Reading His Mind (14 page)

I walked out into the bedroom to find him dressed. “What are you doing?”

“Taking you home.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I can get myself home. I’ve lived here on and off for seven years, and I was completely alone before that. I can manage.”

Instead of fighting me on the issue, he lowered his tall frame to the bed.

“I can’t help what I can do. I control it or use it at my will. If you asked me to not read you, I would try really hard to give you your privacy, but I’m not perfect. Sometimes, it’s a necessity or the temptation is too much, and I want to know. Sometimes, it’s just for fun. I like it, you know?”

He didn’t.

“That’s something you have to decide if you can live with.” I paused, giving him the easy out he wanted. “You should decide now before this goes any further because it’s a big part of who I am. I don’t know who I would or could be without it.”

I walked to the door and opened it.

“Hey.”

I hadn’t seen him move, but I felt his breath on my neck, his hand on my elbow.

“You have a terrible habit of leaving without kissing me good-bye.” Neither of us wanted this particular kiss—the good-bye kiss. It had none of the qualities of a see-you-later kiss or an I’ll-call-you kiss. At the very last second, I turned my head so his lips landed on my jaw.

He pulled away, nodding. “Call me and let me know you got home safe.” His hands fell to his sides while his gaze lingered at a spot over my head on the door.

Turning, I walked down the hall, alone. Lonely. Pathetic and wearing his pants.

“All rise.” The judge entered the courtroom followed by the jury. Wyatt and Michael sat with Greta while I stayed in the gallery immediately behind their table. Wyatt looked terrible. Bags puffed under his eyes. It appeared as though he had slept in his clothes.

Court began with the detective still on the stand. The prosecutor re-engaged the jury with her redirect. This time, I paid no attention to them, instead focusing all of my energy on Greta. She doodled on a piece of a paper in front of her, but her mind wandered through a maze of cloudy thoughts. She remembered being young, riding her bicycle outside in the sun. Then she thought of a day at a cool lake and sitting on the dock to dip her toes into the high water. She wondered how she could ever get back there.

Someone had obviously sprung for a hairbrush, even some new clothing. She seemed much less disheveled than she had on Thursday. Her long, dishwater-blonde hair had been pulled into a tight ponytail, and she wore black slacks with a burgundy blouse. I had one at home just like it.

Fear ate at her. She knew her future hung in the balance, even if she didn’t understand why. All she knew for sure was they’d taken her baby away. She doubted she would ever see her again.

“Mr. Charles?” The judge glared at Wyatt, who sat unmoving. “Do you have anything further for this witness?”

He remained motionless, staring at his pen. The only thoughts in his head revolved around me. He wanted me for his own, and by God, one way or another, he would have me. I slouched down in my seat.

Michael took control, standing taller, bigger than the week before. “Yes, Your Honor.” He appeared more confident than I’d ever seen him. His suit seemed crisper—of course, that could have been an illusion because Wyatt’s was so wrinkled—his stance wider, his steps to the podium surer. “Detective Ryan, you mentioned when you initially spoke to Miss Wildwood, she seemed out of it.”

“Yes.”

“Can you describe what exactly you mean by ‘out of it’?” His tone mocked the casualness of the detective’s previous description of Greta. Michael had relinquished the fidgeting and shifting from one leg to the other, which had made him seem spastic. He stood, hands braced on the podium, his notes on the table. He’d traded his glasses for contacts. Michael hadn’t just come to take this battle, he’d come to win a war.

“She wouldn’t speak. She never made eye contact.”

“Did she seem scared?”

“Yes.”

“When she told you about the incident that injured Baby Caroline, what was her demeanor?” Michael had my notes running around in his mind.

“Her voice sounded flat. Her sentences were broken.”

“When you raised your voice to her, what did she do?”

“She flinched and started to cry. She rocked with her arms wrapped around her knees, but that isn’t unusual.”

“Right. You see that a lot. We get it.” The judge shot a pointed glare at Michael, but he ignored it. “But was there anything about Greta that you wondered about?”

“Behavior wise?”

“Anything physically or with her behavior.”

“No. She seemed like a normal suspect.”

“Was she confused?”

“Yes, but being taken to jail is confusing to some people.”

“Especially if they are being persecuted when they’re innocent.”

The prosecutor jumped to her feet with an objection that rang through the quiet air. The judge overruled, allowing Michael to continue.

“We watched the video evidence of your interrogation, last week. When you blamed Greta for hurting Baby Caroline, we saw her fight back. Right?”

“Yes. She became angry.”

“We heard her tell you it was Mr. Callahan who hurt the baby.”

“Yes.”

“We saw you call her a liar.”

“Yes.”

“In your experience with liars, do you believe anything they say?” Michael learned with speed.

“No. Not usually.”

“But you did with Greta, correct?”

“Yes.”

“You believed she was aware her boyfriend had hurt the baby before?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t believe he had kept Greta prisoner in the house for a period of time when she tried to leave him.”

“No. I did not. I do not believe that.” The detective bit out the words, each one having its own period at the end.

“Why?”

“Because she was uninjured at the time of her arrest.”

“But she told you he kept her prisoner some weeks earlier.”

“A man who beats his woman, as a rule, does it consistently. He doesn’t stop or take a vacation from it.”

“Always?”

“Usually.”

“But not always. There can be a period of time where abuse is stalled, so to speak. But that didn’t happen in this case.” Michael strode to the desk, grabbed a group of photos from a folder. As he had the photos marked into evidence, I watched Wyatt. He still toyed with his pen, his thoughts centered on me. “Detective, these are the photos taken of Greta’s chest when she was brought in. Do you see this bruise on her arm?”

“Yes.”

Michael almost threw the picture to the side. “This one, where her ribs are almost green? Would that be another bruise?”

“I can’t say.”

“Have you ever had a bruise, detective?”

“Of course.” I checked in on his thoughts. Fury raced around his mind.

“So, you would know, as a bruise fades, it changes color, becoming less purple, more green and yellow?”

“Yes.” The detective spit the word as though it hurt him to say it.

“So, you knew there was some abuse, correct?”

“I can’t say where those bruises came from.”

Michael shook his head in disgust, moving on. Snatching the pictures away from the detective, he tossed them on the podium. “Have you ever seen these pictures before today?”

“I saw them shortly after they were taken.”

“But you didn’t believe Greta was afraid to take her baby and leave?”

“There are a dozen agencies that help battered women if they step up and ask for help.”

“Are those numbers posted anywhere in the hotel where Greta and Mr. Callahan were staying?”

“I didn’t notice.”

Michael clicked his tongue. “I did. There were none. Did Greta receive any kind of state assistance where someone could have made her aware of these agencies?”

“Not that we could determine.”

“Who, in their household, worked?”

“Miss Wildwood cleaned the hotel to pay their rent, and she worked two or three nights a week at the Burger Palace.”

“So, Mr. Callahan had control over the child more than Miss Wildwood?”

“It would seem that way, but Miss Wildwood was allowed to leave to go to work. She could have asked for help from any number of people.”

Michael nodded. “If she was afraid Mr. Callahan would hurt her, would she have asked for help?”

The judge sustained another objection, and Michael finished with the witness.

Court recessed for the day at lunchtime because Michael, getting no help from his colleague, needed to “confer with” his client. He secretly intended to head into the office and report Wyatt for showing up to court hungover and unprepared. He planned to fight to get his case back. This time, I was on his side. I had been apprehensive about coming to court at all but sat on the verge of hysterics after listening in on Wyatt’s mind mumblings.

He grabbed my arm when I stepped out into the hallway. “Please, Lyric. Talk to me.”

I jerked out of his grasp, knowing Greta wouldn’t be the only one with a bruise. “Wyatt, you’ve got to stop this.”

“Please, come have coffee with me. Public place. You choose.” He raked through his already messy—not in the sexy way—hair.

I had to put a fast stop to this mess. As long as we stayed in a public setting, I didn’t see a need for worry. Much. “Okay. We can go to the diner downstairs.”

There would be a ton of people in the lobby due to the early court break. He nodded, again jerking my arm into his vise grip. When I tried to break free this time, he squeezed harder, and I knew I’d just bought a bunch of trouble. He passed the elevators, instead heading to the stairwell at the end of the hall, dragging me with him.

“Let me go.” I panicked, looking around for help. The silence of the hallway consumed me. Where the hell had everyone gone?

“Not this time.” His pace increased. I stalled, pulled back, trying to formulate a plan for escape.

I softened my voice, digging in my heels. “Hey. I’m going with you. It’s what you want, right? Relax.”

His mind whirled. He knew I was tricking him.

“It’s not a trick. I want to go with you.” A picture of me kissing Jace flashed through his mind. “Don’t think about anything but us, Wyatt. Nothing else matters.” I needed him to hear me, but his mind traveled down a single track, and I had no hope of derailing him.

I passed panicked and moved right on to freaked-the-hell-out.

He yanked me forward again. “Don’t play with me, Lyric.”

“I swear, I’m not.” I covered his hand, the one cutting off the circulation from my forearm, with my own.

“You spent all weekend with that baseball player.” Bitter accusation dripped from every perfectly enunciated word. We took off again, almost running.

“He was worried about me after the break-in. He’s an old family friend, nothing more.”

“I saw you kiss him. I saw you go into his hotel room, and I saw you leave last night. Did you screw him, too?”

So, he
had
been stalking me. The bastard. The situation had escalated to way worse than I’d originally thought. “No.”

“It’s okay. I paid him a little visit last night after you went home. I was going to come see you, but I thought maybe he needed to learn a little lesson about taking things that don’t belong to him.”

“What did you do to Jace?” Fear tickled down my spine and settled deep in my belly.

“I showed him what a baseball bat is really for.” He chuckled, and my heart lurched. “He was tough.” He rubbed his jaw, as he remembered the punch he’d taken to the face. “But I don’t think he will be bothering us anymore.”

I began to hyperventilate as he pulled me down flight after flight of stairs.

“Oh, grow up, Lyric. He was using you. Any fool could see that. Who could blame him, the way you draped yourself all over him? You were like the cheap suits your preacher man daddy used to wear.”

“What did you do to him?” He could insult my father all he wanted. On a better day, I would have jumped on that gravy train, but at this moment, all I wanted to know was Jace hadn’t been hurt.

“He’s fine. In a better place now.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. A picture of Jace lying on the floor in his hotel caused Wyatt to smirk as my voice rose. “You killed Jace?”

He shrugged. We stepped out into the lobby.

“Stop!” I had to get help, not just for me, but for Jace. I screamed a maniac-in-a-mask-chasing-me kind of scream and eyed the guards who surged forward at the sound. “You killed Jace!”

Oh, yeah. People stopped to stare.

“Let me go!” Images of Jace bounced through my mind. Jace grinning at me in the bar as he fake proposed, cradling me in his arms as we danced, in my bed, in the hotel bed, in the shower. Image after image of Jace seized me, and I screamed again. “Let me go!”

“No.” He yanked me forward.

A police officer stepped in front of us. “Sir, you need to let the woman go.”

Wyatt laughed and pulled a tiny gun from his pocket. It didn’t look like much, but in my experience, a gun was a gun. “Mind your own business and get the hell out of the way.”

Every cop in the building had their sights on him within seconds. This situation did not have a happily ever after stamped on it.

“You need to send someone to the Grand Hotel. Room 611. Someone might be hurt.” My voice belied desperation.

“Shut up, Lyric!”

“This is Wyatt Charles.” I pitched my voice louder. “If he gets away, his name is Wyatt Charles. He hurt Jace Laugherty in room 611 at the Grand Hotel.”

He shook his head. “Bitch.” He said it softly and with great disappointment. “Let’s go.”

“Sir.” A cop pointed his gun at Wyatt’s chest. “We can’t let you leave.”

Wyatt put his gun to my temple.

“Oh, yeah. So much for true love, pal.” I rolled my eyes.

He ignored me as though I had remained silent rather than being myself. “If you shoot me, my finger squeezes the trigger in reflex, then I shoot her and on my way down, I imagine I’ll be able to squeeze off a few shots for all of you, too.” Oh, he’d adopted the voice of calm. “Are you feeling like a hero, Officer, or would you like to make it home tonight?”