Dead By Morning

Chapter 28

The moment he saw Maleah, Derek sensed she was on the verge of collapse. Not that anyone else would even notice. She managed to hide her emotional stress remarkably well, especially considering what he suspected she had just endured at Browning’s cunningly cruel hands. What Derek wanted to do and what he did were two entirely different things. He wanted to grab her, hold her, and tell her it was all right to fall apart because he’d be there to take care of her. What he actually did was walk over to her, give her a casual glance, and ask her if she was ready to leave.

“Yes, I’m ready,” she told him, her voice deceptively calm.

They both shook hands with Warden Holland and thanked him.

“Will you be scheduling another interview?” the warden asked.

Derek wanted to shout “no way in hell.”

“No. This was the final interview,” Maleah said, absolute certainty in her voice.

As they walked together out into the parking area, he waited for Maleah to speak first and was prepared to take his cue from her on how to proceed. If she wanted to talk, he’d talk. If she wanted to be quiet, he’d keep his mouth shut. If she needed time alone when they returned to Vidalia, then he would give her some time alone. But within a few hours, he would have to tell her about Saxon Chappelle’s niece. Only sixteen. Sweet sixteen and never been kissed. He hoped the lyrics to that old song weren’t true in Poppy’s case. He hoped the girl had been kissed at least once by a young boy who had made her toes curl.

Sixteen was far too young to die.

As Derek and Maleah approached her Equinox, she pulled her keychain out of her pocket and tossed it to him. He caught the chain mid-air, keys jangling together when he grasped the large silver “M” to which the chain was fastened.

“You drive, okay?” Maleah did not make eye contact.

“Yeah, sure,” Derek said.

For a woman who usually insisted on driving her own car and even the rental cars they had used in the past, a woman hell-bent on always being in control, handing over her keys and asking him to drive meant only one thing. Maleah didn’t trust herself to drive. Outwardly she appeared to be completely fine, but it was obvious to Derek that she was far from all right.

This was the second time she had asked him to drive after a visit with Browning. The first time, her request had taken him by surprise. This time, he had known she would ask. He had expected her to come out of this final interview in bad shape. What he didn’t know was just how bad it really was.

He unlocked the doors before they reached the SUV, and then he opened her door. But he stopped himself just short of actually touching her, despite wanting to hug her to him and then ease her gently into the passenger seat. By the time he rounded the hood and slid behind the wheel, Maleah had put on her seatbelt and sat there ramrod straight, her fisted hands crossed at the wrists and resting in her lap.

As soon as they were on the road, he asked, “Want some music?”

“Not especially.”

“Want to stop for—”

“No, please, I don’t want anything. Not right now. Nothing except peace and quiet. All right?” She leaned back her head and closed her eyes.

“Yeah, sure.”

They spent the next twenty-one miles in complete silence. Derek kept his eyes on the road, not once glancing at Maleah. But she was all he could think about. If only she’d make a sound. A gasp or a sigh or even a hiccup or a sneeze. It was as if she had hit some sort of mute button inside her.

Less than thirty minutes after leaving the penitentiary, Derek turned in at the Vidalia Hampton Inn, parked the SUV and killed the engine. When Maleah didn’t open her eyes or say anything, he came damn close to grabbing her and shaking her. But the minute he looked at her, really looked at her, his heart stopped. God in heaven!

“It’s going to be okay, Blondie,” he told her in the calmest, most reassuring tone he could muster. “It’s going to be okay.”

He undid his seatbelt, got out, pocketed the keys, and rushed around to her side of the SUV. When he opened the door, she sat there unmoving. He reached in, unhooked her belt, and very gently reached down and peeled back the clenched fingers of her right hand. She had clutched her hand so tightly that her short, neat nails had dug into her flesh so deeply that her palm was bleeding. He repeated the process with her left hand and found it to be in the same condition.

“Ah, Maleah, sweetheart . . .” He pulled a white monogrammed handkerchief from his inside jacket pocket, wiped the bright red droplets of blood from each palm and wrapped the handkerchief around her right hand. “Come on, let’s get you out of here and into the hotel.”

When he grasped her shoulders and turned her sideways, she opened her eyes and stared at him. After slipping his arm around her waist, he lifted her up, pulled her out of the SUV and straight into his arms. Then he eased her down onto her feet.

She looked up at him. “Thank you.”

Keeping his right arm around her waist, he caressed her cheek with a gentle backward swipe of his left hand. “You’re welcome. Come on. You need to lie down and rest for a while.”

She nodded and then followed him into the hotel and down the corridor to the elevator. He kept his arm around her, supporting her, sensing that without him, she would spiral down to the floor and curl up in a ball. He didn’t bother asking her for the key to her room; instead he walked her straight to his room. He unlocked the door and led her over to his freshly made bed. She didn’t protest when he eased her down onto the edge of the bed. But when he moved away from her, intending to take off her shoes before getting a washcloth to clean her hands, she reached out and grabbed him. The bloody handkerchief wrapped loosely around her right hand slipped off just as she gripped his shoulders.

“Don’t leave me, Derek. Stay, please. I—I . . .”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he told her. “I just want to take off your shoes so you can lie back and relax. Then I’m going to get a warm washcloth and wash your hands. Okay?”

“I won the game,” she said. “Browning told me everything he knows.”

Derek lifted a stray tendril of glossy blond hair that had escaped from the soft bun atop her head and wrapped it behind her ear. “I never doubted for a minute that you would beat him at his own game.” But at what price to you, Maleah?

“I need to tell you what he said, everything about—”

Derek tapped his index finger over her lips, effectively silencing her. She gazed up at him with questioning eyes.

“You can tell me everything. Just not right now. You need to rest for a few minutes. You need to let me take care of you. Just this one time. All right?”

She nodded. “All right. Just this one time.”

He smiled. “That’s my girl.” And in that moment, Derek Lawrence admitted an undeniable truth—he thought of Maleah as his. His girl. His woman. His to care for and protect.

Heaven help us both!

Derek knelt in front of her, removed her sensible pumps, set them under the bed, and then lifted her feet and legs. He turned back the covers at the head of the bed, stacked one pillow on top of the other and gently eased Maleah down until her head rested on the double pillows.

“I’ll be right back,” he told her.

A few minutes later, he returned with a warm, damp washcloth and his shaving kit. He sat on the edge of the bed and tenderly washed her hands. And then he took out a tube of salve from his kit and rubbed the soothing cream into the shallow nicks her nails had made in her palms.

She lifted her hands, one at a time, inspected them and said, “Thank you. I didn’t realize what I was doing. I was just trying so damn hard not to fall apart.”

He leaned down, kissed her forehead and said, “I know, Blondie. I know.”

“I’m all right. Really. I’m just a little shell-shocked.”

He set his shaving kit on the floor, dumped the washcloth on top of it, and then turned his attention back to Maleah. “Tell me what you want right now. Tell me what you need.”

“What I want and what I need aren’t the same,” she told him. “I want to forget everything Browning said to me, every question he asked, every innuendo, all the memories he made me dredge up from my childhood. I want to pretend that I didn’t let all those horrible memories make me feel the way I did when I was a child and a teenager. Helpless. Frustrated. Frightened.” She grabbed Derek’s hands and curled her fingers around them. “What I need is to exorcise whatever remains of those old demons. I thought I’d done that in my twenties during a few years of therapy sessions, but apparently, the roots of those memories were buried a little deeper than I realized.”

“Then talk to me. Let’s dig up those roots and burn them to ashes.”

“If anyone had ever told me that I’d be asking you, of all people, to be my father confessor, I never would have believed it,” she said, the corners of her mouth lifting in an almost smile.

He eased his hands from her death grip, tapped her playfully on the nose, and then sat down beside her. He focused on her eyes. “Anything you say will stay between the two of us for as long as we live. You already know my ugly secrets. You know that I despise my own mother, my money-grubbing, social climbing mother who drove my weak, spineless father to drink and eventually to suicide. And she’s never felt guilty about it a day in her life. And you know that when I was young and stupid, I did some pretty awful things. You know that I’ve killed people.”

He took her hands in his and held them so loosely that she could easily pull away. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel trapped by his superior male strength.

“Nothing you ever did could be half as bad as what I did.” He lifted her right hand, kissed it, then lifted the left and kissed it.

She pulled her hands out of his and eased up into a sitting position, her back against the headboard. “When my father was alive, we were all so happy. Mama and Daddy and Jackson and me. Then my father died when I was just a little girl. And my mother, my weak, lonely, needy mother, married a monster.”

“My mother was married three times, but both of my stepfathers were decent guys. I sort of felt sorry for them. If anyone was a monster in those marriages, it was my mother.”

“Nolan Reeves was a sadist.” Maleah clutched the sheet on either side of her hips. “He abused my mother every way a man can abuse a woman—physically, sexually, emotionally, mentally. And he beat Jack unmercifully for years, until Jack got big enough to stand up for himself. I think by the time Jack left home and joined the army, Nolan was halfway afraid of him. He wasn’t as mean to Mama for a couple of years before Jack left. But then, later, when Jack was gone . . .”

Derek circled her wrists, moved his hands downward and opened her clenched fists. He held her hands. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

“When I was thirteen, I saw them,” Maleah said. “I saw my mother running from Nolan. She was naked, her body and face were bloody and bruised and . . .” She gulped several times. “He caught her and threw her on the floor and . . . and . . .”

Derek squeezed her hands tenderly.

“I didn’t do anything. I just stood there in my bedroom door, frozen to the spot and scared out of my mind,” Maleah told him. “I closed the door, got back in bed and covered my head with a pillow so I couldn’t hear her crying while he raped her.”

Tears trickled down Maleah’s cheeks.

“You were a child, even at thirteen. There’s nothing you could have done.”

“I know that. As an adult, I know. But on an emotional level, that thirteen-year-old girl blames herself for not trying to stop him.” Her gaze locked with Derek’s. “He . . . he told me that if I ever interfered in what was a private matter between my mother and him or if I ever told anyone our family’s private business, he would kill Mama and me.”

Derek pulled her gently into his arms and held her. She wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder. And while she cried, he tenderly stroked her back and whispered reassurances.

“That’s it, honey. Let it all out. I’m here. I’ll take care of you. No one can hurt you.” More than anything, he wanted to take away her pain. If he could, he would suffer it for her.

During their flight from Knoxville to London on the Powell jet, Meredith had, thus far, kept to herself as much as possible. Her escort, Saxon Chappelle, had not pressed her to carry on a conversation, not even when they had eaten a meal together. She greatly appreciated how considerate he was. From the moment he had shaken her hand and said, “Please, call me Saxon,” she had sensed that he was a good man. She instinctively trusted him and felt at ease around him, neither of which was true when it came to a great many people.

She suspected that he had been told enough about her so that he knew when she touched him she would be able to “read him” to a certain extent. And that’s why he had immediately shaken hands with her, to reassure her, to let her know he was a decent human being.

Even when she couldn’t see Saxon and wasn’t touching him, she occasionally could pick up on his fleeting thoughts, flashes of memory, and even his feelings. And the same held true for the pilot and co-pilot. Saxon loved his mother and worried about her. A young girl named Poppy kept slipping in and out of his thoughts. She was his niece and he worried about her, too.

Meredith wasn’t sure if it was the pilot or the co-pilot who kept thinking about women. Their breasts. Their legs. Their hips. Kissing them. Fondling them. She had deliberately shut out those sensual thoughts. They were far too personal and absolutely none of her business. It wasn’t that she wanted to invade other people’s privacy. She didn’t. But she couldn’t help it. For as long as she could remember, she’d had “the gift.” Her Granny Sinclair had had the “second sight,” too, and people in their small Louisiana town had called her a witch. Some people even accused her of practicing Voodoo. It had been Granny who had learned about Dr. Meng and made plans to send Meredith to the woman who was now her mentor. She’d been seventeen when Granny died and old lawyer Dupree had read Granny’s will.

“She wants you to go to London,” Mr. Dupree had told her. “To a doctor over there, some woman named Yvette Meng. She managed to set aside money for your plane ticket and enough for you to live on for at least a year, if you live frugally.”

In the six years since she had become one of Dr. Yvette Meng’s protégés, Meredith had progressed from a frightened, awkward, hostile and misunderstood girl to a cautious, curious, often outspoken woman who was still, on occasion, quite awkward, especially around the opposite sex. Men were not attracted to her. She wasn’t pretty. She was short, plump, and plain. And covered in freckles. Her hair was carrot red, wild and curly and untamable. The best she could do with it was pull it back into a ponytail. And even if a man could get past her lack of beauty, he would certainly be put off by her ability to read his mind.

But she couldn’t actually read minds.

She sensed thoughts.

And when she touched someone, she could feel what they were feeling.

Yvette had told her that she had never known anyone whose “gifts” were as varied or as strong as Meredith’s were.

“You are very special,” Yvette had told her. “Once you learn to harness and control your abilities, there is so much good you can do.”

And that was why she was on the Powell jet, heading to London, straight into the arms of a man she feared. From the moment she had met Luke Sentell, she had known he was a killer.

As hard as she had tried not to think about Luke during the flight, he kept creeping into her mind. She had read for a while, watched a movie, taken a nap, and meditated. Without those quiet, still, soul-refreshing moments of meditation, she didn’t believe she could survive.

And now they were over the Atlantic, on their way to a city that held so many good memories for Meredith, memories that included her first meeting with Yvette and her introduction to other gifted people. When Yvette had moved her academy / sanctuary from London and resettled all of them in the U.S., at Griffin’s Rest, Meredith had hated leaving London. But eventually she had become accustomed to her new home in the U.S. and oddly enough now dreaded returning to London. When they landed at Heathrow, Luke Sentell would be waiting for them. No doubt he would whisk her away, via a limousine, to some fancy London hotel where he would keep her a virtual prisoner while he watched her, pushed her to the brink of exhaustion, and guarded her from the outside world. She would force herself to delve into the unknown mystical realm of her mind and use her psychic gifts because Yvette had asked her to help Griffin Powell. And if she failed to give Luke the results he wanted, he would move her to another city, to another country, to wherever he thought she might “pick up the scent” of their prey. He treated her as if she were nothing more than a hunting dog.

She had been sent to London on a mission and Saxon Chappelle would hand her over to Luke, a man she neither liked nor trusted, so that she could help him find a man named Malcolm York.