The Departed (28 page)

* * *

TAYLOR was packing up when he heard the knock.

Not his clothes, not yet, at least. They’d be stuck in French Lick for a little while, he knew. But it was time he did something with his family’s things. If there were clothes to be donated, he’d do it. He’d pay somebody to come in and go through most of his parents’ stuff, but he wanted to keep a few things that had belonged to his father.

And nobody would touch Anna’s stuff. Not yet, at least.

In the middle of going through old, yellowed drawings, he heard the knock and looked up.

Dez was in the depths of the house, still trying to find something, he guessed. He didn’t see her as he jogged down the steps, although the doll he’d given her was sitting in the foyer. Dez’s sunglasses were in the doll’s lap.

The last person he thought he’d see was Joshua Moore.

He tensed, ready to shut the door fast if he had to, wishing he wasn’t hampered by the broken arm. Cautiously, he said, “Yes?”

Joshua looked down and then looked back up. “Can…can I come in?”

“Why?”

The other man grimaced. “I’ve a few things to say to you. Would rather do it where it’s not freezing, but…”

“Just give me a minute.” He shut the door and went to the front parlor where he’d kept most of his things. In his briefcase, he had his weapon. He checked the safety—awkward doing it one-handed, and left-handed at that. He tucked it into the back of his jeans. Not ideal, but he didn’t have a holster he could wear and still manage to draw it with his left hand.

Not that he anticipated needing it, but too many things he hadn’t anticipated had happened over the past week. With Dez in the house, he wasn’t taking chances.

It took under two minutes. When he returned to the front door, Moore was pacing restlessly on the porch. “If you want to talk, come on in.”

“Oh,
want
isn’t the word I’d use,” he said gruffly. “But things just need to be said.”

Taylor remained silent, gesturing to the parlor.

Joshua walked along, hands in his trouser pockets, head bowed. In the parlor, he wandered absently while Taylor settled behind the desk. He casually palmed the weapon and slid it under the desk, ready, but out of sight.

“How’s your wife?” he asked stiffly. He didn’t want to ask—but Anna had cared. He had to remind himself of that, damn it.

Joshua shot him a narrow look. “How can you even ask?”

Taylor lifted a brow. “Excuse me?”

Joshua laughed bitterly. “Oh, come off it. I know what she did. I know…” He closed his eyes. Abruptly he jerked his hands from his pockets. Taylor tensed and then relaxed, seeing the empty hands.

His tension returned in three seconds flat, though, as he watched Joshua press the heels of his hands against his eye sockets. A harsh, ragged sound escaped him, almost like a sob. He took a breath, held it.

“I’ve spent most of the morning at the hospital, with Jacqui. She’s been committed for a psychiatric evaluation,” Joshua said, lowering his hands. He stared at Taylor. “She asked for this. And while she spoke with the psychiatrist, she asked that I be in there, told me she was tired of carrying all of this—felt like she was sometimes two different people. My wife…and somebody with all these secrets. How much of that is real, how much of that isn’t, I don’t know.”

Taylor frowned, not certain why he was being told this. He didn’t
want
to hear this. He had to summon every last bit of self-control he had, every last bit of human compassion, to say, “It sounds like your wife went through a very trying time with that bastard who happened to father her. She might need a lot of help to deal with it.”

“Help. Fuck. Yeah, you could say she went through a trying time.” Then Joshua shook his head. “That’s not what I’m talking about, either.”

He reached inside his coat, and until Taylor saw the sheaf of pages in his hand, he held himself rigid, ready to do whatever he had to if Joshua Moore showed any sign of danger.

But it was just paper.

“I know what she did, Taylor.”

His heart stopped as he stared at Joshua Moore. Blood roared in his ears, a cacophonic noise that drowned out everything else. He didn’t ever hear Dez enter the room. Until her hand touched his shoulder, he didn’t know she was there. He laid the gun in his lap and reached up, convulsively gripping her hand.

“What are you talking about?” he rasped.

“Anna.” Joshua looked at the sheets of paper he held. Then he looked up at Taylor, ignoring Dez altogether. “I’m talking about Anna.”

Carefully, Taylor put the gun’s safety on, then, just as carefully, he slid it into a drawer. He wasn’t ready to hear this—wasn’t ready, wasn’t ready…Standing up, he turned away and stared out the window. He braced one hand on it, staring outside. His gaze fell on the spot where Anna had last been seen. By the fountain. She’d loved that spot. Almost as much as she’d loved their game room—their one place.

“I don’t want to hear this,” Taylor said, his voice rough, ragged. It felt like he was speaking through a throat lined with broken glass. “Get the hell out.”

“No.” Joshua’s bitter laugh rang through the silence of the house. “Look at it this way: you owe me. My son’s paralyzed, in part because of your actions. You can damn well stand there and let me tell you what my wife wanted me to tell you.”

Taylor spun around, fury blistering inside him. “What, how she killed my baby sister?”

“She didn’t.” Joshua’s voice, quiet and soft, couldn’t quite penetrate Taylor’s fury.

But Dez could. She reached up, laid a hand on Taylor’s shoulder. “We need to listen, Taylor. Come on, now.”

He stared at her. “I can’t do this—I…I can’t.”

“You can.” She reached up and laid a hand on his cheek. “You can. And I’m right here, I’m staying right here.”

“She didn’t kill her,” Joshua said again. “I…” He gave Dez a dark look before he continued. “I don’t know what she is telling you, but Jacqui
didn’t
kill Anna. Anna fell.”

Anna fell—

“She fell…” Taylor, stunned, turned his head and stared at Dez.

Joshua gave her an ugly look. “You’re a fucking user, Lincoln. Maybe you
do
have a gift, but—”

He didn’t get anything else out of his mouth beyond that except a strangled
ugh
. Ignoring the pain shooting up his arm, Taylor pressed the cast against Moore’s throat. “Shut up,” he said gently. “You just shut the fuck up now and maybe I won’t beat you senseless. I’m trying to remember what you’ve been through. I’m trying to remember you don’t know Dez. But if you say anything else…it won’t
matter
what you’ve been through, or what you don’t know.”

“Taylor.” Dez curled a hand around his shoulder. “Ease up. Let him breathe.”

The other man’s breath whooshed out of him as Taylor eased back, staring at him.

“She’s trying to tell you that my wife killed your sister and you don’t want me to be pissed?” Joshua snarled, his voice ragged and hoarse.

“I don’t know all of what happened, Mr. Moore. I just knew your wife was involved.” Dez’s voice was cool. Her gaze dropped to the pages clutched in Joshua’s hand. “And she
was
involved. Wasn’t she?”

The anger drained out of him. As though somebody had replaced his bones with water, he sank to the floor. “She took her. Right out of the front yard. I…she heard your mother yelling at her, wanted to make the pretty little angel happy. And something scared her. Anna took off running. They were out near the cabin Jacqui’s mother had left her—it’s on Meyer’s Hill, close to…”

“The field. The well where she dumped my sister. Like she was garbage.”

“Yes.” Joshua looked up at him. “Yes. Anna ran. She fell. Her neck was broken. It…she kept calling her…”

“My angel. My pretty, precious angel.” Dez spoke up when his voice trailed off.

He looked at her, his face white. “Yes.”

Dez looked over at Taylor. “That’s what her father always called her. She didn’t want to hurt Anna. She…she just wanted somebody to love. I think something inside had been broken since he killed her baby. And when she saw Anna being yelled at, she just wanted to love her. She didn’t realize that Anna already had people who loved her.”

She cupped his cheek in her hand. “But she didn’t hurt her. I know it doesn’t undo her loss. It doesn’t take it away. But Anna wasn’t hurt.”

Taylor reached out, hauled Dez against him. Pressing his face against her neck, he struggled not to cry. He wanted to know why—why Jacqueline couldn’t have told anybody. Why she’d hidden it.

But Dez had already given him that answer.

That woman had already been broken inside.

“Anna needed for that woman to find peace,” Dez whispered, her voice so quiet only he could hear it. “Her father won’t ever have the chance to hurt her again, and maybe she can get justice for what he did to the baby. But she didn’t mean to hurt her—in her mind, she was helping her. In her mind, she loved Anna. I think she still does—at least she loves what she thinks she knew of her.”

Taylor shuddered. She wouldn’t say it. Fuck, he knew she wouldn’t. But he also knew what he needed to do. Not so much for
her
—Jacqueline Moore. But for Anna.

Lifting his head, he stared down into Dez’s face. Dark, warm eyes met his. She stroked a finger along his lip. “Are you okay?”

“No.” He pressed a kiss to her finger. “But I’ll manage. Just…just don’t let me go, okay?”

She twined her fingers in his. “Don’t plan to.”

Gripping her hand, his palm pressed tight to hers, he looked over in time to see Joshua finally climbing to his feet. “I can’t say that I can forgive her. I’d be lying. Just…hell. Tell her that I loved Anna—she was a wonderful girl. Tell her that Anna wouldn’t have wanted her to hurt like this.”

He looked back at Dez. He couldn’t do much else, not without lying.

She smiled at him.

As Joshua passed by them, Taylor made himself look at the man. “What’s going to happen with your son?”

“I don’t know.” The other man looked ten years older—no, twenty years older—in that moment. “I just don’t know. I gave the journal to the police. I had to.”

Both Dez and Taylor stared.

Joshua’s humorless laugh rang hollowly through the foyer. “What else could I do? He killed another boy—Tristan Haler—earlier this summer. I read it, in black and white. After I read it, I went to the bathroom and puked my guts up. I turned it in to the cops—I fucking had to, because that boy’s family deserves to know the truth. Then I went back and stared at him, hating myself because part of me still loves him. He’s a monster. He’s my son. And I love him. But I can’t ignore what he did.”

He sighed and shoved a hand through his hair, shaking his head. “I just don’t know what will happen. He may go to jail and I’ll tell him that he needs to at least try to work out a plea agreement. But he needs rehab, he needs counseling, and he looks at me with hatred in his eyes. I don’t even know if he’ll let me help him.”

“I’m sorry,” Dez said quietly.

He shot her an unreadable look, then shifted his gaze away, not responding.

Taylor pressed his lips to her brow and then eased back. There was little indecision as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He handed it to her and said, “I need the card for Greg Moeller.”

She cocked a brow, then shrugged. As she rifled through his wallet, he kept his gaze focused on her hands. Not on Moore, not on the pages he held—for once, Taylor was perfectly happy in not knowing every last detail. Once she had the card out, she gave it to him.

He in turn gave it to Moore. “I’m calling my lawyer. He handles the financial affairs for my family estate—I’m going to set up a fund for the kid’s health care costs—
only
the health care costs.”

Joshua shook his head. “No.”

“Yes.” Taylor glanced at Dez and then back at Moore. “Your son brought this on himself. You and I both know it. People may damn well try to spin it otherwise and I’ll deal with that when it happens. But…if I’d exercised more caution, perhaps he wouldn’t have been hurt.”

“
Perhaps
?” Joshua stared at him.

“Perhaps.” Taylor kept his voice cool. “I don’t know. He took off running, and he didn’t have to. We both know that. Something else we both know—if he’d gotten out of the house that night, it’s very likely he would have hurt people. He got too much pleasure from doing it. I can live with what happened to him, knowing nobody else was hurt that night. But you’re going to have your hands full, just helping your wife get through what she’s going through. You don’t need the burden of figuring out how to care for his health needs—and they’ll be many.”

Joshua gripped the card. “So this is…what, a way to mitigate your guilt?”

“No. It is exactly what I said it is.” He turned back to Dez and wished Joshua Moore were ten thousand miles away.

So he could break.

THEY slept in a guest bedroom.

In the morning, Dez planned on asking Taylor if they could go back to the cottage. She didn’t figure it would take much to talk him into it. She also hoped they wouldn’t have to stay for long. They had to see to Anna, but after that…

She missed home.

She missed
her
home.

She was kind of hoping she could maybe talk him into making it his home, too. His house would be too chaotic for her. There would be too many imprints from others and she couldn’t handle it.

For now, though, they were together in the silent emptiness of a graceful, sad manor with a heartbreaking past and Dez lay curled against the chest of the man she loved.

With the heat of his body pressed to hers, she didn’t notice the change in temperature right away.

And there wasn’t that desolation, either.

But something about the currents in the air when she finally opened her eyes made her realize…she wasn’t alone and Anna had been in there for more than a couple of minutes.

She was sitting on a chair, swinging her legs back and forth, something any child would do.

And she was smiling.

It wasn’t precisely a child’s smile, although there was naïve innocence to it as she stared at Dez.
“You’re in bed with my brother.”

Dez winced. This was a first. She’d never had to face a ghost in her birthday suit, even though she had a sheet tucked around her. She didn’t want to speak, either, for fear of waking him. Trying to communicate silently with her ghosts had never been that easy for her, for some reason.

Her brow puckered as she focused her thoughts, pushing them outward.

Yes. We…well, I got kind of lonely in this big old house.

Anna rolled her eyes.
“Yeah.”
She stood up and wandered around, pausing to glance down at Taylor. Goose bumps broke out over his arms. Dez pulled a blanket up over him, hoping he wouldn’t wake. The stress of everything had finally dropped down on him, so he might sleep through this. Might.

“I think I can go now,”
Anna said, shifting her gaze to Dez.
“Things feel…different. I feel different.”
She reached out a hand, let it hover over him. Sadness turned her pretty face dark and the room’s temperature plummeted.
“He can’t see me, can he? Not at all?”

Dez shook her head.
No. You…
She licked her lips, hesitating.
You know how you felt the lady’s pain? It’s a gift you have. Mine is seeing people like you. Taylor’s got a gift as well. It’s just different from ours.

“He kept me
me
.”
She reached up and touched her chest.
“Sometimes, especially when Mother was really sick, it was awful. But all it took was for Taylor to be there, and it made it better. He kept me
me.
Does that make sense?”

More than you know.
Dez smiled.
He loves you. Misses you. But he wants you at peace, baby.

She nodded.
“I know. I want him happy. Tell him that. And tell him I love him…”

Her fading was quiet, gentle. Dez closed her eyes against the tears, but it didn’t keep them from falling. And only heartbeats passed before Taylor shifted in the bed, his lean body stretching. The rough material of his cast scraped against her arm and she glanced down, saw him staring at her.

His eyes were ridiculously awake, ridiculously alert. Sighing, she reached down and brushed his tousled hair out of his face. “Nobody should look that awake without the benefit of coffee,” she said, her voice husky with tears.

He said nothing, just reached up to wipe the tears away.

She caught his hand. “Anna’s gone.”

He closed his eyes and turned his head.

“Taylor?”

* * *

AT the soft, worried sound of her voice, Taylor looked back at her. The tear tracks on her face gutted him. “I don’t even know what to say.” He sat up, pulling her close, although she still wasn’t close enough. Finally, he ended up hauling her onto his lap, with her legs draped on either side of him. That was better, he decided. Resting his head between her breasts, he said it again, “I don’t know what to say. I…hell, I’m glad. I wish I could have said good-bye, but I seem to chase your ghosts away.”

“She was your ghost, too.” Dez combed a hand through his hair.

“My sister. Your ghost. She called you here.”

“I think we were both intended to be here,” Dez said. “Both of us. Because I think it was my connection to you that made everything here stronger, different. If it hadn’t been for you, I think I would have helped Tristan, Ivy…and then I would have left. I never would have known about Anna. She just wasn’t strong enough to pull at me after all this time—not without that connection to you.”

He shrugged, restlessly stroking a hand up her naked back. “She’s gone…”

“Yes.” She leaned back, forced him to meet her eyes. “She saw you. Recognized you…and she wanted you to know she loves you.”

He closed his eyes. “Fuck.” His arms tightened around her and, once more, he nestled his head against her chest.
Anna
…she was gone. He blew out a breath, determined he wouldn’t break over this. She was gone—at peace. Finally. “Do you think we’re done here, then?”

“Yes.” She combed a hand through his hair, wrapped an arm around his neck. “Your mother…hell, there’s nothing of her here. It’s just emptiness. I think she was too weak to leave even an echo. Your father, I don’t feel him, although I don’t think it’s weakness on his part.”

She stroked her fingers along his shoulder. “He made his own peace with it…maybe he had some inkling what you were doing with your life.”

“He knew I was going into criminal justice.” Taylor sighed. “But he died before I had any clue where I’d go from there.”

“Maybe that was all he needed. But there’s more than just an emptiness here now. There’s peace. You can let it go, baby. You can move on.”

She leaned back and cupped his face in her hands. “It’s time you did just that. Whether it’s back to the bureau, or whatever. You’re bringing your sister home. You’ll lay her to rest. And then you need to let go. Move on with
your
life.”

He closed his good hand around her wrist. A strained, sad smile curled his lips. “Dez, I already did that. I did that the night I went chasing after you.”

Her heart flipped over in her chest as he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers. “You did, huh?”

“Yeah.” The hand on her wrist stroked downward, curving over her waist. “You’re my life…and I moved on to you. I love you.”

“Hmmm. I love you.”