She frowned. ‘That gun could have gone off in the middle of the night!’
‘No, because I kept the gun under one pillow and the clip under the other. I practiced until I could load it in seconds. But I was careful. I didn’t want Stone to get shot by mistake.’
She shook her head again, harder. ‘I was thinking about it going off and shooting you in the middle of the night.’
He hesitated, then decided to trust her with the rest of it. ‘I don’t think I would have cared, Scarlett. There were times I almost hoped it would.’
She turned fully in her seat to face him and it took only a glance to see that all the color had drained from her beautiful face. ‘What?’ she whispered.
‘I still wrestle with what I did that day. I know you think I’m absolved because of my age, but three people are dead who never got their day in court.’
‘You think they deserved their day in court?’
‘No, but my mother deserved to look her husband in the face and know that she wasn’t to blame for Matty’s death because she called in the FBI. I could never tell her.’
‘Because if you’d told her, you’d have had to tell her what you did too. Oh, Marcus.’
‘I made my bed. I’ve had to lie in it all these years. It’s hard enough now that I’m old enough to process everything that happened, but then I was just a messed-up kid. The year I was nine, I came damn close to not seeing ten.’
‘You wanted to kill yourself?’ she asked in a trembling voice. ‘When you were nine?’
He nodded gravely. ‘But I never did. Partly because of Gayle. That she knew and still loved me . . . it made a difference. And partly because Stone still needed me. I couldn’t leave him alone. But some days I wished for quiet in my mind because all I heard was killer, killer, killer.’
‘How did you survive the Army? You had to have killed the enemy.’
‘More than my share,’ he murmured. ‘The Army helped Stone conquer some of his fears. It helped me too. Because by the time I joined up, I was old enough to understand what I was doing and it helped me keep the perspective that the people who kidnapped Matty, Stone and me were the enemy. It helped me square it in my own mind. But it still haunts me. All of my kills do. That’s one of the reasons we rarely get physical with the people we target at the Ledger. I draw the line at gentle coercion. Although recently . . . especially after Mikhail, it’s been hard. I’ve found myself tempted so many times to just shoot the damn bastards and be done with it. Then they can’t hurt their families again. But I’ve stayed on my side of the line. Just barely.’
She nodded unsteadily. ‘Me too. So we’ll prop each other up. But you have to promise me if you ever consider . . . ending yourself again—’
‘I haven’t,’ he interrupted, ‘not since I was ten. That’s when Mom met Jeremy. We were a real family then. Mom was so happy. She got pregnant with Audrey and then we had a baby in the house again. Mom meeting Jeremy O’Bannion was the best thing to ever happen to us – the dad he didn’t have to be. He was only twenty-one when he met Mom. Only eleven years older than me. He could have taken the role of big brother, but he seemed to know how much I needed a father. And he’s always been that for me.’
Scarlett wiped her eyes. ‘I’m glad,’ she said simply, then pointed at the road sign. ‘This is the exit for Saint Barbara’s. Remember, don’t call me Detective.’
‘I won’t.’ He didn’t want to lie to the Bautistas, but he didn’t want to scare them away either.
She smoothed her dress and checked the visor mirror. ‘I look like I’ve been crying, but it makes me look like less of a cop, so the puffy eyes are okay.’
‘You look beautiful.’
‘Thank you. So do you. Do you need anything before we talk to Mila and Erica?’
He squeezed her hand. ‘Just be with me.’
‘Let anyone try to pry me away.’
Twenty-nine
Georgetown, Kentucky
Wednesday 5 August, 8.40 A.M.
Scarlett and Marcus met Trace in the vestibule of Saint Barbara’s. Scarlett had been nervous about seeing her uncle again, but Trace obliterated any nerves with a huge bear hug. She held on a few more seconds than she needed to, because for that moment in time he’d made her feel like a child again. Like the past ten years of her life hadn’t happened.
Like she wasn’t standing in a church of her own free will.
He set her down and tipped her face up, his smile changing to a frown. ‘You’ve been crying.’ He turned his frown on Marcus. ‘What did you do to her?’
‘He’s done nothing,’ Scarlett said firmly. ‘We’ve been talking and I’ve been emotional.’ She slid her arm around her uncle’s waist. ‘Uncle Trace, this is Marcus O’Bannion. He tried to help Tala, was with her when she died. Marcus, Father Trace.’
Marcus stuck out his hand. ‘Father,’ he said politely. ‘You’re the first member of Scarlett’s family that I’ve had the privilege to meet.’
Trace looked down at Scarlett, his brows lifted. ‘Oh, he’s good.’
She laughed. ‘I know.’
Her uncle shook Marcus’s hand. ‘They’re waiting for you in the choir room. Scarlett, I’ve told them only that you’re my niece.’ He hugged her to him again. ‘You look very non-coppish. I’ll let you decide when to tell them who you are.’
‘Are they okay?’ Marcus asked. ‘Physically?’
‘Their feet are pretty cut up. They walked for miles without shoes. I’m so thankful they were picked up by a good person. The trucker recognized that they were afraid and he didn’t ask many questions. One of the women in the church washed their feet and bandaged them, but you’ll want to have them seen by a doctor. You won’t have any trouble communicating from a language standpoint. Their English is impeccable. But they didn’t say much. I showed them the pictures of Mr Bautista and young John Paul, but other than crying and giving prayers of thanks that they were safe, they didn’t say anything more. They’re still very afraid.’
He led them into the church and Scarlett suddenly found it very hard to breathe. She hadn’t been lying to Trace. After all the talking she and Marcus had done, her emotions were like a seething cauldron in her gut. Adding to that the memories of Michelle that had been dredged up when she’d found Tala dead in the alley . . .
She swallowed back the lump in her throat and focused on putting one foot in front of the other. But then Marcus took her hand and held it securely in his. Breathing in the scent of his aftershave, she let it calm her.
‘You okay?’ he whispered.
She tightened her hold. ‘Yes.’
They followed her uncle into the choir room and both she and Marcus went abruptly still. Two petite women sat on metal folding chairs, holding hands even more tightly than Scarlett held Marcus’s. The older woman was visibly trembling, her eyes bright with tears. The younger was barely sixteen, according to the copies of the visas Immigration had provided, but she looked so much older. Her expression was remote, her dark eyes cold and her shoulders bowed.
‘She looks just like Tala,’ Marcus murmured, sounding spooked. He released Scarlett’s hand and stepped forward, going down on one knee in front of the women so that they could look him in the eye. ‘I’m Marcus,’ he said quietly. ‘And I’m so sorry for your loss.’
Mila Bautista’s body began to shake with suppressed sobs, which broke free when Marcus put his arms around them both. Tala’s mother leaned into his shoulder and cried, her heart broken.
Beside Scarlett, Trace sighed softly. ‘He’s for real?’
Scarlett had to blink away her own tears, Mila’s grief and Marcus’s compassion reaching right into her chest and squeezing her heart until it felt bloodless. She pressed the heel of her hand to her sternum to relieve the ache. ‘Yeah. He’s very real.’
‘I read online that he met Tala Bautista in an alley and tried to help her. Is he in the habit of helping strange young women in the middle of the night?’