“You know what I think about the most?” Maggie asked abruptly. She looked at them, her sapphire eyes calm, her face tranquil. “I think about that first summer we met. Do you remember that?”
C.J. and Brandon nodded. Maggie smiled.
“I remember C.J. telling Brandon to go to hell. I remember how shocked you looked, Brandon, and how quickly you covered it up.” She grinned. “I have lots and lots of memories of C.J. washing his mouth out with soap. You got that down to a science.”
“It’s all a matter of technique,” C.J. said blithely.
“I remember the first time you cried, C.J., and I cried, too. We cried silently and I thought—that’s what Max taught us. To cry quietly, so we wouldn’t disturb him, so we wouldn’t need anything from him.” She turned to Brandon and her gaze was somber. “I don’t remember you ever crying, Brandon. It’s taken me years to realize what an injustice we did to you. We let you play the strong one without ever questioning it, without ever realizing it. Without ever giving you a chance to grieve, as well.”
“That’s okay,” Brandon said stiffly, feeling suddenly awkward with C.J. and Maggie staring at him. He looked at the tombstone. He shrugged. “I . . . I was the oldest. I was supposed to be strong.”
“Because if you’d been a better child, Max wouldn’t have left or hurt us,” Maggie filled in softly.
He nodded. Her lips curved sadly.
“Oh, Brandon,” she said, “that’s exactly how I felt.”
“Me, too,” C.J. said quietly. “Me, too.”
Brandon’s throat closed up. He nodded. The tombstone was beginning to blur in front of his eyes.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said abruptly, and as he said the words, they brought him strength. “I remember the first summer, too, Maggie. I remember the three of us, you so sad, C.J. so angry, and me as frozen as a Popsicle. But look at us now. You have Cain, Maggie. A beautiful house, a gorgeous daughter and a second child on the way. You are a great mother and a happy wife. And you, C.J. If you and Tamara exchange any more of those looks across the room, the bloody carpet will catch on fire. I can already picture you and Tamara dragging two point two tots to the racetracks.
“And then there is me,” Brandon said. “I met Julia, who brought me so much. And now I have Victoria. I’m twice blessed. I’m . . . happy.”
Maggie smiled, and it spread across her face. “Then we did it. We grew up perfectly.”
“In spite of Max or because of Max?” C.J. asked.
“Both,” Brandon said at last. “That’s the only answer.”
“Both,” Maggie agreed.
* * *
Brandon drove to the Shilo Inn alone. He stopped along the way, picked a ridiculously huge bouquet of wildflowers and continued.
He found Victoria in their room, just hanging up from talking to Randy. He stood for a moment, looking at her, and thought of how lucky he was.
She sat on the edge of the bed with a smile. Her face had darkened from a summer outdoors. Her eyes were a clear, tranquil blue-gray. She never wore makeup, her hands were a mess of broken fingernails and yellow calluses, and she was still the most beautiful woman Brandon knew.
His heart swelled in his chest.
Belatedly, he thrust out the flowers, a tangled bouquet of honeysuckle, poppies and wild roses. “For you. Picked them myself.”
“Oh, my.” Victoria inhaled deeply, then coughed violently. “Ah, yes, that Tillamook eau de toilette. Guess what? Randy showed Libby. We may have a buyer.”
“Victoria, that’s great.” He crossed to her and decided the occasion was worthy of a hug, then a kiss, then a deeper kiss. It was several moments before either of them drew back. He tucked her hair behind her ear, his arm still around her waist. “Randy must be thrilled.”
“Ready to take full credit, of course,” she assured him. “He deserves it, though. He worked hard.”
Randy had spent most of his summer training Libby with Victoria. When Brandon wasn’t fighting fires, he would spend his morning watching mother and son together and doing odd jobs around the ranch. Randy had inherited Victoria’s touch with horses. Someday, he would be a great trainer, too, if his major league baseball career didn’t get in the way.
“I’ve been thinking,” Brandon said quietly.
“Uh-oh.”
“Exactly. Fire season is over now. I’m too old to be a permanent employee. I need something to do.”
“I see.” Victoria’s voice was hesitant. By mutual agreement, they rarely spoke of life after September. Though there had been times lately when Brandon would catch Victoria staring at him with those questions in her eyes. And sometimes, right after they made love, she would drift into a silence he couldn’t penetrate, and he could feel her pain and love hovering beneath the surface.
“I’ve been thinking that an old geezer like me should settle down.”
“Really?”
“Yes. City life is no good, you know. And I don’t think I could do Everest again. I’m thinking I need a warm, cozy house. Maybe a ranch where I could work hard to earn my keep, dabble in investments on the side. Of course, I’m going to need a woman to keep me in line—we both know I’m incorrigible on my own.”
“Absolutely.”
“And I’ve been wanting to work on my pitching. My math skills, as well. It’s very easy to get rusty, and there’s nothing so tragic as forgetting how to multiply mixed numerals.”
“It would be a shame.”
“So I was thinking. Where could I find a nice ranch in need of some assistance, a beautiful woman willing to keep me straight and a sports-happy eight-year-old with an incredible pitching arm?”
“I have an idea,” Victoria said.
“Really? How perfect!”
Her fingers were sliding up his shirt. “For the right price, I might even tell you.” She found the top button and slid it open.
“Yes, well, I understand that. Someone told me once that ranch owners and single mothers can’t be bought with any old trinket, either, so I’ve given this some thought.”
Suddenly, he was down on one knee. Victoria gasped, grew flustered, then went soft all over. He thought he would be nervous, but he discovered he’d never felt steadier as he looked into her blue-gray eyes.
He took her hand. He withdrew the ring box he’d been carrying for two weeks. He opened it to show the finest opal he could buy. It was brilliant with red and green fire, sparkling and hissing with a life of its own. It reminded him of Victoria and suited her better than any diamond would’ve done.
“Victoria,” he asked somberly, “will you take on an unemployed federal employee, fire-scarred and rough around the edges? Will you love me forever and share your home and son with me? Will you make me breakfast again wearing only your apron?”
“Okay.”
He slipped the ring onto her finger. He folded his hand over hers. “And I will love you forever, Victoria. I will give you all of me, my heart, my soul, my hopes and my despair. I will share myself one hundred percent, giving you my time and attention, and if I ever shut you out, I hope you kick my butt to here and back so I will know to do better. I love you, Victoria, and I want to make you happy.
“I want to be the kind of husband and father who stays forever.”
“Okay,” she said again, and she was crying.
He rose and pulled her into his arms. And it was right and it was sweet and the fierceness that gripped his chest made him strong. He saw Julia and he saw Max. He saw his bitter mother who’d never learned how to move on. And he knew he’d learned enough. He’d become the man he wanted to be.
“You make me whole,” he whispered to Victoria. “You make me whole.”
22269
#1 New York Times bestselling author
Lisa Gardner
is back with another thriller.
> Read on for a preview of
FEAR NOTHING
Available in hardcover from Dutton in January 2014
everywhere books and e-books are sold.
Rock-a-bye, baby, on the treetop. . . .
The body was gone, but not the smell. As Boston homicide detective D. D. Warren knew from experience, this kind of scene could hold the stench of blood for weeks, even months to come. The crime scene techs had removed the mattress, but still, blood had a life of its own. Seeping into dry wall. Slipping behind wooden trim. Pooling between floorboards. Twenty-eight-year-old Tara Blythe used to have approximately 4.7 liters of blood pumping through her veins. Now most of it stained this grim gray space.
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. . . .
The call had come in shortly after nine a.m. Good friend Midge Roberts had grown concerned when Tara hadn’t answered the knocks on her front door or the texts to her cell phone. Tara was the responsible kind. Didn’t oversleep, didn’t run off with a cute bartender, didn’t come down with the flu without providing a heads-up to her best bud, who picked her up promptly at seven thirty each weekday morning for their joint commute to a local accounting firm.
Midge had contacted a few more friends. All agreed no one had heard from Tara since dinner the night before. Midge gave in to instinct and summoned the landlord, who finally agreed to open the door.
Then vomited all over the upstairs hall upon making the find.
Midge hadn’t come up the stairs. Midge had stood in the foyer of the narrow duplex, and, as she’d reported to D.D.’s squadmate Phil, she’d known. Just known. Probably, even from that distance, she’d caught the first unmistakable whiff of drying blood
Rock-a-bye, baby . . .
Upon arrival, the scene had immediately struck D.D. with its marked contrasts. The young female victim, sprawled spread-eagle on her own bed, staring up at the ceiling with sightless blue eyes. Pretty features appearing nearly peaceful as her shoulder-length brown hair pooled softly upon a stark white pillow.
Except then, from the neck down . . .
Skin peeled off in thin, curling ribbons. D.D. had heard of such things. At eleven this morning, she had gotten to see them firsthand. A young woman flayed in her own bed. With a bottle of champagne on her nightstand and a single red rose placed across her bloody abdomen.
Next to the bottle of champagne, Phil had discovered a pair of handcuffs. The kind purchased in high-end sex shops and fur-lined for comfort. Taking in the cuffs, the sparkling wine, the red rose . . .
Lovers’ tryst gone awry, Phil had theorized. Or, given the level of violence, a jilted boyfriend’s final act of vengeance. Tara had broken up with some sorry sucker, and last night, sorry sucker had returned to prove once and for all who was in charge.
But D.D. wasn’t on board. Yes, there were handcuffs, but not on the victim’s wrists. Yes, there was uncorked champagne, but none poured into waiting flutes for drinking. Finally, sure, there was the rose, but not in a florist’s wrap for gifting.
The scene felt too . . . deliberate to her. Not a crime of passion or a falling-out between consenting adults. But a carefully staged production that involved months, years, perhaps even a lifetime of careful planning and consideration.
In D.D.’s opinion, they weren’t just looking at a crime scene. They were looking at a killer’s deepest, darkest fantasy.
And while this might be the first scene they were investigating, a homicide this heavily ritualized was probably not the last.
When the wind blows . . .
D.D.’s squad, the crime scene techs, the ME’s office, not to mention a plethora of other investigators had spent six hours working the space. They’d documented, dusted, diagrammed, and discussed until the sun had set, the dinner commute was on, and tempers were flaring. As lead detective, D.D. had finally sent everyone home with orders to refresh, then regroup. Tomorrow was another day, when they could search federal databases for other murders matching this description, while building the profiles of their victim and killer. Plenty to do, many angles to investigate. Now get some rest.
Everyone had listened. Except, of course, D.D.
It was nearly ten o’clock now. She should be returning home. Kissing her husband hello. Checking in on her three-year-old son, already tucked into bed at this late hour. Working on her own good night’s sleep, versus hanging out at a darkened crime scene with her toddler’s current favorite nursery rhyme running through her head.
But she couldn’t do it. Some instinct—insight?—had driven her back to this too quiet duplex. For most of the day, she and her fellow detectives had stood here and debated what they saw. Now she stood with the lights out, in the middle of a blood-scented room, and waited for what she could feel.
Rock-a-bye, baby . . .
Tara Blythe had already been dead before the killer had made his first cut. That much they could tell from the lack of anguish stamped onto her pale face. The victim had died relatively easily. Then, most likely as her heart emitted a final few pumps, the killer had delivered his first downward slash across her right flank.
Meaning the murder hadn’t been about the victim’s pain, but about . . .
Presentation? Staging? The ritual itself? A killer with a compulsion to skin. Maybe as a kid, he’d started with small animals or family pets. Then, when the fantasy had refused to abate . . .
The ME would check for hesitation marks, if determining jagged edges was even possible given the mounds of thin, curling skin, as well as test for evidence of sexual assault.
But once again, D.D. suffered a nagging sense of discomfort. Those elements were the things a criminal investigator could see. And deep inside, D.D. already suspected that was the wrong track. Indulging, in fact, in exactly what the killer wanted them to focus on.
Why stage things just so, if not to manipulate your audience into seeing exactly what you wanted them to see?
Then it came to her. The thought she’d had in the back of her head. The first and foremost question worth pursuing and the reason she now stood in the dark, her vision deliberately obscured: Why set a scene?
A sound. In the distance. The duplex’s front door, easing carefully open? A creak of the stair riser as a heavy foot found the first step? The groan of a floorboard just down the hall?
A sound. Once distant now closer, and that quickly, Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren realized something she should’ve figured out fifteen minutes ago. Jack’s favorite lullaby, the children’s song she’d been humming under her breath . . . That tune wasn’t coming from solely inside her head.
Someone else was singing it too. Softly. Outside the bedroom. From elsewhere in the dead woman’s apartment.
Rock-a-bye, baby, on the treetop. . . .
D.D.’s hand shot to her sidearm, unsnapping the shoulder holster, drawing her SIG Sauer. She whirled, dropping into a crouch as her gaze scanned the corners for signs of an intruder. No shifts in the blackness, no shadows settling into the shape of a human form.
But then she heard it. A creaking floorboard elsewhere in the apartment.
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. . . .
Quickly, she crept from the bedroom into the darkened hall, leading with her weapon. The narrow corridor didn’t offer any overhead lights. Just more shadows caused by the glow of neighbors’ apartments casting through the duplex’s uncovered windows. A wash of lighter and darker shades of gray dancing across the hardwood floor.
But she knew this house, D.D. reminded herself. She’d already trod this hall, judiciously avoiding the pools of vomit, while noticing every pertinent detail.
She reached the top of the stairs, still looking side to side, then peering down, into the inky pool that marked the landing below. The humming had disappeared. Worse than the singing was the total silence.
Then, from out of the darkness, low and l
ilting: “Rock-a-bye, baby, on the treetop. . . .”
D.D. halted. Her gaze ping-ponged reflexively, trying to determine the location of the intruder as the singing continued, slow and mocking: “When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. . . .”
She got it then. Felt her own blood turn to ice as the full implication sank in. Why do you stage a scene? Because you’re looking for an audience. Or maybe one audience member in particular. Say a hardworking detective stupid enough to be found after dark at a crime scene all alone.
She reached belatedly for her cell.
Just as a fresh noise registered directly behind her.
She spun. Eyes widening.
As a figure darted out of the shadows, heading straight for her.
“When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall. . . .”
Instinctively, D.D. stepped back. Except she’d forgotten about the top of the staircase. Her left foot, searching for traction, found only open space.
No! Her phone clattering down. Her SIG Sauer coming up. Trying belatedly to lean forward, regain her balance.
Then . . . the shadow reaching out. Herself falling back.
Down, down, down.
At the last second, D.D. squeezed the trigger. An instinctive act of self-preservation. Boom, boom, boom. Though she knew it was too little, too late
Her head connected with the hardwood landing. A crack. A shooting pain. The final verse, whispering through the dark:
“And down will come baby, cradle and all. . . .”
Read on for a preview of
#1 New York Times bestseller
Lisa Gardner
writing as
Alicia Scott
in her novel
MAGGIE’S MAN
Available everywhere books
and e-books are sold.
“Don’t move.”
Maggie Ferringer looked up blankly from her seat on the wooden bench outside the second-floor courtroom. Eight fifty a.m. and she hadn’t had coffee yet. She was tired, disgruntled at being called for jury duty and still preoccupied with how she was going to rearrange all her appointments for the next five days. Plus, one of her cats was sick. She was thinking she’d better take him to the vet.