Where Angels Tread (26 page)

Buddy nodded, and Heidi swung her head from one face to the other. “I hope you’re not here to try and convince me to get back together with Shane,” she said hotly, “because I can assure you that if that were an option for me I would have done it already. I miss him, but what’s done is done.”

Jaime shook her head. “We’re not trying to butt into your relationship in any way. I’m sure you made the decision you had to make in order to protect yourself and your son. Shane doesn’t blame you for not wanting to be with him anymore; if anything, he’s taking full responsibility.”

She swallowed hard and fingered the thin gold necklace she was wearing. “That’s the problem. Shane has sort of…gone off the deep end. He’s determined to catch Sam Shephard on his own, even though he knows how incredibly dangerous this man is. We think”—she looked at Buddy for support, and he grabbed her hand and squeezed it—“we think that he’s somehow trying to make up for what happened to your husband by catching this guy. A way for him to forgive himself by being the hero this time around. And I’m afraid…” Jaime’s voice wobbled and a lone tear slipped down her cheek.

“We’re afraid he’s going to get killed,” Buddy said into the silence.

Heidi’s jaw dropped. “But Shane’s so sensible. Would he really do something to put himself in danger? He doesn’t have a death wish. Does he?” she added in a small voice. She knew how hard she was taking their breakup, and could only imagine how much worse it was for Shane, especially if he blamed himself.

“I don’t know,” Jaime said, now crying softly into her hands. “All I know is that no one can get through to him. Please. I know that you aren’t together anymore, and it’s not your problem. But Shane loves you and he always spoke so highly of you. If there’s any way for you to call him, maybe try and talk some sense into this crazy plan of his, maybe he’ll stop what he’s doing.”

Noticing that she had been pacing the room while listening to Jaime speak, Heidi sat down heavily on her armchair. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was open up the lines of communication with Shane; she knew perfectly well that hearing his voice again would erase any progress she had made in the past month as she tried her best to get over him. A task at which she was already failing dismally. On the other hand, she loved Shane and probably always would; there was no way she could sit back and look the other way when his life was potentially in danger. What if something were to happen to him? Heidi knew that she would blame herself forever if she did nothing to stop him.

Jaime and Buddy were both staring at Heidi, visibly tense, and waiting for a response. “Okay,” she said finally. “I’ll give him a call tonight.”

*

Heidi held the phone with trembling hands, trying to navigate her shaky fingers over the keypad; even though she hadn’t dialed Shane’s number in a long time, she still knew it by heart. She let out a deep breath and hit the call button, crossing her fingers that Shane would pick up. Even though she’d rather not have to speak with him at all, the prospect of sitting in her house alone, waiting for Shane to call her back, was not one that she was willing to face. No, she decided, it would be better to just get it over with once and for all. She would do what Jaime and Buddy asked of her, and then she could go on with her life, trying once more to pretend that Shane Kensington didn’t exist.

The phone rang once, twice, three times. By the end of the fourth ring, the voicemail picked up; the sound of Shane’s soft baritone threw Heidi for a loop. “Shane?” she said, cringing at how meek her voice sounded. “It’s…me. Heidi. Please call me back.”

She purposely left her message vague, as she had discussed with Jaime and Buddy, so that Shane wouldn’t ignore her like he did the rest of his family and friends. Heidi didn’t think much of that plan; the last thing she wanted Shane to assume, especially in his fragile state, was that she wanted to get back together. But they needed a way to get through to him, and as Jaime pointedly said, Heidi was the best chance they had.

Setting the phone down on the table, Heidi wandered into the kitchen with the vague idea of cooking something for dinner. Zachary was studying at a friend’s house—a promising sign, Heidi thought—so she was alone once more for the evening. A chill lingered in the air, and Heidi shivered and wrapped her sweater more tightly around her body. It was the perfect night, she decided, for a piping hot bowl of homemade chicken soup. She opened the fridge and removed a few stalks of celery, carrots, and an onion. She had just reached into the cabinet for the cutting board when her phone rang shrilly. Throwing the cutting board onto the countertop, Heidi dashed into the living room to answer it.

“Shane?”

“No…Heidi, this is Lisa Norman, Alex’s mother?” Heidi frowned, trying to place the name. “Alex is on the basketball team with Zachary.”

“Oh!” Heidi said, slapping her forehead with her hand. “I’m sorry, my brain’s a little bit fried right now. Of course, how are you, Lisa?”

“I’m fine, but I just wanted to call and let you know that as we were driving home today from my parents’ house we saw Zachary wandering on the side of Highway 101. We stopped and offered him a ride, but he declined. I asked if you knew he was out there and he said you did, but something didn’t sit well with me so I thought I’d give you a call just to be completely sure.”

Heidi froze; as a single mother, the last thing she wanted this woman to think was that she could barely handle her own child. But, Heidi realized, thinking fast, she now had a pretty good idea of where Zachary had been spending his time when he disappeared for hours on end. When she spoke next, she tried to keep her voice light. “I take it he was near the farmer’s market, right? My sister works there, and he likes to visit her sometimes to help out. She’ll drive him home once it gets dark.”

“Oh, okay then,” Lisa said, sounding relieved. “Good. I’m sorry for bothering you.”

“You weren’t. Thanks for looking out for him.” Heidi hung up the phone, then ran to the closet to retrieve her purse and keys. As she passed the front window, she glanced at the sky outside. Storm clouds were passing over, and Heidi could sense a hint of rain in the air. She needed to get to Zachary before the sky burst open; that stretch of road, as she was intimately familiar with, could be particularly treacherous when the rain kicked up the dust from the nearby fields.

Ten minutes later she was drumming her fingers on the steering wheel nervously, peering out of the windshield to search for any sign of her son’s lone figure walking down the side of the road. She had just passed the police station and was quickly approaching the farmer’s market. Heidi could feel her entire body tensing up; she had done her best to avoid this part of town since the accident, and the memories that were now being conjured up were almost more than she could stand. She pushed them to the back of her brain, reminding herself that she needed her wits about her so that she could find her son.

Heidi gripped the wheel harder as her car neared the accident site, which was marked by a tall weeping willow tree just beyond the guardrail. Heidi could see from the mismatched color of one section of the guardrail that it had been replaced since their car had careened into it at full speed, twisting the metal until it distorted.

Steering her car over to the side of the road, she threw the gears in park and hopped out. “Zachary!” she called. “Zachary!”

“Mom?” A familiar voice responded from the side of the road.

Heidi peeked over the guardrail; there, sitting under the weeping willow with his knees wrapped around his chest, was Zachary. He looked so small, she thought as she swung her leg over the guardrail and made her way over to him. When she reached his side, she knelt down beside him and pulled him into a hug. “What are you doing here?” she whispered into his soft hair. “I was worried about you. And I don’t just mean tonight.”

He tightened his arms around her neck, burying his head in her chest. She stroked his hair gently, and they sat together, listening to the rustle of the wind through the leaves above them. “Have you come here before?” she asked.

He nodded. “All the time.”

“How did you remember? We haven’t been here since that night.”

Zachary pulled away from her arms and leaned back against the tree. Heidi joined him, and together they stared out over the guardrail to the road beyond. The sounds and images from the accident were playing through her mind, but this time, they were like a badly tuned radio. Time, Heidi knew, was beginning to work its magic.

“I remember the tree,” he said quietly, “because I was looking at it right before we got hit. I liked the way the branches reached down toward the ground.”

“But why?” Heidi asked, reaching for his hand. “Why do you come back? I would think that you’d never want to see this place again. I know I don’t.” Zachary picked at a small hole on the knee of his jeans, digging his fingernails into the loose thread to unravel it further. Heidi reached her hand out to stop him. “Talk to me,” she said. “It’s important that you tell me what you’re feeling.”

Zachary balled his hands into fists, and without warning, punched the ground. “Because I’m starting to forget,” he burst out. Alarmed at the sudden noise, a black bird that had been flittering among the branches took flight. “I can’t remember his face, or the sound of his voice.” His face bunched up angrily, and Heidi could see the color rising in his cheeks.

She pulled him back onto her lap. “Sometimes I can’t either,” she said. “And it scares me, too.” She rested her chin on her son’s head and stared out at the road, where an old station wagon was passing by slowly. The elderly man driving it spotted them and waved merrily.

“When I come here,” Zachary said, “I can still feel him. Sometimes I talk to him. Is that weird?” He twisted his head around to face her.

“No, it’s not. I talk to your father all the time. It’s just your way of keeping him close to you. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I pretend that he’s my angel,” Zachary whispered, turning his face to the sky.

Heidi choked back the lump forming in her throat and leaned down to kiss her son on the cheek. “He’s very proud of you. I hope you know that.”

Zachary nodded, then squinted up at Heidi. “There’s something else.”

“What, baby?”

“I know about the accident.”

Heidi froze, her hand hovering over her son’s hair. “What do you mean?”

He sighed. “I heard you and Shane talking. I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to listen. But your voices were loud and I could hear you from outside.”

Heidi buried her head in her hands. “You weren’t supposed to hear that, honey. I didn’t want you to know what happened with Shane. Don’t be mad at him, though. I’m not. It was just an accident.”

Zachary frowned at her. “I know that. Why would I be mad? I always thought…”

“Thought what?”

“I always thought that maybe Dad sent Shane to watch over us since he couldn’t do it himself.”

Shane slid the phone out of his pocket and frowned when he saw that he had missed a call from Heidi. He keyed in his voicemail password and drew the phone to his ear, his stomach lurching sadly when he heard her voice for the first time in weeks. As he listened to the message, though, his sadness quickly turned to anger. It sounded just like the frantic calls he had been receiving from his family all week, he thought furiously. Now, it seemed as though they had bribed Heidi into joining the choir of people telling him that he should stay home, like a good little boy.

Well, he wasn’t going to stand for it. Not now, when Shane knew that he was so close to the finish line. Despite Palen’s orders to stay away from the homeless camp, Shane was there again tonight, sitting quietly in his car, shielded by the blackness of the cloudy sky. Palen may have thought that the homeless men and women who lived in the hills would be foaming at the mouth for a chance at the reward money for turning Shephard in to the police, but Shane didn’t believe that was true for one second. The police and the homeless community in Santa Ynez had always experienced a relationship that was fraught with tension; Palen was instrumental in making sure that they stayed out of the town limits, causing them to flee to the hillside to avoid being arrested for loitering.

Shane was convinced that they would do whatever they could to protect a man whose mission it was to rid the town of every police officer he could, reward money or not. And it was up to him, the lone believer, to make sure that Shephard never hurt another one of his fellow officers again.

He had been the subject of ridicule at the office, once word got around that Shane was taking matters into his own hands. “Think you’re a real tough guy, huh?” Buddy’s old partner Frank had asked as a crowd of officers cheered him on. “Going to catch Shephard single-handedly?” When Shane had turned to Buddy, standing beside Frank and squirming uncomfortably, for support, his friend had merely shrugged and walked away. Shane knew then that he was truly on his own.

And that was just fine with him, he thought angrily as he peered through his binoculars to the hill looming above him. Shane was used to being alone.

But the lack of support he had experienced from the other officers had caused a sense of recklessness to grow inside of him, snaking and snarling through his veins like a many-headed monster.

He patted the duffel bag on the seat beside him. Tucked away inside of it was the costume he had painstakingly planned out. With the entire Santa Ynez police force out searching for Shephard, Shane knew that the only chance of capturing him was by going undercover, becoming someone who Shephard thought that he could trust. Then, once Shane gained the man’s confidence, he would be able to record a confession and place him under arrest. It would finally be over.

As he watched the first rays of the rising sun peeking through the clouds, Shane’s pulse quickened with a mixture of nerves and excitement. His plan would begin at daybreak.