The Suicide Club (32 page)

“Jean says that came from Justin. I’m not sure how he knew…could have just been a lucky guess.”

Despite not having been raised here, Justin understood this community’s mores well enough to push all the buttons that must have driven Tim to think he had no option but take his own life.

“So damn needless.”

“Tim’s death?”

“Everything. All of it. All of
them.
”

Their brains aren’t done…

“You need to let this go, Lindsey. Let them go. The sole responsibility for what happened here lies with the three who set this into motion.”

And two of them were dead. “What will happen to Jean?”

“She’ll be tried, probably as an adult. They’re sorting through possible charges. Although she didn’t fire any shots today, she was certainly an accessory.”

“I heard on the news that she didn’t set off the explosives in the lunchroom. That must count for something.” As the words came out of her mouth, Lindsey realized that she was again defending someone who no longer deserved her defense.

“They weren’t real. That’s probably what Justin had been putting together in the basement this weekend. Thankfully, being the son of a lieutenant colonel didn’t give him access to C4. Still, they needed something to control the hostages they planned to take in the lunchroom, so they faked it.”

“Then the bomb I took away from Jean—”

“Was a box wrapped in several layers of newspaper.”

More deception. And she’d fallen for all of it.

“I have to go,” Jace said. “I’ll call you later. You’re going to be all right there, aren’t you?”

“I’m fine.” Her parents had been glued to the television, but she’d had to take the coverage in small amounts. It was still too real. Too up close and personal. It always would be.

“Why did Justin come out of the lunchroom? I’ve thought about that all day, and I still can’t figure it out. Why not stay there and make them come in and take him?”

“I don’t think there was anybody in there Justin really wanted. Nobody whose death would give him a sense of achievement. None of that glory Steven talked about.”

That had been their avowed goal. Was that why Steven had come upstairs to get her?

“Was I on their list, Jace?”

“Does it matter? Whoever was on it—”

“Were you?” Like poor Mary, had she unwittingly made Steven feel rejected? Because of her relationship with Jace? Could they have known how serious that had become?

In a town where there are no secrets? she mocked her own question.
I knew the first night you slept with him, Linds.

“Lindsey—”

“Never mind.” Did she really need to hear him say it?

“I’m sorry.”

“For what? For saving my life? And who knows how many others. You have nothing to apologize for. Not to anyone.”

“Neither do you. You need to believe that.”

“I’ll work on it. I promise. And now I need to let you get back to work.”

“I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t let this change who you are.”

She smiled, thinking about all the ways it already had. “I’ll work on that one, too. And while I am, you take care.”

She didn’t add the words she’d said to him this morning. He’d heard them then. If they’d meant anything to him, then the next step was up to him.

Jace had tossed his jacket over a chair and headed straight for the cabinet where he kept the Scotch. Then, decanter in one hand and a glass in the other, he’d been about to pour the first drink of what might be several, when his doorbell rang.

For a second or two he considered ignoring it, but there were too many loose ends that hadn’t been tied up to his satisfaction. If someone had come up with the answers he’d posed in the debriefing, he wanted to know about them.

Setting the Scotch and the tumbler down, he walked over to the door. After looking out the peephole, he turned the dead bolt and opened it to Lindsey.

“I thought you might not have had time to eat.”

The smell emanating from the sack she held reminded him that he hadn’t. And of the last time she’d brought takeout.

He stepped back, gesturing her inside. Considering what had gone down today, she looked a whole lot better than he felt. He’d thought about going by to check on her on his way home, but had finally decided, as late as it was, that it would be an intrusion. Not to Lindsey, but to her parents, whom he’d never met.

“Are you all right?” she asked as he secured the door.

“That should be my line.” He turned, taking time to verify his initial impression that she seemed better than she had on the phone.

“I haven’t been working on this all day. Despite my parents’ obsession with Fox, I’ve had some distance.”

“The more time and space, the less consuming it becomes.”

“The voice of experience.”

“Unfortunately.”

He led the way to the kitchen, setting a couple of plates down on the counter. Lindsey watched as he did, but made no effort to put whatever she had in the sack onto them.

“Soda okay? Or something stronger?”

“They finally brought me my purse,” she said. “Steven made me leave it in my desk drawer, and I knew they weren’t letting anyone back in. I called and asked them to go up and get it.”

“If you’d told me—”

“I didn’t want to bother you. Actually, I thought it was a little…strange that I even thought about it, but it had my driver’s license, of course, so I couldn’t drive. And my cell.”

As she said the word, the message he’d left on her phone played through his head, the words etched on his memory by the emotions of the moment. He’d been so afraid he’d lose her. Afraid that he’d been too slow to figure it all out. Once again too slow to stop what he knew was going to happen.

And he almost had. When he’d seen that punk put the muzzle of his weapon against her temple, everything he’d managed to rebuild of his shattered life had hung in the balance.

One chance. And this time he hadn’t hesitated.

“I don’t know whether your message was from the stress of the moment,” she said. “If so, I understand. All you have to do is say—”

“Was that what it was for you? The stress of the moment?”

When she’d whispered the words she was trying so hard to give him an out for, she’d just laid a bomb on his palms. Did she regret saying them? Or was she just afraid he did?

“No,” she said simply.

“Truth be told, Lindsey I’m
not
particularly eligible. Not by anyone’s standards. You’ve probably figured that out by now.”

“No,” she said again, her eyes holding his.

He laughed. “Then you aren’t as bright as I thought.”

“A quality that just might be overrated. I think sometimes…You said important things sometime turn on a feeling. An investigator’s instinct. From the first, as much as I resented
why
you were here, I was glad you were.”

“I don’t know that this can ever be home. I can’t go back to the place that is, but I know how important home is to you.”

“
You’re
important to me. And if you meant what you said in that message, then nothing else really matters.”

“It will. Eventually. Your family. Friends. Your job.”

“The irony is that until today I might have agreed with you. Now…” She shook her head. “I just want to grow old with you. Somewhere safe. Somewhere we can send our kids to school and not have to worry if they’ll come home. Where we can walk into our house at night and not be afraid of the dark.”

“The dark’s always out there, Lindsey. There isn’t any place where those things don’t happen. Even here.”

“That’s why what you do is so important to you. I understand that now. Important enough that whatever happened to you before didn’t keep you from going back to your job.”

“Maybe another quality that’s overrated. What I did was for me. I needed to know if I could face what I feared. I needed to know the next time I wouldn’t make the same mistake.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

She nodded. “And now that you know that?”

“I have to decide if I need to do it again. And if there are other, better reasons for it if I do.”

“I don’t know that I can do that. I don’t ever want to go back to what happened today. Or to the weeks before it.”

“Nobody will judge you if you don’t.”

“Maybe you won’t, but to me, it’s the coward’s way out.”

“You’re not a coward, Lindsey.”

“I don’t know if I can ever walk into a classroom without wondering which of them is capable of what happened today.”

“Fair enough. You don’t owe anybody. Do something else.”

“Be a greeter at Wal-Mart.”

“What?”

“That’s what Shannon always threatens to do when she can’t take the little darlings anymore. Right now…”

“Right now, you need to give yourself some time.”

“How long did it take you?”

“I’m a slow learner.”

“Sorry, that’s not my specialty.”

“What is?” His grin emphasized his meaning.

“You know all of them. Such as they are.”

“That’s right. You’re the
gifted
coordinator. Highly gifted, I might add.”

“Thank you. Actually, thank you for everything.”

“Don’t get grateful and serious on me. Neither one of us needs that. Not tonight.”

“Barbeque?”

“Eventually,” he said, taking the sack from her and putting it down on the counter.

“I’ve got to stop bringing food over here. It’s a waste.”

“I thought it was a bribe,” he said as he took her into his arms. “Police corruption.”

“As long as it works.”

His lips closed over hers, swallowing the last word. And it was a long time later before either of them spoke again.

“I liked the part about sending our kids to school.” Jace ran his thumb over the moisture left on her bottom lip.

Maybe not in Randolph, given the memories that would haunt both of them here. But not so far away that those children she’d mentioned wouldn’t have grandparents. Someone who would love them and nurture them and help them become the kind of person Lindsey was. Someone to balance his cynicism. And someone willing to babysit for the occasional weekend away.

“Boys or girls?”

“Which is less trouble?” He leaned back to see her face.

“Depends on the age, but…you need a little girl. One who will wrap you around her finger.”

“I thought you’d already done that.”

“Just wait.”

“Okay, but…not too long. Time has a way of getting away from you. You never have as much as you think you will.”

“We’ll have enough. We’ll
make
it enough. I love you, Jace Nolan. I always will.”

“That isn’t gratitude talking, is it?”

“Desperation. I told you. So if you have any thought of getting away…”

He didn’t, he realized. No qualms. No doubts. Nothing but an absolute certainty this was how it was supposed to be. Maybe from the beginning.

And certainly—absolutely—to the end.