Second Chance - 03 - Blind Trust

by Terri Blackstock

  He slumped over and covered his face, wishing for once he had listened to his wife’s advice and kept his mouth shut. “No, that’s not true. I do want you to forget. I just have trouble with Eric, that’s all.”

  “He’s your father.”

  “We have the same DNA. That’s about as far as it goes. Now, tell me about Clint. What has he said about why he was gone?”

  Raking her hands through her roots, she sat back down at her desk. “Oh, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Sure, it does.”

  She shook her head dolefully. “He wrote a book. Needed time. And space, I guess. Maybe I’m too much. Too overwhelming. Maybe I just smother the people I love.”

  “You’ve never smothered me, Sherry. You’ve been there when I’ve needed you, and I’ve needed you plenty. Don’t buy into that stupid lie that the men in your life are weak because you’ve done something wrong.”

  “I know you’re right,” she said. “But I wanted so badly to believe—”

  “That there was a good reason?”

  She met his eyes as tears welled in her own. “Yeah.”

  Wes stared at her for a moment, thinking. He had liked Clint, had trusted him. He couldn’t believe he had been so wrong. “Maybe there is a good reason, Sherry. Something more than that.”

  “Like what? Why won’t he tell me?”

  “I don’t know. But I can’t believe that Clint is capable of such a cruel thing as leaving his bride at the altar, if there wasn’t some life or death reason behind it.”

  “I didn’t want to think it. But I’m a crummy judge of character. You’ve said so yourself.”

  “Well, if you are, then I am, too. I thought the world of Clint. So did everybody who met him. Look what he did for his youth group. He took a handful of kids and grew them into a group of a hundred kids who came to church every time the doors opened. He never got tired of doing God’s work. It just doesn’t make sense that he’d skip town for eight months, then float back in with some explanation about writing a book. It’s so disappointing. He’s not the man we all thought he was.”

  Sherry’s eyes took on a distant glaze, and he could see the wheels turning. “There’s this guy who was with him yesterday and then again today. Sticks to him like glue. I knocked over that model, and the guy came running like he thought I’d shot Clint or something. It was so weird.”

  Wes frowned. “Sure is. Who does he say the guy is?”

  “Just a friend. But yesterday when I asked him to explain where he’d been, for just a flicker of a second, I thought he was going to tell me the truth. But he looked at that guy, and then his whole countenance changed, and he gave me the song and dance about the book again.”

  “Something’s not right.”

  “You said it. But I don’t know if I’ll ever get to the bottom of it.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t try. Maybe you should just steer clear of him.”

  “I’m trying,” she said. “But he isn’t making it easy.”

  Alittle while later, as Sherry drove back to the office from the post office, she noticed that a black car like her father had described was tailing her.

  Coincidence, she told herself without conviction. There must be hundreds of black sedans in Shreveport, and her imagination was making more of it than there was.

  She parked her car in the private garage next to the office, and hurried in looking for Wes. Since he wasn’t in his office, she stepped to his window and peered out toward the small parking lot. When nothing unusual caught her eye, she breathed out a long, shaky breath and set her bag on Wes’s desk. She was getting jumpy. Clint Jessup’s sudden return had distracted her in more ways than one. Stepping over, she glanced up the street to her right, and her stomach lurched at the sight of the waiting black Pontiac. Threading her fingers through her hair, she expelled a low, dreadful moan and realized the driver was waiting for her.

  “What is it?”

  The sound of Clint’s voice made her swing around, and she caught her breath in a ragged gasp. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was waiting for Wes. I want to talk to him.” He glanced past her out the window. “What were you looking at?”

  Sherry set her hand on her chest as if it could calm her constricted lungs, and turned back to the window, fighting the rebellious urge to tell him it was none of his business. She was becoming frightened, and he was the only one there at the moment. “It’s just … that car. It’s been following me.” Without questioning her suspicion, Clint stepped into the office and squinted up the street at the car she pointed to. When he saw it, his eyes closed and a long, tangled breath wound out of his lungs. “How long has this been going on?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer at first, because she wasn’t sure.

  “How long?” he asked more urgently.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I think he might have followed me to Dad’s house today. I may have seen the car yesterday, too, but I can’t say for sure.”

  “God … please, no …” The words came out as a craggy whisper. Clint took Sherry by the shoulders and turned her to face him. She felt a slight shiver in his hands, saw genuine fear and haunted despair in his eyes. “Listen to me, Sherry,” he said, his hoarseness contradicting his steady monotone. “I have to go get Sam. He’s down the hall. I’ll be right back, and I’ll take you home. Don’t leave here until I get back. Do you understand me?”

  “But … I have work to do.”

  “Forget work,” he insisted. “Just give me your car keys.” “My keys?” The keys were at the top of her bag, and reluctantly, she surrendered them. “What are you—?”

  “No questions now, Sherry. Just wait right here. Please.” Frightened at the adamant, admonishing look in his eyes, Sherry nodded acquiescence. She stood frozen, listening to the squeak of his rubber soles as he ran up the corridor, heard the exchange of muffled voices, heard Clint’s athletic breathing as he ran back to her office. When he got there, he closed the door and leaned over her desk to catch his breath. “I’ll drive you home, Sherry. And I want you to promise me that you won’t go anywhere alone. Nowhere.”

  “Clint, you’re scaring me.”

  “Good,” he said. “Then maybe you’ll listen to me. Come on.” He straightened and reached for her arm, but she stepped back.

  “Clint, I’m not going with you!”

  “Yes, you are!” he rasped. “Now come on! And keep quiet.”

  Sherry suppressed her rising sense of panic as Clint reached for two white hard hats and handed one to her. “Stuff your hair up in this and pull it low over your face.”

  Nervously, she obeyed, then followed him down the dim corridor. She felt his hand trembling as it looped around her waist, heard the heavy, rhythmic sound of his breath, tasted apprehension rising like a lethal flood to drown her senses. Before they were out of the building, he stopped and pulled a pair of mirrored sunglasses out of his pocket, put them on, and set his hard hat on his head. “Now, walk fast,” he told her. “And don’t say anything until we’re on our way.”

  She nodded. Swallowing the fear flooding her throat, she took temporary refuge in his arm as it wrapped protectively around her. They walked at a fast gait to the Bronco, and he let her in his side and slid in next to her. The engine rumbled to life, and Clint backed out of his space.

  Five minutes had passed before Sherry found her voice. “Clint, you know you’ve just scared ten years off my life, don’t you?”

  Clint glanced in the rearview mirror. “I’m sorry, Sherry. I didn’t think this would happen.”

  “You’ve got to tell me what’s going on.”

  Clint only stared at the road ahead, swallowed, and glanced in the mirror again. In a voice racked with frustrated despair, he said, “I don’t even know where you live now.”

  Sherry gave him her address on a street he was familiar with, then tried again. “Clint, are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “First, let me get you home, Sherry,”

&nbs
p; “Then you’ll answer my questions?”

  “Then you can ask them,” he said.

  Several more explosively silent moments passed as Clint wove through the streets leading to Sherry’s house. “I’m going to park in that shopping center a couple of blocks behind your street. Do you have a back door?”

  A cold, nauseous feeling began to take hold of her, and Sherry glanced through the back window. “Why do I have the feeling that any minute now a SWAT team is going to surround us and start shooting?”

  “Do you have a back door or not?”

  “Yes, I have a back door,” she whispered.

  “Then we’ll have to come up through your backyard and go in that way so we won’t be seen.”

  “Clint, people see me going in and out of my house all the time and nothing’s ever happened before.”

  “Things have changed, Sherry,” he said.

  “Why?”

  The heel of his hand landed violently on the steering wheel. “Because I came back to town!”

  The Bronco whipped into the crowded parking lot at the shopping center, and threaded through the spaces until it stopped. But Sherry didn’t care where they were, for her eyes were set on Clint, seeing the haze of truth for the first time since he’d come back. She had wished there were some deeper explanation for his leaving her, and now she was sure there was. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to know it, after all.

  When the engine was dead, Clint turned and gazed into her eyes. Through his mirrored glasses she saw only herself, blurry blue eyes full of fear and turmoil, a face growing paler by the moment. “If I’d just listened …” he began, but then he just shook his head helplessly and opened the door. “Come on. Take the hat off and we’ll get you home.”

  They crossed streets like lovers on a stroll, stole through yards like prowlers in the night, and approached her back door like escaped convicts waiting to be caught. “Where are my keys?” she whispered when they reached the house.

  “I gave them to That was your house key too?” His impatient voice was rising in pitch.

  “Don’t worry,” Sherry said, quelling his outburst with a trembling hand. “I have one here under the mat.”

  “Under the mat?” he whispered accusingly.

  Ignoring his tone, Sherry opened the door and they slipped inside. Clint closed and locked it behind them, his eyes bright with disbelief. “You actually keep a key under your mat where any fool could find it?”

  “It’s a good thing,” Sherry volleyed. “Considering you handed my keys over to some stranger.”

  “Sam is not a stranger,” Clint said, taking off his glasses and bolting through the house to peer through the curtains.

  “Then who is he?” she asked, following behind.

  “A good friend.”

  “Is he in trouble, too?” Her voice shook as she posed the question, and Clint turned from the window.

  “No.” A hand mussed his hair distractedly. “Sherry, I gave Sam your keys so he could get in your car and distract the person in the Pontiac while we got away. Whoever’s following you will think Sam’s you, if he plays his cards right. I wish I could explain all this to you, but it’s too soon.”

  “Too soon? Clint, you have to explain. You do intend to, don’t you?”

  Clint fell back on the sofa, covered his face with both hands, and slid them wearily down until he peered at the wall over his fingertips. “No. No, I don’t. Not yet.”

  Sherry couldn’t believe what she’d heard. “Do you mean to tell me that you’ve just scared me half to death and you don’t think I deserve an explanation?”

  Clint folded his sunglasses and put them in his pocket. His eyes sparkled with pain that went levels beyond what she had seen in them before. “You deserve one, Sherry. But I can’t give it to you.”

  “Can’t?” she repeated, aghast.

  “The less you know, the better,” he said. “It’s for your own good.”

  She sprang off the couch. “My own good? Was your leaving eight months ago for my own good? Was it for my own good that you popped back into town yesterday, just when my life was going well again? Is it for my own good that you’ve managed to make me afraid to walk outside my door?”

  His eyes held her with an embrace that reached right to her soul. “Yes,” he said.

  Sherry brought a hand to her forehead, beginning to ache with tension and clearer understanding. “I can’t believe this. You’ve done something illegal, haven’t you?”

  Clint’s face was a portrait of regret. He took her hands and pulled her back down beside him, held her shoulders, pressed his forehead against hers. “I should never have come back.”

  “But you did!” Sherry cried.

  Clint slid his hands up through her hair, encasing her head in splayed fingers as he tipped her face to his. “I’m so sorry, Sherry. So sorry.”

  Sherry backed away, breaking his hold on her. “Don’t touch me, Clint. I don’t know you anymore.”

  “I’m the same man, Sherry.”

  “What am I supposed to do, Clint? Just accept what you tell me without asking questions? Why did you even come back?” “There was reason to believe it was okay to come back,” he said, leaning toward her. “I wanted to see you again, make it up to you. I was in too big a rush, but I’d waited so long already.”

  “And you didn’t count on the cops noticing?”

  “Sherry, I needed you—” He reached out with the words, but Sherry shook his hands off of her and stood up.

  “And I needed you! Eight months ago when our wedding was planned! I needed you all those nights that I cried myself to sleep, pretending you were somewhere thinking of me, trying to get back to me—”

  “I was.”

  “Yeah, right. You were off running from the law for doing who knows what! I only wish I knew what our life together was worth to you. What did you trade it for, Clint?”

  A muscle in Clint’s forehead twitched. “You’re wrong, Sherry. It wasn’t that way at all.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because you know me better than anyone else ever has.” “The Clint I knew didn’t commit crimes. He didn’t run from his mistakes. He wouldn’t have vanished off the face of the earth two weeks before his wedding.”

  “I’m the same man I’ve always been,” Clint said wearily.

  “Then I have a terrific flaw in judgment!” Sherry railed, her face burning with rage. A few moments went by, and Clint stood before her, hands hanging at his sides, as if he desperately wanted to touch her but wouldn’t allow himself to again.

  The spitting roar of Madeline’s Volkswagen seemed to shake the house as it pulled into the driveway.

  “Is that your roommate?” Clint asked, breaking the silence. Sherry nodded. “Madeline.”

  “Then I’ll go,” he said quietly. “I want you to promise me that you’ll do your best not to be alone.”

  Sherry’s eyes filled with unshed tears, and she dropped onto the couch. When Clint knelt in front of her, she looked down at him.

  “You’re going to disappear again, aren’t you?” Her voice was so shaky that she could barely get out the words.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Are … are you really in that much danger?”

  Clint only closed his eyes, but the answer was clear.

  He stood up to leave, and she rose to face him, fighting the urge to throw her arms around him and beg him to tell her that when he left he would be safe, that she would see him again. But deep in her heart she knew it was not true.

  “So,” she said hoarsely, wrapping her arms around her own waist instead. The rest of the superficial words seemed to get clogged in her throat.

  “So,” he said, as if he, too, struggled for an appropriate departing line, but came up empty. “I hope you’ll forgive me for messing up your life.”

  Sherry forced out a dry laugh. “No problem,” she said with gentle sarcasm.

  The front door opened, and Madeline, e
ngrossed in the mail, didn’t see them as she stepped inside. When she set her purse down and glanced up, she crossed her arms and nodded as if the sight of Clint didn’t surprise her at all. “Well, well,” she said. “The prodigal fiancé, I presume?” Glancing back at the mail, she began to open an envelope.

  Clint’s eyes remained fused with Sherry’s. “It’s nice to meet you too, Madeline.”

  Madeline cocked a perfectly arched brow and gave Sherry a questioning look.

  But Sherry still stared at Clint, as if he would dissolve before her very eyes.

  Madeline pulled the page out of the envelope. “What on earth?” she muttered. “Wait a minute. Is this some kind of threat?” She waved the letter at Sherry.

  Sherry took the paper and saw clipped magazine letters glued to the page. Glancing at Clint with alarm, she saw deep dread smoldering in his eyes. Slowly, she lowered her eyes to the page clutched in her shaky hand, and read aloud:

  “Tell him revenge is sweet, and falls on those we love.”

  Chapter Four

  Give me that!” Clint’s face turned a deathly shade of gray as he snatched the page out of Sherry’s hand and stared at the pasted letters. “It’s even worse—”

  Halting his thought midsentence, Clint reached for the envelope still clutched in Madeline’s hand. “No postmark,” he growled. He stormed to the window and peered through a crack in the curtain. “Someone hand delivered this.”

  “The man in the black car?” Sherry wasn’t certain where the shaky voice came from, but she awaited Clint’s answer—any answer—with a dimension of fear that seemed set apart from reality.

  “What car?” Madeline demanded curiously, shoving her curly dark hair behind her ear.

  Clint seemed lost in the world outside the curtain, and Sherry swallowed back a wave of panic and stepped behind him. Touching his arm with apprehension, she made him turn toward her. “Clint, it said ‘revenge.’What does that mean?”

  Clint looked at her as if she were stolen goods he had to find a hiding place for.