Christmas at Twilight (14 page)

Hutch turned toward the door, heard her deep sigh of relief. If she thought he was just going to walk away and leave things as they were, the woman had another think coming.

M
eredith had been packing to leave town, her gut screaming at her to go, go, go. Yelling at her that it had been Sloane whom she'd seen in town, even though she had no proof.

But her brain had been reluctant to pull that trigger. Ben was happy here. Christmas was upon them, and poor little Kimmie would be left alone with a man who could not talk to her and was not her parent.

She'd eaten three candy bars to start putting on weight for her physical transformation and dyed her hair red. She hadn't been a redhead since three years ago in Kansas City.

She sat beside Kimmie for half an hour, then checked her temperature again. It was down to 101. Thank heavens. Feeling shaky with relief, she stepped into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face, and ran a comb through her damp, short hair. Time to grow it out again. God, they'd been here only about two months, and she was starting all over again so soon. When she'd first escaped, her only thoughts had been of survival, but as time went on, it got harder and harder to stay in place on constant red alert.

Life on the run was affecting Ben, even more so the older he got. How could it not? She wanted so much more for him than this ghost life. She wanted him to grow up feeling safe and secure. But she could not give him those things.

Tears sprang to her eyes as she stared at herself in the mirror—so many towns, so many appearance changes. She didn't even know who she was anymore. If it weren't for yoga, she wouldn't be able to hold it together.

She grabbed the empty box of hair dye to toss into the wicker trash basket beside the commode. A door hinge creaked. Her anxiety hollered,
Sloane!
She jumped, spun around, her heart rate instantly scraping the ceiling, and stuck her head out of the bathroom again.

Hutch stood in front of her, his gaze dark and intense, his neck muscles bunching tight, and rounding his shoulders. The bathroom light fell over his face but could not breach his locked-up eyes. He held the Magic Slate, framed on either side by his big hands, the red stylus dangling from its string.

Her gaze dropped from his inscrutable face to the tablet. WHO ARE YOU?

She froze, her hand curled around the Clairol Nice 'n Easy Natural Light Auburn box.

He stepped forward, boxing her in, blocking the door. She couldn't escape.

Dropping the box on the counter, she notched up her chin. “You're not supposed to be on this floor. I understand why you came up here with Kimmie, those were extenuating circumstances, but now you need to leave.”

He shook his head, erased his question from the Magic Slate to write, I MADE THAT AGREEMENT WITH JANE BROWN.

Dread flooded her body. Turned her cheeks first cold and then hot. “How . . .” She cleared her throat. “. . . did you find out?”

I'M NOT A FOOL, he wrote. BUT YOU'VE MISTAKEN ME FOR ONE.

“I haven't. It's not like that.” She shook her head, bit down on her bottom lip.

Glaring, he stalked closer.

She let out a tiny shriek, rocketed backward, ran into the wall. What now? Where to go?

Angrily, he lifted the top sheet of the Magic Slate, and in tight, angry script wrote, WHAT'S YOUR CON?

“No con.” She shook her head vigorously.

His frown deepened.

“I swear it.”

Who are you?
he mouthed silently.

She could give him one of her other aliases. Stringing him along until she could get out of here.

And go where in the middle of the night?

Anywhere. It wasn't the first time they'd had to pull up stakes without notice.

But she was so tired of running. So tired of hiding. So tired of people calling her by false names. And she owed him an explanation.
What if you tell him and he goes to the police? What then?

She needed to trust him. She had to start trusting someone, sometime. Hopefully, he'd believe her story.

And if he didn't?

He moved toward her again, his jaw granite.

She held up both palms. “Okay, okay. I'll tell you, but you've got to make me a promise.”

His eyes narrowed.

“Please,” she whispered.

There must have been something in her eyes that convinced him, because he backed up all the way to the door.

He folded his arms tightly over his chest and silently mouthed,
Talk
.

“Not here. The kids need to sleep. Let's go into the guest bedroom.”

He gave a curt nod and led the way, Meredith followed, her dread mounting with each step. Would he believe her? Or would he call the police?

He toed open the guestroom door, flicked on the lights, and waited for her to enter ahead of him. She looked down at her University of New Mexico sweatshirt stained with auburn hair dye. How dumb to have held on to this sweatshirt. Giving away her roots. But it didn't really matter now. He already knew something was off about her.

How long had it been since she'd been in a bedroom alone with a man?

The curtain was open to the window facing the street, letting in the colorful spill of winking Christmas lights. He clicked the door closed behind them.

She gulped, spun to face him.

His face was flat, emotionless.

She took a deep breath. “My real name is Meredith Sommers. It used to be Meredith Sloane. When I was married.”

He laid the Magic Slate on the dresser, folded his arms over his chest, his eyes flinty.

Just say it. Just get it out.

She opened her mouth, shut it, and then opened it again. “I lied when I told you Ben's father was dead. He's very much alive. I only wish he were dead.”

God, she thought she might throw up. Talking about Sloane, thinking about him, always nauseated her. She closed her eyes briefly, licked her lips, and peeked at Hutch.

His features never changed, stayed hard-edged, stony.

“I'm sorry I lied to you.” Her chin trembled, and she blinked hard to keep back the tears. She hated lying. Hated that it had been her life for the last five years. Lies had warped her, diminished her. But coming clean wasn't easy.

Meredith put a palm to her mouth, glanced down at her bare feet, and curled her toes into the rug as if anchoring herself to the earth.

It was shame that had tears on the verge of falling over her eyelids, and tumbling down her cheeks—shame for having been so stupid, for not having known better, for getting herself into a situation that would end up ruining her entire life.

She wrapped her arms around her waist, turned away from him to stare out the window, gathering her courage. Across the way, the red nose of the wire reindeer in Flynn and Jesse's yard blinked off and on. She could feel the cold air rolling off the window pane, smelled wood smoke in the air. Christmas. It was supposed to be a happy time, but it always made Meredith sad deep within the seat of her soul. She had no family to gather round the holiday tree with. It was only she and Ben.

Until this year. Until Twilight. Until Hutch and Kimmie.

When had she started thinking of them as family? She kneaded her brow with her fingertips.
I'm sorry, baby
, she mentally apologized to Ben.
For so many things.

She heard Hutch shift behind her. He was growing impatient.

Meredith hauled in a deep breath, paused, blew it out, and without turning back to look at him, confessed, “There's something else you should know about me.”

He came nearer. She could feel the tension in him, and see him in the glass. Their eyes met in the reflection.

“I'm wanted for the attempted murder of a police officer.”

O
f all the things Hutch thought she might say, this confession wasn't even on the list. Uncertain that he'd heard her correctly, he cocked his head, stared into her urgent eyes.

She nodded, moistened her lips, and ran her open palms over the tops of her thighs.

He'd spent his life prepared for anything—first with his unpredictable mother, and then in the military—but she'd still taken him by surprise, and it took a moment for the information to infiltrate his stupefied brain. Jane was on the run for trying to kill a police officer.

Meredith.
Her name was Meredith.

He liked the name and he liked her. Liked? Who was he kidding? What he was feeling was several notches above like.

She looked much more like a Meredith than a Jane—regal, self-contained, a cut above the rest. He was glad, now, for his inability to speak because he had never called her by the wrong name. When she heard his voice for the first time, he wanted her real name to roll off his tongue. Meredith.

Getting ahead of yourself, Hutchinson. First, you gotta speak. Second, she has to be here in order to hear you say her name.

She sounded so lost that he reached out a hand to touch her, to reassure her, let her know that he did not judge her, to encourage her to keep going. But he hesitated, not wanting to scare her or upset her by breaking her rules.

Hey
, the hard-ass devil on his shoulder argued,
she broke the rules first by lying about who she was. All bets are off
.

Acting on instinct and hoping it was the right move, Hutch gently took her by the shoulders and turned her around. Her eyes were forlorn, but her chin notched up defiantly. “The policeman I shot was my abusive ex-husband.”

But she hadn't killed him? Too damn bad. Any man who would abuse a woman deserved his comeuppance, and Hutch was of a mind to finish the job for her.

“I suppose I should start at the beginning,” she said, although she looked as if she'd rather have all her teeth pulled without novocaine.

He shook his head, letting her know that she owed him no explanation, but she raised an index finger and pressed it to his lips. “You need to know what you're dealing with. I should have told you before, but I didn't know how to go about it. And secrecy has been my protection for so long, I've forgotten how to trust.”

Yet here she was, trusting him now. She didn't have to. She could have just packed up and walked away.

Clearing her throat, she told him about her parents, hot air balloonists who dragged their young daughter around the country on their nomadic lifestyle.

“We were gypsies, living in a small motor home. I was homeschooled. In spite of—or maybe because of—my unorthodox upbringing, I was a happy kid. Who knows?” A soft smile came over her lips as she told him about her parents and how loved they made her feel.

He was glad for her. He wished he could say the same thing.

“But even though I had food to eat and a warm bed to sleep in, I had white picket fence dreams.” She gave a sardonic laugh as if it was the most ludicrous dream in the world.

Hutch peered deeply into her eyes, giving Ja—Meredith his spellbound attention.

The light that had flared in her eyes when she started talking about her parents winked out. “They were killed in a balloon accident when I was sixteen. I was on the chase crew, and I . . . I . . .” She paused, blinked hard. “. . . saw them go down.”

Aww shit, baby no.

He thought about his own loss at sixteen, when he walked into the house just minutes before the school bus deposited Ashley at the door. Finding his mother's body, realizing she'd finally gone and made good on her threats. Snatching up the suicide note.
You drove me to this, Brian.
She'd been mad because he'd thrown her worthless, dope-smoking boyfriend out of the house the day before.

Feeling absolutely nothing, he'd crumpled up the note and stuck it in his pocket. Calmly called 9–1–1, then went outside just in time to stop Ashley from walking into the house.

That night, his famous cool snapped and he went on a grief-fueled rampage, smashing every mailbox on the street with a baseball bat. Caitlyn's father, Judge Blackthorne, had caught him, but instead of turning him over to the police, he'd counseled him. Advised him to join the army as soon as he got out of high school. And the judge went with him to speak to the owners of the mailboxes while he apologized and promised restitution.

If it hadn't been for the judge—who later heard his case and granted him emancipated minor status so he could get Ashley out of the foster care system—Hutch knew his life would have taken a much darker turn.

He was glad he could not tell Meredith about all that. He'd put away the past a long time ago. Moved on with startling success considering where he'd come from. He'd dived headfirst into the military, used it to escape his suffering. But then an ambush on the other side of the world brought him full circle right back to where he started.

Irony. What a bitch.

Meredith wiped away the tears pooling underneath her eyes and took a deep breath. “I don't wallow in self-pity. I'm telling you all this so that you'll understand. At the cookie swap party they told me you lost your mother when you were sixteen. What a rotten thing for us to have in common.”

He nodded and made a fishing gesture as if he was trying to land a one-ton marlin, illustrating struggle and resistance, and then he opened this palms, letting go.

“Exactly. You can't hold on to grief forever or it will drag you down. At some point you simply have to let go.”

Yeah, here he was preaching to her in made-up sign language about letting things go and yet he was the one hanging on to grief, rage, and resentment over what he'd lost. He could sure dole out the advice, but he couldn't seem to take it.

But how could he fully let the past go until he'd done his duty and visited the families of his men?

It all came down to that. His inability to speak. What was a man without a voice?

“After my parents died, I went to live with my mother's mother. Gramma was the only close relative I had left and I finally got my wish to be rooted in one place. I was so excited to go to high school. But I'd been homeschooled for so long it was hard for me to fit in, and my mother had done such a great job teaching me, I was able to bypass my senior year. Instead, I went to massage school so I could put myself through nursing school. My parents didn't have anything but their balloons and our RV, and Gramma was on a fixed income. I couldn't expect her to pay for college.”

What a smart, resilient kid she'd been. He wished he could have known her then.

“My first year in college, Gramma got cancer. She fought a hard battle for four years. She was determined to see me graduate.” Sadness and regret settled on Meredith's face. “Gramma died two days before graduation.”

He touched her upper arm.

She tilted her head and looked up at him. Her hair was starting to grow out a bit and the auburn color softened her skin. Did she have any idea how utterly gorgeous she was?

Shyly, she lifted her hand to the nape of her neck. “I've colored my hair so many times that I've forgotten what shade of brown my real color is.”

Black, blond, brunette, redhead, Hutch didn't care what color her hair was. She could dye it lime green and she'd still be the most beautiful woman in the world in his eyes.

Meredith.
Man, he wished he could talk so he could say her name over and over again.

“I'm hedging, aren't I?” She hugged herself, rubbed the palms of each hand over the opposite upper arm as if she were cold and trying to warm herself. But the temperature in the room was perfectly comfortable.

The chill she was feeling came from the inside. Hutch's jaw tightened. Already his hands were packing into fists, yearning to punch the son of a bitch who'd damaged her. He wasn't any more eager to hear her tale of domestic abuse than she was to tell it, but their relationship was at an impasse until she did. They both knew it.

“I'd never really dated, what with living on the road and then losing my parents, going to massage school and then college. Taking care of my grandmother when she got sick. There wasn't any time for a real social life. I had friends, sure, but not close ones because I didn't have time to go do all the normal things teenagers do.”

He let her take the wandering path to her narrative destination. The secret she was about to reveal was buried deep and it would take some digging to get it all out.

“His name is . . .” Meredith paused, glanced over her shoulder to the left, and then looked right as if expecting him to slip up behind her. “Vick Sloane.”

Hutch hated him already.

“I met Sloane a month after graduation when I was doing an externship after college. He ended up in my trauma room after a prostitute bit him. Another nurse got the prostitute, who'd been badly beaten. The woman claimed Vick was the one who'd beaten her. He claimed it was her pimp. It was the word of a LAPD detective against a hooker. Guess who won? It should have been a warning, but I was so damn gullible. I fell for his mustachioed smile and vigorous lies.”

She ducked her head, shuddered.

Tenderly, Hutch reached out to cup her chin, angled her face up to meet his eyes, and slowly shook his head. She had been young and open and trusting. She shouldn't feel ashamed or embarrassed for being innocent.

“I was twenty-two and a newly minted RN and he was thirty-three and a police detective. I was overwhelmed by his attention. No man had ever given me the full court press like that.”

Hutch's heart was breaking for her. He wished he could go back in time, be the one who had met her when she was twenty-two. If he had, if they'd had each other, how different might both of their lives have been?

She turned away from him again, and still hugging herself, walked back to the window and stared out. For a long moment the only sound in the room was the sound of their simultaneous breathing. Doing yoga together had them breathing in synchronized rhythm. He smiled briefly at that. This wasn't the time to be thinking about what other rhythms they might be good at.

In a small voice she asked, “What is it about sociopaths? How do they know exactly who to pick on?”

He wished he could offer her an answer, but even if he could speak, he could not explain the motives behind black hearts.

“Sloane was charming.”

Once upon a time, Hutch had been charming too. It was what women had loved most about him. He would cock his head, send the woman on his radar a secret smile, pin her with a laser gaze, and say something light and witty.

It always worked. He'd never struck out. Not once.

“He completely swept me off my feet.” She shivered. “I still hate that phrase. That's the thing that bothered me the most when Ashley took off with that guy. She said he swept her off her feet.”

Uneasiness had him scratching the backs of his knuckles, itchy as they healed up from when he'd punched the front door.

“He asked me to marry him after only three weeks of dating. I was so lonely without Gramma, still grieving for her, and Sloane looked to be everything I thought I wanted. Steady, stable, with a secure job. He promised me a house, babies, all of it.”

Hutch hated to see her beating herself up like this, but he'd done the same thing over his mother and Ashley. Was still doing it over the loss of his teammates because he'd walked out as the lone survivor.

She moaned softly. “I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.”

Hutch came up behind her, rubbed a palm over her back, and to his surprise she leaned against him.

“Sloane was a decorated cop. He took risks other policemen wouldn't take. Of course that was part of his pathology, but no one saw it that way. People saw his arrogance as self-confidence. I did too. I thought he was strong and capable and in control. I didn't realize it was a cloak for meanness and cruelty.”

She turned back to face him once more. The more she talked about Sloane, the more she withered—her shoulders rounded and drew forward, her eyes dulled, her voice wavered.

If that bastard were standing in front of him right now, Hutch would cheerfully bash his face in, numerous times, before he killed him. He imagined the fistfight. Tasted blood. Over the course of the last few months he'd lost his taste for blood, for war and violence, for discord and crisis that he used to thrive on, but for Sloane he'd happily make an exception.

“I loved being a nurse, but Sloane didn't want me to work. So I quit my job before the wedding. So dumb of me.” She smacked her forehead with her palm. “So damn dumb. It was his first step in isolating me. And the minute he put that ring on my finger, and I was legally his, the craziness began.”

A faraway look came into her eyes as if she were wishing she could reach back in time and rescue that young woman. She was getting to the hard part now. The part he didn't want to hear.

He could feel her knees trembling. He took her by the elbow and guided her toward the bed. She perched on the edge of the mattress, drew her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her knees, and sat rocking herself gently.

“Have you ever seen that movie
Sleeping with the Enemy
?”

As a kid, he had a major crush on Julia Roberts, so, yeah, he'd seen the movie. He nodded. Julia's character was married to a man so violent and controlling that nothing in the house could be an inch out of place or he'd abuse her. Life with him was so intolerable that the heroine faked her own death to get away from the sociopath. But he tracked her down anyway.

The movie had been damn chilling, because even then, when he'd seen the movie as a preteen, he'd recognized how easy it would be for his mother to have fallen under the influence of someone like that. He remembered wanting to get a gun and protect Julia from her insane husband.