Second Chances (17 page)

"Where to?"

"The airport," Nathan said.

The driver nodded and slipped the car into gear, pulling away from the hotel.

"No, wait, we need to make one stop first."

Both the driver and Paige looked at Nathan.

"Paige, I've been wearing the same clothes for two days now."

She nodded. The driver laughed and Nathan saw him wink at him in the rearview mirror. He didn't bother to try and explain, the man clearly had his own idea what his words meant.

"Any stores close by?" he asked the driver. He looked at his watch. When had it gotten so late? Where the heck had the day gone? He shook his head, debating with himself. He felt like they were on the run and yet he'd just insisted on a stop that would delay them even further.

The taxi driver nodded and turned right at the next intersection. A few minutes later the car pulled to a stop in front of a Gap. He jumped out while Paige stayed with the taxi. When he returned ten minutes later, Nathan was dressed in a pair of blue jeans, a dark green button-up Polo shirt and a light blue windbreaker. Paige smiled at him as he got back into the vehicle.

"Better?"

"Definitely less wrinkled."

"I guess that is a plus."

"No bag? Where are your old clothes?"

"Tossed them. I can always get more, besides I don't think I want to check a bag of dirty clothes on the flight. Everything besides my shoes is new."

"You look good in green."

Nathan smiled. It was only small talk, but it felt good. It felt normal. It felt like old times.

They lapsed into a comfortable silence for the rest of the trip to the airport, partly because it just felt right and partly because they didn't want to talk in front of the driver.

They entered the airport and moved off to the side out of the flow of traffic.

"Okay, so we are at the airport. Where to now?"

Nathan was silent. She looked at him, waiting for a response, hope in her eyes. He was quiet for several minutes. He paced in a slow circle until he noticed that he was being watched by some of the security personnel and then he forced himself to stop.

"So where?" Paige implored.

"I'm not entirely sure. We both have so many questions."

"You can say that again."

"So where do we go for the answers? Who can we ask?"

"Well I thought Linda would be..."

"More importantly, who can we trust?"

Paige frowned. "Until today, I would have said Linda. What about you? Who do you know and trust? Who knew...well us? Even if I do not believe I was apart of your us. Did that make sense or am I just babbling?"

Nathan let out a short laugh and smiled.

"No, I understood you perfectly."

"So who? Your parents maybe?"

His smile was instantly gone.

"No. Like you, both of my parents are gone."

Paige shivered. "I'm sorry," she said.

"No. I'm sorry. I know you said you hate me doing that. I didn't mean to."

She knew what he meant and nodded.

"I know you didn't mean to. So, anyone we can turn to for help? We had friends right? I mean you and your Paige did, didn't you?"

He frowned.

"You didn't have friends?"

"No, we did. Well kind of. We were well liked, but honestly we were each other's world. We did everything together, spent almost every minute together. We made friends wherever we went, but..."

"Not close friends?"

Nathan nodded.

"Yeah. What about you, anyone else you can think of?"

Paige fell silent. She looked away from Nathan, her eyes seemed to glaze over. Her lips began to quiver. She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
 

She pressed her lips together in a scowl and shook her head, as if trying to wake herself. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the doctored picture. She stared at, her eyes blazing with barely controlled fury.

Nathan reached out and plucked the photograph from her hands.

"Okay, we have our destination," he said.

"What?"

"Your college."

"Salve? Why?"

"As good a place as any. Plus, it is one thing we both agree on about you."

She fell silent for a few moments. Nathan watched her closely. She frowned a little and her lip began to quiver again.

"Ar...are you sure?"

He took her hands in his. "Yeah, afraid so. I wish I had a better plan. This may be a dead end but we have to start somewhere, right?" He gave her hands a gentle reassuring squeeze and after a minute she nodded.

"Okay."

He squeezed her hands again, this time to stop their trembling.

"Come on," Nathan said, looking at his watch. "Let's see if we can still catch a flight tonight for Rhode Island."

They made their way over to the United ticket counter and he inquired about their next available flight out.
 

The woman at the counter tapped away at her keyboard for a few moments.

"You are in luck. Our last fight leaves in just under two hours. You'll have a rather long layover in Chicago, but it will get you into Providence at just about eleven in the morning."

"Excellent," Nathan said. "Can we still get seats together?"

The woman smiled and nodded. "Plane is half empty, that won't be a problem."

He paid and they checked Paige's suitcases and then quickly made their way through security.

As they walked down toward their gate, Paige's stomach grumbled so loud that Nathan laughed. He realized they had more or less been on the run since mid-afternoon and they hadn't eaten since breakfast. There were a few places to eat, but they ended up just buying pre-packaged sandwiches, chips and sodas from one of the catch-all shops and ate while they waited for boarding to begin. They ate in silence, both of them feeling drained from the day and lost in their own thoughts.
 

As the time to board drew closer, Nathan noticed that she seemed to fidget more, her hands trembling. He was nervous too, but he thought it was something more than just nerves with Paige. He took her hands in his and squeezed gently. She didn't resist.

Fifteen minutes later they were on the plane. They'd been the last two passengers to board. The cabin was indeed half empty and they had an abundance of seats to choose from. They ignored their assigned seats and picked a row towards the rear of the plane. The next closest passenger was four rows away. Paige had him take the window seat. A night time take off meant less to see. She left the middle seat open and took the aisle seat. Nathan noted it, but said nothing. He placed his laptop bag on the middle seat and then sat down and buckled in.

The plane pulled back from the gate and one of the flight attendants began to review the safety procedures. Paige looked over at Nathan and saw his head resting against the window, already asleep. She realized he likely hadn't slept more than a hour or two since they had first met. She gave him a sad smile and almost reached out to him, but stopped when she saw how much her hand was trembling. She gripped the armrests tight enough for her knuckles to blanch. She closed her eyes and tried to force herself to take slow deep breaths. Questions echoed in her head. Questions for which she had no answers.

When she finally opened her eyes, Paige saw that they were already in the air. She did not recall even feeling the motion of the take off. She glanced at her watch and saw they were already thirty-five minutes into the flight. The cabin was very dark, only the occasional passenger had their overhead light on. Paige reached up and clicked hers on as well as the one over the middle seat.

A moment later one of the flight attendants came by and asked if she needed anything. A pillow or blanket? She declined but asked if she could get some water. When the flight attendant had gone, Paige looked down and noted her hands still trembled a bit. Her eyes lingered on Nathan's laptop bag. By the time her water arrived, she had made up her mind. She thanked the attendant for the water and then took a sip. She pulled the tray table down for the empty middle seat and placed the glass of water on it, before opening the laptop bag and removing the journals. She closed her eyes, trying to remember if Nathan had said what order he had written them in. Moments later she was leaning forward in her seat, lost in the journals.

"Her husband?" Cameron snatched the picture out of Julie's hands, his brow furrowing as he scrutinized the picture.

"Yes. From a couple of years ago, I believe."

His eyes flicked briefly up from the picture to Julie and then back down. A desire to flair out a hand and slap her flashed through his mind. Was she toying with him? He suspected she knew exactly who this was, no guess work needed. Her husband? Yes, that seemed very possible. The man definitely looked familiar and he'd have seen pictures of him if he were Paige's husband.

"What's his name?"

"His name?"

"Did I stutter? Who is this man?" he demanded as he tapped the picture.

"Norman? Nick. Something starting with an N."

"Nathan?"

"Maybe. I don't remember. It's late Cameron, can't this wait until tomorrow?"

She looked down at the corner of her desk and bit her lower lip, doing her best to appear to be thinking hard. She could feel the anger and anxiety rolling off of him in waves and couldn't decide how she wanted to play it.

"This is important, Doctor. Don't let me find out you had anything to do with this."

She didn't have to feign her shock.

"What the hell are you talking about? You think I had something to do with this?"

"Come now. Do you really expect me to think this is just coincidence? He just happened to come across her? Please," he said with a sneer. "I am not a fool. The odds of such a thing are so astronomical it isn't even funny."

He stepped around the desk until he was close enough that she could smell his cologne.

"Did you or he have anything to do with this? Come clean now and perhaps I won't take it out on him."

Her hand was moving before she even realized she had decided to take a swing at him. His head snapped back more from the shock than the actual force of the slap.

"I had nothing to do with this," she said through the tears rolling down her cheeks. "He had nothing to do with this. How the hell could he? For the love of heaven, explain to me just how the hell he could have had anything to do with this?"

"Then you are saying you acted alone?"

He saw the anger flair again in her tear filled eyes and stepped back before she could take another swing. No, she definitely had nothing to do with it, but he had had to know.
 

"Screw you, Cameron."

"Now Doctor, let's not get melodramatic about all this. Perhaps you can not maintain your objectivity anymore. Perhaps you need a break from this, from him. I can arrange for someone else to visit him this week. Perhaps these visits are just too distressing for you."

Julie shivered. Fear and anger waging a war within her.

"Don't even think it, Cameron."

He slammed the picture onto the desk top. "His name?"

"I told you, I don't know. Nick or Norman, maybe like you said, Nathan. I don't have any of the old files up here. Look in the archives. His name was something like Prince or Crown or something."

"Fine, I'll go check the archives."

"Cameron?" She asked through her tears, the tone of her voice unmistakable as was the unspoken question.

"You may still see him. However, if I find out you've been holding back some information or had anything to do with this." He left the threat hanging in the air as he stormed out of her office.

Julie collapsed into her chair. She wiped at the tears, a mixture of fear and relief flowing within her. She looked at the partially open desk drawer and cursed her carelessness. So close and she had almost screwed everything up. The timing of everything was so crazy, but maybe it would work to her advantage. She reached into the drawer and pulled out a small box from under a stack of papers and slipped it into her purse. Her eyes locked on the printed picture on the top of her desk. She removed the framed photo from her desk drawer and held it, looking from it to the printed picture. A sliver of a smile played on her lips for a moment then turned into a puzzled frown. She wondered what he would think of it all. If he could still comprehend it at all. She put down the framed photo and picked up the printed picture, shaking her head in disbelief. What were the odds of Nathan King stumbling across her?

Cameron let out a curse as he looked through the files. Nathan King? Well she had been right, his name had started with an N and his last name was like Prince or Crown. Part of him insisted she had known all along and that she had merely been screwing with him, but another part tried to rationalize it all. It had, after all, been several years and he had put more than a little emotional stress on her. No, had she known, she would have given up the information after he'd threatened to cut off her visitations.
 

He leafed through the file on the man. The material was of course out of date. They had stopped collecting data on him about a year ago.

"Perhaps we should have kept on top of him," Cameron mused to himself. The empty room did not answer. He silently cursed himself. It seemed like such an obvious oversight at this point. Especially given how things had gone wrong with her. He looked around and noted no phone in the archive room, so he slid the drawer shut and took the file with him back to his office.

He cursed aloud when he entered his office and remembered he'd ripped the phone from the wall. "Screw protocol, even if it is my own," he said as he pulled out his cell phone and dialed.

"Hey boss," Jimmy said as he answered his phone.
 

"Jimmy I need..."

"Nothing yet. It's going to take a while for the searches and even then..."

"Silence."

Jimmy did as instructed.

"I know who he is."

"Really?"

"Nathan King. He was her husband from several years back."

"Really?"