FOUR

“Tom?” Her voice sounded far away. “We’re here, Tom.”

He hadn’t been sleeping, but he’d been trapped so far in the past Tom hadn’t realized they had already arrived back at the motel.

“Sorry.”

“Let’s go in.” Nelia’s voice was quiet and lyrical. It calmed him, grounded him, like nothing else could.

My angel.

She’d saved him, physically and emotionally. He didn’t deserve her, but he wasn’t about to give her up. He drank in her trust, her support, her faith in him as if she were wine to the dying man.

It was quiet and they walked to the room together. Nelia had checked in two days ago, paying up front for a week. He’d hidden in the truck, sneaking into the room when it was clear. Acting like the fugitive he was; hating every minute of it. Without Nelia, her truck, her money, her faith, he wouldn’t have survived this long. Coming back to Sacramento to prove his innocence would have been suicide. But Nelia was his eyes and ears. While it still wasn’t easy, with her it was definitely safer than if he’d traveled alone. She bought the food, she reserved the motel, she drove.

His angel.

They walked in and Tom went immediately to the bathroom. He wasn’t being fair to Nelia, but he needed to run his head under cold water and think.

The earthquake seemed so long ago. He’d run because-no use lying to himself-he ran because he was a dead man. At the end of January, he’d had five months before his date with the executioner. His appeals had been denied, over and over. Oliver Maddox had given him cautious optimism, then disappeared. Tom’s thin thread of hope had been severed.

When the quake struck, others ran as well. Cold-blooded killers. Tom had to do something to stop them.

So he had pursued them. He was one of them, after all. They trusted him as much as they trusted anyone. And he ended up capturing seven of the bastards before catching up with Doherty and Chapman in Idaho. He’d been cocky. Cocky because he’d done a damn good job and saved lives. He felt like a cop again. He felt like he was doing something positive after fifteen years behind bars.

It had been three and a half months since that bastard Aaron Doherty had shot him in the stomach and left him for dead in the middle of a snowbank in Idaho. Tom had played that situation wrong-he’d thought he needed to watch Chapman more closely, that he was the more dangerous of the two. Misjudging that psycho had almost killed Tom.

He would have died if Nelia hadn’t found him in the snowbank along the frontage road.

It had been touch and go for a while. For over three months, Nelia nursed him back to health. He rubbed the gnarled scar on his stomach. It was still touch and go; the bullet remained in his body. For the past two weeks, he’d been having periodic sharp pains. But it wasn’t like he could go to the doctor.

Nelia hadn’t asked questions, at least not at first. She wasn’t scared of his blood or his story; she was simply a sad and beautiful woman. And last week when he said he was leaving to find his daughter and prove his innocence, she had simply said, “I’m coming with you.”

Tom O’Brien couldn’t die knowing Claire believed he’d killed her mother. He would find a way to convince her of the truth she’d been too young and emotional to accept when she was fourteen.

Having Nelia, a stranger, believe him gave him the strength to make a stand. He knew he might die in pursuit of the truth. He’d accepted that fate when his last appeal had been denied. He was already a dead man. He had nothing else to lose.

He left the bathroom and his eyes rested on Nelia. Seated at the small Formica table in the corner, she was drinking coffee. When she saw Tom, she poured him a cup from the thermos she had earlier filled at a nearby coffee shop. She pulled muffins from the bag. “You didn’t want to eat before, but you need your strength,” she told him.

Sitting across from her, he took her hand. She stared at him, brown eyes sad and worried. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” he said, voice cracking. He cleared his throat and sipped warm coffee to swallow the emotion.

She shrugged and glanced down. She hadn’t told him everything about her past, but he knew she’d lost her son twelve years ago. He’d been murdered. She hadn’t shared any other details, but even sharing those few had been like ripping open her heart.

Her loss had sent her into a self-imposed exile. It was why she lived alone in the woods, but didn’t explain why she’d helped him, or why she believed him. She’d tell him in her own time.

“Claire is-” What could he say? “-not what I expected.”

“She is who she is. You can’t expect that the horrible things that happened in the past wouldn’t affect her.”

“No, but I–I wanted her to be. . open. She was cold. She’s believed all this time I’m guilty. She was angry and scared. Scared of her own father! I love her more than anyone, and she-”

“Tom.”

He caught her eye. Nelia never raised her voice, but her tone commanded his attention.

“You can’t expect to change her mind during one surprise confrontation. Give her a little time.”

“Unless she turns me in to the cops.”

“Do you think she will?”

Did he? “I really don’t know.” He bit back his fearful frustration. “I need her help.”

“I can look for Oliver Maddox,” Nelia offered, not for the first time.

“Claire has the resources and training to do this. You’ve already risked too much for me.”

“You saved me as much as I saved you, Tom. My cabin in Idaho was as much a prison to me as San Quentin was for you. You freed me. I’m not leaving you now. Not until we find out what happened to your wife.”

“Nelia, tell me the truth. How did you find me?”

“I told you. I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I went to investigate, found you.”

“But you were hours away from home. And you never leave, or so you told me. Why that day? Where were you going?”

“Back home.”

“From where?”

He knew all about how she’d found him-she’d stopped for gas, the snow was coming down harder, she feared she wouldn’t make it back to her cabin before her road became impassable, even with four-wheel drive. She saw what she thought was an angel, did a double take, and saw him lying in a ditch. He’d crawled out, trying to make it to the road, but passed out.

But she’d never told him why she was three hours from home, or why she was driving in the storm, or where she was coming from.

“On the anniversary of my son’s murder I visit his grave. In San Diego,” she whispered. “For the last twelve years. I’ve never told anyone.”

“No one? Not your family?” She spoke to her mother every Sunday afternoon. It was a formal, one-sided conversation, with Nelia cutting it off after ten minutes.

“My ex-husband knows. He found me at Justin’s grave the third year I went.” She looked down at their clasped hands. “I swore him to secrecy. He owed me. Like Lydia, he was having an affair. But unlike you, I knew about it and didn’t care. I didn’t love him. Never had. We married because of Justin. . and we divorced when we no longer had him.” Her voice cracked. “I want you to reclaim your daughter, Tom.”

“Nelia.” He kissed her hand, squeezed it. “I couldn’t have made it this far without you. I’m going to make Claire listen. I didn’t have time to tell her everything Oliver told me. I need to go to her house and-”

“Her house? That’s not a good idea. You said yourself you saw one of the FBI agents in her neighborhood yesterday.”

Mitch Bianchi. He’d been at the Starbucks kitty-corner to Claire’s house yesterday morning. Tom had considered approaching him. After all, Tom had saved the FBI agent’s life during the raid on Blackie Goethe’s gang.

But he’d decided against it. He needed more information before talking to anyone in law enforcement, even Bianchi.

“Tom? Let me go to Claire.”

“I don’t want anyone, even Claire, knowing you’re helping me. You may not care, but I won’t let you risk anything more than you already have. Please. I don’t want to worry about you, too.”

“I need to do something!”

“You can. Talk this out with me as I write a letter to Claire. Help me find a way to convince her in writing what I failed to get across today in words.”

Загрузка...