A half laugh, half sob scraped her throat at her mental phrasing.
There’s still time,
she reminded herself.
She pulled her purse into her lap and took out her makeup kit. Just as she had every Saturday for the last
year and a half, Megan worked a little last-minute magic. Concealer to disguise the dark circles under her eyes from sleepless nights. Highlighter along the top of her cheekbones to make the hollows underneath look less pronounced. Blush to coax to life what was left of the peach in her peaches-and-cream complexion. Last, tinted gloss so Sean wouldn’t see that her lips were as drained of color as the rest of her.
The results were far from perfect, but maybe it would keep Sean from noticing the toll insomnia and stress had taken on his little sister’s face.
Yeah right.
Sean had the kind of eagle eye that had qualified him for sniper training in the Army Rangers. He wasn’t going to miss the red eyes and road map of fatigue lines, no matter how much powder and sparkle she applied.
Megan got out of the car and felt her shoulders start to slump and her mouth turn down. She stopped herself short and paused for her weekly mental asskicking.
Get your act together, Megan! Sean needs you to be strong. Sean needs to see you’re okay. Now put on a fucking happy face like you do every Saturday.
But it wasn’t just any Saturday, and the thought made the soles of Megan’s black Converse All Stars move at a snail’s pace toward the visitor check-in center. She was already tired. It was a four-hour drive from Seattle to the Walls. When Sean was first convicted and sent to the penitentiary in Walla Walla, Megan had considered moving to be closer to him. But Sean had told her to drop the subject or he would refuse all future visits.
No way am I going to let you move out here to the ass end of nowhere just so you can see me for two hours a week.
Megan had been secretly relieved. She hated it out here. If she were objective about it, she’d probably find the rolling hills, increasingly populated by vineyards, and acres of lush farmland beautiful. But to Megan the wide-open space and sparse population represented exile. The weekly drives took their toll on her long-suffering Honda, but they helped her cope. She used the drive here to prepare for her visit, to think up topics of conversation, stories about the kids and families she was working with. Brace herself for Sean’s grim silence, his monosyllabic answers, the forced smile that didn’t do anything to erase the despair in his green eyes.
When she left, she guiltily relished her ability to leave the prison behind and drive west, literally into the sunset. She would roll down the windows and let the wind scrub off the sickening smell of Lysol and despair that seemed to cling to her, welcoming the transition from bright sun to Seattle’s cool, cloudy sky. A rush of shamed relief would bring her back to her own world, her own life.
She checked her watch and forced herself to step up her pace. Visiting hours for the Intensive Management Unit, or IMU for short, were set in stone, and if she didn’t make it through processing by 1:00 p.m., she was screwed. And today of all days, she knew Sean would be counting on her to provide some sort of friendly contact from the outside world.
Megan went through the check-in process automatically, showing her photo ID and walking through the metal detector. After her first visit, which seemed like centuries ago, she’d learned to lock her purse in the trunk of her car and not carry anything but her driver’s license.
She kept her eyes forward and her face impassive,
never making eye contact with anyone in the waiting room. She’d chosen her clothing as much for modesty as for warmth. The heavy turtleneck sweater and baggy jeans gave no hint of skin or curves. Still, she could feel the eyes of the other male visitors, even the male prison guards, making her skin crawl under her dowdy clothes.
Finally she was escorted to a booth to wait for Sean. The slight relief at no longer being on display gave way to the heavy sadness that never failed to surge as soon as the guard locked the door behind her.
While she waited, she tried to swallow back the lump that had taken residence in her throat the day Sean was arrested and expanded to near choking size each week when her butt hit the hard orange plastic of the waiting room chair.
But this week the lump was bigger—like a softball lodged at the base of her throat. And now tears were pricking at the backs of her eyes. She angrily swiped them away, hoping sv height rub off the concealer in the process. No way was she going to let Sean find her crying. He already thought she was too emotional to deal with his problems. Today she needed to be strong. For him. For herself.
Earlier in the week, the Supreme Court of Washington denied Sean’s second appeal. Adam Brockner, Sean’s attorney, tried to console her, telling her it was just a setback. When Sean’s death sentence had been held up in the state’s mandatory review process, that, too, had been a mere setback.
Adam Brockner was full of it.
Her brother was still stuck in this hellhole for something he didn’t do. She’d call that more than a setback.
She’d said as much to Brockner when he’d called her on Wednesday after the three judges on the panel had issued their ruling.
Nothing she could do about that. She’d written a lot of freelance pieces about criminal cases, and her volunteer work as a child advocate gave her some knowledge of the legal system, but she was no defense attorney. All she could do was what she’d been doing since the night Sean was arrested. Put on a brave face for her brother.
That, and explore every shred of evidence that might lead to Evangeline Gordon’s real killer. The appeals process could keep Sean alive for years, but finding the real murderer was Sean’s only true shot at freedom.
After a few minutes, Megan was summoned by a guard and instructed to sit in a booth in the prison’s no-contact visiting area. A few moments later, she watched through the Plexiglas divider as Sean was led in. Cuffed and shackled, he shuffled into the room, his shoulders hunched slightly because of the cuffs. Even so, her brother’s tall body radiated power and strength.
He and Megan shared their mother’s high cheekbones and dark hair and their father’s deep green eyes, but the resemblance ended there. Megan’s wide eyes, small nose, and full mouth gave her face a soft, frustratingly childlike quality—at twenty-nine, she still got carded when she bought drinks. Sean’s features were stronger, sculpted. The rigors of prison had honed his sharp cheekbones and squared-off chin until his features looked chiseled from granite.
And his eyes, thickly lashed but deep-set under strong brows, gave him a tough, almost menacing look that Megan knew others found intimidating. Now, with his
skin pulled tight over muscles and bones, he didn’t look like anyone you wanted to mess with.
But he was not a monster. He was not a murderer. She would never believe that her brother—who at fifteen years old had held her thirteen-year-old hand at their parents’ funeral and promised her he would always take care of her—could be capable of raping and killing a woman.
Still, she could see why the guard moved away quickly once he unlocked Sean’s cuffs and slammed the cell door behind him. Not that Sean had caused any trouble during his incarceration.
Sean settled his long form in a molded plastic chair and reached for the handset as she did the same. As Megan put it to her ear, she braced herself to meet her brother’s eyes.
She never got used to it, the way his eyes, which used to glint with humor and crinkle at the corners with his easy smile, were now flat, dark pools staring out of his skull. No light. No joy. Only the desperation of a man trying to make it through one more day. It hit her like a sucker punch to the gut every time.
She pulled her mouth into a smile. “Hey, Sean.”
“Hey, Bugs,” he replied.
Megan’s smile morphed from pasted on to the genuine article at her brother’s use of the old nickname he’d given her when she was seven, before a mouthful of braces had taken care of her striking resemblance to a certain animated rabbit. She’d hated the nickname at the time, but now it gave her a little burst of hope that maybe the Sean she grew up with wasn’t lost after all.
When she met his eyes through the glass, something like relief swept through her at the expression in them. For the first time since his conviction, there was something
there that looked less like hopelessness and more like resolution. Like he had a purpose and finally knew what he was fighting for.
Her brother on a mission was a force to be reckoned with. They were going to get through this, no matter how long it took, no matter how many rocks she had to turn over to find the truth.
“You look tired.”
She scoffed in mock offense. “Thanks a pantload. I drive four hours to see you and you tell me I look like crap?” There was no venom in her tone, and she relished the opportunity to bust his chops a little. “You better tell me how gorgeous I am or I won’t come see you next weekend.”
Something flickered in his gaze. “You shouldn’t come so much. You have better things to do with your time.”
She rolled her eyes. “Why do we always have to have this conversation? I don’t have a life. If I didn’t come visit you, I’d spend my Saturdays sitting on my couch eating Ben and Jerry’s from the carton and watching movies on Lifetime. I might even get a cat,” she said with a shudder. “You’re saving me from a couch full of hairballs and an ass the size of Jupiter.”
Sean didn’t smile. He never did. “The only reason you don’t have a life is because of me.”
“That’s not true.” At least, not the way she saw it. Sure, most of her friends had gotten tired of what they saw as her delusional devotion to her brother and belief in his innocence. And she’d gone through all of her savings and racked up a mountain of debt to pay private investigators to look into Sean’s case and help her come up with alternate suspects in Evangeline Gordon’s murder. But Sean
was family, the only family she had left. “And even if it were true, it wouldn’t matter. I would do anything for you—you know that.” Sean had given up a big chunk of his own childhood to help raise her after their parents were killed in a car accident. Even if Megan didn’t love Sean more than anyone on the planet, she would have owed him for that.
His mouth softened into something approaching a smile. “Yeah, I know. But you need to live. You should be out, having fun, dating guys I’d want to beat up.”
“I’m only up here on Saturdays. Who says I don’t go out?”
He cocked a dark eyebrow at her, his knowing expression so familiar it made her chest hurt.
She shrugged. “Dating is overrated. Besides, I’m busy. I just got an article accepted in
Seattle
magazine and have a new corporate copywriting client. And I just started working with this new girl—oh my God, her family is such a mess.” Sean let her ramble on about fourteen-year-old Devany and her alcoholic, absentee dad and meth-addicted mother. Last month, Megan became her court-appointed advocate, and after a few rocky interactions, they were starting to hit it off. “Before she moved in with her aunt, she went between her mom and foster care ten times in six years. She’s run away twice and lived on the streets. Her mom gets out of court-ordered rehab in a couple weeks, and Devany’s afraid she’s going to have to move again. I’m doing what I can to make sure she has some stability for a while.”
Megan had started as a court-appointed advocate shortly before Sean got out of the army, and she had loved it so much she’d considered going back to school to get a
master’s in social work. Sean’s arrest, the trial, the lawyers, sucked up any energy—not to mention funds—she might have had for graduate school. So she’d kept up her freelance writing to keep the creditors from blowing down her doors and thrown herself into her volunteer work.
“She’s lucky to have you on her side. All the kids you help are.”
Megan felt tears prick at the backs of her eyes. “Thanks. Not everyone has a big brother protector like you, but I do my best.” It gave her some comfort to be able to give victimized kids a voice, to have some impact on their situation when she couldn’t help Sean.
Sean was silent, staring at her with a funny expression on his face. Oddly affectionate, like he was trying to memorize her face. Totally different from the grim, stony visage she’d encountered on nearly every visit for the past three years.
“What is up with you?” she finally asked. “You’re acting all weird.”
“What do you mean?”
“You seem, like, not happy, but, uh, content? After what happened…” She licked her lips, paused. Might as well acknowledge the giant elephant in the room. “The ruling on your appeal, I mean. I expected you to be in a much worse mood.”
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t like it was unexpected,” he said with a shrug. “We need to talk about what happens next.”
“I talked to Adam and he’s already working on a collateral appeal.”
“I know,” Sean said. “I told him to withdraw it.”
Megan cocked her head to the side. “You’re going to fire Adam and appeal on the grounds of faulty counsel?”
From what Megan had read, that was one of the more common ways to get a new trial granted.
Sean shook his head, his eyes grave. The warmth in Sean’s unexpectedly pleasant mood faltered. “There aren’t going to be any more appeals,” he said. t>
Megan’s head jerked to the side, like she hadn’t heard him correctly. “What do you mean?”