With Every Breath (26 page)

"Hello, hello."

Joe let his breath out as the big man moved closer. "Hey, Angus," he said wearily. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to see Maddie and her boy." He hesitated and gave great concentration to his battered, sandy sneakers. "She was mad at me this morning."

Before Joe could respond to that, he felt the warmth of her behind him. He realized that he had felt her before she even touched him. He’d have to think about that later. Then she pushed him gently aside.

"Angus," she said softly, "come on in."

She unlocked the door. Angus lumbered in behind them, then stood awkwardly in the middle of the living room, his hands deep in his pockets.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

Joe watched her brows go up. "For what?"

"For making you mad. You said we could visit later." "Oh, Angus," she breathed regretfully. She had known he would take it this way, but then she had forgotten about him. Impulsively she reached out and took his face in her hands. "I wasn’t mad at you.
And of course we can visit now."

She did it the way she would have touched Josh, Joe thought, or any forlorn child. And he saw something happen to Angus’s eyes, something that irritated the hell out of him, something not childlike. Angus’s mind might have stopped maturing in the third grade, but his body was plenty old enough to need release.

Joe acted fast, without thought. He closed the distance

between the three of them and put a warning hand on Maddie’s arm. He used enough pressure to make her step away.

"Okay, that’s enough."

She looked at him, confused. "Enough of what?"

Joe opened his mouth with no true idea of how to answer, not while Josh was looking on curiously, and with Angus glaring at him for taking away what had probably been the best thing to happen to him in— what—forty-five years?

"No sense in getting melodramatic about it," he snapped finally, and Maddie flushed.

"There’s no sense in being rude about it, either."

"Did you ever stop to think that maybe
he
noticed somebody up here last night?" He was scrambling. "Come on, Angus, sit down. I need to talk to you about police business."

Maddie was about to say something when the phone rang, surprising all of them. She jumped, then laughed nervously.

"I guess they fixed it while we were out. Go ahead," she said more calmly. "You talk to Angus, and I’ll get the phone."

Chapter 21

It was for Joe. The voice was male, abrupt, but with a strain of excitement. So much for Sheila’s discretion, Maddie thought. She laid the receiver on top of the television and motioned to him.

Joe’s brows lowered, and he stood up from the sofa again. Angus got to his feet as well.

"I have to go now," Angus said. Then he smiled shyly. "I’m glad you’re not mad at me."

Maddie shook her head, half-listening to Joe talk on the phone. She was getting the impression that something was wrong, and her stomach clenched.

"No," she said absently to Angus. "I’ve just been scared lately. When your nerves are strained, sometimes your voice is a little sharper than you mean it to be." Angus nodded urgently. "Your man hurt you."

"My—oh, Josh’s father. Did Joe tell you that? He hurt Josh, actually, but yes, that hurt me, too. Excuse me."

She heard Joe slam the phone down. When she turned around, his face was white.

"What?" she gasped. "What’s happened now?"

He had never learned to mince words, and he was too enraged, too dumbfounded to do it then. "Gina tried to kill herself."

The room tilted. Maddie sat down on the sofa fast.

"Because of me?" Oh, no,
she thought, no.

"Who the hell knows?" Joe growled, grabbing his coat again. He trailed off and looked blankly out the window. And no matter what his relationship with his ex-wife had deteriorated into, Maddie saw guilt in his eyes.

"Can I do anything?" she asked quietly.

Joe looked back at her without answering. "Jesus," he said after a moment, seemingly unable to move.

"You have to go."

"Yeah."

The door banged, and Maddie realized that Angus had left. Then Josh made another sound.

It was a groan, maybe a grunt, and he went to pull on Joe’s hand. When Joe looked down at him, Josh tugged and tugged again until Joe went to his knees. Josh hugged him as he had done with Maddie earlier, giving comfort to those he cared about as best he could without words.

This time Joe felt his own throat close. "Thanks, sport. It’s sad, but it’ll be all right. It’ll be okay." He looked up and met Maddie’s eyes.

Will it, Joe?

She watched him stand again. "I shouldn’t be gone more than half an hour," he said, his voice strained. "I just need to make sure medevac gets here. They’ll take her over to Jonesport. Doc Mazur—our guy here on the island—is dead drunk."

"Oh, God," she moaned.

"Yeah, well, that’s sort of the norm. The fire department can hold her together until the chopper comes for

her. They’re trained in that stuff. Hell, for that matter, so are my officers. What we can’t do here is put blood back into her for what she’s lost." She watched his face change from disbelief, to anger, to something almost but not quite sorrowful. "She cut her wrists."

"Do you really think she meant to die?"
Maddie asked, shaken.

Joe’s expression hardened. "She meant to do exactly what she’s doing—get me to her side. And when I’m there, she'll plead and beg and warn me to stay away from you, or she’ll really do it next time."

Maddie felt sick.

"Under the circumstances, I don’t think it would be a real good move for me to take you along, so I’ll send somebody back here to sit with you. It’s Lou Paul out in the car tonight, and he’s at Gina’s now."

The name meant nothing to her, but she managed to nod.

He was stalling. They both realized it at the same moment.

"Go to her, Joe," Maddie said. "We’ll be fine. It’ll only be a few minutes."

"Goddamn
her," he snarled. He slammed the door hard on his way out.

Maddie watched the Pathfinder pull out of the drive again, her throat closing. Of course he had to go. He was that kind of man. No matter what had happened between them, no matter how ugly it had gotten, he would make sure that Gina got to the hospital on the mainland because underneath that craggy, sometimes short and rude surface, Joe Gallen was so inherently good and kind.

She realized that it had never occurred to him not to go to Gina, and she went to sit down again slowly. She thought of everything that had happened in the short

time since she had woken up this morning, snug and smug in her sealed-off bedroom, and she groaned aloud.

At eight o’clock, the man stood guard at the west side of the island. He watched boat lights approach as a small whaler cut through the water. Occasionally the lights disappeared behind a swell, but then they would bob up high again. At length, he could hear the motor, a steady ch-ch-ch, then it sputtered and died.

The lights went out, but the boat had not yet reached the shore. It would ride the surf in, he thought.

He had played a hunch coming to The Wick so soon. He hadn’t logically expected Graycie to come yet. It proved his suspicions, that Graycie had already been in Maine when he had finally called him. It didn’t matter. The man was ready for him. He’d been ready from the time he had hung up the phone.

He took the gun out of his cardigan pocket. He checked to make sure it was loaded, although he’d already done so several times. Then he went still, scowling at the sound of sirens and another motor.

He looked up sharply at the black sky. A helicopter? Medevac?

His old heart very nearly stopped in the split second it took for common sense to explode back into his brain. Of course Graycie couldn’t have gotten to her already. By the man’s very accurate calculations Graycie should only just then be beaching the whaler.

But that meant that the man didn’t have much time. He started for the house at 110. He hurried.

The other cop didn’t come right away. Maddie paced the living room, going back to the window again and

again to look out for him. She finally realized that she was making Josh edgy. She forced herself to sit on the sofa and watch TV, but her thoughts spiraled and whirled.

Finally, she understood the real reason Joe didn’t leave Candle. It would kill Gina, drive her right over the edge. For some reason—guilt?—he was letting her hold on to him. Maddie groaned again—she had no business getting involved with this troubled man, none at all. She didn’t need the complications, and certainly Josh didn’t either, she thought. Then the knock she’d been waiting for finally came at the door.

She jumped to her feet. Thank God.

"We’re okay now, baby," she said to Josh, but he didn’t seem concerned. He didn’t even look away from the television. He’d calmed down once she’d stopped cutting patterns in the living-room rug.

Suddenly Maddie had a thought that made her heart leap with something more than relief. Maybe the other cop hadn’t come back right away because Joe had decided that he didn’t have to stay with Gina after all. She’d thought she’d heard the helicopter come in a little while ago. If that were the case, then Joe could well be back already.

She opened the door. And looked into Rick’s too-bright eyes.

She had been so caught up in what was happening to Joe that she had forgotten her own danger. For one deadly moment, she had forgotten and simply opened the door. Her blood went to cold, jagged crystals that shattered and rained down into her toes. She tried to draw in breath to scream, but there was none.

Rick smiled.

He leaned lazily with one shoulder against the doorjamb, making no move for her, secure in his power, in his superior strength. "You led me on a merry chase. What gives, cupcake? It was like you didn’t want me to find you. I sure hope it wasn’t that."

Once she would have tried to reason with him. Once she would have tried to placate him. But she knew that none of that would ever make any difference. He had his own agenda, and nothing she could say would ever reach him.

If she tried to speak to him, appeal to him, she or Josh would die.

Maddie felt herself sway, and that was when she found she could scream after all.

"Joshie, run!"

Her voice terrified him. Josh came to his feet and was gone from the living room as though a giant hand had plucked him up and thrown him. She saw Rick’s hand snake out just as fast. He’s going to grab me. When he has me, he’ll call Josh back.

Maddie spun, eluding him out of sheer terror and desperation. She ran after Josh. She raced through the dining room, and in the split second it took to reach the door to the kitchen, something sane flashed in her mind.

The table.

Suddenly she possessed a strength that was inhuman. She reached back for it, dragging it with her. She nearly tore a nail off jamming a comer of the table into the door.

When Rick cursed, it was a voice out of her nightmares, and it echoed in her head again and again. And then he caught her.

"Nooo!" she howled, then she choked the word off. Oh, please, josh, don’t come back.

Rick had her left arm in an iron grip, just above the elbow. He scrambled up onto the table, closing the distance between them as she twisted helplessly to get free of his hand. His other one tangled into her hair, wrenching her head back.

"What do I have to do with you?" he panted. "Why can’t you just be good? I’m not going to let you go, cupcake. I’m not letting you go anywhere at all."

And then his hand was gone, releasing her arm, but he still had her hair, and she felt the cold kiss of metal at the base of her neck. Maddie went still.

He still had his gun.

The medevac chopper lifted off, ponderously at first, its nose angled downward, then it leveled out and soared. Joe watched it with such tangled emotion that, in that moment, he himself could not have spoken a word.

Gina would be fine. A small, vicious part of him wished she had died.

That appalled him. He wondered briefly how he could go on living inside himself, knowing that a piece of his heart could hate profoundly enough to wish another human being dead. But God, he was so tired of her. He was tired of her cruel games and the pain she caused. She was a manacle chaining him to the past. She cut him with her own self-loathing and her twisted love again and again. And he was still uncomfortable with the thought that even a piece of him could wish she was just ... gone.

It was a coward’s way out, he realized, and he wasn’t thinking of her, but of himself.

Gina was not a coward. He knew she had never intended to die. Cassie Diehl had gotten to her in time. She had called Cassie first, no doubt setting the stage, but then maybe she’d balked, maybe she’d had a moment of lucidity—who the Christ knows?—because when Cassie