Evidence of Mercy (38 page)

“Paige, give me the gun,” he said.

Paige shook her head. “Stay back. Jake, move away.”

Reluctantly, Jake let Keith go and slowly rolled backward.

Her face was red and streaked with tears. “If I blew you away,” she said, her voice trembling, “it would be for all the pain you've caused Brianna. All the nightmares. All the trauma. It would be for her peace of mind.” The gun began to shake.

“Send him to jail, Paige,” Jake said carefully. “Don't let him die knowing he finally broke you.”

Her face twisted as she struggled between the emotion of the moment and the hope of the future. Finally, she breathed in and out deeply, her breath catching as her tears flowed anew. “He's right, Keith,” she said. “You're not going to break me. You're just going to rot in prison.”

When she lowered the gun, the house filled with deputies. Larry handcuffed Keith, jerked him to his feet, and took him away.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

A
s low as Lynda's life had gotten in the past few weeks, she was certain that Sally's funeral was the lowest point yet. As if even God mourned her passing, the sky opened up with torrential rains that morning, and it stormed throughout the day. Lynda sat between Paige and Jake, holding hands with each of them, trying to rein back the tears that had controlled her since the day of the explosion. Even Keith's confession and guilty plea to felony murder had not relieved the pain.

She watched Sally's parents weep over their daughter. Sally had been close to them, even though they lived several hours away.

“At least she didn't leave a husband and children,” Lynda heard someone whisper behind her.

Lynda quelled the urge to turn around and tell them that Sally had had many people who'd loved her, that she'd had as much of a family as most people had, and that her being single didn't make it any easier to say good-bye.

The car ride home was quiet, and when they had been back at the house for a while, Paige came out of her room with her bags packed.

Lynda had known they were going back home today, but she'd tried to put it out of her mind. Now there was nothing she could do but face it.

Dropping the bag, Paige reached out to hug Lynda. As they clung together like sisters, Lynda realized that, for the first time in her life, she didn't feel like an only child.

“I'm gonna miss you,” Lynda whispered.

Paige wiped her tears. “Me, too. I don't know how I'll ever thank you for what you've done for us.”

Lynda tried to smile. “Well, for starters—I need a new secretary.” Tears rushed into her eyes again as she got the words out. “And frankly, I don't think I can get used to someone new right now. How about taking Sally's job?”

Paige seemed confused, wary. “Do you really mean it?”

“I sure do.”

“But how do you know I'm qualified?”

“You can do anything,” Lynda said. “I have a lot of faith in you.”

Again, they embraced, then Lynda stooped to kiss Brianna. The child had been quiet and withdrawn since the scene with her father, but she'd already expressed her wish to go back to “school” soon. Paige thought it was a good idea to get her life back to normal as soon as possible.

Jake offered Brianna a final ride on his lap as they hurried through the rain to the car, and Lynda smiled sadly as he hugged the child who had brought him so far, gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, and then helped her into the car.

The rain poured harder as the car pulled away, but neither Lynda nor Jake made a move to go inside.

“Are you all right?” he asked when the car was out of sight.

Lynda was still gazing in the direction they had gone as raindrops mixed with the tears on her face. “I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“That day in the plane,” she said. “When they asked us if we had anyone to contact. Neither of us had anyone, really.”

“You had Sally.”

“Sally the secretary,” she whispered. “But not Sally the friend, not then. I didn't really have any close friends then. I thought I was happy, all alone.”

“We've both come a long way.”

She looked down at him, saw how wet his hair was getting, how soaked his clothes, but he didn't seem to mind. He wasn't the same man who had gotten out of his Porsche that day wearing his designer clothes, expecting crowds to part and women to swoon. “I like having people to love,” she said.

He nodded, swallowed, and she knew that the mist in his eyes had nothing to do with the rain. “I like it, too.”

For a moment, they smiled at each other as the rain dripped down their faces, and finally, she said, “It's going to be awfully quiet around here without them.”

“Well, I'll see what I can do about making a little more noise.”

She wiped her tears. “You'll have to eat my cooking now.”

“I've been keeping it a secret, but I'm a pretty talented cook myself,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I was thinking of making my special Texas stew for you tonight. Paige left all the ingredients in there. I already checked.”

Slowly, the despair left Lynda's eyes, and she began to smile. “Then we'd better get busy peeling potatoes. You do have potatoes in your stew, don't you?”

“Among lots of other things, which shall remain secret.”

“Well, I've survived four brushes with death in the last few weeks. I guess one more won't hurt me.”

His smile faded. “That's not really funny,” he said softly. “Matter of fact, it's downright chilling when you think about it.”

“You're telling me.” Looking around at the trees surrounding her house, she rubbed her arms and shivered. “Let's go in before we get sick and your chair starts to rust.”

“I'd better change clothes first,” he said. “If I don't, I'll ruin your kitchen floor.”

“All right,” she said. “I'll meet you in the kitchen.”

She went back into the quiet house and felt the assault of silence again. But it wasn't so bad because she knew Jake was coming. Quickly she changed out of her wet clothes and towel-dried her hair.

When she went back into the kitchen, he was already at the table, peeling potatoes.

The sight of him there stirred her. Feeling awkward, she pulled out a chair and sat next to him. There were things she needed to say, things he needed to hear.

“We haven't talked much about that day,” she said. “It's been kind of busy, and Sally's been on my mind. And we were all worried about Brianna. . . .”

“Yeah. There hasn't been much time for reflection, has there?”

She looked down at the table, tracing the pattern of the wood grain with her fingertip. “I've been meaning to thank you.”

“For what?”

“For coming to the rescue when Keith was here. My bursting into the house was really stupid. If you hadn't come in when you did—”

“I got lucky,” he said. “If he had turned around and seen me coming, things could have turned out a lot differently.”

“No, I think you would have been able to defend us even then. I didn't realize how strong you are, Jake. Even without your legs, you overpowered him. He couldn't fight you.”

He smiled, but that smile quickly faded. “I just kept remembering that morning, when Brianna agreed to go outside because I was with her. I realized that she
expected
me to protect her. My legs weren't a factor to her. If I was to help her, then they couldn't be a factor to me, either.”

She leaned on the table and faced him squarely. “Did you learn anything from that, Jake?”

His smile was subtle, but it reached all the way through her. “I think I did.”

He didn't have to explain. She already knew that whatever he had learned, it was miles ahead of where he'd been before the plane crash.

“The important thing,” he said, returning to his work, “is that that slimeball is behind bars.” He finished peeling a potato then grew still for a moment, staring down at it.

“What's wrong?” she asked quietly.

He shrugged. “I was just thinking. That day when I called the police about Keith being in the house. They told me about the car blowing up, and said there had been a death.”

Stillness.

“You thought it was me.”

His facial muscles shifted with emotions he could not have named. “I was so glad when you walked up.”

For a moment their eyes locked, and she wanted to reach out and hold him, cling to him. She had done it before when he'd needed comforting. But this was different.

This was more dangerous.

This was more important.

He reached out and took her hand, and squeezing it tightly, brought it to his lips. “You're a miracle, you know that?”

Coming from a man who didn't believe in miracles, that statement overwhelmed her. She saw the way his eyes misted as he gazed openly at her without the barriers of pride or humor, with only the honest glisten of pure affection.

Was he going to kiss her? Did she want him to?

She wasn't sure.

When he let her hand go and picked up his paring knife again, she breathed a sigh of both relief and disappointment. For as much as she'd feared that moment of truth between them, she regretted that it was over before it even started.

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

D
avid Letterman was almost over when Jake started getting ready for bed. Turning off the lamp and leaving only the light of the television, he glanced out the window to see whether Lynda's light was still on. It wasn't. Was she sleeping? Or was she lying awake, struggling with her grief, needing the same kind of comfort she'd offered him more than once?

And then he saw movement in the darkness on the patio and realized she was sitting out there alone, her feet pulled up and her arms hugging her knees. Moonlight played on her hair and touched her face, and he wondered why he hadn't been struck by how pretty she was the first time he'd met her. She was beautiful to him now.

Wanting to be close to her, he rolled out his door. Lynda looked up at him as he came around the house.

In the moonlight, he could see that she'd been crying. How did one soothe a grief like this one? How did you offer comfort when there was none?

“Need company?” he asked softly, rolling up beside her.

She smiled. “Yeah, I could use some.”

He remembered the old days when he would have eagerly held a woman with tears on her face—but it would only have been so that he could use his hundred-dollar-an-ounce charm to work her vulnerability to his favor. It had been so easy for him, then, to make them trust him, count on him, believe in him—then to walk away without looking back the next morning.

Things had changed. Nothing was that easy anymore. He knew that all the introspection of the past weeks had given birth to something new in his life: a conscience. And he didn't think of Lynda the way he'd thought about any other woman in his life.

“I was just thinking about Sally,” she whispered.

“Not beating yourself up again, I hope.”

She looked out into the shadows of her yard. “I was thinking how unfair it is that she should die because of Keith's vendetta against me.”

He turned his chair to face her, then reached out and took her hand in both of his. “Well, call me selfish if you have to, but I'm not going to feel guilty for being glad you weren't in that car.”

“What could make a man want to kill?” she asked. “How could he have believed it would set anything right? Didn't he understand that he lost Brianna because of his violence in the first place?”

“He must by now, or he wouldn't have confessed and pled guilty.”

Lynda shook her head. “No, I don't think he did that because he understands. I think he did that because McRae dropped his case, and he wasn't getting a lot of sympathy from his public defender.”

Jake thought about that for a moment. “Not to mention the little fact that he was caught red-handed holding you all hostage, and he'd admitted, to all of us, that he'd done the other things.”

“I think it was more a matter of defeat than regret,” Lynda said. “He knew he couldn't win.”

“Well, I guess our revenge is in knowing that he's behind bars and that he'll probably never see his daughter again.”

She shook her head slowly. “I'm not supposed to want revenge.”

“Why not?”

She looked up into the stars as new tears rolled down her cheek. “I'm supposed to pray for my enemies. I'm supposed to love them.”

“Yeah, well, ‘supposed to' is a long way from being able to. Look at all he did to you. Look what he did to me. I can't forgive him for that. I don't want to. But if I ever get the chance to meet him alone—”

“You won't,” she whispered. “He'll probably get the death penalty. Unless I do something . . . say something. . . .”

“Lynda, you can't.”

Her sudden surrender to her tears surprised him, but without giving it a second thought, he gathered her up and pulled her against him. She closed her arms around his neck and wept against his shoulder, and he found himself weeping with her—
for
her. And he remembered how
she
had held
him
when he'd wept, how right it had felt, how much it had comforted him, how it had seemed like light seeping into the darkened chambers of his heart. That, more than her heroics in the plane, had probably saved his life.

“I came out here to pray for him,” she whispered. “I made up my mind that I would. But I'm having trouble. It's the hardest thing I've ever done.”

She wilted against his chest, and he stroked her hair. “It's okay, Lynda. It doesn't matter.”

“It
does
matter.”

“Why? Tell me why it matters.”

She sat up then, breaking his hold on her and looked him squarely in the eyes. He reached up to wipe her tears away with the back of his fingers.