Genesis: A Harte's Peak Prequel (14 page)

Richard turned to stare down Jack, which to Maggie's mind did not appear to be a good idea. “What do you have to do with any of this?”

Jack didn't answer, but instead moved closer to Maggie, never breaking eye contact with Richard. He didn't stop until he stood between them.

“He's—he's my friend,” Maggie stammered from where she stood suddenly behind Jack.

“So now you have a gentleman friend.” Richard glared. “What a fine example for your teenage daughter.”

“Richard!” Paula hissed.

“I resent that implication,” Jack stated in a calm voice, though Maggie swore she saw his jaw twitch.

“Resent it all you want.” Richard finally looked at his wife, as though he'd just now noticed she was there. “Fine, fine. We'll go. But this isn't over.”

“Have a good evening,” Jack said.

Paula rushed off behind Richard, turning once to mouth ‘sorry' in their direction, and before Maggie realized what had happened, Jack ushered her inside her home and shut the door.

She managed to take in a long shuddering breath and shut her eyes. When she opened them, Jack stared at her with those blue eyes that seemed to know far too much.

“A little excitement tonight,” Jack said. “So that was your father-in-law, Lexi's grandfather?”

“Sorry to say, yes.”

“Piece of work, that man.” He shook his head slowly, and she noticed some of the tension remained in his jawline. She didn't like the fact that her family troubles had bled over into their friendship, but there wasn't much she could do about that now.

“I'm sorry about that. Lexi and I have caused you to bring your job home with you one too many times.”

“A casualty of my job. Never really get to leave it behind.”

Maggie nodded, remembering why Jack had come over. “I'll go get Chief. He's in Lexi's bedroom.”

She hadn't taken one step before she felt Jack's warm hand on her arm. “Wait.”

A shiver ran down her arm, but she did not want to enter another staring contest with him now. Yet if she gazed in his eyes, she wouldn't look away anytime soon, so she refused to meet them. “What is it?”

“What's going on here, Maggie? Why won't you let Lexi see her grandparents? Something tells me there's a good reason.”

She could tell him that it was none of his business, but a strange part of her wanted to make it his business. And she needed to tell that strange and unwelcome part of herself to get a clue. She was single, and had to remain that way. “Do you really want to know?” She didn't have to hear his answer because it seemed written in his expressive eyes. He did want to know. Somehow, he cared.

“I do.”

“I don't want you to think less of me.”

He'd seen the worst side of Lexi, and he might have already made judgments about her parenting skills. What she had to tell him might cinch it.
That's why the kid is such a mess, he'd think. No wonder.

“That couldn't happen.” He surprised her by backing up, taking a seat on her couch, and spreading his arms out. It all gave the impression of relaxation and waiting, and she had a feeling he'd be here for hours if she wanted him to be. The thought filled her with warmth.

She sat beside him. “OK. You know about Lexi's dad, but what you don't know is that after it happened I wasn't myself for a while.”

“Understandable.”

“I was grieving, but my way of dealing with it was to sleep. When I slept, I forgot for a while that I was alone, that my daughter didn't have a father anymore. That our whole world had come crashing down.”

Jack sat, listening. No questions, only silence.

She continued. “I'm sure you've seen so much of this in your line of work. I don't know why I'm telling you this.”

“Because I asked.”

Right. He had a way of cutting things down to their most basic levels. “It got to where I wasn't getting up to take Lexi to school. I slept right through entire days, waking like a zombie to force myself to check on her. She was a good kid back then, started to cook, and even tried to get me to eat. I wasn't there for my own daughter because I was too wrapped up in my own pain.

“Anyway, Paula convinced me that the thing to do was to move back and be near them. If my own mother was still alive, I'd have come back to be with her, but as it is, the only grandparents left are Matt's parents. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I lived with them for the first few months in their mansion of a house where I felt like a warden. Paula is OK most of the time, but Richard, well, you've seen him. He's a bully. His way or the highway.”

“I got that.”

Yes, he'd seen a great example of that tonight. “It got even easier to sleep my grief away when Paula took care of everything. Taking Lexi to school, cooking for her, taking her to doctor's appointments. She said she just wanted to help, but I needed the kind of help they weren't giving me. And then Richard changed everything.”

“How?”

If only she'd seen it coming. “He filed for custody of Lexi.”

“He what?” Jack's eyebrows rose.

“You heard me right. Later they tried to tell me that they wanted to do it so that they could make legal decisions for Lexi, like sign her up for school, without bothering me. They wanted to let me grieve. Get better in my own time. What they did had the opposite effect they wanted: it woke me up. I had a daughter to raise, and I could no longer afford to feel sorry for myself.”

“Never saw you as someone who felt sorry for herself.”

“I did for a while. The thing is, when someone so close to you is so suddenly just gone, you're left to think about every time you let them down, every harsh word spoken without thinking, everything left undone.”

The light shifted in Jack's eyes, and he stared at her in silence. Somehow, he understood.

“Finally I made some phone calls and collected the small life insurance policy Matt left for us. A few days later, I bought my used car, and then I rented this house and moved us in. It isn't much, but it's home. And as it turned out, we didn't have to go to court because Richard came to his senses. He must have realized with everything I'd done he no longer stood a chance. But the truth is, I had sunk into a pit, and if it wasn't for my faith I'm not sure I could have climbed back out again.”

“I get it now. It's hard to forgive what they did to you.” Jack nodded.

“I had to forgive them, but it's still hard to trust them.” Sure, she wasn't proud of it, but God knew so no use trying to hide it from Him.

“You don't have to forgive anyone,” Jack stated firmly, with more sternness than she would have expected. “Some things are not forgivable.”

Maggie locked gazes with him, because there was something he needed to understand. “Everything can be forgiven. No one deserves it, but that has nothing to do with it. If Christ forgave me, I think I can forgive them.”

“You sound like the pastor.”

“That was a great sermon. I wish I'd understood it when I was younger. Maybe I wouldn't have stayed away from the church for so long after I had Lexi.”

“So what will you do? You know they'll be back tomorrow.”

“I'll let Lexi decide.”

Jack blinked. “Is that a good idea?”

“You haven't seen Richard around Lexi. He adores her, and she feels the same way about both of her grandparents. I don't want Lexi to feel torn between us anymore. Maybe that's why she's been so difficult lately. Lexi lost her father. I don't want her to lose the last link she has to him. Even if it makes things harder for me.”

“You're amazing.” He spoke the words slowly, and his eyes seemed to say the words even more than his lips did.

The compliment shook her, coming as it did from a man who didn't look like he handed them over with ease. “Oh please.”

“I mean it.”

I'm not the amazing one, my God is.
The emotion behind those words made them catch in her throat.

She didn't imagine it when she caught Jack staring at her lips, which only made her stare at his, but instead of breaking away, she wanted to lean in closer.

But Jack rose suddenly almost as if he'd remembered he'd left the oven on, or a candle burning next door. “I've got to go.”

As he moved swiftly to the front door, Maggie remembered the dog. “What about Chief? Should he stay here for the night? I'm sure Lexi wouldn't mind, and I can bring him over in the morning.”

He turned to her, his hand on the doorknob and some kind of unspoken panic she couldn't decipher in his eyes. “Sure. That would be great.” Instead of opening the door, he stood towering over her with a look of tenderness that made her breath hitch.

“Do you have to go?” Maggie dared to ask.
Yes, he does. Let him go.

His large warm hand traced the curve of her face. “I think I do.”

Maggie nodded. “See you tomorrow.”

“Count on it.”

Oh, she was, more than she wanted to admit.

 

 

 

 

10

 

What had he been thinking? Answer: probably not much, since he'd been too busy staring at her lips. Soft, luscious lips he'd wanted to kiss, whether it was a good idea or not. And, of course, it wasn't a good idea.

This was the second time he'd almost kissed Maggie, which meant he needed to get a handle on this because one thing he knew for certain. She deserved a much better man than he could ever be. Not only that, but last time he checked he had a goal, and it was to get back to Virginia. He'd already left too many things undone, and no way would he start something with Maggie that he couldn't finish. She didn't deserve that.

But tonight, when she'd talked about her loss, it had taken him back to his own. Her words could have been his. He and Robert had left too many things undone, and too many words unsaid. And if he'd only known it would be the last time he'd speak to his buddy, he might have come up with something better to say. He ran the back of his hand over his eyes.

Jack had pressed down on Robert's wound. The bullet had hit Robert in the stomach, not the chest. Had to be a good thing. There was time, still time. Plenty, and the paramedics were on their way.

Robert's eyes fluttered open. “Hey. I'm OK.”

“Yeah, you are,” Jack said.

“Where is he?” Robert probably meant their prisoner, Luther Williamson, leader of the white supremacist group he'd worked hard to break up. The man guilty of the murder of a judge in Virginia. The prisoner they'd been transporting until everything had gone so wrong.

“Not for you to worry about,” Jack said. “He didn't get away.”

“What about the kid?” Robert asked through clenched teeth. He wasn't fooling anyone. The sweat drops on his forehead, the pale grayish shade of his skin told the story of his pain, not that Robert would let on.

Jack didn't want to talk about the kid, and Robert had to concentrate on holding on until the paramedics got here. Which, by the amount of loud sirens he heard in the background, would be imminently.

“Don't worry about the kid,” Jack said, forgetting that his partner could read him like one of his favorite crime paperback novels. And where were those ambulances?

“Right,” Robert spit out. “Don't worry, bro, I would have done the same.”

No, he wouldn't have. Robert Craig didn't know the meaning of the word hesitate. He'd have taken care of business without a single thought. Execute. Mitigate loss of life.

The paramedics arrived, and Jack jumped out of their way. Let them work their magic. He had to call Kimberly anyway, let her know Robert was probably on the way to surgery.

There'd be one truck on the way to the hospital, one on the way to the morgue, but he only cared about one of the ambulances.

The paramedics were loading Robert on a stretcher when he grabbed Jack's arm. “Hey bud, he wants to know if I'm allergic to anything. Tell him what I'm allergic to, would you?”

In spite of himself, Jack managed to crack a small smile. Leave it to Robert. Jack glanced at the two paramedics staring at him in expectation.

“Bullets. He's allergic to bullets.”

The paramedics shook their heads and loaded Robert into the back of the ambulance. If that joke was any indication, Jack felt great relief course through his veins. Robert would be fine.

“Call Kimberly, tell her I love her and the girls,” Robert said before they shut the doors.

“You'll tell her yourself. You'll be fine,” Jack said.

The last words he'd ever said to Robert Craig, and he hadn't thought about them in close to a year. It was easier to forget than have to regret. Unfortunately, Maggie had forced him to remember.

Just like she forced him to feel something, when he'd tried to numb it all. And mostly he'd had success, until now. First, her kid getting under his skin, and now Maggie. Except that the way Maggie got under his skin didn't feel like a bad thing. She made his heart race in a good way. But they were a package deal, and both of them were far too much trouble.

God, I swore I'd never have anything to do with You again, but Maggie seems to count on You. So if You're real, please make the pain stop. At least for one night.

The sound of someone pounding on his door jerked him awake, and the first thing he noticed was that the light filtering through the blinds had changed. No longer moonlight. He rubbed his eyes, but no doubt about it. Sunlight filtered through his blinds, and he'd slept all night.

Still in the jeans and t-shirt he'd changed into the previous night, he ambled to the door half-awake. The sleep felt like some kind of drug he couldn't shake off and he moved slow, almost lethargic. Strange.

“Are you OK? I don't think I've brought Chief back once when you haven't practically been at the door before I knocked,” Maggie said when he opened the door.