Maggie''s Man: A Family Secrets

  Cain hefted the backpack over his shoulder and pulled the baseball cap low on his head. Without another word, he opened the door and gestured for her to lead.

  It was now eleven o’clock. Rain had started to fall. There was no moon; the night was black.

  She was scared.

  • • •

  The rain had picked up pace by the time they walked to the theater and reclaimed the truck. From a spring sprinkle, it turned into a thick torrent, solid sheets of water fired from the sky.

  They both scrambled into the truck quickly, their shirts already soaked. Cain turned on the heater, flipping on the truck lights and the windshield wipers. Even then, visibility was poor.

  Tough night for running, but it meant it was also a tough night for chasing.

  Cain stopped on the outskirts of town and filled the tank, then hit the road.

  The night was quiet, almost peaceful with the thunder of the rain, the steady rhythm of the windshield wipers, the thickness of the night. He’d expected something harsher. He’d open his door and encounter a posse. He’d make it to the highway and the entire state police force—led by burning-eyed Joel—would pounce.

  His hands gripped the wheel too tightly. He felt the tension, raw and painful in his gut. His shoulders were beginning to cramp and knot from the unrelenting strain.

  The world swirled around him, cops running, brothers chasing, bounty hunters . . . He stood in the eye of the storm, fighting for a way out. Justice for Kathy, justice for himself. And the great Cain, the brilliant computer programmer who’d once thought he held the world in his palm, didn’t know the answer this time. He didn’t know what to do, and he didn’t know what would happen when he finally caught up with Abraham.

  And he saw his brother, the last day of the sentencing hearing, sitting cool and composed at the front of the courtroom, not even blinking as they sentenced Cain to twenty years in prison, ineligible for parole for ten years.

  Cain had stood at the end, his arms and legs shackled, and he’d stared into his brother’s calm blue eyes. “Why?” Cain had whispered under his breath. “If you wanted revenge that badly, why not just kill me? Why her? Why her?”

  And Ham had replied in a deep rich baritone, “‘If anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over. Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him.’”

  That was it. Ham came, Ham plotted, and Ham won. Cain couldn’t even say he’d put up a decent fight. At least, not until now.

  He forced himself to take a deep breath and relax his death grip on the wheel.

  He was in eastern Oregon now and there was nothing, absolutely nothing out there. The road was straight and lined with night. No homes, no cars, no streetlights. By day this land was red dust, sagebrush, and barbed-wire fencing. By night, it was simply a dark womb, protective, embracing and safe.

  He relaxed by degrees. The rain banged on the roof, soothing and rhythmic. The inky-black well of night remained reassuringly unbroken. Dark and soft. Maggie curled up in a ball on the seat, clutching her locket, and seemed to fall immediately to sleep. He relaxed even more.

  He could do this. If he remained calm, remained logical, he could do this. He’d already covered two hundred miles. He’d been careful to pay for things only with cash in Bend, he’d monitored the phone call between himself and his father. All the police—or this C.J., or Brandon, or Joel and Ham—knew was that he’d last been seen heading southbound outside of Portland. Maggie had withdrawn money in Tualatin, as bank records would show. After that . . . nothing.

  Now, he was 250 miles from Boise, traveling through terrain where the sagebrush outnumbered the vehicles one hundred to one. He would need to stop one more time for gas, but they could be in Boise by morning.

  He would head north then, up to the mountains that had raised him, and travel to the crest where he could still hear the sweet, fading echo of his mother’s lilting voice singing, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound . . .”

  He pushed down on the accelerator and the truck picked up the pace. The night remained thick. The sound of the windshield wipers comforted him.

  • • •

  After another forty miles or so, Maggie finally roused herself. He glanced at her once, seeing her grimace as she stretched out her arms and rubbed her crooked neck. Her long red hair was tangled around her like a subdued mink and her features were flushed with sleep. Then she yawned, a cute little stretch that reminded him of a kitten.

  At last, she leaned back in the seat, no longer looking as timid or stiff. She appeared to be an amazingly resilient woman and sleep had restored her. He had to force his gaze back to the rainy road.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked at last. “We still have some pizza.”

  “I’m fine. Where are we?”

  “About fifteen miles from Riley.”

  “Oh.” Obviously, Riley didn’t ring any bells for her. It wouldn’t have rung any for him except that he’d just seen a green highway sign advertising its presence. “It’s still raining,” she observed after a few minutes of silence.

  “Yes.”

  “Awful night.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it hard to drive?”

  “Road’s too straight for the rain to make a difference.”

  “Oh.” She knotted her fingers on her lap, tapping her index finger against one knuckle.

  Silence resumed its reign and they stared out the windshield at the thundering night. She seemed lost in thought or maybe she was just half-asleep.

  “Cain,” she asked abruptly, “why didn’t you kill the prison guard?”

  He was so startled, he flinched. He stiffened his shoulders as quickly as he could, unconsciously clearing his face and erecting smooth, tough barriers all around himself. “Pardon?”

  “You’re the one who said there are economies of scale with crime. But even after escaping, you haven’t hurt anyone else.”

  “It’s only been fifteen hours.”

  “But you’ve had opportunity and motive,” she replied shrewdly. “I mean, you have this militia background—everyone says you’re dangerous. You grew up with a . . . different perspective on society and government and law enforcement. Yet when you escaped, you didn’t shoot the prison guard—you knocked him unconscious. I would think you would’ve bought more time by . . . killing . . . him, and I would think you of all people know that. But you didn’t do it. You didn’t shoot him.”

  Cain was quiet, his finger tapping the steering wheel, his mind racing ahead to try to divine the point she was heading toward. “Do you want to believe I won’t hurt anyone else?” he asked carefully. “Will that make you feel better, Maggie?”

  “I’m just thinking out loud,” she said and shrugged innocently. “I’m just thinking, here’s this man who’s supposed to be dangerous and I haven’t seen you hit so much as a wall. By your own admission you don’t drink. I’ve seen you angry, I’ve seen you desperate, but for crying out loud, you didn’t even swear. You’ve threatened me, but you’ve never actually hit me. You’ve never thrown things—you’ve never had a rage-filled tantrum. For a man who allegedly committed a crime of passion, I have yet to see you so enraged that you couldn’t control your own impulses. In fact, you appear to be an amazingly restrained and cerebral person.”

  “Maybe I’ve just matured over the past six years.”

  She looked at him quite seriously. “I don’t think so. You know, Cain, you’ve never said you killed her. You said you allegedly killed her.”

  He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure he could. And suddenly, he didn’t know anymore what he wanted.

  “Tell me,” she whispered softly. “Did you kill your girlfriend? Did you kill Katherine Epstein?”

  He found he couldn’t breathe. He found that the words wanted to escape from his throat without his permission, and he’d said them so many times before and it had never mattered. He realized abruptly that he just couldn’t take it. He couldn’t claim inno
cence and then survive the look of open doubt that would wash over her clear, expressive face.

  He’d stood alone so long now. He wanted to just remain there, an island who could never be touched by another betrayal. He didn’t need as other people needed, he reminded himself. He’d grown up alone, moved to the city alone, survived six years of solitary. Maybe he had become an island. He was simply untouchable.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he murmured to his inquisitive companion. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Maggie frowned, looking ready to contradict him, but suddenly headlights appeared up ahead. She perked up instantly, leaning forward. He glanced at the speedometer and forced himself to maintain a steady pace. The headlights before them appeared stationary in the rainy night, and the only car he could picture watching the road on a night like this was a police car.

  Maggie leaned forward even more, her gaze peeled.

  But it wasn’t a police car. It appeared to be a hatchback of some kind, tilted off the road, its tires deep in the red mud. As they drove by, a young couple appeared, their hair plastered against their rain-soaked faces, their arms waving frantically for help.

  Cain winced instantly. It was already too late. Maggie’s gaze was on his face.

  “There’s no one else around,” she said for her opening statement.

  “Exactly. Including us.”

  “It’s cold out. They’re soaked to the skin. They could catch pneumonia and die.”

  “Only in a Brontë novel.”

  “Cain.” She touched his arm and they both flinched. For a moment, his eyes abandoned the road and stared at her simple white fingers resting on his arm. She had short, sensibly cut nails. She had a small, sensible hand.

  The truck tugged to the right. He yanked the wheel in the other direction and almost overcompensated them right into a ditch. Her fingers dug into his arm, and he straightened the truck quickly.

  “Please,” she whispered.

  “I’m an escaped murderer,” he said, but for some reason it sounded as if he were pleading with her.

  “All right,” she said earnestly, her shoulders assuming that determined look he knew too well. “I’ll make a deal with you.”

  “You’re a hostage. What kind of deal can you make?”

  “I’ll cooperate.”

  “Cooperate? Maggie, I have a gun. Of course, you’ll cooperate.”

  “But it’s only under duress, don’t you see? You have to handcuff me to yourself, or to the bed. You have to plan when you sleep. You have to do all the driving and worry about my every move. You’re the one who said you needed to be well rested to successfully pull this off. How are you ever going to be well rested if you’re constantly having to worry about me?”

  He blinked in the darkness. Her argument was amazingly lucid, which frankly scared him.

  “So,” she continued, sounding not at all cowed but actually quite brisk, “if you go back and just check on them, I’ll cooperate. You might not even have to get out of the truck. Just pull up, you know. I’ll roll down the window and ask them what they need, make sure it’s no medical emergency or crisis, and the whole thing will be done in just five minutes. They’ll be helped, and you’ll have my unlimited cooperation for twenty-four hours. I could even do some of the driving and you could get more sleep. You must be very tired.”

  His eyes narrowed. He turned this scenario over in his head several times even as his foot was somehow slipping off the gas pedal of its own volition. “I let you drive and you can drive us straight to the authorities,” he pointed out quietly.

  She actually appeared indignant. “I beg your pardon! I’m a woman of my word!”

  Well, he’d been put in his place, he thought dryly. “But you’d be helping a murderer,” he persisted nevertheless. “Surely even a ‘woman of her word’ doesn’t lose sleep over turning in a murderer.”

  Her fingers curled around his forearm again. He found himself staring at her once more and her strong, pale face was sober. “Listen to me. You’ve already said it yourself. You’re going to get to Idaho one way or another. There doesn’t seem to be much I can do about that. I wish I was like Brandon or C.J.,” she said abruptly, and for a minute, her tone was wistful. “But I’m not. I never will be. I’m just me, and I’m telling you if you will stop and give five minutes to help those two poor abandoned people, I’ll cooperate. Cain, it’s such an awful night and they’re all alone in the middle of nowhere. We can’t just leave them like that.”

  “Maggie,” he said quietly, “when you buy six-packs, you take off those plastic rings, don’t you? You take off the rings and cut them with scissors so the dolphins won’t get them stuck around their snouts and slowly starve to death.”

  “Of course! And everyone else should as well!”

  “And those commercials to support a child overseas, paying for their food and shots and ABCs—you adopted one of those children, didn’t you?”

  “Well, two.”

  “And when you pass homeless people you buy them meals?”

  “Everyone has hard luck sometimes.”

  “Of course.” He knew he shouldn’t do this. He knew turning around was the height of stupidity and he was not a man who could afford to be stupid. But she sat so regally at the edge of the bench seat, looking earnest and sincere and so well intentioned, he couldn’t find the word no. Was it that she reminded him of his mother, and the natural grace and beauty she’d had? Or was it that she reminded him how it felt to be a man and not prisoner number 542769?

  “You’ve given me your word,” he reminded her quietly.

  She nodded just as soberly. “My word.”

  “All right, Maggie. I accept your proposition.”

  He slowed the truck down and turned.

  The couple appeared again as they drove up, looking soaked to the bone and unbearably happy that help had finally arrived. Cain pulled the truck alongside after instructing Maggie to lock her door. He was very conscious of the gun tucked against his skin as Maggie unrolled her window.

  “What’s wrong?” she shouted above the rain.

  “Car’s stuck,” the young man shouted back. He didn’t look a day over eighteen and the freckles stood out prominently on his cheeks. Maggie looked instantly at Cain.

  “All right, all right,” he surrendered, not even needing her to ask. “We’ve taken it this far.”

  He pulled the truck up ahead of the car, leaving it parked on the road since the sides did look thick and muddy. “Stay here,” he said. “This should only take a minute.”

  “I can help, too,” she replied and jumped out into the rain-soaked night as he was opening his mouth to protest. Cooperation? This was cooperation?

  He shook his head and advanced, the rain slaking across his face and instantly molding his clothes to his body. He kept his arm crooked protectively over the spot where he’d tucked the gun.

  “Thank God you stopped,” the young man gushed instantly. “Me and my wife have been stuck here for two hours now. Damn, is it wet and cold. I was beginnin’ to think that was just it—we’re never gonna get out.”

  Cain eyed the car. Its wheels were deeply mired in the mud. Luckily, it was small and didn’t look like it weighed much. “I’ll get around back,” he suggested. “You lift from the front.”

  The boy nodded, and Cain got to it. He didn’t want to linger any more than he had to, especially with Maggie standing there getting soaked to the bone as she patted the young wife’s hand and assured her everything was going to be all right.

  Cain had just bent his knees to grasp the bumper of the old automobile when he realized the young man hadn’t followed him. He looked up, already scowling through the sheets of rain.

  And faster than he could blink, the young man reached beneath his sweatshirt, ripped out a gun and leveled it against Maggie’s head. She froze instantly, her eyes turning into huge blue saucers.

  “I’ll take the keys to the truck,” the young man announced. His body rocked side to side;
his Adam’s apple bobbed. His young face was a case study for desperation. Even then, Cain had to blink several times to register what was happening. Just how many gun-toting felons were running around this state anyway?

  “The keys!” the young man barked, and pressed the gun against Maggie’s forehead. She whimpered helplessly, her blue eyes rolling to Cain, begging for his assistance.

  He still had his gun. He wasn’t as brilliant a shot as Ham, but he’d trained with a firearm every day of his youth. He could take out the kid, though the boy might pull the trigger reflexively, hitting Maggie.

  A man had to be prepared. A man had to be ready to make sacrifices. War has casualties, his father had barked. A man accepts those casualties! No pain, no remorse, no regret. You kill or be killed! That is the world today, my sons—that is how we live.

  His gaze returned to Maggie’s pale, rain-soaked face. Her red hair was plastered against her cheeks, already looking like blood. Her blue eyes beseeched him.

  Slowly, he lifted his hands in the air. “All right,” he said quietly, keeping his voice calm because the kid and his wife looked close to panic. “Take the truck. We won’t try to stop you. Just lower the gun.”

  “The keys,” the kid insisted.

  “I don’t have the keys,” Cain confessed steadily. “I hot-wired the vehicle.”

  The kid stared at him incredulously. “You stole that truck?”

  “Yes.”

  “You stole that truck and then came back in this kinda weather to help two strangers?”

  “Yes.”

  The kid looked over at his female accomplice, a thin slip of a woman, and then started laughing. “Jesus, sir,” the kid exclaimed. “You’re stupider than anyone I ever met.”

  “That could be,” Cain agreed dryly. Maggie, still wary of the gun, flushed, her eyes squeezing shut. “Take the truck,” Cain repeated. “I won’t try to stop you. Just lower your gun.”

  The kid looked at him one last time, then looked at Maggie, then at his wife. He shrugged and abruptly tucked the gun back into his jeans. Cain’s hand twitched spasmodically, but he kept it fisted at his side. If he pulled out his gun now, Maggie might get caught in the cross fire.