I Got You, Babe (35 page)

“Is there a movie or something on television?” she asked. “I could use a distraction until the pizza gets here.”

He reached for the remote and flipped on the television, and he found he welcomed the distraction as much as she did—something to get their minds off the problems they faced. They watched an episode of an old sitcom, and finally both of them relaxed enough to start laughing at a few of the jokes.

He pulled her close, tucking her into his arms as they watched, and soon her body seemed to dissolve into his. He thought about how flawlessly they fit together, how warm she felt against him, and how wonderful her hair smelled even though she’d washed it with nothing more than the cheap shampoo he used every day. He wished there were a way to stop time, a way for them to stay in this little niche of life they’d found together without having to worry about mingling with the outside world ever again.

Then the doorbell rang.

John rose reluctantly to answer the door, leaving Renee sitting on the sofa. Looking out the peephole, he saw a man holding a pizza box. He swung the door open.

“Twelve-fifty,” the guy said.

John put his hand to his hip pocket, then realized he’d tossed his wallet on the dining room table. He left the door open and went to retrieve it.

“If you ordered this pizza with black olives, I’m gonna be pissed.”

John froze. He couldn’t have just heard what he thought he heard.

His brother’s voice.

He spun around. Alex was standing at his front door.

At nearly six-foot-four, his brother towered over the pizza delivery guy, who stared up at him a little nervously. Alex swiped the pizza out of his hand and flipped open the box, then turned to glare at John. “When are you going to learn that there are some food items that do
not
belong on pizza?”

John’s gaze flicked over to Renee. She sat frozen on the sofa, her eyes wide, and unless Alex backed out the door right now and went away, he couldn’t possibly miss seeing her. And now that he had his hands on a pizza, he’d never leave.

“Alex,” he said, trying not to sound as uptight as he felt. “What are you doing here?”

“Heard you were back in town. Thought I’d come by.” He nodded down at the pizza with a satisfied smile. “Great timing, huh?”

John gave the delivery guy a ten and a five and closed the door, his heart beating double time. There was no way out of this. No way.

Alex started toward the kitchen, then stopped short when he saw Renee sitting on the sofa. He gave her an appreciative smile. “Hey, John. You should have told me you had company.”

“Uh, Alice,” John said, “this is my brother, Alex.”

Alex smiled broadly. “Ah. So this is Alice. The one Sandy couldn’t shut up about.” He glanced back at John. “The one she said you’re not good enough for.”

“Sandy has a big mouth.”

“But she speaks the truth, unless she’s talking about me.” Alex walked over, swapped the pizza to his left hand, and held his right hand out to Renee. Renee rose from the sofa and shook his hand, a somewhat terrified expression lurking right beneath her shaky smile.

“Hear you made it through Sunday lunch with the family,” Alex said. “Good for you. That’s the first hurdle out of the way.”

“Uh...what’s the second one?”

“Me.” He eyed her up and down, then turned to John with a guy-to-guy grin. “She passes. Flying colors. Now let’s eat.”

As he carried the pizza into the kitchen, John whispered to Renee, “I’ll get rid of him as fast as I can.”

“We’ll just do what we did with the rest of your family,” she whispered back. “It’ll be okay.”

When they got to the kitchen, Alex set the pizza down on the table. “John’s always getting those damned black olives,” he told Renee. “I hope you break him of that. Make him see that pepperoni—”

He stopped suddenly and stared at Renee. His eyes narrowed, and he tilted his head in that way that said there was something he didn’t quite understand.

“Alice?” John said. “Can you get us some plates?”

“Uh. .. sure.”

Renee walked over to the cabinet beside the refrigerator, and Alex turned to follow every move she made. His expression grew more hard-edged as the seconds passed. When she turned back around, she stopped short, obviously sensing that something was terribly wrong. Then John glanced back at Alex. His questioning gaze had become an accusing glare.

“Alice?” he said. “I don’t think so. It’s...Renee, isn’t it?”

Chapter 18

R
enee felt light-headed, and for a moment she was sure she was going to pass out. Renee? Had he just called her Renee? How did he know?

Alex turned to John. “Don’t you know who this woman is?” The room went deathly still. John didn’t move. He merely stared at his brother, keeping his cool, but she knew it was a hard-won battle. She held her breath, trembling with apprehension, because she knew his back was against the wall. What would he tell his brother?

“Yes. I know who she is.”

“No, I don’t think you do,” Alex said. “She’s an armed robbery suspect. She skipped bail days ago.”

“I told you I know who she is,” John said sharply.

“Then what the hell is going on here?”

“Renee,” John said, his gaze never leaving his brother. “Go to the bedroom.”

“John—”

“I said go. Now.” His voice was low and intense, with a commanding quality to it that said she didn’t dare disobey. She set the plates down on the countertop and left the kitchen, but instead of going all the way to the bedroom, she stopped halfway down the hall and leaned against the wall, where she could hear everything the two men said.

“Let me get this straight,” Alex said. “You know she’s an armed robber, and yet—”

“Alleged
armed robber.”

“Don’t dump that semantics crap on me, John. This is then woman you sat down with your family at Sunday lunch, knowing who she was?”

“I didn’t ask for that. That was Sandy’s doing.”

“But you didn’t think twice about lying to everyone, did you?”

“You don’t know the whole story.”

“I know all I need to know. I was there the night they brought her in on that armed-robbery rap.”

John’s voice held steady. “She’s innocent, Alex.”

“You think so, huh? Well, maybe you’ll think twice when I tell you this. When I saw her that night, I happened to remember a certain little juvenile delinquent I arrested several years ago on a public-intoxication charge. How could I forget her? She dumped beer all over my shoes.”

Renee bit back a gasp. Was it possible? Had John’s brother been the patrol cop who had picked her up all those years ago? He was a detective now, but he wouldn’t have been back then, and he clearly remembered the incident....
Oh, God.

He was the one. And he was John’s brother. She didn’t remember seeing him the night of the robbery, but she’d been in such a daze when they brought her in that she didn’t recall much of anything.

“She has a juvenile record as long as your arm,” Alex went on. “Public intoxication was the very least of it. Then I looked up, and there she was again. Little Miss Bad Attitude, all grown up.”

“I know about that too,” John said, his voice escalating. “But I don’t care what she’s done in the past. She didn’t commit that robbery.”

“Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter if she’s guilty or not. She jumped bail, you’re a cop, and she’s in your damned house!
That's
the problem!”

Several seconds passed before Alex spoke again, and when he did, his voice took on a no-nonsense quality that made Renee shudder.

“Let me tell you something, John. She didn’t just have a bad attitude back then. She was one of the scary ones. She truly didn’t give a shit whether she got thrown in jail or not. People like that don’t change. They may hide it for a while, but it’s always there, waiting to surface. I don’t know if it’s genetic, or if it’s beaten into them from the time they’re old enough to talk, but it’s there, and you just can’t get rid of it.”

Alex’s description of the person Renee had once been was so accurate that she winced at every word. But that stupid teenage girl didn’t exist anymore. How would John ever convince him that she was dead and buried, and the woman who rose in her place would never even consider breaking the law?

“It doesn’t always happen like that,” John said, his voice quavering a bit. “People change.”

“Christ, John, haven’t we both seen it? Kids who were rotten to the core, who grew up and looked okay on the surface, only to end up in jail one more time because it’s all they know?”

“Renee’s not like that!”

“Oh, she’s not? Do you think it’s just a coincidence that she’s accused of armed robbery? It’s
never
a coincidence. They’re always running around with the wrong people. They never break that habit. Then they end up acting it out all over again, committing bigger and bigger crimes. It never ends.”

 Renee slid down the wall and sat on the floor, her knees tucked up to her chest, wanting desperately to cover her ears against Alex’s accusations. But she couldn’t. She had to know what she was up against. What
they
were up against.

Please, John. Please don’t give in. Please. . .

For several seconds neither man spoke. Renee hugged her knees against her chest and waited, her heart thudding in a sluggish, heavy rhythm. As long as John stood by her, everything would be okay. She could take anything. She could walk through hell doused in gasoline if only he stood by her.

“Listen to me, Alex,” John said. “I talked to the victim. She’s half-nuts. Her positive identification of Renee is a crock. She’ll be discredited right off the bat. But something she said gave us a lead to find the real culprit.”

He went on to tell Alex about their speculation that the robber was actually a man. He told him about the talent show at Aunt Charlie’s, and about his plans to go there to look for someone who met the description that the victim gave them. Alex protested a time or two, but John cut him off, telling him it was their best hope of finding the person who actually committed the crime, and that he intended to go there tomorrow night.

“First of all,” Alex said sharply, “that’s such an incredible long shot that no cop in his right mind would chase it. And second of all, you’d be pursuing it in an unofficial capacity while harboring a fugitive. Do you want
that
coming down on your head?”

There was a pause. Too long a pause. And when John spoke again, she could feel his conviction slipping away. “I’ve got to try, Alex.”

“Come on, John! You’ve never been one of those spineless idiots who’ll throw away his entire career for a few hot rolls in the hay. You’ve always been above all that crap. You, me, Dave—we all have. So what’s going on now?”

John didn’t reply.

Alex lowered his voice. “Look. We’re all entitled to a bout of really bad judgment at least once. We’ll consider this yours. Just do the right thing, and we won’t have a problem here.”

“A problem? What are you saying?”

“You’ve got twenty-four hours. If you don’t take her in, I’m going to.”

“Are you telling me you’ll take her right out of my house?”

“I’m telling you I’m not going to have you ruin your career because of some hot little felon who’s got you wrapped around her finger!”

“It’s
my
career! This has nothing to do with you!”

“The hell it doesn’t! Think of the family. It’s not just you we’re talking about here. You get caught doing something like this, and it’ll come down on all our heads. What do you think Dad would say if he saw how you’re behaving now?”

Suddenly Renee remembered something Sandy had said about Alex, that he was the one who’d followed in their father’s footsteps. But she got the impression that their father had practiced his own no-extenuating-circumstances brand of justice, and that John had never lived up to it.

Renee slid her hand to her throat, feeling hot and breathless. Why wasn’t John telling Alex to go to hell? Why wasn’t he saying something more in her defense? Could it be because he cared more about his family’s opinion than he ever let on?

Could it be he was starting to believe Alex and not her?

It was Alex’s voice she heard next, and every syllable he spoke reverberated like a cell door clanging shut.

“Twenty-four hours, John. If you don’t do the right thing, I’m going to.”

She heard footsteps leaving the kitchen, the front door opening, then closing sharply. The noise sliced through her like a cold wind.

Then...silence.

She heard nothing from the kitchen. Absolutely nothing.

She sat in the hall, mentally begging John to come to her, to tell her that everything was going to be all right.

He didn’t.

All at once she felt as if she were drowning in a sea of desperation, and every second that passed added to the deluge. She didn’t know how much time passed—maybe three minutes, maybe four, but finally she got up off the floor and inched her way toward the kitchen.

John sat with his back to her, his elbows on the table and his hands clasped in front of him. She walked over tentatively and sat down beside him, resisting the urge to reach out, to touch him, to connect with him somehow, when she sensed things were going terribly, terribly wrong.

He wouldn’t look at her. Renee knew what that meant. She’d seen enough legal shows on television to know that when the jury didn’t look at the accused, it meant the news wasn’t good.

“I heard everything,” she said.

“Alex will be back in twenty-four hours. He wasn’t joking, Renee. You’ll go to jail.”

“Only if you let him take me.”

“I can’t stop him.”

“You can’t? Or you won’t?”

“Don’t you understand? He knows. He knows you’re a fugitive, and now...” He paused, shaking his head. “We can’t go on like this. Not with Alex knowing.”

“Do you still believe I’m innocent?”

He paused. “Yes.”

“But that doesn’t matter to you anymore?”

“Alex is right, Renee. This isn’t about whether you’re innocent or not. You shouldn’t even be here in the first place.”