Colder Than Ice (12 page)

“I'll give you a call tomorrow, then.”

“Thank you, Chief Parker,” Beth said. To Bryan, her voice just didn't sound right.

“You best get used to calling me Frankie,” the chief told her. She nodded goodbye, an act that made her tight copper curls bounce, and then she left.

Bryan closed up the first aid kit. “I think I'm going to brew some of that tea of Maude's—she's got all the jars labeled. I'm going for the one that says, Tranquil Sleep. Anyone else want a cup?”

“I'd love one,” Beth said. “Thank you, Bryan.”

He went into the kitchen, but he made sure he could overhear the conversation he sensed they were going to have the minute he was out of the room. Something major was going on here. And he wasn't sure his father would tell him if he asked. But he
was
sure he wanted to know.

“Y
ou lied to the police chief,” Joshua said, watching Beth's face. “You didn't tell her you thought you saw someone in your house just before the explosion.”

She shrugged. “I don't trust the government.”

“Frankie's not government. She's a cop. You don't trust cops, either?”

She shrugged. “Cop, ATF, they're all variations on the same theme, right? All working for the same system.”

“Frankie was Maude's friend. You know that, so I don't follow.”

She shook her head. “You don't need to. All you need to know is that I'm poison, Josh. You and Bryan should stay as far away from me as you can possibly get.”

He frowned. “We're not going anywhere.”

“Bryan's in danger just by standing too close to me.”

“In danger from what?”

She shook her head. “You don't need to know that.” Then she lifted her eyes slowly. “I'm sorry, Josh.” She got to her feet, and went up the stairs, knowing that in the morning, she needed to think about getting the hell out of here. Hell, it was already morning. But later. Later.

She hadn't planned to run from Mordecai. Not again. She had decided she would face Mordecai down, end this thing once and for all. But now there was more than her own life at stake. There were Josh's and Bryan's. God, this was the very reason she'd avoided personal involvements all this time.

Beth went up to her corner room in Maude's house, washed up in the adjoining bathroom and wished she could change out of the T-shirt, but she knew she no longer owned any clothes other than the ones she'd been wearing today.

She crawled beneath the covers, but she couldn't sleep. She could only lie there, running through an endless litany of things she had lost. All her clothes and books. Her television and furniture. Every bit of makeup. One of her guns, leaving her with nothing but the tiny derringer, which held only two bullets at a time and wasn't nearly lethal enough for her peace of mind.

Especially not now.

He'd found her. She knew it deep down in her gut.

She thought about her photographs of Dawny. Gone, every one of them. She would have been devastated by that, if not for her certainty that Jewel would make new copies for her.

The soft tap on her bedroom door surprised her. “It's open.”

Josh opened the door, a mug in hand. “Bryan thought you might still want the tea.”

She nodded, and he came the rest of the way inside, closing
the door behind him. He put the mug on the nightstand, then sat on the edge of her bed. “It might help you sleep.”

“I suppose so.”

“According to Maude, her teas are good for just about anything.”

She smiled, slid upward until her back pressed to the headboard, then reached for the mug. “Maude only served it in her antique china cups.”

“I guess Bry figured if a little was good, a lot would be better.”

“Typical male reasoning, I guess.” She took a sip, grimaced. Bryan had made the tea far stronger than Maude ever had, and he had neglected to add the honey, which was the only part that made the stuff bearable. Licking her lips, she set the mug aside. “So why are you really here?”

“Here in Blackberry?” Josh asked.

“That, too,” she said. “But let's start with why you're here in my bedroom.”

He had looked alarmed at her question, but only for an instant. He was good at covering his emotions, she thought. Maybe a little too good. It was almost as if he were used to doing it.

“I got the distinct feeling down there that I might just wake up tomorrow morning and find you gone, Beth. And I don't want that to happen.”

“No? Why not? God knows you'd be safer. Your son would be safer. Hell,
I
might even be safer.”

He shook his head. “There's nowhere on the planet where you would be safer.”

“Oh, that makes sense, when my house just got blown to smithereens and my best friend died under unexplained circumstances, doesn't it?”

“The doctor said her heart stopped.”

“That ghoul poking around Maude's corpse in the dead of night says otherwise.”

He averted his eyes almost guiltily. “Who do you suppose she was?”

“Government,” she said. “Don't ask.”

He closed his eyes. “I'm asking.”

She shook her head. “No. No, I'm not dragging anyone else into this. Sorry, Josh.” She slid out of the bed, took his forearm and tugged him to his feet, then led him to the door. “You were right about one thing, though. I probably will be leaving later this morning. I'm not sure there's even any point in waiting. I'm not sleeping anyway.”

She was reaching for the knob, intending to gently escort him into the hallway and then close the door on him, but he stopped as she tugged the door open, put one hand on it and pushed it shut again. “You can't leave.”

“I can do whatever I want.”

“Dammit, Beth—”

“What? What in the name of hell is there to keep me from walking out of Blackberry right now?”

“Me.”

She stared at him for a moment, and then he suddenly clasped her head in his hands and kissed her. It startled her, shocked her right to her toes. At first it was little more than an act of will, but then things changed. The pressure of his mouth against hers eased; the pace slowed. He sucked her lips between his and kissed her for a long time. She felt herself go pliant, like a crayon in the sun, and the next thing she knew, his arms were around her, holding her to him, and she was loving the experience. He was leaning back against
the door when she managed to twist her head to one side for air.

She rested it against his shoulder, breathless. And she whispered, “It's no great loss, my house being destroyed. Do you want to know why?”

“I want to know everything about you. Including that. Why, Beth?”

“Because I don't count on keeping anything. I don't invest in anything. I don't collect anything. I don't expect anything to last. I've lost everything so many times it doesn't even faze me anymore, Josh. I've fallen into the habit of not acquiring anything it would hurt me too much to lose. You understand?”

He nodded, his hands in her hair. “I understand. I don't buy it, though. Not entirely. I think it hurt you to lose Maude.”

She felt a stabbing pain leap into her throat and swallowed it back down by sheer force. “It did. She got past all my defenses, in spite of my best efforts.”

“Maybe you don't know it yet, Beth, but so will I.”

She stepped back a little, speared him with her eyes. “It's been a long time since I've trusted any man enough to let him into my life, Joshua.”

“Then maybe it's time you tried.” She started to shake her head, but he caught her cheek with a gentle palm, turned her face toward him, held her eyes with his. “You can trust me, Beth. I swear to God you can.”

She wanted to, she thought. She wanted to share this burden so much it was killing her. But dammit, she was afraid.

“Let me help you,” he whispered.

She tried to resist, but her strength was waning so low that she didn't have it in her to withstand his persistence. Swallowing hard, she said, “All right.”

 

He had never realized what an excellent liar he was until tonight, he thought, as he sat on Beth's bed, with her curled up in his arms, and listened to her tell him the story she had never told anyone else, the story he thought he had already known.

“I was sixteen when I ran away from home,” she said. “My stepfather would have raped me eventually. His gropings were escalating, and I knew it was only a matter of time. My mother worshiped him, would never have believed me. And my birth father lost any chance with me when he signed away his parental rights. I said fuck them all and struck out on my own.”

He listened, wincing a little at her language. He'd never heard her swear like that before. And yet he was riveted. This part of Beth's history hadn't been in her files. He realized as he listened that he was holding her gently, stroking her cheek and sometimes her hair as she spoke. The kiss he had intended as a means to keep her close to him, to gain her trust and keep her from running away, had gotten out of hand. Hell, he wasn't sure what the hell had happened to him, but for a few moments, it had been way more than an act. It had been real.

“I met this girl on the streets. Jewel. And we heard about a haven for runaway teens in upstate New York. It was run by a group calling itself the Young Believers.”

This part he knew, but he feigned surprise. “The compound that was raided? Run by that guy Mordecai Young?”

She nodded. “The one and only. It didn't take Jewel and me long to realize we were prisoners, not guests. Slave labor for Mordecai's drug business. Our meals were doped to keep us complacent. So we made nice with him in hopes we could find a chance to escape.”

“And did it work? Did you get out?”

“No. I got pregnant.”

Joshua went stiff. He'd had no clue she'd become pregnant while at the compound. Apparently neither had the government. Or if they had, they were keeping very quiet about it. It hadn't been in her file.

“There was something about Mordecai,” she told him, her voice soft, trembling. “Charisma, I guess. He has…there's a real power to the man. And I was young and naive and half-brainwashed by then. I thought I loved him. Once the baby was born—”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. You had
Mordecai Young's
child?”

She nodded. “He named her Sunshine, called her Sunny. Just before the raid, Jewel and I had decided to try to escape with her, but then…well, then hell erupted on earth. The ATF surrounded the compound. Came to rescue us, I suppose. The truth was, they were a gang of badly trained boys who shouldn't have been set loose with BB guns, much less rifles.”

Joshua closed his eyes, pain stabbing deep. She couldn't see him, the way she was leaning on his chest, but she must have heard the hitch in his breathing. She was dead wrong, of course. His comrades had been far from badly trained boys. They'd been brave young men, highly trained, dedicated. Some of the best men he'd ever known. But he couldn't blame her for harboring bitterness. “Don't you think that's a little harsh? I mean…do you think they'd have fired if no one had been shooting at them?”

“
I
wasn't shooting at them,” she whispered. “But that didn't stop one of the gung ho bastards from ripping my insides apart with a white-hot bullet.” She lifted her head, and her eyes were fierce when they met his. “I swear, if I knew who he was—”

“What about Mordecai? Shouldn't your anger be directed at him?”

“You think it's not?” She lowered her head again, resting it against him. “We made it to the tunnel in the basement. Mordecai was down there, trying to escape with the baby. But Jewel and I got her away from him just before the floor above us collapsed, all but burying him. I took his key and left him there to die. But I couldn't make it. I thought I was dying—I very nearly did. So I gave the baby to Jewel, begged her to raise my daughter for me.”

“And she did?”

“She did. She did a far better job than I ever could have done, I know that. Dawn—that's the name Jewel gave her…she's incredible.”

He frowned, trying to place the name. Dawn. Hadn't there been mention of a teenage girl named Dawn in Beth's dossier?

“I was found in the rubble, barely alive. I spent months in a coma, and when I emerged, I had no memory. It was years before I remembered my past, and more before I was healthy enough to live on my own.”

“The medical bills must have been astronomical.”

She shook her head, as if it didn't matter. “The government shot me by accident and robbed me of my entire life, including my child. The only child I'll ever have.”

“The only—”

She nodded. “The bullet did a lot of damage.”

“God.” His voice was tight. Choked. Maybe revealing too much. “I'm so sorry, Beth.”

“Don't be. It has nothing to do with you.”

But it had everything to do with him, he thought. And it was far worse than he had ever known.

“As soon as I was able to, I started trying to find Jewel and my daughter. By the time I did, quite by accident, Dawn was in sixth grade and thriving. I couldn't bear to butt into their lives and mess things up. So I settled for getting a job as a substitute teacher in Dawny's school district, so I could see her sometimes. I worked nights on my degree, until I earned it, and by the time Dawn hit high school, I was one of her teachers.”

That was where he'd read the name. In the report of the incident last year. Dawn was the “student” who had been kidnapped by Mordecai Young. He hadn't chosen a random girl; he'd abducted his daughter. And Beth hadn't risked her life to save just any student but her own child.