Run Among Thorns (33 page)

She gritted her teeth. Hell’s bells, she was going to do this.

Jenny didn’t breathe evenly again until she’d passed the ten-mile mark, away from the Agency building.

There has been no one there she recognised, no names she knew. The place was swarming with FBI agents, sombre men in suits with watchful eyes.

They’d known all about her. Which had terrified her until they’d told her their source was Dawson. John Dawson was home and well, apparently, but he didn’t work there anymore. No one did.

But it had taken talking to three different men, each one of increasing rank, to get what she wanted. In the end, they couldn’t come up with a reason not to give it to her, although they’d tried. Desperately, she’d torpedoed their reluctance with her mother-to-be status.

She grinned, remembering their shocked looks.

They’d inspected her passport, given her the information, escorted her carefully to the door, and wished her luck, expressing their hope that she’d find what she was looking for.

“Thank you. I will,” she’d said, and for the first time, she’d really believed it. She would find him. Wherever he was now, she would find him.

On the seat beside her, a piece of paper. Kier’s parents’ address. And directions.

There was light filtering under the faded brown curtains, but not much. Kier picked up the bottle, glanced at the amber liquid slopping halfway up the clear glass sides, and put it down again.

He had the mother of all headaches, his mouth felt like a family of squirrels had set up home in it, but for the first time in days, weeks, he was thinking clearly.

In the first weeks after he’d flown back to the US, he had felt as if he had a wound that wouldn’t heal. That was always aching, throbbing, reminding him of the pain when he stood, when he sat, when he breathed, when he thought.

Especially when he thought.

Was she thinking of him? Was she at home in England staring at the wall thinking about how they had been together?

Was she wishing she hadn’t walked away?

He couldn’t have stopped her leaving, because he had to respect her wishes.

Kier’s face twisted, acknowledging the bitter irony. And he chose
this
time to start respecting her wishes. The only time when it might have mattered, just
might
have mattered if he gave in to that overbearing side of him, and he’d rolled over like a kicked puppy.

He was disgusted with himself. Hell, he’d been disgusted with himself, with a few notable exceptions, pretty much since he’d met her. He disgusted that he’d been drinking himself into oblivion these last few days, disgusted that he hadn’t fought for her.

He felt sorry for himself. No, he felt sorry for what he’d done. And he needed to apologise. He couldn’t remember having really apologised since … since joining the Marines what seemed like a lifetime ago. Somebody else’s lifetime.

He needed to apologise.

The need to tell Jenny face to face he was sorry, really sorry for what he had done, was suddenly overwhelming in him, breaking through the fog of old alcohol, the pangs of hunger, and the throb of that angry emotional wound. He had a purpose, suddenly, something he really needed to do.

God, to apologise, Kier McAllister needed to get down on bended knee and say he was sorry.

That was an event in itself.

He glanced around the cramped room, seeing it with fresh eyes. The clothes in an untidy heap on the chair, the empties against one wall. The drapes that hadn’t been pulled back in three days.

He hefted the bottle in his hand and rubbed the other against half a week’s beard.

First things first.

He set the bottle down again.

There Jenny was again, sitting in a car screwing up her courage to get out and knock on a door. She breathed deeply, pushed her hair off her face, and got out, walking over the road and up the path of the pretty house with the white picket fence and the creeper climbing up the weatherboarding.

There was a porch with a swing on it, the cushions missing, and a screen door and painted steps. It looked lovely to her, so much her image of small-town America, it almost wasn’t real. She found it hard to imagine Kier here at all. She wiped her sweaty palms on her trousers and tapped on the door frame.

A man came to the door, in a checkered shirt and jeans, grey-haired and a little soft, big around the middle. She recognised Kier in his jaw, and his eyes, and the thick spring of his hair, though.

“Can I help you?” his voice was deep and calm, gently questioning.

She cleared her throat. “Excuse me, but are you Mr. McAllister? Kier’s father?”

He frowned a little, and there was Kier in that, too. “Yes, I’m Neil McAllister. What can I do for you?”

Behind him, a small thin woman appeared, craning a little timidly around Neil.

“Miss?” he prompted.

“My name’s Jenny. I’m looking for Kier. Please,” she blurted out, suddenly shaking, “I need to find him!”

Behind Kier’s father, his mother suddenly burst into tears. “Oh, thank God,” she said.

Later, when things were a little calmer and they’d all sat down with, surprisingly enough, a cup of tea, Kier’s parents explained a lot.

Kier had come home, apparently. For the first time in ages. But it had been clear right from the start that something was wrong. And then, after a few weeks, he’d left again.

“He became so distant from us. We’ve seen him push himself so hard, drive himself without rest,” his father said.

She could see the lines of strain and worry on their faces, and suddenly felt a fierce anger at Kier for squandering a relationship that she had grieved so hard for. He still had his parents, and all he did was dismiss them and worry them.

“You see, he’d always worked so hard, got so used to being the best at what he did, right from high school. I think he just forgot how to come in second and still feel worthwhile.”

Neil reached out and took Barbara’s hand with a soft smile. There was something comfortable and restful about their manner together, Jenny thought. She found it soothing. But she could also see a young Kier fretting at their staid contentment.

“He never worked out that there were other things that mattered in life,” his father said. Like these gentle people. And conscience. And her, God damn it, and her.

Barbara leant forward a little, reaching out a hand to where Jenny sat on a faded chintz armchair. “I used to pray he’d find someone, but he never seemed to change, just got a little colder, a little more distant.”

“We now know exactly what he did for a living, you see,” continued Neil, “He only explained when he came home this time. But a lot of his behaviour makes sense, now.”

“You have to understand, he was a good boy, kind and honourable, hated bullying and nastiness. But I think as his work got more involved and more … cruel, it just killed him a little bit at a time. He seemed to lose his soul.”

Barbara spoke again. “Until he came home. Oh, Jenny, I wish you could have seen him. He was here two weeks, but I don’t think he slept once. He
agonised
over you! I got your name out of him one night when he was really in pieces, but he wouldn’t tell me much about you. But I knew. I knew from the change in him he’d met someone who had changed his life, and that he’d lost her again. So then I prayed you’d turn up. And you did.” Barbara sat back, smiling through tears.

“Look, honey,” Neil said gruffly. “I don’t know why you left him, or exactly what’s going on. I’d say he probably behaved like a prize heel, but you have to know he’s changed,
is
changing, and whatever reason you had, you’d make us very happy if—”

“I was wrong.” Jenny said. She rejoiced to say it. “It took me a while to work it out, but I know I was wrong, now. I thought I was going to lose myself in him, that he made me weak. But I was wrong. I find myself in him, and he makes me strong. That’s why I’m here. I want to find him. Please, where is he?”

They glanced at each other, a little distressed. Neil answered. “We don’t know for sure. But we made him leave a number where we could leave a message. He gave us this. He said we could leave messages with someone called Bill.”

“This” was a tattered square of a card with a decal of beer bottles and an address of someplace called “Harry’s Bar.”

It wasn’t much. But it was something.

“Look,” she said, “I don’t know how this is going to pan out, but I promise I’ll fix it if I can, and I’ll bring him back here before we go anywhere else.”

“You do what you can, honey. We’ll be here.”

Showered, scrubbed, shaved, and sober, Kier packed the last of his things in his duffle bag and lifted it onto his shoulder.

When he jogged downstairs he found Bill polishing glasses behind the bar in preparation for opening time. He dropped his bag beside the bar and reached for his wallet.

“Bill, I’ve got to go. What do I owe you?”

Bill looked him up and down with a critical eye. “Better,” he said. “The dissolute look didn’t suit you.”

“Ha-bloody-ha. What do I owe you?”

Bill grunted, setting down one smeared glass and picking up another. “Pay me when you see me next. And bring her with you.”

“Who?”

“Whoever she is.”

“For God’s sake, who said there was a woman in the case?”

The landlord put that glass down, too, and leaned scarred knuckles on the pitted bar, dropping his head and doing a creditable impersonation of the McAllister Glare.

“You did,” he said.