Johnston - I Promise (3 page)

Whoever was there tried the door and found it locked. “It’s locked,” a male voice said.

“Just a minute.” Delia slipped into the second high heel, crossed quickly to the door, unlocked it, and pulled it open. She stiffened when she saw who was there. She should have recognized his voice, but she hadn’t been expecting him. Not so soon.

“May I come in?”

Delia stepped back and let Sam Dietrich in. She endured the DA’s scrutiny, hoping her eyes didn’t look as red-rimmed as they felt.

“Janet told me about your mother. I’m sorry,” he said.

“Condolences are premature,” Delia said coolly. “It appears reports of her death were greatly exaggerated.”

Sam raised a brow.

“My mother isn’t dead after all,” she explained. “She was resuscitated by the paramedics.”

“Oh.”

The district attorney was clearly uncomfortable, but Delia had no desire to help him out. Lately, he had been a constant burr under her saddle. Sam was balding, but doing it gracefully. His sandy hair was trimmed neatly over his ears and above his collar. His pale blue eyes were focused sharply on her from behind trendy, wire-rimmed glasses. A hawkish nose, full lips, and heavy brows gave him a nonspecific ethnic look that was certain to be helpful to Sam’s grand political aspirations to become governor.

Sam looked more like a Manhattan corporate attorney than an official of the state in his exquisitely tailored gray wool blend suit and Armani tie. His white-on-white shirt was starched so crisply it could have stood on its own, and his black wing-tipped shoes were polished to a mirror sheen. It was definitely a power suit, and Delia was grateful for the black robe that gave her even greater power.

“I don’t have much time, Mr. Dietrich. I have to catch the first flight to San Antonio.”

She crossed behind her desk and sat to give herself the position of greater authority. It was unlikely Sam had come on a friendly visit. “What can I do for you?”

Sam turned and checked the hallway before carefully closing her door and locking it.

She raised a questioning brow as expressive as Sam’s, but he didn’t explain himself, simply turned to her, stuck his hands in his pants pockets, and said, “I got your message.”

“I see. And what dirty job have you come to do, Mr. Dietrich?”

The DA’s lips flattened. His icy blue eyes narrowed. “I want you to accept the Lincoln plea bargain.”

“Five years probation for murder one?” Delia shook her head. “I don’t think so, Mr. Dietrich.”

“The kid is only eighteen. Two months ago Lincoln would have been a juvenile. He can make a good argument for self-defense,” Dietrich said. “The public defender has witnesses who’ll testify the victim had a gun on him.”

“Then why wasn’t Lincoln charged with manslaughter in the first place? The grand jury must have based their decision to go with murder one on something.”

Dietrich pulled a linen handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the sweat beaded on his upper lip. “Look, Judge Carson, I’m asking you to do this for me.”

Delia’s brow furrowed. She leaned forward and said, “What’s going on here, Sam? If I didn’t know better, I’d think the kid paid you off.”

The DA’s eyes flashed with irritation before he lowered his head to stare at his polished toe tips. When he glanced up at her again, his gaze was completely neutral. “It’s nothing as nefarious as that. The truth is, I’m doing a favor for a cop friend of mine who screwed up the evidence on this thing. We couldn’t get a conviction now if we tried. Frankly, I need a favor.”

Delia shook her head. “I’m sorry, Sam. I don’t do that kind of favor. Come back with a different charge if you want a different plea bargain.”

“But—”

“Is that all, Mr. Dietrich?” she said, cutting him off.

The DA’s eyes narrowed to angry slits, and Delia saw from the way his pants were stretched that his hands had balled into fists in his pockets.

“I won’t forget this,” he said.

“I won’t either,” Delia assured him.

She could see Sam wanted to say more, but he resisted the impulse. He turned on his heel and let himself out, leaving the door open behind him.

Janet appeared a moment later in the doorway. “I made reservations for you on the next flight to San Antonio out of La Guardia.”

“Thanks, Janet. I appreciate your help. For the record, my mother isn’t dead, after all. The paramedics revived her.”

“Oh, Judge Carson, that’s wonderful!”

Delia bit her tongue to keep from contradicting her secretary.

“I’ll let you know as soon as the car arrives,” Janet said. “The driver will wait while you pack and then take you on to the airport.” Janet backed out and closed the door behind her.

Delia propped her elbows on her desk and dropped her head into her hands. Oh, God, she didn’t want to do this! If only there were some way she could avoid going back.

But perhaps it was time—past time—to confront the secrets that had been buried two decades ago. Delia raised her head and threaded her fingers to stop their trembling. Oh, such very messy secrets. She would exhume them and examine them one last time before she buried them again, neatly, once and for all.

Maybe then she could get on with her life.

Chapter Two

Marshall North’s notoriety in Uvalde, Texas, had little to do with being a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist. Quite simply, the bad boy was back in town.

Marsh had tried to blend into the Texas crowd since his return, which wasn’t hard when he mostly wore a chambray shirt and jeans and cowboy boots these days. His hair was a little long beneath a new felt Stetson, and he usually needed a shave, but that shouldn’t have caused the kind of stares he’d been getting on the street since he’d returned home.

They were all remembering what had happened twenty years ago. The past had definitely not been forgotten.

It seemed far away right now. He had a new role in life, one that had him as uncertain of where he was going as a pony with his bridle off. He was picking his way, slow and careful, knowing from his years of experience as a foreign correspondent that sometimes it didn’t matter how careful you were. Things had a way of happening. And not always for the best.

But South American rebel forces aside, being a parent was about the most uncertain thing Marsh had ever confronted. He and his sixteen-year-old daughter had been two-stepping around each other for the past six months but couldn’t seem to get in sync. Either he landed on her toes, or she landed on his. He had no choice but to keep trying, unless he wanted to give up entirely.

Marsh had stopped running from trouble a long time ago. As far as he was concerned there was no way to go but forward. Even if he made mistakes, even if he did things wrong, he was determined to learn how to be a good father to Billie Jo. Certainly a better father than his father had been to him. Which was why he spent most of his time these days as jumpy as a bit-up old bull at fly time.

“Billie Jo, damn it, get up!” Marsh yelled down the hall from the kitchen doorway. “The bus’ll be at the end of the drive in ten minutes! Your eggs are getting cold.”

A sullen-eyed, slump-shouldered teenage girl appeared at the other end of the hall wearing one of Marsh’s best white tailored shirts, arms folded up to the elbows and tails hanging over a pair of ragged, kneeless jeans. The jeans were tucked into a pair of worn black-and-red cowboy boots.

“That’s my shirt, Billie Jo,” he pointed out.

Her chin—the same stubborn chin possessed by generations of Norths—jutted pugnaciously. “Nothing of mine is clean.”

“Comb your hair and get in here,” Marsh ordered, gripping the doorjamb in lieu of his daughter’s slender neck.

Billie Jo shoved a hand through tousled ash-blond curls that were turning dark at the roots and clomped down the hall toward him. “It is combed.”

Marsh stood where he was and watched her edge along the water-stained, rose-papered wall as she passed by him. Not that he had raised so much as a pinkie to her in the six months they had been living together, but she must have noticed he was running out of patience. He brushed a knuckle against the curling paper. His grandmother had loved it. He wasn’t looking forward to stripping it down and putting up new.

But the house was barely fit for habitation. It had been empty during the two years since his father had died, and it hadn’t been in good shape even then. He had hired a man to take care of the livestock since his father’s death, but the ranch house had been neglected. A storm must have torn some shingles loose, because the roof leaked when it rained. Too bad about the wallpaper.

Too bad his grandmother wasn’t here to help him with Billie Jo, but she had died when he was ten. Grandma Dennison had a way of soothing pain, a way of easing trouble that he wished he had inherited from her.

The best he could do was sympathize with his daughter’s need to rebel against authority. He had been wild as a boy himself, quick to anger and rash to a fault. But he had learned in the years since to control his anger and his impulses. The sooner his daughter learned that he expected her to obey him, the easier it would be for both of them. But there was nothing easy about any of this.

He remembered how euphoric he had been the first time he’d held his daughter in his arms. She was so tiny and helpless, needing him the way no one had ever needed him before. He had felt a swell of emotion inside that made him want to cry. He’d been worried because she hadn’t had a lick of hair. His wife had laughed at him and promised it would grow.

By the time Billie Jo had a few curls, he and Ginny were already arguing about his long and frequent absences overseas. Before those curls reached Billie Jo’s shoulders, he and Ginny were arguing all the time. They had stayed married for ten long years. It got so he came home only to see Billie Jo, and the arguments with Ginny forced him out of the house sooner than he wanted to leave his daughter.

Which didn’t explain why he had seen so little of Billie Jo in the years since his divorce. The reasons for staying away were harder to justify. Fathers were supposed to keep on being fathers. It hadn’t taken him long to learn that the pain of parting each time—when Billie Jo clung to him and begged him not to leave—was worse than not seeing her at all. He supposed that was a cop-out. It was also the truth.

There had been no time to prepare himself when Ginny had been killed so suddenly. Either he took Billie Jo or sent her away to some boarding school for girls whose parents didn’t want them around. Even though they were no longer close, he couldn’t do that to his daughter. He knew too well what it felt like not to be wanted.

For Billie Jo’s sake, he had tried staying in Ginny’s Boston condominium. But he would rather leave his hide on a fence than stay in a corral—and that high-rise box had felt like a jail cell after roaming free for so many years. Carting Billie Jo around the world with him wasn’t practical. So he had opted for the wide open spaces of southwest Texas—specifically the North Ranch. At least there he knew he wouldn’t feel so hemmed in.

Billie Jo had balked at leaving all her friends behind, but he had been adamant. They were both going to have to give a little for this to work. She would have to give up Boston. He would have to give up the rest of the world.

She was still angry about the move, and he couldn’t really blame her. He was fighting his own share of resentment at having to deal with a hostile stranger who happened to be his daughter. To tell the truth, he was about at the end of his rope.

Before he had moved back into this old ranch house, full of creaky floors and disturbing memories, he would have said he had learned to control his feelings. But it seemed Billie Jo knew all the right buttons to push. She had been on him like a roadrunner on a rattler ever since the two of them had been forced willy-nilly into the father-daughter role. The fight wasn’t over by a long shot.

He consoled himself with the thought he only had to get her through another year of high school after this one, which was, thank God, half over. Then he could send her off to college with a clear conscience and go back to the work he loved best.

His editor at
The Chronicle,
Lloyd Harrison, had been furious when Marsh had left the tiny African nation where he was reporting on one of the many uprisings over the past decade and flown home to take custody of his daughter.

“I need you, Marsh,” Lloyd had ranted.

“My daughter needs me more,” he had replied. Luckily, he had put most of what he’d earned over the past fifteen years in the bank, so money wasn’t a problem. When Lloyd continued haranguing him, he had hung up.

Lloyd and
The Chronicle
were simply going to have to wait until Marsh could get his life in order. That meant getting his daughter through high school, the prospect of which seemed more iffy by the minute.

When Marsh arrived in the kitchen he discovered Billie Jo had grabbed a piece of toast from the wholesome plate of breakfast he had prepared for her and was making a beeline for the kitchen door.

“Where do you think you’re going, young lady?” he said, stepping in front of the screen door and blocking her way.

“Daddy, I’m going to be late,” she protested.

“Haven’t you forgotten something?”

She looked up at him, the soul of innocence. “I don’t think so.” A pause, and then, “I don’t need a sweater. It’s going to be warm today.”

He hadn’t even thought about that. Another sign of his shortcomings as a father. She was probably right. It was going to be another warm January day. He stared down at her, watching her chew worriedly on her bottom lip. He felt a jolt of recognition. Ginny used to do the same thing.

Marsh realized he had let himself be distracted from the matter at hand. He pulled a folded paper from the back pocket of his jeans and shook it open in front of his daughter’s pretty young face. “What is this?” he demanded.

Billie Jo’s cheeks flamed. She shot a guilty look at him, but that didn’t last long before her dark brown eyes—her mother’s eyes—flashed with anger. “Where did you get that?”

“I found it on your floor when I—”