Promises in the Dark (38 page)

It’s prison, it’s different
, she repeated to herself.

Her brother and what he’d done was her secret since she’d moved here to this large New York hospital. She was twenty-six and she still looked slightly haunted, some might say, but the anonymity was something she craved … something she needed as much as air.

Even though she used her stepfather’s last name, it would be easy enough to tie her to the horrible tragedy that occurred. It was so far in the past for most people that she’d thought, by now, she was safe. But she of all people should know better. She would never be safe from any of it.

Still, the news report signaled the first time anyone had found her since she’d gone off to college. She’d kept her identity hidden, cut her hair short and died it darker, wore glasses even though she didn’t need them, and made up a fictional background that basically left her an orphan.

She wore her hair long and back to its natural blond again now—and no more glasses, since she was old enough not to be recognized as the girl she once was. But as of today, her security was gone.

The entire staff was glued to the television. One by one, they’d turn surreptitiously to look at her, to try to see the resemblance between her and that young girl in shock. She could see the questions in their eyes—and she understood.

Everyone wanted to know what it was like to live with evil. She would do anything in her power if she could only forget.

Paige, are you going to allow yourself to be interviewed for the new book on your brother’s crimes?

Paige, after all these years, are you ready to talk about what happened?

She shut the front door without a word to them and locked herself in her apartment. The press continued to knock on the front door until her landlady threatened to call the police on them.

Paige didn’t bother to open her door to thank her, didn’t want to face her landlady’s questioning eyes. No doubt she already knew.

Exhaustion covered her in a sudden, debilitating wave. She felt as if she’d been on the move since the murders.

In the beginning, before Jeffrey went on trial, it had taken exactly fifteen minutes before the first news crews camped out and seven days before the first hate mail showed up. There were news articles and magazine covers and books that all tried to make sense of what had happened, all asking,
How could the parents not have known?

Anonymous death threats and accusations followed, resulting in six moves in that first year until the trial was over and many people felt as though justice was served. Then some of the parents of the murdered teens had wanted to bring Paige’s parents up on criminal charges, but that hadn’t happened. Still there were civil suits, and even though there was never a judgment found against Paige’s family, the trials had still drained them physically and emotionally and bled them financially.

The saddest part of the entire ordeal was that neither Paige nor her parents blamed any of the victims’ families for anything they did. Their own guilt was too deeply imbedded in them to do so.

Now that guilt became so all pervasive that she didn’t leave her apartment. She wrapped herself in her quilt and stayed in bed. But nearly forty-eight hours after she’d left the ER, once the press had finally left her alone, she got a phone call from a man whose name she recognized from the recent newspaper articles.

“I’m writing a book about your brother, and I’d love to interview you,” the man said after introducing himself as Adrian Weiss, and her skin began to crawl.

“Don’t you ever contact me again,” she whispered, her voice raw as if she’d been screaming for days. But really, that had only been inside of her head.

“Don’t you want your side of the story told?” he asked. “I’m interviewing the victims’ families and friends, and I think your point of view would be invaluable.”

She hung up on him and unplugged the land line. Mind made up, she packed as much as she could into two suitcases and figured the rest she could call a wash. She’d miss the landlady, a widow who often dropped homemade cake and cookies off to Paige, especially around the holidays.

Yesterday had been Christmas Day—she had the half-eaten apple pie and a plate of ham and mashed potatoes to prove it. Mrs. Morris had been kind enough to simply knock and leave them outside the door, as if she knew Paige still couldn’t face her.

She’d lived here two years, a tidy, furnished, one-bedroom apartment in the borough of Queens, close enough to Manhattan to get back and forth to work easily without the ridiculous rent. She’d bought herself a new mattress, a small TV stand, and some kitchen utensils in all that time, preferring take-out and extra shifts at the hospital.

The most valuable things—the photo albums and Gray’s medals and letters—those she packed up and dragged down to the car with her, but not without checking first to make sure that no one was hanging around. But it was dark and she appeared to be alone in the small driveway.

She hoped her old car could make this trip to the Catskills. Sometimes it barely made it across town.

She wore the thickest sweater she owned and still wasn’t warm enough. She suspected she never could be. She jacked the heat up as high as the small car would allow and ignored her own racing pulse and butterflies in the stomach. Two hours of highway driving left her on the two-lane road that would lead her to the small town named after a cow, and she realized that her head felt clearer up here.

Or maybe she was light-headed from the change in altitude.

Fingers tapped the wheel as the truck in front of her car lumbered slowly along. She peered at the sky and then turned off the radio, tired of hearing how the early-for-the-season snowstorm would be the worst of the century.

She hadn’t called ahead. Mace—Gray’s best friend—wouldn’t know she was coming. Better that way. She’d always believed that the element of surprise was most effective—based on her own experience and hatred of surprises, she could say that with firsthand certainty.

But if she ever wanted to find out what happened to her stepbrother, she’d have to speak to his teammate.

The army wouldn’t tell her anything. She’d waited for his friends to show up at the memorial service, but none of them did. It would be up to her to find them, and this seemed the perfect time.

Everything happens for a reason
, her mother used to say, and Paige wondered what this reason was, why Gray was taken from her … why her face was plastered on the news.

Gray had always told her to go to Mace if anything ever happened and he wasn’t around.
Mace will take care of you
.

She’d met Mace once, when she lived in Chicago. Gray and Mace had stayed at her apartment overnight—they’d been on leave and traveling to California for vacation. She could still hear Gray introducing him.

Hey, sis, this is Mace. He’s motorpool, like me
.

Translation: He’s Delta
.

She’d been on her way out to work the night shift, but Mace’s eyes had haunted her the entire time. He was broad and handsome and seemed to take up the entire apartment.

She’d hated him on sight. Maybe because he was handsome. Cocky. An asshole. And she’d labeled him all of that before he’d even opened his mouth.

When he’d spoken to her, it was all one-word answers.

She’d had to work that evening, so spending time with him hadn’t been an option. But the next morning the men were there later than she’d realized. She’d come in from work after having breakfast out with some other nurses on the night shift and dropped her stuff by the door. The pocketknife sat on the table next to the keys and jackets, and she picked it up, assuming it was Gray’s.

It hadn’t been. The images of fear came spiraling through the metal before she could stop them. She’d wanted to throw the knife down, but she couldn’t. She saw a young boy. Saw fear and mistrust—and the words
trust
and then
escape
, over and over again.

The man this knife belonged to had been through hell as a child. And suddenly she was glad she’d been working last night. Even though she understood tough childhoods, she didn’t need to take on any more than she had.

But that hadn’t been the end of their encounter.

She’d walked in on Mace, sleeping naked in her bedroom—in her bed. She’d given him and Gray her room, despite their protests that they’d be fine on the couch.

Gray had been in the shower.

She’d wanted to tear her gaze away from Mace but hadn’t been able to for a good long while. Although she was used to seeing the human body on a regular basis, she remembered having never seen anything so exquisitely male.

In those four years since she’d seen him, she’d been with a handful of men, none of whom really mattered. No, she’d never been able to shake Mace from her mind, and, to be fair, she hadn’t really tried.