Never Let Her Go

by Gayle Wilson

  “SOMETHING ABOUT her son needing her,” Abby explained to her boss when she reached him. “Supposedly he called her today.”

  “Supposedly?” Rob repeated, hearing the doubt in her voice.

  Abby hesitated. She had no basis for doubting Maggie’s story. Other than the timing of this. And the woman’s strange behavior whenever Sheriff Blanchard was around.

  That in itself, she admitted, might mean nothing. There were plenty of people who didn’t like their local law-enforcement officers. They didn’t even have to have a reason for that dislike, other than the badge they wore.

  “I didn’t hear the phone,” Abby clarified. “I wasn’t outside with the tech people long. Blanchard saw to most of it.”

  “They find anything?”

  “Not even the raccoon,” she said.

  “Come again?” Rob requested, his voice puzzled.

  “Nothing. A not-very-funny joke. On me, I guess.”

  The silence occupied the line for a moment. But she supposed it was best not to give Rob too long to worry about that strange comment. “So what do we do?” she prompted.

  “Just what we’ve been doing,” he said.

  Which was not exactly what she had wanted to hear.

  “For the time being, anyway,” Rob added. “You seem to be having some results with our primary objective. Besides, I don’t have a place I can bring you all right now. I’ll need a few days to make those arrangements. Think you can manage for a while?”

  “Until the food runs out. If Deandro’s not choosy about what he eats,” she said. One part of her was relieved that they were staying put for a while. The other half was…frightened? Maybe that wasn’t the word, but it worked.

  In spite of Blanchard’s warning tonight, she was not afraid of what might happen out here. No one in the department really seemed to believe anyone was coming after Nick. She was afraid of something else. The feelings that had been stirred up. Except, of course, they had really been there from the beginning.

  She supposed she could blame them on raging hormones. But she knew the real reason this assignment was proving to be so difficult. She had understood that when she agreed to come out here. Despite seeing Nick again, none of that confusion had lessened. If anything it had increased. Because nothing had changed but Nick. And to her deep shame, Abby honestly didn’t know how she felt about that.

  She made Maggie alter her plans. Nobody she didn’t know was coming on this property tonight, Abby decided. Rob had told her she was in charge. Maybe she couldn’t prevent Maggie from leaving, but she could make her do it in the most risk-free manner possible. Maggie could wait at the end of the drive for whoever was coming out to pick her up, Abby decided. That car would not be allowed to enter the grounds.

  Although she hadn’t protested, the caretaker hadn’t been happy about the change in plans. Or maybe she didn’t like the fact that Abby had called the sheriff and asked him to come back out and make sure that whoever came for Maggie left right away.

  “And, Maggie. I’ll need your key to the house,” Abby said.

  “I’ve had a key to this house since before you was born.”

  “I understand that, but Sheriff Blanchard told you that we’re very security-conscious right now. With what happened here last night, I’ll feel better knowing that no one else has a key.”

  “I ain’t gonna give it to nobody,” Maggie said, her face tight with offense.

  “I’ll still need your key before you leave, Maggie. I’m sorry if you’re insulted,” Abby said She wasn’t sure what she would do if Maggie didn’t comply. Ask the sheriff to step in, she supposed. She would hate to do that, since Maggie obviously didn’t like Blanchard. But she would. She would have to.

  Luckily, it didn’t come to that. Maggie fished in the opening at the top of her cotton dress and produced an old-fashioned cloth change purse. From that she took out the house key and placed it grudgingly on Abby’s outstretched palm.

  “How long will you be away?” Abby asked.

  “Don’t know exactly,” Maggie acknowledged.

  “If we leave before you get back, I’ll leave this for you with Sheriff Blanchard.”

  Maggie’s lips tightened. The harrumph was softer this time, but the cold disdain was in her brown eyes.

  “What’d he do to you, Maggie?” Abby asked. “What’d he do to make you dislike him so much?”

  Stubbornly, the caretaker shook her head, eyes falling to the change purse, which she closed with deliberation and replaced in its hiding place. “I’ll go get my suitcase,” she said.

  ABBY WAS WATCHING from the front windows when the sheriff’s car arrived. He had touched the siren, probably to let her know he was here. In the flare of headlights, she could see Maggie’s figure silhouetted at the end of the drive, her thin body looking lost and forlorn in the darkness under the big trees. The lights cast her shadow, highly elongated, onto the drive behind her.

  The sheriff immediately got out of the patrol car and walked around in front of it, briefly interrupting the twin beams of the headlights He seemed to be talking to Maggie, and Abby found herself wondering about their conversation. And about everything else between those two. Like Nick’s jigsaw puzzle, there were too many pieces missing for her to be able to figure out Maggie and the sheriff’s relationship, which had apparently been formed long before she and Nick had shown up out here.

  The sheriff had gotten back into the patrol car, again passing between Abby and the headlights, several minutes before the second car appeared. Abby watched as Maggie traced the same path, moving in front of the patrol car to climb into the other. She was still watching when both sets of red taillights finally disappeared into the darkness.

  She checked the lock on the front door and then started down the hall, intending to go back to the kitchen to do the same with the back entry. And to verify that the alarm system’s light was blinking. She found Nick sitting on the stairs.

  “Your friend decide not to come in?” he asked.

  His elbows were propped on his knees, big hands relaxed and hanging loosely between his legs. The dark glasses seemed to be focused on her face, just as they had been this morning.

  “Sheriff Blanchard, you mean?”

  “You have any other friends out this way?”

  She debated arguing the point with him—whether the sheriff was her friend or not But, given their last exchange, she decided Nick might be right. Right enough that she didn’t want to be challenged on her feelings about the local law.

  “He was just out here to make sure that Maggie got off the property,” she explained.

  “Maggie?” The crease had reformed between the wings of his dark brows.

  “Some kind of family emergency,” Abby explained

  “Is Andrews sending someone else out?”

  “I think the plans are for us to survive on our own until he can make some other arrangements.”

  “What kind of arrangements?” Nick asked carefully.

  Abby hesitated before she answered, but then she decided that he certainly had a right to know about the decisions the department was making about keeping him safe

  “To move you to another location,” she said.

  “Because of Maggie? Or because of last night?” She wondered if he could be right.

  “He didn’t mention it until I told him Maggie was leaving.”

  “What kind of emergency?” Nick asked.

  “I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me Something about her baby needing her.”

  Nick laughed. He put his hands together, fingers interlocking One thumb rubbed over the other, and Abby couldn’t resist watching its movement. Just as it had moved against her arm this morning. Slow and unhurried.

  “Her baby,” he said. “Maggie’s son. The youngest one.”

  Apparently Maggie had confided a lot more information about herself to Nick Deandro than she had to Abby Of course, Nick had been here for more than five months, Abby reminded herself.

&n
bsp; “Why doesn’t she like Blanchard?” Abby asked, wondering if Nick could shed some light on that mystery. She didn’t really expect an answer, but he gave her one. One that explained a lot.

  “He busted her kid Drug charges.”

  “Possession?”

  “Dealing,” Nick said softly.

  “In this parish?”

  That information didn’t fit with what the sheriff had suggested about the crime out here, but maybe he meant he hadn’t had any trouble after that arrest. It was hard to imagine Maggie’s child being a drug dealer, but then kids went bad all the time. Went against their upbringing. Especially with the temptation of drugs and the big money they offered.

  And suddenly, this all made sense. Maggie would be one of those parents who didn’t want to believe anything bad about her child. It was far easier to blame the law than the child. To blame whoever had made the arrest.

  “This is his jurisdiction,” Nick said.

  “No wonder she can’t stand him,” Abby said

  “Kill the messenger,” Nick agreed.

  Abby nodded. And realized her mistake. “I guess so,” she said. “Did you need something?” she asked, realizing that Nick’s presence on the stairs was something very much out of the norm.

  “I guess you could say that,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “I wanted to apologize for this morning. For touching you.”

  Whatever she had expected, it wasn’t this. She didn’t know how to deal with it Or what to say to him. Even the word touching echoed, reviving memory. His hands on her body.

  “Why don’t we just forget it happened,” she suggested.

  He laughed again, the sound quiet and yet not as dark as his previous laughter. This was almost natural. Almost as it had been before. When she had known him before.

  “That should be easy enough for me,” Nick said. “Just one more thing I don’t remember.”

  It was the most bitter of ironies, she supposed, that she was suggesting to Nick that he should forget something that had happened between them.

  “It’s just that you remind me of someone,” he went on.

  He lifted his hand, rubbing distractedly at the scar on his temple. She watched his fingers, hoping he wouldn’t say any more. She wasn’t ready to hear any more.

  “She was a cop, too. Maybe. I don’t really know that, but at least…” He hesitated, seeming to be thinking carefully about what he was saying. “At least, I used to worry because I thought she wasn’t tough enough. She seemed too damn fragile.”

  Abby said nothing in response. She hadn’t dreamed that Nick had worried about her. Or that he had seen her as fragile. She should have resented his concern, she supposed, but she couldn’t, of course. Because she had done her share of worrying about him, and no one could argue that Nick Deandro wasn’t tough enough for his job. Any job. And yet…

  “She was small. Thin like you. She wore that same perfume.” His face lifted as he inhaled. “She had long blond hair that used to tangle around us when we made love.”

  When we made love. The whispered words hung in the air between them. Hovering there like the too-familiar scent she couldn’t smell. Like memory.

  “And I thought…” He spoke again into the silence, and then his voice faded. “This morning I thought for a moment you might be that woman,” he finished.

  Shouldn’t she whisper the words her heart was screaming? I am that woman. I am. Still she hesitated, not understanding her indecision Surely what had been in his voice just now should be enough to overcome any doubts she had. Any question that they still belonged together, despite everything.

  She was carrying this man’s child. And she had loved him, more than she had ever loved anyone else in her entire life. But still she didn’t say the simple words that would end this cruel charade she and Rob Andrews had conspired together to create. Conspired for different reasons, of course. But she was as guilty of having ulterior motives in coming out here as Rob was in sending her.

  “I need to check the back,” she said instead of telling Nick the truth. Instead of telling him anything. “We don’t want a repeat of what happened last night.”

  He didn’t respond in any way, his hands still locked together, but unmoving now. She walked past the foot of the stairs where he was sitting and toward the safe, beckoning light of the kitchen.

  When she got there, she found that the back door was locked, just as she had known it would be. And the arming light was blinking, slow and steady as a heartbeat. That should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t. It was mocking again.

  She had known this was wrong. To come out here. To pretend to him that nothing had ever happened between them. But she had rationalized her decision by thinking that seeing Nick again might give her a chance to understand her feelings. To understand the terrible duality of them.

  One part of her wanted desperately for Nick to remember. To remember her and what they had had. And another part held back from that because she was afraid it would never again be the same. That she wouldn’t feel the same way about him. That she couldn’t feel that way about him anymore. And if that were true, her rejection was something she knew Nick didn’t deserve. Not on top of all the other.

  She turned off the kitchen light and stood a moment in the darkness, trying to imagine being blind. Trying to think how she would have reacted to that awful change. She found that she couldn’t even imagine what it must be like.

  And she wasn’t Nick Deandro. She was a woman. Women were expected to be vulnerable. They were allowed to be. Allowed some uncertainty and even fear. As men were not.

  She had never wanted Nick to be uncertain or afraid. Those were things she had never associated with him. And she didn’t want to now. Perhaps that was unfair, immoral, cowardly even, but she knew it was also true.

  Shaking her head against the injustice of her feelings, she turned away from the blinking light and headed back to the stairs, hoping desperately that Nick wouldn’t still be sitting in the darkness there. Hoping that they wouldn’t have to talk about this any more tonight. Hoping she wouldn’t have to think about the kind of person it seemed she really was.

  When she reached the door to the hall, she turned around again, glancing back into the kitchen, at the red dot of light, still blinking steadily on the far wall Double-checking because of last night. A little paranoid, she supposed.

  She could never explain why she didn’t scream when his forearm fastened across her throat, pulling her back against the hard wall of his chest. She hadn’t made a sound. Because she had known instantly that it was Nick’s arm. And that it was Nick’s hand grabbing her left wrist.

  She lifted her right hand, which was still free, and began to pry with trembling fingers at the muscled forearm that was across her neck. There was no loosening of the pressure Nick wasn’t hurting her, but he could. Maybe he was even trying to make her aware of how easily he could.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

  “Good question, Sterling. Why don’t you answer it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He laughed, the sound right beside her ear, so close she could feel his breath against her cheek. She could even smell him. Man-scent. Nick.

  So familiar it made her knees weak. She wanted to lean back against his solid strength. To relax against it. To feel his arms close around her and lift her. She wanted him to carry her upstairs to one of the beds and make love to her in the mindless, forgiving darkness. Just as he had before.

  “What the hell do you have to do with all this?” he said instead, his voice harsh. “Why don’t you tell me why Andrews sent you out here?”

  “To protect you,” she said She was trying to think what he wanted to know. If she was the woman he had dreamed about? If so, this seemed a strange way of trying to get information.

  “To protect me from the mob, I suppose.”

  “From the people who tried to kill you,�
�� she agreed.

  “Except that’s not who tried to kill me, Sterling. You and Rob Andrews and I all know that.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Abby said. She didn’t. She didn’t have any idea what he meant.

  “They call in a mechanic, and I’m going to be dead. Very, very dead before he leaves the scene,” Nick said.

  She thought about that. A mechanic A professional hit. That’s what they had all thought. “He got interrupted,” she suggested That was what she had been told, anyway. “A cop showed up.”

  “A real pro would just kill the cop. You know that as well as I do. No mechanic is going to leave me bleeding on the street without making sure I’m dead. He does, and he’s a dead man.”

  “What are you saying?” Abby asked.

  “That it was somebody else that night Somebody who wanted me, but wasn’t quite cold-blooded enough about it to shoot two other people. Somebody who screwed up.”

  “Not a pro,” she said. He was right. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of that possibility before. Why Rob hadn’t. Or maybe, she thought suddenly, maybe he had.

  “You got it, Sterling. Not a pro. Somebody local.”

  “Somebody local,” she repeated, trying to figure out what he was saying. And then it hit her. “Somebody in the department? You think one of us…”

  She didn’t complete the sentence. His forearm had tightened reflexively, and her fingers struggled again against the increased pressure. This time they had some effect.

  It eased minutely, and in response she drew a breath It was deep and uneven—from fear, shock or maybe lack of oxygen. She wasn’t sure, but she was grateful for the reprieve.

  “The woman I told you about,” Nick said, his mouth against her ear, the words still soft in the darkness, nearly caressing. “I’d been with her that night.”

  “You remember that?”