With Every Breath

by Beverly Bird

  Maddie looked at her disbelievingly. "He gave his name and my address to that department store, or at least to some mailing list. He’s taunting me, telling me he knows where I am and that I can’t hide from him." "Not necessarily," Leslie said mildly. "The store could have gotten their list from anywhere. Or they could have taken your social security number and matched it up to the address you gave the utility companies here."

  "Within four days?"

  "It’s no more farfetched than assuming your ex-husband managed to act within that same period of time."

  Maddie’s heart started pounding. "Cassie Diehl called to have the electric turned on in my name weeks ago," she realized.

  Leslie nodded. "And presumably your social security number would be connected to a mortgage that Rick shared, or a joint credit card—"

  "No," Maddie argued. "The mortgage is in my name. I bought the house long before I met him. Same with the credit cards. They were—are—all mine."

  "I’m just outlining a rough scenario here," Leslie said calmly. "Something like that could have happened." Maddie’s eyes narrowed. "You don’t think he did it, do you? You don’t think he’s here or that he killed the kitten? You think I’m nuts." She remembered the way the doctor had tricked her with Doe Carlson, and she had the sinking, helpless sensation that she was on her own again after all. No one was going to believe her about Rick this time either.

  Leslie moved carefully. "I think your ex-husband is just one possible culprit. I don’t want to rule anything out."

  "One? Who the hell else would do something like this?" She lowered her voice carefully, embarrassed to realize she was screeching a little. Her nerves were stretched so thin.

  "Gina?" she went on more quietly. "I don’t think Joe really believes that, and I don’t either, not after this." She crumpled the circular again in a trembling hand.

  "Gina is a troubled young woman," Leslie said vaguely. "She’s one more possibility. But I was thinking more along the lines that it has something to do with your parents."

  Maddie gaped at her. "My parents?"

  "That’s right."

  "You think my parents did this to Josh?"

  "Not likely. Maddie, I want you to listen to me. Calmly and quietly."

  She didn’t like the sound of this. Everything was rearing up inside her, protesting. No, I don’t want to hear this, and I don’t want to have to deal with any more. Why are you doing this to me today? "I’m listening," she said hoarsely.

  "Maddie, your parents are probably dead."

  Surprise burst into her. It wasn’t what she had expected to hear.

  "Well, yes," she answered. "I know that’s the legal assumption. They were declared dead, right, after seven years? That was what Karen Eagan said. And they never tried to reclaim any of their ... their assets or whatever."

  "Most likely because they couldn’t. Maddie, what exactly do you remember of that day?"

  Maddie frowned at her.

  "There are conflicting rumors racing all over the island," Leslie went on, "that you remember nothing, that you remember a little bit. What’s the truth? Think back. Take your time."

  Maddie jumped to her feet, stared at her, then sat slowly again. She shook her head. "It’s not necessary," she admitted, exhaling hard. "I could sit here until next Friday, and the answer would still be the same. There’s nothing."

  Leslie blinked. "Nothing at all?"

  "Very little. Why? You don’t think that’s normal?" she challenged.

  "That’s another issue entirely," Leslie evaded.

  "I remember Angus," she protested defensively, then

  she sighed. "Sort of. The way I remember you. With an instinctual ... good feeling. Where are you going with this?"

  "Have you had any bad feelings about anyone?"

  "You mean, unaccountably? Like someone rubbing me the wrong way for no reason? Well. Cassie, but I guess I have some cause for that." She was getting impatient. And angry. "You’ve got a point here. What is it? Why would Josh’s kitten have anything to do with my parents leaving me?"

  Leslie decided that the best way to handle this was probably what she called the Band-Aid Approach. Jerk the bandage—the blinders—away all at once. Crash through the wall with one sharp blow.

  "When Dave Bramnick, the chief of police back then, found you here that day, you were in the pantry."

  "The pantry?" Maddie looked over her shoulder, in the direction of the kitchen, frowning.

  "You were not clothed."

  Maddie shivered.

  "You were streaked with blood, and it was not your own. We have reason to believe that your parents were killed, Maddie, and that you saw it. You know what happened that day. You know who did it. No, I honestly don’t believe that your ex-husband killed your kitten. I think that whoever killed your parents killed your kitten. I think he—or she—did it to scare you off this island before you remember and point a finger."

  Maddie was reeling.

  She felt the room spin out of control. She was dizzy, and then she was furious. Temper shot through her like liquid fire. She stood up again very, very carefully.

  "I don’t want you treating Josh."

  "Pardon me?"

  "How c-c-can you c-c-call yourself a psychologist?"

  "It was better that you hear it from me than from someone else. And you’ve been here long enough to know now that you would have heard it from someone else. Someone would talk, and it would either be within your hearing or to your face."

  Maddie clenched her hands to keep them from shaking noticeably. She leaned forward a little, staring at the woman hard. "I’ve got a problem here—a big problem— and you land this on me now?"

  "Because your problem isn’t what you think it is." "You don’t know that. Get out."

  "Maddie—"

  "Get out of my house."

  Leslie didn’t move, but another knock came at the front door. Maddie spun that way. Joe. Suddenly she felt like someone had thrown a bucket of ice water in her face. Joe must have known this, too.

  All that talk last night about Gina, about Cassie, about Rick and Angus, and he had known! Suddenly she felt wild, out of control, because it was happening just like Florida, she realized again. She needed help, but no one would help her, no one would believe her.

  This was Rick. It felt like Rick, the way he wandered through shadows, not too close but not too far away, tormenting her with glimpses of him. Oh, yes, this was Rick. He was going to try to take Josh again, and God help her, but she’d kill him herself before she would allow that to happen. She would have to kill him herself, because just like Florida, no one believed her enough to help her. Damn them all.

  She moved jerkily to the door and yanked it open. "Don’t come in," she said sharply. "Leslie’s not staying." She had the satisfaction of seeing a flash of surprise touch Joe’s eyes at her tone. Then his face hardened. He looked past her into the house.

  "Leslie—" he began.

  "Is leaving," she interrupted. She held the door pointedly, amazed that she wasn’t stuttering, but then, she was angry, not scared or nervous.

  The fear would come back later.

  She swallowed carefully and waited, and Leslie came in from the dining room. She passed Maddie quietly, stepping out onto the porch with Joe.

  "We’ll talk later," Leslie said calmly, "when you’re ready."

  "Like hell we will." Maddie slammed the door hard on both of them.

  She had to get back to Josh. He was all that mattered. She had to wait with him, to be there when he woke.

  She put her back to the door and sank slowly down it, covered her face with her hands, and sobbed.

  "What the hell kind of brilliance was that?" Joe snarled. He stopped at Leslie’s car, behind Maddie’s, in the driveway. "Why didn’t you wait for me to get here?"

  "Because I’m the psychologist," Leslie said evenly, "and you’re the cop. Because, theoretically, I’m the one with the expertise and the training to break something lik
e that to her. Last night you gave me credit for knowing a thing or two about the human mind. Well, hitting her with it like that was one way of getting her to remember."

  He grunted, still angry. "Did it work?"

  "I don’t know yet."

  "So you could have put her through that for nothing."

  "It was a shock for her," Leslie admitted mildly, "but such a reaction is perfectly understandable under the circumstances. It’s human nature to whip the bearer of bad tidings."

  "Yeah, well, I didn’t bear anything."

  "She needs some time to calm down. And you were right. Josh is in need as well. I’ll give her a couple of hours and come back. What are you going to do?"

  Joe scrubbed a hand over his jaw. "Dig up a kitten. Turns out they can autopsy a cat. It’s called a . . . uh, a necropsy when they do it to animals."

  Leslie smiled. "I could have told you that. It’s a living thing—"

  "Not anymore."

  "Well, cutting it could at least tell a learned professional how it died." She hesitated. "Is there some doubt?"

  Go for the obvious, Joe thought again. And then turn it this way and that, upside down and inside out, until you make sure it really is obvious after all.

  "Just a hunch," he said shortly. He looked back at the house. "Goddamnit, she needs somebody."

  "She’s stronger than she looks."

  Yeah, he thought, and so am I. But cuts bleed regardless, and when hearts break, it hurts.

  He moved away from Leslie’s car. "I’m going to hang around for a while."

  He went back to the Pathfinder and got the old towel and the biohazard box he’d brought. He took the spade from the side of the house where he’d left it last night, then he dug up the little corpse. One crazy bastard. He wondered again at the kind of mind, the sort of heart, it would take for someone to kill a defenseless animal, not to mention an animal that a little boy had loved.

  He wrapped it up and put it in the box. Leslie had gone. He was just sliding it into the back of the Pathfinder when he heard the front door open again at the house.

  He looked that way quickly. Maddie’s eyes were

  swollen from crying. He slammed the back of the truck and walked slowly up the drive.

  "You knew, Joe," she said wretchedly.

  He hesitated on the steps and nodded. No sense in denying that one.

  "Why didn’t you tell me? How could you just ... just let me repeat Aunt Susan’s story like some kind of fool? You asked me what I remembered about that day, and I told you what she’d told me, and you didn’t say a word!" The betrayal, she realized, swaying a little, was almost as bad as everything else.

  She’d trusted him.

  "I thought the truth would do this to you," he said finally. "I didn’t want to hurt you unless it was necessary."

  She shuddered once, long and deeply, because she realized she had been hiding just like that all her life. Through twenty-five years, since the day she had left here, she had never asked, had never thought, had never questioned the story of what had happened to her parents. She hated them for what they’d done to her, and it hadn’t seemed necessary to get through the pain of their abandonment to know all the details.

  Twenty-five years of resentment couldn’t evaporate with one brutal revelation, she thought tiredly. No, that resentment had been a part of her for far too long ... whether it was founded or unfounded.

  She held the door open a little wider. Joe moved the rest of the way up the deck, and, once he was inside, she closed the door behind him.

  "Josh is still sleeping," she said.

  "Yeah. Sounds like it."

  "I’m going to need Leslie’s help with him whether I want it or not," she realized, feeling overwhelmed again.

  He let her keep working her way through it.

  "In the meantime, I guess I have to pull myself together. For his sake."

  Joe hesitated. "Need any help?"

  She started crying again.

  He moved before he knew he was going to, taking her in his arms. He stroked his hands down her back, and wondered how in the hell he had come to care like this, in a few short days and in spite of his common sense. God, he didn’t want to see her hurting. He tightened his arms around her and found himself brushing his mouth over her hair, and the scent of wildflowers filled his head. He closed his eyes, in pain, and asked himself what the hell he was doing. Was he out of his mind?

  But the real wonder of it was how good it felt.

  Chapter 13

  Such strong arms, Maddie thought.

  The tension in her muscles unclenched; the pain in her stomach uncurled. She was the one who finally pulled away, feeling much steadier.

  "You don’t need to worry," she said finally, softly. "Leslie is wrong. It’s Rick."

  He watched her move into the kitchen, her head down, her expression thoughtful, but still with that smooth grace. He rubbed a hand over his jaw and thought her nerves must be as fragile as glass just then, but it didn’t show. He followed her and found her making coffee.

  "I’ll take some," he said shortly.

  She looked at him, surprised. "It’s still instant."

  "Beggars and choosers and all that. It’s been a long night."

  Her mouth twisted. "It has."

  She turned back to the counter. She finally let herself think, really think, about what Leslie had said, prodding at the knowledge gingerly, like a sore tooth.

  She didn’t remember.

  None of it rang any bells or shook anything inside her. Which was just as well. She couldn’t deal with it yet.

  But she wondered why Aunt Susan hadn’t told her. She wondered if Aunt Susan even knew. She understood then why everyone on the island knew who she was right off the bat. Something like that would have been talked about on a place like Candle for a long, long time.

  Later, she thought again. She would deal with it later, after Rick was finally found.

  She turned once more and gave Joe one of the mugs. "What no one has ever acknowledged before," she began quietly, "is that I know Rick Graycie probably better than anyone else on earth. His family is dead. He has no close friends. I lived with him for six years. I know him.

  "They say he killed Ronnie Sanchez because he panicked," she went on. "He didn’t. He killed him because he stood between Rick and me—between Rick and his plan. Once Rick got away, he could continue haunting me, tormenting me, wearing me down, which is precisely what he’s doing now."

  Joe found himself believing her, or wanting to. It more or less went, with what the Fort Lauderdale cop had said.

  He thought of telling her what that cop had said about a man named Steve Singleton, and decided he would wait on that. At least he would wait until he had talked to his people the next morning, until—possibly— he knew a little more.

  "So you’re saying Graycie’s a cold bastard," he said finally.

  Maddie shook her head. "No. That’s just it. He’s

  heated, Joe. Emotion runs through him like molten lava. Everything is intense with him. He wants me fiercely, so he did what he had to do that day to get away. Even a few days of being in jail, of being unable to watch me, was intolerable to him. He told me once that he had never loved anyone the way he loved me."

  She said it without satisfaction or pride. Joe felt something squirm in his gut as he realized that he could understand a man feeling that way about her. He realized he was sweating a little, though it was still chilly outside.

  He managed to nod.

  "When you love someone like that," she went on, "it’s impossible to let go. It’s hard for anyone to let go, much less someone as emotionally intense as Rick always was."

  Joe put his mug down on the counter. "Actually, I’ve got a theory about that," he heard himself say. And then something inside him recoiled, and he swore.

  "What?" Maddie asked, then she repeated herself when he hesitated. "What’s your theory?"

  They had never been exceptionally popular with
women, he thought. He was actually full of them, and his theories always brought a look of disbelief and horror to women’s faces.

  "Love can be evil, twisted," he said finally, reluctantly. "Any emotion that strong has the potential to turn around right before your eyes, to slide into something dangerous. Love travels a thin line. When it falls over the edge, it becomes obsession, and that has very little to do with love at all."

  Something flared in her eyes. Maddie nodded slowly.

  "I mean, what is it?" he asked. "What’s love? Chemical attraction? Christ, that happens to a man every day. You see some woman walking down the

  street and she looks damned fine and wham!—your body reacts even though your head doesn’t really give a damn if you ever lay eyes on her again. It’s just physical. Love’s not chemical attraction. And it’s not slow and steady, either, growing like some kind of goddamned flower out of mutual like and respect, the way the poets would have us believe. People want to call those things love, but the feeling I mean is . . . you know, that one-two punch that’s overwhelming and immediate."

  "Love at first sight."

  He nodded, eyeing her. "Yeah."

  She realized her heart was hammering. "What then?" she asked. This sounded an awful lot like the ideas behind so many of her pictures. And that spooked her.

  "Love slams you. It’s irrational, making no goddamned sense. It’s not sweetness and light and flowers. It’s dark and it rides you, drives you. With every heartbeat, with every breath, nothing matters but that consuming obsession with the object of your desire. And that can easily fall over the line. It can easily become dangerous."

  "That’s bitter, Joe," Maddie whispered.

  He winced, already regretting his honesty. He had needed her to understand.

  And then he looked into her eyes, and he realized that she did.

  "Anyway," he said, pacing away before he could touch her again, "when it crosses over, when it falls over that line, you stop caring about how the other person feels, how anybody feels, except you. You don’t do things for the person you love, but rather to possess them. To claim them, to hold them, to keep them for your own. And if anybody gets in your way, then too goddamned bad. You don’t care who you hurt, how you hurt them, just as long as you possess your beloved."