The Third Secret

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  There was nothing dramatic about her breakdown. It was just a quiet, exhausted inability to stop crying. She cried for the lost life of the person she’d loved so completely. For the injustice. For all those years of being alone.

  The pain she’d hidden was in hiding no longer. She cried for Noah. And his family. For the family of the little boy who’d died in the fire that had taken Noah from her. For Rick—a good man on the run. And for Steve—a boy who would never grow up. And mixed in with the heartache was shame for the fact that while she’d honored her father, she’d betrayed him, too, in her refusal to admit to anyone, once she’d started college and her new life, that her father had been a convict who’d died in prison.

  She cried with a pain so consuming she wasn’t sure it could ever be assuaged.

  She cried because she was scared.

  And just like when she was a child and life had defeated her, strong male arms wrapped themselves awkwardly around her, offering a gruff but completely enveloping comfort that she couldn’t afford to reject.

  Rick was not a nurturer. Of anything. Or anyone. Not even Steve.

  He didn’t break codes of silence, either.

  And the government had always protected his cover.

  How could a life that had been predictably the same forever suddenly veer so far out of control? Was he in his own skin? Or had the years of living a lie finally taken their toll on him? After living two separate lives for so long, did he even know who he was?

  He couldn’t explain to himself what he was doing with his arms around his beautiful attorney.

  Or why he was anywhere near a woman’s tears, which he always avoided at all costs.

  At other times, he would’ve walked out by now, regard less of how insensitive that made him, but on Sunday night, Rick stayed put. With his arms wrapped around another human being in a way they’d never been before.

  Was this comfort, then?

  And if so, what did one do next? When did comfort end? How did he extricate himself?

  After an unfathomable length of time, the intensity of Erin’s emotions lessened, and he said, “I have to go.”

  He meant the words with everything in him. But he continued to hold the woman in his arms, as though waiting for her to end this. To free him…

  She nodded, her sigh accompanied by a hiccup, an aftershock of the storm. The nod, the weighted movement of her head against his chest, struck Rick.

  Changed him yet again.

  The past year had made him soft.

  Or maybe Steve had.

  Drop your arms, he ordered himself. Let her fall to the couch. You’re in too deep, man.

  Rick acknowledged the accuracy of his thoughts at the same time he ran a hand along the slender strength of Erin’s back. One stroke was all he intended.

  One stroke was all he could give. A farewell.

  She shuddered, relaxing against him for a second. A second he could allow her. A second that turned into two. And then three.

  He kissed the top of her head. She answered by pressing her cheek to his chest. And something changed again.

  She wasn’t crying. And he hadn’t left.

  Tension took root inside him as dangerous air pervaded the room, spread through the space between them.

  And so did a sexual desire that wouldn’t let go.

  29

  Temple, Michigan

  Sunday, October 25, 2010

  I was having an interesting night. Caylee Fitzgerald, Maggie and I were the only guests at Agnes’s renovated castle on the hill down the cliff from Erin’s smaller but equally impressive home.

  We didn’t see Erin, but Caylee pointed out her place to us. We could see it from the balcony of our suite. The teenager was clearly worried about the woman she considered a sister-in-law. Family.

  Caylee, balancing on the brim of a new life, had her own trauma to contend with and spent a good part of the evening with us in our suite of rooms, next door to her room. Maggie had been reticent at first, hanging back, not rude, but not friendly, either.

  Until Caylee told us about the scholarship she’d won to Yale and started to cry. That was when Maggie moved from a chair at the edge of the room to the other end of the couch Caylee was perched on.

  I knew something momentous was happening when I heard Maggie tell Caylee about Glenna, Maggie’s friend and mentor, who, like Caylee, had begun her senior year the month before. And, like Caylee, Glenna had just been awarded a full-ride university scholarship.

  “You’re a senior?” Caylee asked my foster daughter as I sat quietly in a corner of the powder-blue love seat and watched the two of them.

  “No,” Maggie looked straight at Caylee, instead of affecting the introverted demeanor she used most often, either looking down or away, when she was faced with one-on-one conversation with someone she didn’t know well. “I’m just a freshman.”

  They were two lovely girls, Caylee with her amber hair and green eyes, and Maggie with the dark hair and dark eyes that turned too many heads for my comfort. Both girls were long-legged. Slim.

  But it wasn’t outside appearances that struck me as I sat there listening to them. It was the sweetness. The innocence. The softheartedness that came through in their perceptions of the worlds they occupied.

  “So what happened to your friend?”

  I held my breath. Try as I might, I couldn’t get Maggie to talk about Glenna anymore. About any of it. In her mind, I’d switched to the other side the night Maggie’s mother was arrested and I’d joined forces with Deputy Samantha Jones in an attempt to get Maggie to identify David Abrams as the man who’d had sex with her, taken her virginity, in a tent on the outskirts of town.

  Unless Maggie testified against the well-known local attorney, the man would go unpunished, to walk freely among Chandler’s citizens. To walk freely around Maggie.

  “She was killed,” Maggie said. I didn’t move.

  “Oh, my God! Killed? How? In a car accident?”

  “No.” Maggie didn’t look at me. “She was murdered,” the girl continued, her voice low but curiously lacking in bitterness. “In jail. By a cop.”

  “Oh, my God.” Caylee turned, leaning toward Maggie, her face slack with horror. “Oh, my God,” she said again.

  “Her mom’s sick.” The need I saw in Maggie’s eyes tore at my heart. “She’s dying of cancer. It was just the two of them and there wasn’t much money and this cop offered to help Glenna earn some extra cash getting drugs to kids at school. She got caught. He was afraid she was going to rat him out and…”

  Maggie’s voice stilled. Her entire body stilled. Almost as though it was no longer occupied.

  Frowning, obviously concerned, Caylee watched her, glanced at me, then back at Maggie.

  “He strangled her and hung her in her cell to make it look like suicide,” I said quietly, knowing Maggie could hear me. Praying that my sweet child could find the strength, the will, to come back to us. To stay with us.

  I heard Caylee’s gasp in the thick silence. And I noticed a tear sliding down Maggie’s cheek.

  “She was only sixteen,” she said to the room at large, her gaze lost. And I wanted so badly to scoop her into my arms and carry her away to a place where there was no pain. No ugliness. No wrong.

  The fourteen-year-old’s life had never been easy. Born to a single teenage mother, living in poverty, had been struggle enough. But then her best friend had died of leukemia the year before, and this year, her only remaining close friend, Glenna, had been murdered. Her mother had sold her into drug trafficking. And she’d been manipulated out of her virginity by a pedophile.

  It was astonishing to me that Maggie still cared at all. That she had heart enough to cry. The girl was a testament to the strength of the human spirit, an example of a love for life that could withstand all adversity.

  I didn’t kid myself as I sat there, listening to the teenagers’ soft voices as they shared heartaches. Maggie wasn’t out of the woods by a long shot. Although Cayl
ee talked about the pain of being in love in the wrong place at the wrong time, Maggie never mentioned her own heartache where the opposite sex was concerned. She never mentioned “Mac,” David Abram’s alter ego. Or the day she’d spent with the man in the woods.

  She didn’t mention men, or boys, at all.

  Still, I knew a miracle had just happened. Maggie and I had some rough months ahead of us. But Caylee Fitzgerald, with her own sense of compassion and caring, had given me all the hope I needed. She’d shown me that Maggie was still in there fighting.

  And I knew then and there that I was going to dedicate my life to seeing that Maggie Winston had a loving, secure home environment where she could heal. And thrive. No matter what.

  Because if anyone deserved it, Maggie did.

  No man had touched her since Noah. In Temple, no man would dare to try—unless Erin specifically invited the intimacy.

  Which she never had. Never would.

  And yet she moved into the warm strong fingers rubbing slowly up her back, welcomed the heat emanating from the large hand gently planted at the base of her spine.

  She’d lost her father. And then Noah. Enough was enough.

  So much pain. Too much aloneness.

  Way too much aloneness.

  “Oh, God, Rick, I’m sorry.” She had to break away from…she didn’t know what this was.

  That made it all so much more confusing. So much more difficult to escape.

  She was in his arms. Lying against him. Leaning on him. He didn’t say anything—hadn’t since he’d told her he had to go. That had been a while ago.

  He continued to hold her. To offer her something she’d been needing for a long time. Something she hadn’t known she needed.

  Maybe something he needed, too?

  Just to connect with another human being. To have a few quiet moments where you didn’t have to be strong, didn’t have to go it alone, didn’t have to shoulder the world by yourself.

  Just to be touched.

  Her fingers lay on his shoulders, lay there limply, absorbing his heat. Touching him. But not giving to him as he was giving to her. Slowly, aware of every second as though time had stopped, she cupped his shoulders, held on and then explored the muscles behind them. Moved up to his neck, his hair tickling her hands.

  Rick’s hold changed. Tightened. Pulling her more fully against him, their bodies touching thigh to thigh, stomach to side, chest to chest. She wanted to lift her head. To look into his eyes, his soul, to complete the connection, but she didn’t. Her head on his chest, she listened to his heartbeat, letting it take her into its rhythm, become part of the steadiness, the life, the vitality, that emanated from this man.

  His hand strayed lower, spreading out, as though laying claim. Not really touching her intimately. Not going low enough to do that. But the tips of his fingers rested beneath the elastic of her bikini underwear.

  And she liked it. A lot.

  Reaching farther, she linked her hands at the middle of his back, flattening her breasts against his chest. Her nipples hardened. Needing more.

  How she’d ever thought she was content, satisfied, fulfilled without touch she had no idea.

  Rick’s head lowered, his mouth descending to her neck. He didn’t kiss her. That would be wrong. He just touched her. With his lips.

  And in slow motion, very slow motion, her mouth found the musky warmth of his neck. Felt. And lingered. Not quite tasting.

  She could feel the beat of his heart, pounding harder. Energy coursed through her, and yet her body was heavy, forcing her to lean into him. Her hands, her mouth, couldn’t be still.

  Caressing his back, Erin knew a rightness that couldn’t be denied. Couldn’t be stopped. The moment was hers. For the moment, he was hers. A soul to connect to. To comfort. To know.

  He’d trusted her with his most profound confidences.

  And she’d given him hers.

  As her hands moved lower, meeting the denim of his jeans, he shifted back into the corner of the couch, bringing her more fully on top of him. And her thigh brushed against his pelvis.

  And encountered his hardness.

  Body enflaming, Erin lay still. On a precipice. Everything about her, around her, was changing.

  Had changed.

  She lifted her head, meeting Rick’s gaze. He was staring at her, and his eyes seemed to seethe. With desire and independence. With determination and doubt.

  And he continued to hold his gaze steady on hers as he moved the few inches it took to join his lips to hers.

  The first touch was tentative, and then nothing was. As Rick’s lips absorbed hers, he became, in the kiss, everything he pretended not to be outside it. His mouth opened, demanding, taking. Giving. His tongue wouldn’t let her retreat, wouldn’t let her be tentative or timid or virginal. He expected all of her.

  And so she gave it. Gave him more than she knew she had. A passion, a fire, a life she’d never experienced. His hunger made her hungry. His intensity made her intense. The wildness riding through her was foreign, frightening. And exhilarating.

  She’d be his slave. Do anything he wanted her to do. Take off whatever clothes he wanted her to take off. Allow him access. Control. Complete penetration.

  He was leaving in the morning. To face danger without protection, on a mission from which he might not return. He was doing it for her. And for his mentally handicapped friend. He was going to try to take back the small portion that was all he believed was left of him.

  His fingers, roaming along her side, grazed her breast. Erin moaned.

  He needed her. She would fight to the death for him. And…

  “No…”

  Her throat ached from the force she’d had to use to get the word out. “We…can’t,” she said, and wasn’t surprised when Rick immediately released her. For all his crimes, real or imagined, Rick was not a violent man. Or a mean one.

  “I… You’re my client,” she said, sitting upright, facing the lake that she couldn’t see but knew was out there, just beyond her window. “It’s unethical.” She was breathing hard, having difficulty speaking, but these things had to be said. “We shouldn’t make this any more challenging than it already is.”

  Rick stood, facing the lake, his back to her. “I’d like to apologize,” he said, and before she could tell him there was no need, he went on. “But I can’t.” He glanced over his shoulder at her, then reached for his keys. “I’m not sorry. Except for the fact that we had to stop.”

  “You need me to be able to fight for you. You need Sheriff Johnson and everyone else to trust me. I’m your only hope with the law at this point.”

  “I know.”

  “If we— It’s not illegal, but it could cause ethical questions, give the prosecution an edge if they knew….”

  Nodding, he said, “Keep on eye on Steve for me.”

  “Of course.” She told herself not to ask the next question, but she had to. “Are you angry with me?”

  He spun around then. “Hell, no!” His eyes were blazing, but not with anger. “How could I possibly be angry? But I will be if you don’t play it safe. You’re in danger, Erin. Because of me. If anyone asks, you don’t know where I am. You know nothing. If they find out about Tom, sell me up the river. I can take care of myself. Just stay safe. Insist on the guard out there. Don’t go anywhere alone. Do everything the sheriff tells you. Understand?”

  She couldn’t promise to do as he asked, but this much she could give him. “I understand.”

  “Good.”

  It was the last thing he said to her. Without even a farewell, he was gone.

  30

  After Rick’s early-morning meeting with Kelly Chapman, Tom Watkins boarded the southbound flight without incident. His government ID was still valid. Just before the plane took off, he holed himself up in the airline’s lounge facility and, using the scrambled phone, put in a call to Sophie Segura.

  “Hey, baby, it’s me.”

  “Tom?”

  “Ye
ah, I can’t talk, but I have a favor.”

  “Sure.”

  “Meet me in Miami this afternoon.” She had her own boat. Regularly traveled from her home, which was on a small island off the southeast coast of Florida.

  A boat that always had guns. Ammunitions were the family business. No Segura was ever without merchandise. At least for personal use. Rick needed a gun.

  And he had to have her put him in touch with her husband. He had to know why Segura was willing to do business with a rumored traitor.

  Sophie named an out-of-the-way spot, more of a dock than a marina, and agreed to be there by two.

  “I’m already wet, just thinking about it….” Her voice dropped to a needy whisper.

  “Save it for me, lover.”

  Rick rang off, wondering if he’d be able to get hard long enough to obtain everything he needed from the woman.

  Or rather, if he could do so without thinking of Erin Morgan. Without bringing Erin into the depths with him.

  Temple, Michigan

  Monday, October 25, 2010

  As soon as Rick Thomas had left the small holding room at the sheriff’s office that Erin had set up for our interview, I’d written some notes for my report and then walked the short distance to my friend’s office, where she and Maggie were supposed to be at work turning chaos into order. I’d packed my black pantsuit that went with the low-heeled pumps and was glad I had.

  I enjoyed the walk. Temple was a bit older than Chandler. And unique with its vantage point above the lake. Still, I was anxious to join Maggie and Erin. Not because I worried about their safety; many of the building’s other occupants were in residence and the sheriff had men assigned to Erin around the clock until further notice. But because I’d barely had time to introduce my young charge to Erin before I had to leave her in Erin’s care. I didn’t want Maggie feeling deserted.

  Caylee was in school. But from what I understood, she’d be with us that afternoon. I’d offered to speak with her parents or, better yet, to speak with all three Fitzgeralds together. It’s what I would’ve done at home in Chandler—made that offer, I mean. Caylee had called her folks, left a message, but so far I’d had no response to my proposal.