“He’s got more problems to worry about than that,” Smith said. He put the flashlight on the floor, but kept his hand on his leg, affording Lena a clear view of his watch.
3:31:01.
3:31:02.
“Like what?” Sara asked, and out of the corner of her eye, Lena saw Brad moving closer to the second gunman. He looked at the clock again, and she knew that he was thinking the same thing: they couldn’t coordinate if they weren’t looking at synchronized clocks. What if she moved too soon? What if she signaled Brad at the wrong moment, and they both ended up dead before the SWAT team arrived?
“No,” Lena whispered, too late realizing she had said the word aloud.
Smith gave her a toothy smile. “She’s figured it out,” he said. “Ain’t that right, darlin’?”
Lena gave a quick shake of her head, her hand moving behind her, feeling the outline of the knife in her pocket. She was overthinking this. What mattered was working in tandem with Brad. What mattered was the element of surprise.
Smith told Sara, “See, some folks here don’t think I’m as stupid as you do.”
“I don’t think you’re stupid,” Sara said.
Lena glanced down at Smith’s watch again. Thirty seconds left. Brad had moved closer to Sonny, started pacing back and forth across the front of the room like the stress was getting to him. Maybe it was. Maybe he couldn’t do this.
“I know what you think about me,” Smith told Sara.
Lena moved as slowly as possible, her fingers dipping into her back pocket. Her heart shook in her chest. Brad’s footsteps echoed against the tile as he paced back and forth at the front of the room.
“I think you’re a very troubled young man,” Sara told him. “I think you need help.”
“You thought I was trash from the moment you laid eyes on me.”
“That’s not true.”
“You did everything you could to try to destroy my life.”
“I wanted to help you,” Sara said. “I really did.”
“You could’ve taken me in,” Smith said. “I wrote you letters. I wrote him letters.”
He had indicated Jeffrey, but Sara seemed not to notice. “We never got them,” she replied, but Lena could barely hear her past the sound of blood rushing through her ears. Smith had indicated Jeffrey. He knew who Jeffrey was.
Lena gripped the knife, using her thumb to pry up the blade. She pressed the edge of the metal into her heel and heard the click as the blade popped into place.
She held her breath, waiting for Smith to notice, but he was too focused on Sara. How long had he known about Jeffrey? When had he figured out that it wasn’t Matt lying on the floor in front of him, but the man he had sworn to kill?
Smith said, “I kept waiting for y’all to come. I kept waiting for y’all to take me away from her.” His voice was like a child’s. “Do you know the kinds of things she did to me? Do you know how she hurt me?”
In her head, Lena was screaming, “He knows it’s Jeffrey,” but she kept the words from coming out of her mouth. Whatever sick game Smith was playing had to go on just a little while longer. Just a few more seconds and it would be over.
Lena trained her eyes on his watch.
3:31:43.
“We couldn’t help you,” Sara told him. “Eric, Jeffrey is not your father.”
Lena looked at Brad. He raised his eyebrows, as if to say, “Ready when you are.”
Smith said, “You’re a fucking liar.”
“I’m not lying,” Sara said, a certainty to her voice. “I’ll tell you who your father is, but you have to let them go.”
“Let them go?” Smith asked, taking the Sig Sauer out of his belt, still keeping his other hand resting on his thigh.
3:31:51.
Lena swallowed, though she had no spit left in her mouth. In her peripheral vision, she saw Brad nearing Sonny.
“Let who go?” Smith asked, taking his time, obviously enjoying the drama. He smiled down at Jeffrey. “You mean him? Matt?” He hit the t’s hard, spit coming out of his mouth.
Sara hesitated a beat too long. “Yes.”
“That’s not Matt,” Smith said, cocking the hammer. “That’s Jeffrey.”
“Now!” Lena screamed, lunging for Smith. She slammed the knife into his throat, feeling her fingers slide down the blade, sharp metal slicing open her skin.
Sara had jumped seconds after Lena, and she wrested the Sig away from Smith even as a gun went off at the front of the room. The three little girls started screaming as the glass entrance door exploded.
GBI agents swarmed into the station. Brad stood over Sonny, pointing the rifle at the young man’s face as he pressed his foot into his chest.
“Get up,” Sara told Lena, pushing her off Smith. Lena slipped in the blood as Sara turned him over onto his back.
“Get an ambulance,” Sara said, putting both her hands to Smith’s neck, trying to stop the blood. She was fighting a losing battle. Blood was everywhere, flooding out of Smith’s carotid like a broken dam. Lena had never seen so much bleeding in her life. It was as if nothing could stop it.
“Help me,” Smith said, an improbable request considering all he had done.
“You’ll be okay,” Sara soothed. “Just hold on.”
“He killed people,” Lena told her, thinking she must be crazy. “He tried to kill Jeffrey.”
“Get an ambulance,” Sara repeated. “Please,” she begged, her fingers pressing into the gaping wound. “Please. He just needs somebody to help him.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tuesday
Jeffrey slumped into the row of chairs opposite Hoss’s office at the sheriff’s station. After the last few days, he understood what people meant when they said they felt as if they had the weight of the world on their shoulders. Jeffrey felt like he had two worlds, and neither one of them was a particularly civilized.
Sara sat down beside him, saying, “It’ll be good to get back home after this.”
“Yeah.”
He had wanted to leave this town from the moment he got here, but now Jeffrey thought that everything he needed was right here with him. As always, Sara knew what he was thinking, and when she put her hand on his leg, he laced his fingers through hers, wondering how his life could be so fucked up yet feel so good as long as she was holding his hand.
“Did he say how long he would be?” Sara asked, meaning Hoss.
“I think part of him is still waiting for me to say this is some kind of joke.”
“It’ll be fine,” she said, squeezing his hand.
Jeffrey glanced down the unlit corridor toward the jail, hoping that his emotions did not get the best of him. Sara was so good at being logical that it scared him sometimes. He had never met anyone so completely capable of taking care of anything that came along, and he wondered what kind of place he could have in her life.
Sara interrupted his thoughts, asking a question he had not yet let himself consider. “You think it changes anything because he’s gay?”
He shrugged.
“Jeff?”
Jeffrey kissed her fingers, trying to change the subject. “You can’t imagine how I felt when I saw you in that chair. The things that went through my mind.”
She waited for his answer.
“I don’t know how I feel about that,” he said. “I want to kick his ass for what he did to you,” he said, feeling livid all over again. “That kind of thing…” He shook his head, trying not to let it get to him. “I swear to God, if I ever see him again, there’s going to be a reckoning for that.”
“He was desperate,” she said, though Jeffrey did not understand how she could make excuses for him. “Which is worse,” she asked, “what he did to me or the fact that he’s gay?”
He did not know how to answer the question. “All I know is that he lied to me all these years.”
“Would you have wanted to have anything to do with him otherwise?”
“We’ll never have a chance to fin
d out, will we?”
Sara let his words hang in the air.
“When I saw Robert’s jacket in Swan’s closet…” He sat back in the chair, letting go of her hand as he crossed his arms over his chest. Jeffrey kept his own jacket in the back of his closet at home, and though he never wore it, he could not bring himself to donate it to charity or throw it away. He was worse than the Monday-morning quarterbacks at the hardware store, holding on to that jacket like he could hold on to his youth.
He told Sara, “I don’t know. I saw his jacket, and it popped into my head that maybe there was a connection between him and Swan. Just a split second, and then I thought, ‘No way. No way Robert’s a…’ ” Jeffrey gave a heavy sigh, thinking he’d never be able to use the word again. He probably should not have been using it in the first place. “I came here to the station looking for Hoss, but he was out.”
Jeffrey did not tell her that the first thing he’d wanted to do after leaving Swan’s was to find Sara, but he had taken the detour to the station to prove to himself that he did not need her. Had he not been so stubborn, Jeffrey could have stopped Robert before things escalated. He could have protected her.
Oblivious to this, she kept pressing, “Does it bother you that he’s gay?”
“I can’t separate it out, Sara, and that’s the truth. I’m mad at him for what he did to you. I’m mad at him for not turning Jessie in, for letting all this shit stir up and not doing anything about it. I’m mad at him for jumping bail and leaving Possum to sweat it out.”
“He said he’d send money.”
“Yeah, well, I’m calling the state as soon as we get back to see how much I can pull out of retirement.” He thought of Possum’s bruised jaw, and the way the other man had waved off Jeffrey’s apology for hitting him. Jeffrey would not make Possum take all of the financial burden for this. It just wasn’t right.
“What else?” she asked. “What else are you mad at him about?”
He stood, needing to pace. “For not telling me.” He glanced down the hallway as an inmate in the jail yelled an obscenity. “If you hadn’t been in that house, the last thing we’d know is that he jumped bail for killing a man and was on the run. We wouldn’t know about Jessie or his relationship, or whatever you want to call it, with Swan. All we’d know is that he was a fugitive.” Jeffrey stopped pacing and turned to Sara. “He should have trusted me.”
She had a circumspect look on her face, like she wanted to make sure she said the right thing. “My cousin Hare had a hard time at college,” she began. “One minute, he was the most popular guy on campus, the next, he was getting death threats.”
He had forgotten about her cousin in all this, and now Jeffrey wondered if she was taking up for Robert because she wanted to take up for Hare. “What happened?”
“People just figured it out,” she said. “He had this friend, his dorm mate. They were inseparable. When people started to talk, Hare didn’t try to hide anything. He was surprised that anyone cared.”
“That’s pretty naive.”
“That’s Hare,” she told him. “I guess we both grew up in a fairly insulated world. Our parents never let us think that anything was wrong with being gay or straight or black or anything else under the sun. Hare was shocked when his so-called friends turned on him.”
Jeffrey could imagine what happened, but still, he wanted to hear it. “What did they do?”
“This was at the end of his junior year at UGA, so there was summer in between for everyone to cool off.” She paused, and he could tell she was still upset by the memory. Above anything else, Sara cherished her family, and for one of them to be hurt was just about the only thing in the world she did not seem able to tolerate.
She continued, “We all hoped it would die down during the break, but of course it didn’t. His first day back, they tried to beat him up, but he was always a good fighter and he broke a few noses. I heard him tell you he quit football because he hurt his knee, but that wasn’t it. He was told to leave.”
Jeffrey sat down again. “I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing to Robert if I had found out back then.”
“What about now?”
“Now…” He shook his head. “Hell, I just want him to be safe. I can’t imagine living like that, people thinking I was something I wasn’t.”
“Sounds like how you lived the first part of your life.”
He laughed, because he had never looked at it that way. “Yeah.”
“What did Hoss say when you told him all this on the phone?”
“Nothing,” he told her, then added, “He didn’t sound surprised.”
“Do you think he knew?”
“Maybe he suspected. There’s no telling.” He gave her a meaningful look. “Trust me, you don’t see that kind of thing unless you’re looking.”
“What’s going to happen now?”
“Jessie will be arrested.” He hissed air out between his teeth. “That’s gonna be fun. I’m sure Reggie Ray will get a big kick out of all this.”
“You can’t worry about that.”
“If he walked through that door right now, I’d have him leaving on a stretcher.”
“What about Julia Kendall?”
“What about her?”
“I need to tell you something,” she began, taking his hand again. “I need to talk to you about what Lane Kendall said.”
“She’s a—”
“No,” Sara interrupted. “Not that. I need to tell you why I reacted the way I did when she accused you of…of raping Julia.”
“I didn’t,” he told her, feeling defensive. “I swear to you, Sara, that kid isn’t mine.”
“I know that,” she responded, but her expression was so peculiar that he did not believe her.
He stood again. “I’m telling you I didn’t do it. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“I know you didn’t,” she repeated.
“You don’t look like you believe me.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said, and he could see her shutting him out.
He paced again, feeling cornered and guilty even though he knew he had done nothing. All he could think was that they had finally gotten to her. Sara had finally started doubting him the way everyone else did. There was no going back from here.
“Jeff,” Sara said, angry. “Stop pacing.”
He did, even though his body felt like a live current was going through it. “We can’t get past this point,” he told her. “Either you trust me or you don’t, but I’m not going to—”
“Stop,” she interrupted him.
“You think I’m capable of doing that?” he asked. “You think I’d actually…” He could not find the words to finish. “Jesus, Sara, if you think I’m capable of raping somebody, what the hell are you doing here with me?”
“I don’t think you did it, Jeffrey. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” She seemed exasperated, and her tone took on an even sharper edge. “Even if I thought you did it—which I don’t—medically, there’s no way that Eric Kendall is your child.”
He stood silent, waiting for her to spell it out.
“You don’t have a bleeding disorder in your family?” she asked, like she was talking to a three-year-old.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“A bleeding disorder,” she said, as if repeating the words would make him understand. “Lane Kendall said that Eric had a bleeding disorder.”
Jeffrey wondered where she was going with this. He had tried his best to block out the episode with Lane Kendall and did not relish going back over it.
She said, “I haven’t examined him, but from what Nell told me, it sounds more like von Willebrand’s disease.”
He waited for her to continue.
“Blood won’t clot.”
“Like hemophilia?”
“Sort of,” she answered. “It can be pretty mild. Some people have it and don’t even know it. They just think they’re
easy bleeders. Eric’s bruises were raised, like bumps. That’s also a sign.”
Jeffrey felt all the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
His expression must have given him away, because Sara asked, “What?”
He shook his head, thinking that this whole ordeal with Robert had made him too suspicious. “It couldn’t have come from Lane’s family? Or Julia’s father?”
“It could,” she answered, though her tone said she did not think it was likely. “Generally, women know when they have it. Their menstrual cycles are extremely heavy. A lot of women end up getting hysterectomies when they don’t really need them. It’s not an easy diagnosis, not many doctors think to look for it.” She added, “As many children as Lane has had, she would know if she had it. Pregnancies can be very high risk for anyone with a bleeding disorder.”
Jeffrey could only stare at her, his mind making conclusions that turned a knife in his gut. “What if someone gets nosebleeds a lot?”
She wrinkled her brow. “Who are you thinking about?”
“Just answer, Sara. Please just answer.”
“It could be,” she said. “Nosebleeds, bleeding gums. Cuts that won’t stop bleeding.”
“You’re sure it’s genetic?”
“Yes.”
“Shit,” he whispered, thinking that as bad as everything seemed a few minutes before, it had just gotten worse than he could have ever imagined.
“What are you—”
They both looked up as the door opened.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to get here,” Hoss told them, taking his keys out of his pocket as he walked toward his office.
Jeffrey could not move.
Hoss looked at Sara, obviously taking in her cuts and bruises. “I would’ve never thought Robert was capable of hurting a woman,” he told her. “But I guess he wasn’t nearly the man I thought he was.”
“I’m fine,” Sara answered, a tight smile on her face.
“That’s good,” Hoss said, unlocking his office door. He went in, turning on the lights as he walked to his desk and rummaged through some papers. “Come on in so we can get this over with.”
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