by Alyssa Kress
"Looks like you had the makings of a real nice dinner here." Marty peered into the bag as he set it on the old dining room table. Kerrin caught his use of the past tense. She also caught the helpless apology in the half smile he threw her way. If Rogers the FBI man was a complete stone face, Marty was just the opposite.
"Gary's doing just fine," she told Marty, following him with her eyes as he took a seat on the same sofa as Rogers. Marty, she noticed, sat as far as humanly possible from the other man. "Really, he is," she persisted. "A-one, top class citizen."
Marty's smile grew vague. "So you keep telling me."
He didn't believe her. Oh God, maybe they'd found out that Gary knew his friend Willie was dead. This was all her fault. Kerrin's stomach twisted around the cannonball into a big, painful knot.
There was a sound at the door. All three of them watched in utter silence as the knob turned from without. Gary's shoulder pushed the door open and he walked through. His eyes took in the entire tableau at a glance.
"Oh, is this a private party," he asked, "or is anyone invited?"
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Rogers spoke first. "We've found him."
Gary made a curt, cutting motion with one hand. With the other, he closed the front door. "Watch what you say. She doesn't know a thing."
Raising his brows, Rogers turned to regard Kerrin. "She doesn't?"
Gary stalked forward. "That's right. And that's the way I want to keep it."
Rogers continued to regard Kerrin, who was becoming more and more confused. What didn't she know? Presumably whatever had interested the FBI.
"I find it hard to believe that something so closely concerning the woman didn't slip out onto the pillow, Sullivan," Rogers said, turning back to Gary.
"Well, believe it." Gary's upper lip curled in an unmistakable show of menace. "Leave the girl out of this."
Rogers raised his brows. "And what about you? Did you manage to find out from her what I told you to?"
Gary's powerful hands closed into fists. "For the last time, Rogers. Leave. Her. Alone."
"Pity." Rogers didn't respond to the restrained fury emanating from the other man. "That information could have been helpful."
"I don't see what difference it makes now." Gary shot a glance toward Marty, who had one leg crossed tightly over the other. "You're taking me back to Chino tonight, aren't you?"
Marty dipped his chin. "They caught the guy, Gary. He's in custody and he's made a full confession."
"Is that so?"
Kerrin could hear a distinct thread of disbelief in Gary's voice, though she had no idea what any of them were talking about. Meanwhile Gary smiled. "So you don't need me any more," he said.
"You knew the score," Marty reminded him.
"Yep." Gary nodded. "I knew the score. Ten years off my sentence." His gaze, which had been studiously avoiding hers up to this point, slipped toward Kerrin. In one brief instant she saw helplessness and apology, concern and sorrow. The cannonball that had lodged in her stomach seemed to grow and grow. They'd come to take him away ‑‑ and he was going to go. In Gary's eyes she saw no promises. Not a one.
Instead what came through, with surprising clarity, was a single, emphatic imperative. Leave now. Gary clearly didn't want Kerrin to talk to these men. Why not? Who was this fellow, Rogers? From the FBI.
Since Kerrin couldn't ask, she stood, although her legs were barely able to support her weight. What had happened to her miracle? "I ‑‑ I suppose it would be best if I said my good-byes and got out of your way." That's what she heard herself saying, although 'good-bye' was the last thing in the world she wanted to say to Gary. Oh, God. Oh, God. This couldn't be happening.
But the gratitude she saw in Gary's dark eyes almost made the sacrifice worthwhile. He desperately wanted her gone. "You'll have to take over the rest of my class," he informed her. "There's a rough schedule on top of my desk. It'll tell you which groups still have to present their lessons."
"Okay."
Gary shooting her directions for the summer school class added a layer of the bizarre over an already bizarre situation. He took hold of her hand. Kerrin grasped onto it, as onto a lifeline in a tossing sea.
"Rob Bollonoff's a bully," Gary told her, keeping up the stream of words as he led her to the door. "Let him get away with an inch and he'll take a mile. There's supposed to be a quiz at the end of every class, mostly to figure out if anyone's been paying attention."
He got the door open and started to push her through it. Kerrin didn't know where he was getting his fortitude. She certainly didn't have any. She wanted to scream. She wanted to die. She wanted to hold him and never let him go. Gary leaving? No! It couldn't be happening.
"And, oh yeah." Gary kept hold of her hand for just a moment longer. "You've got to keep Matt and Elaine on opposite sides of the room." He grinned. "They distract each other."
"Matt ‑‑ ?" Kerrin was momentarily distracted. "And Elaine?"
His grin told her something she should have realized by now. Gary had been anticipating this day from the beginning, living with it, and yet somehow remaining cheerful. She, however, had pushed it to the side, had refused to acknowledge its existence. Now she was beginning to see the value of his persistent pessimism: he was ready for disaster. She wasn't. Oh, God. Oh, God.
"I've seen worse mismatches," Gary murmured low, brushing his lips by her ear. "Haven't you? Good-bye, Kerrin."
Suddenly she was standing all alone on his porch with the door closed behind her. In shock, Kerrin could only stand there, staring up through the old willow trees into the pinking dusk sky. Gary was going...back to prison. Ten years. Her eyes were dry but there was an extremely cold, empty place where her guts were supposed to be. Oh, what on earth had happened to her miracle?
~~~
It was dark by the time they managed to get rid of Mike Rogers. Marty, watching Gary spar with the guy, thought he'd never seen such fancy footwork.
"Why should I tell you if I found a way to break into the plant?" Gary had wanted to know. "My say would only be a guess. You ought to ask Mr. Holiday himself."
Rogers had rubbed his chin and regarded Gary in a predatory, thoughtful manner. Marty didn't like the FBI man's attitude toward his charge. That was the reason he'd insisted on coming along. Marty wanted to take Gary back into custody, himself. Rogers seemed to consider Gary less than human.
But in the tiny living room, Gary had lounged back in his old easy chair and regarded Rogers with something closer to amusement than fear. "Who did you say Mr. Holiday turned out to be again ‑‑ a postal worker from Boise?"
"That's right."
And then the two men had locked gazes in a duel so quiet and so private that Marty couldn't begin to guess what was behind it. In the end Gary had gotten his way. He hadn't told Rogers a thing about what, if anything, he'd managed to accomplish in his two months in the town of Freedom. Rogers had been forced to depart empty-handed. He'd taken Gary's borrowed car with him and left Marty in sole charge of the convict.
As soon as the door closed behind Rogers' back, Gary turned to Marty. His expression looked carefully bland. "I have a few things to take care of before we leave. Do you mind?"
Marty shoved his hands in his pants pockets. "I guess not."
"Great." Gary went over to an ancient set of drawers and pulled open the top one. Marty momentarily tensed, but all Gary took out of the drawer was a plain white envelope. He took a wallet out of the back pocket of his trousers and looked inside. "Damn. I've only got sixty. Do you have any cash?"
"Huh?"
"I'll write you a check for it. But I've got to pay my housekeeper."
"Your housekeeper."
"She's too young to have a bank account without her father involved so I've been paying her in cash. Another sixty would do it. I don't want her to lose any pay because of my sudden departure."
Marty slowly pulled his own wallet out of his pants, sure this was some kind of trick. "I thought Kerrin was your hou
sekeeper," he delicately pointed out.
Gary's lips curved into a peculiar smile. "No, Kerrin isn't much good at housekeeping. She...fills a different role. Here, let me make out a check."
Marty watched in growing astonishment as Gary sat down at the dining room table and carefully filled out a check made payable to his parole officer for sixty dollars.
"You have a bank account?" Marty asked in disbelief.
"Sure." Gary tore the check from the stub and handed it to Marty. Their eyes met. "I have a job, after all. I have to put my paycheck somewhere."
"Your paycheck." Marty was so bemused he didn't even protest as Gary pried his wallet out of his hands and searched out the three twenties. He left the rest of the bills undisturbed and tucked his check inside.
"It's good," he assured Marty.
"Thanks," Marty said, still in shock. Did he know this man?
Gary made a pass around the room with his eyes. "Might as well put these things in the refrigerator. Elaine ‑‑ that's my housekeeper ‑‑ can probably use them. I'll write her a note."
Gary put both the note and the hundred twenty dollars cash in an envelope, which he affixed to the front door with scotch tape. "It's safe there," he told Marty with a wry smile. "In this town. Now, as soon as we stop by my realtor's we can get out of here."
"Whatever," Marty said. His realtor?
They got into Marty's car and Marty followed Gary's directions toward the main street. The realtor's office was closed, so Gary put the house key in an envelope with a short note and stuffed it through the mail slot.
Who was this man?
Gary climbed back into Marty's economy car and fastened his seat belt. He watched the few buildings of the main street pass by with an impassive expression as Marty drove them out of town.
They were about two miles down the road when he next spoke. "You'd better pull over."
Marty shot him a wary glance. "Why?"
"Just do it."
Scowling, Marty did as Gary asked. "Now what?"
Gary sighed. "You got some cuffs?"
Marty gaped at him. "You gotta be crazy. I'm not putting cuffs on you."
Gary tapped the dashboard with one finger. "I suggest you do it. An hour from now I might not be feeling this cooperative."
"Oh, Christ." Marty shoved the car into park and twisted around to rummage through his cluttered back seat.
"Here." Gary reached back and plucked a pair of metal bracelets from the mess. He handed them to Marty.
"Jesus Christ." Bile rose in Marty's throat as he locked the manacles around Gary's wrists. He'd never had a stronger intuition that he was doing the wrong thing. "Jesus H. Christ."
"That's better." Gary audibly sighed as he slouched down in the seat. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. "Much, much better. Now listen up, Marty. I've got a lot to tell you and you've got to remember it all."
Marty, shaking, pulled back into traffic. "Why do I have a feeling I don't want to hear any of this?"
"Because you're a smart man. But Rogers is even sharper, and he's going to figure that if you and I spend four or five hours in a car together I'm going to have told you all about it. You might as well have the advantage of really knowing. Besides, it's up to you now that I'm going back to prison."
Marty chanced a glance toward his charge. "What's up to me?"
Gary kept his eyes closed. He seemed perfectly relaxed, on the verge of falling asleep. His words, however, belied any of that. "I don't care what he's confessed to, they've caught the wrong man."
Marty closed his eyes. "Oh Jesus Holy Christ, I knew I wasn't going to like this."
CHAPTER TWENTY
Two hours later Marty was still calling on his savior. Under his breath now, because Gary, having briefed him fully, had fallen asleep against the far door of the car. Unfortunately, Marty believed Gary about everything. The postal worker from Boise, Idaho didn't have the intelligence or sophistication to have pulled off a single one of Mr. Holiday's masterpieces. Furthermore, and most damning, he'd never set foot in the town of Freedom. Gary had suitably convinced Marty that whoever Mr. Holiday was, he must have spent a great deal of time in the town.
Worst of all, and what made Marty call on his Lord with the most fervor, was the glaring fact that Rogers knew all of this. He knew they hadn't really caught Mr. Holiday, that the lunatic was still loose ‑‑ and that he was still planning on blowing up the aqueduct.
Marty glanced to the side, regarding the man asleep there. Gary was half curled, half sprawled in an effort to find a comfortable position. In sleep his face was not as calm and relaxed as it had been while Gary'd related all of his disturbing information to Marty. Now anxiety and concern etched lines around Gary's mouth and eyes.
Gary as a compassionate creature was not a new idea to Marty. He'd known the man long enough to have figured this out. It didn't even surprise Marty that Gary seemed willing to go to great lengths to save the lives and homes of the people of Freedom.
What surprised him, what amazed the hell out of him, was that Gary hadn't ripped anybody off. Something had changed over the last two months. Something ‑‑ or more likely someone ‑‑ had brought out a side of Gary's character that Marty had lost hope even existed.
God knew, Marty had trusted Gary too much in the past, but as they got closer and closer to Chino, he grew more and more grimly certain that to shut Gary back inside would be a terrible mistake.
All right, so part of his grim certainty came from a purely selfish perspective. With Gary stuck behind bars, it would be up to Marty alone to sift through the plot that was protecting the Holiday Bomber. He would have to attempt contact with Rogers' superior, if such a thing existed, and expose the fraud.
But another part of Marty's feeling came from pure unselfish instinct. Gary didn't belong in prison any more.
He made some quick calculations. By creative reasoning he could make a case that with the sentence reduction, Gary's full term was only fifteen years. That would put him up for parole after seven and a half. He'd already served five. In two and a half years then, he could be out.
Two and a half years. Marty shook his head, more depressed than before. He had a feeling that two and a half days in Level Four would undo most of the good that a couple of months in Freedom ‑‑ and a certain lady mayor ‑‑ had wrought.
~~~
From his position on the living room sofa, Matt watched his sister step into the hall from her bedroom. The mug she used for tea was in her hand. Matt's attention wandered from the television news as Kerrin pushed open the kitchen door. Since they'd caught the Holiday Bomber there wasn't anything that interesting on the news anyhow. So he watched his sister.
There was a disguised listlessness in her movements, and her face wore the same masked blandness as the morning she'd come in to the summer school classroom and announced that she was taking over the class.
Kerrin had seen the class through its remaining week with a credible facsimile of her normal good spirits. She'd gone on to plan the new school year and managed miscellaneous scraps of town business with more credible good spirits. It was all just a little too credible to be credible.
Frankly, Matt thought it a load of bullshit. Even he felt hurt at the way Gary had taken off so suddenly. He imagined his sister felt about a hundred times worse. And the more he imagined that, the madder he got at Gary.
"Matt?" Kerrin looked surprised to see her brother blocking her way in the hall.
"Mayor Horton," Matt asked, "could a concerned citizen have a word with you?"
"Well, sure." But Kerrin didn't look too eager. Maybe she knew what was coming. As she set her mug of tea on the desk in her bedroom, her face strained with the effort to look normal. Matt wheeled himself inside and closed the door.
"What's up?"
"I feel terrible," Matt said.
Kerrin's face instantly softened with concern. She sank sideways into the seat behind her desk. "Oh, Matt, what's wrong?"
"T
his thing that happened between you and Gary ‑‑ it was all my fault."
"What?" Concern transformed quickly to alarm.
Matt's mouth twisted bitterly. "To think. I practically handed you to him on a silver platter. I could kick myself."
"Matt ‑‑ " Kerrin looked nonplussed. "For crying out loud, no one handed me to anybody on a platter. And for the record ‑‑ " the blandness in her expression fell away, revealing a far more sincere fierceness. "For the record, I don't regret a thing about my relationship with Gary."
Matt frowned at her. "How can you say that?" His sister had had so few relationships with men ‑‑ she didn't know that it wasn't right to act like a doormat. "The guy left you." Surely she didn't need to be reminded.
"Oh, Matt." Her voice went soft as she looked away. "He didn't want to leave."
"Yeah, right. He had 'other obligations.'" That was the lame excuse she'd given the summer school class. Matt gave his sister a hard look. "But all right, let's buy the fact that he didn't have a choice, he had to leave for some odd reason. So why the hell didn't he take you with him?"
Kerrin closed her eyes and made a funny choking noise.
Matt rolled closer to her chair. "You would have gone, wouldn't you? Even though you've always said you'd never leave Freedom, if Gary had wanted you to, you would have gone with him. But he didn't ask you, did he?"
Kerrin's hands shot up to cover her face and her delicate shoulders shook. Her voice was tiny. "He couldn't ask me, Matt. Oh, God."
She was starting to cry. Matt sat perfectly still, horrified. Never in his life had he seen his sister cry. Never. No matter what bad thing happened, even his own accident, Kerrin didn't cry. She was the type of person who always looked on the bright side, the type who kept an illusion of some wonderful future possibility that would make everything all right again. Kerrin didn't appear to be looking on the bright side now. She was out and out sobbing.