Sheriff’s Runaway Witness

Chapter 5

Rachel came back to awareness and an overwhelming sense of grief and terror. She tried to cry out, but something cold and hard was covering her face. She clawed at it, and then at the hands that tried to stop her from doing so. She was crying, sobbing uncontrollably. And there were voices, voices saying words that made no sense to her. Soothing words, nevertheless, and the voices, some of them, were women’s.

“It’s okay…you’re safe now…it’s just a little oxygen. It’ll help you feel better. It’s all right…”

But Rachel was inconsolable. “They…took him. They took…”

“No, no, dear-he’s fine. Your baby is fine. He’s in the nursery. We took him for tests, so you could sleep…”

They were lying, of course. Telling her that just to calm her. She knew, because she had heard them-heard the bassinet fall. It had happened, just as she’d known it would. Carlos had sent his men to kill her, and they had taken away her baby.

The hospital appeared outwardly calm. Sure, there were cop cars drawn up before every entrance, but nobody was shouting, running or shooting at anybody. Nobody was being evacuated, which meant probably nobody was being held hostage. All of which only confirmed J.J.’s suspicion that the perpetrators, whoever they were and whatever they’d been up to, had already fled the scene, most likely in the black SUV he’d nearly collided with on his way in.

I shouldn’t have left her, he told himself. Dammit, should never have left her alone.

You didn’t know who she was at the time, his reasoning self told him. How could you have known?

But he had known. He’d known something wasn’t right. I should have stayed until I heard from Katie.

But as he knew all too well, knowing what he should have done-or not done-after it was too late wasn’t worth diddly. Now, he was going to have one more life-possibly two-on his conscience.

Along with the God-only-knew how many more that were there already.

He went in through the emergency entrance, figuring the nurse on watchdog duty would probably recognize him from when he’d brought Rachel and her baby in and give him a minimum of grief. She did, and would have waved him right on in, but the two cops guarding the door needed more convincing.

“A little out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you, San Bernardino?” one of them said as he studied J.J.’s identification.

“A bit,” J.J. said. He was trying to hide his impatience, his urgent need to move on, but the Ridgecrest cops were no dummies.

“Can I ask what you know about what just went down here?” the one with his ID said, glancing up at him while his partner moved in just a bit closer.

J.J. raised his eyebrows and played dumb. “Something happen? When?”

“Few minutes ago someone assaulted one of the patients here.” He took a notepad out of his uniform pocket, glanced at it, and put it back. “Name of Rachel Malone. You know anything about that?”

Giving up the act, J.J. ran a hand over his beard and swore under his breath. “She okay?”

“Looks like it,” the cop said, giving him a long, close look as he handed back his ID.

“And her baby?”

“Mind telling me what’s your interest, San Bernardino? Like I said, you’re way out of your jurisdiction.” He paused, obviously thinking about it. “You her husband? Different name, but that don’t mean much these days.”

“Nope, no relation,” J.J. said easily. He really didn’t want to step on a fellow lawman’s toes. If he could help it.

“You the baby’s father?”

Why won’t they give me a straight answer? Oh, right, he thought, trying to curb his temper, cops don’t answer questions, they just ask them.

“No,” he said through clenched teeth, “just the guy who delivered him. You gonna tell me how he is, or what?”

Her room seemed filled with people. Policemen-except one was a woman-asking questions, taking pictures, writing notes, talking on their radios or cell phones. Nurses talking to each other in low voices; Rachel could hear them talking about her but didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything, she was sunk so deep in pain and despair. Pain gripped her like a vise, and it was worse than anything she’d ever known, worse than childbirth, worse than the night Nicky died. She could only wrap her arms around herself and curl herself around the pain, too full of pain even for breath. The nurses kept trying to put the oxygen mask over her face, but she didn’t want it. She didn’t want to breathe, didn’t want to live.

My baby’s gone…

Murmuring in the hallway…the nurse’s voice, speaking plainly, sounding distressed: “We’ve told her her baby’s fine, but she won’t believe us.”

“Then why don’t you just go and get him and let her see for herself?”

That voice…with an accent…sounding a lot like John Wayne.

The nurse again: “We thought…he’s still being monitored…so many people…”

“Too many people? So clear ’em out. Come on, guys, that’s enough. You can do this later. Can’t you see the lady’s had about all she can take?”

She lifted her head and gave a hoarse cry, cried out his name. “Jethro?” It was all she could manage; her throat was raw from weeping.

She tore off the oxygen mask, and this time no one stopped her. She watched him come toward her, swimming his way through people, nurses and policemen, all making for the door now, though in no particular hurry. Then he was beside her, and she just naturally lifted her arms to him and he gathered her in, tenderly, as if he understood how wounded she was. As she clung to him, shaking, she felt his hand cradle her head against him, felt his body tense as his head turned, and his voice rumbled next to her ear as he called over his shoulder, “Somebody go get that baby-now.”

She heard a nurse say huffily, from somewhere distant, “Well, I’ll have to ask the doctor…”

And John Wayne’s voice grating, “You just do that, sweetheart.”

Then all was still. She heard only the thumping of a strong heartbeat against her ear, and felt peace settle around her like a soft warm blanket.

J.J. didn’t try to utter comforting words or in fact make any sound at all, just settled himself on the bed beside her and held her tightly, and after a few minutes he felt the tremors and tension in her body ease. Her head stirred against his hand, and he moved that hand to her shoulder, giving her the option to pull away from him if she wanted to.

Which she evidently didn’t. She nestled her cheek more closely against his chest and tightened her arms around him. She sighed, and after a moment, sniffed loudly, then whispered, “He’s really okay? Tell me the truth.”

J.J. uttered a garbled sound, cleared his throat and said, “Yeah, he is.”

A shudder ran through her. “I heard the bassinet fall. I thought-”

“He wasn’t in it. I guess they’d taken him to the NICU for observation, or something. Just to be on the safe side. You know-since he was born in, uh, less than ideal circumstances.”

“I was asleep. And then…” Her voice was muffled and liquid, and she turned her face against his shirt as if to shut out terrible images.

“Did you see who it was who attacked you? Was it Carlos’s men?”

“Who else would it be?” she said angrily, then made a small sound, a gasp, and jerked away from him, wiping her cheeks with her fingers. Above them, her eyes were huge and frightened as they searched his face. “How did you- How do you know that?”

He was saved from having to answer her by a discreet knock on the door. He called, “Come in,” and the door opened.

A nurse entered slowly, smiling, bringing with her a rolling stainless steel cart which carried a clear plastic box. Inside the box, all wrapped up like a miniature mummy with a little blue stocking cap on his head, was the infant he’d last seen naked and sticky and swathed in one of his own emergency blankets. “I brought your baby,” she sang softly.

J.J. got out of the way and Rachel scooted back against the pillows and watched with he could only call hunger while the nurse wheeled the cart right up next to the bed. She never took her eyes off that baby, not for a second, and watching her, J.J. got an achy feeling in his throat. Surprised the heck out of him, too. But the truth was, he’d never seen anything quite like the look on Rachel’s face when the nurse put that baby in her arms. As embarrassing as it was to find himself all choked up over something so sappy, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from it. No way around it-it really was beautiful, and come to think of it, right then he thought she was probably the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

It was while he was standing there watching Rachel Delacorte cuddle and coo over her son, and thinking how beautiful she was, that it hit him.

What he was looking at was nothing less than his own redemption.

It must have been there in the back of his mind all along, he thought, and was maybe the reason he’d raced like a crazy man trying to get to her in time to save her life. What he had here was in all probability an eyewitness to the unsolved murder of two federal agents. If he could get her to tell what she knew…if he could convince her to testify-and keep her alive long enough to testify-he could close this case. And if he could close this case…if he could close one of the biggest open murder cases in the country in years…well, that ought to be enough to get him his old job back, shouldn’t it? Yeah…and he could finally get out of this godforsaken hellhole and back to being a homicide detective where he belonged.

But it wasn’t the time to start talking to her about testifying in open court against a murdering mobster. First, he was going to have to get her to trust him. Which, he realized, might not be all that easy.

Assured now that her baby was safe and sleeping in her arms, she lifted her eyes once more to him. And it didn’t make him happy to see that they were filled with questions, suspicion…fear. He told himself it was no different from what he was used to dealing with, and the only reason he minded was because it meant his job-getting her to roll over on her mobster in-laws-would be that much tougher. He tried to ignore flashbacks to the way she’d been with him a few hours earlier, when he’d held that baby in his own two hands, all squirmy and slippery and alive, heard him take that first breath, make that first sound, then placed him on his mother’s belly and guided her hands to touch him, cradle him. Tried to ignore the regret he felt now, remembering it all. The way she’d trusted him then. Trusted him in a way nobody had ever trusted him before. The truth was, he’d liked the feeling, and losing it-well, he hadn’t expected to mind it this much.

“How did you know?” Her voice was low and tense, and her eyes weren’t giving him any quarter. “About Carlos. How could you know?”

“I’m a detective-it’s what I do,” he said dryly, and instantly regretted it. Stonewalling was automatic for him, but she didn’t need that; she needed the truth.

He took a step closer and felt worse than he’d thought possible when she shrank back into her pillows, away from him. He stopped and held up his hand. “Look, it’s not what you think. I saw the envelope, okay? The one you were hiding under your clothes. When you, uh, when I helped you take off your clothes in the car. Remember?” He hoped reminding her of the fact that he’d helped her might buy him points, ease her mind. But she didn’t say anything, just watched him, tense and still, the way he imagined she might keep her eyes on a rattlesnake she’d come upon unexpectedly, coiled up in her path.

He moved another step closer. At least this time she didn’t flinch, which he considered progress.

“Anyway, I saw your name on the envelope. After I left you here at the hospital, I had my office run your name.” She closed her eyes in what looked like defeat, and he added with a sympathetic smile, “Hey, like I told you, I’m a detective-well, used to be, anyway, and I am still a cop.” He paused, then added gently, “It’s my job, Rachel. Really. Among other things, I wanted to see if there was anybody we needed to notify.”

Her eyes flew open and she gave a sharp gasp. “You didn’t-”

“No. No, I didn’t. And whatever you might be thinking, I’m not the reason those goons found you. Your father-in-law probably had his people monitoring police band radio all over the Southwest. I imagine they had you made when the first call came in about a nun wandering in the desert. That’s not exactly something you hear every day, you know.”

She hesitated, then nodded, and he saw a tear slip between her lashes and run down her cheek. “He’d know about the nun’s disguise. And Carlos has people everywhere,” she whispered hopelessly. “It really wouldn’t surprise me if you turned out to be one of them.”

“Well, I’m not,” J.J. growled. “That I can promise you. Look, think about it. If I’d wanted to harm you and take your baby, I could have left you out there in the desert to die.”

She stared at him for a long moment, then shook her head and whispered, “I was so stupid. Stupid to think I could escape from Carlos Delacorte.” She brushed at her cheek as she gazed down at the sleeping baby. “No matter where I go, or what I do, he’ll find me. I’m never going to be free of him…or safe.”

“Now that,” said J.J., settling himself on the bed beside her, “is where you’re wrong.”

Rachel had to catch her breath, then, a tiny hiccup that was half laugh, half sob. All that was missing, she thought, was for him to call her “little lady.” Classic Duke Wayne.

“What?” His smile was wry, almost uncertain, and she found that unexpectedly endearing.

“What?” she shot back to him.

“You looked like you were about to smile.”

She looked down at her baby, hoping to hide the tears that flooded unexpectedly into her eyes. Hoping to hide the smile that came with them. “You just reminded me of something, that’s all,” she whispered. “Someone.”

“Your husband?” His voice sounded stiff, diffident.

“No,” she said, letting the smile come. “John Wayne.”

He gave a snort of surprised laughter. “I remind you of John Wayne?”

She looked up at him. “Yeah, you do. Not the way you look-more like…the way you talk. Sometimes.” And she couldn’t stop a little gasp of surprise as his fingers brushed her cheek.

“John Wayne makes you cry?” His voice was gentle now, the way she remembered it had been…before.

She pulled away from his touch, shaking her head, self-conscious, wishing she hadn’t mentioned it. “No, it’s just…you know, emotions, I guess.” She tried to wave it away with a gesture. “Hormones, maybe?”

“Understandable.”

He waited, silent and watchful, and after a moment she gave a self-conscious laugh and heard herself say, “When I was a little girl…” She thought, I can’t believe I’m telling him this. Five minutes ago I thought he was one of Carlos’s men, come to kill me. But the words didn’t stop.

“I was very young when my grandmother brought me to this country. It was a huge change, and I didn’t even know the language. I was lost and scared. She used to sit with me and hold me and we wouldn’t talk, just watch old Western movies together. I think John Wayne was our favorite.” She paused, expecting questions, but he only watched her and waited in that intent way he had, and after a moment she went on, but with more confidence now, maybe because he was such a good listener.

“I’m, um…half Vietnamese. My mother left Vietnam with her family after Saigon fell-they were among the ‘boat people’-you probably heard of them. They were some of the lucky ones, because a U.S. Navy ship picked them up and took them to the Philippines. That’s where my mother met my father. His name was Sean Malone, and he was stationed there. He was in…I guess you call them ‘special ops’ now, but anyway, he was killed there, somewhere in Southeast Asia-Cambodia, I think-when I was just a baby. Then my mother died when I was about two, and her family didn’t want a half-breed child, so they put me in an orphanage. And…that’s where I was when my grandmother found me. It took her two years, but she was finally able to bring me to America to live with her. She lived in Hollywood. Her name was Elizabeth.” Her throat had closed up, the way it always did when she spoke of her grandmother, even after all this time, and she could only whisper her name.

“Was?” J.J. prompted softly, in a way that made her try to go on.

She kept her eyes fixed on her slumbering baby’s face, and drew a steadying breath. “She died three years ago. It was right before I met Nicky. In fact…”

He finished the thought for her. “Maybe you were looking for someone to fill a gap?”

She let another breath go in a soft hiss. “Yes. Maybe. I’ve wondered…lately. I know I was very angry at the time. Because it was cancer that killed my grandmother, and maybe I felt medical science had failed her and I didn’t want to be a part of it.” She looked up at him and said with soft vehemence, “Cancer makes me angry. It’s just so…wrong. You know?”

He nodded, and his smile was both sympathetic and wry. “I know what you mean. But cancer doesn’t make me angry. Cancer is what it is, it doesn’t make a conscious decision to ruin someone’s life.” He paused, then added in a hardened voice, “What does it for me is predators.”

“Predators?”

“Yeah, the two-legged kind.”

“Like…” Like Carlos, she thought. But not Nicky. At least he wasn’t like that.

“People who prey on the weak and innocent.” The glint in his eyes reminded her of The Duke again. It also made a strange shiver run through her body. She wondered if he noticed it, because he immediately lightened his voice and his face softened with a smile. “I mentioned I used to be a homicide detective. Guess that’s why.”

“Used to be?” she asked with maybe too much eagerness, glad to have the conversation turned away from her own past. “What happened, did you burn out?”

“No-” He stopped, thinking about it, then made a dismissive gesture. “Hell, I don’t know, I suppose that could have had something to do with it. Maybe. Anyway, it’s too long a story to get into now. Right now, what we need to do is get you to a safe place.”

Safe. She felt a lurching sensation in her stomach, and a clammy chill flooded her skin. She’d actually forgotten, for those few moments, talking with Sheriff Jethro Fox who reminded her somehow of John Wayne. Forgotten that Carlos’s men had come to kill her, and very nearly succeeded. It came back to her now, that awful sensation of fighting for breath and finding none…of hearing her baby’s bassinet crash to the floor…of knowing she was going to die, and there was nothing she could do to save herself, or her son. Horror seized her. She felt as if she was falling, falling, tumbling from a great height.

“Please,” she gasped, and felt someone-J.J.-lifting her baby from her arms. She relinquished him-no, thrust him from her-in desperate panic.

Then she was struggling to get out of bed, under a powerful compulsion to run, to flee, and strong arms were holding her again, holding her tightly while she shivered and shivered. And this time there was such a sense of familiarity about being in that place, in those arms, that she stopped shivering almost immediately. And the thought shown warm in her mind like a welcome-home lamp: Here I am safe.

“This is getting to be a habit,” J.J. said gruffly to the air above Rachel’s head. The odd thing was, he didn’t mind, and even felt a sense of regret when she moved away from him, wiping her eyes. He suspected she’d keep moving farther away, the more she healed and got back to her normal self. Which was the way it should be.

“Feel better now?”

She nodded, but couldn’t seem to look straight at him. Her eyes darted here and there, like those of a cornered animal. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what-it all just sort of hit me again.”

“That’s pretty normal,” he said easily, reassuring her. “Flashbacks. You’ll probably get them a few more times. It’s a pretty big shock to the system to have somebody try to kill you.”

She gave a watery laugh. “I guess you’d know. You must run into this kind of thing a lot in your line of work.”

“Not so much, considering most of the victims I run into-sorry, ran into-didn’t survive to have flashbacks. You’d be one of the lucky ones.”

He could see her looking thoughtful. Then she nodded and released breath in a sigh. “You said, ‘someplace safe.’ I don’t even know where that is.”

“Do you mind my asking-where were you going when you ran away from Carlos? You must have had some place in mind when you set out across a few hundred miles of California desert.”

She gave her head an emphatic shake. “No-I was just running-” she tried to look him in the eye but couldn’t hold it more than a second or two “-to get as far away as I could, as fast as I could.”

Okay, so she was maybe the world’s worst liar. And still doesn’t trust me all the way.

It wasn’t the time to call her on it, so he let it go-for now. “Well,” he said, lapsing into the accent of his North Carolina roots, “we’ll figure that all out in a bit. Right now, I’m getting you out of this place. You can’t stay here, since Carlos knows where you are, and if he wants to kill you bad enough he’ll find a way to do it.”

“Then where-”

“For now,” J.J. drawled, “soon as they’ll let me, I’m taking you home. With me.”

The next evening, driving through the desert with Rachel asleep in the seat beside him, her baby in the back in the car seat the hospital had made him go and buy before they’d let him take him, he kept running over it in his mind, asking himself if he was really doing the right thing-the best thing. For her. For him, sure, no question. But for Rachel and her baby, it wasn’t so clear. Was he just being a single-minded, selfish jackass?

Well, probably. But in spite of that he kept coming back to the conclusion that taking Rachel into his protective custody was the only way he could keep her safe. Keep an eye on her. Yeah, his place wasn’t much, but the only people on the planet who knew the exact location of his trailer were Katie and Deputy Daryl. Katie, he’d trust with his life. Daryl, though…

Well, hell. He scowled at the ribbon of blacktop stretching ahead of him while he went back and forth about Daryl in his mind, wondering just how far he could really trust his own deputy. Wondering if Rachel’s paranoia about her father-in-law’s reach into law enforcement might be contagious.

Beside him, Rachel came awake with a guilty start, the way people do when they’ve fallen asleep in a moving vehicle. She looked over at him, then twisted around to check on her baby before she faced front again, pushing her hair away from her face with both hands. “Is it much farther?”

“A ways,” he said, feeling guilty, now. The hospital hadn’t been happy about releasing her and her baby so soon, and it was probably only the fact that she’d almost been killed while in their facility that had made them give in to his request. More concern for the hospital’s liability than their patient, J.J. thought, but then, he was inclined to be cynical. “Are you-do you need to stop?”

She shook her head and gave him a wry smile. “No-just wondering. A little sore, you know?”

“To be honest, no, I don’t know,” he said, glancing at her. “So you’re gonna have to tell me if you need anything, okay?”

“No kids?”

“Nope.”

“Married?”

“Nope.”

“Ever been?”

He glanced over at her again. “No, and I should probably warn you, my place isn’t much at its best, and when I left yesterday morning to check out a report of a woman-a nun-walking around all by herself in the desert, it was kind of in a hurry. I haven’t been home since, so…be prepared, okay?” He glared at the road ahead. “Anyway, it’s just temporary, until I figure out what I’m gonna do with you. At least it’s safe. Should be, anyway, since only a couple people even know how to find it, and the ones that do I’m pretty sure I can trust.”

She nodded but didn’t say anything, and after a moment he looked over at her again. “If you don’t mind my askin’, how’d you get mixed up with the Delacorte family in the first place?”

She shook her head and he wasn’t sure she’d answer him. But then she leaned her head back against the seat and said, “It was at college-UCLA.” She cleared her throat and her voice grew firmer. “I was finishing medical school-my last term. Nicky was in my psych class.”

He made a snorting sound; it seemed an unlikely major for a mobster’s son.

She glanced at him, then hitched in a breath and plowed on. “Anyway…by the time I graduated, my grandmother had died and we were, uh, together. I started my internship, but-”

“Did you give up on your medical career because you wanted to, or because he wanted you to?”

She was silent for a moment, which he considered an answer, probably the true one no matter what she told him.

He expected her to be defensive, so she surprised him when she drew a breath and said thoughtfully, “I don’t know, now. At the time it seemed…I felt like my relationship with Nicky was so consuming, it didn’t seem to leave any time or energy for anything else. So, when he suggested-”

“Suggested?”

The breath came out in a gust. “He didn’t understand why I felt I needed to work, when he was so…wealthy. And as I said, my grandmother had died and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be a doctor anymore. So, when he brought it up, it seemed like the right thing to do. At the time. So…I dropped out.”

Gave in, is what he thought. Caved. Knuckled under. He thought he was beginning to get a pretty clear picture of Spoiled Nicky the Mobster’s Son.

“Everything happened so fast. The next thing I knew, I was married, and then I was pregnant…then Nicky got shot.” Her voice had thickened, and when J.J. looked over at her, he caught a glimpse of tears glistening on her cheek. “He didn’t have anything to do with his father’s business. He’d promised me…”

“And you believed him? Nicholas Delacorte was the only son of the head of an organized crime syndicate roughly the size of New Jersey,” J.J. said roughly, angry all of a sudden without really knowing why. “You’re kidding yourself if you think he somehow managed to keep his hands squeaky clean. Didn’t you ever see The Godfather? If he wasn’t involved yet, trust me, it was only a matter of time.”

There was a little silence, and then she opened her eyes and said without looking at him, “Have you ever been in love, Jethro?”

“Many times,” he said dryly, and she surprised him with a watery-sounding laugh. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her brush the tears from her cheeks and sit up straighter.

“Doesn’t seem like there would be that many opportunities, out here in the desert.”

It was his turn to laugh without much humor in it. “No, there aren’t. Just another reason why I love it here so much.”

He could feel her studying him. After a moment she asked, “If you don’t like it, why are you here?”

“Long story.”

“Well-” she held up both hands, gesturing at the barren landscape and the road stretching ahead of them as far as they could see “-looks like we’ve both got time.” He could feel her eyes on him again-those exotic, black-almond eyes. “Unless,” she added with a hint of a sly smile, “it’s something you’re terribly ashamed of.”

“Oh, yeah,” he growled, “it’s definitely that.”

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, and looked away, as if it embarrassed her to have stumbled upon his closet full of skeletons. Like a curious-or nosy-little girl, belatedly remembering her manners.

What the hell, he thought. He wanted her to trust him, didn’t he? Maybe if he came clean with her it might inspire her to do the same.

So he blew out a breath and scrubbed at his beard stubble, and finally said, “I told you how I feel about predators.” She nodded. “Okay, well, because of me, there’s one out there somewhere who should have been locked up. Put in a cage where he couldn’t hurt another innocent child.”

Even through the growth of beard she could see the muscles bunch in his jaw, and knew he must be clenching his teeth-hard. After a moment she said in a low voice, “Okay, I don’t understand.”

“It’s not that complicated. The guy was the worst kind of predator, the kind that preys on children-in particular, little girls.” His voice was tight…harsh. Rachel could feel her heart tap-tapping in her loose, quivery belly, and pressed her fist against it while she waited for him to go on. “I had him for the kidnapping and murder of a six-year-old girl. Had him in custody. And I let my personal feelings override my professional judgment. As a result-” He let out an explosive breath. “As a result, he was released on a technicality. Promptly lit out for parts unknown. Now he’s gone. Vanished. In the wind.”

“What did you do?” Her voice was barely audible. “I can’t imagine-”

“Oh, I got…physical. Rough with him. You know-slammed him up against a wall, I think.” He glanced at her briefly, but long enough for her to see the anger, guilt and anguish in his eyes. “He taunted me with what he’d done to that little girl-details. And I lost it. But that’s no excuse. Maybe the miserable freak was hoping I’d kill him-put him down like a mad dog, you know? But I shouldn’t have lost control. No excuses. Because of what I did that animal is out there somewhere, and sooner or later he’s going to do what he does, because that’s what they always do, and some other little girl is going to suffer and die and her entire family’s lives are going to be destroyed. And that’s on me. Innocent people will suffer for what I did.”

“But,” Rachel said softly, “you are suffering, too. Aren’t you?”

He gave a huff of painful laughter as he looked at the expanse of darkening desert all around them. “Every day,” he growled. “Every day.”

“I don’t just mean because you’re out here in the desert, now, and you hate it-I’m assuming you being here has something to do with what happened?”

“Yeah, something.”

“But that’s not the worst part, is it?” He didn’t look at her, or reply. “I think you must think about it…live with it, every day. And at night you probably-”

“Jeez, what are you now, my shrink?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, because she could see by the stiffness in his neck and shoulders that she’d gone too far.

But I know you have nightmares, Jethro Fox. I know, because I have them, too. About Nicky, and what happened that night. I keep playing it over and over in my head, trying to make it come out differently. And I know you do, too.