Dead Even

by Mariah Stewart

  “No, they didn’t.” Julianne’s face went dark. “They weren’t divorced. That’s how much you know. They loved each other. My daddy was so sad when she died. That’s why he took me away. That’s why he called me Rebecca. . . .”

  Genna sighed deeply. She was in over her head, and she knew it. She looked to Jayne for help, but instead of words of wisdom, she got only a helpless shrug of the shoulders from her companion.

  “Tell me what you remember about your mother.” Genna thought perhaps the best thing to do at this point might be to take the focus off Jules, for now. There was nothing she could say about the man that would help the situation now. Perhaps getting Julianne to talk about Mara might be the better path.

  Julianne’s trembling hands lay in her lap, her fingers intertwined.

  “She was pretty. She had long dark hair and a soft voice. She laughed a lot,” she said tentatively.

  “What else?” Genna encouraged her.

  “She sang to me. Played with me. She took me to school in the morning. When I came home we had lunch outside every day when it didn’t rain. I had a swing in the tree, and she pushed me. . . .” Her eyes shifted to one side, then appeared to focus on something Genna could not see. “Sometimes she sat on the swing and I sat on her lap and we swang together. We sang songs. . . .”

  Genna watched Julianne’s eyes flicker, then fill with tears.

  “I always missed her,” Julianne confided. “Daddy told me not to think about her, but I always did. . . .”

  “You’ll see her soon,” Genna told her. “She’ll be waiting for you at the airport.”

  Julianne gave her that look again, that look of not understanding what was said to her. She gazed out the window but did not speak again until the plane touched down at the small airport in Bucks County. A long black car waited just off the runway, and when Julianne was led off the plane by Genna, the back door opened and a pretty dark-haired woman stepped out.

  Julianne stood on the third step from the bottom of the portable stairway and stared as the woman approached her. She walked slowly toward the plane, her face a study in joyful disbelief. As the tears began to roll down her cheeks, she opened her arms wordlessly, and Julianne hesitated for several very long moments before walking into the circle of her mother’s embrace.

  Genna Snow blew out a long-held breath and looked over her shoulder at Jayne, whose eyes were wet. The hands of the two women touched briefly, then Jayne said, “Hey, we must be really important. We scored brass for a driver. . . .”

  The driver’s door opened, and John Mancini emerged. He patiently waited for his wife at the side of the car, and Genna stepped up her pace.

  “Nice boots,” he said as she drew near.

  “Like these?” She grinned, never taking her eyes from his face. “I had to trade my shoes for these babies.”

  “Ahhh, the person you traded with . . . was she dead?”

  “Dead? No. She was in the infirmary, though.”

  “That would explain why your signal hasn’t moved for over a week.”

  “Sorry about that.” She smiled. Just looking at him made her smile. Every time. “Were you worried?”

  “Yeah, I was. I was worried about you.” He held her as she slipped into his arms. “Welcome home, Gen.”

  “Good to be home.” She rested her head on his chest. “You don’t know how good it is to be home.”

  “You did a great job, getting Julianne out. You know we’re going to have to pick your brain now about the operation out there, about Reverend Prescott’s doings, so we can go back in and shut him down.”

  She nodded. “Pick away tomorrow. I’m taking the rest of the day off. Let’s go home.”

  He tossed the keys to the driver of a second car that had pulled up, and caught a set of keys in return.

  “Hey, I don’t get to ride in the limo?” Genna pretended to be offended.

  “You’re not going where that limo is going,” he said as he led her to the passenger side. “That limo is headed for Linden. This car is headed home. Still want the limo?”

  “Nah. I want the driver, though.” She leaned over and kissed his mouth after he’d gotten into the car.

  The limo pulled past them.

  “How do you think that’s going to go?” John rubbed his cheek against Genna’s.

  “I don’t know. Julianne is going to be one very confused little girl. She wants her mother, but she won’t want to believe what her father did. She won’t want to believe he lied about everything. I feel so sorry for her. For her and for Mara.” She sighed, her heart heavy again. The past weeks had worn her out more completely than even she had realized.

  “Can we go home now, John? I just want to go home. . . .”

  Miranda had been watching Will’s face for much of their drive to the prison from Landry’s farm. It had been a quiet drive. Very quiet. Miranda couldn’t remember the last time Will had had so little to say. So a few miles back, she began to study his expression. When she realized that merely staring was not going to shed any light on his silence, she decided to resort to interrogation.

  “So, I guess you’re thinking about what you’re going to say to Giordano.”

  “No. I figured you’d do most of the talking,” he said without looking at her.

  “Why would you figure that?”

  “Because you usually do.” He pulled into the left lane. “Most of the talking, that is.”

  “Should I be insulted by that?”

  “Does the truth hurt?”

  Miranda watched for the sly smile that generally accompanied such a remark. When no smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, she tried another tactic.

  “Wonder how Genna’s doing. Wonder if they’ve landed yet.”

  “I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Aren’t you at all concerned about how all this is going to play out? I mean, with Julianne having been gone for seven years, thinking her mother was dead. . . .”

  Will shrugged. “I have no clue what’s going to happen. The only thing I know for certain is that Annie will be there to help keep things from getting out of hand. Hopefully she can keep things on the right track.”

  “That’s all you have to say on the subject?”

  “Why speculate? We’ll find out soon enough what’s going on, since we’ll head to Mara’s right from the prison.”

  “Do you think John’s right?”

  “He usually is.”

  “So you think Jules is going to come for Julianne?”

  “I think someone is. We can only hope it’s Jules.”

  “You think Prescott would send someone else for her?”

  “I think Prescott has got to be feeling a bit tense right about now. As far as we know, no one has left the Valley of the Angels who didn’t leave at the reverend’s command to go into a situation he controlled. Now, he has to be worried about where Julianne might be, just what she knows about his operation, and who she might be talking to.”

  “You don’t think old nutbar Jules would let anyone do his work for him, do you?”

  She waited for him to respond. When he did not, she leaned over and grabbed her bag from the floor. She rummaged around for a minute, then held up a tin of mints.

  “Want one?” She offered the box to him.

  “No, thanks.”

  She dropped the box back into her bag, then took out her cell phone. She checked for messages.

  “Message from John, Jayne is on her way to Mara’s, with Mara and Julianne . . . she and Aidan will be there until we arrive.” Miranda paraphrased John’s message. “How do you think Julianne will react when she realizes that her mother is involved with another man? Mara and Aidan are inseparable.”

  “Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

  “And a message from . . . huh, no message.” She hit a button on the phone and scrolled for the number of the caller who had declined to leave a message. Finding it, she hit the return call button, then held the phone up to her ear
. The number rang and rang, and finally, she heard the message prompt.

  “This is Miranda Cahill, FBI, returning a call from this number. The caller didn’t leave a name, but if there’s someone there who still wants to speak with me, please call me back. You obviously have the number. . . .”

  She disconnected and dropped the phone into its designated spot in her bag, then opened the box of mints and popped one into her mouth.

  Finally, she asked, “So, are you going to tell me what’s eating you?”

  He appeared to be debating a response, but when a full minute had passed, and he hadn’t replied, she said, “Nod if you can hear me, Fletcher.”

  “I’m thinking,” he said, and moved to the right to allow a large truck to pass. “It’s hard to think when I have a headache.”

  “You have a headache? Why didn’t you say something? Pull over and I’ll take the wheel. I just realized, you’ve been driving all day. I’ll drive the rest of the way, and you can relax.”

  “It’s not the driving that’s making my head hurt.”

  “What is?”

  “You are.”

  “I make your head hurt?” She sat straight up in her seat, offended.

  “Among other things, yes.”

  “I hope you’re going to explain that, and not sink back into silence again.”

  “I’m thinking, Cahill, okay? Just stop talking for a minute and let me think, will you?”

  She grew quiet then, and waited, hurt, wondering what she’d done to cause him to react to her in such a manner. They’d always gone round and round with each other, but it had always been mostly in fun, hadn’t it? And she couldn’t recall that there had been one of their usual go-rounds today. Or maybe even yesterday, for that matter. She looked over at him, confused, and felt the slightest stirring of apprehension, and thought back several days to having watched him and Annie walking across the parking lot, their heads close together, chatting like conspirators.

  Miranda swallowed hard. Well, she hadn’t given him much encouragement, had she? She had no one to blame but herself if he had found someone else.

  Which wasn’t to say that she wanted him, of course. Did she?

  “That lightbulb go on yet?” she prodded, suddenly impatient.

  “Okay,” he said, still looking straight out through the windshield. “I guess the best way to say it is like this: I just don’t want to go on like this anymore.”

  “Like what?” she asked cautiously.

  “Like, friends. I don’t want to be your friend anymore.”

  “You don’t want to be my friend?” She felt as if he’d struck her.

  “Well, of course, I want to be your friend.” He exhaled sharply. “I just don’t want to be just your friend, okay, Miranda? We’re a little old for this shit.”

  “But you were the one who brought up the friends thing. You said you wanted to be friends, Will.”

  “I said what I thought you wanted to hear, okay?”

  She blinked, not expecting him to sound so . . . vehement.

  “Will—”

  “Let me finish, will you? You wanted to hear this, you listen.”

  “Okay.” She shifted in her seat so that she could watch his face, give him her full attention.

  “I understand that the way things have been between us hasn’t been especially . . . stable. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but it will have to do for now. I know it’s no one’s fault more than the other. I mean, look at the way it’s always been for you and me. We’ve always had this great chemical thing going for us. Attraction.” The smile finally appeared, but barely. “An understatement, I know, but let’s just call it that for now.”

  “You used to call it hot monkey sex.”

  “That was when I was immature. Before . . .”

  “Before what?”

  “Before I realized I was starting to fall in love with you.” He never took his eyes from the road.

  “Oh.” The tiny word escaped from her mouth without her even being aware of it. She couldn’t think of a single word to say, he’d taken her so off guard. So she simply repeated, “Oh.”

  “Now, I’ve come to realize that you don’t understand what love is . . . no, don’t interrupt me.” He held up a hand when she appeared about to rebut. “You don’t, Miranda. You understand great sex, and you understand friendship, but you don’t understand the rest of it. The heart stuff.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing anyone ever said to me,” she blurted out.

  “Oh, speaking of maturity—”

  “If you weren’t driving, I’d—”

  “Spare me. You’re only trying to change the subject.”

  “You think I’m not capable of loving someone?”

  “That is not what I said. I think you’re more than capable. I just think you don’t want to.”

  When she didn’t respond, he said, “You look at what went on between your mother and your father, and you think, Who needs that? Who needs a man who comes and goes, in and out of your life, the way Jack came and went in and out of your mother’s. You saw what that did to her, so you want none of it. I can respect that.”

  She looked at him, her eyes dark, unreadable.

  “But I am not Jack, Miranda. I won’t love you and leave you, and I’m tired as hell of coming in and out of your life. If you’d let me, I’d stay, for as long as you wanted me.” He took a deep breath. “If you’d let me, I’d take this as far as it could go, wherever it leads. If you’d let me.”

  “It seems like you’re always leaving me.” The words were so soft, he wasn’t certain at first that she’d spoken at all.

  “Sometimes you’re the one who leaves,” he reminded her. “Assignments sometimes come in the middle of the night; we both know that. It isn’t always me leaving you, babe.”

  “It feels like you’re always the one to go. It hurts, Will. It hurts when I wake up in the morning and you’re gone. I never know if it’s been just a good time, or if it meant something more to you. You never told me how you felt.” She could have added, And I knew just how my mother must have felt, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it.

  “Neither did you.”

  “Everyone knows the man is supposed to say it first.”

  “I just did,” he reminded her.

  Miranda put her face in her hands, and he reached over and gently pulled them away.

  “Let’s start by not hiding anymore, okay? Over the past few years, we’ve each found a hundred ways to hide from each other.” His voice grew soft. “Let’s stop doing that, okay?”

  Will drove with both hands on the wheel, as if needing something sure to hold on to. He’d put his heart on the line. He was so afraid of what might come next.

  “So, what do you say, Cahill?” he asked, trying to infuse his voice with a lightness he did not feel.

  “I don’t know what to say. I think I’m terrified.”

  “Oh, that’s encouraging,” he muttered dryly.

  Feeling rebuffed, he fell back into silence.

  A few miles down the road, she said, “Are you saying you don’t want to sleep with me unless there’s something more than friendship between us?”

  “I didn’t say that exactly, but that pretty much sums it up. Strange as it may sound, sex just isn’t enough for me anymore. I want it all, but I want it all at the same time. Body, mind, heart.”

  “You left out soul.”

  “Everyone’s entitled to keep a little something for themselves.”

  “You realize you’ve rendered me pretty much speechless, don’t you?”

  “That’s a first.”

  “Will . . .”

  “Hmmm?”

  “That was our exit.”

  “Swell.” He glanced in the rearview mirror in time to see the sign fade around the bend.

  “The next one is just around that next curve, if I remember correctly.” She pointed ahead.

  The exit was there, and he eased into the lane. Once off the
expressway, they were only a few miles from the prison.

  “What if we can’t . . . you know, make it as anything other than friends?” she asked.

  “You really think that’s going to happen?”

  “I don’t know what will happen. I’ve never seen this type of thing work out.”

  “Of course you have. Look at Genna and John. You don’t have to look far to find relationships that work when both people want them to work. Stop looking so hard for a reason not to . . .” He paused, then said, “Unless, of course, you don’t feel that way toward me. If that’s the case, then—”

  “I don’t know what to call what I feel for you. I can tell you very honestly that I’ve never felt that way about anyone else, though.” She leaned back into her seat, her blue eyes focused on his face. “Do you really think that things would have been the way they were between us if I hadn’t felt something really strong for you?”

  “A guy can hope.”

  “It’s hard to put a name to something you’ve tried to avoid thinking about for so long.”

  “Well, I think that’s my point. We’ve both been avoiding this whole relationship thing for years.” He pulled to the side of the road and stopped the car. “We never talked about it, but we’re talking now.”

  “I’ll give you this much”—she unsnapped her seat belt and leaned over and took his face in her hands—”there’s never been anyone but you. I’ve never known what to call what I feel for you, but the whole time since we’ve known each other, there’s never been anyone else.”

  “I can live with that, for today. For now.” He drew her close and kissed her, almost weak with relief. He held on to her as if to a lifeline, his heart pounding. He wondered if he’d ever tell her how the thought of this conversation had struck terror in his gut. He’d been so afraid she’d shoot him down.

  “I think we can work this out somehow,” she whispered, returning his kiss and running her top teeth along his bottom lip, because she knew it made him a little crazy.

  “We’ll work on it.”

  “Day and night until we get it right.”

  He laughed and kissed her again, wanting to feel her pressed against him, but there was the console, and the steering wheel. So he kissed her one last time and said, “We can do this. No more joking around. We can do this.”