She caught him behind the ambulance as the EMT and paramedics loaded Luz Maria. The flashing light bar pulsed a lurid intermittent glow.
Leaning close to him, she said, “I want whoever did this caught. For your sister, and for Joe Rozinski, because you can’t tell me all this stuff is not related.”
He looked her in the face, his dark eyes narrowing. “And you think I don’t want the bastard caught? How the hell can you imagine I—”
“I think you’re conflicted. You’ve been protecting Luz Maria your whole life; we both know it. You’ll think long and hard before you implicate her, even to put the man who did this behind bars.”
He said nothing, but she could feel words warring within him: arguments he didn’t dare raise with so many ears around them. Yet the heat of his regard seared her flesh like a hell-hot August sun.
“Just so you know,” she told him, “the decision’s out of your hands. I’m going to give a full and accurate accounting. I have to, to be able to look myself in the mirror—and to stand up at Joe’s services with my head high.”
He nodded slowly, then turned away, leaving her to shiver in the absence of his gaze.
As he climbed inside the ambulance, she noticed a figure standing across the street, a tall man wearing dark sweats, who stared at her with single-minded purpose, his arms folded across his chest as if he were either chilled or angry.
“Beau?” she called out, walking toward him. “Beau LaRouche, is that you?”
As she stepped into the street, a rust-spotted station wagon hit its brakes. She stopped short, then waited for the driver to finish cursing her in Spanish and ease past the emergency vehicles.
By the time she looked up again, Beau had vanished. Leaving a sick feeling in her stomach and a question roaring through her mind.
Who was she to pass judgment on Jack for wanting to protect his sister? She had only worked with LaRouche for the past nine months, yet she’d failed to report what had happened at her house yesterday morning. And even now, with his earlier threats toward Jack ripping through her brain, she mentally balked at the idea of telling the police about his presence here tonight.
Because he’s not the guilty party, her conscience supplied. There’s no way he hurt Luz Maria or set the fire he was working to put out.
Yet she doubted that LuzMaria had set ablaze her own brother’sapartment,either. Butthatstill didn’t prove her innocence any more than Reagan’s rationale did Beau’s.
Her first lie was the hardest, Reagan realized. Her heart pounded out a quick tattoo, but she forced herself to look the older cop straight in the eye.
“Where’d you get that bruise?” he repeated, his voice deceptively casual as he pointed to her cheekbone.
She touched her face reflexively. “I guess it’s from that guy we chased, the one we saw hanging around Jack’s sister’s window.”
After that, the slope grew steadily slicker, making it increasingly difficult for the truth to keep its footing. But that was the way of lies, thought Reagan. Once even the smallest was uttered, that cosmic mote of falsehood took on weight and gravity until, before one knew it, it was spinning on its own. After the first, she had to tell more, leading the officers away from Beau to focus on tonight’s ordeal with Sergio and Luz Maria.
So much for the self-righteous bull she’d thrown at Jack about her “full and accurate accounting.”
Though the younger of the two cops didn’t seem to notice, the thick-necked veteran honed in on her nervousness as the night wore on. He must have passed word to the head of the task force on his arrival, too; either that or the FBI’s special agent in charge had some sort of sixth sense. Whichever was the case, the man’s questions grew increasingly more pointed, until the sharp-faced, sharp-eyed man sat across from her at her kitchen table and demanded to know why she had told them earlier that she was not involved with Jack Montoya.
“I wasn’t,” she insisted as she watched yet another gloved technician leave her bedroom. “I did tell you, though, that I’d known him a long time ago, when both of us were kids. And since all of this started, it’s gotten weird, you know?”
The agent’s skin was so white it nearly glowed in the room’s dimness, so white that though his card read R.J. Lambert, she had long since mentally renamed him Casper. “Has it gotten so ‘weird’ that you’ve forgotten that the man might be involved in a terrorist organization, to say nothing of your own captain’s death? I’m not just pulling this idea out of thin air, Miss Hurley. We’ve subpoenaed Montoya’s records, bank and credit-card statements, phone bills, all of that—and I can tell you, this is very real, and if you don’t cooperate fully, you could be making one hell of a mistake.”
With every syllable he banged a big gold class ring on the table, as if he were attempting to subliminally telegraph his authority to her. Her dislike deepening with each tap, Reagan decided he was even worse than Detective Dough Gut.
Bluffing, she decided. The jerk was bluffing about his “evidence,” piling on intimidation, figuring he could scare her into breaking down.
“Jack stopped by to express his condolences and see how I was doing.” It was none of their business that she’d invited him to stay the night—and she didn’t even want to think about the humiliating way she’d thrown herself at him after hearing of Joe’s death. “When he left, he forgot his cell phone. And then tonight—or last night, I should say—I get this call on it, and it’s a woman screaming. I heard how frightened she was. You think I should ignore that? You think you could tell me how?”
Though he never got around to answering her question, Casper and his cohorts strung her out for hours, leading her back over the rough terrain of her account whenever another of the team arrived. Trying to trip her up, she figured. The investigators seemed especially interested in what she could tell them about Sergio: what he looked like, what he’d said—especially the part about following the money—and whether he had given any indication that he and Jack were well acquainted. And not a one of them would give her any news on LuzMaria’s condition, no matter how often Reagan asked.
Though the sun was by now peeking through the windows, and Peaches had long since come and gone—taking poor Frank with her for some warm milk and a bath—the interviews dragged on. Finally, Reagan’s patience reached its end.
“We’re finished now,” she told an ATF guy whose prematurely white hair put her in mind of the actor Peter Graves.
“Says who?” he asked as he glanced at his partners. “I thought we were going back over the events leading to your finding Miss Montoya in your bedroom.”
With her hand rubbing at the stiffness in her neck, she looked longingly at the now-empty coffeepot. “You’ll have to get it from your colleagues, because unless you’re arresting me, I’m out of here. I’m going to the hospital to find out about Luz Maria.”
The man threw up his hands in a pretense of surrender. “Look, I’ll tell you what. We’ll call there, check on her ourselves, and let you know how things are going.”
“I guess you misunderstood me. You’ve collected your evidence, gotten your pictures, and picked my brain until it’s bleeding. Now I want every one of you out of my house.”
“You don’t want to get this cleared up now?” Casper interrupted, banging once more with his ring.
Reagan felt her temper spike past reason. “Knock on that freaking table once more and you are going to arrest me—for disorderly conduct when I cuss your lily-white ass into traction.”
That got a laugh out of the ATF guy and a frazzled-looking older woman from the state fire marshal’s office. Reagan got the feeling that neither was a big fan of the ring-banging routine.
For whatever happy reason, their reaction seemed to take a little of the wind from Casper’s sails. After the obligatory spiel warning her about the gravity of the case, the importance of giving complete and accurate statements to agents of the government, and how now might be a super time to upgrade locks on her doors and windows, they fina
lly packed their things and vanished.
Leaving her alone in an all-too-silent house.
She didn’t see them out. Didn’t even get up from her kitchen table. Instead, she laid her head down on her crossed arms and closed her eyes against the staccato images that stuttered through her mind.
The apartment building blazing on the television news; the fire truck as she imagined it, heading out without her; the grill of the green car racing toward her; the dead woman on the freeway, her twisted limbs contrasting sharply with Luz Maria’s carefully arranged, blanketed form.
Carefully arranged, mused Reagan. As if the one who’d brought her here had cared about his victim.
The next thing she knew, an alarm was ringing and she was coughing—choking on air thick and bitter with hot ash. Her lungs seized as moisture streamed from both her nose and eyes.
She flailed her limbs—or tried to—in an attempt to get away. But something was confining her, preventing her escape, even as the wall of smoke pulsed orange with the fast-approaching flames.
She couldn’t drag in breath enough to scream. Couldn’t move or call for help or—
Heart thudding wildly, Reagan woke up blinking in a warm, yellow streak of sunlight shining through her kitchen window. The telephone was ringing, as she realized that it had been, off and on, for quite some time. That must have been what she’d heard as she’d slept.
Still shaking from the dream, she jerked her head toward the microwave. But the digital display was flashing 12:00, so she focused on her watch instead and saw that it read 10:37. Damn it. She had meant to drive straight to the hospital, to check on Luz Maria.
Was that Jack calling? God, she should already be there with him, as she’d promised. How could she have allowed herself to drift off to sleep?
She rose too quickly, knocking over her chair as she reached for the wall-mounted cordless telephone.
As soon as she said hello, the caller said, “Rea—Reagan, is that you?”
She nearly dropped the receiver as her pulse pounded in her ears. All traces of fatigue were swept away on a fresh surge of adrenaline. “Matthias? Matthias, oh my God, is Mom—? Has something happened to my mother?”
“No, Reagan.”
At least her stepfather didn’t bristle over her calling him by his first name, the way he always had. Maybe after all these years, he’d decided it didn’t matter. Or maybe he was too upset to care.
“Your mother…your mother’s healthy enough,” he said, then cleared his throat. “It’s just…she hasn’t been herself since you called the other night. Why would you? After all these years—it was after four A.M., you know that? You might have given her a stroke.”
“I thought she’d want to know.” Reagan felt her own blood pressure rising at the censure in his voice. Why had she imagined that he might have changed? “Or would you rather she found out on the news or in the papers?”
“What was it you said to her? What was it that couldn’t wait ’til morning?”
“You mean she didn’t tell you?” asked Reagan, thinking that Matthias Wooten wasn’t the only one who hadn’t changed. She’d thought that by this time her mother would have gotten therapy or something, maybe even learned to cope with the past all on her own. “Joe Rozinski died on duty, at a fire.”
“I think I read about it—he was that friend, wasn’t he? That one you went to stay with?”
“He was my captain,” she answered, her anger boiling over. “And my father’s. He was the one who broke the news to Mom and me. And the one who finished raising me when the two of you couldn’t get the job done.”
Her stepfather swore softly, as though he didn’t want someone in the house to hear. “Why’d you have to go and dredge up all that old stuff for her? We were all set to go on this three-week cruise, everything first-class and—”
“Didn’t you hear me? I said the man was dead, not fucking playing possum to screw up your vacation.” Reagan tried hard never to let her language degenerate to this point, but she was so far beyond incensed that hot tears coursed down her cheeks and the warm brick of her kitchen had just dissolved in a red haze. “For some reason, I thought that maybe you and my mother had gotten past thinking the whole world revolves around you and your damned money—”
“Don’t you understand?” he interrupted. “Whenever the phone rings at night, whenever a strange car pulls up at the curb, your mother starts shaking, thinking it’s about you. That it’s you who’s died on duty. You whose funeral she’ll have to live through.”
Her mother thought about her, even worried? The same mother who hadn’t bothered calling after the attacks on 9/11, when so many firefighters had been killed?
“But I imagine you’ve always known that she would suffer,” Matthias went on, the rising emotion in his words threatening to blister her ears if not her heart. “You knew it from the day you told us you meant to become a firefighter like your father. You knew it, but you simply didn’t give a damn.”
He slammed the phone down hard. The second time she’d been hung up on in as many days.
But on this occasion, she asked herself, had both her mother and her stepfather had some reason for their anger? Was it possible that Reagan’s decision to throw herself into suppression firefighting had been less about honoring her father than about punishing her mother? Or were Matthias and Georgina Wooten simply another pair of self-absorbed, pretentious boomers, caught up in the world of who-owned-what?
For a lot of years, that had been the easy answer, but Reagan was no longer quite so sure it was the right one.
After letting out a deep breath, she picked up the chair she’d knocked down, then found some clean clothes she’d left folded on the dryer—a small mercy, since there was no way she was going back into her room to face that mess. She made time to shower quickly, brush her teeth, and dry her hair, then added a little makeup to counteract the walking-dead look of the pathetic stranger in the mirror.
But lipstick couldn’t cover her unanswered questions, no more than a few haphazard swipes with her mascara could disguise the haunted look in her blue eyes.
Or her own uneasy thoughts about her family…and the sad, misshapen forms that love could take.
Chapter Eighteen
Though fatigue had long-since blurred his vision, Jack stared hard at the doctor. “You’re sure about this? I’d rather hear the whole truth than the sugar-coated version.”
Back when veteran obstetrician/gynecologist Danielle Fischer had worked out of Hermann Memorial, the med students had christened her “The Hummingbird” for her habit of rushing in for ER consultations at lightning speed, then tossing off dead-on diagnoses in the wake of her retreat. But this morning, outside the private waiting room where Jack’s mother and aunt were ensconced, Dr. Fischer’s plump body had gone dead still, and her blue-eyed gaze remained unflinching, even if she did frown at Jack’s suggestion.
“I don’t have time to deal in half-truths, Dr. Montoya. The pregnancy your sister mentioned to you—I’m afraid she’s suffered a miscarriage. But there was no bruising or abrasions to indicate a sexual assault. No semen was collected either. It’s possible the pregnancy’s loss was triggered by your sister’s accident, but that’s not necessarily the case. I’m afraid we’ll never know for certain.”
Jack freed the breath he had been holding. As bad as things were, at least Luz Maria hadn’t been raped. “Was it…was it a complete miscarriage, or will you need to—”
Dr. Fischer shook her head, and her wiry iron-gray bob flipped back and forth. “Nature’s taken its course. I—I’m sorry for your family’s loss, especially under these circumstances. I was told your sister was awake a little earlier, while the neurologist examined her. Were you able to speak with her?”
Jack shook his head, gritting his teeth. “By the time I was allowed to go in, she was asleep again.”
The very fact that she’d awakened was a good sign, especially since she’d responded appropriately to simple questions and c
ommands. But he wouldn’t feel right until he talked to her himself, and he was still pissed that the special agent in charge had refused to allow a nurse to interrupt the interview to tell Jack of his sister’s change in status.
Fortunately, Dr. Fischer didn’t ask him to explain his comment. She had already begun rattling off the items printed on the photocopied list of aftercare instructions that she had foisted on him. Once finished, she zipped off—in typical Hummingbird fashion—to another patient upstairs.
Still standing outside the private waiting room, Jack rubbed his gritty eyes and thought of walking to the cafeteria for more coffee. He hesitated, not only because his nerves felt raw from all he’d drunk already, but because he knew he was avoiding going back inside the little room where his mother and Tía Rosario waited. Or more specifically, because he didn’t know what to say about his sister’s pregnancy.
Now that it was over, was there any point in telling them? Tempted as he was to avoid the whole difficult conversation, Jack couldn’t make himself believe that silence was the right thing. During his years of practice, he had seen all too many of his patients’ toxic secrets explode out of the past, with devastating consequences. He’d gradually come to the conclusion that when the truth was locked away in darkness, it put out malignant roots.
Why not come clean now, while his mother was still thanking God that her daughter would most likely make a full recovery? Then, after he broke the news of her miscarriage to his sister, she wouldn’t face the added burden of hiding her emotions from their family. Wouldn’t that be best for Luz Maria?
But something about the idea gnawed at him. For one thing, though his mother and her sister had always supported each other, they were fierce competitors as well, with each worshiping at the altar of her family’s respectability. Would the childless and incurably old-fashioned Tía Rosario lord it over his mother to the end of time that her daughter had gotten pregnant out of wedlock? Whether or not she did, his mother would likely be furious that he had “disgraced” her by sharing the information with his aunt. Jack wished he had a sounding board to tell him whether his sleep-deprived, stressed-out brain had thought through all the implications.
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