Cold Snap (19 page)

But it was. It was real and this was the proof. The blood on the floor. The violence that she saw with her own eyes.

“You killed a man. Here!” She pointed to the bloodstains. And then she saw more. So much blood. She had been blind, but she wished she didn’t know. She wished she could be a Pollyanna, but she’d never be able to unsee this.

Patrick’s jaw clenched and he looked as hard and unfeeling as he had in the truck when he confronted Clark. She really didn’t know him. She thought she did, but he wasn’t the fun-loving high school baseball player she’d had a crush on.

“I had to,” he said. “I don’t take it lightly, but I had no alternative. They would have killed both Jack and me to get to Kami.”

He sounded so calm. How could he be calm? How could he talk about murder so matter-of-factly? Didn’t he care?

“Oh, God, she saw this?” Elle’s emotions were spilling over, and the more she felt, the more steadfast Patrick became. She didn’t know this man.

“I secured her in the bathroom upstairs.” Patrick reached out for her, and she flinched.

“Elle, let’s go someplace else. You don’t need to be here. I’ll hire someone to clean it up. I shouldn’t have brought you back.” Jack was right, it was too soon.

“You can’t clean it up. I can’t forget what happened. I’ll always see this blood.”

Patrick took her hand. “You’ve been through hell. Give yourself time.”

“Is that what you say to yourself? Give yourself time? How many men have you killed?”

Patrick stepped back. “I was a cop, Gabrielle,” he said, his voice colder than she’d ever heard it. “I never killed except to protect another human being. I’m not going to apologize.”

She shook her head. “Of course not.” Oh, God, she’d hurt him. She hadn’t meant to say that. Her head was about to explode, she wanted to run away. She’d never been so overwhelmed in her life.

“I don’t understand any of this. I don’t understand you. I don’t understand what you do, or why Clark nearly killed me, or why three men died in my living room!”

She was getting hysterical, and she didn’t want to be. She didn’t want to sound ungrateful, because she was grateful. She just wanted to forget everything that had happened.

She took a deep breath. “Kami can’t come back here with the place like this,” she said quietly.

“I’ll stay and help clean up.”

She shook her head. “Go back to your family.”

The buzzer rang on the door. She jumped, and hated that she was scared. Would she ever feel safe again?

Patrick had his gun in hand, at his side, and walked to the door. Was this how her life would be from now on?

She didn’t know if she could live like this.

Patrick was talking to someone at the door. She kept picturing Patrick with the gun pointed at Clark. Pointed at her, because she was there in the truck, too. The risks he took to save her. Why would he do that? He could have died. She could have died.

Elle felt so confused she wanted to scream.

But she didn’t see how it could have happened any differently.

This was a world unfamiliar to her. She’d seen violence, but always the aftermath. Stories from street kids who’d seen too much, too young. The court system. She’d never lived through it, not like this. She was so scared she couldn’t think.

She sat on the floor and put her head in her hands.

“Elle?”

She looked up. Dwight was standing there.

“Where’s Patrick?”

“He said he had to go. Come to my place.”

“Patrick left?”

Why would he have walked out? What had she said to him? She could hardly remember. But she’d hurt him somehow. She wished she could take it back.

“You’ve been through hell. Patrick says you’re in shock and he’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Shock?” What did Patrick know? Did he think that she’d just get over this, like she had dead men in her apartment every day?

She squeezed her eyes shut. He’d saved her life. She’d never faced her own mortality like she had today.

“Okay,” she whispered.

Dwight extended his hand to her. She grabbed it, a life line, and he pulled her up.

“I like him,” Dwight said, “but you always try to change people, Elle. You can’t change him, like you couldn’t change me. You either have to accept him for who he is, or walk away.”

She slowly walked upstairs and stood in her bedroom crying. Feeling like she had just lost something she hadn’t realized she had.

CHAPTER 16

Patrick sat in the hotel bar and nursed his beer. He’d already had a couple of tequila shots and was feeling the effect, but he considered having a couple more. He wasn’t much of a drinker, so the hard liquor hit him hard.

Jack walked up and sat on the stool next to him and ordered another round. The bartender brought two shots of tequila and two more beers. They downed the shots together and slammed the glasses on the counter.

“Elle didn’t take it well,” Patrick said a few minutes later.

“Did you think she would?”

“I never should have brought her back to her place.”

“I won’t say I told you so.”

“Shut up.”

Jack remained silent.

“She had to see it with someone,” Patrick said, trying to convince himself he’d done the right thing, even though he knew he hadn’t. “If she’d walked in there alone—that would have been worse.”

Jack drained his tequila and poured another.

“I’ve gone over the last twenty-four hours in my head and can’t see where I would have changed anything,” Patrick said. “Other than keeping a much better eye on Elle this morning so she couldn’t sneak out.”

“You’re a good cop, PK.”

“I’m not a cop.”

“Being a cop is like being a soldier. Once a soldier, always a soldier. Shit happens. We’re the people who clean it up. She’ll either see it, or she won’t. She’s stubborn, but she’s smart.”

“We lead two different lives. And never the twain shall meet.”

“Bullshit.”

“She has this idealized view of the world. Even after this weekend, she doesn’t see the bad. Except—when she walked into her apartment, I think it slapped her in the face. I tried everything I could, but I was getting so angry, I shut down. When her ex showed up, I let him take over.” He sighed and sipped his beer. “I’ve been angry for a long time.”

“I know.”

Patrick glanced at him. “How?”

“Do you remember when I came to visit you in the hospital, when you woke up from the coma? You woke up as if it were the next day. All the pain and rage was still there. I knew it the minute I saw you. I don’t think anyone else wanted to see it. And it won’t go away overnight.”

“It’s been seven years.”

“Five years for you. And you still haven’t forgiven her.”

“Forgiven who?”

“Lucy.”

Patrick shook his head. “There was nothing to forgive.”

“You blamed her.”

“Shut the fuck up. I love Lucy. I never thought any of it was her fault.”

“Not consciously, but she made a bad choice. And shit happened. And she feels it, because she knows you feel it.”

“I’ve never—God, Jack, don’t.” Patrick loved Lucy more than anyone. His sister was all that made him whole. “She visited me. Read to me. I heard her voice all the time, in my head, when I was half dead.”

Jack poured two more tequilas. “I shouldn’t pretend I’m Dillon. I’m not good with this shrink shit.”

“I don’t need a shrink.”

“You need to forgive yourself for all the shit that went down seven years ago. Your guilt for blaming Lucy, for being angry, for losing part of yourself. Let it go. That anger you have, Elle feels it, too. She might tell you that she has a problem with you taking down those men, but it had to happen. We saved lives today. What she felt was your anger that she went off on her own and put herself in danger. Yes, it was a dumb-ass move, but she did it for the right reasons. What she felt was your anger when all she wanted was justification for three dead bodies in her living room.”

“I don’t blame her,” Patrick said. But maybe … maybe he did. He expected her to understand the situation that resulted in the violence at her apartment. He expected her to see the truth, but he hadn’t known how to explain. He hadn’t fought for her, forced her to see the truth.

But he wasn’t a forcing kind of guy. It was there … or it wasn’t. He didn’t like emotional, personal confrontation.

Yeah, he could see how she might think he blamed her for putting herself in danger. He’d shut down because that’s what he did so he wouldn’t lose his temper. But maybe all she needed was to be held. A human connection. A reminder of hope.

“I’ll talk to her tomorrow. What time are you leaving?”

“Whenever you’re ready, bro. But you know, Ma won’t mind if you’re a day late.”

“Right—the first Christmas we’ve all been together in nearly twenty years. She’ll never talk to me again.”

“She’ll talk to you—like I said, you’re the golden child.”

“Maybe I can talk Elle into coming with us.”

“Maybe you can,” Jack said. He grabbed the bottle of tequila off the bar and motioned to the bartender. “Put it on my tab.” Then he left.

Patrick called Lucy. It was three in the morning in Denver, but he had to talk to her.

She answered on the first ring. “Patrick?”

“You’re awake?”

“We’ve had some excitement here,” she said. “I heard you did, too. We’ll swap stories when we get home.”

Patrick was relieved to hear her voice.

“I’m really going to miss you when you leave D.C.,” he said. In that moment all the anger, all the guilt, all the past blame, evaporated. She was getting on with her life, an agent with the FBI, in love with his best friend. He was so proud of her. Maybe, at one point, he had blamed Lucy for everything that happened seven years ago, but more than that, he blamed himself for not protecting her. Blamed himself for the feelings of anger he couldn’t control. But now it was gone.

“What’s wrong?” she asked quietly.

“Nothing.”

She didn’t say anything. That’s what Lucy did. She waited. Patiently.

“Luce, I love you.”

“I know. I love you, too.”

“And—well, I’m going to miss you.”

“Have you been drinking?”

He laughed. “I don’t hold my alcohol as well as Jack.”

“No, you don’t. And for what it’s worth? I’m going to miss you the most. Visit. Often.”

“I’ll see you in San Diego. I might be a little late.”

“We all are.”

*   *   *

The phone rang and woke Patrick up. His head ached. Jack was in the shower. It was eight in the morning—he must have gone out hard after two brutal days. And too much tequila.

“Kincaid,” he grunted into the phone.

“Patrick? It’s Carina.”

She sounded panicked. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Dad. He’s in the hospital. He’s had a heart attack.”

“Jack and I will be there as soon as we can.”

Patrick hung up. His dad—he had to go home.

He called Elle, but remembered that her cell phone was toast. He called Dwight. Voice mail picked up.

“Dwight Bishop, leave a message.”

“Dwight, it’s Patrick Kincaid. I have a family emergency in San Diego. Please tell Gabrielle that I’ll call her as soon as I can. And—put in a good word for me, okay? I screwed it up last night, and I want to fix it.” He hung up and hoped he hadn’t made a mistake asking Elle’s ex-husband for help.

But he couldn’t have made the situation any worse than it was when he walked out last night.

Jack stepped out of the bathroom. “It’s all yours.”

“Pack up,” Patrick said. “I’ll be ready in five minutes. Carina called—Dad’s in the hospital. We need to go home.”

PART TWO

Denver

Saturday, December 22

CHAPTER 17

Lucy Kincaid stifled a laugh at the text message her brother Patrick sent.

I wish I was stranded in Denver. When Mom found out I was in Sacramento, she sent me on an errand to San Francisco. You will not believe what she’s asked me to do. See you at home!

“What’s so funny?” Kate stretched and rolled over on her side. She was relaxing in one of the two queen beds in the Denver hotel they were stuck in.

Lucy held her phone out so Kate could read the message.

“At least he’s in the right state,” Kate said with an exaggerated sigh.

“You didn’t even want to come,” Lucy said.

“Only because your family terrifies me.”

Lucy laughed. “Hardly.”

“All those hugs and piles of food and constant noise. I was raised by my grandparents, who were the most soft-spoken people on the planet.” And, as Lucy knew, they hadn’t been affectionate. Kate could handle one or two Kincaids at a time, but she usually avoided big family gatherings.

“You’re lucky—you get to stay with Carina and Nick at their place. Sean and I are at the house, and Dad already made it clear that Sean has to stay in the room above the garage.” Lucy didn’t complain, however. It was the same for all her brothers and sisters; if they were involved with someone, they weren’t allowed to sleep with them in the same bed under her parents’ roof until they were married. Lucy was a bit nervous telling her dad that she and Sean were moving in together, but she wasn’t the first in the family to do so.

“What are the boys doing?” Kate said. “If they’re drinking in the bar without me, I’ll shoot them.”

After hours of weather-based delays, all flights in and out of Denver were canceled. The blizzard, which was being compared to the storm of 2006 when the airport shut down for nearly two days, was getting worse. Sean had reserved a hotel room in Denver while they were still back in D.C. as a precaution—he said he didn’t like the weather patterns and thought the predictions were overly optimistic. Considering Kate and Dillon couldn’t get their own room, Sean was enjoying being right—even though the four of them had to share one room.

“At least we have beds,” Sean had teased.

Lucy sent Sean a text message. He and Dillon had dropped off their carry-ons, but Dillon had needed some things from the shop downstairs. “I’m sure there’s a long line,” Lucy said.

“If Sean tells me one more time that he didn’t forget anything in his overnight bag, I’m going to beat him up.”