Guilty as Sin (31 page)

What if he’d gotten a call, seen the news, that Kate had died? Because no one was around to love her and take care of her.

He got an urgent, gut-deep feeling that somehow that person should have been him. He shoved it away. “I’m sorry, I had no idea—”

“No reason you should have,” Kate interrupted. “My father did a damn good job making sure no one had any idea,” she said with a rueful smile.

She held her arm up to the window, examining it in the bright afternoon sunlight. “I’m surprised you even noticed
it. The senator got the best plastic surgeon in D.C. to do the sutures, and now it’s totally faded.”

“I had to get really close,” he said, shifting a little in his seat as he remembered exactly how close he’d been.

Kate’s cheeks flushed as though she knew exactly what he was thinking about, and the atmosphere in the car changed abruptly.

The air got thick and close, the temperature seemed to rise about ten degrees. Tommy reached over and cranked up the AC, but it didn’t do much to cool the blood pooling between his legs.

“Anyway, I’m sorry,” he said, trying to bring the subject back around. As much as he didn’t want to dwell on the idea of Kate trying to off herself, there was nothing like attempted suicide to take the edge off a boner. “I feel like I should have been there for you.”

“Tommy,” she said, her voice edged in regret, “after the way I pushed you away and especially after what my father did, there was no way I could have expected anything from you.”

K
ate may not have expected anything from Tommy, but that didn’t mean she didn’t dream about him coming to her rescue. Every day and every night for that first year after Michael died. Every day of her senior year, the bell would ring and she’d imagine walking down the front steps of Sacred Heart Academy and finding Tommy’s truck parked outside. He’d be inside, waiting to take her away forever.

Never in a million years would she admit that out loud. “And besides, like you said, you thought we were fine. Everybody did.”

“Still,” Tommy said. His shoulders were pulled tight and he smacked the steering wheel lightly with one big hand. “It’s not right. It’s not okay that you went through that and nobody did anything to help you.”

“That’s not true. After that, some of the best psychiatrists and therapists in the country did plenty to help me.”

He shot her a glare, and Kate couldn’t stifle the little thrill that shot through her to see a big, tough warrior like Tommy so angry on her behalf. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

He was silent a few seconds. Then, almost like he was talking to himself, he said, “I should have tried harder to get in touch, but when you didn’t answer my letter… Maybe things would have gone differently—”

“What letter?”

Tommy’s face took on that closed, stony look.

“Seriously, what letter?” Kate said.

Tommy pressed his lips into a rueful line. “You never got it, did you?”

She felt like snakes were coiling and uncoiling in her stomach. “I never got a letter from you, Tommy.”

He slapped one big palm down on the steering wheel. “You’re absolutely sure?

Was she sure? She’d spent days, months, wallowing in the impossible dream that by some miracle he didn’t hate her, wishing with everything she had that he’d show up at her door. Call her.

Write her a letter. “I swear on my brother’s grave,” Kate said in a shaky voice. “If I had ever received a letter from you, I would have remembered it.” She shook her head, her lips pursing around the bitter taste in her mouth as she realized the truth. “All of our personal mail was handled by my mother’s assistant. I’m sure my father told her to make sure I didn’t get anything from you.”

Tommy let out a long, slow breath. “Well, doesn’t all of this just hit the reset button,” he muttered.

Kate wasn’t sure exactly what he meant by that, but right now she had bigger concerns. “When did you send it?”

Kate watched as the muscles in his jaw clenched and unclenched. “Two days after you left. I told myself not to worry when you didn’t answer right away. Two weeks later my scholarship was yanked, and I figured I had my answer.”

Kate’s stomach plummeted as she realized how hurt he must have been. “Oh, God, Tommy, I’m so sorry. You must have felt—”

“I got over it,” he said stonily, the hard set of his jaw making it clear he wasn’t going to go there.

“What did it say?” she said a few minutes later, curiosity burning too hot to contain.

“It doesn’t matter,” Tommy said, and just like that the steel doors slammed shut.

“Uh, it matters to me,” Kate replied. “Since the fact that I believed you hated my guts was like a cherry on top of the shit sundae my life had become, hearing something from you to the contrary would have gone a long way toward making me feel like I wasn’t a completely worthless human being!”

Tommy let out a startled laugh. “Shit sundae?”

She gave a soft laugh of her own. “That pretty much sums it up.” When he stayed quiet, she prodded again. “So what did it say?”

He shifted in his seat, cleared his throat. He was uncomfortable.

“It didn’t say anything about hating you, that’s for sure,” he muttered.

She gestured with her hand for him to elaborate.

He blew out a sharp breath. “I think I said something about how I was sorry and that I was there if you needed anyone to talk to, and hell, Kate, it was fourteen years ago. How the hell am I supposed to remember?”

But the dark slash of color on the cheekbone facing her and the way his fingers flexed and unflexed around the steering wheel told her differently.

She stifled the urge to press him further. It was clear from his face and his body language that he wasn’t interested in going any deeper on the topic.

Just as it was clear he remembered a lot more of that letter than he claimed. Something important that he wasn’t ready to share.

Too consumed with curiosity to muster up small talk,
Kate switched on the radio to quell the thick silence. Other than to ask her to double check Judy Dorsey’s address, he stayed silent, closed up, for the rest of the drive to Spokane.

Yet Kate couldn’t shake the feeling that with these latest revelations, something had shifted between them.

Reset button indeed.

As they pulled into Judy Dorsey’s driveway, Tommy struggled to pull his tangled thoughts back under control.

She never got the letter.

She never got the letter.

The thought had been banging like a gong in his head for the last fifty miles, along with a twisted mess of stuff that bubbled up with the realization that when it came to Kate, he’d been wrong about a lot of things for a lot of years.

Of course, the possibility had occurred to him. The senator’s disapproval of Tommy had been loud and clear well before Michael’s death. Tommy wasn’t stupid. When he didn’t hear back from Kate, he’d known there was a possibility that the letter had been intercepted.

Yet the possibility that she’d read it, ignored it, and gone along with her father’s plan to screw up his life had burned like acid in his gut for the past fourteen years.

He should be happy, he thought, or at least relieved. If she hadn’t read—and ignored his letter—it meant he’d never humiliated himself.

He’d never all but begged her forgiveness for his part in what happened that night, begged her to call him or write him back. She’d never read the part where he told her that even if she didn’t want to be with him, he still wanted to be
her friend, that he’d take whatever she was willing to give as long as she didn’t completely shut him out.

He’d never told her he loved her.

Yet more than relief, he felt a sharp ache. At the idea that things could have gone a lot differently for them if only the letter had reached her.

Maybe…

He smacked the thought down before it could even form. Really, idiot? Even if she had received the letter, you really think she would have welcomed you back with open arms? She was still the same girl who slammed the door in your face when you tried tell her you were sorry. She was still the same girl who had gone willingly with her father when he’d crooked his finger.

The same girl who had blamed him so much for his part in Michael’s death that she’d willingly done her part to ruin his future.

Hearing something from you to the contrary would have gone a long way toward making me feel like I wasn’t a completely worthless human being.

That didn’t sound like someone who blamed him. That sounded like a heartbroken girl who was desperately grasping at any kindness thrown her way.

So what? Nothing would have turned out different.
He slammed the door of the sedan and started up the walkway of Judy Dorsey’s modest single-story house.
You were both a couple of dumb kids. Even without the tragedy, the relationship would have burned out as soon as you set foot back on campus that fall.

Michael’s death just sped all of that up and made sure the aftertaste was particularly foul for both of you.

Still, he couldn’t get the picture of Kate, slumped on her floor, blood spilling from the milk-white skin of her wrist,
out of his head. Christ, he’d seen horrible things in his life—bullet wounds, limbs blown off. Hell, he’d watched half of his friend’s skull get blown off and hadn’t lost his cool for a second.

But just the thought of Kate like that made him feel like he was going to throw up.

If she’d known he was there, that he’d cared—no, loved her—would she have felt so desperate?

He raised his hand to knock on the door, forcing the thoughts aside. This was no time to wallow in their past and wonder about what might have been.

They waited several seconds and he could feel Kate’s furtive, speculative stare. He’d felt it the entire remainder of the drive, probing, trying to suss out the truth he had no intention of sharing.

There was a sound from inside, the scrape of a chair across the floor, followed by quick footsteps. Kate’s gaze snapped to the door, immediately on task as she pushed her spinning thoughts about Tommy and his missing letter aside for the moment.

The door opened to reveal a woman in her early forties. She was dressed simply in a long-sleeve T-shirt and baggy jeans, with dirty blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. She had the kind of lines in her face that came more from fatigue than age, and she had a tired, careworn air.

“Judy Dorsey?” Kate asked.

“That’s me,” she replied, her eyes narrowing on Kate’s face. No doubt trying to place her.

“Is your mother here?” Tommy asked.

Judy’s gaze swung to Tommy and she got a wary look
on her face as she registered his size and stony expression. “What’s this about?” She started to take a step back.

“Sorry, we should introduce ourselves.” Kate pulled her face into her camera-ready smile and made quick introductions.

“Kate Beckett? The woman who’s always on TV talking about missing kids?”

Kate nodded. “And Mr. Ibarra is currently helping with an ongoing investigation. That’s why we’re hoping to talk to your mother.”

Judy’s jaw clenched and she started to shake her head. “I’m sorry, my mother’s not a well woman, and she really can’t talk—”