REILLY'S RETURN
Page 16
"No one travels that old back road much," Walker answered, "because the new one is safer, even if it is longer. But I guess she was in a hurry to reach you. I don't know all the details—Mandy doesn't remember the accident, of course—but the skid marks told their own story. She lost control on a sharp turn and went off the road. Her car broke through a guardrail, rolled halfway down a ravine, then ended up wedged sideways against a stand of aspens. It was a miracle that the gas tank didn't explode." Walker's voice wasn't quite steady now. "She wasn't found for hours, and by the time she was, it was too late to save the baby." His eyes darkened as he remembered. "It was touch and go with Mandy herself for a while there."
It was too much to take in at once. Reilly struggled to put the pieces together in a way that made sense, but all the while the thought kept running through his mind that she had almost died. She had said as much to him last night. I almost died when you did, she'd thrown at him, but he'd thought she was talking figuratively.
He shook his head to clear it of the memory. "Why didn't you contact me?"
"How was I supposed to do that? You were in the program, remember? They whisked you away and told me nothing."
Reilly wasn't ready to accept that explanation. "There were ways. If I'd known…"
"What could you have done? Come back? Put Mandy in danger again so you could tell her the explosion was a setup, and that she didn't have to risk her life and her baby's to save you?"
The blow landed, and Reilly struck back. "You could at least have told her I was still alive. But that didn't fit in with your plans, did it?"
Walker flinched, and Reilly closed in for the kill. "You saw your chance to move in on her, and you took it. Never mind that I trusted you to watch out for her. Never mind that she was grieving for me, that she was mourning the loss of my baby. No, those things weren't important. You wanted her…" Bile rose in his throat as the image of Mandy in Walker's arms floated before his eyes, and he couldn't finish.
"I couldn't tell her, damn you!" Walker was furious. "By the time she was strong enough to be told, I didn't know if you were alive. And even if you were, there was no guarantee that you were ever coming back. She had already suffered enough. There was no way I could tell her the truth!"
A harsh voice intruded from the other side of the clearing. "You should have found a way, Cody." Both men swung around to face the direction the words had come from. Mandy was standing about ten yards away from them, and they'd never heard her approach. They'd been so caught up in their argument, they'd blocked out everything else.
"All this time, you let me think Reilly was dead. You knew, Cody, and yet you said nothing." Bewilderment replaced the shocked comprehension of a moment ago, and she stared at him as if he were a stranger. "You were my friend. I trusted you. How could you do that to me?"
"Mandy, I—"
She cut him off. "And you," she said, turning that bewildered gaze on Reilly. "You said you loved me, then you went away and let me think you were dead, but you trusted him with the truth?" She shook her head, as if she could somehow make sense of it that way. "I was right the first time." She took a step forward, her hands tightly clenched. "Who gave you the right to play with my life that way? My life, and my—" Her voice wavered, then quit before she could get the word out.
She swallowed, the movement visible to Reilly even from a distance, and her name was torn from his throat. "Mandy, don't."
She found her voice again and continued, her bitter words flaying him. "You don't deserve an explanation, but I'll give you one anyway. When you died, and I lost the … baby…" She quivered and wrapped her arms around herself as if for moral support. "I wanted to die, too. I had nothing to live for. Can you understand that? Nothing. You talk about deathless love as if you understand it, but you don't have a clue." She laughed a little, the forlorn sound slashing at Reilly's heart. "I don't know what all Cody told you, but I'm sure he didn't tell you this." Her voice lowered, but her next words came to him clearly. "When you died I tried to kill myself."
* * *
Chapter 12
« ^ »
Reilly's throat worked, but no sound came out. "No," he mouthed, taking a step backward, as if he refused to believe the unforeseen results of his actions a year ago. "I was only trying to protect you."
Mandy didn't hear him. For a moment she was back in the hospital, waking up to a world devoid of hope. Reilly and her baby were dead. She might as well be dead, too. Surrounded by equipment meant to save her life, one thought had run through her head like a sad refrain: Nothing to live for. Nothing to live for.
Dry-eyed, she'd deliberately ripped the IV needle out of her arm and turned off whatever equipment she could reach. And waited to die.
The flashback receded, and Mandy repeated, "I tried to kill myself. When I finally came to my senses I realized that I couldn't die. It's funny," she said, her gaze turned inward as she contemplated the past, "but even though I knew I would never love again, never carry a child again, I still found a reason to live."
"What—" There was a catch in Reilly's husky voice, then he managed to ask, "What was it?"
"To keep you alive." She smiled sadly. "I thought, as long as I'm alive, Reilly can't ever really be gone. My memories of you, of us, were too vivid, too vital to let you fade into oblivion. I'd lost your baby, your chance for immortality. My chance to see you live on in your child. I knew the only other way to keep you alive was in my heart. And for that I had to live."
"I can't listen to this." The clipped words were Cody's. He turned on his heel and strode toward the cabin.
As she watched him go, Mandy couldn't help but feel a quick pang of empathy for him, despite his betrayal of their friendship. She had her own wounds to deal with, though, and Reilly's. Cody's came a distant third.
Her gaze swung back to Reilly. After the less than stoic response he'd been shocked into revealing, he'd retreated behind an emotional stone wall again. A spasm of anger shook her. She wasn't his enemy. All she wanted was to make him see how it had been.
"How about you?" she challenged. "Or can't you deal with the truth either?"
If he was surprised by her question he didn't show it. "I want to know," he said. "Everything." And for an instant she saw the rare vulnerability in his eyes, the vulnerability he only showed to her.
Mandy let out the breath she'd been holding. "I lived. It wasn't easy," she said slowly, searching for the right words now. "Even though I'd found a reason to go on living, don't think it was easy." She glanced away, seeing not the sun peeking warmly over the horizon, nor the faint green traces of spring in the foliage around the clearing, but rather the endless winter of loneliness she'd endured.
"The nights were the worst," she said softly. "I'd lie awake for hours, remembering, pretending you were in bed next to me, then finally fall asleep and dream. The dreams started out fine, but they all ended the same way, watching you burn to death. I'd wake up, and for a second or two I'd think, Thank God it was only a dream." She breathed sharply, then met his eyes again. "I'd reach for you, to reassure myself, but you were never there. And I'd grieve all over again."
Reilly made a restless movement with his hand, as if to deny the past, but Mandy pressed on relentlessly. "Then there came the night when I didn't dream your death, and I woke up crying. I knew you were truly dead then, and nothing—not my love, not my memories, nothing!—could keep you alive." Her breathing was ragged now, but she knew if she stopped she'd never be able to bring herself to this point again.
"That was the worst day since I'd woken up in the hospital. It was New Year's Eve. Symbolic, in a way, saying goodbye to the best and worst year of my life.
"We were in the midst of a three-day blizzard, but even if we hadn't been, I couldn't have gone in to open the store. I cried off and on that whole day and far into the night, knowing I had to let you and our baby go." As she was talking, a small part of Mandy wondered why, when the memory still had the power to rend her heart, her tears were
absent.
She licked her dry lips. "I even tried to drink myself into a stupor that night with the bottle of Irish whiskey I'd bought for you months before. I just wanted to forget, even for a little while. I thought if I could just blot everything out for one night…" She paused, reliving the memory as if it were just happening, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "I was so cold that night. So cold, from the inside out. I built a roaring fire in the fireplace and brought blankets and pillows to lie down in front of it, but I couldn't get warm." She shivered with the memory. "Cody came to check on me the next day."
"That's enough." The harsh voice startled Mandy out of her trancelike state, and her eyes focused on Reilly's face. "I don't think I want to hear the rest, after all," he said, an expression of what she thought was revulsion casting a grim shadow over his features.
She dropped the arms she'd wrapped around herself earlier and lifted her chin. "I wasn't going to tell you any more than that," she said, gathering her dignity around her like a cloak. "What passed between Cody and me is private, and no one's business but ours. I would no more tell you about him than I would tell him about you. Even if you and I were—" She broke off, paused for a second, and tried again. "Even if we… I know it's not very likely now, but if … somehow … we were together again, I couldn't tell you."
"You don't have to go on," Reilly said brusquely. "You've made your point."
She studied him for a moment, but found no hint of softening, no sign that he had even tried to understand. It was all for nothing, she told herself bleakly. I could have saved myself the trouble, spared Cody the humiliation.
Her shoulders sagged and she turned to go, then changed her mind and faced him again. "I have to ask you something. You don't have to answer, but I hope you will."
"What is it?"
"Would it have made a difference if … if I'd told you about the baby and … Cody before we … you know. Would you feel differently now if I had?"
He considered the question for a few seconds, then slowly shook his head. "No. It wouldn't have made a difference. None at all."
She nodded. I was wrong about that, too, she thought. Wrong all across the board. "Thanks for being honest, at least," she said out loud, forcing a tiny smile. It probably looked as phony as it felt, but she couldn't do any better. Not right now. Maybe later, when she'd had a chance to pull herself together, maybe then she'd be able to put up a brave front. For now, she'd be satisfied if her legs held out until she could put some distance between herself and Reilly.
* * *
Reilly watched Mandy walk away from him—shoulders squared, head held high—and fought the urge to call her back. She hadn't understood what he'd meant when he answered her question, and his first impulse had been to set her straight. He'd curbed that impulse, realizing that maybe it was better this way. He'd been blown away by the discovery of the baby she'd lost because of him, and her subsequent revelations had shattered his conviction that he'd only done what was best for her.
He needed time to sort things out in his mind, time to come to terms with Mandy's home truths, but time was something he had precious little of right now.
Assuming Walker was still willing to help him take Pennington down—and that was a big assumption—things were going to heat up pretty damn quick. It would be better all around if he kept emotions out of it until everything was settled.
Before he'd met Mandy, he'd had a lot of experience doing just that: compartmentalizing his life, locking his emotions away. It shouldn't be too hard this time. All he had to do was focus on his target—Pennington—and the rest would follow as it always did.
He hoped.
* * *
In the cabin, Mandy found Cody standing over the sink, wolfing down a bread-and-butter sandwich. Normally she would have made a teasing comment about his unbalanced diet, but not this time. She had a few things to say to him, and none of them concerned food.
She didn't even wait for him to finish. "You had no right to tell Reilly anything," she said, watching him swallow the last bite and brush the crumbs from his hands before he turned to face her. "Not last night, and not this morning."
"He asked."
"That's no excuse, and you know it. I was going to tell him myself when the time was right."
"There's never a right time for that kind of thing. If there was, you'd have found it before now." Cody's voice had an edge to it.
"It was still my choice. Mine."
"He'd already figured it out last night, and he wouldn't have believed me if I'd lied. And this morning he was a walking time bomb. I didn't want you to get hurt."
"Shielding me again," she said, her anger flaring. "You and Reilly, you're both the same. Both of you lying to me, both of you trying to protect me, as if I'm some halfwit who can't protect herself. Well, I have a news flash for both of you—I can. I'm stronger, tougher than either of you will ever be."
Reilly strode into the cabin as the last sentence left her mouth, and he answered her before Cody could. "Maybe you are," he said abruptly, and though he faced her, he avoided meeting her eyes. "Maybe we were wrong not to tell you what was going on a year ago, but what's done is done. We don't have time for recriminations. Pennington is out there, still gunning for me, and you already know he doesn't give a damn about who else gets killed in the process. He won't stop unless we stop him first." Reilly's gaze moved beyond Mandy to Cody. "Are you still in?"
Cody's brows drew together in a frown, but he said, "That hasn't changed."
"Good," Reilly said. "The sooner we start, the sooner it'll be over. And now that I know Pennington's out of jail, we need to revise our plans."
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Probably. The timing will be tricky, but I'm betting we can pull it off."
Mandy looked at Reilly's face first, then Cody's. There seemed to be an understanding between the two of them that transcended their earlier hostility toward each other.
"You'll be taking a big risk," Reilly warned.
Cody shrugged. "So will you."
"Yeah, but I don't have a choice. You do."
Cody glanced at Mandy, then back at Reilly. "No," he said softly, with a crooked smile. "I don't have a choice either."
Reilly stiffened for a second, then acknowledged, "I don't guess you do, at that."
Mandy had had it with being left out of the discussion. "If you think either of you is leaving here without telling me what you're talking about, think again."
The men's eyes met over her head, then Reilly nodded toward the kitchen table. "Have a seat," he said. "This'll take some time."
* * *
Night had fallen. Reilly sat at the table, a soft rag in one hand, the pieces of his gun spread out in front of him for cleaning and oiling. His second gun, the one he'd given Mandy to use, was already finished and laid to one side.
Mandy sat in front of the fireplace, her arms wrapped around her knees. She glanced over at Reilly, but something in his intense concentration prevented her from interrupting him. He'd been like this all day, shutting her out, his closed expression forbidding her to approach him in any way.
She sighed soundlessly, then turned back and again stared into the dancing flames, wondering what it would take to break through that shell of his, and wondering even more if she had the courage left to try. He'd as good as told her this morning that he didn't love her anymore, and she wasn't a masochist. Why give him the chance to tell her again?
Her thoughts shifted to Cody, who'd long since left. Before he'd gone, however, he'd managed a private moment with her while Reilly was outside. Now she blocked out the cracking fire and the methodical sounds from the table behind her and replayed that scene in her mind.
"I'm sorry," Cody said, his blue eyes contrite, reminding her poignantly of apologies they'd exchanged over the many years of their friendship, and her heart softened toward him despite herself. "I know it doesn't change things, but I am sorry."
"I know," she said.
"I know that, too." She paused, then added, "I always meant to apologize for using you that way. For using you to try to forget Reilly." Her gaze wavered, but she hung in there and continued looking up at him. "By then I knew how you felt about me, and I knew it wasn't fair to you. But I did it anyway. I'm not proud of myself, but like you said, it doesn't change things. It happened. I never for a moment blamed you."
Cody swallowed, then touched her cheek briefly. "Thanks."
"Be careful out there, okay?"
"Okay." He hesitated a moment, as if making a decision, then asked lightly, "There's no chance for me, is there?"
"Oh, Cody." Her soft heart ached for him, but there was no point in giving him false hope. Even if she and Reilly never patched things up, she would never love Cody the way he deserved to be loved. She shook her head.
"That's okay, honey." He gave her a lopsided smile. "I didn't really think so."
He'd gone before Reilly returned, and Mandy had watched him until he was out of sight. Cody had hidden it well, but she knew she'd hurt him anew, and she mourned the loss of a friendship that would never, could never, be the same.
She sighed again, out loud this time, and stole another glance at Reilly. Without raising his head from the job in front of him, he suggested, "Why don't you go on to bed? I know it's early, but you didn't get much sleep last night."
"No less than you."
"I'm used to it. You're not."
Something snapped inside Mandy. "You don't know what I'm used to. Not anymore. You haven't exactly been around to see." The hands carefully reassembling the gun froze for a second, then continued their task. For some reason his control made her lash out at him. "For that matter, you don't have to pretend you're concerned about whether I get enough sleep or not."