Nobody's Hero (45 page)

Maybe she was just getting together with some
girlfriends who also were home for the holiday weekend. Then why
didn’t she just say that, rather than make him think it was another
man?
Come on. She hadn’t said anything to indicate it was a
man.
Yeah, she’d just said someone.

What if it was one of those boys from high
school she said only liked to talk about sports? Hell, she still
didn’t like sports. What would she have in common with them now? He
watched her make a turn about a block ahead and hurried to catch
up.

Adam argued with himself that he should be
encouraging her to pursue someone her own age. But the thought of
her being with another man rotted his gut. Deep down, though, he
knew Karla wasn’t off meeting a lover. Still, she was keeping
something from him. Not that she owed him anything. They weren’t
together anymore, not even in a Dom/sub relationship.

Maybe they never should have been together in
the first place. But that horse had left the barn and there was no
going back now.

He’d known having Karla in his life would
never be easy. She always would be unpredictable. He had to admit
he loved that about her most of all. He’d led a safe, predictable
life since he’d retired from the Corps. She’d stirred him back to
life. Maybe he couldn’t love her as perfectly as she ought to be
loved, but he’d do his damnedest not to ever hurt her again.

A gust of wind buffeted the car, making it
hard to keep it on Lake Shore Drive. He saw her slow down, then
turn into the garage for a posh-looking high-rise apartment
building. Damn. He’d never find her in there. What if there was a
guard or doorman or something? He stepped on the accelerator and
followed her into the garage. She parked and he continued up to the
next level, then ran to the elevator to see which floor she stopped
on.

Two. Hell, he could take the stairs and maybe
even see which apartment she went into. Fuck, this was more recon
than he’d done since his days in Kosovo. He took the stairs two at
a time and opened the door to peek out. Karla stood waiting outside
a door about halfway down the hall. The door opened, but he
couldn’t see who greeted her. A kid maybe, judging by where her
gaze focused. He grinned, a lot less worried.

After she’d gone inside, he crept down the
hallway and checked the name on the door. Gallagher. The voices
coming from within both sounded female. He recognized Karla’s, but
the other sounded like an older woman. Did she have a relative who
hadn’t come to dinner today? Or perhaps a former teacher? She was
close to her music teacher, who had helped her get into
Columbia.

He could play this guessing game all night,
but, instead, he’d just stake himself out down the hallway at the
opposite end from the stairs and elevator to wait for Karla to
leave. He no longer needed to know who was in apartment 2F. But he
did want to be sure Karla got home safely.

* * *

When the apartment door finally opened, Karla
found herself staring into thin air, until she realized the woman
of Adam’s nightmares was the thin and frail-looking woman seated in
a scooter-type wheelchair in front of her. Her rheumy green eyes
carried only a hint of the lively sparks in her son’s eyes, but she
could see him in them.

“Please, come in, Miss Paxton.”

Karla walked into the spacious living room,
decorated in the clean lines of Scandinavian furniture. The
hardwood floors gleamed. No area rugs to warm the room, but she
supposed they would have obstructed the woman’s limited mobility.
The pieces of furniture that caught her eye, and didn’t seem to fit
the room, were the antique secretary desk in a mahogany or other
dark wood, and the upright grand piano that had to be from the turn
of the last century.

“Have a seat, Ms. Paxton.” Karla took a seat
on the beige bench-like sofa.

“Please call me Karla. And thanks for
agreeing to see me on such short notice, Mrs. Gallagher.” Karla
waited for Adam’s mother to roll herself into place a couple of
yards in front of her.

“Can I get you something to drink? Tea or
coffee? Pop? I’ve given my personal assistant the weekend off to be
with her family, so I’m afraid you’ll have to suffer from my lack
of skills in the kitchen.”

Karla almost smiled. Like mother, like son?
“No, thank you. I can’t stay long and don’t want to bother
you.”

“No bother at all. I can tell you care about
my son.” She smiled.

Karla tried to give the woman the once-over
without being too obvious. Her hair was soft-permed and
silver-gray, a lighter shade than the grays on Adam’s head. She
wore wire-rimmed glasses with a designer brand name. When she
smiled, little crinkle lines appeared at the corners of her eyes,
just like Adam’s. Her lips were a pinkish hue, matching her
perfectly manicured fingernails. She wore a two-piece suit,
conservative, stylish, but a little out of date.

“Are you Adam’s wife?”

“No.”
Not yet.
“We’re good friends.”
With kinky benefits
. “I work in a club he owns in
Denver.”

“What has Adam told you about me?”

Karla’s gaze went back to the woman’s eyes.
“Not much.”
Only that you locked him in something when he was
bad.

“My Adam didn’t have it easy growing up.”

No fuck. And he’s mine now. You lost the
chance to claim him a long time ago.
Okay, she needed to cut
the woman some slack, until she got the whole story. “Tell me more.
I want to understand.”
Understand him—not the insanity you and
your husband put him through that gives him nightmares to this
day.

Mrs. Gallagher looked down at her hands,
which she twisted in her lap. The knuckles were swollen with
arthritis and she thought how painful that must be. Still, not as
painful as what they’d done to Adam.

“His father was an alcoholic. Very abusive.
He wasn’t like that before the war. Vietnam changed him.” A tear
rolled down her wrinkled cheek and plopped onto her hand. She wiped
it away as though pushing away a fly. Apparently, she wasn’t any
more fond of showing emotions than her son was. “I tried to protect
him.”

Like hell you did
. Karla’s breaths
came in short, shallow bursts as the blood finally boiled to the
surface. “By locking him up?”
Okay, so much for tact,
Kitty.

Adam’s mother lifted her head and scrutinized
Karla. “I didn’t know what else to do,” she whispered.

“Locking him up was the only option? Come on.
He has nightmares about it to this day.”

Mrs. Gallagher winced.

Karla took a deep breath. She was letting her
rage get out of control. If she wanted to get the info she needed,
she couldn’t afford to piss the woman off.

Then woman drew herself up straighter and
sighed. “He was safe in the closet. His father couldn’t beat him
there.”

Wait a minute. She’d locked him up to
protect
him? “I don’t understand. Maybe you’d better start
at the beginning.”

What unfolded was a tale of abuse at the
hands of a monster who had some serious psychological problems.
When she described the injuries both she and Adam had suffered at
the man’s hands, Karla wanted nothing more than to beat the
ever-loving shit out of the asshole. If he weren’t already dead,
Karla would have tracked him down and done just that.

For Adam. For the little boy who had been so
horribly abused and tortured. Then abandoned.

“Tell me what happened the night Adam ran
away.”

Mrs. Gallagher rested her head in her hand,
her elbow resting on the arm of the wheelchair. “The worst night of
my life. I lost my husband
and
my son. The last because of
my own stupidity.”

“This was during the home invasion? I thought
Adam wasn’t there.”

Adam’s mother raised her gaze to meet
Karla’s. She studied Karla’s face a moment, before her features
softened and her frail hand went to the back of her neck to knead
her nape, much like Adam did every so often. Seeing her do it sent
a chill up her spine. Did Adam even know that was where he had
picked up that nervous tic from?

“There was no home invasion. That was the
night Adam’s father was killed. The night I became paralyzed. The
night I told Adam to run as far and as fast as he could and to not
look back.”

Karla didn’t realize she’d stopped breathing
until her chest began to burn. “What are you saying? Did Adam kill
his…?”

The woman’s watery eyes opened wider. “Good
Lord, no! Not Adam. Me! I killed my husband.” Tears streamed down
the woman’s face, unheeded now. Her hands shook uncontrollably and
she clasped them together, then lowered her voice to a whisper, “I
couldn’t take it anymore. I snapped.”

Karla didn’t know what to say. The woman had
just admitted to murdering her husband. What was Karla supposed to
do with that?
Nothing
. She might have done the same if she
were in that situation. That wasn’t what she’d come here to find
out. She needed to know what Adam saw. What Adam knew.

“Where was Adam?”

“He was too big to lock into a closet
anymore. I’d told him to stay in his room. It was Thanksgiving
night.”

Oh, God. No wonder he didn’t enjoy the
holiday. It didn’t have to do with missing Joni. He’d lived through
hell one Thanksgiving.

Mrs. Gallagher looked at the nearby coffee
table where a fresh-flower arrangement including golden and
burgundy mums and cream-colored alstroemeria was displayed. “He and
his father had fought at the dinner table that day. He’d stood up
to his father. They’d struggled, fell to the floor. He’d told his
father to get the…to get off of him.”

“
Get the fuck off me, you son of a
bitch!”

Karla remembered the time Adam had screamed
those words and thrown her off his chest where she’d fallen asleep
after her accident.

“Adam left the house to cool off, but this
was much later. I guess he heard the intensity of the argument and
my screams when his father took a baseball bat and struck me in the
middle of the back. I crumpled to the floor and knew my spine had
been damaged. I just didn’t know how badly.”

Karla’s gaze went to the chair. A crocheted
pink and maroon lap robe covered her thin legs.

“I dragged myself over to the nightstand and
pulled out a pistol I kept there for protection. When he came at me
again with the bat, ready to bash my head in, I guess, I just
pulled the trigger.”

Dear Lord.
“What did Adam see?” Her
voice came out in a whisper.

“He came into the room after I shot his
father. He was already dead. I was lying in the pool of his blood
on the floor, unable to get up. At first, I went on automatic and
asked Adam to help me clean up the blood, as he’d done so many
times before. Only before, it had always been Adam’s or my blood.
But then I just didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if I went to
prison for life. I could never be in a worse prison than I’d been
in the past eighteen years. But I didn’t want Adam to be taken down
with me. He’d…made threats at the table that my family had
overheard. He might have been accused of killing his father. So I
told him to take the money we had in the house and to run.”

Adam had seen his dead father lying in a pool
of blood. He’d probably seen his mother battered and stitched up a
million times, too, but to see her lying wounded and helpless...
Karla glanced at the wheelchair again. Adam had run that night.
He’d been running away from the horrific scene his whole adult
life.

Oh, Adam
. Tears spilled down Karla’s
cheeks. She needed to get back to him. To hold him. To take all the
hurt away from the lost little boy inside him.

“I used to watch over him when he slept.”

Karla’s attention returned to the woman in
front of her. “What?”

“I’d go into his room and just find a corner
and sit and watch him sleep. So innocent. So brave. I wish his
childhood could have been as normal and nurturing as my other two
children's.”

His mother had watched over him, much like
Adam had watched over Karla. Another trait from his mother that he
probably didn’t even associate with her. Did those actions provide
him with comfort when things were out of control? Remind him of his
mother?

“He was such a beautiful boy. I had such
hopes for him. He wanted to be a Marine.”

His mother glanced over at a series of old
portraits on the upright grand piano showing five men in military
uniforms, three of them recognizable as Marine uniforms. Adam said
there had been Montagues in the Marines as far back as the Civil
War. He must have been inspired by those photos while growing
up.

“He’d have made a fine Marine. He was always
trying to protect me. Adam had a penchant for doing the right
thing, even when it wasn’t the easy thing to do.”

Karla wasn’t sure if she wanted Adam to meet
this woman again, but knew she needed to tell him about her and let
him make that decision. But, if he chose not to see her, she should
at least let her know how he’d turned out.

“Adam took the name Montague after he ran
away.”

“Oh, my goodness! No wonder we could never
find him.”

She’d looked for him? How sad they hadn’t
been able to reconnect sooner. Maybe things would have been
different for both of them.

“Mrs. Gallagher, Adam
is
a Marine. He
served almost twenty-five years and reached the rank of master
sergeant. You can be very proud of him. He carried on the family
tradition and served with great honor and distinction.”

Fresh tears glistened in her eyes and spilled
down her cheeks. “Do you think he’d ever want to see me again?”

“I don’t know. I’ll tell him about you, but
we’ll have to let him decide.”

The woman nodded, looking much older than
she’d looked when Karla had entered her apartment less than an hour
ago. Karla felt sorry for her, but still harbored some anger that
no one had tried to do more to protect Adam while he was growing
up. They hadn’t lived in the dark ages. There were programs to help
battered women and children. Locking him in a closet was not the
way he should have been protected, because it only made him think
he was the one who had the problem. The little boy in Adam hadn’t
understood. He thought he was being punished. Karla blinked the
tears away that burned her eyelids.