The Heart Heist (33 page)

"I can take care of you." Eldridge's voice went soft. "Just like I took care of Willie."

Gary's head shot up. On the surface this sounded like a simple request for sexual relations. Nothing so rare or surprising around here. But he suddenly wondered if Eldridge didn't mean something deeper, more sinister. Willie had ended up dead.

Eldridge's eyes met his with a cool, cunning darkness.

"Sullivan?" A screw appeared behind Gary's right shoulder. "If you're finished eating, you got a visitor."

Gary regarded his half-eaten meal. "Who?"

The screw checked a piece of paper. "Kerrin Horton."

A part of Gary's soul that should have been dead leapt back to instant life.
Kerrin
. He'd tried to put her, and the rest of it, behind him, tried to pretend it had been nothing more than a dream. Life on the outside had to become a dream for a con. Any obligations he'd still owned regarding the bomber he'd discharged by putting on Marty's shoulders. The only thing Gary could do now was his time. He couldn't think beyond that or he'd go crazy. Seeing Kerrin was going to stir up a host of tormenting wants and desires. Heck, that's why he'd made her promise not to come!

"I'm done eating," he told the screw anyway, rising from the bench.

Kerrin was dressed in a professional style navy blue skirt suit. Whatever care she'd taken with her makeup couldn't disguise the dark circles under her eyes or the fact that, thin as he remembered her, she'd lost weight. She also looked every day of her twenty-seven years, and then some. Gary remembered how young she'd looked that day in June they'd first met here, how full of energetic self-righteousness and blissful innocence.

Looked like he'd had a real good effect on the woman.

But did Gary do what he should, and turn right around, go back into the lock-up? Ha! He didn't have the will to do anything that noble. Instead he sank into the seat opposite her at the counter, letting his eyes drink her in. Just looking at her was like...medicine; soothing, healing medicine. Touching her, though, would have been something he couldn't bear, so he didn't attempt it.

Fortunately, she didn't try touching him either, but left her hands clutching the purse in her lap. Her eyes, however, glittered at him with a longing brilliance.

"Are you mad I came?"

Gary shook his head. This visit was going to set him back months. He needed to get back into prison culture, not dote on the past. But seeing her now -- how could he be mad?

"You don't look too good," Kerrin observed.

"Neither do you."

She bit her lip. "They almost didn't let me see you, said you'd lost your visiting privileges. I had to speak to the warden."

Kerrin and her red tape dancing. It was almost enough to make Gary smile. "Oh yeah, and what did he have to say for himself?"

Sure enough, indignant fire lit her eyes. "He claimed you hadn't shown up for work in two months. Can you believe it, Gary? The nerve!"

Oh yes, Gary could believe it. But watching Kerrin's innocent outrage only ended up making him smile after all.

"As if you'd never been gone," Kerrin sputtered. "Well, I made him see the light pretty quick." She huffed and settled in her chair like a flustered hen.

Gary couldn't stop smiling. Oh, he'd have to pay for these few stolen minutes with Kerrin. He'd pay in the renewed ravages of loneliness and useless aching, but right now he was going to enjoy what he could. "And Freedom," he heard himself asking, as though he had any business interesting himself in the outside world. "How's everything back in town?"

"Oh, fine, I guess. You were right about Matt and Elaine, by the way. He shuts her up in his bedroom and claims they're working on some hush-hush project." Kerrin rolled her eyes in a fair imitation of her brother. "Right."

The mention of hush-hush projects reminded Gary briefly of his own secret project in Freedom. But he took his qualms about the town's safety and put them to the side. He'd done what he could, passing the ball to Marty. Marty, like Kerrin, knew the red tape dance. He also knew everything that Gary did about the Holiday Bomber and the tunnel. He'd take care of the matter.

"How's Elaine doing?" Gary asked instead.

"Fine. She's moved into your house, thanks to all that money you left her. Oh, which reminds me." Kerrin stopped to dig around in her purse. "I brought something for you."

Before Gary had a chance to stop her, she'd shoved a single sheet document across the counter at him. He just had time to catch a glimpse of STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION written in fancy script at the top before one of the screws swept down to snatch it away.

"No signing or exchange of papers," he growled.

"What --?" Kerrin's astonished gaze turned toward Gary. "What's the harm in a piece of paper?"

Gary leaned back in the institutional metal chair, all the balm of Kerrin's presence dissolving into a more familiar helplessness. "They just like to control things." He glanced idly after the retreating guard. "What was it?"

He turned back to find Kerrin regarding him with a peculiar expression. "It was an award," she said.

"Oh." He supposed he ought to be excited about that, but suddenly nothing excited him any more. He didn't have anything to do with this woman's world, not really. He was inside. She was out. The two couldn't meet. What was he doing here, leading her on, trying to keep up the connection? It was futile, and it wasn't right.

"Gary." She leaned over the table, reaching for him. He drew his arm back, away from her touch. "Gary," she repeated urgently. "We have to get you out of here. This place is killing you."

A cool wind breezed over Gary's grave. Kerrin was repeating Eldridge's claim, almost to a tee. But Gary shook off his second death prediction in half an hour.

"Kindly don't discuss 'getting me out,'" he advised her. "The screws aren't likely to take it well. And don't think you're going to be able to dance your way through this red tape. They have very good reason to keep me in here."

"I'll call Marty today," Kerrin went on, blithely ignoring his request. Her eyes went vague and dreamy.

"Oh, I'm sure Marty will be just brimming over with helpful suggestions," Gary snickered. He didn't bother telling Kerrin that Marty had yet to take care of officially reducing his prison sentence. There were still twenty years on his record.

"And in the meantime," Kerrin continued, her gaze narrowing back on him, "we have to do something so that we can be together. I think we ought to get married."

The words dropped like acid onto an already festering wound. "Get married," Gary repeated in disbelief.

"It's the only viable alternative," Kerrin told him, "under the circumstances."

"That is NO alternative."

"I can move down here to Chino," she went on, ignoring him. "I'm sure I can find some kind of job."

"No!" Gary slammed a palm on the counter and leaned over it. He wanted to snarl and bare his teeth at her, anything to make her admit what he really was, to make her see the truth. "No, Ms. Horton, we are not getting married."

Her amber-jade eyes just looked at him in her unique way, the way that got her anything she wanted out of him. But not this, he wasn't going to stoop this low.

"Gary, I don't need to point out the obvious, surely," she said. "We need to be together, physically."

His voice came out as a harsh rasp. "The hell we do."

"For one thing," Kerrin announced, "how else are we going to have children?"

That did it.
Children
? He'd had as much of this nonsense as he could take.
Children -- him? Children, with a con for a father?
He pushed back from the chair and stood up, letting his eyes fall on her with all of the old, well-developed con implacability. "This conversation is over. This visit is over. And furthermore -- " He hardened his voice yet more. "You aren't coming back here again."

"Gary -- "

"If you do," he promised, "I won't agree to see you, so it'll just be a waste of time. Now get out."

He'd finally gotten through. Gary could see that in her expression of shock and pain. Closing his eyes, he turned and headed for the guard at the door. He felt suddenly nauseous, and hoped he could make it through the door before he lost what little lunch he'd eaten.
Married?!
Where had his brain been when he'd taken on this woman? Somewhere below the region of his belt, no doubt.
Married with children!

Finally the screw managed to get the security door open and Gary made it through, never glancing back at Kerrin. The door closed after him with a final clang and he knew right then that both Kerrin and Eldridge had been right, but only half right. He wasn't going to die. He was already dead.

~~~

Matt hated doctors. He hated the calm, sedate manner in which they talked. He hated the way information that could set a guy flat on his back in horror came out of their mouths with supreme ease.

Dr. Flanigan was no more likable now than he'd been when Matt had first met him three years ago. He still kept an eerie silence as he studied your records, still rubbed his chin with quiet reserve as he stood scanning your latest X-ray. Matt sat in his wheelchair across the doctor's wide desk, silently steaming, quietly dying. Why couldn't the guy come out and
say something
, for Christ's sake?

As though sensing Matt's thoughts, Dr. Flanigan finally shot him a glance. "Look at this." He pointed to one of the two X-rays he had up on his light screen. "This is you three years ago. See the way the vertebrae are pressing down on the nerve here?"

Matt could see it. It had been permanently etched in his brain at age thirteen.

"Now look at this." Dr. Flanigan pointed to the second X-ray. "This is you today. You can see how the vertebrae have moved in the course of a normal growth spurt. When'd you suddenly shoot up, Matt, about a year ago?"

"Maybe." The vertebrae were moving. That was no good. He was sure it was no good. Helpless fear gripped him and his hands tightened on the arms of his chair.

Dr. Flanigan shook his head and the fear took hold of Matt's throat.
Please God
.

"I've never seen anything like it." The doctor turned from the X-ray and gave Matt a sharp look. "You say you've been having these shooting pains in your thighs. Anything else?"

Matt instantly sensed the doctor was looking for something specific. Just as quickly, he determined he didn't want to give it to him, as if not knowing the truth would make it go away. "Nothing else," Matt claimed.

Flanigan crossed his arms over his chest. "Absolutely no other symptoms?"

"Why?" Matt felt provoked enough to ask. "What are you looking for?"

At that Dr. Flanigan's granite face cracked enough for a tiny smirk. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe that you'd gotten up and played a round of golf?"

Matt was so astounded by the man's cruelty that he couldn't say a word.

Completely unfazed by his patient's reaction, Dr. Flanigan half turned and hit the latest X-ray with the back of his hand. It made a sharp, cracking noise against the glass. "I've seen kids grow out of lots of things, but never out of a back injury like this one." His gaze went severe again. "Don't get me wrong. There's been three years' worth of atrophy in those legs. I doubt you'll ever walk normally."

"Walk?" Matt croaked.

"It's possible," the doctor went on, "you may never be able to get out of that wheelchair, even with the nerve free. It'll take months of physical therapy just to make that determination." He pursed his lips. "After that it'll be a question of how much extra help you're going to need: braces, a walker, crutches." With an air of business and efficiency he moved to his desk, sat down, and fished among the papers on top. "I'll set you up at the center here for three times a week."

"Now, wait a minute."

Finding an appropriate form, Dr. Flanigan paused, staring off into the air. "Better make that twice a week, to begin with. We'll increase from there."

With growing trepidation, Matt watched the doctor begin to fill out the form prescribing his treatment. He'd come here expecting to be told he was getting worse, not better. He should have been relieved, crazy with relief. Instead he felt as though the floor had been kicked out from under him.

"Maybe I don't want to go to physical therapy," he told the doctor.

Flanigan frowned over the form he was filling out. "Of course you're going to go. There's no other possible treatment indicated."

Matt set his jaw. "I'm not sure I want to go through months of that -- or put my family through it -- only to learn I'm still stuck in this chair."

Dr. Flanigan stopped writing. He stared at the sheet of paper in front of him and then slowly looked up at Matt. "Okay. You want to tell me what's the problem here?"

"I thought I just did."

Flanigan set his pen down with care. "Yes, you did, and quite frankly it's a load of nonsense. So, tell me, Matt, why don't you want to walk again?"

That was the other thing about doctors, Flanigan in particular. Sometimes they were too damn smart.

"Because," Matt replied evenly, "I don't deserve to."

~~~

Kerrin drove through Westwood Village to the corner of Westwood and Leconte, at the gate of the university. Matt was there waiting for her, reading a magazine. He rolled forward and opened the car door to transfer himself inside. Their eyes met and Kerrin saw in his exactly what Matt must have seen in hers: unspeakable depression and a consequent disinclination to talk about it.

"You want to go first?" Kerrin asked, once Matt was in the car.

He gave her a sidelong glance. "Why, you going to tell me what happened with Gary?"

Kerrin set her jaw. "Sure." She needed to find out what the doctor had told Matt. Her pride was minor compared to Matt's health.

"All right, then." Matt turned forward as Kerrin drove them toward the freeway. "You go first."

Kerrin's fingers gripped the steering wheel harder as she merged into the freeway traffic, but that was because merging always made her nervous. It wasn't because she was still bothered about what had happened in that Chino visiting room. No, during the drive between Chino and Westwood, Kerrin had decided she had to put the scene in perspective.