by Sandra Brown
“That’s debatable, but go on.”
“She recovered enough so that when the weather cleared, I brought her—”
“I know that part. Knight and Grange filled me in. The gas station. The media frenzy.”
“I didn’t know until after she was back in the fold that I had returned her to her would-be killer.”
“Jeff.”
“The very one.”
“So,” Connell said, drawing out the word and nodding as he pieced it together, “you knew she was in mortal danger.”
“Yes.”
“But being you and wanting to stay under the radar, you couldn’t get the world’s attention and announce it.”
Hayes figured his silence was confirmation enough.
“Instead,” Jack continued, “you sent up a smoke signal for me to come running.”
“My fingerprint on the faucet.”
“A perfect thumbprint in an otherwise pristine cabin,” Connell said wryly. “I knew you wouldn’t be that careless.”
“How long did it take you to figure it out?”
“Five, six minutes tops.”
“You’re rusty. Or freakin’ old.”
“Cut me some slack. I’d just gotten off a red-eye from Seattle.”
“I was beginning to think I should have been less subtle, done something like paint a red arrow on a signpost pointing you in my direction. TO BANNOCK: THIS WAY, JERK-OFF.”
“I realize it would have been boring, conventional, and totally un-Bannock-like, but you could have just picked up the phone and called me.”
“And cheat you out of the thrill of the chase?”
“Fuck you.”
“And back at you.”
Grudgingly, they grinned at each other.
* * *
During their bantering exchange, Emory had vacillated between disbelief and fury. Now she confronted them. “You’re friends?”
Hayes said, “Not even close.”
Jack’s reply was, “Quasi friends.”
“How long have you known each other?”
Jack said, “I recruited him straight out of the army.”
“For?”
“My SWAT team.”
She looked at Hayes with wonderment. “You’re with the FBI?”
“Was.”
“You’re the unnamed SWAT officer who made the impossible shot and killed the Westboro gunman? You’re the legend?”
Hayes didn’t respond.
“Answer me!”
He shouted back, “I will when you ask a question that I feel is worthy of an answer.”
The sound that broke the resultant silence was Connell slapping his naked knees. “We’ve got a lot to talk about. Hand me my pants.”
Hayes looked behind him where Connell’s clothes were piled in a chair, along with his pistol and shoulder holster. “You should keep your weapon within reach, Agent Connell.”
“Lesson learned. God knows who’s likely to show up and assault me.”
Hayes tossed the trousers toward the bed. Connell caught them and shook them out. “Excuse me, Dr. Charbonneau.” He stood up and stepped into his pants. As he did them up, he said, “Oh, before I forget.”
He took a cell phone from one of the trouser pockets and handed it to her. “Yours. We found it in the bedroom last night after you ran off. I asked if I could keep it, monitor calls you received. Guess there’s no need to now.”
“Thank you.”
“FYI, the battery has run completely out. It needs charging.” He finished dressing, including his shoulder holster, and worked his feet into a pair of loafers. “Emory, what Bannock said about your husband, is it valid?”
“Why don’t you ask me?” Hayes said.
“Because I’m asking her.”
“I believe it’s true,” she said.
“Based on a hunch or evidence?”
“In all the confusion…” She bent down and retrieved the brown paper sack containing the rock, which she’d dropped on the floor during the tussle. She handed the sack to Connell. After opening it and looking inside, he turned to Hayes. “Her hair and blood?”
He nodded. “Found at the scene, along with a designer logo off Jeff’s ski jacket.” Jack mulled over that information for several seconds, then said, “Before we get down to business, I could use some strong, black coffee and hot food, and, since I’m the only one here not currently being sought by local law enforcement, I volunteer to go for them.”
He gave them time to argue or offer an alternative. When neither did, he put on his overcoat and gloves and scooped the keys to his rental car off the dresser. “Back soon.”
He pulled the door closed behind himself, but even the momentary blast of cold air didn’t dissipate the tension in the room. Neither she nor Hayes spoke. He walked over to the bed, pulled the bedspread up over the mussed sheets, then sat down approximately where Connell had been. Only then did he look at her.
“How did you get in here so fast?”
His head went back a notch. “Of all the burning questions you must have, that’s the one you asked?”
Without even trying to mitigate her anger, she said, “I’m pacing myself.”
“I drove around to the other side of the building, ran like hell, and came through the bathroom window.”
“Why not just accompany me to the door? He would have been just as surprised.”
“I had to make sure of you.”
“Of me?”
“I had to be certain that you would do what was right and uphold the law.”
She gave a harsh laugh. “Do you realize how ludicrous that statement sounds coming from you?”
“It’s my choice to bend the law when expedient. But I didn’t want to be responsible for your breaking it.”
“You made me into a burglar.”
“That was an exception. Even you drew the distinction between the episode with the Floyds and lying to a federal agent in order to let a fugitive escape justice.”
“So everything you said this morning was to see in what direction my moral compass was aimed?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, I’m happy I passed.”
“I know you mean that sarcastically, Doc, but I’m happy you passed, too.”
“You put me through hell for nothing.”
“Not exactly for nothing, but I’m sorry I had to be so hard on you.”
“Not hard, horrid.”
“I had to push your buttons, or the ruse wouldn’t have worked.”
“I could happily kill you right now.”
“I have that effect on people.”
He’d met her charges with calm acceptance, which only made her angrier. “You never planned to drop me off and hightail it?”
“Do you think I’d trust your safety, your life, to Knight, Grange, or even to Jack? Hell. No.”
“You must trust Connell to some extent or you wouldn’t be here. Weren’t you afraid he would arrest you on sight?”
“Arrest me? His pursuit is personal, not official. In his book, my only crime was bailing.”
“What?”
“I vanished. Disappeared.”
“You didn’t commit a terrible crime?”
He gave a brusque shake of his head.
“Then what have you been hiding from?”
“From being the legend who took out the Westboro mass murderer.”
Left speechless, she could only gape. When she was able to speak, her voice was thin. “You did your job.”
“True. But I didn’t see it as cause for celebration. I didn’t think it merited recognition. It was a good day for our team. We did spare lives, no doubt. I wanted it left at that.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“Not by anybody who knew me. Not by anybody, period. The media wanted my name, but thank God nobody on the team, including Jack, leaked it. I’ll always be grateful to them for that.”
“Remaining anonymous only made you more intriguing.”
>
“I guess,” he muttered. “I was the most sought-after interview, one TV station said. Some of the victims’ families wanted to meet me so they could personally thank me. I got it. I understood. Closure. An eye for an eye. All that. But I didn’t even read the letters they sent Jack to pass along to me.
“The buzz, for lack of a better word, lasted for months. Seemed like every frigging day it was in the news. A different aspect of the incident. I got sick of it and thought, hell, if it won’t go away, I will. So I tendered my resignation and took off. Rebecca, too. Jack’s been after both of us ever since.”
His explanation disarmed her. But considering the closeness they’d shared, physically and emotionally, she felt wounded by his not confiding all this to her sooner. “Why didn’t you tell me? Or was that a test, too?”
“Test?”
“To see if I would believe the worst about you and still go to bed with you?”
“No.” Then with more emphasis, “No.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
He pushed back his hair with both hands, and when they met at the nape of his neck, he held them there for a moment before lowering them. “I killed that kid, Emory. I put a bullet through his head and he died.”
“You did your duty,” she said with soft earnestness. “You did it in order to save lives.”
“Doesn’t make it any easier to accept. He wasn’t a criminal or a psychopath or a fanatic with a point to make. He was a victim, too.”
He got up and walked over to the window, where he twirled the wand on the blinds to open them. Looking out, he said, “His name was Eric Johnson. Jack referred to him as an angry, bitter young man, but he had just turned seventeen. Seventeen. He was working through summer vacation, about to start his senior year in high school. Most kids would be excited. Not Eric. He couldn’t bear the thought of school and more bullying.”
“He was bullied by his classmates?”
“By just about everybody.”
“His parents?”
“No.” He came around to face her, perching on the window sill. “Honestly, I don’t think so. He was their only child, and all indications were that they loved him. Maybe they should have sensed his increasing withdrawal and gotten counseling for him, and maybe they didn’t read the signs of his impending meltdown, but their negligence wasn’t malicious. Besides, by definition, the unthinkable never would have occurred to them, would it?
“They were shattered by what he did and shocked to learn that he had obtained his murder weapon without their knowledge. His dad had never owned a gun of any kind. Eric hadn’t grown up around them. He bought his murder weapon online and learned to use it in secret.
“The discovery came too late, when investigators from every branch of law enforcement turned the Johnsons’ lives and their house upside down looking for answers as to why he’d done what he did. Pundits aired their theories. But the reason was clear.”
“The bullying.”
“Yeah. Eric was an overweight, classic nerd. No people skills. No special talents or athleticism. In an effort to get him more involved, his dad encouraged him to attend a soccer camp one summer, and the following fall, he actually made the junior varsity team. In a journal, he described the cake his mom had decorated in the team colors to celebrate that achievement.”
Emory swallowed with difficulty.
“It didn’t turn out so well, though. He was slow and had no aptitude for the game.”
“Then why was he chosen for the team?”
“To be the coach’s whipping boy. If they lost, Coach gave the team hell, but he was especially hard on Eric.”
She murmured, “The soccer coach in Utah.”
“He’s not a coach anymore and never will be.”
“You saw to it.”
“I never laid a hand on him. All I did was hand him a length of pipe similar to the one he’d cracked across Eric’s kneecap.”
“With an implied threat.”
He didn’t respond to that. “More often Eric’s torment was psychological. He attended a parochial school. It was reported to the headmaster that he’d been caught masturbating in a restroom stall. During chapel the following morning, the headmaster used the incident to illustrate moral turpitude.”
Her heart sank with pity for the boy who’d been publically humiliated, and her expression must have revealed the sadness she felt for him. “This headmaster was a priest?”
“Yeah. A man of God,” he said with rancor. “When I caught up with him, he’d been reassigned to a school in Lexington.”
“I understand that he resigned under…duress.”
“I was in the congregation the morning he confessed to his sex addiction from the pulpit.”
“He was a sex addict?”
“I don’t know, but I made it clear that was the sin he’d damn well better confess to.”
“Moral turpitude.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “And there were others. Connell mentioned something in Texas. A hairdresser?”
“Vain bitch. She was Eric’s barber. He had a crush on her. She made fun of him on Facebook.”
“And?”
“A few weeks after I caught up with her in Wichita Falls, she posted a photo of herself on her Facebook page. Shaved head. No makeup.” He sighed, said, “You get the idea.”
“Their punishment fit their crime.”
“Not so much a crime as a transgression against an easy target. But yeah, I make my point.”
“The Floyds?”
He smiled crookedly. “That was especially satisfying.”
“They beat Eric up?”
“Just a few weeks before the shooting rampage. In fact, they might have been the final straw. They’d been picking on him since he was hired on. During a lunch break, Eric had enough of their torture and took a swing at Norman. That gave them all the excuse they needed to lay into him. Beat him senseless.”
“As you did to them.”
“Yes.” Darkly, he added, “And I wish I had it to do all over again for what they did to Lisa.”
“On that, I agree with you.”
His eyes found hers with the accuracy and intensity of lasers. “But you don’t agree with the rest of it.”
She raised her hands, trying to convey the helplessness she felt. “I’m conflicted.”
“Because now I’m the bully.”
She was glad he’d said it and not she. “Aren’t you?”
“This is why I didn’t tell you,” he said, his tone cold and clipped. “Why I never wanted you to know.”
“You would have let me exit your life without ever knowing—”
“Yes. Because you’ll never understand.”
“Try me.”
“Justify my actions to you?”
“No, justify your actions to yourself, Hayes. Because I think that’s what you’re running from.”
He was rocking back and forth on his heels, his expression angry and troubled. She discerned that this wasn’t the first time he’d grappled with this. He said, “Eric Johnson will be remembered for gunning down seven people. But no one will remember, or even know, the names of the people who put him behind that brick wall that day, fortified with a weapon and ammo and a consuming hatred for humankind.
“The bullies who instilled that hatred were never made to account. I think they should. I think they should because he died that day, too.” He poked his chest with his index finger. “And I was the one who had to kill him.”
He gave her a hard stare, as though daring her to take issue. Then he pushed away from the window ledge and began to prowl aimlessly around the room, as though he felt caged, perhaps by his own conscience.
“Why do you think Connell has pursued you all these years?”
He made a dismissive gesture. “Hell if I know. Maybe he wants to assuage his own misgivings about how that mission was…resolved. Maybe he hasn’t found a replacement for me on his team. Or he’s got nothing better to do, or could be he’
s just stubborn as a damn mule.”
“Those aren’t the reasons.”
He stopped roaming and turned to her. “Okay, Doc, enlighten me.”
“He cares about you and hates knowing that you’re wasting yourself by living a shadowy, lonely life.”
He tilted his head. “Gee whiz. You figured out all that in…what?” He made a show of looking at his wristwatch. “Ten minutes? You must’ve taken advanced psychiatry classes in med school.”
“You’re pushing my buttons again.”
“Well, you’re pushing mine, too. Who says I’m lonely? And you’re one to talk about self-imposed loneliness. Married to a man with an icicle where his dick ought to be. And how about your distance running? I’m no shrink, but it seems obsessive. What do you need that you can’t find standing still? What are you running to? Or from?”
His intention was to make her angry or to turn the conversation off himself and on to her, but she refused to take umbrage. “I’ve been asking myself those same questions recently.”
“Well keep to them and stop trying to analyze me.”
“When did you last see your sister?”
“We talked two nights ago while I was keeping vigil outside the hospital.”
“That’s not what I asked. She loves you, Hayes.”
“How the hell do you know?”
“Connell.”
“The man’s all mouth.”
“Rebecca loves you.”
“It’s her main character flaw.”
“Your niece loves you.”
His jaw worked, but he didn’t respond except to turn away from her and go over to the dresser. Bracing his hands on the edge of it, he leaned in toward the mirror, although she noticed that he didn’t look into it.
“And I love you.”
He jerked his head up. Their eyes clashed in the mirror. “Well don’t.”
“Too late. I do.”
She left the chair, and when she reached him, she laid her cheek against his back and tightly hugged his torso, linking her hands across his chest.
“You’re setting yourself up to get hurt, Doc.”
“Probably. But that doesn’t change how I feel.” She rolled her forehead against the hollow of his spine and placed her hand over his left pectoral. “Reasonably, you know you did what you had to do that awful day in Westboro. You just wish Eric Johnson had been someone you could despise and revile, not someone you pity.”