Triple Exposure (10 page)

Something more than fury—could it be fear?—flashed over his expression. But Rachel had all she could to master her own terror—and the intermingling of past and present.
Zeke doesn’t hurt women. He isn’t Kyle Underwood, and the
kind of candid photos I took weren’t anything like
…

Her own anger blasted to the surface. Anger that she’d been reduced to a quivering, speechless victim by Zeke Pike’s size and booming voice. She thought of her dad’s concern that this past year had “knocked all the starch” out of her. Thought of how she had allowed her fears to keep her grounded.

“Get out of my face and we’ll discuss this,” she said with every bit of courage she could scrape together. “
Calmly
, or there’s not going to be a conversation.”

“You damned well owe me an explanation.” Zeke’s green eyes sparked with barely contained rage, and he was shaking, too, with the raw power of it. “If I’d known—if I’d had any damned idea this would be about the area’s ‘artists’ more than the work, I never would’ve—I’ve been
overrun
this week. Strangers, even some woman who owns a gallery in Dallas, buying every scrap I had to offer. There were a lot of whispers, lots of strange looks—even from—from certain
men
.”

He looked so disturbed about that, Rachel might have laughed—if she had dared.

“But I never understood,” he went on, shaking his head, “until some giggling lady and her boy-toy pulled this out and asked for my
fucking autograph
.”

“Soooo…business has been good?” Rachel smiled hopefully, desperate to spin something positive out of the situation.

“You couldn’t’ve missed the damned point any better if you’d been spun around blindfolded.”

“Look, I’m sorry you’re upset, but I asked you to look
through all of the photos before you signed the release form. And besides, what the heck are you so afraid of? If you don’t want people bugging you, just lock your gate.”

“You’re full of it and you know it. You were supposed to be photographing the things I make, not me. And I sure as hell had no idea you were sneaking around my place spying on me, shooting pictures when I wasn’t looking.”

“I wasn’t
sneaking
around, Zeke,” she said. His words echoed through her brain, as jarring as the clank of the jail-cell door the day she had been booked, as horrifying as the idea of photos shot while
she
had been incapable of protest. After swallowing hard, she mumbled lamely, “You told me to come back that day.”

“But you
knew
—you damned well knew what I meant. And you’ve talked to me enough to know how I feel about my privacy. Hell, I don’t even have a decent sign to bring in business. If it weren’t for the bed-and-breakfast and the hotel people talking—”

“That photo, Zeke…Can’t you see—”

“
You’re
the one who can’t see, or maybe you’re so self-absorbed you don’t want to. I guess Patsy was right about you after all.”

She stepped back as if he’d struck a blow. So Patsy had talked to him about her? Her father’s wife was running her down in front of customers? This piece of news shouldn’t have stung her. She’d always known that Patsy didn’t like her, known she was far friendlier when Rachel’s sporadic visits remained brief.

Discomfort banked a little of the anger in his eyes. With a shake of his head, he said, “The hell with this. And the hell with you, too, if you’re just going to stand there crying—”

“I’m
not
crying,” she shot back. “It’s bright out, and I left my sunglasses—”

“Just forget it. The damage is done now. You couldn’t do a thing about it even if you gave a damn.”

“I do,” she said. “I do.”

But he had already turned his back to her to stalk past Walter Copeland, who looked flushed and ready to defend her, though he was nearly a head shorter than Zeke Pike.

“Everything all right here?” he asked, and Rachel felt a surge of love for the one man who would always defend her.

Even when you’re dead wrong
, she realized.

Thursday, March 6

The patchy predawn fog helped deaden the sound of the observer’s footsteps and the screech of metal as the hangar door rolled open. More fortunate still, there was no one else around yet, no one to remark upon the odd timing of this visit…or to connect it with the tragedy destined to take place later.

Such a long wait for this day, the day Rachel Copeland would finally fly solo. A rechristening to be remembered as she took the newly restored German glider on its maiden voyage.
He
had insisted on it as a way to show them, rub it in everyone’s noses that she was the boss’s daughter, no matter that she’d killed or forced too many others to pay the price for her sins.

For the last few weeks, the observer had kept an eye on her progress. Desperate, almost frantic, for an opportunity. Still deprived of further counsel, of any glimpse of the lights that offered guidance. Farther than ever from success, but drifting in the dangerous direction of memories of The Child.

Stop thinking of it. Stop remembering
. The observer sucked a breath through clenched jaws, then ground flexed knuckles into throbbing temples in a desperate bid to make the buzzing stop. But time ricocheted like stones hurled against
the sides of a rusted trailer. Flew back to strike the thrower right between the eyes.

That child had had nothing, less than nothing. Like a vacuum sucking at the dried teat of the world. Food was scarce, attention scarcer, and when it came down to a choice between buying booze or fixing fractures, The Child was merely sent beneath the trailer where its mewling whimpers couldn’t be heard.

Never again
. Never hurt and hungry and banished to the darkness, bereft of even the cold consolation of the lights. Better dead than that…better to disintegrate into bones and ashes than face the terrifying void alone.

Only one way to bring the lights back, that one way shirked far too long. So the observer went to work inside the hangar, a metal shell so reminiscent of a trailer that it gripped the heart with icy fingers and the soul with timeless dread.

Rachel and her father each took a wing to push the German glider from the hangar. Once they had it in the morning sunlight, her father was all smiles.

“Hell of a lot of work,” he said of his restoration project. “I can’t even count the hours. But this is what it’s all about. Those classic lines, that incredible…”

Once she would have been embarrassed by the way her dad choked up, hazel eyes welling, over some old sailplane. But since high school, she’d learned there were far worse things than a father with an enduring passion for his work.

As she looked over the glider, she saw all the love he’d put into it. He’d rewired rudders, replaced gauges, and then re-skinned the deteriorated sections before repainting the old bird a vibrant red and yellow, with hand-painted “Flying Tiger” eyes and mouth beneath the single-seater’s nose and canopy. The freehand-drawn mouth, she noticed, was slightly lopsided, but Rachel thought its imperfection added to its charm.

“I think I’ve found another undiscovered Marfa artist.”
Smiling, she pushed her hair behind her ears, then pulled the compact digital camera she often carried from a pocket. “I’ll have to get some pictures for my showing.”

Her father crowed happily at her assessment. “You just do that, Rusty, and I’ll pose next to this beauty with my beret and palette.”

Rachel took several shots of her father hamming it up next to what Patsy called his “other woman.” Father and daughter both laughed at their foolishness, but Rachel couldn’t help comparing his reaction with Zeke Pike’s. She could still see the huge man shouting, could still hear the booming echo of his question: “
Do you have any damned idea
what you’ve done?
”

“As a matter of fact,” she mumbled, “I
don’t
.” She could have understood his explosion had the photograph been unflattering or overly revealing, or if it had depicted something that would hurt his business. But every time she looked at it, she could only think, how perfect, how beautiful and sensual and…

She had even dreamed about the damned thing, or about Zeke working her body with the same feverish attention he devoted to his craft. And her body—the foolish traitor—responded to the moment she had captured, a moment as personal and private as the man she’d photographed.

“Were you listening, Rusty?” Her father waved a hand in front of her face. “I asked, are you getting excited about your solo flight this afternoon?”

Her toes curled inside her boots. “You sure you want me to do the honors? I mean, you’ve worked on this for two years. And what about Bobby and Lili? They’ve put in a lot of time, too. Won’t they be hurt, maybe mad if I—”

“I want
you
to do it, Rusty.” His stance widened, as if he were preparing to dig in for a fight. “You’re family—and the future of this outfit.”

“Dad, I—” She cut herself off, not knowing how to argue. Both Bobby and Lili were far more experienced pilots, and their hearts were in the business. Yet how could she
refuse her father, who had just last week taken out a second mortgage to pay for a new lawyer? Rachel damned well owed her dad more than money, even if it meant she’d have to burn the candle at both ends to work at her photography in the evenings and rare days off from the airfield.

It hurt to think of pushing what she thought of as her “real” work onto the back burner. But at least a jam-packed schedule would distract her from her lackluster—make that nonexistent—social life, where any free hours were spent playing board games with her grandma or struggling to keep J.D. from anointing any more of her belongings, an effort he had only stepped up since his “nuggets” had gone missing.

“I’ve talked to Bobby and Liliana,” said her father. “They’re okay with this, I promise. And they both need to understand you’ll be stepping into my shoes when the time comes.”

“Dad, your eighty-six-year-old
mother
still kicks my butt at Scrabble.” Although Rachel suspected she was making up a few more new words with every round…. “You’ll be running the show out here for twenty years yet, maybe longer.”

Her father turned away, ears reddening, to regard the sailplane once again. “Don’t you just love the way those wings are raked back? I could stand here and stare at her forever…but I have a couple of lessons scheduled for this morning.”

She wondered at the change of subject, but before she could say anything, Bobby Bauer trotted toward them. One glance at the pilot, who was slim and fit for his late forties, told Rachel he was upset.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “If it’s about the test flight, I don’t mind letting someone else—”

“The office answering machine was blinking this morning—lots of messages.” He skimmed his palm over the top of his short, sandy-colored hair.

“Customers?” her dad asked, apparently not noticing his employee’s obvious discomfort.

“Um, no. It was—” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Hate to be the one to tell you, but it’s reporters. Reporters wanting a comment about—was there some kind of lawsuit filed?”

Her father’s color deepened, and Rachel felt her own face heating. They had tried to keep this new disaster quiet, and she had dared to hope that Kyle’s mother would choose to do the same. Since no one outside the family other than Zeke had mentioned it, Rachel had harbored the hope that Patsy hadn’t cried on any other shoulders. But clearly, the news had leaked out somehow. Had Kyle’s photogenic mother wept her way through a TV interview or even a press conference? Did she believe another public play for sympathy would bolster her case against Rachel? Or had she cracked completely beneath the burden of her grief?

Rachel’s heart dropped like a stone. As badly as the thought of facing more reporters scared her, she was more troubled by the idea that other crazies could be stirred up by the woman’s show of grief. And nervous as hell over what the experts would have to say about those newly discovered photos.

“Just what I need,” she said. “And yes, I’m being sued. For wrongful death, and for a pile of money.”

The sunglasses hiding Bobby’s eyes did little to conceal his stricken look. “And the tough breaks just keep coming. I’m really sorry, Rachel. I know your dad here and Mrs. Copeland have your back, but if there’s anything you need, anything at all I can do to make things better—”

“She’ll be fine,” her father cut in. “The judge will see this is bullshit, persecuting an innocent girl for defending herself against—Sick son of a bitch would have—my God, he was naked—naked when he went for her. Would have killed her, probably, after he was done. We ought to countersue those bastards, sue the estate for—”

“No. We won’t,” said Rachel. Quietly, emphatically, as sure of this decision as she’d been unsure of so many others lately. “That woman’s not only lost her son, she’s been so distraught she can’t work.”

And if she had been making threatening phone calls, she needed serious counseling, not the added fuel of a retaliatory lawsuit.

“If she’d raised that asshole any better—”

“I’ve been angry, too, Dad, but don’t you see? It doesn’t help. Besides, from the testimony I heard, Kyle was given every advantage, including all the love a child could want. His parents tried to get him help, too, after he hurt those boys at his prep school.”

Bobby frowned and shook his head. “Spoiled, rich punk. A parent can ruin a kid by giving him too much, too.”

“My—uh—” Rachel started, “a psychologist I met told me Kyle’s history suggested he was probably a sociopath. Glib, manipulative, with no regard for other people’s feelings. No remorse for any harm he brought about. Kids can be born without a conscience, and nothing you can do will really fix it.”

“
You
fixed it,” Bobby told her. “Best way to fix it there is, and now you’re getting shafted. It’s not right.”

“What I did didn’t fix anything. But it’s sure as hell broken lots of lives. Mine, my family’s, Kyle’s family. Sometimes I wish I’d never gotten scared enough to buy that handgun.” Rachel’s words tasted bitter as she thought of the days after her lost evening. About the phone calls and the e-mails insinuating that something had—She clamped down on the thought. “Definitely I wish I’d never pulled the trigger.”

“Rusty, don’t.” Her father clapped a hand over her shoulder. “Don’t doubt your instincts on this. It was either him or you, and I’m glad—”

“I’m sorry any of it had to happen in the first place.”

Because no matter how she or anybody justified it, Rachel couldn’t erase the knowledge that she had killed another human being. If she had had any idea of the scar it would leave on her soul, the damage it would wreak on her life and the lives of others, she would have found some other way. After he started to harass her, she would have found some way to make the police take it more seriously. Or she
would have borrowed the money to put in a
real
security system instead of settling for the dead bolt that her landlord installed. She would have even
moved
, if she had only seen the train wreck headed her way.

“Shhh, it’s all right.” Her father’s strong arms pulled her to him, but she remained fiercely rigid, angry at herself for falling back into the trap of second-guessing. In the months after the shooting, she had wasted so much time wondering what she’d done to encourage Kyle. Had her praise of his talent been inappropriate in some way? Had her smiles been suggestive? Had the sweaters she had worn to class been too tight or the fit of her jeans too provocative? Dr. Thomas had given her hell for buying into the notion that the target of a sick, sexual obsession bore any of the responsibility.

Rachel knew he was right, but it didn’t stop her from occasionally backsliding into faulty thinking. Which made her furious at herself—and even angrier with Kyle, who was too damned dead to care how she felt.

Bobby hooked a thumb in the direction of a nearby hangar. “I—ah—I’ve got to go and do some…Yesterday, I heard a rattle on the Cessna. Better check it out before I have to fly that fella to Odessa later.”

Rachel wasn’t surprised by his disappearing act, nor did she blame him. After disentangling herself from her father’s embrace, she said, “If you ever expect Bobby or Lili or anybody else to believe I’m capable of running all this, you have to stop treating me like I’m a fussing infant that needs coddling.”

Her father let his arms drop, looking so hurt by her rejection that guilt struck her like a slap. Why had she lashed out at him when she was upset with herself?

“I’m sorry, baby,” he said. “It’s just—I can’t stand thinking how I could’ve lost you. Can’t stop wishing I’d been the one to keep you safe.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry,” she said as the red-and-yellow sailplane blurred in her vision. “Sorry I snapped, and sorry that I brought this garbage into your life—”

He moved in a step and opened his mouth as if to argue.

She shook her head to stop him, “I can’t do this. Cannot afford to have this conversation or take the time to fall apart now. I have to keep myself together and get over to the office. Because if I don’t start returning calls and telling them ‘no comment,’ those reporters will be out here. Out here and sticking their damned microphones in my face for an answer.”

What else would they stick in her face? The photographs she hadn’t seen yet? More damning testimony?

“That’s a good idea, facing this instead of running.” He nodded, a look of fierce approval straightening his spine and lighting his eyes. “And you know what else you’re going to do? You’re going to fly today like we planned. Because that’s the way to show them you’re not going to let this beat you.”

His faith and pride shone on her like spotlights, so for her father’s sake, she laid her hand upon the glider and made a solemn promise. She
would
fly today, as scheduled. Because she would be damned if she—along with the father and grandmother who believed she could survive this—was going to go down in defeat.