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Amy Black shook her head and Kate wanted to hit her. Hit something. She'd seen a prosecution similar to what she was describing on television once. It could work….

“What you're describing is called character evidence, and that's not an element of the offense with which Mr. Whitehead's been charged. Even if we tried, the defense would bring forth a motion to disallow it after pretrial, where we have to disclose our evidence.” She spoke slowly, like a teacher to a child. Kate hated her more with every word.

Hated how powerless Amy Black's words were making her feel. How helpless.

And hopeless.

“Any judge would rule that evidence inadmissible,” the prosecutor continued anyway. And in the city of San Francisco, hell, the whole state of California, they wouldn't be dealing with
any
judge. They'd be dealing with someone Thomas most likely knew, someone Thomas had served in some capacity.

Arms back on the table, Kate leaned forward, unable to hold herself upright any longer, but turned her head sideways to look at the older woman. “So what you're telling me is that we all know Thomas is guilty of a Murder One felony for conspiracy to murder and because we don't have enough irrefutable proof, he's going to walk. Just as he has with every other wrong he's committed in his life.”

“We have a fiduciary duty to the people of California,” Black said, her words mere background for the darkness that was overcoming Kate. “It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to trial. We can't spend that money unless we have reason to believe we can win….”

She couldn't think of a thing to say. Yet she couldn't just sit there and take it, either. “But…”

“After Mavis's testimony and now with your reappearance, which destroys our ability to show there's a pattern, we have
nothing,
” Amy Black said, more strongly now. “No motive, no pattern, no previously questionable behavior. And the defense has plenty—including a so-called accomplice who's got no credibility at all. An alibi. They have a defendant whose charitable heart is known far and wide. The fact that the
state was ready to put the man to death for a murder we have living proof he did not commit…”

It was as she'd said. Her return had bought Thomas his freedom.

 

She spent another hour there before she was free to go. Dinner had come and gone. The sun had come and gone. All that was left was darkness.

Her dental records had proven her identity. First thing Monday morning, when banks and the drivers' license bureau opened, she'd have her life back. Such as it would be. For as long as it would be.

“Do you have a place to stay tonight?” Amy Black asked quietly as everyone packed up pens and pads preparing to leave.

She nodded. Somehow or other, she was going to get out to the cabin where her son would undoubtedly be asleep. She'd never spent the night apart from him and now wasn't a good time to start. For either of them.

The rest of the world might underestimate Thomas Whitehead, but she did not. Once it was known she was back, that she was alive, she would never be free of him. She'd either play by his rules or end up rooming with Leah.

If she didn't have Taylor to consider, the latter would be her choice. She'd already wasted too many years in Thomas's power. It was a no-win situation.

“Mrs. Whitehead.” She turned as David Holm, prosecuting attorney and partner to Amy Black, called her
name by the door. His worn leather satchel was tucked beneath his arm.

Kate's feet hurt in Carley's pumps. Her legs ached from too much sitting and too little rest. And her head felt as though it was on the verge of exploding. Still, she tried to find a polite smile. “Yes?”

“There's someone here who's very anxious to see you,” he said. Exhausted as she was, she couldn't tell whether his smile was genuine or completely put on, but she experienced a moment's relief.

Her mother. They'd called her mother for her. She'd been waiting to find out what would be required of her before contacting her mother, so she'd have some answers with which to reassure the vulnerable older woman.

With the first real smile she'd managed in many hours, Kate glanced behind the attorney to the hallway beyond.

The room went cold. Her smile faded away.

It couldn't be. They wouldn't do this. Not here. Not like this. Not yet.

Kate leaned one fist on the table beside her as her knees began to shake.

“Hello, my love. Thank God it's really you.”

Thomas's voice cracked, his eyes filled with tears as, moving past Holm, he came into the room and took her into his arms, lifting her off the ground with the strength of his embrace.

“Y
ou have no idea how glad I am to see you.” Thomas's fervent words, whispered just above her ear, sent chills through Kate's body. Trapped in his grip, she struggled to breathe, wondering if she was suffocating because he was holding her too tightly. Or if, perhaps, his suffocation of her was less a physical thing, and she was only now starting to manifest the effects of inner death.

Either way, she gasped for air.

“It's okay, baby, don't cry,” Thomas crooned softly, molding her body against his. There was no other sound in the room but Thomas's voice, his breath in her ear. Had everyone else left? Was she alone with him?

She couldn't open her eyes to find out. Was too light-headed.

“Shhh, I know you've been through a lot, but I'm here now. Right here.”

I'm not crying.
She tried to say the words.
I'm too dead inside to cry. Numb.
The muscles in her chest
ached as she forced them to work, to get in even a small bit of air.

Something dripped down her neck. And then again. “We'll get through this.” He shuddered against her. “I know we will.”

Yes. They would get through this. Didn't he always? She got in another small gulp of air.

“Oh, my love, you feel so good.” While he still held her close, one hand ran up and down her back, between her shoulder blades, the small of her back, over her buttocks. “So damn good.”

There was something laughable about that—saying this when she was slowly dying. She'd never felt worse in her life.

He sniffled, and only then did Kate realize that the wetness on her skin was his tears. She sucked in another breath.

A vision of Leah, her usually smiling face stern, floated behind her closed lids. She'd looked that way when Kate had come to her, beaten and bruised by her father, but refusing to tell anyone what had happened. Leah had begged her to turn him in. Kate had known her mother would pay the price if she did.

Thomas lifted his head. She felt the movement, but wouldn't look. He could stare at her if he liked, but she wouldn't let him in. She needed to sleep.

“They've left us alone,” he said. “I don't know what you did with the kid, gave him up for adoption, whatever, but I want you to know I forgive you for all that.”

Her head was thick and it felt as though someone had filled it with cotton. But the cotton, while soft and white, was heavy, too.

“Let's get out of here, honey,” he said.

Had she finally escaped reality, only to end up living in a hell in her own mind? She couldn't be in Thomas's arms, listening to him speak as though nothing had happened between them but a cruel twist of fate, an accident, a mistake beyond his control and hers. Listening to him so blithely dismiss his son,
her
son. The best part of her.

“Ah, baby, you haven't said a word.” His voice was so soft, so loving, she shivered. “What have they done to you?”

Leah's face swam back and forth before her eyes. Leah's expression remained stern, but it was filled with the light of knowing. They were twenty-one. Kate had just been offered her first chance to have her designs shown. She'd lacked confidence, hadn't thought she was ready. Somehow Leah had found the spark of strength and drive inside Kate and ignited it.

Leah believed in her.

Thomas's grip changed. The arm around her waist moved lower, behind her knees, lifting her until she was cradled like a baby in his arms. Her eyes flew open as he started to walk with her. Outside the door, lining the hall, was a row of faces. Some she recognized, most she didn't. With one quick frantic spin, she sought Amy Black. Couldn't find her.

These were all Thomas's friends. Kate quickly shut
her eyes and let the man who'd raped and beaten her carry her gently out into the night.

 

He was glad he'd driven himself. Glancing at the woman passed out beside him, Thomas Whitehead drove slowly through the relatively quiet San Francisco streets. He'd found a trial pack of a nighttime pain reliever in Kate's expensive leather purse and had, with the help of a rookie female officer at the door of the precinct, gotten one down her. From the little he'd heard, she'd been up for more than forty-eight hours. She'd sleep a while now.

And he had her all to himself, didn't have to keep up appearances with anyone, not even Sammie, his driver—the son of his father's driver. The boy he'd grown up with, played with like a brother, before he'd recognized the great gulf between him and the kid his age who played on the property of his home, but would never be like him.

Sammie had been with him since he'd graduated from college. Drove him anywhere, everywhere, without question. Thomas trusted him more than he trusted most people. But tonight he was tired. Tonight he was thankful.

Tonight he wanted to be completely alone with his wife.

She sighed and he looked over, pleased to see that she was still out. There'd be time enough for conversation later. Tonight she needed him.

He liked that. Always had.

Squinting against approaching headlights, he remembered back through the years of his marriage to
Kate. The good times. Choosing to ignore the bad. They were over. Behind them. She'd come home to help him. That was all that mattered. No matter what had gone before, in the end she'd saved him.

Blinking lights, yellow and red and blue, drew his attention to a marquee. Lonnie's Bar had dancing until two. Maybe another night when Kate felt better.

She wouldn't have come back during his darkest hour if she didn't love him. At least a little bit. She might not realize that yet, but he'd show her. She was an intelligent woman. She'd understand it eventually.

And in the meantime, he wasn't going to let her out of his sight.

San Francisco Gazette
Sunday, May 8, 2005
Page 1

“Carley? Thomas Whitehead.” Holding the phone to his ear, he stood in his office at the mansion that had been a wedding present to him and Kate from his parents. Looking out over the lush green grounds, interspersed with trees and colorful flower beds, he waited for the sun to rise. Sunday mornings had always been his favorite time of the week. This morning was particularly nice.

“Where is she? What have you done with her?”

He paused, bit back the instantaneous reply that rose to his lips. Counted flower beds. There were fifteen of them on this side of the house. Leah's sister was one of the few women he truly despised.

“I've done nothing with her,” he said when he was calm again. “I love my wife. I've spent the night thanking God that she's back home with me, safe and sound.”

“She's there? At your house?”

“It's her home,” he reminded her. “She's upstairs sleeping.”

Where he'd been until half an hour before. He'd come down to make coffee. And take care of this one pressing matter. He couldn't have a troubled bitch like Carley Winchester running amok with stories of Kate gone missing again.

“You're telling me Kate just showed up there last night and announced that she was staying?”

“No.” There it was. The first streak of blinding light sparkling through the trees. Day had begun, and it was going to be a good one. “I went down to the station and we left together.”

“She went with you willingly.” It wasn't so much a question as a statement of disbelief.

“I certainly didn't carry her kicking and screaming out of the police station while a dozen police officers stood by and watched,” he said with a hint of humor. “As a matter of fact, one of the female officers downstairs got her a cup of water as we were leaving so she could take an aspirin that was in her purse.”

“That was a nighttime pain reliever!” Carley said. “It had a sleeping aid.”

So Carley was closely enough involved with his wife to know about the contents of her handbag. He pinched the bridge of his nose.

“It was the only pain reliever in her purse,” he said again. That was the point here. And hardly worth mentioning. “She had a headache.”

“I don't know what you're up to, Whitehead, but if you hurt one hair on her head—”

“I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Mrs. Winchester. I love my wife. I'm thankful beyond comprehension that she's home and—”

“I'll just bet you are.” The vituperative woman just wouldn't let up. “I just heard the radio news. You walked again, you bastard.”

“Lovely conversation, Carley, and I'd be delighted to continue, but I have a wife who'll be waking up soon, and as you can imagine, I'm anxious to get back to her. I placed this call on her behalf so you wouldn't worry about her. I understand she was planning to stay at your place last night.” He chose his words carefully, as always, speaking only truths. Selective truths. He hadn't been told where Kate planned to spend the night. But he knew her well enough to know that was where she'd run. He knew her well enough to know she wouldn't want to worry Carley.

“She asked you to call me?”

“How do you think I got your cell phone number?”

He couldn't lie. But that didn't mean he had to answer every question he was asked. The number had been scribbled on a scrap of paper in Kate's purse. There'd been very little else. Although he'd looked diligently, he hadn't found one piece of identifying information among his wife's things. Nothing to give him a clue about the missing two years of her life.

“Something stinks here, Whitehead. You just tell Kate I'm keeping Taylor safe until I hear from her personally.”

The day darkened perceptibly.

“Taylor?”

“Just give her the message.”

He wasn't going to be threatened. “I—”

Thomas stopped, anger surging through his chest when Carley Winchester hung up on him.

 

Taylor had to be the kid, goddammit. Thomas threw the phone, watching as it bounced off the leather couch and landed on the plush carpet of his office with barely a sound. Why hadn't someone at the station mentioned that she'd brought the kid back with her? He'd assumed she'd left the bastard behind. Another son of a bitch's kid. He'd assumed that since she'd come back, she'd seen the light—known how unfair it would be to ask him to raise her lover's son.

He'd assumed. Whitehead, Sr., had delighted in pointing out to him on numerous occasions that
assume
made an
ass
out of him. He'd heard that throughout his childhood, but apparently he hadn't learned it as well as he'd thought.

Half an hour later, Thomas sat still behind his desk, staring out at the morning.

The Winchester bitch had said she was keeping the kid—Taylor—safe. Which led to a fairly logical guess that Kate had left him in her care.

He ran through the months in his head. Adding, subtracting. He'd be nineteen months old now—this child of his wife's. Pain shot up into his shoulder. Loosening
his death grip on the arms of his chair, Thomas slowly opened his aching hands, flexing them. Anger was good. It instilled enough strength to prompt action. But it had to be used properly, in the right measures at the right time.

He stood, stretching, letting his anger fuel a resurgence of passion as he thought of the beautiful woman sleeping upstairs. Now
wasn't
the time for anger. He was too close to the perfect life he'd scripted, worked for, deserved. He couldn't act out of turn. Besides, he reminded himself with a grin as he sprinted up the stairs. His wife was home.

 

The sheets were cool, smooth and soft against her bare legs. Kate stretched, wondering why she'd forgotten how good four-hundred-count cotton felt against naked skin. Turning over, she slid a hand under her pillow, wallowing in that state between sleep and wakefulness, enjoying a few minutes of utter relaxation. She'd slept well. Better than she'd slept in a long time.