Out of Time (Nine Minutes #2) (45 page)

She couldn’t exactly say what she was feeling. Anger, relief, remorse, grief. She was so conflicted. It was just too much. Delia’s letter, and now this.

Don’t lose it, Gin. Don’t lose it now. You’ve come too far.

She looked at the bandana clutched so tightly in her fist that her knuckles were turning white. She wouldn’t make a decision today. She would do what she came here to do: Clean out the garage and her past with it. She wiped the last of her tears with the already-soaked bandana and, lifting her right hip off the pavement, she tucked it away in her back pocket. Maybe Grizz was right.

After all, she had no way of knowing if she might need the bandana one day. She had no way of knowing if she might need
him
one day. Him. Jason William Talbot.

Chapter Seventy-Five

2001, Six Months Later

Somewhere in Louisiana

He didn’t know
how long he’d been riding. He barely remembered the roads, the little towns he passed through, the crummy diners, the dilapidated old motels. He shook his head. The motels.

Memories pierced and taunted his heart. Big brown eyes, an innocent stare, tears, laughter, passion, love. The passion. There had been a lot of passion. The love. There had been even more love.

He shook his head as he tried to reason with himself. He tried to remember why he’d done the things he had. Nothing, not even fifteen years in prison or the near-death experience he’d had on the lethal injection table, had prepared him for the emptiness, the hollowness of a soul that didn’t love. Or worse yet, a soul that didn’t think it could love again, found it with Kit, only to lose it.

Lose it by his own stupidity.

Twenty-five years ago, he’d seen a spark of light. He lived in the radiance of that light for ten years. He hadn’t realized how bright that light truly was until he had to live without it while he was stuck in that prison. And then he’d actually died on that table and saw what darkness was like. Real darkness.

Kit had tried to share her faith with him for so many years. To introduce him to a God he was certain didn’t exist. He had been wrong. He now knew Kit’s God existed, because he was pulled from what he was certain was the pit of hell. If hell was real, and he now knew it was, then heaven had to be real, too.

But he was certain it wasn’t there for the likes of him.

He remembered at his execution motioning to Kit to show him her ring tattoo. He couldn’t see his name, but he knew it was still there, and that was all he needed to see. He knew they, he, had permanently removed her from his life, but they couldn’t remove him from her heart. She could’ve had that tattoo removed years ago, especially when he’d told her she had to move on with her life and leave him behind. She had finally fallen in love with Grunt, had a child with him.

But she didn’t have Grizz’s name removed. As small a consolation as that was, it was all he had gotten and more than he deserved.

He’d fucked up big time in more ways than he cared to admit. Regret, an emotion he rarely admitted to, pierced his conscience, and as hard as he tried to bury it, it was there all the same. He’d had no way of knowing all those years ago he would fall in love with her. He didn’t care about people back then and he certainly didn’t love. Especially after Ruthie.

But all of that changed after he’d had her brought to the motel.

And what the hell was he even doing in Louisiana? He knew he was looking for some connection to the woman who’d been torn from her home as an infant and forced to live under an assumed name by her foolish mother. He hadn’t seen Delia’s note from Kit’s Bible since the day Guido had showed it to him all those years ago. But he thought he remembered the city on Kit’s real birth certificate. The certificate Delia had tracked down. So, he mused, Kit had been seventeen when he took her, not fifteen. He should have felt some relief at knowing she was slightly older back then, but honestly, he didn’t care. Her age was never a factor in his decision to take her.

He couldn’t remember the name of the hospital but found one he thought could’ve been where she was born. He sat on his bike and stared at it. Idiot. He didn’t even know if he was remembering the city right, so the chance he was sitting in front of the hospital where she was born was slim to none. What had he been hoping to find here, anyway? Nothing, really. He knew there was nothing to find. It was just his last feeble attempt at grabbing onto something that was part of her.

Two days later, he was still wandering the back roads, slowly taking him away from what he thought might be his last connection to her. Clinging to the speck of hope that she might one day need him. For someone who’d thought he was so smart, he was actually a stupid motherfucker.

He slowed down and squinted to see if the little diner he was approaching was open. Nope. Another locally owned business that had sunk under the weight of trying to make a living in a small town. A small town in this country. He scoffed to himself as he thought about what was really going on with this country. With this world, actually. Restaurants were tough. It wasn’t like they could sell off their inventory. When the customers didn’t come, the food eventually rotted. As did dark souls who thought they could be rehabilitated.

He’d felt tricked by fate.

His mind drifted back to a good memory. He didn’t like to remember good things because it made it all the more painful when the memory was over and he was brought back to the bleak reality that had become his life. Riding worn and pitted roads, staying off of
their
radar, just in case. Staying off the world’s radar and mourning the life he’d carelessly let be taken from him.

He smiled at this memory. He might even let himself laugh at how adorable she’d been. He’d been patiently waiting to introduce her to oral sex. He’d been driven mad by the smell of her, and not going down on her had been pure torture. His smile widened when he remembered her scooting down the bed. How she’d thought she was being subtle while dodging his attempts. He had known all along she’d been avoiding it and had let her have her space.

His hands gripped the bike tighter when he remembered she’d told him she needed to save something of herself for her future husband. He’d been stunned when he realized she hadn’t seen him in her future. That she was going to save something of herself for the man she would marry “one day.” Fuck that, he’d thought then. There was never a question in his mind. Never an instant where he had to think about marrying her. She’d fallen asleep in his arms that night and he reflected on what had been so special about her. What had drawn him to her like a moth to a flame.

It had started out as nothing more than repaying a kindness to an obviously neglected child. When she’d walked out of that convenience store and handed him a box of bandages, he’d been overcome with an unfamiliar feeling. What was it then? Was he grateful that he’d seen a spark of kindness, even if it was from a child? Maybe that was it, but he couldn’t remember for sure, and he really didn’t see himself as anything more than a silent partner in her care and protection. It was all Mavis. Yes, he was responsible for putting Mavis there, but he really didn’t do anything other than shell out some money for necessities.

He had to admit that when he’d found out about her quest to bring down a prominent businessman and local political figure, that Marcus fucker, he’d started to admire her. And that was rare. As a rule, Grizz admired no one but himself. He’d prided himself on being a self-made and successful businessman. He shook his head. No, he wasn’t a businessman. He was a thug who’d used the excuse of his childhood to inflict terror and wreak havoc wherever he went.

It hadn’t started out that way. He really believed early on he’d been ridding the world of filth. He didn’t remember when he’d invisibly crossed over that threshold himself. When he’d started becoming the filth. Eventually, he allowed himself to think he was entitled to whatever he wanted. He’d told himself he’d not only outsmarted the government, but he had the real power players by the balls. He’d gotten cocky and slack, and it’d cost him Kit.

Maybe he’d fooled himself. Maybe she was never really his to begin with.

The first wrong move he’d made was abducting her because he saw Matthew Rockman kiss her. He wasn’t in love with her then. How could he be? He didn’t know her. Besides, he didn’t love back then. But witnessing that kiss had unnerved him in a way he hadn’t expected and couldn’t explain. He hadn’t entertained thoughts of kissing her himself, but he couldn’t ignore the twist in his gut when he saw Rockman do it. Rockman. That fuck.

He remembered the first glimmer of light in his soul the night she was brought to the motel. The night she’d first seen him and looked up at him from the lawn chair with those wide, innocent brown eyes. Even though he’d seen her from afar over the years, he wasn’t prepared for the jolt he received when their eyes met. The fear she’d tried to replace with false bravado. The smell of her. Oh, fuck, the smell of her when she passed by him as Moe led her to number four. He’d never been close enough to inhale her essence before. It permeated his very being that night and never left. It was there now, in his mind, torturing him.

Another smile as he remembered her defiance when he told her she would never use her real name again. That ridiculously, beautiful name that had been branded on his soul. Guinevere Love Lemon. Of course, he hadn’t even known then that that wasn’t her real name. Delia had been clever at covering her tracks. It didn’t matter, anyway. She would always be his Kitten.

He thought more than once what it would’ve come to when she was recognized so many years ago in the vet’s office. What if she admitted to her high school acquaintance that, yes, she was Ginny Lemon? He’d told her then that he would’ve grabbed her and run, and he would have.

Would it have turned out any different if that had happened?

His second mistake was marrying her. Not because he didn’t want to marry her. He wanted to marry her with a desperation that riled him to his core. To make sure that there would be no other man in her future.

But he’d fucked that up, too. The mistake was in letting
them
see he cared. He’d made himself vulnerable.

He’d only ever loved two people. The first was Ruthie. The second was Kit. He loved Kit, and his actions showed it, and they knew it and used it against him. And that’s where he went wrong. He should’ve given it up then. Given them what they wanted in exchange for a new life with her away from South Florida.

A few things stopped him from doing that. One, his ego. He was Grizz. He could have it all. He had been wrong. Two, he’d become complacent; let himself forget they were still out there. He told himself that the “powers that be” had died off or gone away. Even after they had told him to get rid of Candy he hadn’t heard from them again for years.

And, third, there were no guarantees that instead of relocating them with new identities, they wouldn’t just have had them eliminated. There was still no guarantee, but he’d stayed around long enough to be pretty sure they’d kept their word. He knew they’d listened closely in those last few weeks to everything happening in Grunt and Kit’s home. They were certain the couple who had been so tightlipped for years about Grizz would finally slip up and talk about what they knew. There was nothing to know.

He’d been with them that day, listening to snippets of the last conversations between Grunt and Kit. Grunt was smart to throw the journal in the garbage. He knew they’d be listening and would need to make certain nothing important was in it. Grunt knew they would retrieve it from the trash, and of course they had.

He was also glad Grunt never revealed the truth behind Moe’s suicide. According to the two agents, Moe had felt guilty for inadvertently helping someone named Wendy set up Kit’s rape and attempted murder. This was old news to Grizz. He never did find Wendy. It was probably Willow tricking Moe from a phone. Isn’t that what Willow had told him? That Wendy had called and had a Southern accent? It had to be Willow all along. He remembered the agent’s smug attitude as they sat there listening to the tapes.

“So, looks like your son is still lying to her. Never told her someone named Wendy was behind her attack,” the younger of the two agents said. He had a baby face and a head full of wavy, black hair. “What a fucked up mess you left, Talbot, or whatever the fuck your real name is.”

It took all the strength that Grizz possessed not to beat the shit out of the man right then and there. He’d been sitting in an isolated office behind a small pool supply store somewhere in Tallahassee. It was the agreed meeting spot. He gave them the documents, pictures, and money plates, and they were to give him his life and Grunt and Kit their freedom from the NNG’s inexcusable invasion of their privacy.

There were no guarantees that the electronic versions of what Grizz was turning over wouldn’t go viral, but they didn’t care about that anymore. Hadn’t cared about it for a while. Anybody can pretty much do anything they want on the World Wide Web. Isn’t that what they called it? It was the hard documents they wanted. Grizz surmised that with the advances in forensic technology, even though so many years had passed, there was a way to pull DNA and fingerprints from those documents, pictures, and metal plates. Of course, Grizz’s would be on them as well, but it wasn’t Grizz’s that concerned them. Somebody powerful wanted all of it back.

He was certain the two agents took sadistic pleasure in letting him listen to some of the tapes. He tried not to wince when he listened to them making love. He tried not to breathe a sigh of relief when Kit confessed that Grizz had been a true love and a soul mate to her. He needed to hear that. To have that validation. He even felt a stab of pity for Grunt when he heard her tell him her love for Grizz had been real and she wouldn’t deny it.

His hands gripped the bike’s handlebars tighter as he remembered hearing of Jan’s confirmation, that his suspicions were correct about Matthew Rockman. Rockman hadn’t been working for or with the NNG. He had taken Grizz on all by himself without knowing he was helping
them
out. They could’ve helped Grizz find Jan a lot sooner than Blue did. But they didn’t.

Grizz could admit he’d been an egotistical ass, priding himself on being two steps ahead of everyone and everything. He didn’t find it exhausting. He found it invigorating. And yet he’d fucked up royally. Then they’d fucked with him over the years while he was in prison. He knew only
they
could pull off a fake execution with lethal injection. Yet they made sure the bills in place to legalize lethal injection in the Florida prison system continued to get vetoed, furthering his stay on death row.