Third Grave Dead Ahead (37 page)

“So he doesn’t have to go back to prison?”

“I talked to your friend Neil Gossett,” Uncle Bob said. “They’re going to keep him in minimum security until all the paperwork goes through.”

“But why don’t they just let him out now?” I asked, alarmed. “The man he went to prison for killing isn’t even dead.”

“For one thing, they have to prove that really is Earl Walker. Then papers have to be filed and a judge has to review the case. It’s not like in the movies, hon.”

“So how is he?” I asked.

“Farrow is fine,” Ubie said. “He’d called the police before he ever got to your place and was there when we got there. He surrendered with no complications. And that is really the man he went to prison for killing?” he asked at the last.

I knew he would take it hard. Sending a man to prison for a murder he didn’t commit would wreak havoc on the heightened moral codes of a good cop. “There was no way for you to know, Uncle Bob. Wait.” My brows slid together. “What do you mean he surrendered? He didn’t really have much of a choice, did he?”

“Actually, the first officers on the scene were a little busy. They had no idea who he was. He identified himself and told them the guy lying in a heap of broken limbs was Earl Walker.”

“He told them? With the gunshot wounds?”

Ubie and Cookie exchanged glances. “He wasn’t shot, sweetheart,” Cookie said.

“Oh, my gosh, he’s faster than I thought. I could have sworn he was shot. I mean, I saw Walker pull the trigger. I saw the bullets head straight for his heart.”

Again with the glances. Cookie took my hand. “Hon, that wasn’t Reyes.” She bit her lower lip, then said, “That was Garrett Swopes.”

I blinked in confusion, closed my eyes, and replayed the memory. A tall man came bursting through the door, and Reyes had been on his way. I’d just assumed.

“Swopes?” I finally muttered. “Garrett came through the door?”

“Yes,” Uncle Bob said.

“Garrett Swopes was shot?” I simply couldn’t wrap my mind around it. “No, that was Reyes. It had to be. He crashed through the door and … the gun went off.”

“Sweetheart, why don’t you get some rest.”

“You must be mistaken.” Shock and denial fought for a front seat in my convertible to la-la land. They had to be mistaken. Garrett was shot? Because of me? I struggled to get out of bed. “Is he here? I have to see him.”

Uncle Bob lowered me back onto the mountain of pillows. “Charley—”

“I can’t believe I got him shot. Again. I need to see him. He’s going to be so pissed.”

“You can’t, hon.” Uncle Bob lowered his head, sorrow and regret coming at me in white-hot waves.

I glanced at Cookie, at her red-rimmed eyes, and the dread that crawled up my spine was so cold, so crushing, it swallowed me where I lay. I forced myself to look at Uncle Bob. And waited.

He visibly struggled with what to say, how to word it; then he raised his lashes and whispered, “He didn’t make it, hon.”

And everything else slipped away.

26

Sometimes that light at the end of the tunnel is a train.

—T-SHIRT

Slowly, and with a sharp pain that echoed off the hollow walls of my heart, the realization that I’d actually gotten a man killed, a friend, sank in. There comes a time in every woman’s life when she has to reevaluate her priorities. Did I really want to kill off all my friends one by one?

Another thought surfaced, one that centered on the fact that the men in my life found me incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. True, my track record didn’t instill a lot of confidence, but I’d solved case after case, I’d weathered ridiculous odds, and damn it, I’d looked good doing it.

A momentary sense of pride swelled inside me until I once again remembered I’d gotten a man killed. Not just a man. Garrett Swopes. My Garrett Swopes. A bond enforcement agent with more talent in his little finger than I had in my whole body. I replayed the scene in my mind, the bullets heading toward him, too fast for him to react. And I’d watched, like a voyeur. Thinking it was Reyes, I figured he could react, he could defend himself against those odds. Had I known it was Garrett, would I have done more? Would I have tried harder? Could I have?

If Reyes had just trusted me. That was another thought that played itself over and over in my mind. If he had just trusted me. If he had just filled me in on the freaking plan. Quite frankly, Reyes Farrow could bite my ass.

When I started pulling needles and tubes out of every available surface of my body, Uncle Bob jumped up from a chair in the corner.

“What are you doing?” he asked, trying to stop me. And succeeding with minimal effort.

“I need to go home.”

“You need to lie back.”

“Uncle Bob, you know how fast I heal. And I’ll heal even faster at home. I just want out of here. I’ve been here for two weeks.”

“Hon, you’ve been here for two days.”

“Are you serious?” I asked, more than a little appalled. “It seems like forever. And then some.”

“Charley, let’s just talk to the doctor first, okay? He’ll make his rounds again in about an hour.”

With a heavy sigh, I fell back, opened my mouth in a silent scream at the pain shooting through every molecule in my body, then clamped my jaw shut because silent screaming hurt, too. Holy crap, I hated being tortured. I hated that Reyes didn’t trust me. And more than anything, I hated getting my friends killed.

“I killed him, Uncle Bob.” I plastered a hand over my eyes so he wouldn’t see the evidence of how pathetic I could be.

“Charley,” he said, his voice soft, “that wasn’t your fault.”

“It was entirely my fault. Maybe Dad was right. Maybe I need to be a plumber.”

“Your dad wants you to be a plumber?”

“No,” I said, my breath catching between sobs, “he just wants me out of this business.”

“I know. But since he essentially got you into this business, I’m having a difficult time with it.” A hardness seeped into his voice, and I blinked past the tears to look at him.

“I don’t want you to be mad at him.”

He smiled. “I’m not, honey. It’s just, he gets you into this, gets you to solve all his cases for him, then when it comes time to hang up his badge, he decides it’s suddenly too dangerous for you? I have to wonder if that’s not why he retired when he did.”

I hiccuped a sob. “What do you mean?”

“He retired earlier than we thought he would. I think he felt guilty about using you like that. Whatever the case may be, I’ll talk to him, pumpkin. Don’t you worry.”

The doctor came a while later and argued for a good half hour, but Uncle Bob and I won. They were releasing me on my own recognizance.

“Where are you going?”

I looked up as Dad walked in. Uncle Bob was helping me with a pair of slippers as Cookie retrieved a robe out of the closet.

“Hey, Dad, they’re letting me walk. It’s crazy. They apparently have no idea how dangerous I am.” I realized about mid-
crazy
that Dad seemed upset. “What’s wrong?” I asked when he frowned at Uncle Bob and me.

Uncle Bob stood. “Leland, she wants to go home.”

“You just keep encouraging her, and now a man is dead and she is in the hospital after having been tortured almost to death, yet again.”

“Now is not the time for this conversation.”

“Now is precisely the time. She refuses to listen to anyone, even her own doctor.” Dad’s aura crackled with anger. “This,” he said, gesturing to the equipment surrounding me as I sat on the side of the bed, fighting the pain throbbing in my arm and leg, “this is what I’m talking about.”

I didn’t have the energy to argue with him. The pain leached it out of me as fast as my body could produce it.

Gemma walked in then, her eyes wide with worry, and I realized there was more going on than just Dad’s anger. “I tried to talk him out of this, Charley.”

“Why?” He turned on her, his jaw set in anger. I’d never seen my dad like this. He was always the calm one, the stable one. “So she can end up in the hospital every other week? You want this for her?”

“Dad, I want her to be happy. She likes her job and she’s good at it and it’s not up to us.”

He turned from her as though disgusted. I wondered where Denise was, the stepmother from hell; then I saw her standing down the hall, worry lining her face. She looked up as two officers walked past and stepped into the room. And lo and behold, one was Owen Vaughn, naturally, and I knew this was about to get much, much worse.

“Charlotte Davidson?” the officer that I didn’t know and who had never tried to kill me asked.

“Dad,” Gemma said, “please think about what you’re doing.”

“That’s her,” Vaughn said, as though he hated to do it.

Uncle Bob spoke up then, suspicion thickening in his voice. “What are you doing, Leland?”

“What I should have done a long time ago.”

“Ms. Davidson,” the officer said, “we’re here to place you under arrest for aiding and abetting an escaped convict and obstruction of justice in the apprehension and arrest of said convict.”

My jaw fell to the floor. I looked from them to Dad and back.

“Dad, please,” Gemma said.

“Due to your physical condition, we’re going to ask that you come in voluntarily within the next week to be formally arrested. Your rights and privileges as a licensed private investigator have been suspended until an investigation can determine the extent of your involvement in Reyes Farrow’s escape and continued evasion.”

With the wind knocked completely out of me, I sat in stunned silence as he spoke. My father did this. The one person I could always count on growing up. My rock.

Somewhere between the drips of a leaky water faucet nearby, I slipped into a surreal state of consciousness. I heard Dad and Uncle Bob arguing violently, nurses rush in and out, Gemma and Cookie talking to me in soft, soothing tones. But the world had been dipped in red. My dad. Reyes. Nathan Yost. Earl Walker. It was enough to bring out the anger in a girl.

My sudden spike in annoyance must have summoned Reyes. He was there at once, enshrouded in his undulating robe. He looked from the arguing crowd to me, then back again. And he was not a person I wanted to see. In fact, he was more a person I wanted to punish. Because I saw betrayal. Unconscionable behavior. Murder.

“Rey’aziel,” I whispered under my breath with every intention of sending him back to his body for good, but he was in front of me at once.

“Don’t you dare,” he said, his voice a low growl.

I glowered at him. “You don’t get to order me around.”

He pushed his hood back, his face startlingly beautiful, inches from mine. “So you’re going to punish me? Unbind me when you need me, then bind me again when you don’t?” He leaned so close, I could smell the lightning storm roiling inside him, the earthy dampness of morning dew evaporating under the heat of the sun. “Fuck you, then.”

I shook to my core, the anger sparking within me, catching fire and flooding the area with the energy pouring out of me. In a word, I threw a fit.

“What is that?” I heard someone ask.

I looked up, a curious slant to my gaze as I watched everyone around me grab for furniture, the doorjamb, each other … anything to stabilize themselves. Uncle Bob stumbled, then rushed toward me. He knew. Somehow he knew.

He took my chin into his hand. “Charley…”

The lights flickered overhead. Sparks cascaded around us and screams filtered toward me from the hall.

“Charley, honey, you have to stop.”

Cookie came into my line of sight, her eyes wide with fear as she clutched an equipment cart.

“Charley,” Uncle Bob said again, his voice soft, soothing, and in an instant I blinked back to reality. He was in front of me, and I was back in my body, grounded in flesh and bone. I forced myself to calm, to take deep, cleansing breaths, to control the arcs of energy surging out of me.

Screams and shouts echoed down the hall. People were struggling to their feet. Equipment had toppled over and light fixtures hung from the ceiling by wires.

And my father looked at me. And he knew.

Then Reyes was in front of me again, an expression that was part anger and part satisfaction lit his beautiful, traitorous features. “Finally,” he said, right before he disappeared.

Then it was silent and Uncle Bob was leading me out of the hospital, carrying me up the stairs to my apartment, onto the sofa where Cookie had built a bed with sheets and my Bugs Bunny comforter and set a soda on the end table she’d scooted within easy reach. I was back at my apartment, stitches, arm sling, leg brace, and all.

“They’re calling it an earthquake,” Cookie said, the relief in her voice evident. Like they would ever suspect that undulating force had come from a person, especially one unable to walk and chew gum at the same time. She needn’t have worried. “And Neil Gossett from the prison called. He has information on Reyes’s status, and he wants to know how you are.” Oddly enough, I didn’t care. “I gave him the usual. But if you want to call him later, I’ll leave your phone right here.” She put it on the table beside the soft drink.

“I’ll take care of this, hon,” Uncle Bob said, hovering almost as much as Cook. “Don’t worry about what your father did. I’ll get everything dropped.” He left worried and angry, and I wanted to warn him about the dangers of driving in his condition, but I was so numb, even the thought of being a smart-ass didn’t appeal to me.

So, I sat in shock and wallowed in self-pity for a good long while before drifting off, Cookie at my side. At least I could sleep now, and suddenly sleep was all I wanted to do.

*   *   *

A knock sounded at the door. I didn’t quite have the energy to invite a visitor in. I’d used it all hobbling over to the snack bar and climbing up it with my one good leg. I raised the other knee and sat on the hard tile surface with my back against the wall, the coolness biting into my injuries. I didn’t deserve to be comfortable, spread out on a sofa watching soaps all day, even if I was decades behind.