I Got You, Babe (36 page)

She grasped his forearm. “I’m here because you know what will happen to me if I stand trial. They’ll convict me, John. They’ll put me in prison. They’ll take away my life for something I didn’t do. And even when I get out, I’ll have to carry that with me for the rest of my life!”

He spun around to face her. “Don’t you think I know what you’re facing? Do you think I want you to go to prison?”

“Then tell your brother to go to hell!”

“I can’t do that!”

An icy chill trickled down Renee’s spine. “Does this mean you’re going to take me to jail?”

He stared at her a long time, and she felt a rush of panic.
Don’t let it end this way. Please. Not this way.

“No,” he said. “I’ll never do that, no matter what my brother says.”

Renee put her hand to her throat, feeling relief because of that at least. “But Alex—”

“Alex doesn’t make idle threats. If you’re here tomorrow night, he’ll take you in.”

“Then I won’t be here,” she said, trying to interject a note of hopefulness into her voice. “I’ll go somewhere else. Then you can go to the club tomorrow night and find the person who committed that robbery.”

“No. Alex was right. We’re never going to find the person who did this.”

“But when you came home tonight you said it was a possibility. You said you thought we had a good chance—”

“I was dreaming. We both were.”

“It’s my only hope!”

He just shook his head.

“Why don’t you try to talk to Alex again tomorrow?” she said. “After he cools off. Maybe you can make him see—”

“No,” John said sharply. “Even if I could talk Alex out of taking you to jail, as long as you’re here, we still have only two choices. Either you eventually give yourself up and risk going to prison, or we carry on as if you’re not an accused criminal and I’m not a cop, waiting for the day when we slip up and you end up going to prison, anyway. Now, which of those two do you think we ought to pick?”

Renee felt as if she were walking through a nightmare where nothing was real anymore, and behind every word, every phrase, every look John gave her was something grim and heart-wrenching.

“What are you saying?” she asked.

“You have to leave. Tonight.”

Renee’s whole body quivered with disbelief. He was slipping away from her. A feeling of hopelessness built up inside her until she wanted to scream.

“Just one more night, John,” she said, her voice choked. “Just let me stay tonight, and then--“

“There’s a motel up the road. I’ll take you there. It’ll give you a chance to think about what you’re going to do. Then tomorrow—”

“No!” she shouted. “I don’t want to go to a damned motel!”

His jaw tightened, his eyes drifting closed. “I know how you feel, but—”

“No! You
don’t
know how I feel! If you knew how I felt, you’d never be able to do this!”

He pushed his chair away from the table and stood up. She caught his arm. “John.”

She held on tightly, waiting until he looked down at her. She swallowed hard, trying to keep her tears at bay. “I thought there was something between us,” she whispered. “Was I wrong?”

For just a moment she saw a tiny shaft of light in his dark expression, something that told her that no matter what he said, she still had his heart. But just as quickly as she’d seen the light, it disappeared, and his expression fell into shadow once again.

“No. You weren’t wrong. There was something between us. And it was all based on a fantasy. We’ve got no future, and we were crazy to think we did.”

Every word he spoke in that cold, emotionless voice ripped her open a little bit more. He slid his arm from her grasp and strode out of the kitchen, leaving her sitting at the table, tears streaming down her face.

How could he do this? How could he abandon her now, when she needed him the most?

John took Renee to the motel he’d told her about, a cheap but decent establishment ten minutes from his house. They didn’t speak the entire time he drove, and the silence allowed Alex’s words to bombard the inside of his head over and over again.

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!

The longer Alex had talked, the more John’s eyes had opened to the reality of the situation, a reality he hadn’t wanted to face. He’d been going along these past few days, thinking that if he wanted Renee badly enough, somehow things would work out all right. Listening to his brother, though, he’d realized the truth.

He’d screwed up. Royally.

Then he remembered what Dave had told him. You’ve got to quit getting so personally involved. Sooner or later it’s going to eat you alive.

Dave was right. His lack of objectivity was a cross he’d borne since he first became a cop. It had gotten him exiled to east Texas, and it had gotten him into this situation now.

He didn’t look at Renee. He didn’t even glance at her, but he’d become so involved with her that he could feel every breath she took. He could feel her anxiety. Her fear. And it had clouded his judgment to the point that he didn’t even know what professional objectivity was anymore.

What do you think Dad would say if he saw how you’re behaving now?

Alex’s accusation had been right on target. If their father were here, he’d be wearing that expression that was so familiar, that look of disgusted disappointment that said John hadn’t lived up to his expectations. He never had, not from the beginning, and certainly not now. He’d always been the one to ask questions when their father’s word was supposed to be law. He’d been the one to challenge authority and get slapped down for it. He had the eeriest feeling that his father was looking down from heaven right now, and he didn’t much like what he saw. And the mere thought of that sent a chill down John’s spine.

It wasn’t as if he had any delusions about his father. Joseph DeMarco had been ruthlessly strict and heartlessly demanding, insisting that his sons live up to unreasonable standards. So why was he still beating himself up every time he fell short of his father’s expectations?

Deep down, he knew the answer. Because his father had died before he could do that one thing that would make the old man proud.

He pulled into a parking space near the garishly lit motel lobby and put the car in park. He shouldn’t have brought her here tonight. He should have waited until the light of day, when things wouldn’t have looked so desolate to her. But he’d been afraid that if she stayed with him one more night, she’d end up in his arms again and he wouldn’t have been able to bring her here at all.

He was going to catch hell from Alex tomorrow night when he showed up and found Renee gone. But no matter what his brother had told him to do, he couldn’t be the one to turn her in. As much as he wanted to right the wrongs he’d committed, taking her to jail when he knew she was innocent would haunt him forever. This way, at least he could hold on to the hope that maybe she’d managed to escape somewhere and live a halfway decent life.

She reached for the door handle.

“Renee,” he said. “Wait.” He pulled out his wallet.

“I have money,” she said quietly. “Paula let me borrow five hundred dollars.”

He held out a handful of bills to her. “Take it anyway.”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

He held the money out a moment more, but when it became clear that she wasn’t going to take it, he stuffed it back into his wallet and tossed it onto the dashboard. He desperately wanted to do something for her, knowing all the while that what she really needed from him he just couldn’t give her.

“So what happens when Alex shows up tomorrow and I’m gone?” she asked. “What will he do to you?”

“He won’t do anything to me. He won’t like it, but if you’re gone, it’ll all be over with.”

“For you, maybe. Not for me.”

She put her hand on the door again, then stopped. For several seconds she didn’t move. Then slowly she turned back around, her eyes filling with tears again, shimmering softly in the dim light.

“I’m so scared.”

At the sound of those faint, whispered words, John had to fight the urge to pull her back into his arms, to make more promises he couldn’t keep, to tell her everything was going to be all right when he knew that nothing was ever going to be right for her again.

“What should I do?” she asked.

“Run.”

She swallowed hard. “I haven’t got any way to run. I don’t have my car, or--”

“Call Paula. She’ll help you.”

“Is there any way, if I turn myself in—”

“No. Right now the evidence is overwhelming, and if you’re arrested, you’ll go to prison. If you stay in town and Leandro catches up to you, after what you did to him this time, he may decide to take his own revenge.” He paused, feeling an overpowering desire to kiss her tears away instead of causing more. “Run as far and as fast as you can.”

“Maybe I’ll call you. When I get where I’m going. Maybe—”

“No. Don’t call. Don’t write. I don’t want to know where you are. It’s—” He stopped, then expelled a weary breath. “It’s better for both of us.”

She nodded slowly. “Do you want to hear something crazy?” she asked, with a small, humorless laugh.

“What’s that?”

“I think I was starting to fall in love with you.”

John closed his eyes, wishing to God she’d never said that. How was he going to spend the rest of his life knowing she was out there somewhere, remembering him as the man she might have loved if he hadn’t turned his back on her?

She opened the door, slipped out of the car, and walked away. She never looked back. And she was never going to know that maybe, just maybe, he was starting to fall in love with her, too.

He watched her approach the desk in the brightly lit lobby and ask for a room. He waited until he saw the clerk hand her a key, then jammed his car into gear and left the motel parking lot, thinking what an incredible fool he’d been the night he’d turned away from the police station and gotten involved with her in the first place. Thinking how cold and lonely that house of his was going to feel without Renee in it.

Thinking that there wasn’t any possible way he could hate himself more.

Chapter 19

R
enee lay on the orange flowered bedspread in that ugly little motel room, staring at the cracked ceiling, crying until she didn’t have a tear left to shed. It was as if a hole had opened up inside her with nothing to fill it, and the pain it caused was excruciating. She’d thought she knew what kind of man John was, but a few angry words from his brother and he’d turned his back on her, depositing her at this crummy motel as easily as taking out the trash.

Her head pounding, she reached for the phone and called Paula. Twenty minutes later, they were sitting on that ugly orange bedspread together, and she was telling Paula the whole story. She told her about how she’d gone back to John and he’d pledged to help her, and how they thought maybe the talent show might hold the key to finding the real culprit, and then how Alex had shown up and John had turned his back on her.

She’d intended to leave out the part about making love with him and about how she’d come to trust him so much. But when she got to talking, those tears she thought had left her for good came back with a vengeance, and suddenly she was spilling everything. Through it all, Paula nodded sympathetically, letting her tell the story without passing judgment, which was what Paula did best and why Renee loved having her for a friend.

“I think he forgot for a while that he was a cop,” Renee said, wishing her headache would go away. “His brother reminded him.”

“Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry you had to go through all that.”

Renee sniffled, and Paula got her another handful of tissues from the bathroom.

“I can’t tell you how he made me feel,” Renee said, dabbing her eyes. “Like nothing could hurt me. And then...this.”

She wanted to hate him. She wanted so desperately to hate him so she could replace the pain she felt with anger, but she couldn’t. Every time she tried to picture slapping him, she pictured kissing him instead.

Stop it. If he cared about you, you’d be in his arms right now and not in this tacky motel room.

“So what are you going to do now?” Paula asked.

Renee thought about the life that lay ahead of her, and she had no idea which way to turn. “I don’t know.”

“So you really think the robber was a man?”

“It’s possible.”

“So what about the talent show?”

“What about it?”

“Do you think the person who committed that robbery will be there?”

Renee blinked. “It’s possible, I guess.”

“So are you going?”

She thought about that for a moment, about how John and Alex had both decided it would be an exercise in futility. Then she thought about how neither of them was facing an armed robbery accusation, and if they were, they just might see things a little differently.

The longer she thought about it, the more she realized that it was the only chance she had to get out of this mess without running for the rest of her life. She had absolutely nothing to lose.

“Yes,” she said suddenly. “I’m going there.”

“You are?”

“Yes. The talent show starts tomorrow night at nine o’clock, and I’m going to be there.” Her conviction gained momentum as she spoke. “And I’m going to find some answers.”

“Good for you!”

“Will you come with me?”

Paula froze, her excitement deflating like a popped balloon. “Uh...me?”

“Yes. I could use another set of eyes, not to mention the moral support.”

Paula’s expression got a little shaky. “Won’t we, you know...look out of place?”

“We shouldn’t. We look like women, don’t we?”

“Right. We look like women. We don’t look like men trying to look like women. They might not even let us in the door.”

“Good point.” Renee thought about that a moment. “Okay. I’ve seen transvestites and cross-dressers on those sleazy talk shows. Most of them overcompensate. Shorter skirts, flashier clothes, bigger boobs. Maybe we just have to show a little bad taste and a lot of Cottonelle.”