Blind Trust (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

T
he sound of Sam’s lamentably off-key singing tempered the low roar of the ambulance’s engine, his slow voice coming across like a dirge rather than a pick-me-up as Clint was used to. He sat with his legs crossed on the stretcher, his head swaying slowly against the wall.

“How much farther?” Clint cut in uneasily. The technician’s seat felt like a vibrating slab of concrete, and his heart raced in anticipation of something he couldn’t even name.

The driver, adorned in a bulletproof vest with the navy blue hooded jacket over it, glanced back over his shoulder. “About thirty more minutes. So far, so good.”

So far, so good. Why did that sound like a countdown to doom? Clint wondered. And why the feeling eating at his gut that something terrible was going to happen—not to him, but to Sherry?

“How well do you know those three cops we left back there?” he asked Sam.

Sam stopped humming. “Enough to know I can trust them. You don’t have to worry.”

Another moment of silence followed, this time without Sam’s singing. Clint watched him glance out the window, his eyes distant and full of thought. “She was really worried, you know,” he said finally. “She pretended not to be, but she was.”

“Sherry?”

“No, Madeline. It’s been a long time since anyone worried about me.”

A soft smile tugged at Clint’s lips. “Becoming attached to her, are you?”

Instead of the usual quip, a pale shadow intruded on Sam’s eyes, and he shrugged. “As much as a man like me can become attached.”

His grin faded, and his gaze gravitated back toward the window. “I’ve gotten attached before. It nearly destroyed two pretty decent people.”

“What? Your marriage?”

Sam swallowed and slid his hood off of his head. “Yeah. I watched her turn from a levelheaded, independent, cool woman into a basket case whenever I walked out the door. She was sure that one day I wouldn’t come back.” He sighed and shifted on the stretcher. “We both got bitter. I felt smothered and guilty, and she got angrier and angrier. The best thing we ever did for each other was call it quits.”

Clint watched Sam gaze out the window, watching the trees whirring by.

“Madeline seems different, though.” Sam’s observation was set on the edge of hope, but couched in caution.

“Sherry says she’s had a tough life. Both parents died when she was pretty young. She takes things in stride, and doesn’t dwell on things that would break most people.”

“And she’s beautiful,” Sam tacked on. He reached to the oxygen cylinder and tapped it thoughtfully. “That silky, curly hair, and those eyes …”

Clint couldn’t suppress his laughter. “Man, you’ve got it bad.”

Sam cocked a half-grin and leveled a look on his friend that held no denial. “Seen any of her cartoons?”

“Yeah. She’s pretty good. She’s one of Justin Pierce’s top animators.” He thought about Madeline, and how they had behaved toward each other, as if they each disapproved of the other’s way of caring for the common person they loved. Clint’s eyes grew serious. “I get aggravated with her, but she’s been good for Sherry. Helped her through a bad time. Sherry has a short fuse, and she explodes emotionally just as quickly as she pulls in the reins. She can’t stand to sit still and let things go by without her. That’s why it was so hard on her when I left and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. Madeline’s get-on-with-life attitude was helpful to her.”

“What do you think?” Sam’s smile left his eyes, and a shadow of doubt crept into them. “You think a woman like Madeline could be attracted to a deviate like me?”

Clint grinned. “What do
you
think? Has she run kicking and screaming away from you?”

Sam laughed. “Not since that first day.” His laughter died in a sighing expiration, and he looked down at his callused hands. “Matter of fact, she’s gotten pretty close to me a time or two. Pretty darn close. I don’t know, maybe there is hope.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised, buddy,” Clint assured his friend. “There’s always hope.”

H
ope became the thin thread that pulled Madeline from the quicksand of her depression almost as quickly as she had plunged into it. After washing her face and brushing her hair, she came into the kitchen and informed Sherry that it was time for them to look at the positive side.

“Is there one?”

“Of course.” Madeline took a deep breath and began the recitation as if she’d rehearsed it. “The chances of anyone getting through that security barricade to either Clint or Sam are pretty slim. And I trust your dad. He’ll make sure that nothing happens to them on the way out, either.”

“Give it up, Madeline,” Sherry moaned. “I’m furious at my father, and I’m not interested in hearing how good and kind and conscientious he is. He had no right to do what he’s done.”

Madeline sighed and sat on the table. “All right. We won’t talk about it then. Let’s just go watch television.”

“Television? There’s nothing on television in the middle of the day.”

Madeline cast her a disbelieving look. “Surely you can’t be serious. I realize that you spend most of your waking moments working for your brother, but you can’t have completely missed the soaps in all these years.”

“I hate to break this to you, but …”

“Then don’t. Some of the greatest stories ever woven are on the soaps. On this one I watch, there’s a girl who’s a KGB agent, but she has amnesia and thinks she’s a hairdresser. Only Russia has a little disk in her tooth, and they record everything she says or does with her CIA husband. Where do you think I get my cartoon gags? Come on, it’s great. I’ll narrate for you. It’ll get your mind off your problems.
No one
can have problems worse than those people.” Madeline hopped off of the table, starting toward the living room.

Resigned to letting Madeline’s methods of diverting her fears and anxiety help her, Sherry followed her friend out of the kitchen.

M
inutes later, Eric Grayson paced in his own kitchen in Shreveport, his hand trembling as he held the telephone. “I don’t care what she said!” he shouted to one of the police officers guarding Sherry. “Get my daughter on the telephone immediately or I’ll have your badge!”

“I’m sorry, sir. She refuses to talk to you. I tried to—”

“Don’t give me
tried!
Tell her I
order
her to get on this phone!”

The young officer muffled the phone with his hand while he relayed the message. Grayson dumped his uneaten breakfast into the garbage disposal and searched the cabinet for an antacid to stop the burning in his stomach. If he could just hear her voice, he could be ensured that she was completely safe. The timing was crucial here, and after a sleepless night going over every angle to assure Clint’s safety en route to court, it had finally occurred to him that it wasn’t Clint’s life that would be in jeopardy today. He was too well guarded, and Givanti’s cohorts wouldn’t risk the publicity of Clint’s death. But what if they managed to get Sherry? What if his daughter were used as the go-between to keep Clint from testifying honestly?

After a moment, the young officer cleared his throat. “Uh … sir. I gave her the order, and she said she didn’t care.”

“
Didn’t care
?” Grayson bellowed.

The phone was snatched from the officer’s hand, and Grayson heard his daughter say, “Give me that!”

Grayson’s blood pressure dropped a degree, along with his voice. “Sherry?”

“I have nothing to say to you, so you’re wasting your valuable time trying to call me.”

“I just wanted to see if you’re all right. I’ve been very worried about you.”

“It’s Clint you should be worried about,” she said. “He’s the one you’ve made into your pawn.” Her voice faltered. “Has he made it there yet?”

“Not yet,” her father said. “But I don’t expect them for twenty minutes or so.” He cleared his throat and looked down at the oak grain on his kitchen table. “It’s going to be all right, sweetheart, but I want you to be careful.”

“If anything happens to him, I’ll never forgive you.” She caught her breath on a sob. “I’ll probably never forgive you, anyway.”

Grayson slumped down in his chair and tried to picture the woman who had so easily forgiven him before. “When it’s over, I’ll come there and we’ll talk …”

“I have nothing to say to you,” she snapped. “You’ve used the man I love like a toy to satisfy your legal ego, and you’ve lied to me to do it. Go back to work, Dad. Go make Clint spill his guts. Then bask in the glory of the press and your awed followers. I won’t be there.”

The phone slammed in Grayson’s ear like a clap of thunder that reached straight through to his soul.

T
he telephone was cold beneath Sherry’s trembling hand, as cold as the betrayal she felt. Madeline’s soap opera wasn’t going to do the trick. She needed to think. She needed to be alone.

Pinching the bridge of her nose, she turned back to the officer who had answered the phone. “I want to go out to the pier and catch my breath.”

The young man still looked shaken by his run-in with the attorney, but he got his sunglasses. “I’ll come with you.”

She squelched the urge to scream about her need to be alone. The poor guy looked as if he’d had enough. “If you have to,” she said.

“You won’t even know I’m there,” he said. “Not unless you need me.”

Quickly, before Madeline could insist on joining her, too, she darted out the door and made her way to the pier. Treading out to the end of it, she sat down and crossed her feet. Hugging her knees to her chest, she looked out over the water. The sun hadn’t climbed very high in the sky, but already the air was sweltering. From somewhere upwind on the still lake, she heard children laughing and the sound of a ski boat farther down. She wondered what it would be like to have nothing to worry about again. Here, in this isolated section on the still water, she could almost pretend she was a lazy socialite out for a tan. So peaceful. So private. One would never know that the end of her world could be lurking just around the corner.

Would they contact her if Clint was hurt en route to court? Or would her father insist on “protecting” her again? A fresh surge of anger shot through her. What would she do if Clint didn’t come back to her?

What was she doing? She caught herself and shook her head, as if the violent movement would shake her back to her senses. How could she think about what she would do if he didn’t come back? She hadn’t given up already. Even when he had disappeared for eight months, she had never given up entirely.

She dropped her head onto her knees, and reached deeply inside herself for the strength to endure what she was facing. If only it would rain. Rain cleansed and soothed and purged. It had always been a great source of comfort to her. She looked up into the sky and issued a silent prayer for strength. The prayer brought back a memory … a night months after her mother had died, when her father had shown up on her doorstep and announced that he wanted back into hers and Wes’s life. She had called Wes to come over, and there had been a terrible fight among them. Wes had wound up leaving.