by Gayle Wilson
“I didn’t go back to water my plants,” he said, smiling at her.
“Kyle couldn’t find the name, even after murdering three people, so he gave them me and tried to convince them with a doctored picture that I was the one who could supply them with the courier’s name.”
“He didn’t have any real information, and he wanted their money. So he manufactured some evidence: the picture and the money he had electronically had deposited to your account.”
“But he couldn’t have taken that picture. He was in it. And that in itself seems—”
“He took it out of my files.”
“Your files?” she repeated, not understanding. “Why would a picture of Kyle and me having dinner out be in—” The realization of what that meant was shocking. “You had us under surveillance. You were following and taking pictures of your own people.”
“At that point, there weren’t that many of my own people left. And obviously one of them was extremely dangerous to the rest. When the two of you started meeting, especially since everybody knew how you felt about Kyle-”
“Everybody knew what? What are you talking about?”
“That you thought he was a jerk. It was obvious. I imagine, obvious even to Kyle.”
“Paul,” she said softly, thinking of the number of times she’d rejected Kyle Peters’s advances, “do you think that’s why he tried to make them believe I was the one? Because I’d damaged his ego? Did he set me up so they’d torture me for information I didn’t have?”
“I don’t know. Judging by what we know he did to Jeff… Forget him, Rae. He was sick. A rogue. And you ended the harm he could do.”
They didn’t say anything for a few minutes. She watched Paul examine a couple of the cartons for another bite of food they might have overlooked. She guessed that was what made him a good cop. He could discuss all this mayhem and still have an appetite.
Now there was only one question she had to ask. No matter what Paul thought.
“What will happen to him now?” she asked and watched the blue eyes come up to examine her face. He didn’t question who she meant, and she knew that Paul, at least, had guessed that more had gone on during the week she was missing than she had told him, than she would ever tell anyone.
“He’ll be tried in Colombia. We decided that was best. Otherwise, we could be called to testify.”
“Did you agree to his deportation because of me? Were you protecting me? You know it’s possible he’ll escape the full force of what we’d give him. Their judges have reason to be leery of dealing too harshly with the cartels. Did you allow him the easy way out because of me?”
It took him a long time to answer, and when he finally met her eyes, she knew what he was saying was hard.
“You do what you have to do because you make promises or because you think it’s in somebody’s best interests. You walk the line between doing what you want to do, what you feel is right and what’s…necessary. I just do the best I can, Rae, given the circumstances. Sometimes I screw up, but they pay me to make decisions. It’s my job. I took the job, and I’m going to do it.”
She eased up off the couch. She sat on the arm of his chair and put her good arm around his shoulders. Finally she kissed his forehead. “I guess we all just do the best we can. Thanks, Paul, for everything. I’m glad you came for me. I’m glad I’m alive, and I promise you I’m going to be all right. I may do what you said—go back home and finish my degree. I don’t know about that right now, but I want you to know that I’m going to make it. I promise.”
“Your dad would have been very proud of you, Rae.”
She smiled at the thought of her father. “I don’t know about that, but I think he would have understood. I guess that’s all I can ask.”
He hugged her carefully and stood, apparently embarrassed by their display of affection. He began to gather up the containers.
“Leave them,” she said. “I’ll get high smelling them in the morning. It’ll give me something to do to loosen up this shoulder.”
“Aren’t you supposed to do some therapy?”
“Yeah, and it’s probably going to hurt like hell, but I do hate being left-handed.”
Paul laughed. “You do it. The doctors assured me you’d have no problems if you’d do everything they tell you.”
“I always do what I’m told. I’m the good little girl my daddy raised. I worry over keeping library books out too long. That’s why I’m a cop. I doubt I’ll make a good lawyer.”
“Be a prosecutor. Work for the state. It’s the next best thing.”
“The next best thing?” she asked, smiling, knowing what he meant.
“To being a good cop. That’s the best thing there is, Rae. The very best.”
She kissed him again, and she locked all the locks, just as he’d ordered her to when he left. She still slept with the lights on, but it didn’t help the dreams. Darkness is my natural element, he had said, but he invaded her lighted bedroom every night, and she wondered how long it would take before she didn’t dream about him anymore.
THE PHYSICAL THERAPY was every bit as bad as Rae had thought it would be, but at least it gave her a goal, something to focus on besides what had happened. She worked like a dog, pushing herself hard during the next weeks. The physical exertion helped her sleep at night. With the gradual but steady improvement in her shoulder, however, she knew it wouldn’t be long before she would be physically capable of returning to work. Whether she would ever want to do the kind of work she had done for Hardesty and the task force remained a question. She was on leave until her specialist dismissed her, and she knew that day was approaching faster than she really wanted it to.
When it came, she went back because they were dissolving the task force anyway. Nobody believed they could be effective, given what had happened. All they would be doing was a mothballing operation, closing up shop and transferring information. Rae could do that without thinking, and most days she did.
Paul had given her credit in front of the team for putting an end to Kyle’s activities. She knew he had deliberately built up her role to prevent questions about the week of her disappearance. Nobody asked, but occasionally she would detect speculation in a pair of eyes that would slide hastily away, or a conversation would just die when she approached. She could live with that. She had told them the facts. Not the truth, but the facts.
She was looking out into a cold December rain, preparing to make a dash for a cab after working late, when she felt a hand on her arm, preventing her from stepping out the revolving door.
“I thought it was you,” said the deep voice at her elbow.
“Dell Stewart,” she said, glancing up into the smiling brown eyes of the man she hadn’t seen since that summer morning. And she hadn’t seen him too well, then.
“How are you, Rae? I heard you were back at work. How’s the arm?”
“I’m fine. We’re closing up shop. I know that doesn’t come as a surprise to you.”
“No, Paul told me. Looking for a job?”
“Why? Do you have one?”
“Yes.” There was no hesitation in Stewart’s offer. “Just say the word.”
“I appreciate it, but I really think I’m going back to law school.”
“Well, I can’t blame you, but I hate to see it happen. You’re not letting Peters’s death influence you?”
“No, although Paul thinks I am. It’s just the culmina- tion of a lot of things.”
Dell studied her a minute and then nodded his understanding. “Why don’t you let me give you a lift home? This stuff will chill you to the bone.”
“Are you sure? Will it be out of your way?”
“You’re on my way home if you’re still at the same place.”
“Then I’m on your way, and I hate cold rain. Lead on, Macduff,” she said, joining him under his outsize golf umbrella.
During the ride they talked about football, the weather, some social events, although Rae, having been holed up like
a hibernating bear throughout the fall, was really out of touch. She enjoyed being with Dell and told him how much she appreciated the lift.
“Anytime, Rae. Just call me. I’m still at the same place. Still doing the same old things.”
She had wanted to ask Dell all along, because she was sure he would have heard, but she had forced her mind away from the questions until they arrived at her complex. Why not? she finally decided. After all I went through, I have a right to ask.
“Is this the one? Or the next set?” Dell asked, trying to find the right building in the driving rain.
“This is it. This is great. I really appreciate the ride.”
“It was good to see you, Rae. Take care.”
When she didn’t open the car door, Dell turned to look at her.
“What finally happened with the guy you arrested that morning?”
He didn’t answer for a long time, so she waited, thinking she was probably going to regret having asked.
“What the hell,” he said softly. “I’m not Paul Hardesty. I don’t owe anybody anything in this. Except maybe you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, because I think it was a raw deal.”
“A raw deal?” she repeated when he didn’t go on.
“And maybe dangerous. Dangerous for you not to know.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Dell?”
“Look, we didn’t arrest anybody that morning. Kyle was dead. The big guy was dead. But there were no arrests.”
“Wait a minute. I don’t get this. The other man. He was there. He was there when I was shot. You guys were just outside. Are you trying to tell me he escaped? With all you big-time lawmen surrounding the place?” She allowed her disbelief to color her questions.
“I’m not telling you anything other than the fact that we didn’t make any arrests that morning,” Dell repeated, almost challengingly.
“Paul told me he was in custody. That they were going to deport him to Colombia for trial.”
Dell didn’t say anything, but he met her eyes without flinching.
“You’re telling me that was a lie?” Rae asked.
He waited a long time, maybe regretting what he had revealed, but finally he nodded. “I might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a goat. That’s what I’m telling you. You make Hardesty level with you. He owes you that.”
He stopped talking and looked out the windshield into the night and the rain.
“Is that it?” she said finally. “Is that all you’re going to say?”
“You ask Paul. Make him tell you why he lied. I didn’t even visit you in the hospital because I was still burned. Tell Hardesty I said to stick it if he doesn’t like me telling you the truth.”
“Trust me,” Rae promised softly, “that’s going to be very mild compared to what I tell Paul Hardesty.”
Chapter Twelve
Paul was on the phone when she knocked on his open door the next morning, but he motioned her in. She walked across the room to the chair in front of his desk and waited for him to finish his conversation. Finally he hung up and turned, smiling, to greet her.
She didn’t give him time to speak, wanting to catch him off guard as much as possible. “I talked to Dell Stewart last night. I want to know why you lied to me, Paul. Why you’ve lied to me from the beginning.”
The impact of her words touched his eyes, flickered briefly in the clear blue, and then he shook his head. “I don’t understand, Rae. What are you upset about?”
“God, you do that so well. Doesn’t it even bother you anymore? You’ve lied and lied and lied to me. From the very first, when you lied about the courier. You look at me out of those innocent baby-blues, and like a fool, I always believe you.” She stopped for a breath, and then went on, trying to at least sound rational. “You told me that the man you arrested the morning I shot Kyle had been deported, sent to Colombia for trial. Stewart told me there were no arrests.”
“Did you want him arrested, Rae?” he asked softly.
The question stopped her. Could Paul possibly know what had happened between them? She had felt so much guilt for loving him; it was a betrayal of the person she was, of her father’s memory, a betrayal even of Paul and the task force. But despite the depths of those feelings, the heaviest guilt had been that, in finally doing the right thing, she had betrayed her captor. Why, then, had she been so furious last night to find out he hadn’t been arrested?
“I wanted what was right,“ she said angrily—an explanation of her own emotions as much as an answer for Paul. “I got Diego killed trying to do what was right. I took a bullet, Paul, doing what good cops do. Then I find out from Dell—”
“Stewart shouldn’t have told you,” he interrupted. “It wasn’t his place to tell you anything.”
“Why not? Because Stewart doesn’t lie? Or because that’s all you know how to do? Why wasn’t that man arrested? And damn it, don’t you lie to me again.”
She waited a long time, breathing deeply, again fighting for control.
“I can’t tell you that, Rae.”
“You owe me, Paul. You at least owe me an explanation. You know you do.”
“Yes.” He acknowledged the truth of her statement.
“Did they pay you off?” she demanded, wondering if she could have been so wrong about Hardesty. “How much does it take to buy a man’s soul? You asked me that about Kyle. How much did it take for the cartel to buy yours?”
“Do you think I’d still hold this job if Stewart thought there’d been a payoff? Did he even suggest that, Rae?” Paul asked, seemingly as angry now as she.
And, of course, Dell hadn’t. It had simply been one of the scenarios that had occurred to her in the sleepless night during which she had tried to figure it all out.
“Then what else? What possible reason could there be for not taking him in? Why would you just let him go? Give me something that makes sense.”
Paul’s lips tightened, and he said nothing for a long time, weighing what to tell her, she guessed. Deciding, maybe, on the next lie. Wondering what she would buy. When he did speak, it was obvious he wasn’t even going to attempt an explanation—believable or otherwise.
“Sometimes we don’t have choices about what we do. I told you it went with the job. Sometimes we just have to do what we have to do.”
“That’s it? That’s your explanation for letting him go? ‘We have to do what we have to do’?” she jeered. “God, you make me sick. This whole business makes me sick. Did he cut a deal? What the hell went down, Paul?”
He sat there behind his desk, meeting her eyes, but she couldn’t read anything in the clear blue depths of his.
“I slept with him, Paul. I let him make love to me,” she told him, trying to make him understand. And then she knew the rest was more important, so she said it, too. “And I loved him, more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my life. But because I’m a cop, I gave him to you. I betrayed him. And I’ve lived with that every day for the past five months. Because it was the right thing to do. I could live with that guilt because, somewhere inside, I knew I had done the right thing. And then last night Stewart told me you let him go. All I’m asking is that you tell me why. Make me understand,” Rae begged.
Finally, the slow negative movement of the white head provided his answer.
“I can’t work for you anymore, Paul. I can’t live anymore with the lies and deceit.”
She got up and walked toward the door of his office.
“Rae,” he said softly.
She turned around in time to see him close a desk drawer. He held an object almost hidden in his hand.
“When I was packing up, I found this. I made you a promise, and I’ve kept it, but since we’re shutting down, I can’t guarantee what will happen to this if I put it in the case file. I think you should have it.”
He opened his hand to reveal a tape. The tape Franklin Holcomb had made that night in Virginia. The agonized whispers of the dying courier.
&
nbsp; “Escobar’s accountant,” she said softly. There was nothing left. There was no truth or honor left anywhere.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Paul said, the blue eyes reflecting now what appeared to be genuine puzzlement.
“He told me that. He said the courier knew so much about the money laundering because he was Escobar’s accountant.”
“Then he lied to you, Rae.”
She shook her head, her small smile very bitter. “Everyone lies. He told me that, too. And he was certainly right about you. He said it was probably in your job description. So who do I believe, Paul? Who can I ever trust again?”
“Listen to me, Rae. The man in Virginia was everything you thought he was. And he wasn’t part of the cartel. I swear to you on my soul that’s the truth.”
“I’d be surprised if you have any soul left. You’ve probably sold it all through the years in little bits and pieces. Little dishonors that you did, although you knew they were wrong. Expedient, maybe, but wrong.”
“Take the tape, Rae.”
“I don’t want it,” she said, feeling sickness coil inside her. “If he was what you say he was—” She stopped because she didn’t know anymore. She would probably never know. “Burn it,” she said finally. “I told you then. If he was what you say, it shouldn’t be the only thing that’s left.”
“I thought you might want to listen to it. To remember—”
“I don’t want to remember anything I ever did for you. You’re not the man I thought you were, and you used me. You lied to me and you used me. I won’t ever forgive you for that.”
“Rae,” he said, and for once the mask was down. For once the regret was clear in the blue eyes.
“Burn it,” she said again. “At least do one right thing in this whole mess of lies and deception. Do one thing right,” she ordered bitterly, as she turned and left.
IT WAS A FEW DAYS before Christmas, and Rae had fought off her mother’s determined efforts to have her on a flight to Texas to spend the holidays there. Rae didn’t know why she hadn’t gone, why she was sitting in a dirty apartment alone, eating day-old pizza out of the refrigerator. She put the half-eaten piece she held down on the coffee table. She ought to be home where there would be a tree and decorations. The only decorations here were a pair of panty hose draped across the back of a chair, and they didn’t look at all festive.