The Last Time I Saw Her (27 page)

“And there's you,” Michael's eyes met hers. “Why the hell would he come here looking for you?”

Charlie's new cell phone rang, interrupting before they could explore that thought any further. That she even had a cell phone was due to a pit stop she (well, actually they) had made by Walmart on the way to the Pioneer Inn. They'd done a quick dash in and out because Charlie had felt an urgent need to pick up a temporary phone so she could stay in touch with everything that was going on. Much as she was looking forward to spending the day with Michael, she was discovering that simply totally abandoning a search for missing hostages and serial killers was beyond her. On the drive from Walmart to the inn she'd called Tam to give her the number in case something came up, and she'd called Tony, too, for the same reason. Both calls had gone to voice mail, and her new phone now rested on the end table beside her as she waited for one or the other of them to call back.

This was Tony, calling back. Smiling as she listened, Charlie felt a flood of relief.

“They found the pickup. The two boys are safe, and Torres, Ware, and Doyle are back in custody.” Charlie reported what Tony had just finished telling her to Michael, who, having been drawn by the call, was standing beside her, looking down at her as she curled in the chair.

“That's good. I'm glad,” Michael said, while Tony, on the other end of the phone, asked sourly, “That him you're talking to?”

Charlie noticed that he didn't refer to Michael as Hughes.

“Yes,” she admitted.

“Well, hold on to your hat. I've got some other news for you. I had some state-of-the-art, don't-tell-the-bean-counters-how-much-it-cost testing done, using blood Hughes donated to an office blood drive right before he came up here. I had it compared to blood test results from Hughes's identical twin who was actually convicted of being the Southern Slasher. Hughes never had chicken pox.”

Charlie was momentarily at a loss. “What?”

“There were antibodies to the Varicella-zoster virus—chicken pox—in the blood of the twin who was convicted of being the Southern Slasher: Michael Garland. At some point in his life, Michael Garland had chicken pox. Rick Hughes did not. Blood left at the crime scenes by the Southern Slasher had the antibodies in it. Which means the right twin was convicted of being the Southern Slasher: Michael Garland, not Rick Hughes, killed those women.”

Disconnecting, Charlie stared at Michael.

He clearly was able to read in her face that something was up, because he frowned down at her.

“Did you ever have chicken pox?” she asked him. Her voice was only a little high-pitched.

His frown deepened. “I think so. When I was a little kid. Why?”

“Hughes never had chicken pox.”

“You want to get to the point here?”

“The genetic material left by the killer at the scenes of the Southern Slasher murders contained antibodies to the Varicella zoster virus, which is chicken pox. Hughes never had chicken pox. His blood doesn't have any antibodies to chicken pox in it. You did, and yours does. Hughes didn't do it.”

Feeling her chest tighten like it was being squeezed in a vice, Charlie watched as he took that in.

Then his face hardened, his mouth thinned, and his eyes flared at her.

“So I guess that makes me the Southern Slasher, huh?” Not a trace of intonation in his voice.

The evidence was there, and it was damning. The evil-twin thing had been so perfect, just the explanation for Michael's innocence she'd been searching for—but it was wrong. She had wanted it to be true so badly that she'd been guilty of the classic researcher's mistake, using evidence selectively to arrive at the desired outcome. But the cold, hard truth was this: Rick Hughes might be Michael's long-lost identical twin, but the Southern Slasher was not Hughes.

Which left Michael.

Charlie looked up at him, at the beautifully cut mouth, the straight nose, the square jaw, broad cheekbones and forehead, the thick, tawny hair. Eyes that were a hell-born black instead of their usual sky blue beneath straight dark brows. Intimidatingly tall and powerfully built. Outrageously handsome. Demonstrably dangerous. Able to break necks and sever spinal columns with ease. She'd seen him kill without hesitation or apparent compunction, although every time he'd killed since they'd been acquainted it had been to save her.

“Scared of me, babe?” There was a sneer in his voice. And something else, too: bitterness. A trace amount only, but it was there, in his voice and his face.

Charlie decided.

“In your dreams,” she said, putting the phone down and standing up. That brought her so close to him that their bodies brushed. She was immediately enveloped by the heat coming off him. His hands settled automatically on either side of her waist. Hers flattened against his chest. For a moment, the tiniest moment, she allowed herself to be distracted by the sleek warmth of his skin, the firm resilience of his muscles. Then she got a grip and met his eyes. “Guess what, pretty boy? I know you didn't kill those women, so you can go ahead and drop this whole badass vibe you've got going on.”

He looked at her. His face was still grim. Then one corner of his mouth twitched. “ ‘Pretty boy'?”

Charlie nodded. “Really pretty. Even Lena thinks so.” He was making a face as she went up on tiptoe to kiss him. “Remind me to tell you about it sometime,” she murmured, and pressed her mouth to his.

His arms came around her, and he kissed her back, and the magic that was them, the blazing sexual chemistry, the electric charge that sparked from his body to hers, ignited the air. He kissed her dizzy, and undressed her, and took her to bed. They made love until the sunlight slanting across the bed turned golden, until Charlie was so sated she could hardly move, until just lifting her head from Michael's shoulder where it rested was an effort.

But she did it.

They were lying sideways across the bed. Naked. On top of the fitted forest green bottom sheet, the top sheet and the other covers and pillows having been long since lost to the foot of the bed or the floor. He was flat on his back with an arm folded behind his head. She was tucked against his side. Stroking a hand down his chest, she took a moment to enjoy the tensile strength of his muscles and the damp warmth of his skin as well as the sheer masculine beauty of him. Bottom line: the guy was seriously hot, and she was seriously smitten.

His eyes were open. He was watching her look at him, and all that watching was having an interesting effect on an interesting part of his anatomy. But that was a diversion to be explored later. For now, there was something she needed to know. Propping an arm on his chest, rearing up higher so that she could see his eyes, she met his gaze.

His eyes promptly dipped to ogle her bare breasts that were hanging like ripe fruit just above his chest.

“Hey.” She snapped her fingers to get his attention. “Eyes on the face.”

He complied. His eyebrows rose questioningly at her.

“I love you,” she said.

His eyes narrowed slightly. His hand that had been lightly stroking the curve of her waist slid down to her hip and tightened.

“I know,” he said.

The look she gave him then was downright threatening. “That is so not going to be our code for
I love you, too.
”

The grin he gave her was so charming her toes curled. “I just wanted to see what you'd say.”

She frowned, pointedly waiting.

“I love you, too,” he said.

“There you go. That wasn't so hard, was it?” As he shook his head she regarded him meditatively. “Michael.”

He huffed out a breath. “Jesus, there's your we-need-to-talk face. No, we don't. There's lots of other things we can do.” His hand slid suggestively over her butt, fondling and squeezing.

“No.” Reaching for the top sheet, she dragged it back from the crevice between the mattress and the footboard it was lost in and wrapped it around herself as she wriggled around until she sat cross-legged on the mattress beside him. “I want to know why you ended up in Spookville.”

He regarded her unsmilingly. For a moment she thought he wasn't going to answer. Then he said, “Could have been a lot of things. Who knows?”

“You know.”

Picking up her hand, he carried it to his mouth and kissed her palm, then let his lips crawl down the sensitive skin on the inside of her arm. “I know how soft your skin is. How sweet it smells. How—”

She yanked her arm away from him. “Just so you know, what you're doing here is classic avoidance. When individuals opt to avoid a subject, it's usually because it's something that carries a great deal of pain for them. Quite often there's shame associated with it, too, and—”

Michael growled and sat up. “Would you stop with the shrink shit, please?”

“Will you tell me why you were sent to Spookville?”

Their eyes warred.

Michael said, “I was wrong. A bulldog's got nothing on you.”

“Michael. Please. I need to know.”

He looked at her. His face tightened. His jaw grew hard. “Babe, you ever think that maybe you don't want to know?”

She regarded him steadily. “Whatever you did, I know that it wasn't evil. So I'm not worried.”

He snorted. “You got any more of those rose-colored glasses you're wearing on you? Because I could sure use a pair.”

She just looked at him.

“Fine,” he said. Stretching out a long arm, he snagged a pillow from the floor and flopped back down on the mattress with it stuffed behind his head. Catching a corner of the sheet she was wrapped in, he pulled it over himself so that he was minimally decent. He slanted a look at her. “You remember I told you how Sean died?”

She did. As a member of Marine Force Recon in Afghanistan, pinned down by a vicious enemy, Michael had been forced to shoot his mortally wounded buddy to survive.

“Yes,” she said. Her hand crept into his. His fingers entwined with hers, but she wasn't sure it was a conscious act on his part. He was staring up at the ceiling.

“After that, our unit was broken up, and I was given another assignment. Black ops stuff. There were a few of us. We worked with military intelligence. Our job was to facilitate the mission by going in clandestinely and taking out high-value targets. Wet work. We'd already been doing some, Sean and Hoop and Cap and me, but this took it to a whole different level.” He glanced at her, and must have decided that she wasn't following because he spelled it out. “We were assassins, babe. We killed up close and personal. Sometimes a lot of lives could be saved if a particular leader or bomb maker or someone like that was taken out individually. That's what we did. That's what I did. Went in, eliminated the designated target as quietly and with as little collateral damage as possible, and got out. I was good at it and I had no problem with what I was doing. Remember how you were always asking me if I felt remorse? No, I never did. It was my job. Most of the people I served with, Sean and Cap and Hoop and everybody else, they had people they loved, people who loved them. Families, people they wanted to go back to. I was different. Fundamentally different, do you understand? Like there was a giant coldness inside me. I didn't love anybody, didn't have anybody I wanted to get back to, didn't give a fuck about anybody or anything. I could do what needed to be done, and afterward I could sleep at night just fine. I always wondered if the military knew that about me, and that's why I was given the job they gave me.” He looked at her again then. “Just so we're clear, I did that for a little over two years. I killed whoever they told me to kill. No mercy, not a bit. And no, no fucking remorse.”

Charlie consciously stopped herself from sucking in air. If her fingers tightened on his, well, that was just reflexive. “You followed orders. You did what you were told to do.”

His mouth twisted. He slanted a glance at her. “That excuse won't get you off in a court here on earth, much less the court I'm facing.”

“Whoever's in charge of these things in the universe can't decide to hold you accountable because of something the military ordered you to do!”

“I guess whoever's in charge can decide any damned thing they want.”

“It's not fair! You never had a chance! Your childhood—you were abused—your mother”—she gave a snort of scornful laughter—“what mother? That woman was not a mother! You—”

“Babe, I'm a grown-ass man, and have been for a while now. You can't go blaming all the shit I've done on a crappy childhood and a bad mother.” He brought their joined hands up to rest on his chest. “Truth is, I didn't do anything I wasn't perfectly willing to do. And anyway, that's not the worst of it.”

She pressed her lips tightly together as their eyes met. “Tell me,” she said.

“Hoop and Cap were with another unit, and that unit—the survivors of that unit, because there was a hell of a firefight first—got captured. There was a lot of noise about what the enemy was going to do to them, that they were planning to make a big spectacle out of beheading them or maybe burning them alive. So a group went in to get them out. It was all volunteer, because it was pretty much a suicide mission, deep in the mountains, deep in enemy territory. Getting in was doable because nobody knew we were coming, but getting out—” He broke off, shook his head, and looked at the ceiling again. “Eight of us went in there, three of us came out. We brought five prisoners out with us. The survivors. They were in rough shape, we were mostly carrying them on our backs. Cap made it out. Hoop didn't. He was dead when we got there. So there's eight of us hustling through these mountains that make our mountains around here look like a park in Kansas, with half the Afghan army on our tail. We're skirting around the villages, trying to get to a point where some choppers or AMTRACs can get in there and get us, when we walk right into this group of villagers having some kind of meeting in the woods. There's like six of them. Men, most of them old, a couple not. They see us, we see them. Nothing to do. So we round them up, and we have this quick little debate. If we let them go, they'll run straight to their village and we're fucked. If we tie them up, the minute they get loose or are found they'll tell everything they know about us, and we're fucked again. I knew from the beginning that the only thing to do was kill them, but we took a vote and the vote was that we were going to leave them tied to a tree. So we leave them tied to a tree. Every single one of us knows it's a bad decision, that it's going to come back and bite us in the ass big-time. So I make the call, just to myself, don't say a word to the others, and I go back and shoot them. I shot unarmed civilians. The youngest looked like he was maybe fourteen. After that, we made it out, all of us, alive. I looked at it the way it was, us or them.”

Listening, Charlie's heart seized up. Her insides quivered. Her throat tightened, all with horror for the fate of those men—and for him. His voice was totally devoid of inflection. His face was as expressionless as a wall.

He continued, “Cap got killed about a month later. IED. I finished my tour three months after that.” He must have felt the emotions she was trying hard to keep contained because he looked at her then. “I told you from the get-go I've done some bad things. I'm a killer. I just don't happen to be a serial killer who slices up women.”

But despite his denials, he'd been haunted by what he'd done, by those whose lives he had taken, by the villagers, by the thought that he'd killed a teenager. She knew it by the expressionlessness of his face, the lack of intonation in his voice, by his body language. She knew it by the way he reacted to kids who were in danger now. He might say he felt no remorse. He might even believe he felt no remorse. But it was there, buried deep under a ton of denial, eating him alive. He'd never forgiven himself for the things he had done, and her heart turned over at the knowledge.

He was looking at her, watching her, waiting for her verdict, for her judgment, although she knew he would die before he'd admit it. His face was completely unreadable. His hand gripped hers hard.

All kinds of things that she wanted to say to him crowded into her head. Things like: deeds done in the fog of war don't count; surviving at all costs is the oldest human instinct there is; you almost certainly saved the lives of the men you were with that day.