Chas realized he was fighting a losing battle when he was about halfway across the first ten acres of the field. The sun was all too swiftly aiding the psychopath’s escape by erasing his footprints.
And the guy had been clever, running in an irregular zigzag pattern that was hard to follow even with clear prints.
But Chas continued anyway, rage propelling his steps, his own anguished words to Allison, the fear in his son’s pale face, reverberating in his head, in his heart.
If he didn’t continue, if he didn’t find this man and stop him cold, he would never be able to look at himself in a mirror again. He would never be able to meet his son’s gaze and feel like a father.
And he would never be able to assure Allison that all would be well, that he would be able to keep her safe.
But some fifteen minutes later, when Pete Jackson pulled up in his Jeep Cherokee, having driven down the narrow farm lane at the edge of the field, Chas had lost all sign of the man’s prints.
Pete got out of the cab and tossed him a jacket. Chas looked at it for a moment, then eased it onto his arms.
“Carolyn’s taking Allison and Billy to Levelland. The kids are with Sammie Jo.”
Chas nodded and stared out at the now damp but very brown field. Here and there, he thought he could make out a footprint or two, and maybe far beyond them, the recent tracks left by a vehicle, but there wasn’t anything in sight as cover, no houses, no trees. Nothing out this way but the workers’ shacks and then nothing until Charlie Hampton’s place.
“Chico’s still in the corral,” Pete said quietly.
Chas turned to look at this man who had burst into their lives about a year or more before. “How’s Billy?”
“He’ll be fine. Just a bump on the head. How’s yours?”
Chas lifted a hand to his cold forehead. He’d forgotten the horse had grazed him with a flailing hoof. The blood had stopped flowing and was dried against his brow. “I’ll be all right.”
“We’ll find whoever did this, Doc.”
Chas nodded, looking back at the broad expanse of field. Miles of open farmland.
“We can drive on a ways if you want,” Pete said.
Chas knew the former FBI agent thought the search futile at this point but was too kind to say so.
“We will find him,” Pete said again.
Chas couldn’t look at the man he’d liked and trusted from the first day he’d showed up on Carolyn’s ranch. He didn’t want Pete to see how close he was to letting his pent-up rage fly loose. And he didn’t want Pete to know that if—when—he found the man who’d tormented Allison, who had very nearly killed his son, he wouldn’t be worrying about handing the man over to the cops. He was just going to end it, right then and there.
All the vows he’d ever taken for preserving lives, animal or human, meant nothing at that moment. He, who had built his life around vows and promises, understood that they had no more substance than the melting snow. Less.
“Come on,” Pete said. “Let’s get you to the hospital. Sammie Jo’s been calling everyone in town since last night, telling them to watch out for a stranger. We’ll find him.”
Chas climbed in the cab of the Cherokee and buckled his belt. He stared across the brown field as if he could make the stranger appear by sheer will alone.
But the field remained as empty and barren as his heart.
In the waiting room of the hospital in Levelland, Allison accepted the cup of hot coffee from Carolyn’s steady hands. Her own shook noticeably.
“Pete’ll find Doc,” Carolyn said. She smiled. “He’s pretty good at that sort of thing.”
“He didn’t have a coat on.”
Carolyn blinked at this. “No? Well, it’s already warming up out there.”
“What if he did find Dorchester?” she asked.
“Who is Dorchester?”
Allison stared at her for a long moment, stunned that her sister-in-law didn’t know. She closed her eyes then and sighed. There was so much she didn’t know. Carolyn took the cup of coffee from her hands, then enfolded Allison’s fingers within her warm grasp.
“I don’t know who he is really,” Allison said heavily. “In fact, I don’t know anything anymore.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
Allison opened her eyes and met those of this stranger who claimed her as family, who held her hands lovingly. Who had raced to the hospital with her and Billy, who had held the boy’s hand while the doctors examined him. And suddenly she wasn’t looking at a stranger anymore. She was meeting the eyes of another sister. Another person who loved her.
When had she allowed her life to become devoid of love? Could it really have been fifteen years ago on a lonely stretch of highway? A sleeping beauty, pricked by pain and loss, woken not by the prince but by a madman.
She began her story with the only partially remembered interview with Michael Dorchester and finished it with Billy’s concussion. She left out the past tragedies, both real and imagined. She left out the way Chas had taken her to heaven and brought her home again. And she left out her confused and myriad emotions about him, about Billy’s revelation to her that Chas wasn’t his biological father.
When she wound to a close, Carolyn tightened the pressure on her fingers. “You know, there used to be a legend around here. Two of them, in fact. One was that there was something in the water that the Leary women drank that turned them all beautiful.”
Allison smiled faintly. She remembered hearing that one when she was little. She thought it was true of Carolyn, though she was technically a Jackson now.
“The other one was that all the Leary women were unlucky, that something terrible would happen to them and those they loved before they could find true love.”
Allison’s smile slipped. She thought of her mother, her untimely death. She thought of her cousin Susie. Of Taylor’s first husband, Doug. And she thought of her brother, Craig, and this lovely woman who had been his wife. Another Leary woman.
And she thought of Chas, who’d told her twice now that he loved her. Of his son, who lay in the hospital room beyond them, sleeping under the watchful eyes of the nursing staff.
Maybe it was her turn. Her heart thudded in her chest, and she felt lightheaded with the shimmery hope. Maybe, just maybe she’d be able to let go of the past long enough to embrace a future.
The nurse slipped out of Billy’s room and signaled them. “He’s awake,” she said softly.
Carolyn nodded at her. “You go on. I think Chas would want you to.”
Allison rose unsteadily, wondering how her sister-in-law knew.
As if reading her mind, Carolyn smiled softly. “Billy’s been wanting a new mom for a long time now.”
Allison’s mind flashed on the painful past, a past that didn’t seem anywhere as horrific as it had been only the morning before. She thought of Chas kissing his fingers to the air, muttering in his exaggerated French accent. She thought of the naked pain on his face as he’d held Billy.
She didn’t smile back at Carolyn; she only squeezed the hands that had warmed hers and turned them loose.
Billy was partially raised in his bed that seemed far too large for him. Now that she knew he wasn’t Chas’s biological son, she could see the subtle signs of a different set of genes in him. The darker hair. The darker eyes. The lips shaped like Thelma’s had been. The narrow face.
But when he turned and smiled at her, his hand half lifting, his grin open and welcoming, she knew that whoever his father may have been, he was definitely Chas’s son.
“Dad...?” he asked before she was halfway into the room.
She shook her head. “But Pete’s gone to fetch him and bring him here.”
He released a big sigh of relief and smiled again, this time nervously, she thought. His fingers plucked at the blanket sheathing him, and he looked down at little peaks and valleys he created.
“How are—?” she began.
At the same time he asked, “Allison?”<
br />
His eyes lifted to hers, and he mumbled an apology for interrupting her.
“That’s okay. What were you going to ask?”
His eyes shot back down to his nervous blanket plucking. Three more mountains formed before he spoke up.
“I know that you and Dad were, like, friends before he married Mom.”
Allison felt as if her jaw was unhinged.
“Mom told me. A long time ago.”
If he’d held a gun to her head, she couldn’t have spoken then.
“The thing is... she told me how she knew this and she went to Dad anyway and begged for him to help her. Cause she knew he would. And I guess he did. You know, like say he would marry her. Because of me. Because she was pregnant with me, you know.”
He flattened all the mountains and started again. Her heart bled for him, and she ached to reach out and smooth the hank of hair hanging down on his forehead away from his face. And she wished she’d had one quarter of his tremendous maturity and courage all those years ago. She wished she had it now.
“The thing is, see, I think Dad’s still in love with you.”
Chas burst into the hospital like one of his own abruptly released animals, his eyes cutting right and left, seeking those people he knew, looking for immediate information about his son.
Carolyn grabbed his arm.
“Where is he?” he asked, spinning around to face her.
“Allison’s with him,” she said. If she’d tossed a glass of ice water in his face, nothing could have made him still as rapidly as hearing this.
She nodded at him as he assimilated this bit of information. “He fine. He likes her, Doc.”
“He’s okay?”
“A concussion. A bruised forearm. No breaks. He’s hardheaded. Which is more than I can say for you.”
Chas felt his head was mush at the moment.
“Where are they?” he asked.
She cocked her head down the hallway he hadn’t been plunging into. “Room 335.”
He started to move in that direction, but she didn’t release her hold on his arm. “Doc?”
He turned, trying to quell the frown rising in him at her detaining him.
“Allison’s a Leary. Probably more so than the rest. She’s all of them, all wrapped up into one. She’s got all their stubbornness. All their pride. All their love. All their pioneering spirit.”
“What are you saying, Carolyn?”
“I’m saying that Allison loves you, but it’ll take an act of Congress before she’ll ever let you know it. I don’t even know if she knows it yet.”
Chas stared at this lovely woman for a long moment, then bent to kiss her cheek. He looked up to see her husband slowly walking up to join them. “You’re a very lucky man, Pete,” he said.
Pete smiled and put his arm around his statuesque wife at the same time she released her hold on Chas’s arm. “You have no idea.”
“Sometimes you just gotta make your own luck, Doc,” Carolyn said, and smiled up at her husband.
Both their words followed him down the short hallway, slowing his footsteps.
By the time he reached the door, he no longer felt like a papa bear on a mission to find his cub.
And he was glad, for he heard his son’s voice. And Allison’s.
He stood outside the doorway, listening shamelessly, closing his eyes as he had outside Taylor’s house the night of her wedding, hearing those two beloved voices mingling.
“...kind of like a puppy following after a bigger dog,” Allison was saying. “Like the boys follow you around.”
Billy chuckled, and a huge knot of fear loosened in Chas’s chest. “Yeah? But that’s pretty cool. I mean, like, you’re famous and everything now.”
“Fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Billy.”
“No? How come?”
“Oh, a big city can be a pretty lonely place sometimes.”
“Why don’t you just stay here, then?”
Chas found himself holding his breath, nodding at the empty air around him.
“And what would I do for a living, hmm?”
“Marry Dad,” Billy answered promptly. “Like, wouldn’t that be perfect? I wasn’t kidding a while ago when I said that I thought he still loved you. Like Mom said. Well, it’s true. I think he still does. I saw the way he looks at you and stuff.”
So much for hiding things from your children, Chas thought, but he leaned forward to hear Allison’s response.
“He said he does.”
“So, like, what’s the problem?”
Oh, Billy, Chas thought, I hope to God you never know.
“It’s me, isn’t it?” Billy asked.
“What?” Allison asked, sounding as stunned as Chas felt outside the room.
“Well, if Mom hadn’t gone to him and talked him into marrying her, he’d have married you.”
Out of the mouths of babes, Chas thought, his heart breaking.
“No,” Allison said swiftly.
Chas felt his blood draining.
She cleared her throat. “That’s not the way it happened at all, Billy.”
Chas held his breath.
“You see, I did know about your dad and Thelma. Your dad wanted a child so badly, you see. Wanted you, I mean, that he asked Thelma to many him. Maybe your Mom didn’t know the whole story. He told me, but I didn’t w-want kids back then. S-so he married your mom, so he could have you. And he’s never regretted it one single day. He told me so.”
“Really?”
“I have to tell the truth to millions of Americans every week—you think I’m going to come all the way back home and tell you a lie?”
Chas pushed his way into the room.
Billy lit up and waved at him. “Dad! You’re okay!”
Chas realized it hadn’t mattered one iota to Billy if he caught the man or not; his safety had been all that his son had thought of. And what was more important to his son than that? Being there for him was paramount; possibly losing his life in a stupid encounter with a psychopath wouldn’t do Billy—or Allison—any good at all.
Allison had frozen, her back still to him.
He shook his head, understanding so much, so unable to reveal any of it. He all but flew to his son’s side and scooped him into his arms for a huge hug. God, he loved this kid so much. Allison hadn’t been lying about that part, though he would owe her for the rest of his life for her other lies.
Feeling Billy’s spindly teenage arms around his shoulders, he fought the sting of relief tears, and didn’t care who saw them.
After a few moments, he released Billy to turn to Allison, but she’d gone. “Just a sec, okay, Bill?”
“Sure, Dad,” his son said, a knowing look on his young face.
Chas dashed from the room in time to see Allison and Carolyn walking out the hospital front doors. Down at the other end of the hallway, Pete raised his hands out from his chest in the universal “who knows?” gesture, then made car-driving motions and pointed in the general direction of Almost.
She wasn’t just leaving hospital. Every instinct in him screamed that she was leaving Almost. Leaving to keep everyone safe. Leaving him. Again.
He turned back to his son. “Billy, I don’t know what all you and Allison talked about—”
“She’s really great, Dad. You know, I think she loves you.”
Chas stared at his son as if he’d never seen him before. “Pretty sneaky, Billy. Pulling the same trick on both of us?”
Billy looked startled, “You heard?”
“I was outside in the hallway.”
Instead of looking guilty or sheepish, Billy just grinned at him. Chas realized his son had taken Allison’s statement about the past at total face value. Some shadow he’d never realized had lurked in his son’s eyes was gone now.
“Well, you were right when you told her that I loved her...but I didn’t hear her telling you any such thing.”
“Oh, like you’re always saying, some things people don’t ha
ve to say out loud, you know?” Billy said, his mouth curved into a mischievous smile, his eyes alight with fun. Then he seemed to catch some whiff of his father’s fear. “What’s wrong, Dad?”
“Did she tell you about the man in the barn this morning?”
Billy tensed up even further. His eyes widened as he sat forward. “No. Who was he? What did he want?”
Chas drew a short breath, then told his son the raw truth. “He’s a stalker, Billy. He’s been after Allison for months. I hope you don’t think—”
“Did she leave, Dad?”
“She’s on her way back to Almost.”
“You better go after her. I’ll be cool here. I got TV, and nobody’s gonna bug me in the hospital.”
Maybe Allison hadn’t been lying after all, he thought; this was one terrific kid. And he would, even knowing the terrible truths, do it all over again just to have him.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Chas said, dragging his son up for another bear hug. “I’m gonna ask Pete to stay here with you.”
“Cool.”
Chas headed for the door, but his son’s “Hey, Dad!” stopped him at the threshold. “You better wash that blood off your forehead. It’s like you always told me, ladies don’t like grungy guys.”
Chapter 13
All but flying down the farm-to-market road leading to Almost, pushing Pete’s Cherokee to its limits, Chas could only think of one thing: getting to Allison in time.
He realized his main thrust wasn’t to rescue her or protect her; it was to stop her from leaving Almost.
He growled in frustration as he saw the clock on the dashboard. She didn’t have that great a lead on him, but he knew how Carolyn drove, as fast and surely as a race-car driver.
He was hunched over the steering wheel like a crazed man, as if his leaning forward could actually propel the Jeep to greater speed. He glanced around the interior, as if seeking an elusive power booster, something, anything, to allow him to catch up with her, and his eyes fell on Pete’s cellular phone tucked between the front seats.
A slow smile creased his aching face.
He’d tried telling Allison that she didn’t have to go through anything alone. And he’d been trying to accomplish his goals by doing the same thing.
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