He’d be there for her. And she’d never thought that would happen, never mind adding kids to the mix.
She was used to a solitary existence. She chose it because, after a day spent atoning for her sins at work, she needed the solitude.
She wanted to think that making love with Mace was only about safety and pleasure and comfort, but she was lying to herself.
She wanted more, so much more … and she always had. Had been pretty sure she’d never be able to get it, though, so she’d given up on the idea.
“Now what?”
“Now we face tomorrow and then you come back home with me.”
“And be your bartender?”
“You can be anything you want,” he promised her, and she believed him. After a few moments of silence, he asked, “So this touch thing … it’s only through your hands, then?”
“You mean, if I touch you with my mouth when we’re making love, can I read you?” She lifted her head from his chest and gave a wan smile. “It’s never worked that way for me. I’m glad.”
“Why? I can promise I’m feeling really damned good.”
She pressed her cheek to his chest again. “Hearing what you’re thinking—anytime I hear someone like that—it’s exhausting.”
“Because you don’t love those people,” he said, and she picked her head up again and stared at him, the realization that she did, indeed, love him flooding her with warmth.
“How did you …” she started, and he smiled as she trailed off.
“I don’t have to be psychic to know that. But don’t you want to know if I mean it when I say it?”
When he says it, not if. “I’ll know for sure without touching you.” God, she already knew, just by the way he looked at her, held her.
He nodded, but he didn’t say it, didn’t give voice to the sentiment. He would do that in his own time, she guessed, his own way. He’d simply been preparing her for what was coming … and letting her know that she’d fallen in love with him too.
Whether he actually ever said the words was just a formality.
CHAPTER
14
Paige didn’t say much the next morning when she woke in Mace’s arms. The night before, she hadn’t been sure she’d be able to sleep, but they’d made love until the early morning hours and then weariness had won out. She showered groggily and then she and Mace made their way out of the hotel and into his truck.
It was only when they began to drive, the bright sunlight shining through the sunroof, that she began to feel awake enough to talk. The large coffee Mace had stopped and bought for her helped, as they zoomed toward the prison.
They were outside of the maximum-security compound far sooner than she’d been prepared for. The trip could’ve taken a year, and she still wouldn’t have been ready.
She surveyed the more than half empty parking lot, was glad the warden had approved her coming on a non-visiting day when there would be no crowds. She didn’t think she could bear watching the people heading inside, their bodies heavy with grief, with the knowledge that they would leave without someone they loved.
What must it be like to visit here with love in your heart? She certainly had none.
Mace finally broke the silence. “The warden’s going to give you a list of all the people who’ve visited Jeffrey over the years. Caleb’s brother asked him to do that.”
She nodded. “I wonder who I’ll see on that list.”
“You’ll see Gray.”
She turned toward him in surprise. “Gray visited Jeffrey? When?”
“A couple of times a year for a while. It was hard trying to find the time, but he did it.”
“Why?”
“He wanted to see the guy for himself, behind bars. He trusted a lot of people, but he felt that since he’d been trained to break out of enemy prisons, anyone could.” Mace shook his head at that statement and the sickening irony didn’t escape her. “He didn’t tell me he’d been doing it until we were flying over for the last mission. I don’t know why he suddenly brought it up. But he told me that he went in, tried to divert Jeffrey’s anger from you to him.”
“It wouldn’t have worked.” She shrugged. “In Jeffrey’s mind, everything he does is a show put on just for me to watch … to cause me pain.” She’d become a nurse to balance out the karma of the deaths Jeffrey caused. “The lives I’ve saved can never, ever make up for the ones lost because of me. But that doesn’t mean I won’t keep trying.” Her voice held a desperate edge to it and she hated herself for that. “And now I find out I was on Gray’s mind during that mission. I distracted him.”
“He always worried about you, Paige, for sure, but not when he was on a mission. The reason he died had nothing to do with his being distracted. You need to stop blaming yourself for everything.”
“A lot of people blamed my parents, said they should’ve known that my brother was a monster. Who wants to know that about their own kid? Who could admit it?” She shook her head. “With my friends, I couldn’t go to their funerals. I never got to say good-bye, really. And I feel guilty that it upsets me. I think about their parents and their families and I have no right to worry about myself.”
Jeffrey had ruined her family beyond repair in so many ways.
She’d gone into a prison of her own making when Jeffrey got sent away. It didn’t have bars or locks—but she was bound, just the same. “Do you ever feel trapped?”
“We’re all trapped, one way or another.”
She knew she had a lot of guilt, that she believed she could have stopped her brother, somehow. She’d also been living with the shame and the stigma of the crime.
Because of that, she’d unconsciously—and consciously—kept all potential friends and lovers at arm’s length. But Mace was threatening to break through.
“Is this the first time you’ve seen him since …”
Since that day in the cafeteria when he’d laughed—a maniacal sound that bounced off the walls at a level that somehow overtook the screams of the panicked students hiding under the tables, as if the flimsy wood could save them.
After what they’d witnessed that day, it often felt nothing ever could. “Yes, it’s the first time I’ve seen him.”
She pictured the last of her friends dropping to the floor, Jeffrey’s gun pointed toward her. And when she heard the shot, she thought she was dead.
She didn’t find out until later that a sniper had taken Jeffrey down, hit the hand that held the gun. Jeffrey had lived—and so had she.
But seven innocent people had died.
Even now she looked down at her hands as if expecting to see splattered blood on them, the way they had looked that day. “I don’t want him to see you. Whenever he thinks I have something, he tries to take it away. At least, that’s how it’s always been.”
“I’m not afraid of him.”
“But I am. Scared of making you a target somehow. Please, don’t come inside. Stay out here.”
He muttered something—she caught the word stubborn—and then, “I’m walking you to the main check-in, and I’ll wait there. But I’m not happy about it.”
“Me neither. But thanks. For this. For everything.”
Together, they walked toward the main visitors’ entrance of the prison.
“Just be safe in there. Keep a poker face. Don’t give him any extra information,” Mace shot off before they got inside the main gates.
The saving grace was that Jeffrey wouldn’t have the opportunity to touch her at all. This visit would be strictly conducted through glass, in a private room. Still, it was close enough to her brother to make her want to insist Mace take her away from the prison immediately.
Instead, she walked inside and let him shut the door behind them. The vibe of sorrow was so pervasive even here, the outer reaches of the prison, she felt like she could shower for days and still not be free of it.
“You sure you don’t want me in there with you?” Mace asked one final time.
“I do.
But I need to do this alone. And I need to keep you safe,” she repeated and he gave a half smile, as though the thought of her protecting him was amusing as hell.
Reluctantly, she walked through the thick glass door, which shut hard behind her, walked for what seemed like forever, following the first guard. She lost track of time, having left her watch behind in the car. She’d dressed in comfortable, easy-to-search clothing, as Mace had suggested, and sure enough, when it was her turn she was checked thoroughly and led through a passageway with two large orderlies.
This was a terrifying place, fraught with dangers that weren’t so hidden. It was like a funhouse of terrors.
She shoved her hands in her coat pockets as she was led through a maze of hallways, an intricate labyrinth that brought her closer to her nightmare.
When they passed a new checkpoint, another guard asked who she was visiting. She felt the gaze of the guard who’d been escorting her when she said her brother’s full name out loud for the first time in a long time. Met his eyes, and they shared a look she wouldn’t soon forget. Part sympathy, part empathy.
“Wait here, ma’am. I’ll see if the warden’s ready for you.”
The guard went into an office, leaving her in a secured area—she saw him talking on the phone, nodding, and then he hung up and came out and had another guard escort her to the warden’s office. After waiting a few moments outside, she was ushered in to meet the warden, Charles Roy Lester.
“Thank you for arranging this visit today,” she said as she shook the man’s hand. “When my brother contacted me, he insinuated that he had information on some girls we grew up with who disappeared and remain missing to this day,” she said quickly, before she choked up. “He’ll probably reveal their location to me today when I talk to him. It’s the only reason I agreed to see him.”
The warden already knew that information, but she felt it bore repetition, maybe to convince herself, if nothing else. The warden was kind but firm with her. “Ma’am, this is not our usual way of doing things. But I agree that you have the best shot of getting information that could put a family at peace.”
He continued, “The room is wired—he’ll know that. There’s also a guard posted beyond a glass wall. Ma’am, do you really think you’re okay to do this? I know what he’s put you through.”
“I have to be okay. I have to show him I’m not scared. He wants me to hear it when he talks about it.” She knew that as surely as she did her own name.
The warden looked at her with such pity in his eyes that she nearly screamed. Had to look away in order to restrain herself. She was ready to bounce off the walls. “I need to get this over with. If I don’t get the information, you can call in a detective.”
The warden nodded and called out for the guard to come in and escort her to her final destination. As they walked, the guard reiterated what the warden had said about his being in the room with her. That she shouldn’t try to pass Jeffrey anything over the glass partition or let him pass anything to her. That there was absolutely no contact allowed.
She almost laughed out loud with relief that it was more than just her own rule.
“You go right through these doors, Ms. Grayson, and you’ll see where you’re supposed to sit and wait for your visit,” he said, pointed to the next set of locked doors.
They unlocked as she approached and another guard opened them. She saw the table where she was supposed to sit, the sheet of glass that would separate her from Jeffrey.
It would only be the two of them. How Caleb’s brother had arranged that, she had no idea, but she’d be forever grateful. There was no way she could do this with a crowd of other prisoners and visitors around her.
She sat in the hard plastic orange chair and stared through the dirty scratched glass. The phone she would speak into was on her left. There was an identical one on the other side for Jeffrey.
Doors clanged open then shut—a sound she’d heard on countless television shows.
In real life, it was far more sinister—there was a finality to it, a feeling that once locked in, you were never getting out. And even though she was far from claustrophobic, she swore she could feel the walls closing in, wondered how the prisoners lived with this daily, and remembered that they lived with far worse, most without any kind of real remorse beyond the fact that they’d gotten caught.
In the beginning, her parents had hired the best lawyer they knew in order to get Jeffrey the help he needed. He was so young, her mother had pleaded with the judge. He needs help, not prison.
The judge and jury hadn’t agreed. Neither had Paige. She’d never been as relieved as she was on the day of the sentencing, learning that Jeffrey wouldn’t be eligible for parole until he was a very old man.
Even then, he would still be a danger, and she prepared to make it her mission to make sure that he was never released. Various appeals had surfaced throughout the years, only to be scrapped. The transfer to the psychiatric section of the prison was viewed by some as simply the first step.
“He’s coming now,” the guard told her, as if sensing she needed the warning. She fought the urge to escape the room, to run out of the prison, into the fresh air and Mace’s arms.
Instead, she remained glued to the chair and tried to breathe calmly. Stared at the scarred tabletop in front of her and tried to imagine how many other people had sat here. How they’d felt.
She could know if she allowed her palm to rest on the cold surface, but she wouldn’t. As it was, she’d have enough stimulation today to exhaust her for many hours to come.
When the door beyond the glass opened, she forced herself to look up. Show no fear. Keep your face devoid of emotion. Don’t let him get to you.
Once again, she wished Mace were here, but at least she had the comfort of his words.
Her first thought was how Jeffrey’s face looked basically the same. Young, almost innocent, if you didn’t know what he’d done. What he was still capable of doing.
His brown hair was longer than it had been in high school, his face was smooth, his eyes clear. He was handsome, and that didn’t seem fair.
He wore a red jumpsuit. From what she’d read about the prison, that signified he was one of the most dangerous prisoners here—a reminder to the guards to be careful around him at all times, despite his pleasant demeanor.
He sat on the chair and pulled close enough to the table to make her jump back.
That made him smile and she pulled her chair close again, as defiantly as she could. She picked up the phone first, but couldn’t get any words out.
Jeffrey didn’t have the same issue. “Missed me, little sis?”
“No,” she said evenly, but that didn’t get any response beyond another easy smile. In so many ways, he was still the young boy who could charm anyone out of anything.
In every way, he was still the young boy who committed murder without a speck of conscience. And he would do it again in a second if given the opportunity.
“You know, your new brother didn’t like me very much. Came here to tell me in person a few times. But now that he’s dead, I figured you’d show.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I was finally able to get your phone number without his interference.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t try harder earlier.”
“I’m patient.”
“You’re a monster.”
Something dark flickered behind his eyes for a moment, and then it was gone, replaced by the placidness she knew so well. “I just want to again be the family we once were.”
Stay calm, Paige. The bile rose in her throat at the thought of his release. “You’re not my family.”
“Then why are you here?”
She smiled although she was sure it didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m not the same scared little girl, Jeffrey. You don’t have that kind of power over me anymore—you never will. And I’m going to make it my life’s work to make sure you never get out of here.”
“Why? It
’s not like any of your friends’ families will care what you do. They won’t forgive you.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “I knew he would do this,” he said in a falsetto tone. “That was perfect, really. Better than I’d hoped.”
She was chilled but resisted the urge to cover her palms. This was not the time to show fear.
“I hope you’ll be at my appeal hearing,” he said. “But I know it’s hard for you to face all those people you let down.”
Damn him. “Stop sending your stupid girlfriends my way.”
He stiffened slightly, an imperceptable movement to anyone who didn’t know him as well as she did. But now she certainly had the advantage … and she wouldn’t lose it. “And if you’re planning on sending any boyfriends, don’t bother. I’m sure they’ll be as easy to catch.”
Jeffrey relaxed then, and smiled. The old calm-and-cool psycho was back. “You know I always keep my promises, Paige. I just wanted to make sure you had plenty of notice of what I plan on doing.”
“Kind of hard behind these bars.”
He put his hand up flat against the glass. “Touch me, Paige. I know you want to.”
“Wrong again.”
He took his hand down and leaned in, spoke in a conspiratorial tone. “I saw you on the news. I’m glad you’re okay. That guy did a number on you. I can still see the bruises.”
He was staring at her neck.
“Don’t pretend to be concerned.”
“But I am. I’m a different person now. The new drugs help,” he said, with the easy conviction of a career liar.
Drugs couldn’t help someone grow a conscience. “What about the phone call with the taped message?”
“I wanted your attention.” He shrugged. “I hear you brought a boyfriend with you.”
She forced herself to ignore him and hoped he was only fishing for information.
“I’m surprised—with your curse, it must be pretty hard to be intimate,” he continued, his eyebrows raised. How such evil could hide behind such an attractive face stunned her. She’d expected him to look haggard, older. Instead, he looked rested and handsome, as if this was all some giant joke and he was really enjoying himself. “But if you weren’t putting out, I doubt he’d be looking at me like he wants me dead.”
In the Air Tonight Page 22