Black at Heart

by Leslie Parrish

  But it hadn't worked out that way. She'd opened the door all right. Then she'd shrieked a little, made the sign of the cross, and slammed it closed in his face.

  He'd knocked for five minutes, pleaded through the door that he was free, he hadn't broken out of jail, and she ought to turn on the news if she didn't believe him. She'd apparently called a neighbor instead. Because that fat fuck Mr. Watson from the other side of the duplex stepped outside onto the porch, butting his nose in where it didn't belong, like always.

  "She don't want to see you, son," he said.

  "I'm out," Jesse insisted. "They let me go. It's not like I escaped or anything. But she won't listen to me."

  The front door finally opened. His mother peeked around the edge of it, smiling in relieved appreciation when she saw Mr. Watson. The man stepped back into his own doorway, but didn't close it, remaining right there in plain sight. Then Ma glanced somewhere behind the still mostly closed door and said something to another person who had to be in the tiny living room. "Just hush, now, it's okay. I'll step outside and be right back."

  "Who you got in there?" Jesse asked, knowing his seventy-year-old mother would never be with a man. Then a curtain shifted in the front window, and he saw a kid's face peer out.

  He tensed, a familiar sensation crawling up his body, from his toes all the way up his legs and throughout the rest of him. His mouth went dry, his throat tight. A buzzing started in his ears, as if a fly had gotten inside his skull and was whooshing around, trying to find a way out.

  "Who's the boy?" he whispered.

  "I'm babysittin' him." She planted herself in front of the door, crossed her arms over her big chest. "And you ain't comin' in."

  How crazy was that? She didn't trust him around some neighborhood kid.

  Such a cute little neighborhood kid.

  He swallowed, wondering why he felt dizzy. Why he always felt this way when he saw some bright-faced boy, all grins and big teeth.

  Seeing how closely she watched him, he forced himself to stand up straight and not let his eyes shift to peek at the window again. "Ma, they let me go. You gotta let me in," he said. He turned his back to Watson, who stood so close, probably able to hear every word. He acted as if he needed to be a bodyguard, protecting Jesse's mother from her only son.

  "I know what you are. I know what you have always been. And you've set foot in my house for the very last time."

  Shock made his jaw fall open. That was ugly, what he saw in her eyes. It looked like disgust. Maybe even close to hatred.

  "But they let me go," he said weakly.

  "Not 'cause you didn't do it, though." She stepped closer, until he could see the way the wrinkles had deepened in her face and the dark circles had imprinted themselves under her sunken eyes. She'd aged a lot more than two years. Lowering her voice, to keep Mr. Watson from hearing, she snarled, "Because you did do it. I don't care what they say on the TV, what the lawyers say-I know you and I know you're guilty."

  Jesse started to cry, sniffling as though he were some damn little kid who'd been caught out doing something dirty. "No, Ma. No, I got a bum rush. It wasn't fair."

  She lifted her hand and shook one quivering index finger in his face. "Don't say nothing more. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to see your face. Whoever let you out of that jail was crazy, because I know you ain't gonna be able to last long without hurting somebody again."

  "I didn't hurt him!" he insisted, hearing the whine in his own voice. But it was true. He hadn't hurt him enough to kill him, at least, not on purpose.

  That had been an accident. Just an accident. He wasn't a killer-he'd never murder anybody. Who could be blamed for an accident?

  She stepped back inside for a moment, and when she came back out, she was holding a small plastic bag, thick with folded bills. She shoved it toward him. "Your money, all you had in your room and your account before you got picked up. I held on to it for you. Plus I put in every dollar I had in my purse. Now, get gone, boy. Just get gone. I'll keep praying for you-just like I pray for that little boy you killed. But prayers are all you're getting from me."

  She slipped back into the house without another word, shutting the door again, slamming the bolts home, leaving him standing there on the porch. Alone. Rejected. Homeless. And completely loathed by the woman who'd given birth to him.

  Anger flooded through him. Not at her; he couldn't be angry at her, not ever. But at the authorities who'd hunted him, who'd thrown him in that courtroom and dragged out that ugly trial that his ma had had to sit through. She'd been in the courtroom when that blond cunt had testified. She'd seen the pictures of that kid.

  It was their fault he was in this mess. It should never have happened-that FBI lab was corrupt; his own lawyer had said it. He should never have had to go on trial. Should never have had to see that look of hatred in his own mother's eyes.

  He staggered off the porch, wandering aimlessly down the street. Nowhere to go. Nobody who even wanted to know him. Jeez, he might just as well go back to the prison and give himself over to rape and beatings for the rest of his life. Or just die now.

  Suddenly, a ringing sound intruded on his misery. He'd forgotten all about the cell phone Ms. Vincent had given him. It was in his pocket, untouched, since he hadn't had a single person to call.

  He gingerly removed it, not even sure how it worked, then pulled it open. "Hello?" he said, cautious and tentative.

  "Hello, Jesse."

  The voice sounded strange, tinny and fake. Like one of those automated ones you got whenever you tried to call just about any customer-service number. "Who is this?"

  "I am your benefactor, Jesse. The person who hired Ms. Vincent to represent you."

  Reaching a covered bus stop, which was deserted, he ducked inside for privacy. "You heard, then? That she got me out?"

  "I heard. Congratulations. How are you enjoying freedom?"

  He kicked his toe against some gravel on the cement floor. "S'okay."

  A pause, then the voice said, "I almost hate to tell you this, but there might be a problem. I have heard through some very reliable sources that the FBI agent who testified against you, the one whose body was never found, might not actually be dead."

  Five minutes ago, Jesse had been ready to give up, to die or go back to prison. Now, though, when he thought of that woman, realized she might still be out there, sheer fear, combined with a healthy dose of panic, roared through him. He lurched back in the shelter, collapsing onto the bench, sucking in deep breaths. "This is some kind of joke, right? "

  "I'm afraid not. I believe the authorities are seeking her out now, and expect if anyone will find her, it's her former colleagues. One Supervisory Special Agent Blackstone might even know where she is already."

  Jesse pounded his head back on the wall of the stand. "This can't happen. Can't. Happen."

  "Cheer up. I don't think it matters. Obviously she was wrong about your guilt, and now that you have an alibi, it really isn't an issue. At least, as long as that alibi holds up."

  Fuck. The alibi from some guy he'd never even heard of, this Will Miller he'd supposedly been drinking with at the bar he'd never been to in his entire life? How well would that hold up if they tried to put the screws to him again, with that Fletcher bitch leading the way?

  "Lucky for you, Mr. Miller remembered talking to you at the bar that night. It certainly wouldn't be good for you if anything happened to him. If it did, and Ms. Fletcher were to return, you could be in some very serious trouble." The person on the other end of the call suddenly tsked. "Or, well, I hate to even bring it up, but if this Agent Fletcher is a vengeful woman, things could be even worse."

  Vengeful? Despite being slim and pale, the woman had looked ready to rip him apart with her bare hands from up there on the stand.

  "I mean, she was an FBI agent, after all. Good with weapons, I suppose. And if she thinks you got off on a technicality, well…"

  "Oh, God." He leaned over, clutching his stomach, sure he
was gonna puke. "She might come after me. What am I gonna do?"

  There was a long hesitation. Then his anonymous benefactor quietly murmured, "If this does come to pass, Mr. Boyd, I think there is only one thing you can do."

  "What?"

  Something clicked, like some kind of metal against the mouthpiece of the phone. And when the voice came back, it sounded different. Thicker. Almost seething.

  "You have to get her before she can get you."

  Chapter 11

  Wyatt spent most of Thursday night calling himself an idiot. All the promises he'd made himself, all the resolute certainty that what he felt for Lily was sympathy and protectiveness, and he'd let himself kiss her as if he needed her kiss to survive.

  He wished he could regret it. He really did. But when he evaluated his most base response, his innermost reaction, it wasn't regret he found.

  It was hunger.

  Hell, maybe he did need her kiss to survive. Maybe he needed that warmth, that vibrancy, that keen mind, and the will that seemed to grow stronger by the day.

  Maybe he did. That didn't, however, mean he should take it. Because he wasn't what she needed. Whatever she said about not regretting it, not wanting him to, and not needing to be protected, he was still her former boss, still the man taking care of her, still ten years older and a good deal more jaded.

  Well, perhaps not that. Lily had seen things in the past few years that could harden even the most tenderhearted person.

  "She's not hard," he reminded himself as he sat outside on the back patio Friday morning, sipping the steaming cup of black coffee he'd just made. The enclosed courtyard behind the town house offered privacy and was lush with vines and vegetation that made it seem more like a secret garden than a backyard. He'd had the stone wall heightened and the plantings increased soon after he'd inherited the house, so now neither next-door neighbor could look down from a higher floor and see anything other than the top canopy of shady trees and flowering shrubs.

  No, Lily was not hard. The strength she'd fought for, that stamina and will, hadn't come at the cost of her kindness and her good heart. Lily hadn't buried her former self to become the powerful woman she was today. She'd simply blended two parts, the old and the new, until an altogether different woman had been formed. Not the innocent girl she'd been long ago. Not the angry, scarred woman he'd known this past spring.

  She was neither. She was both. She was so much more.

  And she was walking out the back door toward him right now, wearing a short, silky bathrobe and carrying her own cup of coffee. Wyatt looked away, not liking the sudden flash of interest that had shot through him at the sight of her long bare legs, revealed nearly to the tops of her thighs. High enough for him to see the puckered flesh, the scars. Yet she wasn't self-conscious about it anymore, as if she knew there was nothing about her he could look at and find unattractive.

  "Morning," she said, sitting opposite him. She smiled, as if their tense evening hadn't happened. And it had been tense. After he'd come back into the house, they'd barely exchanged ten words beyond his telling her how to find her room.

  He wondered if her sleep had been as restless as his.

  "Good morning." About to ask her how she'd slept, he was interrupted by the ringing of his cellular phone, which sat on the table. He'd already spoken with Brandon this morning, and with Jackie, who had asked him if he was going to come in to deal with the increasingly furious Deputy Director Crandall.

  Yes, he would, but not until he was ready to. Not until he knew what he was going to do with the woman watching him with sleep-heavy eyes from across the table.

  He glanced at the caller ID and saw the name G Vincent with a Virginia area code. "Boyd's attorney," he said, nodding in approval. He'd suspected the woman wouldn't be able to resist returning the call Wyatt had placed to her less than a half hour ago. Lawyers were nothing if not predictable, and she was probably strutting her stuff over her big win in appeals court. The chance to throw that win in the face of an FBI agent-so often the enemy in a criminal trial-would probably be irresistible.

  Placing his finger over his lips to instruct Lily to remain silent, he flipped the phone open. "Blackstone."

  "Hello, Agent Blackstone, this is Claire Vincent. I just arrived in my office and was given a message that you called."

  "Yes, I did. Thanks for returning the call." He winked at Lily. "I wasn't sure you would."

  The woman on the other end of the line laughed softly.

  "Oh, don't be silly. I'm always happy to talk to law enforcement." Her laugh ended abruptly. "Especially when they do me such enormous favors."

  He sat straighter in his chair. "Favors?"

  "Of course. If not for you, my client Jesse Boyd might still be sitting in his prison cell."

  Wyatt slowly rose to his feet, tucking the phone into the crook of his neck. He lifted his coffee mug and walked to the edge of the patio, sipping slowly, waiting for the lawyer to explain.

  "You are calling about Jesse, aren't you?"

  "I am."

  "I'm not surprised. It must be difficult for you. I mean, you must know that your exposure of the shenanigans in the FBI crime lab couldn't have helped my client any more than if you'd gotten a signed confession from another suspect."

  He lowered his mug to his side, closing his eyes. This was what he hadn't wanted to hear, but what he'd feared he would discover from Boyd's attorney. The details hadn't been laid out in the article. It had said only that there had been some problems with the original case against the man. Problems involving evidence and, of course, the loss of the witness.

  "The fact that the victim's aunt was your employee didn't hurt, either. But the real icing on the cake was you reporting that evidence tampering when you did. I mean, if you'd blown the lid off that a few months later, I might not have had as much legal maneuvering room. As it was, the timing was just close enough for the judge to buy it as a reason to throw out the evidence."

  An almost tangible wave of red washed over his vision and a vicious headache began to pound in his brain. Each thud of his pulse ratcheted it higher until the pressure felt likely to blow through his temples.

  "Can't imagine how tough it must be for you, since Fletcher worked for you. Thank God she's not alive to know your whistle-blowing helped get the guy accused of killing her nephew off the hook."

  The woman's chipper voice assaulted him with every syllable. No, he hadn't been taken completely by surprise. A tiny part of him had worried that his actions might have had something to do with this case.

  He had long ago accepted the fact that, by doing what he had done, reporting what he knew, he could be costing the convictions of some pretty horrific criminals. That knowledge had kept him up night after night, racking his brain, trying to find some other way. In the end, there had been no other way. He was an officer of the law surrounded by lawlessness. He'd done what he had to do, fully prepared to accept all consequences.

  But not this one.

  Jesus, not this one. He did not want to put the phone down, turn around, and admit the truth to Lily.

  "Now, is there something I can actually help you with, Agent Blackstone? Or did you simply call out of morbid curiosity?"

  Wyatt pulled his thoughts together, focusing only on getting information. Not on past cases, not on old mistakes. Only on now.

  "I'm curious," he said, wondering whether she could hear the tightness, the barely controlled anger in his voice, "about how you got involved with the case."

  The woman didn't answer.

  "I mean, you weren't the original attorney of record. Who brought you into the case at this late date?"

  Ms. Vincent sounded a little less amused and a lot more cool when she answered. "I am not at liberty to discuss my clients You know that."

  "I'm not asking you to. I'm simply curious. From what I remember, Boyd doesn't exactly come from a wealthy background. He couldn't afford more than a public defender at the original trial."

  "I
repeat, I'm not at liberty to discuss my clients, nor who's paying their bills. Now, if you'll excuse me, I am due in court this morning. Good-"

  "One more thing," he interjected smoothly. "I was wondering, since I haven't seen your name in any local cases, where your practice is located."

  A brief hesitation said she was considering whether to respond. The question was a perfectly innocuous one, though Wyatt very much wanted to know the answer. Finally, as if realizing he could get the information if he dug for it, anyway, she admitted, "My firm is located in Williamsburg, Virginia, Agent Blackstone. Now, I really must go. Good-bye."

  Brandon lived close to headquarters, so rather than taking the Metro down to Alexandria first thing in the morning, he went to the office first. He had something he needed to retrieve.

  As soon as he got there, though, Jackie waylaid him, pulling him into her office before he could even get close to his. "Anspaugh's here again," she explained as she softly closed the door behind him. "And he's been barking your name since yesterday. The minute he sees you, he's going to want to question you."

  "Does he have a warrant?" he snapped.

  "Get real. You know you can't refuse."

  Right. Which meant he better make sure he remained scarce so Anspaugh never got the chance to ask.

  "Where's Wyatt?"

  "At home, as far as I know," he replied.

  "Crandall has called twice and he sounds like he is going to shout his office walls down if Wyatt doesn't show up this morning. He calmed down about yesterday when I forwarded him Wyatt's actual airline itinerary, proving he'd gone up to his place in Maine, and couldn't come in. But that also means he saw the trip was for one day only and he was coming back last night."

  Brandon smiled. Forwarding the itinerary as a way to get Crandall off their backs for a day had been his idea. It had, however, as Jackie had just reminded him, bought them only one day. Which wasn't enough.