The Signature (A Perfect Forever Novel)

by Ward, Susan

  He went to the nightstand, pulled open a drawer, and then dropped her unicorn strung with the yellow ribbon onto the bed.

  She recognized it instantly: the unicorn she had tied to Morgan’s motorcycle that day so long ago, when she had chanced upon it in Coos Bay.

  She remembered it as though it were yesterday, what it had felt like to find the bike in Coos Bay. She had stood there, staring at it, tears in her eyes, afraid to go into the hotel where she knew he was. She’d known there was no point and that it would just reopen the wound that had healed too slowly.

  She had thought it silly to tie the charm on the bars at all, even while she had slowly worked her hair ribbon through the clasp. She had been certain Morgan would never even notice it was there, would never know that she was telling him that she was safe.

  Now, it felt as if her insides were slowly shattering. She pulled away from Devon, edging back until she pressed into the wall.

  “Morgan gave this to you?” she murmured in dazed disbelief.

  It all made such horrible sense; how, before the interview, bits and pieces of the truth always fell easily from her lips, as if she were coerced; how Devon never misread the complexity of her emotions, the effect of Nick Stafford’s brutality. It had seemed almost mystical, the way Devon understood Krystal without her having to explain details. Now she knew why.

  It hadn’t been by chance; Devon had discussed her with Morgan, the only man she’d ever known to be totally conscious of her, body and soul. And Morgan had sent Devon here. Devon had studied her, learned everything in advance from the only man before him who had ever known Krystal completely.

  For her, it felt similar to how Nick had transformed himself into something that would fascinate her, to lure her into marriage with him. Devon had transformed himself into something to arouse her interest so he could get the interview. It was Devon’s job to get people to expose themselves.

  She had fallen for it all. All the way to his bed.

  Meeting her condemning eyes, Devon forced himself to continue, “I should never have withheld from you that Morgan was my source in finding you. I should have told you when I admitted to you my purpose in coming to Coos Bay.

  “Morgan wanted me to make contact with you. To let you know that things with Nick would be resolved shortly, that Morgan’s attorneys were working out a deal for your return. No kidnapping charges. No jail, Krys. He wanted you to know that you could come home, if you wanted to, without fear.

  “If you decided not to return, he wanted me to bring back assurances to him that you were all right. What he hoped for himself, I don’t know. I’m fairly certain, though, that he has unanswered questions he wants to explore with you.”

  She was reeling so much from the shock that she could hardly allow her thoughts to take clear form. Morgan had used Devon as a means to contact her. Only none of it had turned out as Morgan had planned.

  Four months ago, she would have run back to Morgan in a heartbeat, and yet now those emotions were tarnished and complicated. Complicated by the love she had found with Devon.

  “Why are you telling me this now? What’s the matter, Devon? Have you gotten all you want from me and are now looking for a way out? What was us being together to you? Was making me fall for you some sort of sick, added amusement to brighten your days? Or was it a male ego trip to see if you could seduce me away from Morgan? Or an amusing tale you were after that you could toss about at parties? How your little interviewee jumped into your bed!”

  “You know me better than that, Krys,” Devon said calmly.

  “I don’t know you at all!” she hissed, only then realizing she was crying. “How could you have kept this from me?”

  “You have every right to be angry—”

  “Try humiliated. Betrayed. Used. You had no right not to tell me about Morgan! How could you tell me you love me and yet lie to me all these months? What right did you have to play with my life? I had enough of that with Nick Stafford to last me a lifetime! Or did you think deceit was the only way you could have me?”

  “Do you think I came here planning to fall in love with you? I should have told you about Morgan. I would have in the beginning, if I had been certain that things would work out with the authorities. And if it never happened, I would have walked away from my life and stayed with you here forever. But the shadow left by Morgan would be here as well.

  “Whether you believe so or not, there isn’t any closure to that part of your life. For both our sakes, we need to go back to LA, face the courts, Nick Stafford, and Morgan! If you don’t, we have no future, Krys. And I want our future. More than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.”

  Her expression, lost and forlorn, tore at his heart. “We have no future, Devon. We have nothing. You built us on a foundation of lies. Where did you believe that could possibly leave us? Every moment we’ve spent together has been a sham.”

  “Why are you so angry, Krys? Are you mad that I withheld Morgan’s part in all this, or is it that all this time you’ve been with me you could have been with Morgan? Don’t look at me like that. It’s an honest question.”

  For a moment, she couldn’t actually believe he said that. Then, with fury, she hissed, “You’re no better than Nick. He played with me as if I had no right to decide any part of my life. He would have done anything to keep me from Morgan. As for our future, you have an overblown sense of your own importance if you think you are worth risking my daughter’s safety over!”

  “I would never put you or Katie at risk,” Devon responded with furious force. “If I didn’t believe it safe for you, I would never have suggested that you return to LA. Nick signed over his parental rights to Katie yesterday. It will be in the papers tomorrow. The federal authorities still haven’t backed down on the kidnapping charges. But I spoke to Morgan yesterday, and he thought that very shortly they would reach an agreement. Maybe a week. No longer.”

  Devon had spoken with Morgan. Krystal digested that statement in silence, still not willing to believe it possible.

  “The plans on how to deliver you to the federal authorities are almost complete. But your attorney doesn’t want you to surface until he can finalize the agreement with Federal Court to let you go with a slap on your wrist. It’s almost over. Very soon you can go on with your life, without fear, whether you believe me or not. It was never my intention to hurt you, to complicate your life further, any more than it was my intention to fall in love with you. I didn’t keep the truth from you for any other reason than I didn’t want to hurt you again if I didn’t have to, if there wasn’t any reason to let you believe that you could return home soon.”

  “I think you lied because this was all a sick game to you! Well, you have your story, Devon. Congratulations. I’m sure it’ll be considered quite a coup. It will probably earn you a tabloid Pulitzer this time! If you negotiate it well, it will probably make you a wealthy man!”

  Devon lost his grip on his patience. He went to his desk, pulling free a file folder.

  “If my intention had been only to get a sensational story into print, then any one of these would do. Front page, each and every one of them. I could have e-mailed this off and been done with it if I hadn’t cared about what happened to you.”

  He dumped the file into her lap, taking the backup disk from his laptop and tossing it to her, as well, knowing he was taking the gamble of his life.

  “Read them. Burn them. Do whatever you like. I could never risk letting the articles see print. I love you so much that even the slightest risk that these could hurt you more than help you made it impossible for me to do anything with them. This stopped being about a story for me from the first time I set eyes on you.”

  She looked down at the folder. If this were all an act, it was a darn good one. Would he really destroy the stories if she asked him too?

  She tried to hold onto her anger, but deep inside of her she felt a betraying emotion she wanted no part of. How could he have kept the truth from her!

&n
bsp; “If I tell you to go away, that I’m not going back to Los Angeles, you’ll tell nothing about where I am and what I’ve done?” she asked. “If I tell you I’m running, without you, staying in the Network, you’d let me?”

  “I’d destroy every last story about you. No one need ever know that I found you, Krys. Consider yourself one hundred percent safe from me. All you have to do is tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it. If you want to run again, I won’t do anything that will jeopardize your safety. If you choose to go back to Morgan, to see what’s left between you, I won’t stop you. I want you to be happy. I want you to do what you need to do.”

  When the door closed behind Devon, Krystal picked up the file. She thought of burning it. She thought of leaving before Devon returned. She thought of a hundred things she did not, could not do.

  She opened the folder. The first sentences jumped out at her: Morgan calls her the unicorn. That’s what I found, a unicorn, in a brutal, uncaring cynical world. A unicorn in hiding: Krystal Palmer Stafford...

  Devon’s words on paper were powerful. If he had meant to make purely pragmatic points against the injustices of the current judicial system, he had missed his mark.

  There was something lyrical to his prose, passion stirring. In every word, she could feel the terror she had felt for Nick, the desperation that had enveloped her life, the tragic sense of loss she had suffered by leaving Morgan.

  This was not emptily recalled events, put down coldly on a page; this was her. She was alive in every word in a way she had never expected, her heart’s blood exposed, revealing everything she had felt of the terror of those dark, uncertain days between Los Angeles and Coos Bay.

  This was clearly written to raise people’s consciousness, to make them sympathetic to the course she had taken in her search for safety. A piece to stir moral outrage for the women and children that justice seemed reluctant to protect.

  Nine columns, to run consecutively. He had not been able to say all he’d wanted in a single, journalistic effort. Every word was beautiful, a work of art, full of sophisticated wordplay and classical illusion, and not at all what one would expect to read in a newspaper.

  Devon had earned a Pulitzer for his work; this was brilliant and she doubted the articles would ever see print.

  Two things became very obvious during her time alone with Devon’s writing: He had put all of himself into this effort, and anyone who read these pieces would be fully aware that he was not an uninvolved bystander. That something more than an interview had passed between them.

  He had exposed his breach of ethics. How long would it take Morgan, everyone, to see that? Not long. Not long enough for the whole series to see print.

  Morgan. He was there, within the reach of her fingertips. If she wanted him. She had never dared to believe that his love for her would have survived the two years they had spent apart. In her mind, she had always thought him lost to her. He was the greatest sacrifice she had made the night she had left LA.

  What would there be between them when she saw Morgan again? Had what they felt for each other truly survived, or was it some lingering sentimentality for the past which made it possible for him to believe they could pick up where they’d left off? Would she have ever come to love Devon if her emotions for Morgan had truly been sustained?

  Love Devon...yes she had come to love him. Even in her fury, her love had simmered just beneath the surface, demanding acknowledgement.

  But where was there to go with loving Devon? Every memory, every smile, every touch was sullied by the web of untruths he had woven around their mistimed union.

  If they had met under normal circumstances, would they have ever been given a chance to connect? If he had told her the truth that first day, would they still have ended up in bed? Would she have given him his story? Would she have gone back to Morgan?

  She wasn’t certain of anything now.

  Blurred pictures floated behind her closed lids, wispy images of her life, of Morgan and Devon. But mostly of Devon. Of the magnetic pull of his eyes as he smiled at her, of the sweet thrill of his touch, her name, spoken on his low, gentle voice. A clear song in her ears.

  Krystal tried to give herself up to the memories of another time, but they were not so rich, the feelings not so full.

  Why did nothing in her life seem as real to her than the days she’d spent with Devon in Coos Bay?

  Merciful numbness settled over her, as she hurriedly pulled on her clothes. There was a limit to how much one could feel in a single day, and thankfully she’d reached it.

  The note she scribbled was an afterthought. She had been about to leave, but those stories deserved a response. She’d walked out one door in her life without a goodbyes; she owed it to Devon, to herself, not to do so again.

  And if Devon’s work could help smooth a way through the events Morgan had set in motion, if she decided to return to Los Angeles, then why shouldn’t she accept the help?

  She left the tear-splotched note on the bed: Print them, Devon. Print every word. You came to Coos Bay for a story and that’s what you should leave with. What reason is there for us both to leave empty-handed?

  Two weeks later, Krystal was halfway between Shasta and Reno, to her second safe house, alone with Katie, when she picked up a copy of Devon’s newspaper and saw her story there on the front page.

  The unicorn is a delicate creature, gentle of line and graceful. Fragile, like crystal. Krystal Palmer Stafford is gentle of line and fragile like crystal. You can’t see it because she is larger than life on stage, an illusion created by talent, lights and camera angles. Her protection in the harsher, larger world...

  She had told him to print the articles. She had never expected him to.

  At first, she stared down at his words in hurt disbelief, certain that it confirmed every ugly assumption in her mind that the story had, and always would be, the sole purpose of Devon’s advent into her life.

  She crumbled the newspaper in her hand, about to throw it away, before a strange impulse had made her reopen the paper.

  It wasn’t until she turned fifteen pages back, to read Devon’s opinion column, that she knew why he had chosen to let those articles begin their life in print.

  His column gave him free reign to speak his mind, and in today’s press Devon did just that, without restraint.

  His comments were a scathing condemnation of the judge who had ignored very real dangers and had ruled, without regard to the consequences, to keep both Krystal and Katie trapped unsafely, by court order. He alluded to the deal with federal authorities that seemed to be unattainable without the facts being put in print.

  But with knowledge, one could read between the lines of his heated words, which stated without exception, that this intolerable situation was allowed to continue solely because no one seemed fit to take the responsibility or the blame for its occurrence.

  That the first step in righting this injustice would be to allow her to return home, without fear of arrest, now that there was no risk to her safety. An injustice, he stated, that could never truly be made right. How could one give back two years of a life?

  She read the column over and over again. He had printed the stories because it was the only means she had left him to communicate with her. He wanted her to know it wasn’t safe yet to return to Los Angeles. He thought the articles would help to finalize the deal with the authorities, make them back off about prison.

  Brushing at her tears, his column stared up at her from the passenger seat as she continued on her journey to Reno. Every ugly accusation she had flung at him that last night came to her mind, but this time, with them came the look in his eyes each time she unleashed a blow.

  The truth had been in his eyes. Why hadn’t she seen it? She brushed at her burning tears with a free hand. He was nothing like Nick. How could she have said those words to him? She had accused him of being like Nick Stafford! How could she have doubted him?

  She wished that she could take back every. B
ut she couldn’t. It was there between them and couldn’t be undone. Just like her actions couldn’t be undone.

  She had run from Devon. Now she was alone without any idea about what she would do, without any thought as to how she would make it through another day without him.

  “Mommy! Mommy, come! Devon is in the television, Mommy! Come!” Katie cried excitedly, as she burst into the kitchen.

  They had been gone from Coos Bay five weeks. The worst weeks of Krystal’s life. She couldn’t break free from the sadness which surrounded her heart. It was time to decide where she would go with their lives. If she would dare to return to Los Angeles.

  Pulling from her thoughts, Krystal realized that her daughter was tugging on her arm, trying to get her to move, and trying to tell her something.

  “Devon is in the television,” Katie repeated heatedly, pulling Krystal with her into the tiny living room where the TV was turned on low.

  Sinking down on her knees in front of it, Krystal’s eyes hungrily took in the screen. It was Devon. She turned the volume up and shushed Katie with an uncharacteristic sharpness, as she tried to understand what was happening. It was Devon and he was in court.

  Court?

  Understanding flooded her mind. Oh, my god! The articles. It had been reckless to strike out at the judge while she was still a fugitive, with an ongoing investigation underway.

  “Are you aware, Mr. Howard, that if you continue to refuse to answer the question, you can be charged with conspiracy? That your silence will make you an accessory to a crime, and this court can lock you off the streets for the next seven years of your life? Has your counsel made you aware of this?”

  She watched as Devon turned to confer in silence with his counsel. It was then, when the cameras turned, that she saw familiar faces peeking out from a crowded gallery in the court room.

  Her father was there. The shock of that nearly leveled her. Four men who looked so much like Devon, that it was undeniable that they were his brothers. A small, elderly woman with gemmed, green eyes that flashed with reflected defiance: Devon’s mother. John Hunt, Krystal’s own attorney. Colin Craig, her manager.