Truth and Humility (44 page)

Mary jumped when a distant engine roared to life.  She flattened a hand to her chest, the familiar guttural growl of her son’s high-performance muscle car evoking a powerful emotion within her heart.  Her other hand flew to her mouth and she ran to the window over the kitchen sink, pulled back the lace curtain.  Just in time to catch the full-length rear taillights that were a distinctive feature of the 1970 Challenger her boy had lovingly restored since he’d been old enough to drive.  She followed them until they disappeared out of sight.  “Oh, dear God,” she whispered and turned her face toward the stairs.

Would her only daughter ever sleep through the night again?

Austin put the glass tumbler to his lips and took a liberal sip of the small-batch bourbon inside it.  He glanced at the wall clock in his office, noted the time.  One o’clock in the morning.  Papers were spread out on the desk before him, photos and documents that had been faxed to him earlier that night.  Mug shots, re Musband lease papers, a detailed schedule of activity.  Someone had paid a hefty sum to bail Brett Lockton out of jail.  That information had remained elusive, but the private detective he’d hired the day before worked fast.

Why hadn’t the authorities notified Danny of Brett’s release?  She’d been his victim for Christ’s sake.  If she’d known the man was free, she could have at least taken out a restraining order…not that a piece of paper would stop an abusive prick like Brett.  If he was capable of murder…

A powerful sense of unease washed through him, moved in tandem with the tranquil effects of booze.  The bottle of bourbon sat before him and Austin stared at it hard.  He shouldn’t be drinking.  Not with the medication he’d been prescribed.  But he shouldn’t be driving, either, and he’d done plenty of that, too.

Something about that label had him thinking.  About what, he wasn’t sure.  It was the same label he’d turned to for the last year whenever he’d needed a push to encourage that ever-elusive sleep.

But this time it looked different.  It was the same shape, same reflective silver, embossed with the same brand name in the same letters of rich gold and brown.  What was it?

The reflection.

Austin leaned forward, looked beyond the label and saw something that spoke to him.  Somehow, the clutter on his desk was arranged in a strategic way that reflected with the letters in a mosaic composition of a raging river.  He leaned back then forward again.  Back, forward.  The river flowed like a moving picture.

Was he drunk?  Stoned from the combination of alcohol, antibiotics and pain pills?  And if he were, would this pestering voice inside him telling him to follow his instincts be howling so loudly?

He put his palms to his eyeballs and rubbed.  With a growl, he rose from the chair and grabbed his keys.

The door vibrated from incessant pounding.  Mac reached over, switched on the light.  “Jeez!  I’m coming!” he barked, and threw off the covers.  Fuck.  What time was it?  He reached out, opened the door without bothering to verify who was on the other side.  “Boss?” he observed sleepily, scratching the hair on his barreled chest.

Austin glared under a lowered brow.  “Get dressed.”

“Huh?”  Mac looked down at his boxers and bare feet.  “Why?”

“Because you’re driving.”

She didn’t remember the drive.¬h=""Ariabsp; Her mind had been so far off, that before she knew it she was braking.  The front tires ceased movement just inches from the curb stop.  After setting the brake, Danny reached over, cut the headlights, then the engine.  In the ensuing silence, she returned her hands to the ten-and-two position on the steering wheel.  From the police reports, she knew this same car had been parked in this very spot the night of Rena’s drowning.  Where she had left it.  The incident had taken place in the evening of Fall, not early morning of Summer.  But the sky was just as dark.

The windows were down, letting the cool breeze in and she stared straight ahead through the row of trees silhouetted before her.  Beyond those trees was the river.  Not so high.  Not so raging.  But the river just the same.

It was a pure act of desperation.  A last ditch effort to reach in and pull out the elusive memories that plagued her sleep.  She closed her eyes, inhaled the familiar scent of the Challenger’s interior, and her hands tightened on the wheel.

Remember.

He was with her.  She could feel him.  Whether it was real or not, she chose to acknowledge his spiritual presence.  “Help me, Derek,” she whispered softly.  “Help me remember.”

The passenger door opened.
  Her eyes flew open and she searched the car but no one had entered. 
The dome light never came on
…but it had been burned out almost nine months ago.

“It was burned out that night,” she repeated aloud.  Knowing now the sound of the car door had been in her head, she could still hear the ghostly reverb of the pulled handle.

It was working.  Being here, re-enacting the event she’d pieced together from bits of outside information…

“The passenger door opened.”  Danny closed her eyes again, squeezed them tight. 
The passenger door opened
.  S
omeone slid into the seat beside her.
 
Derek?
 
No, it wasn’t Derek.  It was a woman, a stranger.

She opened her mouth to protest the invasion.  The woman’s arm snaked toward her as she gnashed her teeth.  A small arc of blinding blue.

Pain.

Danny drew back violently as if the current had just moved through her in a very real way.  She shrank into the corner by the door, as far away as she could from the woman in her vision.  There was no one there.  She was still alone, a solitary individual in the riverfront parking lot.

But ew width="4the vision was still fresh.

The hood of the woman’s jacket was pulled up and over her hair, concealing the length.  The dome light had not come on.  But her striking features were clearly visible against such a porcelain white complexion.  Slanted sexy eyes, full red lips, dark wedged bangs…

“Huge boobs,” Danny finished out loud, seeing the woman as Austin had described her.

“Holy shit,” she breathed, her body still tingling from the shock.  “That was Rena!”  And the woman had come at
her
completely unprovoked.  “I hadn’t even gotten out of the car yet.”

But why?  Why would Rena want to harm her?  “Unless that isn’t where our encounter begins,” Danny thought out loud, using her voice to coax the unfolding details along.  “No,” she concluded, repositioning her hands on the wheel.  “I had just pulled up.  The space beside me was empty until she pulled in.”

The maroon sport-utility came to a stop.  The engine fell silent.  In rapid succession, the driver’s door opened, closed.  Then the Challenger’s door opened, closed.

Definitely premeditated.

Danny was so preoccupied with her new revelation that she failed to notice the white truck enter the parking lot.

“What the hell,” Austin exclaimed, bracing against the dash.  “That’s Derek’s car!”

Mac, overcome by a sudden case of heebie-jeebies, rolled his eyeballs toward the man beside him.  “Now, that’s creepy,” he stated baldly.  How had his boss known to come here?  Until now, the trip to the river had seemed like a spontaneous excuse to keep him from a good night’s sleep.

“Cut the lights and pull in beside it.”

Mac did as he was ordered and maneuvered the truck to a stop, cut the engine.

“It’s Danny,” Austin voiced next to the glass.

The two men exited the truck.  Austin knelt at the open window beside her and curled his hand over the sill.  She was in a trance of some kind, white-knuckling the steering wheel.

“Aw, hell,” Mac said beside him, the man bent over, taking in her wide spooked eyes.  “I’ve seen that look before.”

The familiar voice penetrated her thoughts in a gentle way.  Danny blinked and relaxed her fingers in order to let the blood flow through them.  “I’m fine,” she said breathily, struggling to convince herself more than the two men who had appeared out of nowhere beside her.

Austin narrowed his gaze.  “That’s what you said before you started throwing your shoes at me.”

That particular voice woke her up completely.  “Austin?”  Danny blinked again, turned and focused on the two faces beside her.  “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t like her strange behavior.  Not one bit.  “More importantly, what are
you
doing here?  In this car?  At this time of night? 
Alone?
”

Danny peeled her fingers from the steering wheel and balled them in her lap.  “I couldn’t sleep.”

The admission, spoken so piteously, revealed so much more.  Her intense grief was overshadowing her judgment.  “Look…” Austin began, situating himself more comfortably on his knees, “I know you’re hurting, babe, but you can’t be out here like this.  Didn’t you get any of my messages?  My ‘don’t let your guard down’ lecture?”

Babe.  He’d called her babe.  “I have to if I want answers.”

“Answers…” Austin thought about it, looked around and took in the line of trees before her, the river.  The car.  The walking bridge where the witness had seen two figures struggling by the rushing water.  Suddenly, his heart grew heavy.  The weight she’d been carrying was written in every hollow of her haunted face.  He leaned in closer.  “Danny…you don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Not for me.  I don’t need to know.  Not anymore.”  Her eyes scoured his, but failed to find the animosity that had clouded them since the night in the tree house.  He reached over and traced a thumb over the ridge of her cheekbone.  “You’re a lot of things, Bennett.  And that includes a fighter, thank God.  I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.  But you aren’t the kind that would knock a woman into the river.”

No, she wasn’t.  Her memories confirmed she hadn’t attacked Rena.  It had been the other way around, but he’d loved the woman so much.  And now that Danny understood the level of pain he’d been forced to endure because of her death, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him.  “How do you know?” she asked instead, the question a test of sorts.

Her face slightly turned into his touch despite the conflicting emotions that swam in her eyes.  Austin silently vowed to end her conflict before the night was through.  “Blind faith, I guess.”

Pass.
  His answer brought a sad smile to her lips.  “Wow, Cahill.  You’re making progress.”

But something in her remained guarded, told him it wasn’t enough to change the status of their relationship.  Too little…too late.

Mac reached the same conclusion, but brought up the possibility of another obstacle.  “Hey, Monkey.  You aren’t seein’ that young noob you work with, are ya?”

Austin swiveled his head to glare pointedly at the man for asking.  Danny’s brows came together.  “You mean Shaw?”

Mac ignored his boss’s glower and pressed the issue.  “Yeah!”

“He’s not a noob, he happens to be very skilled.  And what does he have to do with anything, anyway?”

“Well.”  Mac folded his arms impudently.  “It would be a damned crime if you were seeing him.  He’s not right for you.”

“Oh, jeez,” Austin rolled his eyes, desperate to end the man’s ramblings.

“For your information,” Danny brought up riotously, “I don’t date members of my crew.  It’s unethical.”

“Didn’t stop you and Boss from hooking up.”

“Okay, you get back in the truck!” Austin boomed, shooting up from the ground.  “She’s got enough on her mind without you harassing her about her love life.”

Mac backed away with his hands in the air, the look on his face anything but humble.  “Just saying.”

As soon as the man was confined, Austin turned back to Danny, prepared to pick up where he’d left off.  But the truck lights came on and he glared at the stars while the windows slowly came down behind him.