With Every Breath (41 page)

look at his face when he turned around again and backed up. "I was kidding. I was ... you won’t hit me. You never hit me."

And he didn’t then. He caught her by the throat, a handful of her jacket in one hand, his other fist wrapped in her hair, and he was shaking—shaking as he never had—and he wanted to squeeze the breath right out of her. His knuckles were white.

She veered again, triumphant that she had his full attention at last. "You won’t ever love anybody else, Joe! I told you! I won’t let you!"

Not even Lucy. The words were there, hanging between them, as loud as a scream.

He picked her up off the sand. Her feet dangled. She craned her head back, and found the breath to scream. He hurled her away from him before he could break her, before he could let himself destroy her with his bare hands.

She landed in a crumpled heap in the sand. "Don’t you do it!" she howled. "I won’t let you love her!" "Watch carefully, Gina. That’s exactly what I’m going to do."

He actually took four steps before she shot him.

The bullet hit him below his right shoulder. It exploded into his flesh, and he knew it was bad. It flung him face forward into the sand.

He made himself roll over. It was bad, very bad.

Josh’s face swam into his line of vision, blotting out the sky. The boy’s skin was bleached of color, and his eyes swam with tears. His small fingers plucked at Joe’s shirt.

"You were ... supposed ... to go," Joe managed. But he hadn’t. Joe thanked God that he hadn’t.

"Where ... is she?" he went on. But the kid couldn’t talk. He’d forgotten that the kid couldn’t talk.

"Point," he tried again. "Point ... for me. Where did she go?"

Josh pointed. Joe turned his neck, carefully and painfully. Don’t move too much, more bleeding that way. He angled his eyes as much as anything else, and saw Gina staggering back toward the promontory again, making wild zigzags on the beach, waving the gun.

His gun. A .38. Large caliber. A big hole.

"Go ... to my ... truck." He brought his face around again with excruciating care. He looked at Josh. Maybe he should just send him to get Maddie. Less chance for error that way.

No. By the time Maddie could get back, then go to the Pathfinder herself, he would probably be dead. And he had heard her scream. Sending Josh to her could be sending him headlong into danger.

Had to save one of them.

The pain ebbed. Strange. He was aware of something hot and wet underneath him. His blood. But beyond that, there was only an airy, tingling, almost gently cold feeling in his chest.

"Truck," he managed again. "Radio. Two buttons. Josh. Take ... the handset ... push the black ... button. Say
‘
Joe’s down.'
You’ve got ... to say ...
‘
Joe’s down.’
Got to, sport. I’m ... dying."

He thought of how long it would take medevac to get there, even if everything with Josh worked out okay. He closed his eyes, feeling hopeless.

Goddamnit, he said to himself. He had only just started figuring out what he wanted.

His vision was black around the edges. It was a slow, creeping thing, a vile, insidious darkness moving in on him.

Joe groaned. He couldn’t fight it.

Chapter 34

Joe wasn’t coming.

Maddie knew it with some sixth sense, even before it became obvious. Maybe he had gone too far to hear her scream. Whatever, he wasn’t coming.

She was on her own.

"I d-d-don’t know you," she said to the woman, her voice a croak, still trying to back up even though there were the shelves behind her. The woman had a gun.

"I d-d-don’t even know you," she managed again. "Why?
Why are you d-d-doing this?"

That seemed to shake the woman even more, but then she recovered. "You know me."

Her voice was rich, with that edge that came from money and good breeding. It reminded her of Tony Macari’s tone.

"No," Maddie whispered. "I c-can’t hurt you."

The gun was in the woman’s lap, resting there almost idly, but her finger was through the trigger guard. Maddie stared at it, feeling cold, even as her heart hammered. Then she heard another voice, and she

screamed again and jerked to look toward the diningroom door.

The man in the picture.

"Not this time, Dierdre," he said. "I won’t protect you again. I won’t do it. This is senseless."

Maddie looked blankly at the face that she had almost recognized a few moments before. Then everything crashed in on her, and she understood. She began shaking.

"You k-k-killed her," she said to him, forgetting the woman, forgetting the gun for a moment. "You k-k-killed my m-mother."

Harry Reiter ignored that. "You don’t need to stutter now, Madeline. Everything’s fine. It’s all past. It’s over." If his voice wasn’t kind, then neither was it cold. It was as it had always been on the few brief occasions when she had spoken to him. Blunt ... but without that faint, almost-imperceptible accent that so many of the people on the island spoke with. It was missing from Tony’s voice, too, because Tony, too, was actually from the mainland.

It was as though Harry read her mind.

"I’m not really an islander. I just have a small place here, where I stay when I need peace. No phone, no way anyone can intrude upon me. It’s quiet there."

"Your love nest," the woman hissed.

"Shut up, Dierdre," he said, with an odd, weary kindness. His eyes stayed on Maddie. "For the most part, we live on the mainland," he explained. "Dierdre lives on the mainland. But I prefer it here. A few days a week I discard the trappings and demands of the city and come back here. It’s always been kind to me."

"It gave you—" the woman began, her voice cracking. "Right now, right at this moment," he interrupted her, "you have done nothing wrong, Dierdre. You have

committed no crime here. If you’ll just give me the gun, we can forget about this."

"No!" Maddie protested. She felt herself swaying. "We c-c-an’t f-forget!"

Again, Harry ignored her. "Give me the gun, Dierdre. She doesn’t remember. She never knew. Annabel told her nothing."

"She knows." The woman’s voice became thinner, panicked. "She’ll talk about it."

"No. I’ve taken great pains. So did Annabel."

"For my money. Because you would lose my money." "For you, Dierdre. I stopped needing your money a very long time ago. You might think mine is vulgar, but it’s hard-earned and it’s green and it spends. Think about it. When was the last time I ever touched yours?" "She'll speak of it, and I won’t have it get out, Harry. I will not have it be known what you did to me."

Maddie’s eyes whipped back and forth between them. And then her gaze skimmed over the back door.

She wondered what would happen if she simply ran, if the woman would pull the trigger.

She wondered if her legs would carry her. She felt sick, sluggish, feverish, as though in the grip of the flu.

And then Harry Reiter reached down and took the gun. It was as simple as that.

Maddie stared at him disbelievingly. The woman— Dierdre—was weeping with wrenching gasps. Maddie’s legs wobbled and seemed to melt out from beneath her. One moment she was standing, then she felt herself losing her balance. She stumbled backward, against the shelves again, and Harry caught her.

"Don’t touch me!"
she screamed. And she didn’t stutter.

"It’s all right now," Harry said again. "You just need to leave here. That’s all I ever wanted you to do. Not for

me. For yourself. That’s all that’s important, all these many years later."

She realized, as she stared at him, that she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

But she remembered. Finally, she remembered.

She had come in the back door that afternoon. Happy. Maybe hungry. There had been a screen door then, in front of the old wooden one—aluminum, she remembered wildly, and it had rattled when she had wrenched it open. She’d come inside, stared, not understanding at first...

Blood. On the refrigerator and on the walls, but mostly on the floor. And her mother, crumpled, with both legs bent backward, like a cheerleader in midleap, her back arched, her arms flung up ... only she was lying down.

And this man. Harry Reiter. Standing there, over her—crying, had he been crying?—with a gun. He’d seen Maddie and had stared at her for a moment, and what she had seen in his eyes had scared her most of all because that kind of anguish shouldn’t have been there, not in the eyes of a man she’d thought they barely knew.

She had run, screaming. She had not gone into the pantry.

She pressed her hands to her temples. "I d-d-don’t remember the rest."

She saw Harry look triumphantly at the woman. "There, I told you. All this, all your fear, has been for nothing."

The woman’s face twisted. "I can’t bear it again. I can’t go through it all over again. The talk."

"People didn’t even talk that time, Dierdre. The only voices you ever heard were the ones you dreaded, in your own mind."

She drew herself up, her spine straightening, and

Maddie saw something of the woman she must have been a long time ago. Her face sagged a little, but her eyes remained alert and hot.

Dierdre wheeled herself outside to compose herself, her chin high. Maddie took a shaky step toward the door herself.

"You must go, Maddie. You must leave the island." She looked back at Harry. And she knew then that she wasn’t going anywhere. If she hadn’t remembered this place, then at least it felt vaguely like home, in a way no place else had ever felt for her before.

"No," she whispered. "I c-c-can’t."

"You’re in danger."

Fury screamed through her like a firecracker. "Then just shoot me, damn you! Don’t play games with me! Do it!"

He looked honestly startled. "I’d never hurt you."

"The kitten—"

"Was to warn you off. To scare you."

"You butchered
it!" she screamed.

"No. It was already dead. Someone had broken its neck. All I did was hang it up, cut it a little, to scare you."

A real case of overkill, Joe had said. Maddie swayed. "The flowers—"

"Yes. I brought those, too."

"Why?"

"Because it’s not safe for you here." He hesitated, then spoke what he had come to believe about the mysterious, anonymous person who was helping him. "Someone else must have loved her, Madeline. Someone I never knew about. That’s my best guess. Someone else loved your mother, and now they want you to leave, too. And I’m not sure that they won’t hurt you."

"Who?" she whispered. "Who?"

"I don’t know who it is."

"You’re my f-f-father."

She didn’t know where that came from. She certainly hadn’t been thinking it. She’d been thinking about someone else wanting to hurt her—someone else, on top of everything—and that this man was going to inordinate lengths to protect her. Or at least he thought he was, in his own twisted way. And then she had opened her mouth, and the words came out.

He didn’t argue with her.

"T-t-tell me."

"I will," he said finally. "I will, if you’ll just give me your word that you’ll leave here. Then none of this will matter."

Maddie struggled with herself. But in the end, her dignity and pride still mattered. She would not, could not, lie.

"I w-want to s-stay here. With J-Joe."

Something happened to Harry’s face. Something soft yet hard, pained yet pleased. "Yes. Well, there is that." He gazed out onto the deck. "Then you must live with what I tell you," he decided. "You have the right to know, but look at her, Madeline. Look at Dierdre and tell me if she ought to be punished now. She has nothing. She has not had me, not for thirty-five long years, and I am what she killed for. She does not have the use of her legs, she does not have her health. She has, perhaps, three or four years left if God is willing. She lives with that knowledge daily, with every ache and pain."

He looked back at her. "I grant you that that wasn’t the case when I first chose to protect her. I did it then because of my own guilt. Because I was the catalyst. I’ll do it now because she’s had enough. She had the stroke right afterward, you know, so she didn’t live with it lightly. And in the end, here, today, she didn’t shoot you, did she?"

Maddie shook her head dazedly.

"I did not kill your mother."

"You were here," she croaked. "You had the gun. She was d-d-dead."

"True enough. That was how I found her. The gun was on the floor. I knew who had fired it. I had to take it away."

"Why?" she demanded again. Even remembering what she did, so little made sense.

"Because I had made my decisions. Annabel had made her decisions. All that was left was for us to settle down and live with them, but it didn’t work out that way. I didn’t feel good about her choices. They tormented me, year after year, as I watched, unable to do anything. Dierdre lost a piece of me to that, even though I vowed I would never see your mother again, and I didn’t, not really. But Dierdre could never have that part of me back that had fallen in love with Annabel, even after it was over, because that part kept watching and fretting and grieving over both of you. So when you were nine, Dierdre finally had enough and she determined to set us both free." Harry looked at her steadily. "You understand by now. I loved your mother intensely, with my every breath. But I didn’t meet her in time."

She had a wild, echoing memory of Joe’s love theory and felt herself nodding.

"I was already married to Dierdre. I had met her in my early twenties, long before I ever laid eyes on your mother. Dierdre was beautiful, too—darkness to Annabel’s light—and well above me. Unattainable." He actually smiled in memory. "But Dierdre always had a hot streak. She decided she wanted me, perhaps because I was forbidden, perhaps because it upset her parents so,