Men Made in America Mega-Bundle

by Gayle Wilson, Marie Ferrarella, Jennifer Greene, Annette Broadrick, Judith Arnold, Rita Herron, Anne Stuart, Diana Palmer, Elizabeth Bevarly, Patricia Rosemoor, Emilie Richards

  Becki held his eyes a moment, realizing that she wouldn’t change his mind. “All right, if you won’t do anything, then we will,” she said. She walked away from the cars toward the center of the encampment. She was aware that Mike followed her, aware, too, of the departing patrol cars. She wondered briefly if the sheriff would even make the small efforts he’d promised. She pushed that thought away, knowing that she couldn’t do anything about his seeming lack of concern. If she had to, she’d find Deke by herself.

  The tent was empty. The central table held a few dishes, the remains of the food they’d contained hardening in the dry air. There was nothing else. No papers. No maps. Nothing left behind to indicate where the men who had taken Deke had come from or where they had gone. Nothing.

  Mike put his arm around her shoulder. The human touch was comforting and she leaned against him, remembering how it had felt when Deke had held her against his body, allowing her to draw strength from his. And now…

  “It’s too late, Bec,” Mike said.

  Angrily, she jerked away. She didn’t want to hear this. More of the same defeatist crap the sheriff had spouted.

  “It’s not too late,” she said. “An hour at the most. That’s all the head start they’ve had. We can still find them. Deke’s not going to just give in. He’ll keep fighting. We just have to find—”

  “He threw his gun away. He gave himself up to them in exchange for our freedom. It’s what he intended to do. They had already decided on the one who…” Mike hesitated, and then, like the deputy’s, his eyes fell away from hers.

  He didn’t need to finish the thought. She knew.

  “The guy in charge?” she asked bitterly.

  “A kid. Some kid they called Richard. He wanted that ‘honor’ pretty badly,” Mike said bitterly. “He seemed to feel he had some right to…be the one to do it. That’s what he said. Some kind of payback.”

  “Richard,” she repeated softly, shaking her head, remembering the dark night and the man Deke had chosen not to kill. So ironic. So damned ironic. “Richard,” she said again.

  It was unfair that someone Deke had deliberately chosen to spare would now be allowed to take his life. Might already have carried out the execution he had described to her. Might already have…

  The rage that had caused her to throw the phone when she’d finally realized what Deke intended was back, boiling uncontrollably through her body. There was nothing she could do. She didn’t know the country or the direction they’d headed. Nothing. And no one else seemed to care. No one cared.

  Furious with her inability to change anything, she suddenly swept the dishes off the table, a single swing of her arm across the surface, watching them fall and bounce on the canvas floor of the tent. Only one glass broke, and that because it struck with a sharp ping against the lip of one of the thick white plates. She wanted it all to break into a million pieces, as she was breaking inside, but instead they fell almost silently against the softness of the tent floor. She watched them settle, the liquid that had been left in one of the glasses spreading in a small silver puddle over the treated canvas.

  She pushed against the edge of the camp table, lifting with both hands until it turned over, landing against the wall of the tent. Then there was nothing else to fight against. Nothing else of theirs she could hurt or destroy. The small, senseless protest was over. She found she was crying, dry, hard sobs that hurt her throat and chest. Nothing to do. No target for her anger. She wanted to tear down the tent they had erected, but like the dishes she’d tried to destroy, that wouldn’t change anything. It was already too late. They had waited too many years to get their hands on Deke Summers. They weren’t going to screw it up now. Too late. She couldn’t stop whatever was happening. Had already happened.

  She didn’t resist when Mike’s arms wrapped around her, holding her, allowing her to cry out her despair against his body. They stood together in the shadowed interior of the enemy tent. They’ll put the muzzle of a rifle… The phrase echoed unwanted in her heart. His life for Josh’s. A sacrifice she knew he had willingly made. She acknowledged her gratitude and knew that, as she had before, she’d eventually learn to deal with this loss. But not yet. Not for a long time would she forget what she felt for Deke Summers.

  BECKI WAS AT HER grandmother’s, after another Sunday dinner, when she discovered that the prayer she had offered so fervently for the past three weeks wasn’t going to be granted. She leaned against the coolness of the floor-length mirror attached to the back of the bathroom door and felt the tears slip out.

  Her period had been late, although she hadn’t really been aware of it for a while after their return from New Mexico. When she had realized, she had tried to tell herself it was simply the result of all the stress, but the small hope had grown with each passing day. It hadn’t seemed so much to ask for. Deke’s child. But now, finally, she knew that wasn’t to be. It seemed that nothing was left of the man who had touched their lives, hers and Josh’s, except memories.

  Someone knocked on the door, softly, but given the fact that this was the only bathroom and considering the number of people crowded into the old house, she knew she would have to respond. She sniffed, wiping away the tears, and then, using the mirror, attempted some quick repair.

  The soft knock demanded again. “Bec?” her sister said. “You okay?”

  Deke’s word. “I’m okay,” she whispered.

  “Then let me in,” Mary demanded.

  Becki opened the door and watched as her sister’s concerned eyes traced over her features. Apparently she hadn’t been very successful in her attempts to hide the tears. Mary stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

  “Would talking help?” she asked.

  “Not really,” Becki said truthfully, but because the love was so clearly visible, she put her arms around her sister and hugged her. She stepped back, almost embarrassed by her display and said again, “I’m okay.”

  “How’s Josh?”

  “Waiting. At least I think that’s what he’s doing. I’ve tried to tell him that Deke isn’t coming, but I don’t seem to be having any effect. He doesn’t believe me.”

  “That’s…awful,” Mary whispered.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s better that way. Eventually he’ll forget. It’ll just be one more thing some adult promised and then screwed up. Who knows what’s easiest?”

  “Is that what you’re crying about?”

  “No,” Becki said, smiling. “At least, not this time.”

  “Look,” Mary said softly, “eventually you’ll—”

  “Don’t. Just don’t. Whatever you’re about to say, just don’t say it. It won’t help.”

  Mary studied her face a moment and then nodded. “All right. No big-sister advice. But I care. And I’m grateful. Mike told me some of what happened. Enough to know that Summers didn’t have to do what he did.”

  Becki took a breath, thinking about the enigmatic man she had known so briefly, and then she said, “I think maybe he did. Because he was the kind of man he was. I think he had to do exactly what he did.”

  Mary nodded.

  Suddenly Becki wanted to share the sense of loss, that no one else might understand was a loss. Only a cold emptiness where she had imagined Deke’s child to be, longed for it to be. She had visualized, through the long, dark hours of the nights she didn’t sleep, his child growing safely inside her body. Maybe it would help just to tell someone.

  “I just discovered I’m not pregnant,” she said. No explanation.

  “And you wanted to be?” her sister asked carefully.

  “More than anything,” she admitted.

  They said nothing for long moment.

  “That would have complicated the hell out of your life,” Mary said finally, smiling, sharing feminine understanding. “At least…” Mary began and let the sentence die because she knew her sister didn’t care about any of the complications. “I’m so sorry, Bec,” she said. She leaned to put her lips against her ch
eek. “So sorry.”

  They moved away from each other, still slightly embarrassed by the shared confidences.

  “You’re not shocked?” Becki asked, trying to read the truth in Mary’s eyes. “Disappointed in me?”

  There was some subtle shift in her sister’s eyes, some response that she hadn’t expected.

  “Because you slept with him?” Mary asked. At Becki’s nod, she shook her head. “I’m not shocked.”

  “It seemed so right, with everything…that was going on. It was right. I loved him so much.”

  The tears had begun again, and she blinked to clear them, seeing the sudden answering moisture in her sister’s hazel eyes.

  “I know,” Mary said. “You don’t have to explain. Sometimes things happen that you don’t plan on, don’t expect.”

  Becki nodded.

  “That’s really what happened with Vernon,” Mary said, her voice very soft. “I didn’t intend anything…like that. And then the week Joel was gone…it just happened.”

  “Vernon?”

  “I know he’s not…I do know what y’all think about him, but he’s good to me. And I was lonely. You know? Just so damn lonely.” Mary’s voice faded, the confession suddenly too hard.

  “I know.”

  “There was no reason for him not to stay. No one would ever know, he said. He wanted to. And I wanted him to. And there was no reason…It was nobody’s business but ours.”

  “The nights the guys were gone?” Becki said, the remembrance of Mary’s sleep-filled voice the morning she had called from Louisiana suddenly strong in her head. Her sister’s hand over the phone, speaking to someone in the background. “Vernon was with you then?”

  “Shocked?” Mary asked, her question a little bitter at what she thought she heard in Becki’s voice, given the confession her sister had just made.

  “He was with you the morning I called.”

  “You called at the crack of dawn. Of course, he was still there.”

  “And that’s who you were talking to?”

  Mary shook her head, puzzled. She probably didn’t remember putting her hand over the phone, answering Vernon Petty’s harmless question.

  “He asked you who was calling, didn’t he?” Becki asked, finally putting it all together. Deke hadn’t been wrong, but then neither had she. It had not been her family providing information to the enemy. At least, not directly.

  “I think so. I really don’t remember. What does it matter?”

  “And you told him it was me.”

  “Probably. If he asked,” Mary said.

  “And you told him where Mike and the boys were when Mike called you Friday night.”

  “Of course, I told him. Why not? The call came while we were…What does it matter?” she asked again, her tone defensive now.

  “He must have traced my call that morning, asked the phone company where the collect call you’d just accepted had originated.” Becki was thinking out loud now, still piecing it together. And it had been Vernon’s little service station where she and Deke had stopped to make the call to her mother. Finally it all made sense. “Vernon saw the car. That’s how they found us at Wal-Mart the first time. Vernon told them what car to look for.”

  “Becki?” Mary said when she finally ran down. “Just what are you accusing Vernon of?”

  “That son of a bitch,” Becki said instead of answering. “That redneck son of a bitch. It was Vernon all along.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The small station was empty. That had been obvious somehow, although there was no For Rent or For Sale sign, only the chain and padlock securing the front door. Becki peered in through the window to the right of the door and then crossed the narrow planks of the small porch. She stepped off at the end, looking in windows as she made her way around to the back.

  She didn’t really know why she had come or what her intentions were, now that she was here. The thought that confronting Vernon Petty might be dangerous had occurred to her, but it hadn’t prevented her getting into the car and driving several miles to the other side of the Sunday-afternoon-idle town for that confrontation.

  The door in the back was open, swinging slightly in the occasional breath of hot air that also stirred the lush weeds that had proliferated with the owner’s absence. She pushed the door with her fingertips, creating a wider opening, and then hesitated before stepping across the threshold. She didn’t know what she was afraid of. She could see inside. There were only shadows in the darkened interior. Smells. Years-old fumes of gasoline and floor-cleaning compound. The musty aroma of an unoccupied building.

  She walked into the small back room, an office, she realized, although it had been stripped of furniture. There was apparently nothing left of the man she had come to find. Nothing of the man who had courted her sister. The man who had been indirectly responsible for Deke Summers’s death. Nothing.

  She walked across the wooden boards, her heels echoing strongly in the enclosed space. She allowed her eyes to trace over the walls, realizing that what was left on them had been put up long before Petty had bought the business. A couple of travel posters, the heavy stock they had been printed on yellowed now, the people and scenes they portrayed subtly out of date. Someone had laminated a map of Alabama and the bordering states, the gold star which marked the location of the station still dimly gleaming, protected through the years by its overlay of plastic. She turned, admitting finally that this had been a wasted trip. Foolish. There was nothing here. The one enemy she’d been able to identify had disappeared, fading back into the nameless, faceless void of ideology that connected them all.

  It was only as she headed to the door through which she had entered that she realized there was something on the opposite wall that was different. The paper was starkly white, new and therefore, in contrast to the aging posters, noticeable. She walked over to stand before the picture. Computer generated, it was a black-and-white photograph. A slashed-across-the-middle circle had been imposed over the features of the man she loved. Printed across the circle was the single word EXECUTED. And a date. The day they had left New Mexico.

  She stared unseeing at the picture a long time, all the memories running through her head like the images of a video on fast forward. It had all gone too quickly. Fragile and fleeting. If anything, that was the legacy Deke had left her: the knowledge that life was so damn fleeting.

  Her fingers were remarkably steady as she tugged the blue plastic map pin out of the wall. She didn’t know why she wanted to take the picture with her. Her mind recognized the impulse as macabre. Morbid. But somehow she couldn’t leave it here—Vernon Petty’s trophy. She stuck the pin back in the wall and carefully folded the paper.

  She closed the door behind her when she left, and she didn’t allow herself to look at the phone booth from which she’d made that early morning call to her mother. These were not the memories she would cherish. Only the others—the few, brief moments when she had been allowed to touch the real man behind the created identity.

  When she’d climbed back into her car, she slipped the folded paper into the side pocket of her purse. She turned the key and resolutely dry-eyed drove back to her grandmother’s to pick up her son, to get on with the business of living each fleeting, precious day to the very best of her ability. Somehow that had become a responsibility. And a promise.

  IT HAD BEEN THE HOTTEST day of the summer. It was August, and the afternoon temperature had climbed several degrees above one hundred. At dusk Becki Travers stepped out of the comfort of the air-conditioning onto the small deck that backed her house. She set the cat bowl down in its customary spot. She had filled it with tuna—not the feline kind—real tuna.

  “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” she called. They hadn’t seen the ginger tabby since their return. Almost six weeks now. Mentally, she had acknowledged that he had probably moved on to a more dependable source of food or had gone back to the wild. She had even, mother rational, told Josh that, but somewhere in her heart she hadn
’t completely accepted it. And so occasionally she went through the motions of trying to lure him home.

  “Here, kitty, kitty,” she called again, eyes tracing across the edge of the woods that backed the yard, hoping for the proud swagger of a faintly ringed tail, moving out of the undergrowth.

  The phone rang, the sound distant through the closed door, and she hurried inside to answer it.

  “Hello,” she said, balancing the receiver against her shoulder while she slipped the spoon she used to scoop out the tuna into the cooling dishwater in the sink.

  “Rebecca Travers?”

  “Yes,” she said, trying to place the voice. It was not familiar and not Southern.

  “My name is Ballard, Ms. Travers. I’m with the ATF. I’d like to talk to you.”

  “About what?” she asked. She had always expected someone official to call, to question the events of June.

  “About Deke Summers,” the voice acknowledged.

  Despite the fact that it was only what she’d expected, her reaction was strong. Too emotional. She fought it, determined to keep her voice steady.

  “All right,” she managed.

  “I hate to ask, Ms. Travers, but would it be possible for you to come in to Birmingham? I think that might be better than our calling on you at home.”

  “Better? Do you mean safer?” she asked, suddenly apprehensive.

  “You’re in no danger, Ms. Travers. Not any more. I just thought it might cause less…comment if you came here. If it’s convenient. I’m afraid I’ll only be in town a couple of days. Would it be possible for you to come in tomorrow?”

  Less comment. She didn’t know how much of the story was common knowledge, but she knew how small towns worked. She thought about that. About Josh.

  “All right,” she said again.