She stared at the men who passed her. The man with the funny winter hat…did he have Eric? The man in the three-piece suit…was he the kidnapper?
She held the sack of money against her heart as she stepped onto the escalator. She scanned the faces of the shoppers who came into view as the moving stairs took her to the lower level of shops. Were Rose and Vincent here…waiting for her to drop off the money? Or was a stranger watching her…trading money for her heart?
As she approached the Dillards store, she recognized Kip, a hat pulled low on his forehead as he sat at a bench nearby. He had a newspaper in one hand, a hot dog in the other. He didn’t look up as she walked past him, but she had a feeling that, despite his nonchalant air, he missed nothing that was happening around them.
When she reached the trash can, she dropped the bag inside, turned and headed back the way she had come. Instantly, all her energy, all her strength, seemed to disappear. She walked back to the security office on legs that trembled. The tension, the worry…the gnawing emptiness…were suddenly overwhelming as she prayed that this day would end with her son back in her arms.
Tears blurred her vision and streaked down her cheeks. It was over. She had done what she needed to do. Now she could only pray the kidnapper would keep his word.
Sully met her at the office door, as if he’d known how great her need to be held would be. And that was what he did. Held her. While Donny studied the monitors, while dozens of officers kept their attention focused on a trash can, while agonizing minutes passed…Sully held tight to Theresa.
Someplace beyond the horror, in spite of the anguish over Eric, Theresa realized that she and Sully still had unfinished business. There was still a bond of love between them, a strong, shining strand that the divorce hadn’t been able to snap. She had never understood the reasons why Sully left her, had assumed and guessed, but had never really known.
With his arms tight around her, feeling his love suffusing her, she knew that before this was all over she’d demand some answers from him. And this time she wouldn’t let him walk away until she had the answers.
“Sully, you and Theresa need to go back to her place. I’ll send Kip with you,” Donny instructed.
Theresa pulled away from Sully’s arms. “Why? I want to stay here. I want to be here when they let Eric go.”
“That might not happen here,” Sully said, his voice gentle, as if he were aware of the tenuous control she was fighting desperately to maintain.
“Just because they had you drop the money here doesn’t mean this is where they’ll release Eric,” Donny explained, his gaze not wavering from the monitor in front of him. “They might contact you by phone, tell you where Eric has been released.”
“Come on, I’ll drive you two home,” Kip said.
ASTHEY DROVE toward Theresa’s house, Sully recognized the shaky control his ex-wife fought to maintain within herself. She clutched his hand, as if lost, as if he were the anchor that kept her moored to sanity. He’d never seen her so needy, so weak. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her forever, keep the world with its monsters at bay. But he couldn’t. The monster had already entered their life and stolen their son.
He knew she’d believed that the moment she dropped the money into the trash can, Eric would miraculously appear, like a rabbit pulled from a magician’s hat.
Nobody spoke on the way home. There were no words left for any of them. When they reached the house, the press stood waiting, a vocal single entity with dozens of talking heads.
“Where’d you go?”
“Have you heard from Eric?”
“What’s happened in the past several hours?”
Questions pelted them as they walked up the sidewalk and into the house. Fifteen messages awaited them on the answering machine. Two crank calls, three reporters, the rest friends and neighbors offering condolences and help. As they listened to each one. Sully saw the hope slowly ebb from Theresa’s eyes.
“What if they never let him go?” she said. She stared at Sully with dull, lifeless eyes. “Robert said this kind of thing brings people closer, makes them stronger. But it doesn’t. It destroys them.” She pressed a hand against her mouth as tears silently oozed from her eyes.
Her weakness made Sully reach inside himself to find his strength. “Theresa, you can’t give up hope now. Eric could be home at any moment.”
“And he could be…dead.” The word they’d all danced around, the possibility they’d refused to acknowledge, fell from her lips on a moan.
“No!” Sully’s protest exploded from him, making Theresa jump. He grabbed her hands and held them against his heart. “It’s just like you told me before. I still feel him, here in my heart. I know he’s alive.” Sully’s voice rang with his conviction and, to his relief, he saw the dark emptiness of her eyes filling with a spark of renewed life…returned faith.
“Oh, Sully. How did we lose each other?” Her eyes pierced his, as if she were attempting to see the secrets in his soul. Secrets he couldn’t share with her. “Nothing has been right since you left. I miss you. I want you back in my life, back in our life.”
The unexpected words were like gunshots delivering bullets into his flesh. Each one sharp, causing piercing pain. He yearned to give in to the images her words produced…the sweet thought of a future filled with Theresa and Eric. He longed for that future filled with laughter and love.
But it was a false image, for he could never be the man she needed, would never again be the man he wanted himself to be.
“Theresa, we’re both under a lot of stress.” He stepped away from her, needing some distance. If he’d ever been strong in his life, he needed to be strong now. But he couldn’t be with the scent of her perfume filling his head, the warmth of her body heat so achingly close.
He walked across the room, then turned to face her once again. “Our world has been turned upside down. You’re reaching out to me right now because of everything that’s going on. We can’t make decisions, changes, in the midst of all this turmoil.”
She stared at him for another long moment, the flicker of life in her eyes intensified with a spark of something akin to anger. It sparkled and rippled, then faded away. “You’re right, Sully. Now isn’t the time to make any decisions. But sooner or later, I want you to tell me all the things you didn’t tell me about the night you were shot. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to explain to me how a bullet in your chest so effectively killed our marriage.” Without waiting for his reply, she turned and left the kitchen.
Sully closed his eyes and drew a deep, weary breath. They’d never talked about that night
Oh, he’d told her the bare facts after he came out of surgery. She’d sat with him day after day during his recuperation, but he’d never told her of his suspicions. He’d never talked to her about his fears. He hadn’t explained to her that on that night, the man she loved had died, and a weak, ineffectual coward had taken his place.
Chapter Ten
The evening hours seemed to last forever. Sully and Theresa took turns pacing the living room, while Kip sat at the kitchen table, eating the pizza he’d had delivered around six o’clock.
Kip maintained radio contact with the officers at the mall, who so far had nothing to report. Nobody suspicious had gone near the trash can, and they intended to remain monitoring until the mall closed at eleven that night. Then, if the money hadn’t been picked up, the situation would have to be reassessed.
Sully wandered the house, roaming like a burglar casing the place. Tension knotted the muscles in his neck, made sitting still absolutely impossible.
He would have liked to stay at the mall, watch that trash can until the perpetrator sidled up to it to grab his money. He’d like to wrap his fingers around the guilty party’s neck…shake him until they got some answers. But he knew Donny had been right to send them home. Home, where a call might come in, telling them Eric was at the corner of Tenth Street and Oak…or at a grocery store on Main Street.
But the calls that occasionally interrupted the quiet continued to be useless…neighbors and acquaintances, reporters and media, people offering help or wanting a story.
Sully found himself in Eric’s bedroom, breathing in the scent of boyhood. There was so many things he hadn’t experienced yet with Eric. So many unfulfilled promises and yet-to-be-reached dreams.
He’d promised the boy a fishing trip this summer, looked forward to helping him work on his knuckleball. Dammit, he’d had plans…dreams for Eric…and the thought that those dreams might not ever be fulfilled broke his heart.
“Sully?” Theresa appeared in the doorway. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I thought maybe the hamster might need some food,” he said, improvising.
She nodded. “Eric will be mad if he gets home and we haven’t taken care of Petey.”
Sully poured some fresh pellets of food into the dish in the hamster cage. Petey stuck his little pink nose out of the cedar shavings, then retreated once again into sleep.
“Come out here and sit with me,” Theresa said.
They went back into the living room, where Montana immediately curled up on the sofa next to Theresa. She patted the dog on the head. “He acts like he’s been here forever.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t check it out with you before getting him,” Sully said as he eased down in the chair next the fireplace. “To be honest, I didn’t know I was going to get him until the day I saw him in the pet shop. He looked at me with those big brown eyes, and I was lost Then, when the store owner told me his name, I knew this mutt was destined to belong to Eric.”
Theresa smiled and stroked the dog’s rich coat. “It’s okay. Eric will be wild for him.” Her gaze remained fixed on Sully. “You look good, Sully. You’ve lost some weight, but it becomes you.”
“Getting off the booze didn’t hurt.”
“I’m so proud of you, Sully. I know how difficult it is to put something like that behind you.”
He averted his gaze from hers. He didn’t want her pride. If he was truly a good man, he’d never have fallen into the trap of alcohol in the first place. “Yeah, well, I thought about how I felt about my father, and I never wanted Eric to feel that way about me.” He knew he didn’t have to say anything further.
Theresa knew all about his father’s alcoholism, the disease having finally killed him when Sully was twenty-four. Theresa knew that Sully had loved his father, but also that his love had been tempered with resentment and anger that sometimes flirted with actual hate.
“Eric could never feel differently about you than he does,” Theresa said gently. “He loves you, Sully. Next to Joe Montana, you’re his hero.”
Sully laughed. “Yeah, I never could quite compete with old Joe.” He sobered. “Anyway, I like my life now that I’m sober. It works for me.”
He saw the hurt that darkened Theresa’s eyes at his words, but knew it was important she believe his words. He had to make sure she entertained no hopes for a reconciliation.
It had nearly undone him when she told him she still loved him, wanted them back together as a family. But he knew her words of love had probably come from the stress of the situation, their bond through Eric.
All he had to do was look around to see that she’d done fine without him. She’d provided Eric with a good home, one that radiated love and warmth and happiness. He didn’t belong here, and he wasn’t about to be seduced by emotion into the position where she would see the damage inside him, the crippling fear that left him less than a whole man.
She deserved better. A man like Robert Cassino, with his smooth good looks and adoring smile. Sully’s stomach clenched at thoughts of the banker. “How long have you been dating Robert?”
She frowned. “We aren’t really dating, so to speak. We’ve gone to dinner together half a dozen times. The three of us went to the movies twice. It’s really not a big deal.”
Sully remembered the way Robert had looked at Theresa. It might not be a big deal to her, but it was definitely a big deal to Robert. He fancied himself in love with Theresa.
“And what was it he said to you? Something about this adversity bringing you closer together?”
She nodded, her hair falling over her shoulder in a dark spill. Sully clenched his hands, fighting the impulse to wrap his hands in its softness, breathe deeply of its fragrance. He’d always loved her hair. “He hoped going through this ordeal would bring us closer together. Fat chance,” she said derisively. “What this ordeal has done is make me realize I don’t want to see him anymore. He’s not the man I want in my life or Eric’s life.”
Sully rubbed his forehead, crazy thoughts taking form in his brain. Was it possible? It seemed too ridiculous to even consider…and yet…“You don’t suppose it’s possible that Robert engineered this whole kidnapping?”
Theresa stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. And perhaps he had. “Oh, Sully…why would he do something like that?”
“I don’t know…some crazy scheme to bring you and him closer together?” The longer he thought about it, the less crazy it seemed. A long shot, yes. But long shots were all they had in their possession. “He provides the ransom money and becomes a hero in your eyes.”
“And he doesn’t have to worry about losing the ransom money because he intends to retrieve it from the trash can.” Theresa followed his thought process. “It sounds so crazy…and yet it makes a crazy kind of sense.”
“I’m going to talk to Kip, see if he can get some men to check it out.”
“WHY HASN’T ANYONE tried to pick up the money? Why haven’t we heard anything about Eric?” Theresa felt as if she’d shatter into a hundred pieces if they didn’t hear anything soon.
Christmas Eve. She and Sully should be whispering secrets, wrapping last-minute presents and glorying in the season of love and peace. Instead, Eric was missing and Sully had retreated into a shell of silence.
She flopped onto the sofa and stared at him with a touch of resentment. He’d made her angry earlier, when he dismissed her plea that they get back together so easily. And again when he stressed that he was happy with his life now…as if he’d been so unhappy with his life with her.
But with the passing of hours, she’d realized he was probably right. She was overwrought, under too much stress to make decisions that would affect her future.
And yet her head couldn’t deny what her heart knew. She loved Sully, would probably always love him. But even though the tragedy of Eric’s disappearance had brought them momentarily together, closer than they had been since their divorce, there would be no happily-ever-after for them.
She’d bared her heart to Sully, told him her desire that they be together again. She hadn’t missed the fear her words provoked in his eyes. She’d known then that hers were the dreams of a fool. She was part of Sully’s past, and he had no intention of repeating his mistakes.
Sully sat down next to her, offering her a small smile of truce, one that only made her love him more.
“This waiting is horrid,” she said, breaking the silence that had filled the room.
“I know. Theresa…” He turned and looked at her, as if he’d made a decision, come to a conclusion. “About the night I got shot.” He leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment. When he looked at her once again, a steady resolve darkened his eyes. “We never talked about it…. I never told you exactly what happened that night.”
“Talk to me now, Sully,” she prompted.
He raked a hand over his face. “I don’t even know where to begin….”
“Just talk,” Theresa replied, wanting him to fill the silence, a silence that had lingered far too long between the two of them.
“Donny and I had cultivated a number of street snitches, punks who worked both sides of the law. Louie was one of Donny’s punks, a paranoid loser who occasionally came up with useful information about cases we were working.” He stood, obviously needing movement to keep the words flowing.
“On this parti
cular night, Louie called and said he had some big information. About an hour before he called, Donny had left sick. I knew better than to go alone, but hell, I was the great Sullivan Mathews…crime-stopper extraordinaire. I figured I could handle one punk snitch.” His face twisted with a bitterness that tore into her heart.
“Sully, you can’t blame yourself. You’d met snitches alone before,” she said softly.
He nodded. “You’re right” He sank down in the chair across from her, his eyes as dark and cold as the night falling outside the window. “But I knew this time was different the moment I got out of my car.”
“What? What made this time different?” Theresa asked as she leaned forward. The ache of waiting, the emptiness of Eric’s absence, momentarily fell aside as Theresa delved into the unknown events that she suspected caused Sully’s nightmares.
Sully frowned, the lines across his forehead deepening. “I’m not sure…. Something…something made me wary, apprehensive, but…but…” He sighed in frustration. “The memory is just out of my reach.”
“Leave it for now…. It will come to you,” Theresa said, not wanting him to stop talking, hoping for some sort of answer that would explain the wreck they had made of their life together. “What happened in that alley, Sully? I know Louie was killed, and you were shot, but something happened to you that you never told me. You changed that night, Sully…and whatever it was, it was more than the bullet that hit your body.”
He leaned back in the chair, a gray pallor sweeping over his skin as he dived into the landscape of his nightmares. “You know what the official story is…that whoever Louie was about to rat on shut him up. I just got in the way, was a misfortunate bystander.”
“Okay…that’s the official version. Now, what’s your version?” She could see the battle taking place inside him, the need to talk battling the need to keep whatever it was within.
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