by CJ Snyder
The words hung between them, dead lifeless things for an instant. Then Kat watched as they became sharp, twisted rapiers, gaining speed and velocity in a mad rush to viciously mutilate his soul. He took a single step back in recoil, then braced himself between the wall and the island. His eyes never left hers. Kat wanted to run, to hide, to escape, but she forced herself to face him.
“You were gone,” she whispered. “And then you were dead.” She wanted the words back as soon as they were out. This wasn’t the time for excuses, to demand he acquit her. “I’m so sorry.”
After an eternity, while she died and burned in hell several times over, his mouth moved. It was several seconds before a choked word emerged. “Miriam.”
Kat nodded. “She knew, of course. And Doug. They were the only ones.” She could read the next question in his eyes before he asked it. “I don’t know why she didn’t tell you. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you–except that there wasn’t a good time. It seemed so horribly cruel, once she was taken. I didn’t want to. . .to hurt you.” But she had, terribly. She wanted to go to him, gather him into her arms and comfort him, but she didn’t dare. Didn’t know if she’d be welcome. So, she stayed where she was, watching the emotions flash and tumble in his eyes. His cell phone rang. Lizzie! Max didn’t move. Kat moved to his side and snatched it from his unfastened belt.
“Hello,” she breathed, hearing her heart pound too loudly in the silence.
“Who’s this? Where’s Crayton?”
“It’s Kat Jannsen, Detective Reicher. Max is,” she glanced up at him. His gaze had followed her, but nothing else had changed. “Unavailable. Can I take a message?”
“I wanted to let him know I’m going to the hospital to talk to his sister. Did he tell you? She’s not the little girl’s mother.”
“Yes.” Kat turned her back on Max so she could concentrate on the detective’s words.
“Yesterday he ID’d the toe ring.”
Kat winced. Poor, poor Max!
“If it is her toe, which the evidence suggests, we’ll need to know who the parents are to expedite positive identification.”
“You won’t need to make that trip.” Behind her, Max sucked in a deep breath. It sounded harsh and painful. Kat turned in time to see him release the counter and step back to sag against the wall. In her ear, Reicher demanded an explanation. In her heart, a voice screamed at her not to repeat the words in front of Max. Not now. Not again. Not yet.
Max had closed his eyes, shutting her out. Kat flew down the hall, back to her bedroom that still smelled of him. Of them. Together. She eased the hall door shut and retreated into the bathroom.
“I’m Lizzie’s biological mother, Detective. Max is her father.” The last word sounded pathetically like a whimper. Kat straightened her shoulders. She couldn’t fall apart now. Lizzie needed her. Max did too, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
Reicher was suddenly as silent as Max.
“Max didn’t know until this morning. We’ll be in touch, provide whatever you need.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Jannsen.” The pity in his voice shook her, then had anger boiling up inside.
“My daughter is alive, Detective.” Despite the pain of the last half hour, a trickle of joy spread out inside her to say the words aloud to another human being. “I’d suggest you concentrate on finding her.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He ended the call with a request they call before they come down to the station.
Kat set the phone down next to the sink and glanced at her reflection. “My daughter,” she whispered. “I’ll find you, Lizzie. Stay safe.”
Kat told herself a shower would give Max some time. She didn’t allow herself to dwell on the dread welling up inside at the thought of facing him again. “You didn’t do anything wrong!” she told herself as she stepped under the stinging spray. The bittersweet ache of muscles not used in years betrayed her. She should have confessed, before she’d taken him back into her bed. Would he forgive her? Could he? Hard enough to live without him when she’d believed him dead, but now that she knew, now that she’d held him again, in her arms, in her body, in her soul–if he didn’t forgive her, how could she go on?
Max wasn’t in the kitchen. He was back at the computer. His shoulders no longer slumped, they were rigid with fury. Kat shuddered after just one glimpse. She made sure he knew she was there, putting away the dishes she’d washed the night before, straightening up the living room, all with no response. Finally, she sat down on the couch. He couldn’t just ignore her.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He didn’t turn and his fingers didn’t stop. “About what?” His voice was too cold and hard to be dead flat, but there was a fatal undercurrent that scared the hell out of her. Her Max was gone. This was the sniper, capable of a ruthlessness she could only guess at. “How you gave away our baby?”
Kat’s hands tightened to fists, but her training took over. Of course he was furious. He had every right to be. She could speak to the man buried beneath the rage. Eventually he, not the anger, would answer. “Yes.”
“I’ve already heard it, Kat.” Disgust curled toward her across the room, wrapping nasty tendrils around her heart. “You couldn’t possibly be a fit mother. Look at your own. Never mind that Lizzie’s just like you. Never mind that Miriam could never–ever–possibly understand the spirited little hellion you foisted off on her. Never mind that I might, just might, have raised her better, even if I had to do it alone!”
At least you had a relationship with her. At least you know her, enough to know she’s a little hellion. Kat substituted a deep breath for the words. The calming technique didn’t stop the ones that tumbled out after. “I would have chosen that option, if it had been available.”
His fingers quit at that, but he didn’t turn. “You gave her up. You walked away.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
Finally he turned, fixing her with an anguished stare that made her cringe. Moving silently, he crossed the room, fingers rough, biting into her arms as he hauled her to her feet. “You could have said yes.”
The air left her lungs in a soft whoosh. Unexpected, the accusation rocked her, leaving her trembling, defenseless. Easy prey if he chose to finish her now. A whimper escaped, along with a final, useless attack of her own. She already knew the answer, didn’t she? “Would you have stayed?”
For more than a decade, his fervent proposal on their last night together had haunted her. It only grew worse when she’d finally given in and married Vic. The marriage had been doomed from the beginning, the what-ifs Max’s proposal presented in hindsight proving too great an obstacle for her. All of her choices, all the years of agonizing, everything hung on his answer.
“No.”
Her victory was hollow and short-lived.
Something in his eyes shifted, even as he loosened his tight grip on her arms. Some of the fury left his body. His features softened. His gaze now held a shadow of the deep grief she’d lived with for years. He trailed one finger down her cheek, capturing a tear she didn’t know was there. “I could have told you. Not where I was going, not even that I was going. But I could have told you I’d be back. To hold onto that, no matter what. You would have been my wife. You would have known I could never, ever leave you.”
He released her. Kat sobbed, one agony-filled eruption and she put her hands flat over her mouth to keep back any more. Her eyes were open but blind as she stumbled into the kitchen. Coffee. Dry toast. A cigarette. The giant fist squeezing the life out of her heart would ease. The sobs begging for relief would die away. The pain was deeper now, sharper than before, but it was still just pain. She knew pain. Understood this pain. Finally knowing the answer to the question didn’t change anything, did it?
The coffee scalded her throat, but she drank the cup dry. She ate the toast at the sink, concentrating on her breathing so she didn’t inhale the dry crumbs and choke. There were no cigarettes in the freezer. For a second she panicked, a
nd then she saw the pile of mail she’d placed on the end of the counter yesterday. It was morning no longer, but a ritual was still a ritual. Every Monday, before she left for the office, she sorted mail, personal and otherwise, that she’d brought home from the office the week before. It focused her, gave her a chance to arrange her week’s agenda. Exactly what she needed now. She didn’t have to look to know Max was back at the computer, his outbreak proving to be only a momentary lapse from his anger.
She sorted the envelopes, two piles to start, private and professional. The private pile was all junk. She turned to the professional. Bills in one orderly stack, correspondence in another.
“What are you doing?”
Kat jumped. “Opening mail.”
“Why?”
She didn’t have any answer to his strange question, except the obvious one.
Max didn’t wait long for her reply. “Because it’s normal?”
“It’s what I do on Monday mornings.” She continued because any conversation, especially a work-related one, was better than his furious silence. “Whenever I finish a high profile case, I get mail. Letters from wives, from children, friends...wanting my help. Depending upon the circumstances, I respond.”
“So you figured now is a good time to take on some other people’s problems? Now that you’ve so hopelessly screwed up your own life?”
Brutally honest. He still was. Apparently it was a trait he shared with the stranger who now inhabited his body. “It helps,” she murmured. “It’s routine. Normal. And it helps keep my mind off Lizzie.” Off of you.
“Lizzie’s dead, Kat. You know the grief stages. Denial’s first and I don’t have the time or energy for you to stay there. She’s not going to rejoin the living just because you will it so.”
Kat froze, rigid with anger. “My daughter is not dead. I will find her. With or without you.”
“Really? By reading letters from kooks?” He lifted the top letter and started to read, deftly avoiding her attempt to snatch it back.
“That’s private, Max!”
He caught her wrist, easily holding her away and started reading, “Dear Katherine.” One eyebrow lifted. “Katherine, huh? Who calls you Katherine?” He glanced to the bottom of the letter. “Mitch. No last name. New boyfriend?”
Kat stopped all attempts to get free and let him continue to read the letter.
“I have information that will clear your mother.” Max dropped her arm and shot a glance at her. “Do you know about this?”
Kat shrugged. “Mom mentioned something about him. She’s convinced he’ll get her out. He left a message, but no number.”
“Do you think he’s legit?”
Kat nearly laughed out loud. Afraid it would sound more like a sob, she squelched any sound at all. No need for Max to know just how close to hysteria she remained. “She thinks we can trust him because he’s got pretty eyes. Did he give a number?”
“No.” Max finished scanning the rest of the letter and then returned it to her. Kat let it drop to the counter. Her mother’s problems and possible solutions didn’t rank real high at the moment. She watched Max pull the rage back and thought of the grief stages. Denial was first. Then anger. Would he bargain next? Or just accept? Most likely she wouldn’t be around long enough for him to get past anger. And she knew the stages weren’t really stages, more like positions on a chess board.. Today I’m in denial. Tomorrow I’m angry. Saturday morning I’ll accept it all but by evening I’ll be angry again. She sighed.
“I’m going to take a shower before I head out.”
“Where are you going?”
“The hospital. I have to tell Miriam her daugh–“ Max’s eyes clouded for just an instant and then it was gone. “That Lizzie’s gone.”
“But, Max–“
”It’s a lie!” he all but roared, fire-breathing rage testing his limits again. “I’m done with lies, Katherine.”
He stormed down the hall and thunder boomed, making the lights flicker. He was done with lies. She was now Katherine. Their relationship was over.
##
Kat didn’t know how she convinced him to take her along, but as he tore through the rain-slick streets of her neighborhood, her only thought was to convince him to wait. News like this could kill Miriam, especially coupled with the confession that the secret the two of them had shared for eleven years was out in the open.
“You can’t do this, Max.”
“The hell I can’t. I told you, I’m through with lies. Not telling her is the same as lying.”
“But she’s Lizzie’s mom.” When he glared at her, she glared right back. “She is, in every way that matters. I don’t know why she didn’t tell you, only she can answer that, but now is not the time. You don’t have proof Lizzie’s dead. Miriam’s sick–very, very sick. You could kill her with news like this.”
“Mim’s heart is fine. Twisted and black like yours, but fine.”
Kat’s black, twisted heart leaped into her throat when Max took a corner seemingly on two wheels. His truck’s big engine didn’t slow. She clutched the grab bar, braced herself against the dash board, and dove back in. “She’s her mother, Max. You can’t–“
Max swore and slammed on the brakes for a light that was too red to run at a busy intersection. Her seatbelt was all that kept her from ending up a quivering puddle on the floor. Kat peered into the inky afternoon sky, hoping the storm would break up soon. Otherwise they might not live long enough to tell Miriam a thing.
The light turned green and Kat braced herself for another round of NASCAR driving antics. Max didn’t move. His eyes searched the skies as hers had seconds before. Behind them an impatient horn sounded but it was drowned out by an explosion from Max.
“Son of a bitch!”
Kat peeled her heart off of the roof of the truck’s cab, shoved it back into her chest and faced him on the seat. “What?”
“You’re Lizzie’s mother.”
She waited. They’d covered that one. There had to be something else.
“Who knows?” Max didn’t wait. “You. Miriam. Doug’s dead. Who else?”
She shook her head. “No one.”
“Your mother?”
“No.”
His eyes narrowed, accusing her of yet another lie.
She shook her head. For once she wasn’t guilty. “No, I called her and wrote, but I didn’t visit once I started to show.”
“Mim’s neighbors?” The irritated motorist behind them gave up and drove around, horn blaring as the light turned red again.
“No. Unless she told–but she wouldn’t, not if she didn’t even tell you. She started gaining weight as soon as you disappeared. I rented a little house, here in Denver, and she moved in with me for the last trimester. No one knows.”
“Somebody does.” He still stared at her, almost through her, as though he expected an answer. When she only stared back in silence, he gave a groan of exasperation. “The note.”
“What note?”
“Mom’s next.”
“Mom’s next? I thought it said Miriam was. . . “ He thought they were after her. “That’s crazy, Max.”
He touched the fresh bandage on her forehead. “Is it? Two flat tires. A hold-up.”
She knew her eyes were too wide, but she couldn’t help it. “A bomb threat.”
“A what?” She filled him in and Max spun the truck around, narrowly missing a collision with an on-coming RTD bus.
“Where are we going?”
“Back to your house. I’ve been concentrating on me, but it’s not me. You’re the link, not me.”
Kat shivered and reached for the heater switch. Except technology didn’t make heat to warm this kind of chill.
Chapter Nine
Max flicked on the lights and went back to the computer. Kat followed more slowly. He knew he’d stunned her with his implications, and he still couldn’t prove that Kat was the link, but for all his searching, nothing as damning as that second note pointed to him.
The link had to be Kat.
“No one knows,” she whispered again, uselessly.
Max ignored her protest. She was so stuck in denial about Lizzie it didn’t surprise him she wanted to stay there with this. The screen flashed to life and he flipped through open windows. The best way he knew to convince her, at least enough to get her marvelous mind focused on the possibility, was to offer her the proof he had. Kat slipped to her knees beside his chair, gaze fastened on the monitor as he added a few lines to the file and then scrolled back to the top.
Time Line.
1. Nine-thirty Saturday. Met with Kat at Miriam’s house.
He heard her softly indrawn breath and knew the inclusion of their encounter would rattle her further, but damn it all, running into her, at Mim’s house, on the day Lizzie was kidnapped was just too much of a coincidence. He said so, when she glanced up at him.