The Last White Knight (19 page)

Erik took a slow, deep breath of morning air, his eyes steady on Lynn’s. This was a test. She’d given him his chance to prove himself to her; now she was going to put his character to the test to see just how sincere he was. He could see the trap as plain as day, but there was nothing for him to do but step into it.
He had made his decision. He would accept any challenge, pick up any gauntlet, if it meant winning his lady’s heart.

“I hope you have a plan here, Ms. Shaw,” he said.

The smile that beamed across her face was worth whatever damage this situation might do to his career, he thought with a wry smile for the image-conscious man he had been a scant few days ago. Love was leading him down a dangerous path, especially considering that the lady holding his hand had every intention of leaving him in the dust. But as with every struggle he’d ever faced, he planned to come out of this a winner—with his heart intact and Lynn Shaw by his side.

“This is a lot more exciting on television,” Lynn remarked, hunkering down in her seat.

She placed her left ankle over her right knee and crossed her arms, resettling herself for what she knew could be a long and fruitless wait. She had left the house with Erik a little after eight-thirty, making it known to one and all that they were going to a late movie, but they had only driven around the corner, where they had parked Erik’s Thunderbird and left it. They were ensconced now in a musty, dusty ’69 Ford Fairlane that Father Bartholomew stored
in the garage behind Horizon House. The car afforded them a clear view of the back door. If and when Regan left the house, they would follow her as best they could on foot.

They’d been waiting nearly two hours. The neighborhood was cloaked in darkness and quiet. Even on a Saturday night, this was not an active part of town. The grills had been cooled down and put away, the lawn chairs folded. Everyone had gone indoors to escape the mosquitoes and watch television or turn in early after a long, hard day of lawn maintenance. The last of the interior lights went off at St. Stephen’s, leaving glowing only the enormous lantern that hung on a chain above the main entrance. In the dark the building looked more like a medieval castle than ever, its stone turrets rising up against the night sky.

Father Bartholomew emerged from the side door, fumbling with his keys and trying to keep a pair of books tucked under his arm. The books slipped to the sidewalk with a thump. As he bent to retrieve them, his glasses fell off, then he dropped the keys. “Well, fiddlesticks,” he grumbled, his voice carrying plainly across the expanse of lawns. He gathered himself and his things together and trundled off toward the rectory, the shadows of the buildings swallowing him up in darkness.

As his footsteps faded away, Erik turned to Lynn, the corners of his mouth turning up. “We could make it more exciting,” he said, his smoky voice low and suggestive as he slid an arm around her shoulders.

“Some cop you would have made,” she jeered, elbowing him playfully in the ribs. “Making out on stakeouts while crime runs rampant in the streets. Do you think that’s how Reuter and Briggs spend their shift?”

“God, I hope not,” Erik said with feeling.

He settled his arm around Lynn’s shoulder and eased her against his side. She offered no protest, though she thought it probably would have been best for both of them if she had simply moved away. She didn’t have the heart to do it, not tonight, not when so much was still hanging in the balance. She didn’t want to feel alone tonight. She didn’t want to feel alone any sooner than was absolutely necessary.

Funny, she thought as she stared at the little plastic statue of the Virgin Mary that was glued to the dashboard, she’d been alone for so long the feeling had just become a part of her. It had been absorbed into who she was: She had black hair and green eyes, she had a bad temper, and she was alone. She had ceased to think of it as an affliction. Until now. It had been so long since she had wanted something
more than the life she’d carved out for herself, she’d forgotten what it was to yearn for something beyond her reach.

She leaned her head against Erik’s chest and closed her eyes against the pain welling in her chest. She had Horizon—at least for the moment. She had her girls. She had Lillian and Martha. That was all she was allowed, and she felt damn lucky to have them after the mess she’d made of her early life. She wasn’t allowed to want more. She sure as hell wasn’t allowed to want this knight in shining armor sitting with his arms around her. But she couldn’t let go of him just yet.

Tipping her head back, Lynn sought Erik’s mouth with her own, hungrily, kissing him with all the urgency of the turmoil that swirled inside her. Twisting around on the seat of the Fairlane, she sought to press herself against him, wishing she could just become part of him, a part he could keep and cherish.

“Hey,” he whispered, feathering kisses along her jawline. “It’s all right, sweetheart. We’ll work everything out. We will,” he insisted, stroking a hand over her hair.

Lynn settled back in her place, embarrassed at the way she had allowed her emotions to break through the surface of her control. She pulled her feet up on the seat, raising a minor cloud of dust, and wrapped
her arms around her knees to keep herself from touching Erik again.

“Just thought I’d sneak a quick one before the action starts,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t call her on her feeble attempt at lightening the situation. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He was watching her, quietly considering. She hadn’t fooled him, but he let it slide, and Lynn had all she could do to keep from exhaling a sigh of relief. The confrontation would come, of that she had no doubt, but at least it wouldn’t come now.

“There may not
be
any action, you know,” he said, relaxing back against the seat. He rested one hand on the steering wheel and stared out the windshield at the towering walls of St. Stephen’s. “Graham has put a lot of pressure on the police department to patrol the neighborhood at regular intervals. Anyone trying something tonight would just be asking for trouble.”

“Asking for
something,
” Lynn said.

“You really think Graham’s son is behind this, don’t you?”

“I’m willing to bet he is. He’s trying so hard to be like his father it almost hurts to watch. Elliot is too wrapped up in his cause to notice. He treats E.J. like a secretary instead of a son.”

“You think the boy is committing the vandalism to win his father’s attention.”

“Or to help win his father’s campaign for him by ‘proving him right,’ so to speak. If he can make everyone believe the Horizon residents are as much a detriment to the neighborhood as Elliot has portrayed them to be, then he’ll help his father win that city council seat. It’s a classic case of a child seeking parental approval. They don’t always make the best choices as to how to go about it. Believe me, I know.”

“But even if Graham’s son is the one responsible, that doesn’t solve the mystery of Regan’s clandestine journeys.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Lynn’s shoulders sagged a little under the burden of that particular weight. She’d had another heart-to-heart with Regan that morning, with nothing to show for it but frustration. Regan had wedged herself into the corner of her bed, her back against the wall, and locked herself up inside a shell of hostility and distrust.

“Why should I tell you anything? You’ll only come down on me for breaking all your freaking rules. You’re not on my side, so just cut the ‘I’m your best friend’ routine.”

“Right now I am your best friend, Regan. In fact, I’m about the only friend you’ve got.”

“Bull. You’re my freaking jail keeper. I’m not telling you anything, and if that screws up your plans for your precious Horizon House that’s just too damn bad.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to lose her no matter what,” Lynn murmured, admitting her fear aloud for the first time. “I want so badly to help her, but I just can’t seem to reach her.”

Erik listened to the pain and the bewilderment in Lynn’s voice, and he held her hand to offer what comfort he could. She seemed so genuinely puzzled by her inability to get through to Regan Mitchell. It seemed as if she were standing in front of a mirror trying to reach through it to touch her own reflection.

“Could anyone have reached
you
at that age?” he ventured softly.

“I don’t know,” she whispered, staring unseeing through the dirty windshield of the car. “No one really tried.”

The sadness in those words went straight to Erik’s heart and stuck there, as sharp and piercing as needles. He looked at Lynn and tried to picture her young and pregnant and alone, and anger burned inside him, anger toward the people who had meant
so much to her who had turned her away, and anger toward himself. He wanted to think he would have protected her, defended her, been a father to her child, but the truth of the matter was he probably would have been at the head of the line to ridicule her. What a pompous, self-righteous hypocrite he was. And Lynn thought
she
wasn’t worthy of
him
.

“I love you,” he said, needing her to hear it. It couldn’t change what had happened in her past, but somewhere in his heart he believed it could change their future. The words might bind her to him, might hold her close, might be the one thread that would keep her from breaking away. If she knew he loved her,
really
loved her … He wanted to have a chance with her, a chance to slay dragons for her and right wrongs and live up to the image she had of him.

“Erik, please don’t—”

He silenced her with a finger to her lips. His gaze locked on hers in the faint light. “Don’t tell me not to love you, Lynn. Don’t.”

He lowered his head, intending to silence any protest with his kiss, but a movement at the back of the house caught his eye and he jerked his head around, searching the shadows, willing his eyes to see past the darkness.

“It’s Regan,” he whispered. “I’d know those combat boots anywhere.”

Lynn slipped farther down on the seat of the Fairlane until she was kneeling on the floor and peering over the dash. Regan had climbed out of the second-floor bathroom window and was making her way carefully down the sloping roof of the bay window directly below it. For an instant she was caught in a wedge of streetlight that illuminated her pale skin and dark clothing. Then she was in shadow again as she dropped down onto the lawn.

She came straight toward them, and for one terrible moment Lynn thought the girl might have been using the tumbledown old garage as a hiding place, that she would walk right in and find them there waiting for her like hunters lying in wait for some unsuspecting doe. But she ducked away at the last second, skimming her fingernails down the side of the building as she made her way past it to the alley.

Lynn let out a breath and an expletive. “I never would have made it as a spy.”

“Too late now, Mata Hari,” Erik said, easing open the driver’s door.

They skulked down the alley like a pair of thieves, keeping to the cover of a row of overgrown lilac bushes that grew behind St. Stephen’s rectory. Erik led the way, towing Lynn along behind him like a
recalcitrant child. Lynn lagged back, terrified of having Regan hear them.

If the girl caught her at this game of hide-and-seek, that would be the end of Lynn’s chances with her. Lynn knew the one thing that would absolutely destroy all hope would be a breach of trust, and Regan would definitely see being followed as that. If wouldn’t matter that Regan didn’t deserve to be trusted. Therein lay the challenge. Lynn remembered it well—anyone wanting to reach her would have to want to do it in spite of all the rotten things she did. Regan wouldn’t see this for what it was—Lynn trying to prove the girl’s innocence. She would see it as just the opposite—Lynn trying to prove her guilt, trying to catch her at something.

They crossed the street, ducking behind parked cars as Regan hurried on ahead, almost breaking into a jog at points. Wherever she was going, she was eager to get there. She stepped around the corner of a house, disappearing just as a police cruiser turned the corner onto a side street. Erik pulled Lynn behind a privet hedge and they crouched down holding their breath as the car slowed, then moved on by. That was all they needed, she thought, to get caught sneaking through people’s lawns in the dead of night. The headlines flashed before her eyes.

“Which way did she go?” Erik whispered.

Lynn snapped back to the present. “I’m not sure. Listen, Erik, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. If someone catches us, your reputation—”

“Will you let
me
worry about my reputation?”

“But—”

“Come on. I see her.”

He didn’t give Lynn the chance to refuse. He turned and moved, dragging her along in his wake like a rag doll. Her sneakers scuffed on the cement of the driveway as Erik led her after their quarry. They crossed another street and doubled back to the north, hurrying to keep Regan in sight, struggling to keep quiet and keep hidden. Lynn’s lungs burned as she tried to keep from panting aloud for breath. She got a stitch in her side from running bent over. And all the while, an awful sense of foreboding was building in her gut. She didn’t want to know the outcome of this journey, because instinctively she knew it was going to be bad. It wasn’t the knowledge of guilt—it was intuition, a sense of déjà vu, a heaviness in the air. She wanted to turn around and run, but there was nowhere to run to and no time, because just as she was gathering the strength to stop and turn, Erik dropped to his knees behind a Dumpster and jerked her down with him.

Lynn glanced around her, taking a reading on their location. They’d gone maybe five or six blocks
toward downtown, reaching the outer fringe of the business district, where low-rent houses intermingled with fix-it shops and auto-parts stores. The Dumpster they were crouched behind sat in back of one of the cinder-block buildings, at the back of a weedy patch of dirt that had been cleared away for employee parking. The security light above the back door of the business was broken, but enough light drifted from the streetlamp on the corner to make visibility relatively good.