Depth Perception (37 page)

"Ward and Hunt were just as bad as Elliott. They never let me forget what happened that day. They laughed at me. Made fun of me because I'd soiled my pants. Do you have any idea

what that does to a kid?" His eyes hardened, blazed. "My own father couldn't stand the sight of me. I'd embarrassed him."

"You were just a kid ..."

''That didn't matter," he spat.

She waited, her fingers wrapped around the wood base of the umbrella, and watched his eyes glaze.

"After that, except for some teasing, Ward and Hunter left me alone. I had asthma and couldn't play with other kids, so I turned inward. I started reading a lot. Eating a lot. Gaining weight.

"But I had friends, Nat." Smiling, he tapped on his head. "Only they were up here. And every time my old man put me in that room, my friends came out to play. After a while, I wasn't even scared anymore. I liked going into that room by myself."

''Travis, I can't imagine Ward not trying to help you."

"You think that husband of yours was such a saint," he hissed. "Do you want me to tell you about Ward the Saint? Do you want me to tell you what he did?"

Nat didn't want to hear more. All she wanted was to get away from him. Away from the terrible things he was saying. But he was blocking her way to the kitchen. She gripped the umbrella and waited for an opportunity to rush him.

"I got put in that storage room a lot. You see, I'd realized I liked to set fires. I burned the shed in the backyard. The cabana by the pool. The gazebo in the garden. Every time I got put in the storage room. Every time my friends came out to play. When I was fourteen. I set the kitchen on fire. Elliott put me in the storage room, and I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew Hunt and Ward came in. They didn't turn on the light and started making fun of me. Ordering me around. Pushing me. Hitting me. Calling me names. Fatso.  Queer. And then it was like someone flipped a switch. Something happened to them. They got really mean. Looking back, I know it has something to do with that primal, pack mentality." His voice broke, his words trailing. "They told me to take off my clothes. When I said no, they started punching me, mostly in the gut, because they never messed up my face.

“When I couldn't take any more, I took off my clothes. Then things got really bad because they . . . they made me . . ." He made a choking sound, squeezed his eyes closed for an instant. ''They did unspeakable things. They made me do things to them. Vile, nasty things. They told me I was fat and stupid and I deserved it. They called me a fat, little sow."

Nat stared at him, her heart pounding. She gripped the umbrella handle, but her palm was slick with sweat.

''There was a hand broom in the closet, and Ward the saint, the minister, your perfect fucking husband ... " His voice broke. "He sodomized me with that broom," he whispered. "He stuck it in me and made me want to die. Then they laughed at me. Do you have any idea what that did to me?"

"Travis," she said, struggling to keep her voice level, "It's not too late to stop this. I'll help you. Just let me go."

"I don't want to go to prison, Nat,"

"You were abused as a child. Psychologically. Physically. Your brothers sexually assaulted--"

"Shut up about that!" Spittle flew from his lips as he snarled the words. "Don't say it! Don't ever bring that up!"

She measured the distance between them, wondering if she could slam the umbrella into his temple and run past him before he hit her with the baton. ''Those are extenuating circumstances, Travis." Knowing this could very well be her only chance to talk him down, she laid it on thick. "You were just a boy. The police and the courts will take that into consideration. They'll make sure you get the help you need. Counseling. Medication. They'll see to it that Elliott Ratcliffe is punished."

"No one will understand, Nat. If the police find out what I've done, I'll never see the light of day We both know that."

"Travis, you have to let me go. Alcee is expecting me at the police station."

''The only person expecting you is Bastille, and nobody in this town gives a shit about him."

"I care." She glanced at the baton, saw his fingers flex. ''And I care about you, too."

He looked at her as if the words had startled him. "You're lying. You don't give a damn about me."

"That's not true. Think about all the years we've known each other. You were kind to me.  The brother I never had." She held his gaze, but it was difficult with her mind scrambling wildly for just the right thing to say. "It's not too late to fix things."

He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time, his eyes filling. "You'd help me even after everything I've done?"

Seeing the opportunity she'd been waiting for, Nat jerked the umbrella from the closet. Swinging it like a bat, she slammed the handle against his forehead. His hands flew up to protect himself, but he was already reeling backward.

The force of the impact knocked the umbrella from her hand. Knowing she only had an instant to escape, she bolted past him and tore around the stairway.

"Bitch! I'm going to make you pay for that!"

She hit the dining room at full speed, made a hard left, barely missing the table. Behind her, she heard his footfalls pounding the floor. She saw movement in her peripheral vision. Air whooshed as he swung the baton and missed. Too close, she thought, and dove for the phone on the counter.

Before she could punch in the numbers, pain exploded the right side of her head. The violence of the blow snapped her head to the side. White light flashed in front of her eyes. The phone clattered to the floor. Then she was falling into space.

The counter crashed into her chest as she went down. Her knees hit the floor. Then she was lying on her side, the tile cold against her cheek.
This is what it feels like to die,
she thought. She saw blood on the floor and realized her nose was bleeding. It was on her hands. Dark and sticky between her fingers. Dizziness assailed her. The room began to spin as if she were being sucked into a vortex. Not from the blow, she realized, but her son . . .

Kyle?

The words inside her head were disjointed and rushed. She sensed his fear, knew it was being augmented by her own. Vaguely, she was aware of her finger moving over the tile. Red letters written in blood on the floor.

And then the world faded to black.

Chapter 27

Nick had been in enough trouble in his lifetime to know when it was bad. As he stood in the jail cell of the Bellerose Police Department and watched the jailer lock the outer door behind him, he figured this qualified and then some.

It had been two hours since Alcee Martin and Matt Duncan had dragged him away in cuffs from Nat's house. They'd questioned him for an hour, in which time he'd found out that Hunt had been out in his mud boat frogging when he'd been shot in the head at point blank range. Dutch's rifle had been found at the scene, conveniently dropped into Hunt's boat. Alcee had already questioned at least two people from The Blue Gator, and both of them had mentioned the argument between Hunt and Nick a few nights earlier.

The situation wasn't looking good for a parolee with a murder conviction on his record.

Nick was counting on Alcee Martin being smart enough to look beyond the obvious. Nick hadn't shot Hunt. He hadn't been anywhere near Edward Bayou. The problem was proving it when someone had gone to great lengths to make it look like he had.

Nick had used his phone call to contact his lawyer in New Orleans. But the man had a court date the following morning and wouldn't be able to drive up until afternoon. Unless someone was able to rouse a judge---or conjure a miracle--Nick was stuck.

He looked around the small cell and tried not to feel claustrophobic. As far as jails went, Bellerose was top of the line. At twelve feet square it was roomy and clean with a single ground level, barred window that looked out over the parking lot. The mattress on the bunk was unstained and fresh as the day the citizens of St. Tammany Parish had paid for it.

But Nick could feel the glossy tiled walls closing in on him. Six years in prison had left him with a bad case of claustrophobia. The day he'd walked out of Angola, he'd sworn no one would ever lock him in a cage again. He hadn't counted on someone putting a hole in Hunt Ratcliffe's forehead. Sweating, his heart pounding, he sat down hard on the bunk. Who the hell had done it? Dutch? Nick didn't think so. His old man might have Alzheimer's and a mean streak as wide as the Mississippi, but he wasn't violent. Dutch was a hunter and had always been a responsible gun owner. He was obsessive about gun safety. So then how the hell had Hunt ended up shot with his old man's rifle?

Nick didn't have the answer. The only thing he did know was that if he didn't get out of this cell, he was going to go stark, raving insane.

Struggling to stay calm, he bent his head and put his face in his hands. He'd been trying not to think of Nat, but every time he closed his eyes, he saw her face. He saw the way her eyes had glazed when he'd been inside her. The way her body had shuddered when he'd moved within her. The sweet cries she'd uttered when he'd brought her to peak. Making love to her had been one of the most erotic experiences of his life. She'd been responsive and loving and more passionate than he ever could have dreamed. She was decent and good and deserved a man who could give her his trust, his whole heart. As desperately as he wanted to be that man, Nick knew be wasn't.

He glanced at the clock above the jailer's desk. Two hours and ten minutes had passed since he'd left her. She'd volunteered to check on Dutch, then come to the station. Nick had been trying not to consciously think of it, but she should have been here by now. Where the hell was she? The question hit a nerve and out of the dark recesses of his mind, a terrible new worry began to eat at him.

Rising abruptly, he cursed and began to pace. Why hadn't she come? Had something happened to her? He could feel his heart beating heavily in his chest. A sheen of sweat slicking his back beneath his shirt. He didn't know if it was claustrophobia or fear for her safety, but it had clamped down on him like the teeth of a steel trap. He could feel panic edging in. The utter certainty that something had happened to her. That he wasn't going to be able to protect her the same way he hadn't been able to protect Brand.

Nat, where are you?

A door clanged. Nick rushed to the bars, hope jumping through him that she had finally come. Instead, a large woman with a mane of wild red hair and a flowing maroon cape strode toward him like a battleship gliding out to sea. Behind her, one of Alcee's deputies and a skinny man in a dark suit rushed to keep up with her.

What the hell?

"You Nick?" she asked.

"Who wants to know?"

She stopped outside the bars, bringing a wave of some exotic perfume with her. She stuck her hand through the bars. "Name's Faye Townsend, but that's not important. What is important is that I think Nat's in trouble. I just came from her place and she's not there. This here's my ex-husband, Judge Tommy Doyal from Covington. You just made bail."

#   #   #

Nat woke to darkness and pain on top of pain. Nausea ebbed and flowed in her stomach, so she closed her eyes and concentrated on taking slow, deep breaths. There, was a roaring in her ears. Vibration all around. She was lying on her side with her knees drawn up to her chest. She tried to shift, only to realize her hands were tied behind her back.

Confusion swirled; then the memory of everything that had happened came rushing back. Nick being arrested. Her struggle with Travis. A terrible blow to the head. Panic sliced her cleanly, and for several unbearable moments she struggled mindlessly against her bindings. Her heart was like a piston in her chest. She could hear her breaths tearing from her throat, too shallow, too fast. The smell of exhaust told her she was in the back of a moving vehicle. Another wave of panic threatened, but she fought it back, willed her muscles to relax.

"Calm down," she whispered. "You're going to be okay."

Taking a deep breath, Nat looked around, but the back of the vehicle was completely dark. The carpet smelled like motor oil and dust. She tried to stretch out her legs, but the space was too small. She tested her bonds, found them secure, her hands already growing numb.

Where was he taking her?

The vehicle stopped abruptly, and the engine went silent. Every nerve in her body went taut when she heard the door slam. An instant later, the back door lifted. Fresh air and rain and the soft black light of night poured in.

"You're awake," Travis smiled down at her. "I was hoping I wouldn't have to carry you."

Nat raised her head and looked around, realized she was in the rear of Travis’s SUV. She saw trees and misty rain and the utter darkness of the woods. "Where are you taking me?"

"You'll find out soon enough." He reached for her arm. "Come on."

She struggled to a sitting position. Then he was pulling her roughly from the vehicle. She barely managed to get her feet beneath her when he slammed the door closed. He'd stopped the SUV on a dirt road surrounded by thick woods. He was holding a powerful spotlight and was using it to illuminate his face. A ripple of satisfaction went through her when she saw the raised bruise on his forehead where she'd hit him with the umbrella.

Taking her arm, he pulled her away from the SUV, then used the spotlight to indicate the path cut into the woods. "Start walking,” he said.

Nat started toward the path, but kept her pace slow. She didn't know where he was taking her, but knew it was a place she didn't want to go. Once they arrived, she was pretty sure he was going to kill her.

She could feel the fear bubbling inside her. Panic nipping at its heels. “Travis, it's not too late to stop this," she said. "It doesn't have to end this way."

"Shut your mouth and walk."

"What can you possibly hope to accomplish by killing me?"

"Killing you will keep me out of prison, Natalie."