Right Before His Eyes (15 page)

“T
HERE WAS NOTHING,
B
OSS.
Not one trace that the girl knows about the money.” The ex-con braced himself for Kell Saunders's reaction to the news. “But at least we found her. Thought we'd never get a chance to search the place, though. All she does is work and take care of her sister.”

“Then it's time to have a chat with her.”

“Not easy to do with cops crawling around. All I can do now is keep my eyes on her. Just got to be patient.”

“I'm running out of patience. Hilton Branch has screwed with me for the last time.” Saunders sighed.

“The girl's been there for months, you say? Why hang around so long? The money's got to be in North Carolina, from what Clifton said when I questioned him.”

Questioned him,
the man thought. A polite term. “Saw something interesting while I was watching, Boss.”

“What's that?”

“Branch's son, one of the twins. He showed up after she did.”

“How was he behaving? Think he knows who she is?”

“Can't tell. He was there for a while, then waited on the cops and split. Didn't look happy.”

“I don't need this complication. Get to her, get the information from her, then get out. Pronto.”

The man shook his head. Saunders acted as if he was king of the planet, but this whole venture wasn't simple. He didn't know all the details, but he couldn't understand why a guy like Saunders, who was rolling in dough, got so worked up over a lousy million bucks or so. Somehow, though, this had become personal.

The man flinched. Kell Saunders was not someone you wanted to have focused on you. Whoever this Branch guy was, he'd regret crossing Saunders.

Prison walls were made strong in order to keep the bad guys inside, but they provided no protection at all for those on the inside when someone as powerful and connected as Kell Saunders was out for revenge.

“Will do, Boss,” he said, glad as hell Saunders didn't want to teach him a lesson.

 

M
ELLIE DIDN'T WANT TO WATCH
the race at Phoenix.

But she couldn't seem to stop herself.

Anyway, it was impossible to avoid the coverage in the hub of NASCAR, especially at Sheila's. And truth to tell, however stupid it was to want to catch a glimpse of Bart, to wish with all her heart that she hadn't made his championship hunt more difficult, she was in his corner, even if his abandonment had hurt.

She hadn't seen or heard from him since the break-in, and she didn't expect to. He was right, however good her intentions, she'd lied to him again and again, for months now. At first she hadn't known that Hal Walker, the man she was trying to find, was actually Bart's father, Hilton Branch. Then she'd been struggling to protect him from that knowledge.

Some good that had done.

But she really couldn't blame Bart. The timing
couldn't be worse for a bomb like that to be dropped on him.

Never mind that the aftermath wasn't easy on her, either. She'd gone from the heights of glory one night, to the depths of despair the next morning.

In between, she'd let herself spin all manner of fantasies about being with Bart, about finding a family, about a future where she wasn't so alone and frightened.

More the fool, me.

She hadn't asked for this misery, any of it. She'd lost a mother and a home, and she'd been doing her best to cope while caring for her little sister.

But all Bart had seen were the lies. Oh, sure, he'd hired a security company to watch over her until the cops could locate the people responsible for the break-in. But she was as dead to him as if she'd never existed.

I knew it was too much to hope for.

She hadn't been able to stop herself from hoping, however.

The crowd at the diner gasped, and Mellie's attention returned to the screen. Mellie couldn't breathe as she watched Bart evade a multicar collision by the skin of his teeth. When he was safe, she checked the standings and the lap count, her heart sinking. If she understood the points system, he was barely hanging on to second place and the gap between him and the points leader had increased.

Oh, Bart, I am so very sorry. This is my fault.
A heartbroken Mellie turned away and busied herself bussing tables. Maybe if she didn't watch, he'd do better.

Maybe if she were gone altogether from his life and his town, she couldn't do him any more harm.

She would call the police detective handling her break-in and promise to stay in touch after she left.
He hadn't been optimistic that the culprits would be caught anyway. He'd explained to her all he'd learned from Bart about the money meant for Mama and Lily, the price of Hilton Branch's guilty conscience for the lie he'd perpetrated on her beautiful mother.

But the detective had admitted that the chances of tracing the funds were slim to none, that over time the criminals looking for it would be forced to give up, since she clearly knew nothing about it.

There was no reason she had to stay in the area and so many reasons to go…if only she knew where.

She'd promised Bart not to try to leave until the bad guys were caught, but that would likely never happen, and meanwhile, all she did was complicate life for Bart and his family.

Worse than that, she'd received a call last night from Bart's sister, Penny, telling her that the Branches wanted to meet Lily, that they were eager to welcome her into the family.

A family with a lot of money and power. Mellie hadn't slept a wink since the call, not after she realized that the Branches could stake as much claim to Lily as she herself could. What court wouldn't compare how much better they could support Lily and give her everything Mellie could not?

For a second, Mellie wished for that stash of money to be real so she could use it to defend her right to keep her little sister with her. But even if it existed, spending any of it would only alert the bad guys and they'd be right back after her.

The thought of losing Lily—however many times Mellie had prayed to be relieved of the heavy responsibility—stabbed terror deep into Mellie's breastbone. Her hands began shaking, and her mind darted like a
terrified minnow with a shark in hot pursuit. She barely heard the groan of disappointment in the crowd when Bart couldn't quite pull off the win. Her mind was fully occupied with one thought and one alone:

She had to disappear again or she would lose Lily.

In that moment, she made up her mind to slip away as soon as possible. She and Lily had been staying with Louise and Al since the break-in while Mellie spent off hours cleaning up the damage to the apartment, the least she could do to repay Sheila's kindness.

She would finish up tonight, then tomorrow when she was off for the day she would take Lily and leave Mooresville for good.

 

M
OST OF THOSE ON THE PLANE
with Bart wisely left him alone on the plane ride home.

But not his crew chief, Philip Whalen. “Where the devil is your head, Bart? There is nothing else you should be focusing on but your driving. What's the matter with you? I've never seen you so distracted. Whatever's bugging you, get it squared away. We can still win this thing, but only if we're all in it one hundred percent.”

Bart itched to expend some of his filthy mood in a rousing argument, but Philip was right. What was wrong with him was Mellie and his sense of being duped yet again by someone he'd thought he could trust.

As Penny had reminded him last night, however, Mellie had done nothing wrong except be very young and scared half to death, shouldering a backbreaking responsibility. Even Bart's mother had called him to say that she welcomed Mellie—he should call her Amelia, he guessed, but he couldn't—and the innocent child of his worthless father.

If his mother, who'd been so deeply betrayed by Hilton, could hold Mellie blameless, why couldn't he?

Ignoring her wasn't helping. She was on his mind constantly. He was afraid for her, even though he'd hired a highly reputable security company to watch over her. And, blast it, he missed her.

He'd been her first. That thought never left him for long, how passionately she'd responded to him, how sweet and vulnerable she'd been in his arms, how no one had ever touched him so deeply before.

“You're right,” he said to his crew chief, whose eyebrows flew upward as he'd obviously expected a much different response. “It's something personal, and I thought I had it tucked away, but…” He sighed. “I'll get it taken care of, I swear.” He hoped, anyway. That is, if Mellie was still speaking to him. He would head over to Louise's the second the plane touched down, and he'd make this right.

He leaned forward in his seat. “Okay, let's talk about Homestead. I'm going to win that sucker, come hell or high water. I let you all down today, but it won't happen again, I swear it.”

Relief flashed over Philip's features. “Okay,” he said, and began the postmortem of the Phoenix race.

 

M
ELLIE HALTED AT THE BOTTOM
of the staircase leading to the apartment. It didn't matter that she'd already cleared out a lot of the damage, the first image was always of what she'd stumbled onto only days ago, and a shiver of fear still accompanied that memory of feeling so violated and so helpless.

That she now understood what had happened in Idaho and had pursued her across the country didn't help. She glanced around for her shadow, the omnipresent
anonymous vehicle that changed from day to day, making it as hard for her to spot as they all hoped would be the case for the bad guys she hoped had given up and left. If it would help, she'd gladly take out a newspaper ad or post a big sign that said Mellie Knows Nothing About Any Money. Please Leave Her Alone.

She'd seriously proposed that approach to the police and the security company agent who'd arrived before Bart would leave her alone, but all had said it would do no good. The agent had told her not to worry and had given her a necklace with an alarm button on it that would allow them to stay back out of sight but ensure she could summon help anytime she was worried.

She fingered that necklace now.
Don't be a goose,
she chided herself.
You're safe.

She took a deep breath and mounted the stairs, glad that this would be her last night to enter the place that had once been her haven but now represented a nightmare she was eager to leave.

She stuck a key in the lock and turned it, then opened the door and reached for the light switch to set the place ablaze—

A hand caught her wrist and stopped her, grabbing for the other hand instinctively going for the alarm button. “Your guardian is having a little nap,” said a harsh, triumphant voice. “While he's sleeping,” the man snickered, “you and I are going to have a little chat.”

 

“C
OME ON OVER TO THE HOUSE
,” Will urged Bart at the terminal parking lot. “Don't go back to your place alone. You know you'll just chew over this all night.”

“I'll be fine,” Bart said.

“Why don't you go with him, Will?” Zoe suggested
as she and Will each tucked a baby into a car seat. “It's not like I've never put the kids to bed by myself.”

“I'll help Mom, Uncle Bart,” Sam said.

“There's no need for all this trouble,” Bart protested. “I might go by Louise's first and talk to Mellie a minute.” He carefully kept his tone casual, but he and Will hadn't shared a womb for nothing.

“Let me just follow you, in case…”

Bart couldn't help but grin. “In case what, she pulls out a shotgun on me?” The very image of tiny, dainty Mellie brandishing a weapon was too incongruous not to laugh about.

But Will wasn't laughing. “I'm following you. If you trip over your tongue with her, I'll be the Mounties and rescue you from screwing up. Seriously, Bart, maybe it would help her to know that the whole family's behind her.”

“Pen already called her, right?” But abruptly Bart stopped arguing because the fact was that he wouldn't mind the company if Mellie either wasn't available or wouldn't speak to him. “Okay, but just for a little while, then you need to go home to your beautiful wife.”

“You think I want to look at your ugly mug any longer than I have to when I could be in bed with Zoe?” Will's sarcasm did a poor job of veiling his concern over Bart's state of mind. “Get real, dude.” He saluted and unlocked his own truck, then waited for Bart to start his.

Bart drove to Louise and Al's, trying to figure out how best to tell Mellie what a jerk he'd been and how to get her to forgive him, but as he rolled to a stop in front of their house, he gave up. He would have to simply wing it and hope that her kind heart would relent. He walked up their sidewalk and waited for them to answer.

But when Louise told him Mellie wasn't there, that
she'd gone to the apartment to finish cleaning up, he breathed a small sigh of relief that he wouldn't have to make his case in front of an audience. He wasn't thrilled at the thought of her being in that place at night, but Louise assured him that she had her cell phone and her alarm button and that the security company guy who'd been parked outside had said that his relief was rolling into place at the apartment even as Mellie was backing out of the drive.

Bart spared a moment to update Will, then headed over to the apartment, still with no idea exactly what he would say. When he pulled into the parking lot, he made his way up the stairs, preoccupied with his internal debate over what approach would work best.

But when he knocked on the door, Mellie took a long time answering, and when she did, she seemed preoccupied. “Bart, this, uh, this isn't a good time.”

No surprise she wasn't happy to see him. “Look, Mellie, I know I was harsh on you, and I was wrong. I've given it a lot of thought, and I see that I overreacted. It's just that my dad— Let me in, and I'll try to explain.”