by Nora Roberts
neighbor’s or a public place and call the police.”
“He’s not here.” She hated herself for being so scattered she was unable to make herself clear. “I think he knows where she is, Michael. She left a message on the machine this morning. If he was here when she called, or he played it back, then he knows. I tried to call her, but she didn’t answer.”
“I’ll take care of it. Get out of the loft and call the cops.” He hung up before she could respond.
“Kesselring, if you’ve finished talking to your sweetheart—”
“Let’s move.” Michael interrupted his partner’s complaint and started for the door at a run.
“What the—”
“Move,” Michael repeated. He was already peeling out when McCarthy jumped in the car.
Chapter Thirty-Six
WHEN EMMA WALKED into the lobby of the Beverly Wilshire, it was nearly four. During her long afternoon on the beach, she’d made one decision. She was going to call her father. He would have heard about Jane’s death, and Emma had no doubt he would have tried to contact her.
It wouldn’t be an easy conversation, but a necessary one. It was time she told him that she had left Drew. Perhaps it was also time to take advantage of the press that was always so eager for gossip. Once the separation was made public, she might break out of her perpetual daze. Maybe she’d stop being afraid.
As she walked down the hall toward her room, she dug in her bag for her key. Her fingers brushed the warm metal of the gun. She was going to stop carrying it, she told herself. She was going to stop looking over her shoulder.
She opened the door of the suite, and frowned. The drapes shut out all but the faintest light. She hated the dark, and silently cursed the maid. Pushing herself forward, she let the door close behind her as she went toward the lamp.
Then the music started. Her fingers froze on the switch. That eerie, unmistakable intro that haunted her dreams. The murdered Lennon began to sing in a crisp staccato.
Across the room the light flashed on. She could only whimper and stumble back. For a moment a face floated into her mind, blurred, but almost, almost recognizable. Then she saw Drew.
“Hello, Emmy luv. Have you missed me?”
She broke out of her trance and raced for the door. He was quick. He’d always been quick. One sweep of his hand knocked her aside and sent her bag flying. Still smiling, he turned the security lock and fixed the chain.
“We want our privacy, don’t we?”
His voice, pleasant, quietly loving, sent ice skidding up and down her back. “How did you find me?”
“Oh, we have our ways, Emma. Let’s say there’s a bond between you and me. Didn’t I tell you I’d always find you?”
Behind her the music kept playing. It was a nightmare. She wanted to believe it. She had them often, the music, the dark. She would wake up, sweating cold as she was sweating now. And it would be over.
“Guess what I received, Emma? A petition for divorce. Now, that wasn’t very nice, was it? Here I’ve been worried sick about you for two weeks. Why, you might have been kidnapped.” He grinned. “You might have been murdered like your poor little brother.”
“Don’t.”
“Ah, it upsets you to talk about him, doesn’t it? The music upsets you, too. Shall I turn it off?”
“Yes.” She’d be able to think if he turned the music off. She’d know what to do.
“All right, then.” He took a step toward the recorder, then stopped. “No, I think we’ll leave it on. You have to learn to face things, Emma. I’ve told you that before, haven’t I?”
Her teeth had begun to chatter. “I am facing them.”
“Good. That’s good. Now, the first thing you’re going to do is call that fancy lawyer of yours and tell him you’ve changed your mind.”
“No.” Fear was storming through her system so that she could only whisper. “I’m not going back with you.”
“Of course you are. You belong with me. You’ve had your little snit, Emma, don’t make it harder on yourself.” When she shook her head, he let out a long, gusty sigh. Then his hand snaked out, quick as a whip, and smashed across her face. Blood filled her mouth as she slammed into a table, sending a lamp crashing to the floor.
Through a haze of pain she saw him coming toward her. And she began to scream. He kicked her full in the stomach, cutting off the screams and her air. When she tried to curl up, he began to hit her, slowly, methodically.
This time, she fought back. Her first blow glanced off his chin, but surprised him enough to give her time to crawl away. She heard pounding on the door, a demand to open it. She managed to struggle to her feet and take a watery step toward the sound, when he caught her again.
“So you want to play rough, Emma?” He began to tear at her clothes, raking his nails down her skin. Her struggles only drove him on. She would be punished this time, in a way she would never forget.
Emma heard someone pleading, begging, promising. She wasn’t aware it was her own voice. She hardly felt the blows as he continued to beat her. This time he used his fists, forgetting everything but the need to pay her back.
“Did you think you could walk out on me, bitch? Did you think I’d let you ruin everything I worked for? I’ll kill you first.”
Her body was a jelly of pain. Even the effort to breathe cut through her like dozens of dull-edged knives. It had never been this bad before. Even at its worst, it had never been this bad. Groggy, she grabbed a chair leg and tried to haul herself up. Wet with her own blood, her fingers slipped off.
She stopped fighting. There was no strength left to hold him off. She felt him lift her, then send her flying. Something snapped in her chest and she screamed again against the sickening pain. Half conscious, she lay sprawled.
“Bitch. Whore bitch.” He was panting as he started for her again. Dimly she saw that blood was running from his nose. His eyes were glazed and wild. She knew, looking at his face, that he had crossed some line. This time a beating wouldn’t be enough. He would pound on her until she was dead. Weeping, she tried to crawl.
The snap of his belt made her flinch. Her sobs rose up into wails as she pulled herself across the rug. He continued to snap the belt, snap it to the beat of the music as he stalked her. She collapsed. The jolt screamed through her ribs until her vision wavered.
She heard someone calling for her, shouting her name. Splintering wood. Was that the sound of splintering wood or was her body just breaking in two? The first slash of the belt across her back had her arm flinging out. Her fingers brushed metal. Blindly, she closed her hand around the gun. Choking on sobs, she pushed herself over. She saw his face as he raised the belt again.
She felt the gun jerk up in her hand.
Michael broke in the door in time to see Drew stagger back, a look of puzzlement on his face. Weaving, he lifted the belt again. Michael’s weapon was drawn, but before he could use it, Emma fired again, and again. She continued to press the trigger long after it clicked uselessly, long after he was sprawled at her feet. She held the trigger down, aiming at empty air.
“Good Jesus,” McCarthy said.
“Keep those people out.” Michael moved toward her. Peeling off his jacket, he wrapped it around her. Her clothes were torn to bits and soaked with blood. She didn’t move, only continued to fire the empty gun. When he tried to take it, he found her hand convulsed on it.
“Emma. Baby. It’s all right now. It’s over now.” Gently he brushed at her hair. He had to fight to keep his rage buried. Her face was a mass of blood. One eye was already swollen shut. The other was glassy with shock. “Give me the gun now, baby. You don’t need it anymore. You’re okay.” He shifted so that she could see his face. Taking a scrap of what had been her blouse, he dabbed at the blood. “It’s Michael. Can you hear me, Emma? It’s Michael. It’s going to be okay.”
Her breath began to hitch violently. Shudders wracked her. He gathered her close, rocking while her body shook. Her hand was limp when he
slipped the gun from it. She didn’t cry. Michael knew the sound she made as he held her couldn’t be called grieving. She moaned, low animal moans that died into whimpering.
“Ambulance is on its way.” After a cursory check of Drew’s body, McCarthy crouched beside Michael. “Messed her up pretty good, didn’t he?”
Michael continued to rock her, but he turned his head and studied Drew Latimer for a long time. “Too bad you can only die once.”
“Yeah.” McCarthy shook his head as he rose. “The sonofabitch is still holding the belt.”
BRIAN WATCHED THE clouds race across the sky as he sat beside Darren’s grave. Each time he came to sit in the high, sweet grass, he hoped he would find peace. He never had. But he always came back.
He’d let the wildflowers grow where his son was buried. He preferred them to the small marble marker that carried only a name and two dates. The years were pitifully close.
His parents were buried nearby. Though he had known them for decades, he remembered his son with more clarity.
From the cemetery he could see plowed fields, spaces of rich brown cutting through the rich green. And the spotted cows grazing. It was early in the day. Mornings in Ireland were the best for sitting, dreaming. The light was soft and pearly, as he’d never seen it anywhere but Ireland. Dew was glittering on the grass. The only sounds he could hear were the bark of a dog and the distant hum of a tractor.
When Bev saw him, she stopped. She hadn’t known he would be there. Through the years she’d been careful to come only when she knew Brian was elsewhere. She hadn’t wanted to see him there, beside the grave where they had both stood so many years before.
She nearly turned away. But there was something in the way he sat, his hands resting lightly on his knees, his eyes looking out over the green hills. He looked too much alone.
They were both too much alone.
She walked quietly. He never heard her, but when her shadow fell over him, he turned his head. She said nothing, but laid the spray of lilacs she carried beneath the marble marker. On a sigh, she knelt.
In silence they listened to the wind in the high grass, and the distant purr of the tractor.
“Do you want me to leave?” he asked her.
“No.” Gently, she brushed a hand over the soft grass that covered their son. “He was beautiful, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.” He felt the tears well up and fought them back. It had been a long time since he’d wept here. “He looked so much like you.
“He had the best of each of us.” Her voice quiet, she sat back on her heels. Like Brian, she looked toward the hills. They had changed so little in all these years. Life continued. That was the hardest lesson she had learned. “He was so bright, so full of life. He had your smile, Bri. Yours and Emma’s.”
“He was always happy. Whenever I think of him I remember that.”
“My biggest fear was that I would forget somehow, that his face, and his memory, would fade with time. But it hasn’t. I remember how he laughed, how it would just roll out of him. I’ve never heard a prettier sound. I loved him too much, Bri.”
“You can’t love too much.”
“Yes, you can.” She fell silent for a time. A cow began to low. Oddly, the sound made her smile. “Do you think it’s just lost? That everything he was and might have been just vanished, just went away when he died?”
“No.” He looked at her then. “No, I don’t.”
His answer made all the difference. “I did at first. Perhaps that’s why I lost myself for so long. It hurt so much to think that all that beauty and joy had been here for such a short time. But then I knew that wasn’t true. He’s still alive in my heart. And in yours.”
He looked away, toward the distant, shadowed hills. “There are times I want to forget. Times I do whatever I can to forget. It’s the worst kind of hell to outlive your own child.”
“When you do, you know nothing that happens to you will ever be as painful. We had him for two years, Bri. That’s what I like to remember. You were a wonderful father.” She reached out for him, took his hands. When his fingers tightened on hers, she held on. “I’m sorry I wouldn’t share that pain with you the way I shared the joy. I was selfish with it, as if holding it to myself would make it only mine. But it’s ours, the way he was ours.”
He said nothing. Tears were clogging his throat. Understanding, she turned to him. Holding each other, they sat in silence as the sun rose higher and dried the dew on the tall grass.
“I should never have left you,” he murmured.
“We left each other.”
“Why?” He tightened his grip. “Why?”
“I’ve thought about it so many times. I think we couldn’t bear to be happy. That we felt, or I did, that if we could be happy after he was gone, it would be like dishonoring him. It was wrong.”
“Bev.” He turned his face into her hair. “Don’t go. Please don’t go.”
“No,” she said quietly. “I won’t.”
They walked, hands linked, back to the farmhouse. The sun shone bright through the windows as they went upstairs. They undressed each other, stopping only for long, quiet kisses, gentle caresses.
He wasn’t the young man who had once loved her. Nor was she the same woman. They were more patient now. They didn’t tumble onto the bed, but lowered slowly, knowing each moment was precious when so many had been lost.
And yet, though they had changed, their bodies moved easily together. When she reached for him the years seemed to vanish. With his mouth pressed against her throat, he drew in the familiar scent, the familiar taste.
Even as passion built, they glided along its edges, unwilling to be ruled by it as they once had been. Her lips curved as she ran a hand through his hair. As her body heated she sighed as much in contentment as desire. With her eyes half closed, she let her hands run over him, remembering every angle, every plane of his body. Passion, released, flowed into them like a fine wine.
She welcomed him, opening and arching. When they joined, she wept. Bringing his mouth to her, she tasted his tears mixed with her own.
Later, they lay quiet, her head tucked in the curve of his shoulder. She wondered that it should be so easy, and feel so right. It had been nearly twenty years. Half of her life had been spent apart from him. Yet they were here, bodies damp from loving. She could feel his heart thud under the palm of her hand.
“It’s so much like it used to be,” he said, echoing her thoughts. “And yet it’s so different.”
“I didn’t want this to happen. All this time I’ve worked so hard to stay away from you.” She lifted her head, looked in his eyes. “I never wanted to love this much again.”
“It’s only ever been right with you. Don’t ask me to let you go again. I wouldn’t make it this time.”
She brushed his hair, with its first few sprinkles of gray, away from his brow. “I was always afraid that you didn’t really need me, certainly not the way I needed you.”
“You were wrong.”
“Yes, I know I was.” She lowered her head to kiss him. “We’ve wasted a lot of time, Bri. I’d like you to come home.”
They stayed the night there, in the old bed, talking, making love. It was late when the phone rang. Brian answered it only because there was no other way to end the interruption.
“Hello.”
“Brian McAvoy?”
“Yes, speaking.”
“This is Michael Kesselring. I’ve been trying to track you down.”
“Kesselring.” He regretted saying the name the moment Bev stiffened beside him. “What is it?”
“It’s Emma.”
“Emma?” He sat up quickly, mouth dry as dust. Bev’s hand was on his shoulder, squeezing. “Has something happened to her?”
Michael knew from experience it was best to say it all quickly, but he had a difficult time forming the words. “She’s in the hospital, here in L.A. She’s—”
“An accident? Has she had an accident?”
“No, she was beaten pretty badly. I’ll explain when you get here.”
“Beaten? Emma’s been beaten? I don’t understand.”
“The doctors are working on her. They tell me she’s going to be okay, but she’s going to need you.”
“We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
Bev was already up and pulling on her clothes. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. She’s in the hospital in L.A.” He swore,