With Every Breath

by Beverly Bird

  "You ... won the ... game, sport," Joe panted. "High five." Where the hell was she?

  He slapped the boy’s upraised hand, yanked open the door, picked him up, and carried him inside. "Go get us something to drink, huh? I bet your mom’s thirsty, too." He set Josh down again, threw his coat on the sofa, and went looking for her. She was in the bathroom. She was brushing her hair ferociously. She jumped when he appeared in the door.

  "Forget I said that," she said tightly. "It was ... impulsive. Stupid, really."

  Forget it. He wanted to, and doubted if he’d manage it. "Okay."

  "I didn’t mean ..." She closed her eyes, not willing to look at him, not even in the mirror. "I don’t want to get involved again. Not now. Maybe not ever. I’m sorry. It’s not you personally, Joe. It’s just that I’ve got a pretty rotten history, and I’m not willing to take a chance again."

  "No. I mean, yeah. I understand. Me, either. We’ll forget it."

  "Good." She took a deep breath. "Where’s Josh?"

  It occurred to Joe then that she must have been terrified by what she had said to run and leave her son. His own heart kept thundering. "Getting us something to drink."

  She finally turned away from the mirror to look at him. She did it slowly, putting the brush down, and he could see that she was still trembling.

  And no matter what her mouth said, her eyes wanted him.

  Joe closed his own and pushed the door shut behind him. He had no true idea of what he was going to do next. It seemed there ought to be something else he should say, but for the life of him he couldn’t find the right words.

  You're the kind of man who could be my real thing. Jesus. He couldn’t let his heart go out to the two of them, to Maddie and Josh Brogan, knowing that one or both of them was in danger. And even if this danger passed, he knew, he just knew, that all he had to do was blink and God could reach down and snatch one of them away when he wasn’t looking. A man had no control over his own life. None at all.

  His heart kept thumping. Too LATE too LATE. The door rattled, saving him.

  "Josh," she said quickly.

  Joe looked down at his hands. They shook. Oh, ]esus.

  "Josh," he repeated. He ran the back of his hand over his mouth. "Sit down."

  "What?"

  "Just sit."

  She put the toilet seat down and dropped onto it. She realized that her legs were hollow.

  He jerked open the medicine cabinet, found a box of Band-Aids and dragged one out with clumsy fingers. He grabbed her hand, slapped the bandage onto the top of it, and opened the door.

  Josh stared in at them, wide-eyed.

  "Your mom hurt her hand on a shell," Joe said hoarsely. "She had to hurry back here to fix it."

  Josh nodded slowly, then he smiled.

  Maddie held out her hand for his inspection, caught Joe’s eye, and knew they were both thinking the same thing. Thank God he’s six. Because there was an off chance that a six-year-old wouldn’t question why a simple cut was so urgent that she would flee as though all the hounds of hell were on her tail.

  She couldn’t rock the boat for him just then with anything new. Joe knew it, too. He had gone with it without question or mention. She watched him step out of the bathroom again.

  Josh came to hug her. She closed her eyes tightly so that she wouldn’t worry him by crying as he finally stepped back to touch a finger to the Band-Aid on her hand.

  "I’m all right, baby," she whispered. "It didn’t hurt that much."

  No, she thought, it had barely hurt at all.

  Chapter 20

  The man in the dunes watched until Maddie, Joe, and the boy were all in the house again. Something happened to his chest, to his heart, and his blood.

  So like her mother.

  If she hadn’t moved just like that, he probably wouldn’t have seen it. He’d been keeping an eye on her for a week, and he had certainly noticed some similarities, but none so strong as this. She ran and her hair flew, glinting in the sun, the same color, the same glimmering gold. And the way she moved was the same, free and strong.

  Once Annabel had run across the beach toward him in just that way.

  He was shocked when tears sprang to his eyes. It had been such a long time. To know that his feelings for that woman, so long dead, were still so volatile and strong, was stunning. And the man let himself do something he hadn’t done in twenty-five years.

  He thought, what if?

  What if he had been a man of courage rather than honor?

  What if she had not insisted upon getting married?

  Then Annabel might well still be alive.

  Then again, he thought, maybe not. Probably not.

  She would be so proud of this daughter, and he ached as strongly as he had twenty-five long years ago. I will take care of her, Annie, as I promised and have always tried to do.

  He turned away from The Wick beach to go down to the big island. It was nearly time to begin waiting at the phone booth again.

  That night, the phone finally rang.

  He parked in front of the post office and he heard it jangling as soon as he got out of his vehicle. He tried to walk calmly up the sidewalk toward it, but halfway there he quickened his pace. He snatched up the receiver.

  "Hello."

  "Yeah." There was a cautious pause. "You got a picture I’m interested in."

  The man cleared his throat as his old heart seemed to explode. Finally. "Yes. Yes, I do."

  The voice on the other end of the line cracked into a derisive laugh. "You’re stupid, man. I checked the area code. You haven’t got a damned thing to sell me. No money’s going to change hands here, buddy."

  "I don’t want money."

  This time the pause was longer. "What then?"

  "I want you to come get her. I want you to take her home."

  The voice turned mean, as threatening as the rattle of a snake’s tail. "Yeah, right. You get me there, and then you’ll get some kind of reward for tipping the cops off, right?"

  "No cops." And that much was certainly true.

  "How do I know that?"

  The man gambled. Given what he had learned about life and men and women, he thought it would probably work. "You don’t."

  "Yeah, well, I’m not going anywhere near her," Graycie muttered.

  "That’s certainly your right. You can walk away from her. You can keep yourself perfectly safe. Or you can have her back. I’m going to tell you where to find her. There’s an island off the northern coast of Maine. It’s called Candle, and there’s a mass of land just to the north of that, which we call The Wick. She is at number one hundred and ten on The Wick Road. The information is yours, and it’s free. Do with it what you will."

  He hung up again carefully and quietly, but his hand was shaking. Graycie would come, he thought. There was no way he could walk away from Madeline Brogan, no more than a man could have walked away from her mother.

  He knew. He had tried.

  The man was almost certain that Rick Graycie would be on Candle Island before dawn. He had a hunch that the guy was already in Maine. He’d said he’d checked the area code, and if that was true, then he would have had a general idea of where to come even before making the call. And after their conversation, he knew how to get the rest of the way.

  Soon now, very soon, it would be over, as it should have been a long time ago.

  Fury screamed through Gina’s head. She couldn’t see anything other than visions of what might be happening in that house up on The Wick, and the visions brought agony.

  She finally stepped away from the worktable in the

  back of the bakery. She snatched her apron off, wadding it up, hurling it in the direction of the laundry bag.

  "What do you think you’re doing, miss?" Enzo Lucisano demanded.

  "I don’t feel good," she gasped. "I’m going home."

  Gina ran outside. Her palms sweated, and she really did feel sick. What in the Lord’s name, she wondered, was she supposed
to do now? Mildred had called, filling her head with horrible things, but the woman wouldn’t help, wouldn’t tell her what she should do!

  Gina hated her.

  She began walking dazedly. Joe was with Maddie Brogan, she thought again helplessly. They had both ignored her threats. They were together, probably touching. Mildred had warned her that the next thing she knew, he’d be spending the night up there, and there he was, on the verge of it.

  She would kill Maddie, she thought fiercely. She would do it in a minute, but how could she get to her? She couldn’t even get to her precious, retarded kid because Joe was with them all the time.

  She’d warned him not to take up with anyone new, and he’d always listened before. He’d married her, and her family just didn’t recognize divorce. Divorce, she thought, was just a piece of paper. That was all. It had not one damned bit of significance in the eyes of the Lord.

  Joe was her husband, and she would kill him before she let him mess around with anyone else.

  Kill him? No, she thought. No, she couldn’t live without him. If he was gone, she would have nothing left to look forward to. She might as well kill herself.

  She stumbled and stopped walking.

  That would wrench him out of his little love nest up

  on The Wick. It would prove that she didn’t want to live without him, that she was ready to take him back.

  Gina began walking again, and this time she smiled.

  Maddie still seemed shaky when she finally came back into the living room. For that matter, Joe thought grimly, he was still pretty rocked himself.

  He wondered what might have happened if Josh hadn’t come to the bathroom door. He wondered what time the boy went to bed, and what he would possibly do then to maintain the wall of propriety, of sanity and caution, that was fast crumbling between them.

  He would postpone it, he decided. Postpone the inevitable, an inner voice mocked him. He glanced at his watch and dug his keys out of his pocket at the same time.

  "Come on. Let’s go for a ride."

  Maddie was clearly startled. "A ride?"

  "Yeah. I want to check out those pay phones." It was just before seven. He had exactly enough time to get to each of them before the witching hour. "Hurry," he urged, grabbing Josh, giving him a piggyback ride to the Pathfinder.

  Maddie caught up, still looking lost. "What’s the urgency?"

  "That ad. That picture," Joe explained cryptically when they were driving back toward the bridge. "Steve Singleton is supposed to be taking calls at seven o’clock."

  Her eyes widened. He watched her color drain, and was just as glad he hadn’t remembered to tell her that part earlier. She would have worried about it all day. As it was, she looked helplessly at the backseat, at Josh.

  "We’ll be able to see both booths from blocks away,"

  Joe told her. "If anybody’s there, I’ll park and approach by myself, on foot."

  "No!"

  He looked at her, scowling. Her throat was working, but she didn’t say anything else. And then he understood.

  The last cop who had tried to apprehend Rick Graycie was dead.

  "Easy," he said, but his own voice was short and tight. The absolute terror in her face—for him—got to him as much as anything had all day.

  He motioned at the radio affixed to the dash. "I’ll call in for someone to back me up. I won’t do it alone," he went on.

  "Neither did he," she answered, strangled, then her voice dropped. "You don’t even have a gun!" she whispered fiercely.

  "Yeah. I do."

  "Where?"

  "In the back. In the hatch."

  It was all a moot point anyway. The phone in front of the post office was deserted.

  Joe urged the truck faster, hurrying to the Sandbar. No one was at that phone either. He glanced at his watch.

  Seven o’clock on the dot.

  He went back to the post office, parked, and jogged to the phone. He picked up the receiver, listened to the dial tone, and wondered if he was out of his mind or if the receiver felt warm, as though a hand had just encircled it.

  Out of his mind, he decided. And he had screwed up. Goddamnit.

  He’d intended to put Kenny Halverson down at the Sandbar and watch this one himself. Then somebody

  had dropped black flowers and worms on Maddie’s coffee table. Then Josh had laughed, and somewhere in there Maddie had said things she hadn’t meant to say ... and there he was, a day late and a dollar short.

  He began walking back to the truck.

  He had been on time, regardless, he thought. And he couldn’t be certain that anyone had been there at all. Maybe the whole mystifying business of the seven o’clock phone call and the picture had been settled and done with even before Florida had called him about the ad. Maybe he was chasing ghosts. Maybe no one had been there that night at all.

  He dropped behind the wheel and picked up the handset. He called into the station. Maddie watched him with an apprehensive frown.

  Hector was on the phones. Joe gave him instructions to have the guy out driving—Lou Paul—swing by both booths periodically. He slammed the handset down again.

  "Like locking the goddamned bam door after the horse is gone," he muttered.

  "We were there by seven," she pointed out in an undertone.

  "Yeah."

  "No one was there, and the phone didn’t ring." She echoed his thoughts, and her eyes said thank God.

  "Maddie, for Christ’s sake, if we’re going to stop this bastard, sooner or later we’re going to have to confront him."

  She let out her breath. "But not tonight, Joe. Not tonight. Let’s just go home."

  They drove back to The Wick in tense silence. As he pulled in the drive at 110, Joe saw something big and dark move on the front deck. He swore vehemently. Maddie jumped.

  In a second he was out of the Pathfinder, and his

  knee complained all over again as he jogged up the steps. He moved too fast into the shadows at the far end of the deck, and he heard Maddie cry out behind him. Too late, he realized he had left his gun in the hatch of the truck.

  "Hello, hello."

  Joe let his breath out as the big man moved closer. "Hey, Angus," he said wearily. "What are you doing here?"

  "I came to see Maddie and her boy." He hesitated and gave great concentration to his battered, sandy sneakers. "She was mad at me this morning."

  Before Joe could respond to that, he felt the warmth of her behind him. He realized that he had felt her before she even touched him. He’d have to think about that later. Then she pushed him gently aside.

  "Angus," she said softly, "come on in."

  She unlocked the door. Angus lumbered in behind them, then stood awkwardly in the middle of the living room, his hands deep in his pockets.

  "Sorry," he mumbled.

  Joe watched her brows go up. "For what?"

  "For making you mad. You said we could visit later." "Oh, Angus," she breathed regretfully. She had known he would take it this way, but then she had forgotten about him. Impulsively she reached out and took his face in her hands. "I wasn’t mad at you. And of course we can visit now."

  She did it the way she would have touched Josh, Joe thought, or any forlorn child. And he saw something happen to Angus’s eyes, something that irritated the hell out of him, something not childlike. Angus’s mind might have stopped maturing in the third grade, but his body was plenty old enough to need release.

  Joe acted fast, without thought. He closed the distance

  between the three of them and put a warning hand on Maddie’s arm. He used enough pressure to make her step away.

  "Okay, that’s enough."

  She looked at him, confused. "Enough of what?"

  Joe opened his mouth with no true idea of how to answer, not while Josh was looking on curiously, and with Angus glaring at him for taking away what had probably been the best thing to happen to him in— what—forty-five years?

  "No sense in getting melod
ramatic about it," he snapped finally, and Maddie flushed.

  "There’s no sense in being rude about it, either."

  "Did you ever stop to think that maybe he noticed somebody up here last night?" He was scrambling. "Come on, Angus, sit down. I need to talk to you about police business."

  Maddie was about to say something when the phone rang, surprising all of them. She jumped, then laughed nervously.

  "I guess they fixed it while we were out. Go ahead," she said more calmly. "You talk to Angus, and I’ll get the phone."

  Chapter 21

  It was for Joe. The voice was male, abrupt, but with a strain of excitement. So much for Sheila’s discretion, Maddie thought. She laid the receiver on top of the television and motioned to him.

  Joe’s brows lowered, and he stood up from the sofa again. Angus got to his feet as well.

  "I have to go now," Angus said. Then he smiled shyly. "I’m glad you’re not mad at me."

  Maddie shook her head, half-listening to Joe talk on the phone. She was getting the impression that something was wrong, and her stomach clenched.

  "No," she said absently to Angus. "I’ve just been scared lately. When your nerves are strained, sometimes your voice is a little sharper than you mean it to be." Angus nodded urgently. "Your man hurt you."

  "My—oh, Josh’s father. Did Joe tell you that? He hurt Josh, actually, but yes, that hurt me, too. Excuse me."

  She heard Joe slam the phone down. When she turned around, his face was white.

  "What?" she gasped. "What’s happened now?"

  He had never learned to mince words, and he was too enraged, too dumbfounded to do it then. "Gina tried to kill herself."

  The room tilted. Maddie sat down on the sofa fast.

  "Because of me?" Oh, no, she thought, no.

  "Who the hell knows?" Joe growled, grabbing his coat again. He trailed off and looked blankly out the window. And no matter what his relationship with his ex-wife had deteriorated into, Maddie saw guilt in his eyes.