While You Were Dead (3 page)

“You always do that, don’t you? Take care of everybody.”

He glanced back into the room to see she’d obediently switched beds and was looking at him strangely. “It’s my job, babe.” He winked at her. “Somebody’s gotta.”

Lizzie didn’t smile. Max put down his shaving kit and crossed to her bed, giving her braid a playful tug. “It’s going to be okay, sweetheart. With your mom.”

Lizzie shook her head. “Can I ask you a question?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Tell me about when you were a spy.”

Max kept his features rigidly impassive as he sat. “A spy?”

“Mom told me.” She nodded, but the twinkle usually evident in her eyes when she teased him wasn’t there. “While you were dead—when I was little. She said everyone thought you were dead, but you were really just working for the government. And if you disappear and you’re working for the government then you have to be a spy.”

Or a sniper. The thought was fully formed before he could stop it. He was far more tired than he’d imagined. He kept his gaze trained carefully on his niece’s pert nose. “I wasn’t a spy, Lizard. It was just business.”

“Secret business.”

“Secret business,” he agreed. “I’m gonna take a shower. You get ready for bed, and we’ll see about a little television before you go to sleep.” With any luck at all, she’d be out before he finished. That thought almost made him laugh. Not likely. But he needed time to think. To push all this emotional turmoil back inside, because Lizzie’s innocent question had sprung the lock on the box where he kept it all latched up tight. Miriam’s upcoming battle had him on the edge for sure.

His emotions were back under rigid control twenty minutes later. Lizzie had done as he asked for once, and was under the covers in her designated bed. But she wasn’t asleep and her gaze pierced him as soon as he stepped out of the bathroom.

“Was part of your business taking care of someone?”

For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what was behind the sudden interest in his past, but he could easily see the intensity and the fear there in her eyes, so he stifled his sigh and pulled a chair close to her bed. So much easier to make up bedtime stories when she was four. Honesty, he reminded himself. But he couldn’t speak of that awful time, and not just because of the oath he’d taken. There were some things a child should never have to know.

“I’ll tell you what I can, Lizzie, but it won’t be everything.”

“You promised you wouldn’t tell?” He nodded. She did, too. “I knew it! You were a spy!”

“I was not a spy. Turn out the light.” No way he wanted her looking at him if she got too close with her questions. She’d inherited her mother’s ability to see right through him. When the room was dark, he heard her roll back close to him just before her hand crept into his.

“Tell me about Mom, then,” she whispered. “Before you were a spy. She took care of you?”

“Always. Your grandma and grandpa died when I was young—”

“Cause they had you late, right? Just like Mom and Dad had me late.”

“Exactly like you, Lizard. That’s why you and I get along so well. Your grandpa worked for the government and he wasn’t a spy.”

“If you have to have the operation to give a kidney to Mom, who’ll take care of me?”

Listen long enough and the heart of the problem will out, Max thought wryly. Lizard was paying attention when he’d filled out donor forms. Miriam was to start dialysis immediately while the doctors stemmed an infection in her toe. “We’ll figure something out. Something you’ll like.”

“What did you do before you were a spy?”

He should be used to her lightning speed changes in subject matter. “I was not a spy, Lizard.”

“Then before you worked for the government.” He could hear the grin in her voice.

“I’ve always worked for the government. Ever since college.”

“Mom said you lost your heart . Was she pretty? What was her name?”

In the darkness, Max closed his eyes. “As pretty a girl as you’ll ever see,” he whispered. The old bittersweet pain swept through him, still strong enough to tighten his throat. “Her name was Katherine. But everyone called her Kat. And she had these dark, blue-green eyes, like velvet.”

“Is that why they called her Kat? Was she a spy, too?”

“Lizard! I was not a spy.”

“All right, already. Was she a spy?”

“Kat was not a spy.”

Sure would have made it easier.

“Why did you break up with her?”

Max winced in the darkness. He never lied, but he wouldn’t–couldn’t–be honest about Kat. Couldn’t admit how he’d failed to protect her from the pain of his world.

Lizzie’s voice was drowsy as she continued. “Tell me about the day you met her,” she asked dreamily. “Then we can make up a happy ending together–like when I was little.” When he didn’t answer, she continued. “Please, Max,” she whispered. “I gotta concentrate on something. Otherwise, I see Mom.”

Max’s fingers tightened automatically around hers. “Okay, sweetheart.”

“How did you meet her?”

Max closed his eyes, seeing the day like it was yesterday, or this morning. Certainly not twelve aching years. No, the day he met Kat was forever etched with startling clarity in his mind.

Kat Jannsen couldn’t stop thinking about the day she met Max. With nothing but a three-hour drive ahead of her, it wasn’t surprising. She gripped the wheel tightly and accelerated into traffic, headed north from Denver on Interstate 25. Thoughts of Max kept her mind off Lizzie and Miriam, the reason for her trip. For ten years, Miriam sent a picture and a note every month outlining her daughter’s deeds and misdeeds. Until this month. Even worse, she couldn’t get an answer at Miriam’s house.

Yes, thoughts of Max were better than the alternative. Exactly ten hours before her flight to the East Coast to visit her mother. Which made all of this her mother’s fault. If Ellen wasn’t certifiably insane, Kat wouldn’t be here now, breaking every rule she lived by. Daring Fate. If not for her mother, she’d never have met Maxwell Crayton. Never enrolled at the university in Chapel Hill. Never been so distraught that momentous day.

“Miriam, where the hell are you?” Kat wailed, grabbing up her cell phone. But at Miriam’s house in Bluff River Falls, the phone just trilled until the answering machine cut it off. An entire week now, and Kat didn’t have a choice. Something was wrong. Time to find out what.

Thoughts of Miriam led, of course, back to Max. Kat tried futilely to focus, but with nothing to do but drive, it was hopeless. And it was easy, just so easy to remember. The years slipped away as effortlessly as the miles beneath her tires.

Twenty-one year old Kat had pleaded with her irate mother through the Plexiglas. Ellen Jannsen, still a beautiful woman at forty-seven, didn’t look much like a murderer. Except when she was angry. She was definitely angry now.

“No! Answer my question! What are you doing to get me out of here?”

“All that I can, Mom. But you’ve got to work with the psychiatrists. If you won’t even see—”

“Head shrinkers? You want me to talk to the creeps that think I’m nuts? Oh, excuse me, not creeps, your idols. You’re going to be one someday, just like your father. Only I’m not crazy, Katherine. Eleven years I’ve been here. Get me out!”

Kat had heard it all before. “I’m trying, Mama. But if you won’t talk to them, I don’t—”

“You can find an investigator to prove I didn’t do it,” her mother spat back. Then Ellen stood, placing her hand flat over the plastic in front of her daughter’s face, effectively blocking her out of her life as she voiced her exit line. “Don’t come back until you do.”

Kat had one more glimpse of her mother’s flashing green eyes before she turned her back. Giving in to the urge that had grown since she’d first angered her mother, she let her shoulders slump forward. How could she help if her mother wouldn’t cooperate? She blinked to stop the prickling that was a precursor to tears. Her visits always ended in tears. Her tears. In the beginning, years ago, her mother cried too. She didn’t any more. Kat doubted she even could. Suddenly conscious of the guard’s questioning stare, she pulled herself to her feet, glad the tears hadn’t escaped. Or was that the first sign? No more tears. . .no more regret. Cold decisions, snap judgments. Kat shuddered, snuggling into her warm coat. Was this how insanity began?

Still pondering her mother’s refusal to help herself, she made the drive back to the university. In the large tiered classroom, she slid into her seat and dutifully rummaged for her notebook. The irony of her life slapped her squarely in the face several times a day. A psych major with a mother serving a life sentence for murdering her father. She had three months to go until graduation. Then seven more years for medical school. By then she’d have the answers she needed, the nightmares would end, her mother would have help, and the fear that enunciated every breath she took would ease. Wouldn’t it? Surely a forensic psychiatrist could solve her own self.

A ripple ran through the tiered classroom suddenly, like a collective sigh. Kat fixed her attention forward and her breath caught in her throat. A sound like a wildcat’s mating call sailed to the front from behind her. Her heart lurched in agreement. Professor Evans was on leave. His replacement would guarantee that not one female student would miss a single Behavioral Psychology class for the next month.

The professor’s replacement had blue eyes. Deep, rich, tell-me-all-your-secrets blue eyes that sparkled with amusement as he surveyed the class. He was tall, definitely over six feet, with a face that looked...well, comfortable. Young, his sandy blond hair touched the back collar of his sports jacket—a jacket that stretched enticingly over broad shoulders when he turned to the chalkboard and wrote two words.

Maxwell Crayton.

“Our assignment?” A female voice behind her issued the hopeful, blatant invitation. Maxwell Crayton turned with a smile and Kat’s stomach flipped.

“My name,” he replied simply. There was nothing simple about the thrills that ran over Kat at the sound of his voice. It was chocolate. Warm, liquid chocolate running over her skin, through her pores to her very heart. “I believe you’re in the middle of a discussion on genetics.” His voice rumbled inside her again, drawing her gaze to his mouth. Little laugh lines radiated out from his firm, sensual lips. Lips like those. . .. Kat licked her own and yanked her attention back to his words.

“The debate rages to this day. Genes or environment? Pre-disposition or learned behavior?”

Kat sucked in a sharp breath, feeling as though he’d punched her. This topic she’d covered. Lived actually. It was a debate indeed. And the reason she’d never have children, never dare to be a mother. She wouldn’t listen to his lecture–already knew he had no answers for her.

Hope had died the day she’d discovered that truth.

She’d failed her mother, failed herself. There was no longer any reason to go on with her plans. Doomed, she’d nearly dropped out of school, but she wasn’t a quitter. And she didn’t know what else to do with herself. For an entire week, she wandered the campus, terrified to leave, too distraught to go to class. Would she inevitably become her mother?

Finally, Mrs. Perrelli, the librarian she worked for and the closest thing she had to a friend, intervened.

“See a counselor, dear. That’s what they’re there for.”

Not a therapist. Therapists, she knew. Therapists didn’t have any answers. But a Counselor. Yes, she liked the sound of that.

UNC Staff Counselor Edward Greeves had given her words to live by. “You’re too focused on yourself. Start thinking about others. Ask yourself what you can do to help. When you find the answer to that, you’ll stop being the problem and be part of the solution.”

So abrupt. So trite. And so very much exactly what she needed to hear. So she wouldn’t have children. So there were no guarantees she wouldn’t fulfill all of Aunt Nell’s prophecies and become her mother. Instead, she could help others struggling with the same sorts of questions. She was a good listener. She was logical. So what if there weren’t answers for her? There were answers for others, and she could help to discover them. Kat Jannsen could change the world.

And, starting in three months, she would. For now, she struggled to cope all over again with the bittersweet knowledge that someone like Mr. Perfect Maxwell Crayton could never be hers. She blocked out the words that spelled despair and vanquished all hope. She smiled. Maybe she couldn’t have him, but she could dream, couldn’t she? Dreams were cheap. Dreams cost nothing.

“Did you have a question?”

Kat focused slowly on the eyes she’d been staring at, daydreaming about. . .now just inches from her own. Max Crayton knelt before her on the chair in the tier below. Heat erupted over her. Embarrassment had her mouth flopping open and then closed. Her daydream. “No, I—” Startled, she looked around for help. . .to an empty classroom. Dear Lord, she and Maxwell Crayton actually daydreamed the whole class away. She clamped her eyes shut, desperately wishing him away.

“Something else on your mind?”