A man she still loved. A man she feared even more.
She nodded.
“Dana! Baby! Oh my God, it’s good to see you.”
Chief Brian O’Connor didn’t seem to age. His hair was still as dark as hers, although he was approaching his fifty-fifth birthday. His eyes as blue. Standing up from his chair at a conference table, he reached out to her with both arms, but didn’t approach.
She followed Chantel to the other side of the table, taking one of the four seats there, as far from the chair her father occupied on the other side as she could. Tad took a seat at the end. Closest to Miranda.
Playing both ends against the middle?
That was fitting.
Chantel landed right next to Miranda.
Maybe they were protecting her by sitting on either side. Maybe she liked the feeling.
Maybe she didn’t need it.
Brian moved closer, taking the seat across from her. They were doing what they’d always done. Communicating with every move, every look, as much as with the words that weren’t being said.
He was cat to her mouse.
She could choose her chair, he’d stand back and allow it. And then he’d move in. If she’d been a good girl, a smart girl to his way of thinking, she would’ve immediately made the right choice, the obvious choice—planting her butt in the seat across from him.
Or next to him, depending on how he wanted this to play out.
Trouble was, she had no idea what he was up to. Other than the ultimate win of getting Ethan to his home in North Carolina.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said, his hands reaching across the table as he leaned in, looking her in the eye.
She looked back. Said nothing. Her face remained flat, not because she willed it, but because she was on hold. Every system in her body. Holding.
With his eyes narrowing, probably imperceptible to everyone else, he met her gaze for another long, uncomfortable minute, and then turned to Tad.
“Thank you, Detective. I owe you a debt of gratitude. A lifetime of it. You’ve brought my daughter back to me.”
Tad took a breath, Miranda felt it, although she wasn’t touching him. She prepared to hear his response, but her father wasn’t giving up control of the floor.
“I’d hoped we could have this conversation in private,” he said, turning his full attention on Chantel.
“Tad and Miranda have chosen to be here,” Chantel answered, pleasantly enough, but without a hint of being willing to give his request consideration.
“Tad, yes, that’s fine. But Dana—Miranda—we might be better served if I could have a moment alone with Detective Fairbanks.”
What game was he playing? Clearly he knew Chantel wasn’t going to give him what he was asking.
So why ask?
“Your daughter has expressed a desire to be here,” Chantel said. “Can you tell me why she shouldn’t be?”
Brian looked at her again, and for a brief moment, she thought she saw regret in his eyes. Her heart pounded and her chest grew tight.
He’d loved her once. In her deepest heart, she knew he still did.
Just as she knew that the ugly parts of him, the pained and bitter pieces inside, ruled his relationship with her.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” he said. “I didn’t want it to go this way. For your mother’s sake, I’d hoped...”
He’d invoked her mom. It was going to be no-holds-barred. Miranda had no idea what was coming, but she grabbed the sides of her chair with both hands and held on, because she knew it wasn’t going to be good.
* * *
Tad stared at the man he’d revered. In a dark suit and tie, the chief embodied authority with every move he made, every word he spoke. Tad wondered how he, and thousands of others, had so misjudged him?
Could it even be possible?
And yet...he knew Miranda. There was no doubting that her father was the abuser from whom she’d run.
With almost no money, she’d taken her newborn from the small apartment she’d moved into from her dorm shortly before she’d given birth, left behind everything familiar, everyone she knew, everything she held dear, and started a new life for herself and her son. She’d gone to school. Had a well-paying, respectable job she loved. A career, not just a job.
The former he’d found out from what her father had told him in the beginning—that she’d left her apartment in the dark of night. That O’Connor knew for a fact that she’d had little money.
Now he said, “My daughter needs help.” Not at all the words Tad had expected to hear from the chief, who sat with a closed manila folder in front of him. “She’s mentally...unstable. Has been since shortly after her mother died. She refused to go to school. Threw fits if I tried to make her. Sobbed until she made herself sick. Eventually, I had to get her help.”
He pulled a sheet out of his folder, placing it before Chantel. “That’s a signed letter from her psychiatrist and it’s in her school records, as well. It states that she could have recurring episodes later in life.” He looked briefly at Tad and then back at Chantel.
“Her psychiatrist believes that her mother’s passing just as Miranda was entering puberty was likely the catalyst that sent her over the edge. Her emotions became too much for her handle, and her psyche invented a way for her to check out. She’ll do fine for a while, and then she’ll relapse. Often in cycle with hormonal changes. Which is what happened shortly after my grandson was born. She got it in her head that I was going to try to take him from her and so she ran, taking him from me.”
The man looked from Chantel, to Tad, and then back, his tone soft, compassionate. “I never intended to take him. A child needs his mother, and it was obvious that she adored him. And that she was taking good care of him. But knowing her...challenges, I felt it was my duty to keep them close by. A newborn baby—if something happened to him, and I knew about her issues and did nothing...”
His voice trailed off, leaving the obvious unsaid.
Maybe for Miranda’s sake.
“The night Dana took Jeffrey out of his crib in the middle of the night and fled into the dark, I’d driven to Asheville, stopped by her apartment, asking her to move back home to Charlotte. She was living alone, said the father of her baby was dead, but I couldn’t believe her at that point. When she has her episodes, she tells lies that even she believes are true.”
Tad listened. Hearing sense. Logic. A tragic, tragic correlation of events.
Glancing at Miranda, he was struck by the lack of emotion on her face. It was as though she wasn’t there with them.
And then he saw the whiteness of her knuckles against the seat of her chair.
“She accused me that night of abusing her,” the man said. He had Tad’s attention. “Said I’d been getting away with it for years, but that it was going to end right then. That her son wouldn’t grow up as she had.”
“Had you been abusing her, sir?” Chantel’s question was nonjudgmental in tone. They were having a conversation. Tad’s interrogation skills tended to go in another direction.
“Of course not.”
He turned to Miranda. “Did I ever, ever raise a hand to your mother?”
“No.”
“And did I ever, ever even look like I might raise a hand to you or speak to you in anger while she was alive?”
“No.”
He looked back at Chantel. “I’m telling you, these delusions started after my wife died.”
White knuckles against dark wood. They stayed in Tad’s peripheral vision.
“When she first went missing and I was out of my mind with worry for her, I called her psychiatrist. Told him what she’d said. He suggested to me that since there’d been no abuse in our home, chances were good she’d suffered it elsewhere. Said it didn’t sound like something she’d just made up. We came to the obvious conclusion that i
t was her ex she’d been afraid of. That she was, in her own confused way, trying to tell me something. That she’d said the guy was dead because she’d wished him to be.”
One hundred percent focused, Tad was aware of every crack on the wall, the floor, the scars on the table. Every line on the chief’s face.
And those knuckles. Still white.
“You told Tad when you hired him that you’d had recent word that her ex was dead,” Chantel said as Tad was reaching a point of no longer being able to hold his silence.
His time would come. When he knew it all.
O’Connor bowed his head, then met Tad’s gaze. “I lied to you about that,” he said. “I didn’t know. I wasn’t even sure who he was. I suspected it was that kid she’d hung out with, talked about a time or two, but I never met him. Or knew his name. But I knew about you. Your reputation. And when events happened in such a way that you were out of work, I looked into your record more completely. I knew that if anyone could find my kids, you could.”
“You were willing to put them at risk of an abuser possibly finding them through my search? Of me leading him to them?”
“I knew that wouldn’t happen. You’d be there every minute, until I could ascertain enough about her mental state to come myself. You’d keep them safe. You always do. Keep those you’re protecting safe. You’d give your life if you had to. Because of your sister. Because of Steffie.”
He sucked in air at the mention of his sister’s name. The man was right. He’d have given his life to protect Miranda and Ethan.
“At the same time, I was doing everything I could to locate Jeffrey’s father. You telling me that she’d named the boy after his father—that was my big break. Once I had a name, I could go to Asheville and learn about any Jeff who might have spent time with my daughter.”
“That’s how you got the coroner’s report,” Tad said.
Opening his folder, O’Connor pulled out the original. Along with a death certificate. Cause of death, overdose. Not car accident.
Tad glanced at Miranda. Like a recalcitrant child, she sat quietly, allowing the three of them to talk around her.
“You told me he died because of a car accident,” he said, expecting her to ignore him.
Instead, with eyes that had little life in them, she addressed him. “It was an intramural football injury, actually. And an overdose. He’d been told he only had a couple of months to live. He knew it wasn’t going to be long enough to see his baby born. So he mixed his pain medication with alcohol and some over-the-counter sleep aid, leaving a note so that I’d understand he wasn’t running out on me, but was preventing me from having to care for him at the end. He’d said he was also providing for us financially, in that he wouldn’t be eating up what money he had left on his medications and medical care. He left it for me, instead.”
Tad wasn’t sure what to believe anymore. Had no basis with which to make that decision. Just as Miranda no longer had reason to lie.
Chantel was allowing him the floor, so he turned back to O’Connor. “Why now?” Tad asked, wishing to God he could know what Miranda was thinking.
“Because I was diagnosed with mesothelioma. Time was up. I couldn’t go without knowing they were okay. Without seeing them. Without letting her know they were set for life, financially. Without having a chance to teach my grandson some things about being a man.
“But as it turns out, it was a misdiagnosis. I had a biopsy soon after you came out here and what they’d found in the lining of my lungs was nonmalignant.”
Miranda’s chin tightened.
“So now, I’ve come to collect my family and take them home,” the chief said, looking at Chantel, as though Miranda wasn’t even there.
“Miranda is a grown woman with a successful career. You can’t force her to go with you,” Chantel said.
“I think I can,” the man said. “Actually, I know I can.” He opened his file again. “I’ve been in touch with her psychiatrist and I have here a signed commitment order—”
“It’s okay.” Miranda shook her head. “You don’t need to do this. I’ll go with you.” She turned to him, tears in her eyes. “You win, okay?”
Brian O’Connor looked almost sad for a second before he reached across the table, holding out his hand.
Tad could hardly believe it when she let go of the seat she’d been clutching and put her hand in his.
Chapter 28
Miranda hadn’t had any idea what her father was going to do, but she’d known he’d do something. He never left himself unprepared.
Or left stones unturned.
Briefly, sitting in the conference room with Chantel and Tad, she’d had moments of hope. When her father had confirmed his illness, she’d figured that even worst case, she’d only have to fight him off for another year or two, less depending on how quickly he grew weaker.
When he’d admitted that the illness had been misdiagnosed, she’d known where it was all going.
How it would end.
So she’d play it out.
She asked her father, in front of the others, if she could please have an hour or so back at her house with Tad, so they could clear out her stuff and Ethan’s, because she knew that if she asked without the others there, he’d likely say no just to establish that he was the one in charge.
Sitting there, listening to him render her powerless, it was as though she’d become him. If she was going to save Ethan, she was going to have to play her father’s game. Know him better than he knew himself.
Her son had his favorite things. She was going to get them for him.
Her lease and so on she’d deal with later.
Reminding her that she could have everything packed and shipped if she wanted to, he said, “I have us on a flight back to Charlotte that leaves in a little over four hours. I’m expected in my office Thursday morning. Will half an hour do?”
If he’d refused outright, he’d have looked bad in front of Chantel.
Five minutes would do. She knew what she was after. The money. And Ethan’s things. And couldn’t take more than she could easily carry. She’d be leaving it all soon enough, but if she could give Ethan his favorite things, just for the first few days...
She might have to get on the flight. Might even end up in her father’s home, where he’d most likely have her under guard, a guard no one would ever see, including her. But when she saw her chance, she’d take Ethan and run.
If she had her way, she wouldn’t be leaving Santa Raquel with her father. When Tad offered to bring Ethan in a few minutes, so she could have time to collect his things without having to answer the child’s questions, she shook her head immediately.
Tad’s tone was so respectful, conciliatory even, she wanted to puke. Or cry.
“I’m not leaving without my son,” she said, reacting. Not thinking first.
Tad looked to her father, his brows raised, giving him the last word. He, of course, then said, “Thank you, Detective, thank you. I’d rather the boy meet me in his own home, rather than a police station.”
“Okay, then, I’ll bring Ethan. I can meet you and Miranda at her house in, say, twenty minutes?”
“You’re a good man, Detective.”
Instinctively, she wanted to argue, to see her son, but knew that to balk would do her no good. Tad wasn’t going to run off with Ethan. Chantel was there. They were all doing their jobs. Pandering to her father was part of that.
While she was with her father, she’d see Ethan again. She just had to play along. To get along.
Until she could snatch her son and get away.
Tad hadn’t looked at her since she’d said she was leaving. And why should he? What she’d thought they’d shared—it hadn’t been.
He couldn’t know, as she brushed past him in the hall, with Chantel as her escort, that the way his hand accidentally connec
ted with the small of her back sent a shock of life into her.
And she hated herself for still reacting to him.
* * *
“You know I love you.” Brian’s words broke the silence in the car he’d rented—a black sedan, no surprise—as he drove Miranda to her home. She might have feared that he’d dump her off a cliff, but since everyone knew they’d left the station together, that he was the last person to see her alive, he’d be the prime suspect.
He’d never allow his reputation to be tarnished like that.
“I know you’re angry with me, girl, but I only want what’s best for you. You and Jeffrey. You can move in with me for the time being. Get a job. Maybe something at the hospital. And we’ll see how it goes.”
How he decided it should go, she translated.
He told her about the money he’d been awarded. About his new position as North Carolina chief fire marshal. He told her how much he’d loved her mother. And that she’d be glad now, knowing they were all back together.
He talked about coaching Jeffrey’s Little League team.
“He likes basketball,” she said, and then, at his assessing glance in her direction, wished she’d kept her mouth shut.
She’d just given him something. She wasn’t sure what. Some glance into her mind. A tidbit no one else would have noticed.
And she was going to pay for it.
* * *
All the way to Miranda’s house, Tad kept up a constant stream of chatter with Ethan, asking the boy about his tour of the police station. What he liked best. He wanted to prepare him, but realized he couldn’t. He needed Ethan to act as though he knew nothing, and the only way to get a six-year-old to do that was to make certain he knew nothing.
Tad pulled into Miranda’s drive in his own SUV, which had been returned to the station, along with Miranda’s car, in exchange for their “rental.” It took his full strength of mind to let the boy hop out. To run up to the front door, filled with stories to tell his mother.
He’d told Ethan she’d driven separately because they’d come in two cars, and the boy hadn’t questioned why he’d been left to ride with Tad. Tad would’ve made up some story about her not feeling well if he’d had to.
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