“Have you found her? Have you found Andrea at the DECC?”
Stride shook his head. “No, Serena and I have both been looking, but we haven’t located her yet. It’s a madhouse in here.”
“You have to stop her. Don’t let her go public.”
“We’re trying, but why? What have you found? Did you talk to Halka?”
Maggie’s words tumbled out. “It wasn’t him, boss. Halka didn’t do it. It was Ned Baer. Ned was a roadie at the big ZZ Top concert in Duluth that night. He was there. He went to the party with Halka, the one where Andrea was assaulted. You know what that means. It was him. It had to be him.”
Stride closed his eyes and silently swore.
“How sure are you about this, Mags?”
“As sure as I can be after thirty years. Do you believe in coincidences? Because I don’t. Baer kept it a secret. He didn’t want anyone to know he was in Duluth that night, because he did it.”
Stride could see Ned Baer’s face in his head again. He could see him at the Deeps, that nasty smile on his face, proud of what he’d done. That man had violated Andrea as a girl and then violated her all over again years later by coming to town to expose her secret.
It made Stride wish he’d been the one to pull the trigger.
“Andrea won’t believe it,” he went on.
“Maybe not, but if she goes up there and confronts Devin, and then this all comes out, it will destroy her,” Maggie went on. “You can’t let her do it.”
Stride stared across the stage, and his heart fell.
“Too late,” he said. “She’s here.”
Andrea held her breath at the top of the steps on the west side of the ballroom stage. It took a while for anyone to realize she was there. For that fleeting moment, she was still anonymous. She froze where she was, gathering her strength, debating whether to turn and walk away while she still had time to stay out of the spotlight.
She could go back home if she changed her mind right now. She could live her life. It was sad, it was shadowed, but it was still a life. She could make peace with who she was and what she’d done. Forgive every sin. She almost turned around and preserved all of that, but she waited too long, and circumstances made the decision for her. One second of hesitation passed, and there was no going back.
Peter Stanhope noticed her first. His gaze passed across her without really seeing her, but then, as if by instinct, it went back and stopped. He stared at her with a kind of curious horror. She could tell. He knew, watching her face. She could see him whisper to the person next to him, could see his lips form the words.
It’s her.
Someone with a camera noticed her next. A journalist. He took a picture. The pop of the flash, as bright as the lightning storm, made her squint and cover her eyes, and suddenly, others began to look her way. Murmurings began, a growing undercurrent, a rumor that became a living thing in the ballroom. People pointed at her. Every gaze shot toward her. More cameras flashed, and video cameras swung toward the end of the stage. The staff saw her, the crowd saw her, the seas began to part to let her through. A long stretch of empty stage opened up in front of her, a clear path for her to walk toward Devin Card.
He was the last one to realize she was there.
For a long moment, he was oblivious, trying to understand the changed dynamic in the ballroom. Everything was different, and he obviously didn’t know why. Then, finally, Devin saw her, too. They stared at each other. He studied her like a scientist discovering an unusual new species. It was all too obvious that he knew she was the one, and it was equally obvious that he had no idea who she was. No idea at all. She was a total stranger to him. That, more than anything else, made her furious. This man had been the central figure in her entire life, had dominated her thoughts every day, and he didn’t even recognize her. He had used her and thrown her away and forgotten her. His life had gone on, a life in which she didn’t matter at all. Meanwhile, she hadn’t been able to get his face out of her mind. He’d always been there, tormenting her, reminding her of what she’d lost, of what she’d given up.
Andrea started across the stage. She didn’t hurry. Someone, from somewhere, came up and handed her a microphone. She held it in her hand and thought: I have a voice now. It made her feel strong, made her walk with a confident step. All the years had led her to this moment. Devin watched her come, and she could see uncertainty cross his face, confusion fill his eyes. He was racking his brain, hunting to find her there, trying to pull her out of some dusty drawer in the back of his head.
Do you know me?
There were thousands of people in the room, but now it was just the two of them.
She stopped when she was six feet away. Devin didn’t say a word. He was waiting for her to begin. The whole ballroom waited for her, wanting to see what would happen next.
“My name is Andrea Forseth,” she said into the microphone.
Just like that, a thousand journalists keyed her name into search engines. She would never be anonymous again. The first line in her obituary had just been written.
“Hello, Ms. Forseth,” Devin Card replied. “Thank you for coming forward. I know this must be hard for you.”
Her mouth was dry. She had trouble forming words.
“I know you won’t admit what you did to me,” Andrea said, hearing her voice in the room like the voice of a stranger. “I know you can’t. But that’s not even why I’m here. That’s not what I want. After all this time, it doesn’t even matter to me to hear you say it. I know what happened to me. I know how my life changed that night. You can deny it, or say I made a mistake, or say I never told you to stop even though I did, but I don’t care. Like I said, that’s not what I want from you.”
Devin waited a long time before he said anything. He wasn’t going to interrupt her.
“What do you want from me, Ms. Forseth?” he asked.
She stared into the face that had haunted her dreams for decades. It was an older face now, but still with the same wavy blond hair, still with the same movie star blue eyes, the same masculine confidence that life would give him whatever he wanted. He was the football quarterback and always would be.
Andrea inhaled and put down the microphone, so that he was the only one who could hear her. “I want you to say that you remember me.”
36
Brayden stared, transfixed, at the blond woman on the stage in front of Devin Card. In the midst of looking for Cat, he simply stopped what he was doing and couldn’t take his eyes off her. She came out of nowhere, emerging from the crowd of people crushed around the west-side steps. She had a kind of simple grace, not like a victim and not like a hero. And yet her presence electrified the room, as if royalty had joined them. She was right there above Brayden, barely twenty feet away from him, staring straight ahead at the man she’d accused. He felt others pushing to get closer to the stage, wanting to see her face.
The whispers began.
That’s her. She’s the one. Who is she?
Then she answered the question for them.
“My name is Andrea Forseth.”
Brayden heard her speak, and she had a surprisingly powerful voice. He thought about the courage it took for her to be here. To stand up for herself in this place. All day long, he’d heard reports in the media that the anonymous victim would finally come forward, and he hadn’t believed it would really happen. There was no way she would put herself through this circus. But here she was. Looking at her now and seeing the wolves gather, he could only wish she’d stayed away. She would never have peace again. They would rip apart her life, pry open every secret.