A Scarlet Cord (16 page)

From his stance near the rail, Joel could hear threads of Patty’s end of the conversation, including Larry Cohen’s name, and he felt the blood drain from his face.

“No, that’s okay. We were finished.” Melanie flashed Joel a smile over the receiver. “Sure. Bring him on up. Thanks, Patty.” She put the phone back in its cradle and gave Joel an apologetic smile. “Sorry, but I probably should see this guy—” She stopped short and peered into his face. “Are you all right, Joel? Your face is white as a sheet.”

“I … I don’t think that soup agreed with me,” he said. “I think … I’ll go home and lie down for a while.”

She came to him and put the back of her hand on his forehead. “You don’t feel hot.” Reaching up, she put her warm palm on the side of his face and planted a kiss on the opposite cheek. Her forehead wrinkled. “I hope I didn’t give you food poisoning. That soup mix has been around here for a while.”

The old elevator clanked, and Joel heard the grind of gears as the car descended to the main level, apparently at Patty’s command.

“I’m going now,” he told Melanie, starting for the spiral staircase.

“Why don’t you wait for the elevator, Joel? I’m serious … Those stairs are treacherous.”

“It’s okay. My feet are dry now,” he said. His heart raced as he heard the elevator hit the first floor, then begin its thirty-foot climb a few seconds later.

“Just be careful,” Melanie warned. “I hope you feel better. I’ll call you.”

“Thanks.”

Hurrying to the steps, he grabbed the railing and started down. His heart lurched as he heard the door slide open and Melanie’s business voice ring out. He stopped midway down and stood stock-still, listening as Patty introduced Melanie to Larry Cohen.

“Hello, Mr. Cohen. Nice to meet you. Please, have a seat …” Then her voice rose an octave. “Oh! Patty … Joel left his coat!”

Joel froze. He heard Melanie’s voice again. “He just took the stairs. Would you mind seeing if you can catch him, Patty? Take the elevator, though.”

Again, he heard the elevator doors glide open and the gears grind to life.

He descended the last few steps and walked to the foyer, careful to keep his head down. While he shook out his umbrella, Patty came jogging down the corridor with his coat over her arm.

“I wondered where I left that,” he told her lamely.

“You need a wife,” Patty laughed.

He knew she expected him to tease her back, but his mind could
not come up with the appropriate retort. Instead he nodded and busied himself with the buttons on his topcoat.

The phone rang, and Patty went to her desk to answer it.

Before Joel went out into the rain, he risked one glance up toward Melanie’s office. Larry Cohen stood beside Melanie at the rail, smiling and pointing out toward the colorful sculptures that hung from the rafters. But before Joel could look away, Cohen turned in his direction, and for an instant their eyes met. Again, Cohen’s eyes flashed a spark of recognition. And something that hadn’t been there before. A trace of suspicion, perhaps?

Joel shivered involuntarily and walked out through the wide doors into the pouring rain.

Fourteen

Joel Ellington shook out the society section of the
Post-Dispatch
and pondered his own face staring back at him. Beside him in the newspaper photograph was a radiant Melanie. Their engagement announcement, set apart in a box at the top of the page, filled him with conflicting emotions. His love for Melanie surprised him all over again each morning when he awoke to the realization that she was in his life and that she loved him in return.

And he couldn’t help but smile as he thought of the little girl who had already begun to call him Daddy. He had never dreamed that hearing that word from Jerica’s little Cupid’s-bow mouth would do such strange things to his heart. He didn’t believe he could have loved her any more had she been his own flesh and blood.

He folded the page carefully and put it with his briefcase to take home. He knew Melanie would want extra copies. A flush of heat came to his face as he remembered the ridiculous scene he’d made over their engagement announcements. Even if anyone still had a reason to come after him—which they didn’t—they sure wouldn’t be sitting around scrutinizing the society pages of obscure Midwestern newspapers. It had been foolish for him to make such a big deal over Melanie’s simple request, especially when he couldn’t offer an explanation that made sense to her.

This month marked a year since his arrival in Silver Creek, and
until now the town had felt like a haven of security for him. But bumping into Larry Cohen at Melanie’s awards banquet that night and then at her office had freaked him out a little. They had warned him during the WITSEC orientation that it wasn’t all that unusual for protected witnesses to run into people from their past—even hundreds of miles from home. They’d been coached in how to deal with such a likelihood, and in spite of the panic he’d felt that night, he thought he’d handled it reasonably well. He felt sure he’d convinced Cohen that he was mistaken. But the orientation had failed to inform him of how paranoid such an event might make him in the days that followed.

It hadn’t helped matters when Cohen showed up at By Design two weeks ago. According to Melanie, Cohen was there to invite her to present a workshop at a graphic arts conference the Cohen Group was hosting. Melanie recognized Larry Cohen as the man from the Addy awards and had mentioned to Joel that Cohen had been at her office. But from what Joel could gather from her—without asking questions that might have aroused her suspicion—Cohen hadn’t connected Melanie to Joel. It was probably just his overactive imagination that made him think Cohen had recognized him in the lobby of By Design.

But his sense of peace had crumbled a little in the face of these encounters with this man from his other life. And in spite of Joel’s clean-shaven face and his new haircut, Larry Cohen
had
recognized him that night at the Addys. He hadn’t imagined that.

Joel comforted himself with the fact that Cohen had legitimate reason to be at these advertising venues. The man posed no threat. But what if Cohen went back to New York and happened to mention to the wrong person that he had spotted a dead ringer for Joe Bradford in St. Louis? Joel shuddered. If that happened, his safety might be compromised. The odds were remote, but was he willing to stake his life on them? Or Melanie’s life?

He had agonized again and again over how much of his past to
share with Melanie. WITSEC had pounded it into his head that he could tell no one. In fact, when he’d first been taken into the witness security program, the U.S. Marshal assigned to his case had been furious when he found out how much Joel had told Tim. Tim had quietly changed residences twice since the trial—just to be sure. And whenever he came to visit Joel, Tim took extreme caution to be sure he wasn’t followed.

As long as Joel embraced his assumed identity, he felt relatively safe. Still, if he thought about it too hard, it nagged at him to be keeping something so significant from Melanie. But even if he decided to tell her everything now, how could he possibly expect her to understand after all this time? After his deception was so complete? Could she ever forgive him?

He didn’t want to find out. Besides, it was Joel Ellington that Melanie had fallen in love with, not Joseph Bradford. No. He’d made his decision, and he’d honestly made it with Melanie’s best interests in mind. It served no purpose to second-guess himself now. And the events of these last weeks only confirmed his resolve. God forbid Melanie should ever have to put on the kind of performance he’d been forced to act out in front of Larry Cohen that night at the Addys.

He shook off the unsettling thoughts and picked up the
Dispatch
again. Scanning the sports pages, he checked the scores. The Bulls game was on cable tonight. Maybe he’d call Melanie and suggest they order pizza in and watch the game together.

He shook out the front section of the paper, skimmed the headlines, and turned the page. A New York dateline in a series of national news briefs caught his attention. He read the story three times before it soaked in.

No! How could this be?
With a sinking feeling, he stared blankly at the newspaper in front of him. Fear knocked around in his gut and the walls seemed to close in on him. All the qualms he’d dismissed as foolish not ten minutes ago seemed to mock him now, and he felt like a trapped animal with nowhere to hide.

He read the article one more time. How terribly ironic that this story should appear in the very issue in which his engagement was announced. Here, in black and white, lay the incongruity of the joy and the agony of his life: his engagement to Melanie, representing all that was new and redemptive. And a few thin pages away, a revelation that was sure to turn his world upside down: Another witness had stepped forward, and the prosecutor in Victoria’s murder case was talking about a new trial.

Why hadn’t Toliver informed him? Joel had had no contact with the Justice Department for over a year now. He’d not expected to hear from them again—ever. Now he confronted the awful truth. He would surely be called to testify again. And once again he would have to face the man responsible for Tori’s death—the men responsible for his exile.

Oh, Melanie. How could I have dragged you into this mess? And Jerica. Oh, dear Father, what have I done?

Suddenly the truth stood before him in perfect clarity. He would always be a fugitive. He would never be able to ensure the safety of anyone close to him. Already he had imposed deceptions, large and small, on Melanie and on everyone else he’d come to know and respect here in Silver Creek. And as it always was with deceptions, one lie led to another and another and another. He realized now that his dishonesty, however necessary to his safety, however well intentioned, would eventually erode the trust of everyone dear to him.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, Joel now saw that his deception had changed who he was deep inside, as surely as his protective identity had changed who he was on the outside. He wasn’t even sure he knew himself any more. He had been mistaken to think that he could hold a position of leadership in the church when his very identity was based on a lie. People had looked to him to make important moral and spiritual decisions, yet their confidence in him—in who they thought him to be—was based on lies!

It was time to ask some tough questions. What if something
went wrong at this new trial? Perhaps, unknowingly, he had already put Melanie in peril. But even if he hadn’t, what if, after they married, he was forced to assume yet another identity, another life? If another relocation was ever necessary, how could he possibly ask her to bring Jerica and follow him back into the Federal Witness Security Program? It would be grossly unfair to drag the two people he loved most in the world into his dangerous circumstances. And even aside from the danger, how could he rip them from the small town they loved, the job in which Melanie found such satisfaction and financial security, and most of all, the grandparents who were so much a part of Jerica’s life?

How could he even think of taking Jerica away from the LaSalles? She was all they had left of their son—their only child. She and Melanie were the only family Jerry and Erika had in the world, their only hope of carrying on their legacy. How could he be so selfish?

The answer was simple. He could not. As much as he loved them, he could not pull Melanie and Jerica into his deception.
Because
he loved them, he could not ask them to sacrifice everything they held dear for him.

As the realization soaked in, Joel slumped over his desk, putting his head in his hands. And in that moment of utter agony, he made the most difficult decision of his life. He must leave. Now. Before he hurt them worse than he already had.

Trembling, he picked up the telephone and dialed a number from memory. He punched in the extension. The phone rang a dozen times before Joel finally hung up. What was going on? He’d never had trouble getting through before.

He dialed again—a different number—tapping a pencil impatiently on the desktop, sweat forming on his brow. “Come on, come on, Tim … pick up the phone,” he whispered under his breath.

As the phone rang again and again on the other end, he grabbed the newspaper and creased it, jamming the New York article deep
into the folds of newsprint. He reached for his handkerchief and mopped away the sweat that beaded his forehead.

Then abruptly, Tim’s voice came on the line.

“Tim! Thank God you’re home!” His voice came out as a strangled sob.

“Joe? What’s wrong?”

He paced nervously, as far as the phone cord would allow, like a dog on a short leash. “Something’s happened, Tim. I need to talk to Toliver, but I can’t get through. He’s not answering his phone.”

“What happened? Tell me.”

“No, not on the phone.” He whispered into the receiver now. “I’ll … I’ll meet you at your place. I’m … I’m not sure what I’m going to do for money until I get hold of Toliver …”

“What’s going on, Joe? Has something happened? Do you need to get out of there?”

“I can’t talk now.”

“Don’t worry about money, Joe. You just get here as quickly as you can.”

“Thanks, Tim.”

He willed himself to calm down, forced himself to think rationally, to make sure his brother had all the information he needed. He spoke into the receiver again. “I’m leaving now … driving. I have to take care of some things here first, but I’ve got my cell phone. I’ll call you when I get on the road.”

He dropped the phone in its cradle and ran his fingers through tousled hair. Thank goodness Don Steele wasn’t in the office on Mondays. Joel wasn’t sure he could have behaved as though everything were normal. Quickly, he scratched out a note to Don, then went into the pastor’s office and reached for the top drawer of the desk. It was unlocked, as Joel had known it would be.

He filed through the small stack of paychecks until he found the one made out to him. In spite of the fact that his name was imprinted on the check, he felt like a common thief. Payroll checks
weren’t actually due to be distributed until Wednesday, but Darlene always cut them in advance. They would just have to understand. He laid the note he’d written to Don on top of the remaining checks, and silently slid the drawer shut.