Unlawful Contact (24 page)

Now that she knew about his sister, Hunt’s teenage years made even more sense. Always in trouble, always at the center of mayhem. He’d lost his little sister, seen her taken from their home and…

And then Sophie understood. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Tracking her down after the army. Killing Cross. Going out of your way to help Megan from your cell. Breaking out of prison to look for her. Risking your life to find her. You blame yourself. You blame yourself for what happened that night, and you keep trying to make up for it.”

His body tensed. “That has nothing to do with this.”

Sophie stepped to stand in front of him, lifting her palms to his cheeks. “It has everything to do with this. You couldn’t save Megan that night, and you’ve beaten yourself up for it ever since.”

He glared at her. “I’m her older brother. I’m supposed to take care of her!”

“Is that what your mother said? Did she try to shift the blame from herself onto you? I know you loved her, Hunt, but what she did was wrong.”

A muscle clenched in his jaw, and Sophie knew her words had hit home. For a moment she thought she’d pushed him too far. But then he closed his eyes and drew a long, shaky breath. “Megan was so little and so afraid. I should’ve—”

“You were ten years old! There was nothing you could have done! You needed protection as much as she did. Don’t you see that? It wasn’t your job to save her.”

He opened his eyes, gave her a sad, lopsided grin. “Is it your job to try and save me? It’s sweet of you, but it won’t work, Sophie.”

She ignored him. “What made you decide to find Megan after you left the army?”

He wrapped his arms around her, kissed the top of her head. “My mother died while I was stationed overseas. Losing Megan destroyed her. She quit drinking, but she started shooting up and just couldn’t stop. It killed her in the end—hepatitis C and liver cancer.”

“So Megan was your only family.”

“Yeah. After Afghanistan I felt like I’d straightened myself out enough to be a decent brother to her. But when I found her…God! It was like looking at a younger version of my mother.”

Sophie held him tighter. “I’m so sorry, Hunt! I’m so sorry!”

She knew the rest of the story. Hunt had gotten his sister into rehab and was helping her to turn her life around, when Cross had come over and Hunt had learned the truth about his DEA buddy—and had killed him. It was terrible beyond words.

But at the same time…

“You know, if we could win you a new trial and present all of this to a jury, prove the drugs weren’t yours—”

“No!” He set her away from him, looked straight into her eyes. “No new trial. No jury. I told you already. I won’t put Megan on the stand. She’s been through too much already.”

“She’s not a helpless little girl anymore, Hunt. She has the right to make that decision for herself! Do you think it will do her any good to watch you rot in prison, knowing that she could have helped you and didn’t?”

“It won’t accomplish anything! Even if my conviction is overturned, I’ll still end up in prison for a long damned time, and Megan will feel like she’s been raped all over again. Think about it. On top of Cross’s murder, I would also be facing charges of assault on an officer, theft, felony menacing, kidnapping, breaking and entering. What do I stand to gain, Sophie?”

“Justice!” She shouted the word, tears pricking her eyes. “Even if they sentence you to life, at least you’ll have a chance for parole. I won’t watch you throw your life away, not if there’s the slightest chance for us—”

“For us to be together? Are you going to wait for me until I’m sixty?” He shook his head, gave a little laugh, drew her back into his arms. “Remember what I told you? No happy endings. Don’t try to make these few stolen days more than they are, Sophie. You’ll only end up getting hurt.”

But Sophie knew it was already too late for that.

B
Y NOON, THEY’D
found three more boxes in the basement, each of them holding mementos of Megan’s childhood. None of it would help them find her, but every piece of it felt like a prize to Marc—crafts projects, two blue ribbons from track-and-field day, a little book of poems she’d written. He looked at each one, held them, then passed them on to Sophie for repacking. Somehow, telling her had made this easier, as if some of the weight he’d carried for so long had been lifted from his shoulders.

It was Sophie who found it, scrawled in black marker on the foot of an old brown teddy bear. She held up the stuffed animal’s foot for him to see, her eyes glittering with tears, a sad smile on her sweet face. “Look what she named him.”

Mark.

Megan had spelled it wrong, but there it was—his name.

Sophie ran her thumb over the awkwardly spelled letters. “So Megan snuggled with a teddy bear named ‘Mark.’ I’d say she missed you and that thinking of you made her feel safe. How wrong it was to tear two siblings apart like that! My relatives talked about splitting David and me up, but my grandma, bless her heart, wouldn’t hear of it. I don’t think I fully appreciated what she did for us until just now.”

Marc took the bear and looked at his misspelled name, feeling like his chest might burst. The stuffed creature was lumpy and worn, a few of its seams threadbare, one of its eyes sewn back on with a different color thread than the other. It looked as if it had been hugged a lot before it ended up in this dusty box.

And just like that Marc knew what he wanted to do. “Let’s pack this stuff up and go.”

“Go where?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings disowned Megan. They tossed her out of the house on her eighteenth birthday. This stuff no longer belongs to them. I’m taking it someplace safe.”

“And where’s that?”

“Boulder.”

The drive up US-36 took only thirty-five minutes. It could have gone a lot faster, but Marc decided it was best to stick to the speed limit. Besides, with Sophie beside him and classic rock on the radio, he was right where he wanted to be. The day was sunny and warm, one of those strange Colorado winter days that seemed like spring. Ahead of them, the Rockies stretched as far as the eye could see to the north and south and far into the west, a horizon of jagged white.

“I understand why you’re doing this, and I can’t say I blame you.” Sophie looked over at him from beneath her sunglasses, her expression neutral. “But technically this is theft.”

Marc grinned. “Details.”

And then they came to his favorite part of the drive, where the highway came to the top of McCaslin Mesa and the entire Boulder Valley opened up in front of them, plains colliding with mountains and reaching a compromise with the foothills.

“God, I’ve always loved this view—Bear Peak, Green Mountain, the Flatirons.”

She nodded, smiled. “Me, too.”

He glanced at the digital clock on the dash. It was almost two. “You hungry?”

He drove her to University Hill—or The Hill as it was known to locals—and stopped for a couple of sub sandwiches.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Sophie said under her breath as they walked into the sub shop. “Aren’t we supposed to be staying out of sight? What if someone recognizes you? What if there are cameras?”

He slipped his arm around her shoulder, kissed her temple. “Would you relax? I haven’t seen a single camera, and no one is paying attention to us. They’re not looking for us here.”

His mouth watering, he perused the menu for ten minutes before deciding to go with the pastrami. They ate outdoors on the patio, taking in the tie-dyed, dreadlocked, pierced-lip street scene, soaking up the sunshine, talking about everything and nothing in particular, the ordinariness of the moment seeming so extraordinary to Marc. He did his best to absorb the feeling, that crazy indulgent feeling of being with her, of being able to reach over and touch her hand or lick mustard off her lower lip, of watching her face and hearing her voice as she spoke, of simply having
time
with her.

After lunch, they strolled back to the car, Marc dragging Sophie into an ice cream shop where she got a single scoop of strawberry and he got a bowl piled high with four scoops—cookie dough, mint chocolate chip, double fudge chocolate, and peanut butter—which he immediately devoured.

“Damn this was good.” He licked his spoon. “I should’ve gotten the rocky road, too.”

Sophie watched Marc polish off the last of his ice cream, both amused by his enthusiasm for such simple pleasures and saddened by it. It made her happy to see him enjoying himself, but it also reminded her of everything he would lose when he was caught. She wished she could give him everything—a lifetime’s worth of taste and touch and smell and sound to carry him through any darker days that might lay ahead. And not for the first time she found herself praying that he and Megan would reach Mexico and find a way to build a life there.

She hadn’t told him about the pills yet—the pills she
hadn’t
taken. She wasn’t sure how he’d feel about it. She didn’t want him to worry, and she didn’t want to get his hopes up. The night they’d had sex had been twelve days into her cycle—she’d counted on the calendar last night—so there was a good chance she’d been fertile. Instead of feeling horrified by that thought as she ought to have been, she’d found herself hoping she
was
pregnant. At least she’d have a part of him to hold onto.

Thursday would be here far too soon, and after that…

She didn’t want to think about it.

“You’re going to have to slow down on the eats if you want to keep your trim figure,” she teased, poking him in his 3-percent-body-fat, hard-as-steel abdomen.

He looked at her over the top of his sunglasses and grinned. “You’ll have to help me work it off later.”

And Sophie felt herself blush.

T
HEY WALKED BACK
to the car, fingers twined, then headed north on Broadway.

“So are you going to tell me where we’re going?”

“I have a storage locker. I rented it when I was still out on bond, paid for it in cash, put it under my mother’s name. The cops and the feds didn’t manage to take all my assets—I had some savings from the army they couldn’t touch and all my personal belongings. I brought it all here—cash, clothes, gear. I set it aside in case I needed to leave town fast. For awhile, I thought of taking Megan and making a run for it, but I didn’t want her getting caught up in all of it. I think some stupid part of me still thought I’d get a sentence I could live with—twenty years with parole in ten or some shit.”

“Well, you were wrong about that.”

The storage facility was on the north edge of town not far from the strip club and the homeless shelter. Hunt drove through the open front gate and wound his way through rows of what looked like garages, all painted bright sherbet orange. He turned into the last row, drove three doors down, and parked.

“You need to see this,” he said.

Sophie got out of the car and followed him, watching as he bent down and turned the numbers on the door’s combination lock—6-9-1-9-9-6. For a moment, she didn’t think anything of it. And then it clicked.

June 9, 1996.

“That’s…!” The night of the graduation party. The night they’d first been together. “You remembered.”

“Of course.” He pulled the lock free. “Most important night of my life.”

The door rolled up, just like a garage door. Inside was a cold, dark space about the size of a single-car garage that was piled high with boxes. While Hunt carried Megan’s stuff in from the car, Sophie walked inside and glanced around. A mountain bike stood propped up against boxes. A kayak lay on its side against the far wall next to some skis. There was a dusty bookshelf and an old VCR. And there, on the floor to one side was a familiar-looking backpack. Beside it was a sleeping bag in a stuff sack.

“You came here. After you left me at the cabin, you came here.”

“Yeah. I crashed for a few hours, then changed clothes and headed into Denver.”

“And to think I was worried.”

He set the last two boxes down and glanced over at her. “You worried about me?”

“I was afraid you’d frozen to death.” She poked around, looked in some of the boxes and found clothes, shoes, books, CDs, videos, photo albums.

Sophie picked up one of the photo albums, brushed off the dust, opened it. Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t this—a portrait of Hunt in an army dress uniform in front of an American flag. He looked handsome enough to make her knees weak, happy, and confident, his face free of the worries he carried now.

So that’s how he was before all of this happened.

She turned the pages. Hunt wearing only briefs and dog tags, hanging with his buddies in the barracks. Hunt sitting in full combat gear in a helicopter, mountains visible outside the chopper’s door, his jaw set. Hunt standing on a desolate patch of dirt road, stubble on his face, body armor over winter camo, holding a mean-looking rifle and standing in front of what could only be a land mine.

“Afghanistan.” He came up behind her, wrapped his arm around her waist. “Damn mines were everywhere.”

“What happened to your army buddies?” She was almost afraid to ask.

“Some of them left the service. Most stayed in, went to Iraq. A few were killed there.”

“I’m sorry.” She turned the pages, fascinated by the photographs, each one a window on a part of him that she knew nothing about. Hunt outside a mud hut. Hunt next to a Humvee parked beside the rubble of a bombed village. Hunt in a T-shirt and khakis playing soccer with a group of Afghan boys. “Do your army buddies know?”

“About my situation? Yeah. They stood by me at first. The cocaine in the crawl space was too much for them. I don’t blame them.”

“What’s this?” She pointed to a photo of him standing, cleaned up and in dress uniform, shaking the hand of someone who, judging from the ribbons on his chest, must have been a high-ranking officer.

“I’m getting my Bronze Star.”

Astonished, she looked up at him. “You earned a Bronze Star?”

He nodded. “Doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“It matters to me.” She closed the album, slid it back into the box—but not before sliding a few of the photographs out and tucking them in her purse.

“Come here.” He took her hand, led her to a box full of kitchen stuff, and pulled out a coffee can. He opened it, reached in, and pulled out a stack of hundred dollar bills. “After today, there will be only about five grand left in here. I never told Megan about it, because I knew she’d spend it on drugs. But I want you to know. That’s one of the reasons I brought you here. If anything happens to me, everything in here goes to you. Do whatever you want with it, but please watch over Megan and especially Emily.”

Sophie had to turn away to keep from bursting into tears.

M
ARC DROVE SOUTH
on 28th Street, which would eventually turn into US-36. Sophie sat beside him in silence, and he knew he’d upset her. There hadn’t been any way around that, as far as he could see. The situation was what it was, and he couldn’t change it. He’d wanted her to know about his stash, and now she knew. If he were killed or landed back in the pen, his stuff would end up going to someone who cared about him instead of landing in the trash. And if she ever needed cash in a hurry, she knew where to find it.

He pulled up at a red light, glanced to his left. “Wow! Look at that.”

“They tore down the old mall a few years ago and built this. Pretty upscale, huh?”

“Yeah.” He popped on the turn signal, slid into the turn lane.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking you shopping.”

She turned in her seat and gaped at him. “What? Are you nuts?”

“You haven’t figured that out already?”

“You’re taking too many risks, Hunt! You can’t do this!” She was still protesting as he parked in the underground garage. “You can’t go in there! They’ve got tons of cameras. I won’t do it, Hunt. I won’t go in there with you. I won’t do anything that will put you in danger!”

“You’re right—I can’t go in there. But you can.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a stack of hundreds. “I hate seeing you in Mrs. Rawlings’s ugly shit. Go buy yourself a few nice things. I’ll wait right here.”

“I won’t take your money, Hunt. You’re going to need that.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Am I?”

She glared at him. “You scare me when you say things like that. I hate it!”

He caught her chin, forced her to meet his gaze. “We both know where I’m likely to end up. If I want to spend my money on you, let me.”

Her eyes filled with tears. Then she nodded and took the money from his hand.

“And, Sophie,” he said as she stepped out of the car, “don’t hold back on the lingerie. Feel free to surprise me.”

He watched her walk away and settled in for the wait.

S
OPHIE WALKED OUTSIDE
, most of her new wardrobe in bags, the rest on her body. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. But Hunt had said she should feel free to surprise him, and she had taken him seriously. With the help of three or four sales staff who’d sprung forward to help her when they’d seen the cash she was carrying—and a very helpful makeup artist at the Lancôme counter—she’d didn’t look anything like the woman who’d entered the store forty-five minutes ago wearing jeans and no makeup.

Her hair was now shaped in a French twist, her face carefully made up, her body sheathed in a short silk dress as black as sin. Black patent leather heels, black silk stockings, black lace garters, and a matching black lace bra completed the ensemble. No panties.

If only she had Holly’s sexual courage—and her skill at walking in spiked heels.

Doing her best to step gracefully, Sophie made her way down the stairs into the parking garage, spied the gleaming black Jaguar, and, pulse racing, walked right past it. She stopped at the end of the row and stood there, waiting. Hunt was a smart man; he would figure it out.