Blood Kin

by Judith E. French

  She studied his face carefully for a moment. “I don’t suppose you can tell me how you know this, or what the CIA has to do with my paternity? Why would they have cared or known in the first place?”

  He put his finger to his lips. “Not here. Later. Just trust me. He was your father. Grace blackmailed him, but she never really knew the truth. He verified it years ago.”

  “But they haven’t been doing DNA that long. How could he—”

  “I can’t give you all the details. Well, I could, but . . .”

  “Oh . . .” She let out a long sigh. “But that means you and I aren’t related.”

  “The Marshalls are relative newcomers to Tawes, no more than six generations. We can’t be any closer than third cousins twice removed.” He looked at her hand, stroking it, adding a playfulness to his voice. “So there’s no reason why you and I can’t—”

  “One step at a time, all right? This has all been pretty sudden.”

  “Not for me, babe. I think I’ve been waiting all my life for you to come along.”

  Moisture sparkled in her bloodshot eyes. “But there was someone else, wasn’t there? Someone in Afghanistan? A woman that you loved—”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Not loved. A woman that I was involved with . . . a woman that I might have come to love if we’d had the time to work on it. The Catlin boys may be a little slow to pick a wife, but when we marry, we do it for life. Mallalai, the girl I thought I could love . . .” His voice thickened. “She tried to lure me into a trap. A buddy of mine was going to meet us there, and something went wrong. A mechanical flaw in the wiring of the timer, I believe the report read.”

  “Daniel.” She squeezed his hand. “You don’t have to—”

  “You have a right to know what happened. Mallalai and I were on different sides, and I didn’t know it. If my taxi hadn’t gotten stalled behind an overturned donkey cart, I’ve have been blown to bits along with George Marker, Mallalai, and a dozen or so innocent civilians. I’m not nursing a broken heart for her, Bailey. Regrets, maybe, but as Grace liked to say, it never could have worked out between us.”

  “And you think we might have a better chance? What about my being a mainlander?”

  “You do come from good island stock. And if you’re looking for work, I have friends in high places. Two cousins and an aunt on the Tawes school board. I just might be able to find you honest employment, if you’d like to stay on at—”

  “You expect me to pick up my life, just like that, and move to an island in the Chesapeake?” She looked at him expectantly. “Live in that drafty old farmhouse on the water?”

  “Someone has to feed and exercise Elizabeth’s horses. It would be a shame to disrupt their lives. Horses are creatures of habit.”

  “And you’re suggesting me? Or are you suggesting something more permanent between us?” she teased. “Are you asking me to move in with you? Or are you proposing marriage to me before you’ve discussed this with my great-uncle Will?”

  Daniel groaned. “I was afraid you’d get around to that.”

  His cousin Jim Tilghman and Jim’s wife, Cathy, had been at the hospital at nine o’clock sharp this morning to give them firsthand news from Johns Hopkins on Will and Emma. Apparently the two had already become celebrities at the shock trauma unit. Will had required several units of blood and survived a seven-hour surgery, with a second, less critical operation yet to come. Will’s attending physician had told Jim that he wished he had the older man’s heart and muscle tone, and he saw no reason why—with a few weeks of physical therapy—Will shouldn’t make a full recovery. Emma remained in intensive care but was stable and sitting up, joking with nurses, and wanting to know when she would be discharged.

  “I’ve been told that the Tawes men are devoted to the welfare of their women,” Bailey said with a glint in her eye. “And Uncle Will does have the reputation of being someone you don’t want as an enemy.”

  “True. He’s a hard man, but a fair one. You do know that the Catlins and the Taweses have had a blood feud running for a couple hundred years? I might not be Will’s first choice for a great-nephew-in-law.”

  Bailey chuckled. “And who’s to say you’d be my first choice? I haven’t agreed to anything . . . yet.”

  “Mr. Catlin.” The nurse’s stern tone brooked no more nonsense. “I really must insist.”

  Daniel made a shooing motion. “Just another minute.”

  “Please,” Bailey said. “We were just getting to the good stuff, the part where Mr. Catlin explains exactly when he intends to finish the extensive repairs on my home.”

  “It might run a little past the time we first talked about,” he said.

  “And over budget?” Bailey laughed. “You contractors are all alike.”

  “Seriously,” he told her. “I want you stay. With me.”

  “Uncle Will is going to need help for some time. And Emma can’t possibly manage the shedding house alone for who knows how long. You couldn’t run me off with a gunboat. And God knows, your sister-in-law tried.”

  The nurse took hold of Daniel’s wheelchair and pulled him back toward the door. “Visiting hours are over for you, Mr. Catlin,” she said firmly.

  “I’m serious about that name change,” Daniel said, as his fingertips slid from Bailey’s. “You might consider Bailey Tawes Catlin. Officially.”

  “I might. Do you know a good lawyer I might consult about a prenup?”

  “Not offhand,” he said, as the nurse tugged him through the open doorway. “Give me time, and I might think of one.”

  “Time, Mr. Catlin,” Bailey murmured, “unlike yesterday, is now something we both have.”

  Visiting hours were over for the public, and the evening shift change had taken place. Lights were dimmed on the surgical floor, and the only sounds Grace heard as she stepped off the elevator were the muted canned laughter of a late-night comedian’s audience from a patient’s TV and the buzz of a nurse’s call bell at the far end of the hall.

  Grace walked stiffly, the agony in her hip and shoulder dulled by the drugs she’d purchased from a Hispanic who offered third-world emergency surgery without questions for illegal immigrants in a trailer near Crisfield. He’d removed two bullets from her body with dirty hands and demanded far too much payment for his crude surgery and the prescription painkillers.

  She’d given him exactly what he deserved and far more than he’d expected. She might be a pastor’s wife and a genteel lady now, but she’d been Dot Widdowson’s daughter, and she’d come up the hard way.

  Grace had caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror, and she looked like hell. There was no polite way to put it. The cheap hair dye and overdone makeup did little to cover the effects of her ordeal, and white was not her color. Ivory, perhaps, but not white. The lab coat and loose blue trousers were stained, but the ID badge hanging around her neck would pass all but the most intense scrutiny, and the little container of vials, needles, and assorted items for patients’ blood collection was real.

  She slipped her hand gingerly into the roomy pocket of the elastic-waisted pants. The rude young man had told her that the barbiturate would put down a Great Dane, and that he’d seen the vet he worked for putting the medication into an IV. If it didn’t work quickly enough, she’d removed the surgeon’s pistol from a kitchen drawer on her way out of the trailer. He wouldn’t need it again, and one way or another she intended to rid the world of Beth’s brat and Daniel Catlin tonight. She’d have to find a way to deal with Will Tawes another day, but perhaps he was already dying and just hadn’t had the good sense to get it over with yet.

  She waited until the woman at the nursing station answered a phone call before walking briskly past, pausing to check her clipboard and read the information on the patient listing posted on the wall to find the correct room number. Elliott, yes—Elliott, B. And luck was with her tonight. There was only one name listed for that room.

  Grace turned back toward Bailey’s room. She’d reached the
open doorway and was about to enter when the elevator bell sounded and the doors opened. A man in a wheelchair rolled out into the hall. She glanced at his face, and for a moment their eyes met.

  Grace felt the shock of instant recognition.

  “Stop! Help! Call security!” Daniel shouted as he leaped out of the wheelchair.

  Grace dropped the little basket. Glass shattered on the tile, and blood splattered. She ran down the hall.

  “Call the police!” Daniel yelled as he ran into Bailey’s room.

  Grace took the first turn to the left. Another bank of elevators marked STAFF ONLY caught her eye. She limped toward it, dragging a leg that didn’t seem to want to support her. She hit a fire alarm on the wall before stepping into an open elevator that was surely provided by God, certain that in the ensuing panic she could make good her escape.

  Only a few minutes later, trembling with pain, Grace snatched a walker from a first-floor storage closet and made her way out of the closest door. She’d left her stolen Jeep only a block away on a side street. Surely, masses of terrified patients and staff would be pouring from the hospital. She could already hear the wail of a fire siren in the distance. “Bitch!” she cried bitterly. “Rotten little slut of a whore!”

  She was sweating heavily. The pain was excruciating as she forced herself off the curb and into the street. All she had to do was to keep moving. Lift the walker. Take a few steps at a time. Stop to rest. Take a few more steps. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the shadowy outline of a vehicle. Alarms were going off in the hospital behind her. People rushed past.

  Horns blared. A woman cried out. Grace kept walking. A hundred feet more and she’d be safe. All she had to do was get to the green Jeep and—

  Abruptly the roar of an engine broke through her concentration. She looked up to see a black Expedition accelerating down the street toward her. She threw her up her arms, waving to let the driver see her. She was wearing a white coat. It wasn’t possible that he didn’t see—

  Grace’s scream ended in a thud. Pain greater than anything she’d ever experienced radiated through her body. For an instant she felt herself flying, and then she slammed into the pavement. Agony. The grating of bone against bone. Excruciating. She tried to draw breath but a crushing weight bore down on her.

  Tires screeched as the SUV squealed to a stop. Grace tried to call for help. Blood poured in streams from her head and face, clogging her nose and mouth. She gasped for air. Tires screeched again. She forced one eye open, and through a curtain of blood saw the Expedition turning around in the street.

  Help was coming. Someone would come to save her. Blood filled her throat, choking off her final scream as the Expedition drove over her sprawled body, crushing her head beneath the oversize tires.

  From Bailey’s window, Daniel watched the black vehicle bump over the remains of the walker, turn the corner, and speed away into the night with the lights off. He didn’t need to ask who had been at the wheel. Hadn’t Lucas told him he’d come to tie up loose ends? The agency couldn’t risk the possibility that Grace would go to trial, that her connection to Joe Marshall and his drug money might come out.

  “Grace? You’re certain it was Grace?” Bailey called weakly.

  Daniel stood and made his way unsteadily to her bed, sat on the edge, and drew her into his arms. “It’s all right, Bailey,” he murmured into her hair. “You don’t have to worry about her anymore. I promise you. It’s over.”

  “It’s over? They caught her?”

  “You’re safe now. She’ll never harm you or anyone else again.” In this world or the next, he thought. “Never, never again.”

  Three weeks later, Daniel and Jim Tilghman lifted Will out of the wheelchair and into the big cushioned wicker chair on Emma’s back porch. “Are you all right?”

  “Hell, no, I’m not all right. Do I look all right? I’ve been kidnapped, and I’m being held by a bunch of young fools,” Will grumbled.

  “Did you expect Bailey to run back and forth between her place and yours when she’s still recovering herself?” Emma asked. “Use some common sense, Will Tawes. Think of somebody but yourself for a change.”

  “Shut up. I don’t want to talk to you. I’m here. I’ll pay whatever you charge for room and board for two days, and then I’m going the hell home. And anybody who doesn’t like it can—”

  Bailey kissed him on the forehead. “A week, Uncle Will. One week, and then you can either come out to the farmhouse with Daniel and me or go home.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s a decent cup of tea to be had in this den of iniquity,” Will grumbled. “Something that doesn’t come in a tea bag?”

  “I’ll think I can find some Earl Grey,” Bailey offered.

  “I’ll see about that crab soup. If there’s one thing we don’t want, it’s for that milk to come to a boil.” Emma held the door open for Bailey. “Come on, honey. Your uncle will be fine out here with the men. He’s only trying to save his pride by blustering like the old windbag he is.”

  “I’ll get your tea,” Bailey promised, “just the way you like it.”

  Daniel looked at her anxiously. “Are you sure you’re not doing too much? You know the doctor said you were supposed to—”

  “I’m fine, Daniel. I’ll get you a cup, too. Jim?”

  “No, thanks. Cathy’s got supper on, and I’m late. She hates it when she goes to the trouble of making a hot meal and I don’t show up on time. Of course, her meat loaf isn’t the greatest, but it will have lots of peppers and onions. I’ll stop by tomorrow to see if there’s anything I can do for you, Will.”

  “Looking after my dogs and those horses, that’s a godsend. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”

  Daniel eased painfully into the straight-backed chair next to Will, glanced at him, and then watched Jim stride around the house. Through the screen door Daniel could hear the two women clinking dishes inside.

  “This was a bad idea,” Will grumbled.

  “It wasn’t mine. It was Bailey’s,” Daniel reminded him. “And you know how she is.”

  “I’m beginning to see how she is, and I’m not sure I like it. Interfering with a man’s life and livelihood. Pushing and prodding for me to make peace with that . . . that Emma after all these years. She doesn’t deserve it. I almost killed her, you know. Should have. Cow-bellied parody of God-knows-what. We’re never going to be friends. That’s not going to happen. But I’m not going to hunt her down and shoot her, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

  Daniel nodded. “I can see how you might feel that way. But Emma . . . If she hadn’t told me where to look for Grace, we wouldn’t have Bailey alive.”

  “There’s another wrong that’s eatin’at me. Has everybody lost their reason? Your brother bringing Grace Catlin’s body back here to bury in the same churchyard as my Beth and the others after what she done?”

  “She has to face a sterner judge,” Daniel said quietly.

  “Well, thanks be for that.” Will leaned back in the chair and rested his head.

  “While I’ve got a minute alone with you, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

  “You know I’ve always treated you more like a son than a friend, but if you’re asking me for permission to marry my Bailey, then you’d—”

  “No.” Daniel glanced in to see Bailey following Emma into the big pantry.

  “It’s got to be in there,” Emma said. “Did you look behind the brown sugar canister?”

  “No, that’s not it,” Daniel said, leaning close to Will. “It’s something else, something that’s been nagging at me. Joe.”

  Will scowled. “What about him? He’s in hell, same as Grace, if there is a hell.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “I can’t help wondering how you could have lost your granddad’s old shotgun. You thought so much of it. You knew Joe was Bailey’s father, didn’t you?”

  Will nodded. �
��He said as much when he leveled that fancy gun of his on me. Said he wasn’t paying anymore.”

  “He accused you of blackmailing him.”

  “Called me a thief to my face.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Bailey who fathered her?”

  Will sighed. “If I did, I’d have to say more, things you should never say to a woman. Better leave what’s in the past in the past.”

  “That you shot her father?”

  “Never said that, Daniel Catlin. Never did say it, never expect to.”

  “Did Joe take a shot at you?”

  Will nodded. “Two barrels.” He shook his head. “A man never should look for courage in a bottle. It makes his hands unsteady, makes him apt to miss what he fires at.”

  “You didn’t think you could tell what happened, explain that it was self-defense?”

  Will frowned. “You try it, if you’re fool enough. A rich, powerful man like Joe Marshall—a U.S. by-God senator—and a man that’s spent time in prison for a crime he didn’t do. How much justice did I get from the courts before? And how much do you think I’d find tomorrow if I needed it?” He scowled. “You got a problem with that?”

  “No problem. It’s a shame about your grandfather’s gun, though.”

  “It is. I put some store by that gun.” The older man sighed. “But I put a sight more on what’s fair, and I figured, in the end, it was a good trade. Granddaddy would approve. He might say, ‘Will, you bought your own justice with that old shotgun.’ ”

  “He might say that,” Daniel agreed.

  “Hot tea coming up,” Bailey called.

  “Let me give you a hand with those cups,” Daniel said, rising to go to her. He stopped, met Will’s gaze for an instant, and nodded. “I think you’re right. Sometimes the old ways and old sayings are true. Island justice.”