First You Run (25 page)

“Absolutely. I’m certain she’ll dispatch someone to finish the list I was working on, and Jack is going after the Whitaker baby from Rebecca’s paper.”

“Then let’s get back on that plane and get to South Carolina. Maybe hearing my voice will wake Eileen Stafford up. Maybe she has more to tell us.” She drew back and gave him a smile. “I know it’s kind of impulsive, but it feels right.”

“I know the feeling, and I like it.” He tipped her chin and kissed her forehead.

T
HE SUNSHINE SEEMED
unnaturally bright, shining on stark gray cement buildings surrounded by a deadly barbed-wire fence. It warmed the backseat of the sedan, where Miranda sat listening to Jack Culver’s New York accent volley with Adrien’s gentle Australian clip as they discussed the botched trial of Eileen Stafford.

The whole trip had been surreal, from the moment they’d arrived in Columbia and met the tall, disheveled former cop who had once saved Adrien’s life. He’d moved mountains to get them cleared to visit the Camille Griffin Graham state penitentiary the next day, where, deep in the bowels of the healthcare facility, Miranda would meet the woman who gave her life.

Correction: the woman who gave triplet babies life, then let them be taken from her. A woman who, eight months after she gave birth, was arrested for the murder of another legal secretary at the Charleston County Courthouse. She’d been in that alley—her fingerprints were found on the gate. The murder weapon was in her car. She had no alibi and had been seen arguing with the victim the day before the shooting.

Yet Jack was convinced she’d been framed.

In the front passenger seat, Adrien combed through Jack’s notes, asking questions and making comments. “What’s your theory on why she had the murder weapon?”

Jack stabbed his hand into thick black hair that fell over his collar against cheeks that hadn’t been shaved for at least two days. His stubble was less refined than Adrien’s, more a function of a man who simply forgot the basics. “Someone planted it.”

“Do I look like her?” Miranda suddenly asked, not even embarrassed by the non sequitur that revealed her thoughts.

Jack threw her a look in the rearview mirror. “Hard to tell. Her hair’s gone, and her face is worn. Her eyes are blue but lighter than yours.”

“Would you like to see a picture, Miranda?” Adrien asked. “There’s one here, from the trial.”

She reached for the glossy picture he held, their hands touching.

“You okay, luv?” he asked, rubbing his thumb over hers.

She nodded. “I’m fine. I’m ready.”

They’d spent the night in a hotel on the outskirts of Columbia, awake until nearly dawn. They’d made love, then spent the last few hours sleeping in each other’s arms. When she woke that morning, a sense of peace and purpose had settled over her. She wouldn’t make this journey with anyone else but him. And that might be the most surreal sensation of all.

She was falling in love with him.

She took the picture and angled it into the sunshine, ready to scrutinize every feature for something, anything, that connected them.

But instead of a reflection of herself, she saw…strength. Strength like Miranda had never known. An inner fortitude that was so powerful it leaped off the picture.

She saw it in the set of her jaw, in the hold of her shoulders, in her smoldering stare at the cameramen. After listening to Jack describe the way her case was brutally mishandled, the unreasonable leeway the judge gave to the prosecution, and the spineless defense, the very last thing Miranda expected to see was
inner fortitude.

Yet Eileen Stafford had it in spades. Along with cheekbones that reminded Miranda very much of her own.

Jack pulled the car up to a heavily armed guard, who demanded identification for all of them.

“Keep your wallet out,” Jack said after they’d been through the first gate. “They’re nothing if not thorough at Camp Camille.”

He wasn’t kidding. By the time the three of them were reunited at a two-story windowless building called the Medical Eval Unit, Miranda had been searched, fingerprinted, and subjected to so many indignities that she almost forgot why she was there. But when her escort walked her up to join Adrien and Jack, her limbs tingled in nervous anticipation of meeting Eileen.

Inside, a nurse behind a desk greeted Jack with a friendly, familiar smile. Another came down the hall, an officious-looking black woman with a clipboard, who also acknowledged Jack as though she knew him well.

“How is she, Risa?” he asked.

Risa shook her head, and the smile disappeared. “Her vitals are normal, Mr. Culver, but she simply isn’t responding to anything. She’s been sound asleep since you were last here.” She glanced at Adrien and Miranda. “You can go in, but don’t expect a response.”

Jack thanked her and they started down the hall, but Risa kept talking.

“I told that man yesterday the same thing, but he waited and waited until we had to call a guard to make him leave.”

“She had a visitor?” Jack asked with incredulity. “Who was he?”

Risa shut down. “I’m not allowed to tell you that, Mr. Culver. I shouldn’t have said anything.” He eyed her for a minute, and she responded with a turned-down mouth. “Don’t try to get it out of me, ’cause I’ll get fired.”

“Strange,” he said to Miranda, guiding her forward. “Eileen hasn’t had a visitor in years. Maybe ever.”

Near the end of the hall, a door stood open.

Miranda slipped her hand into Adrien’s but looked at Jack. “Is this it?” she asked him.

“This is it.”

She took one slow step, then another. First, an empty bed. Then, a few feet away, a bald woman in a blue and white hospital gown, her arm connected to softly beeping monitors, a clear inhaler sending oxygen up her nostrils.

She could have been a hundred years old, and if she’d ever had the inner strength Miranda had seen in the picture, thirty years in jail and a battle with cancer had sucked it all out of her. She looked old, beaten, and seconds from death.

Miranda walked to her bedside and closed her hand over the metal bed rail, studying the grim turn of her mouth, the vein pulsing on her head, the closed eyes, with lashes and eyebrows sacrificed to chemotherapy.

This sick, sad, dying woman was her mother.

She closed her fingers over the narrow wrist. Her skin was cool, dry, old.

“Eileen,” she whispered, leaning closer. “My name is Miranda Lang. I’m your daughter.”

Nothing. Not a flicker of response, not a roll of her eye under her eyelid.

Miranda looked up at Jack, who stood on the other side of the bed. “Do you think she can hear me?”

Jack shrugged. “Can’t hurt to assume she does.”

Adrien came up behind her, easing a chair for her. “Here, luv. Sit with her. Talk to her.”

She did, maintaining contact with her hand on the soft, old skin.

“I live in California, Eileen,” she said, feeling awkward. “I’m a professor at Berkeley, of anthropology. I…” She glanced at Adrien, who stood next to her, his hand on her shoulder. “I wrote a book,” she finished, and for the first time, a tear stung her eyes. She paused for a minute, and he squeezed her shoulder and nodded encouragingly.

“I grew up in Atlanta,” she continued, her voice tightening. “My…parents are really great. They…” Her voice cracked, and she fought a sob. “They love me.”

The first tear trickled, and she swiped it, gently squeezing Eileen’s arm as the wave of emotion washed over her.

“I know about…my sisters. I have a friend.” She smiled up at Adrien. “He’s more than a friend, really. He works for a company who can help me find them. I’m going to find them both, and we’re going to come back here, and surely one of us can give you what you need to live.”

She sniffed and took a breath. “And then,” she whispered, her voice hoarse, “we’re going to find out who killed Wanda Sloane.”

Eileen’s eyelids moved, and Miranda sat closer, excited.

“She heard me. Don’t you think? She heard me?”

“Maybe,” Adrien agreed.

No maybe. She’d
heard
. Miranda stood and leaned over the railing, wanting to get closer, to smell her and connect to her. She bent all the way over and put her lips on her mother’s dry cheek.

“I’m glad you looked for me,” she whispered, tears rolling from her cheek to Eileen’s.

She stood and turned to Adrien, who closed his arms around her, holding her so long and hard it felt like he was trying to give her all his power, all his bravery…all his love.

She took it, hugging him close and sobbing into his shoulder. “I want to take the blood test as soon as possible. Can I do that?”

“It looks to me, luv, like you can do anything you want.”

Dropping her head onto his shoulder, she closed her eyes. She
could
do anything she wanted. And she knew exactly what that was.

“I want to meet my sisters. I want our mother to live. And I want to clear her name.”

“Then you will.” He kissed her hair. “I have no doubt about that at all.”

Nearly a hundred people crammed into the back half of the Vero Beach Book Center, most of them holding copies of
Cataclysn’t
to be signed after Miranda’s brief reading. Standing outside in the humid Florida air, Fletch watched the crowd through the large front window as he listened to Lucy’s message on his cell phone.

Miranda would be thrilled with the news. At least, she’d be hopeful. They’d finally narrowed down the list to the last name, a woman living in New York named Vanessa Porter.

Jack hadn’t found the right Whitaker yet, but he was working on it. Lucy had kept her promise and, in true Lucy fashion, extended it to include providing resources to search for Miranda’s sisters. She said it was because they could be in danger, as that mysterious phone call to Jack had implied, not because her former employee was involved. Either way, there was a full-field press, and Miranda was optimistic.

She needed that optimism after the frustrating news that although she carried Eileen’s DNA, she wasn’t a match for a bone-marrow donation, intensifying her determination to find her sisters. Eileen hung on but remained, a month later, in a coma.

Fletch watched the bookstore manager speak to the crowd, knowing the introduction wouldn’t be much different from the half-dozen he’d witnessed in the past month. A snappy overview of her credentials, some glowing reviews for her book, and a teaser for a possible follow-up on the great ruins at Palenque.

Introductions that, in Adrien’s opinion, didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what made Miranda Lang extraordinary and exceptional. Such as the way she fought for what she wanted, never giving in. And the way she laughed and listened and loved. He’d never known such love.

“And I have more news.” Lucy’s message pulled him out of his reverie and back to the present. He knew what was coming next. The diamond drop in Antwerp.
Please, Lucy. Take pity. Don’t send me to Belgium
. He wanted more time with Miranda. Bloody hell, he wanted
all
time with Miranda.

“Victor Blake is apparently willing to turn over the entire estate and the property of Canopy to the state of California as part of his plea for a lesser sentence. As you and I discussed, I put in a call to my friend, who has arranged for Miranda to meet with the Governor’s Arts Council. They are extremely interested in her proposal to transform Canopy into a revenue-generating museum and education center for Maya studies.”

Yes!
Now all he needed was to be based in Santa Barbara, and life might be close to perfect.

He turned back to the window to see Miranda perched comfortably on the table, having ditched the podium several signings ago. She read from her book, then set it aside to walk around the crowd as he imagined she did in a college classroom, making each point with a sparkle in her eye and the confident tilt of her head.

He’d heard it many times by now. He knew all about what the newspapers and television interviewers called “twenty-twelve-ology” and how they’d used
Cataclysn’t
as proof that there was no need for a mass, worldwide panic. But he never tired of listening to her bring her world to life.

He tugged open the glass door and walked inside the crowded beachside bookstore, snagging the last copy of her book. When she caught his eyes, she smiled the secret smile she saved for him. A few in the audience turned to look at him, but soon they were riveted by the presenter.

Two hours later, he tucked her hand under his arm and led her out of the bookstore into the clear, warm night.

“I sold out,” she exclaimed with a little bounce in her step. “Can you believe it?”

“Of course. And I’ve been waiting to give you some wonderful news I just learned from Lucy Sharpe.”

She froze. “They found someone.”

“Close. We have an ID on the last woman on the list. Vanessa Porter, from New York—but it seems she’s just left for a Caribbean vacation. Lucy’s planning to send a man down to talk to her.”

“That will put a damper on her vacation,” Miranda said. “And the Whitaker lead?”

“Jack is searching every Whitaker in the state of Virginia,” he said.

She hugged his waist. “We’ll find them. I know we will.”

“But listen, luv, there’s more,” he said, turning them onto a side street next to the little bookstore. “Blake said yes to donating Canopy to the state, and Lucy got you a meeting with the Arts Council to present your proposal.”

Her eyes flashed with joy, and she gave a victorious laugh. “Fantastic! I guess it helps that she’s on a first-name basis with the governor. Perfect timing, too. We can stop in California on the way to Australia.”

He rolled his eyes. “Teach a woman how to fly, and the next thing you know she’s a one-person travel agency.”

“You’re not going to change your mind, are you? We had a deal.”

“No,” he assured her, leaning her against the brick wall of one of a store. “If you can fly over the Pacific Ocean, I can attempt peace with my parents.”

She smiled. “Good onya, mate.”

“And there’s one more thing.” He dipped his head closer to her mouth.

“You want to remind me that you’re a helluva good kisser?” She closed her eyes and lifted her mouth, but he didn’t kiss her. Instead, he slipped the book between them.

“Sign this.”

Her eyes widened in surprise as she flipped open the cover and saw the note inside. “I…”

“I know you’re a linguist, Dr. Lang, but those three words are fairly common. And in this case, quite true.”

She touched his lower lip and dipped her finger into his soul patch. “I love you, too. Now will you show me what a good kisser you are?”