Breath of Dawn, The (43 page)

Erin—also battered, with her hands bandaged where she’d torn the skin getting free of the shackles—had a substance and clarity he could hardly take in. Pure and piercing, like rarified air, and yet so exceedingly breathable.

“Have you been checked over?” Sheriff Ingram asked. “Medically?”

“I’m fine. We got out.”

“You know, as an alternative, there’s always law enforcement for these kinds of things.”

Morgan nodded. “Sometimes you just act.”

“I’m not saying it would have ended differently, but you put yourself in harm’s way.”

He nodded at his wife. “They were already in harm’s way. If he’d taken the offer, they would have been safe and . . .”

“Then the agents on the jet would have nabbed him.”

“That was the plan.” Morgan ran a hand through his hair. “Didn’t foresee the Molotov cocktail.” He shook his head. “It seemed everything he did was motivated by greed.”

“I don’t know,” the sheriff said. “With con men there’s power and manipulation in it too.”

And maybe something more sinister. Morgan directed his gaze to the flames the firefighters were knocking down with hoses. That was one house that would not be rebuilt.

Erin joined him with a look over her shoulder at the same awful scene. “Makes me wish I hadn’t done all the patching and painting.”

He formed a soft smile. “That felt like an act of kindness for Livie and me.”

“It was.” But then she shuddered.

“That goodness, the way you cared about RaeAnne and the people treated there—and me— protected you the whole time you were working in it. Whatever evil was there couldn’t get a hold.”

She looked into his face. “I’m not crazy, then?”

“When I was running down the stairs, it felt like hands were pushing against my chest, trying to keep me from you.”

“The hands on my side were greater by far.” She frowned. “But
Markham . . .” Her face twisted. “Morgan, he killed Pops. After I called. He killed him and took his phone.” She shook as tears came. “I thought it was Pops calling.”

Dismayed, he gripped her shoulders. “He’s a liar.”

“I saw the bloody phone. And he knew exactly what Pops said to me. He snuck up because Pops and I—”

“You had nothing to do with that.”

“If I hadn’t called—”

“No. It was Markham. Not you.” But it shook him, too, to think their decision to reach out to her family might have ended the old man’s life. They couldn’t have known. But it hurt. He held his wife as the sorrow moved through her. So much destruction, for what?

Holding tight, he looked over her head at Hannah, the piteous piece of the puzzle. “Will your sister be okay?”

“I don’t know.” Erin looked up, pulling herself together as she must have done so many times already. “Could we take her home?”

“With us?”

“No, I mean, to my family.” She wiped her tears and swallowed.

Anger clenched his hands. “Are you ready for that?”

She looked back at her sister, wrapped in a blanket and staring. “She needs her dad.”

“But I was asking about you.”

She shrugged a shoulder. “Markham’s gone. If not now . . . when?”

He made his hands relax. They didn’t deserve her, but he said, “As soon as we’re free to go.” They’d be untangling it for some time. He rubbed her arm. “Could we restrict any future rescues to small children and animals?”

She gasped. “Bella! Livie!”

“Relax. Your only problem there will be convincing Livie that Bella isn’t her doggy. She’s talked of nothing else, and I mean nothing.”

Erin pressed a hand to her chest. “I miss her so much my heart hurts.”

There was nothing else to say to that.

The drive to Hot Springs, South Dakota, with Hannah crying would have been awful. The same drive, silent, broke her heart. With Morgan behind the wheel because of her bandaged hands, Erin glanced back at her sister lying in the back seat of her truck, mute, staring. She wished so many things could be different. But where would she even begin?

When she turned back to study Morgan in profile, a quality of feeling rose inside that was more than emotion. It was as though he were inside her and she in him. The beauty of that made her hurt all the more for Hannah. The cruelty of what Markham had intended would hurt far longer than any physical injuries. Probably forever.

How had her father let that happen? Had his pride and the inability to admit he was wrong jeopardized the person he loved most of all? She understood what Morgan said about building a world for Hannah, but why invite the serpent to the garden?

Or was he merely a fallible man, trying like the rest of them? She sought the right spirit and mindset to face him.
Lord.

They had washed up at the ranch before heading out. She’d helped Hannah into and out of the shower and borrowed clothes for both of them from Noelle’s closet. They had not tried to eat, even though the last she and Hannah had was Markham’s bread and water and a Gatorade from the EMTs.

In darkness, they entered the community she’d left four years ago in righteous anger. That anger stirred again as she passed the homes of people she’d known her whole life—church members who lived in close proximity to the minister like a flock around their shepherd. It seemed they would get their money back, once the FBI sorted it out.

She shuddered, doubting these people would ever be told the full extent of what he’d actually done. One tiny bright spot was that she wasn’t going to be charged or have to testify again at Markham’s trial. She was free to live her life. Or almost free. Her stomach shrank in when Morgan parked outside her father’s house.

Pops had described her parents’ insipid reaction to her news—in their last conversation before he died. His cell phone must have blown up in Vera’s house, or burnt up on Markham, destroying evidence of that crime. She trembled with grief.

Morgan looked over. “Ready?”

She glanced back at Hannah, still lying there. “I’ll let my father get her.”

She and Morgan went to the door. Since her cell phone was also destroyed, they hadn’t called ahead. She could have used Morgan’s, she supposed, but what would she have said?

It took a long time for anyone to answer the doorbell. Then her father, still mostly brown-haired with white along his hairline, stood in pajamas and a green velour robe, taking them in with bewildered annoyance. “Do you know what time it is?”

She wondered how long those first words to her in four years would linger. “Hannah’s in the car, Dad. She needs you.”

His visible transformation hurt.

“Dad?” She caught his arm before he passed by. “Markham’s dead.”

Stunned, he looked immediately at Hannah, his heart in his eyes. As it should be. She let go of his sleeve.

“Quinn?” Her mother’s voice brought her around.

“Mom.” She went into her arms, needing that touch more than she’d let herself know, then turned. “This is my husband, Morgan.”

“Oh,” Gwen murmured. Knowing nothing of his fame or worldly success—though he did cut a striking figure in the smallness of her parents’ front porch—her mother’s eyes widened nonetheless as she took him in. Erin shook her head. As much as she loved and respected him, she hoped she never looked at him that way.

“Morgan, my mother, Gwen Reilly.”

“Come in,” Gwen told them. Had she always been so whispery? She was a puff of wind next to the mighty redwood Celia, though it wasn’t fair to compare.

“We brought Hannah home.” Erin rested a hand on her mother’s arm, her birdlike bones frail beneath her skin. “I’m sorry, but Markham’s dead.”

“Dead?” She seemed more confused than hurt by the news. “How?”

“We’ll wait for Dad, if it’s okay. I only want to tell it once.”

“Yes, of course. He should be the first to hear.”

She hadn’t meant that at all, only that emotional exhaustion would only carry her through one explanation.

“I should see what I can do to help your sister.”

Erin nodded, witnessing once more the way of things.

As her mother went to help her husband with Hannah, Erin leaned with Morgan against the spotless Formica counter, standing on the freshly mopped linoleum. The cabinets retained a scent of Murphy Oil Soap. The pink chintz curtains were pressed right up to the crisp gathers. Gwen Reilly loved keeping house.

Leaning there, Morgan closed his eyes, fatigue catching up. Neither of them had slept in more than a day. He and William had spent the night meeting with the FBI and lining everything up.

In the Bureau’s version, the critical incident team would have been first on the scene handling the hostage situation with the other agents waiting on William’s jet, if it went that far. But Morgan and William privately agreed he had a better shot at a positive solution by going in under the radar and working with Markham’s demands.

In the end, Markham went off the rails altogether. She wondered what pushed him over, but it didn’t matter. Though she hadn’t wished the end that came, he’d chosen it. She asked Morgan, “Do you want to sit?”

For an answer he put his arm around her, sensing the fine tension keeping her upright. “Nope.”

“Should we drop Hannah and run?”

Eyes still closed, the corners of his mouth deepened.

She said, “I don’t think they’ll miss me.”

He opened his eyes, angling his face to her. “The problem is, you don’t fit here. They probably had no idea what to do with you. The best they came up with was hiding your light under a bushel.”

She stared into his face, touched and heartened by his perception. “Are you tired of hearing I love you?”

“Try me in forty years or so.”

From the bedroom, she heard Hannah crying. It was going to be a while. “Let’s come back in the morning.”

He searched her face, then straightened off the counter. “Okay. Where to?”

Her chest quaked. “Pops’ house.”

“Erin.”

“I know.” She suppressed a sob. “I just want to be in his place. To say good-bye.”

Morgan released a breath. “Okay.”

They drove the short distance to the tiny turn-of-the-century house by the river they’d fished. She couldn’t stop the tears as she climbed the porch stairs and turned the old knob. Pops had never locked it. How she wished now that he had.

The house smelled of lemon oil and shirt starch and faintly of fried chicken. It seemed impossible she’d never see him with an iron skillet at the stove again. A wave of pain closed her eyes, twisting her brow like a hook in her forehead.

And then a voice broke the silence. “Stand right there. By Patrick and all the saints, you’ll not catch me unawares again.”

“Pops?” Her legs gave out.

Morgan caught her going down. The light came on. All the emotion of the whole horrific affair burst from her in sobs.

Morgan said, calmly, “Is there somewhere she can sit?”

A bandage wrapped his head, and Pops moved jerkily as he ushered them into the parlor, but his voice was strong, his tone insistent. “Be still, lass. Be still.”

She dropped to the velveteen sofa. “I thought you were dead. Markham said—”

“And that should have been your clue. Take more than that scurvy weasel to crack this Irish skull. Did more damage to the rock.”

She caught the amusement in Morgan’s eyes, a matching high spirits in Pops’s.

“This isn’t funny. I’ve been in agony over you.”

“Well, about time,” he said. “If it takes bumping my head to bring you back, I’ll do it myself. And a better job of it.”

She dropped back against the couch with a hint of exasperation.

Pops shifted his attention. “You must be Morgan. Great name, that. Welsh bones in it.”

Morgan rose and offered his hand. “Morgan Spencer.”

“Corlin Reilly.” Pops returned Morgan’s firm grip. “You’re a lucky one, getting my Quinn.”

“Don’t I know.” Morgan took his seat again. “But . . . she goes by Erin now.”

She studied her grandfather for a reaction.

“Oh?”

“We changed it when we married to elude Markham, but . . . I like it that way.”

Pops gave Morgan a long stare, then said, “Just as well. I only gave her Quinn to nettle my son. Erin, though. That came from the heart.”

Morgan shot her a look that said he’d told her so.

She raised her chin. “Pops, tell me the truth. Are you really fine?”

“A wee concussion. My neighbor found me almost right away, got me off the river shore into my kitchen. We had a stiff drink and toasted Markham straight to hell.”

She couldn’t help thinking he’d gone there. But she raised her brows. “I thought you didn’t believe in hell.”

“No, lass. I believe that right well.”

“Then, why are you so against God?”

To her surprise, he pondered it. “It’s not so much I’m against God as I don’t think he’s got much use for me.”

“But, Pops . . .” Surely there was hope in this.

He gripped the chair arms with his gnarly hands. “I did things in my youth. Killed a man in a bar fight. He had it coming, but it turned me somehow. Never saw myself the same again.” His brow furrowed. “Lately, though, and maybe while I lay there, contemplating my demise, I thought there might be room for conversation. God and I.”

She crossed her hands beneath her throat, tears brimming. “I’m sure you’ll have plenty to say. Both of you.”