for you. It’ll get your mind off your problems. No one can have problems worse than those people.” Madeline hopped off of the table, starting toward the living room.
Resigned to letting Madeline’s methods of diverting her fears and anxiety help her, Sherry followed her friend out of the kitchen.
Minutes later, Eric Grayson paced in his own kitchen in Shreveport, his hand trembling as he held the telephone. “I don’t care what she said!” he shouted to one of the police officers guarding Sherry. “Get my daughter on the telephone immediately or I’ll have your badge!”
“I’m sorry, sir. She refuses to talk to you. I tried to—”
“Don’t give me tried! Tell her I order her to get on this phone!”
The young officer muffled the phone with his hand while he relayed the message. Grayson dumped his uneaten breakfast into the garbage disposal and searched the cabinet for an antacid to stop the burning in his stomach. If he could just hear her voice, he could be ensured that she was completely safe. The timing was crucial here, and after a sleepless night going over every angle to assure Clint’s safety en route to court, it had finally occurred to him that it wasn’t Clint’s life that would be in jeopardy today. He was too well guarded, and Givanti’s cohorts wouldn’t risk the publicity of Clint’s death. But what if they managed to get Sherry? What if his daughter were used as the go-between to keep Clint from testifying honestly?
After a moment, the young officer cleared his throat. “Uh … sir. I gave her the order, and she said she didn’t care.”
“Didn’t care?” Grayson bellowed.
The phone was snatched from the officer’s hand, and Grayson heard his daughter say, “Give me that!”
Grayson’s blood pressure dropped a degree, along with his voice. “Sherry?”
“I have nothing to say to you, so you’re wasting your valuable time trying to call me.”
“I just wanted to see if you’re all right. I’ve been very worried about you.”
“It’s Clint you should be worried about,” she said. “He’s the one you’ve made into your pawn.” Her voice faltered. “Has he made it there yet?”
“Not yet,” her father said. “But I don’t expect them for twenty minutes or so.” He cleared his throat and looked down at the oak grain on his kitchen table. “It’s going to be all right, sweetheart, but I want you to be careful.”
“If anything happens to him, I’ll never forgive you.” She caught her breath on a sob. “I’ll probably never forgive you, anyway.”
Grayson slumped down in his chair and tried to picture the woman who had so easily forgiven him before. “When it’s over, I’ll come there and we’ll talk …”
“I have nothing to say to you,” she snapped. “You’ve used the man I love like a toy to satisfy your legal ego, and you’ve lied to me to do it. Go back to work, Dad. Go make Clint spill his guts. Then bask in the glory of the press and your awed followers. I won’t be there.”
The phone slammed in Grayson’s ear like a clap of thunder that reached straight through to his soul.
The telephone was cold beneath Sherry’s trembling hand, as cold as the betrayal she felt. Madeline’s soap opera wasn’t going to do the trick. She needed to think. She needed to be alone.
Pinching the bridge of her nose, she turned back to the officer who had answered the phone. “I want to go out to the pier and catch my breath.”
The young man still looked shaken by his run-in with the attorney, but he got his sunglasses. “I’ll come with you.”
She squelched the urge to scream about her need to be alone. The poor guy looked as if he’d had enough. “If you have to,” she said.
“You won’t even know I’m there,” he said. “Not unless you need me.”
Quickly, before Madeline could insist on joining her, too, she darted out the door and made her way to the pier. Treading out to the end of it, she sat down and crossed her feet. Hugging her knees to her chest, she looked out over the water. The sun hadn’t climbed very high in the sky, but already the air was sweltering. From somewhere upwind on the still lake, she heard children laughing and the sound of a ski boat farther down. She wondered what it would be like to have nothing to worry about again. Here, in this isolated section on the still water, she could almost pretend she was a lazy socialite out for a tan. So peaceful. So private. One would never know that the end of her world could be lurking just around the corner.
Would they contact her if Clint was hurt en route to court? Or would her father insist on “protecting” her again? A fresh surge of anger shot through her. What would she do if Clint didn’t come back to her?
What was she doing? She caught herself and shook her head, as if the violent movement would shake her back to her senses. How could she think about what she would do if he didn’t come back? She hadn’t given up already. Even when he had disappeared for eight months, she had never given up entirely.
She dropped her head onto her knees, and reached deeply inside herself for the strength to endure what she was facing. If only it would rain. Rain cleansed and soothed and purged. It
had always been a great source of comfort to her. She looked up into the sky and issued a silent prayer for strength. The prayer brought back a memory … a night months after her mother had died, when her father had shown up on her doorstep and announced that he wanted back into hers and Wes’s life. She had called Wes to come over, and there had been a terrible fight among them. Wes had wound up leaving.
But she had wanted a relationship with the man she’d so often wondered about, so she had invited her father to stay in her apartment until he could get a hotel room the next day. Far into the night, when she had believed him to be asleep, she had begun to grieve over her mother’s death and the life she’d been forced to lead when he’d abandoned them. Caught in a whirlwind of emotions, she had opened her window and sat on the windowsill. It had been raining, and she remembered the whip of lightning in the distance, the rumble of thunder, and the cold, cruel prickles of hard rain upon her skin as it slanted into the window. But she had not been afraid, and she had not closed the window. The storm had drowned out the pain and memories inside her apartment, and she had seen the lightning as flashes of future trying to break into her world and promise her something better. Maybe her father’s reappearance in her life was God’s provision for the loss of her mother.
She remembered how long she had sat there, how cold she had become, yet the thought of going back in and facing what was happening had been too overwhelming. Perhaps it was the cold that had awakened him, or the sound of thunder through the open window, but he had finally come into her room and asked her to close the window and get into something dry.
She had done as he’d asked, and told him good night. He had struggled to keep back his own tears, and had lectured to her about lightning and pneumonia and falling off the slippery window sill. Something about that paternal concern had touched her, bonded her to him. Then he’d told her how much he loved her, and that he’d spent most of his life as a shell of a man who hadn’t had the capacity to love. He’d changed, he said, and he knew it was hard to believe. But he needed for her to give him a chance, even if her brother would not. She had known that night that he really did love her.