Fallen (38 page)

“So when were you going to tell me about you and Lydia?” Adam asked, recapturing his attention. The heart monitor beside his bed beeped steadily, accompanying his raspy voice.

So he knew. Ryan released a breath. “When I thought you were strong enough. I didn’t want to get you worked up. Who told you? Mom?”

“She broke the news—”

“I don’t need another lecture, Adam,” he said quietly.

But his brother reached out from the bed and laid his fingers on his forearm. “I’m not going to give you one.” He took a labored breath, still clearly in pain and dealing with reduced lung capacity. An oxygen cannula remained clipped under his nose. “You’re my brother, Ryan. If I’ve had a grudge against Lydia, it’s only because I love you, man. But I also have to believe in you and trust you’re doing the right thing.”

“
I am
,” he stressed. Pressing his lips together, he added, “We are.”

“Then that has to be good enough for me.”

Ryan tilted his head at him. “So you’re calling a truce in this war against Lydia?”

“Mom and I’ve talked a lot since she’s been here.” Adam didn’t look at him as he spoke, instead focusing on the blanket tucked around him. “She got me to finally see how much losing Tyler affected Lydia. How she might’ve let her grief confuse her. She says I’m
intractable
—hell, I’m not even sure what that means—but that I need to forgive her and give you both my support.”

He toyed with his hospital ID bracelet before speaking again. “Lydia and I’ve talked, too. Especially since I’ve been a captive audience here. I’ve listened instead of just lighting into her on sight.”

“She’s come to visit you?”

“Yeah. More than once.”

“Then she’s braver than I even realized.” He had meant it as a joke, but Adam’s expression remained serious.

Ryan became aware of the tension that had released from his body. So their mother had brought about this change of heart. He was grateful for the time she had been here, even though he hated that it had been under such difficult conditions—both her sons wounded, Adam nearly dying. Ryan understood how lucky he himself had been. The shot delivered at close range had passed through the muscle surrounding his abdomen. It had bled like hell, but it hadn’t entered his stomach cavity, hadn’t hit any vital organs.

Adam had a long road ahead of him that included at least two more weeks of hospitalization and a stint in pulmonary physical therapy to strengthen what remained of his right lung. His career as a beat cop was over, something he had just begun to accept. They had talked tentatively about him taking the detective’s exam the next time it came around. Until then, once he was well enough, he’d work a desk job at his precinct. It would be an adjustment for his adrenaline-junkie brother, but Ryan knew how much worse things could have been.

“Just do me a favor?” Ryan asked, attempting to lighten the mood. “This is a big city—not south Georgia where we grew up. Stop being a cheapskate. Get a security system, even if your landlord won’t subsidize the installation cost.”

Based on the jimmied lock, Molly had gained entrance through the ranch’s back door.

Adam smiled faintly. “Whatever, man. Not that yours did you much good with that gangbanger.”

“Talk to Tess about that. They have to be
on
to work.”

Both men looked up at the tentative knock on the door. The red-haired kindergarten teacher stood in the room’s threshold. She had been a regular presence since returning from the beach and finding out what had happened. Ryan greeted her, rising gingerly from the chair, his palm pressed against his side.

“Please,” Rachel said as she entered. “Don’t leave because of me.”

“I need to get going anyway.” Ryan laid a hand on her shoulder as he slowly walked past. He’d begun to feel his strength waning. “Before they do a bed check and discover I’m AWOL.”

“Hey.”

At his brother’s voice, Ryan turned.

“
You do what you need to do
,” Adam said meaningfully. Rachel had moved to his bedside, and a nurse had also entered the room. “Not that you need it, but you have my blessing. Truce.”

Ryan nodded.

He had begun his slow trek back to his room when his cell phone rang inside his bathrobe pocket. He stopped amid the others in the corridor—mostly hospital staff—and reached for it. Seeing the number on the screen, he took the call.

“I rang your room and no answer,” Mateo said.

“I’ve been with Adam.” He considered taking a seat on an upholstered bench under a nearby window, but remained standing. “What’s up?”

“I thought you’d want to know. Tox screen’s back. It’s clean. No drugs in the bloodstream or muscle tissue, including residual traces in the organs.”

Which confirmed what they had already suspected. Molly hadn’t been taking the medications prescribed by her California psychiatrist. She had probably been off them for a while.

“Thanks,” Ryan said, finding his voice.

“How’re you doing? You got your release papers yet?”

“I’m hoping for tomorrow.”

They talked for another minute before Ryan disconnected the call. But as he returned the phone to his pocket and began walking again, he couldn’t help it—his mind remained on Molly. He continued to grapple with the knowledge that someone who had seemed so outwardly normal had been masking such delusional thoughts and careening emotions. That she’d been capable of such predatory violence. She’d been diagnosed with mental illness, but she’d also had the cunning that spoke to some degree of lucidity. Threatening Nate from a payphone. Then stepping up a level, buying a burner phone to ensure the calls to Lydia were untraceable to her. A prepaid cell had been linked back to Matthew Boyce’s phone records, as well. But Molly hadn’t been as careful everywhere. A post-mortem roll of her prints had generated a match to the passenger-side door handle of Boyce’s car and to the packaging used to mail the wasps to the hospital.

He thought of the men she’d been having relations with—Nate and Matthew Boyce overlapping, apparently. Where Watterson fit in, they didn’t yet know. Ryan wondered how many others on the force had been with her but hadn’t come forward.

Turning the corner that led to the elevator bay, he stopped to rest.

“You should be in a wheelchair.”

Lydia appeared beside him, in scrubs and her lab coat. She linked her forearm with his, assisting his slow walk. Ryan guessed she was on break and had been headed up to his room when she had spotted him, inching his way along the corridor like an arthritic old man.

“I don’t need a wheelchair,” he argued. “I’m getting out tomorrow—”

“That remains to be seen.” But her smile was soft as she looked up at him. Lydia’s dark hair had been pulled into a short ponytail. Pale lip gloss appeared to be the only cosmetic she wore.

She looked beautiful to him.

“I’m guessing you’ve been to see Adam.”

He decided not to let on that he knew about their private conciliatory conversations. “He’s still got a long way to go.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “He’s motivated. He’ll make it.”

Coming to a halt in front of the elevators, she pressed the button. “I saw Melanie a little while ago—headed out through the lobby. She was going to Adam’s to get some of his things and then to your place to do laundry.”

“You know Mom. She’s planning to stay until he’s out of the hospital and able to care for himself.”

The elevator chimed. Once the doors slid open, they walked inside. Lydia pressed the button. “I suspect his new girlfriend will want to lend a hand, too. I’ve talked to her a few times now. She seems pretty great.”

“Yeah,” Ryan agreed, facing her. Alone on the elevator, he tucked strands of hair that had come loose from her ponytail behind her ear. They felt soft, like spun silk. Lydia’s fingers caressed his raised wrist.

“I love you,” she said.

Ryan thought of what Mateo had told him as he lay in bed post-surgery. Even now it created a knot inside him. In Molly’s apartment, police had found the vial of sulfuric acid she had supposedly taken to the parking garage that night, intent on harming Lydia. Ryan wasn’t sure what had spooked her from her mission, but he thanked God for it.

He also wondered again if Lydia hadn’t simply become the target for the pent-up jealousy Molly felt regarding women who had what she didn’t. Love. Only with Lydia had Molly acted out—not with Kristen Weisz or Boyce’s ex-wife. If it was true Molly considered him special, then Lydia’s appearance at the wake and his focus on her had quite possibly been the tipping point.

Placing a finger under her chin, he gently lifted her face and joined his mouth to hers. They broke apart only when the elevator’s bell chimed, announcing they’d reached his floor. But as the doors opened, he slid his fingers through her hair again and searched her soft-brown eyes.

“I’m
fine
, Ryan,” she murmured, apparently reading his thoughts.

But was she? He worried about how this most recent trauma had affected her. She had taken to sleeping in the recliner in his hospital room when she was off-shift, instead of going home. Lydia insisted it was because she wanted to be with him, but he worried it was also because she was afraid of being alone.

“Let’s get you to your room,” she said, walking with him, her arm once again offering support.

“I heard from Elise Brandt,” she revealed once they’d entered Ryan’s room. Someone—an orderly or some other hospital attendant—had remade the bed in his absence. He stopped in front of the bureau topped with flower arrangements and cards, looking at her.

“The US Marshals allowed her a call, and it was me. She sounds
strong
, Ryan. She wanted to thank me—thank both of us—for everything we did.”

He had been the one to tell Lydia it had been Molly, not Brandt, behind the wasps and calls. But it didn’t matter. Ian Brandt was a dangerous man. He’d killed and abused, engaged in felony activities. He deserved to be imprisoned. They had helped put Elise a step closer to freedom. There was no trial date yet, but Ryan hoped the ultimate outcome would be justice.

He watched as Lydia turned down the bed. The way she had stood up repeatedly to Brandt, her quest to rescue Elise—it all spoke to her bravery.

As did the makeshift weapon she had plunged into her captor’s neck.

Thinking of the torture Molly had attempted, Ryan’s lungs squeezed. He’d learned of it only after reading the transcript of the statement Lydia had given police.

“Let’s get you into bed.” She returned to him. “You look tired, Ryan. I swear it’s like talking to a brick wall, but you’re overdoing it …” She must’ve seen something in his expression. “What’s wrong?”

Throat tight with emotion, he said, “Just that I don’t want to waste another minute of our lives.”

For several moments, Lydia peered up at him, her gaze liquid and questioning as her fingers lay against his chest. She shook her head. “I still don’t understand.” Her words held a faint tremor. “The amount of blood you lost, how long you went without treatment. You should’ve been in hypovolemic shock. You pushed the limits of endurance when you got free—”

“I
had
to get to you.” The pad of his thumb caressed her cheek. It was the only explanation he had. “Nothing could keep me away.”

Ryan pressed his lips to her forehead.

Epilogue

Four Months Later

“Are you sure
about this, Tess?” Lydia asked as the two women stood in the sunroom of the Inman Park bungalow. With the cooling weather, the leaves on the Japanese maple visible through the large window had finally begun to turn a rich burgundy.

“Oh, he won’t be any trouble. And I’ve gotten attached—that’s why I suggested it to Ryan.” Tess flipped her long braid over her shoulder as she bent to scratch Max’s head, eliciting a throaty purr from the feline. “This old-timer’s set in his ways. He likes his old haunts.”

“It
would
be easier for him,” Lydia conceded.

Tess smiled. “I’ll consider him a housewarming gift.”

A thud coming from outside attracted their attention. Lydia walked to the side window to see Carl Buchwald in the driveway, moving boxes from the back of his open station wagon. Silver-haired and large-framed, Carl would soon be the house’s new owner. He’d already begun storing some of his things in the detached garage, since he had closed on his home in Florida and would be staying in the small upstairs apartment with Tess until the house was vacant.

“I still can’t believe he was your high school sweetheart. After all these years.”

“Turns out he might’ve been the love of my life.” Tess had come to stand beside Lydia. “I just didn’t know it at the time.”

Tess had revealed the identity of her regular male guest after learning of Ryan and Lydia’s plans. She and Carl had been briefly engaged after school, but she’d broken things off when he had enlisted in the Army. She hadn’t wanted the life of a military wife. He had moved on, married someone else and had three daughters. Tess had never forgotten him, however. Carl had first contacted her a little over a year ago, some time after the death of his wife, Beth. After the military, he’d had a successful second career in insurance. He had bought the bungalow outright, and at Ryan’s asking price. According to Tess, they had been talking about taking their relationship to another level—getting a place together—for a while.