That, if Suzie had shared with them, would have been what Emma had needed to win her conviction. But then Suzie would have exposed Kyle...
“She was already half in love with the kid, though she wasn’t acting on it,” the officer said. “Bill guessed that she had feelings for Kyle, but other than that one time with Harris, she wasn’t unfaithful to her husband. She and Kyle didn’t start anything until after she divorced Bill and Kyle had turned nineteen.”
Jayden had heard enough. He’d been had. Emma had been right. He’d refused to turn his back on Bill, had insisted on being there for the guy...because he hadn’t been there for Emory?
Or just because the older man had been that good at seeming sincere? He’d really believed Bill had changed. That the man had been honoring his second chance.
Not sure to do with that, Jayden had never felt more lost. Emma could have died because he’d been wrong...“And when Bill got out from prison, and found out they were still together, he started in again,” Emma said. The conclusion was obvious.
“No.” Chantel’s words yanked Jayden’s steely gaze straight to her. He couldn’t look away. “Bill left them alone. Except that he started sending Suzie cash every week. Turns out the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, even though they hardly knew each other. She didn’t tell Kyle about the money. Said she knew he wouldn’t want them to have it, but they needed it so badly. Of course, he found out and couldn’t stand that Suzie was taking money from his father, her ex-husband, and he got it in his head that she still loved Bill. He was as jealous of his dad as his dad was of him. The night he found out about the money was the first time he hit her.”
Wait. “So Bill hasn’t been near Suzie since he got out?”
“She says she hasn’t seen him since he went to prison.”
He’d been right about Bill.
Dear God, he’d been right. Weak with relief, and sad, too, Jayden stood there, allowing himself to give himself a little credit.
“But the lipstick...?” Emma said, frowning.
“Bill admitted that he left that threat on your back door,” Chantel said as a flash from a news crew’s camera went off, not far from them.
Jayden stepped closer to Emma, keeping her out of sight, as officers moved in the yard, and police cars, many with their lights still flashing, continued to block the road.
“When Jayden started questioning him,” Chantel continued, “he thought you were gunning for him. After I got off the phone with the neighbor, I went in and told him what I knew. He let me know that he was protected by double jeopardy for whatever happened four years ago, at which time I told him that if we tied him to the current crimes, and we could, you could use the past to make his sentence more severe. I wasn’t sure you could—” she looked at Emma “—but at that point I didn’t care a whole lot about telling him the truth. That’s when he told me that all he’d done was write that note on your back door. He didn’t know Suzie was being beat up again. He was really shook up when he heard that.”
Because he’d really changed? Because the second chance mattered? Or because he thought he was the only one allowed to punish his woman? The whole thing left Jayden feeling like he needed to puke.
“So the truck running me off the road...?”
“That was Kyle.” The female officer—Jayden couldn’t make out her name badge—spoke up. “He’d gotten home before Suzie on Monday night and was threatening to beat some sense into her if she didn’t tell him where she’d been. She told him that she’d talked to you—” the officer nodded at Emma “—about Bill, thinking that that would appease him, but he knew how you’d gone after his dad and was certain that you were now gunning for him...”
“So...wait a minute,” Emma said. “None of this explains how you all came to be outside when—”
“Bill swore to us that he hadn’t seen his ex-wife since he got out and said that if anyone was hurting Suzie, it was Kyle. Said the kid had a vile temper. I’m guessing he inherited his father’s temper,” Chantel told them, “and depending on how much he witnessed between Suzie and Bill, or how much Suzie told him, he learned it at the hands of his father. He wasn’t violent with her until Bill was released and Kyle found out about the money. Bill is the one who told us Kyle and Suzie lived together. We knew the two of you were heading over to tell Suzie that Bill was locked up. I tried to call to warn you. When you didn’t pick up, I brought a backup team just to be safe. When we first arrived, Kyle had the three of you on the couch. Protocol said we had to call in a hostage team to try to talk him down, but before the team got here, he had Suzie by the neck. I made the call to shoot at first opportunity...”
Emma shook her head. Frowning.
“But the baseball caps...”
“Suzie works at a printing shop,” Chantel said. “They do promotional items for businesses.”
“Like hats,” Emma said.
Chantel nodded. “She’d given Bill one of the hats. Said he looked sexy in it. I can only assume she thought his son looked sexy in one, too.”
“They both loved her,” Emma said right about the time Jayden was ready to lose his lunch. “And sadly, she probably loved them, too.”
“I think you’re right about that,” the female officer said. And then, looking at Chantel, she said, “They’ve read her her rights, and have her in the back of the car. You want us to book her?”
Chantel looked at Emma, who shook her head. “She had a one-night affair with a neighbor. There’s no crime in that...” Emma was saying.
“She withheld evidence...talking to you as she did Monday night. Not telling you the truth about Kyle...” Chantel interrupted.
Chantel seemed to think that her words might change Emma’s mind, but Jayden knew better. No one was perfect. But Suzie was the victim here.
It wasn’t pretty. In fact, the whole thing was damned ugly.
But Emma was going to try to give her a second chance at life.
Chapter 25
She was reeling. Ready to fall over. And still standing. Maybe because it let her lean against Jayden. To stay connected to him. Emma focused on his warmth as he used the key she’d given him to open her front door. They’d pick up her car in the morning.
At that moment, just getting inside her gated community where there were no flashing lights and no more questions, from police or press, had been the priority.
Jayden had to shower. His clothes were blood-spattered. She followed him into her bedroom, watched as he dropped the bag he’d grabbed during a brief stop at his place, at the end of her bed.
In all the nights they’d spent together, he’d never brought any personal items into her home before. She’d given him a spare toothbrush—one she’d received free from the dentist—and that had been the extent of his ablutions in her home.
He hadn’t asked her if she’d wanted him to stay over. She hadn’t said she did. He’d just said, as they’d left the scene, that he had to stop by his place, and she’d nodded. Waited in the car. And seen him come out with the bag.
“I thought you were dead.” She’d told herself to leave it alone. Leave him alone. Parts of her didn’t listen. Because all of her needed him. Really needed him.
“I’m fine.” His words didn’t take away the sting.
“You might not have been if Chantel and her team hadn’t been outside.”
“It was a risk I had to take.”
Yeah, that pissed her off.
He stripped off his shirt. Walked toward her bathroom. “No, you didn’t,” she said, following him. From one vantage point, outside, she could see herself following him, all shrewlike. From another—inside—she couldn’t stop herself.
“You could have stayed on that couch. Let the news come on and show him that Bill really was in custody. That could have calmed him enough for us, or Suzie, to get him to drop the gun.”
Undoing
the button on his shorts, he gave her a nod. “It could have. I had to take the surest way to save your life.”
“You have no respect for your own.”
With his shorts undone, but still hanging off his hips, he dropped his hands. Eyes narrowed, he looked at her. “Come again?”
“You were willing to throw your life away, like it doesn’t even matter,” she told him. And then took a couple of steps closer. “Well, I have to tell you, it matters to me. And I’m sure to your parents and to a whole lot of other people, too. You might find it worthless, but it’s got value. A lot of it.”
Okay, she was coming unglued.
He didn’t grin. She had to give him credit for that. But he cocked his head, and that was just about as bad.
“You can go ahead and think you’re another Tom Smith, Jayden. You can find justification for shutting out life as some sort of penance, but I’ve got to tell you, you’re just taking the coward’s way out. Running from the tough stuff. And hurting the people who love you, too, which is even more of waste.”
“I am, am I?”
“Yes.” She’d been right about Bill Heber four years before. And she was right about this, too.
“And you can speak for the people who love me, why? You’ve spoken to them?” He took a step closer to her, not menacing at all. More like he was toying with her. Or challenging her.
She didn’t like either option.
“One of them.” So there. He thought he knew it all, and...
She stared at him. Emotionally exhausted. Not sure how much fight she had left in her.
He took a step back. Smart man.
“I don’t think I’m Mr. Smith, by the way,” Jayden told her. “Listening to Emory’s mother...she divorced him because he pretty much forced her to, but it’s clear she still loves him. That she needs him. And his daughter, and her kids...it’s like he’s robbing Peter to pay Paul, as my mother would say. And another one from her—two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“I think I’d like your mother.”
“I’m sure she’d like you, too.”
Was he ever going to take those shorts off? Get in the shower, so they could go to bed? Couldn’t he see she was rocking on her feet?
“We’ve known each other...how long?” she asked him. Because she was thinking the answer.
“I don’t know. Two years. Three maybe.”
Three and a half, and she was counting. She’d been lead on a case, opposing parole, and he’d been at the hearing, giving his report on preliminary housing interviews and recommendations. He’d recommended the woman for parole.
She’d won. The woman had hung herself in her cell six months later.
She’d been right. Professionally. Facts had surfaced after the woman’s death that had substantiated that.
But he’d been right, too. Knowing that the woman valued a second chance so much she’d taken her life when that chance had been denied her.
“What’s it matter how long we’ve known each other?” he asked, curious.
“It doesn’t.”
Or did it?
“I was wrong to lash out at you earlier today, about...you know, not being perfect. Insinuating that you were failing the real challenge—learning to forgive yourself,” she said.
“Okay.”
“I was upset, thinking you were giving yourself permission to not have a life, with Emory’s father as your justification.”
“And it would have mattered to you so much...if I was like him?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. Picked a piece of lint off the carpet. Adjusted one of the pillows on the bed.
Wondered what was in his bag. Did he normally sleep in pajamas? Had he brought them over?
“What you said about the real challenge being learning to forgive yourself...” he said, moving to the end of the bed. “You might have been right about that.”
She glanced at him. “You think so?”
“Do you?”
“I know I need to be a little better about it, myself,” she said. Poor Ms. Shadow Side. Emma had shunned a part of herself, a valid, real, worthy part, because she couldn’t handle the excruciating pain life had brought her. She’d been running away from herself. “I didn’t want my baby to die, Jayden. I already loved it so much...”
She was crying. She couldn’t believe it. Tears streamed out of her eyes and down her face. She’d almost lost Jayden that night.
Lost him before she’d even had him. Except as a play toy.
He nodded. “I know.”
“How could you know? You weren’t there. You didn’t even know me then.”
“But I know you now.”
He wasn’t touching her. The bed practically separated them, with her at the side and him at the end. And yet...she’d never felt so intimately connected to him.
“I know you now, too.” Her throat started to dry up.
Jutting his chin, he nodded again then said, “You looked like you wanted to let Suzie go tonight.”
“She made mistakes. Maybe some big ones. But she was the victim. Not the criminal. She didn’t tell me that he was the one hitting her when I spoke to her Monday night, but she could have argued that she wasn’t under obligation to testify against her spouse.”
“She’s not his spouse.”
“I think she is,” Emma told him. “I noticed that she had a wedding ring on a chain around her neck. I think we’re going to find out that they were married.”
Sometimes life was hard. Too hard. Like when you got on a motorcycle to please the man you thought you loved and your baby died. Or you tried to give a guy the life he thought he wanted and he died instead.
And sometimes life blessed you, too. Didn’t it?
“I found out something tonight,” she said, thinking about courage. About reasons to live. To get up every day. To fight for justice.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t want to know what my life would be like without you in it.”
Yep, she got another nod. She could almost have predicted that one.
“You going to take your shower?” she asked.
He didn’t nod. At least he did her that favor, saved her from one more of those infuriating nods. Stripping off his shorts, and then his briefs, he strode naked to her shower, turned on the water, and stepped inside.
Good thing, too.
He didn’t see the tears, or hear the sobs, that burst from her as she undressed, turned out the bedroom light and crawled into bed.
* * *
Jayden took a long shower. He washed away the blood of the man who’d been shot that night. And maybe a bit of the blood that he’d had on his conscience for more than a decade. He’d done Emory Smith a huge disservice.
And maybe he’d given the boy his greatest desire in life, too.
Who knew why some died young and others lived past the times their minds even knew who they were?
Jayden sure as hell didn’t.
He’d been wrong about Bill Heber—the man really had killed his own child in his wife’s body. And he’d been right, too—Bill had honored his second chance.
And loved his wife—albeit in a sick way that was unacceptable.
Jayden stayed under the spray after all but the bathroom light went out. Until the water ran cold. And then, reaching for one of the two towels he’d seen on a rack, he dried himself off. Top to bottom. Feet last.
A guy needed some things he could rely on. Some things that didn’t change.
But if he was going to be true to himself, to keep his word and honor life—both that had been and that which was left—he had to know when change was necessary and when it wasn’t. He had to have the courage to face that change. Or to turn away from it.
No matter how much it hurt, he had to make a choice.
Hanging his towel, he turned out the light. Padded across the carpet, pulled down the covers and slid beneath them.
Emma didn’t move. After several nights in bed with her, he’d grown to recognize the sound of her breathing as she slept. He didn’t hear it.
She might still be awake.
Hands shaking, he slid up against her back, pressed his chin over her shoulder and whispered in her ear. “I don’t ever want to know what life is like without you in it.”
She didn’t turn. Didn’t seem to move at all.
“I don’t know what the future brings,” he told her. “I don’t know what mistakes I might make. I don’t know if I’ll ever be an asshole again. But I know I’ll make mistakes. And be selfish sometimes... I can promise to always put your happiness before my own. I might not do it.” He had to stop. Emotion clogged his throat. He could feel every breath she took. And took them with her. Calming. Wanting to sleep.
Just lie there with her and sleep.
“I’m not always going to agree with you.” Her words entered the air on a whisper.
“I’m going to be right sometimes,” he told her.
“I don’t want to know what my life would be like without you in it.” She was crying again as she repeated her earlier words.
He turned her over, blinking away a moisture that astounded him. Scared him, even. No one had ever meant to him what she did.
In such a short time.
Or over time.
Maybe he’d been heading in her direction from that first case three years before. Maybe he’d needed more time to heal. Or to pay.
“I don’t want to live without you,” he told her, looking her straight in the eye in the darkness. He kissed her then.
Slowly. Softly. He was hard. But not needy. Not really even wanting all that much at the moment.
“I want to have a baby, though.”
He’d known, of course. She wasn’t going to be complete without knowing what it felt like to have her baby grow to fruition inside her.
Shielded in the Shadows Page 22