The Newlyweds (19 page)

“What is it?” she asked. “What's going on?”

“Baker's been spotted at a diner just north of town. He ordered something to go. The waitress had just seen him on the news. She said he was traveling north on a state highway when he left, one that leads right into the mountains. And there's nothing for miles there. No place for him to hide. No place to run. We've got him.”

“Who's going after him?” Bridget asked.

“Davis and Jones are right behind him,” Pennington said.

Sam. Sam was going after Everett Baker. She wished Pennington had told her it was someone else. But he'd be fine, she reminded herself. He'd promised her he would be.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked.

“Just sit tight,” Pennington told her. “This thing is coming to an end. Finally. I'll call you when I know anything more.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I'll be right here.”

She hung up the phone feeling both better and worse. Baker was still at large, and that wasn't good. Sam was on his tail, and that wasn't good, either, because it meant he wasn't entirely out of danger. But they'd caught the other bad guys. And Baker wasn't violent. Plus, Sam was very good at his job.

He'd be fine, she told herself again. He'd be fine.

They could talk when he got home, she thought
further as she climbed the stairs to her bedroom. As she washed her face and brushed her teeth, she rehearsed all the things they would say to each other. She was too tired to change into her pajamas, so she pulled back the bedspread and climbed into bed in the clothes she'd been wearing all day. And as she closed her eyes and willed herself to relax, to go to sleep, she found herself smiling.

Home,
she repeated to herself. Soon Sam would be home. And she would, too. Maybe home wouldn't be the house they'd been sharing for the past month. But wherever Sam was, that would be her home. And she hoped he felt the same way about her.

They'd talk soon, she told herself. Just as soon as they both got home.

 

Nancy's apartment building was completely dark when Everett arrived there what seemed like days after abandoning the baby at the motel and driving off with Samuel Jones on his heels. He hugged the brick wall and slunk away from a gash of yellow streetlight that spilled down the alley behind the building, panting hard and trying to get hold of his thoughts. He glanced down at his watch, its luminous dial telling him it was almost four o'clock in the morning.

Nine hours. It had been only nine hours since he'd left the motel. He could scarcely believe it. In nine hours, he'd abandoned a child that had probably been kidnapped from its mother at some point, had run from federal authorities, had been cornered by two of them and had shot at them! He! Everett Baker! He'd shot at FBI agents! He hadn't aimed, of course, and he was reasonably sure he hadn't hit anything, but the fact remained that he, a man who could never conceive of
hurting anyone, had deliberately put someone's life in danger. It was like a bad dream. But the pounding of his heart told him it was all too real.

But what else could he do? he asked himself as he tried to catch his breath. After leaving the motel, Everett hadn't been able to resist going to Charlie's to see if the feds had closed in on him yet. But as he'd approached Charlie's apartment building, the place had been overrun with people in blue windbreakers with FBI stenciled on the back of them in big white letters and he'd panicked. He hadn't wanted to show himself to the authorities, and suddenly he was stumbling right in front of them.

So he'd turned a block before arriving at Charlie's building, thinking maybe he'd go to Nancy's instead. Tell her what had happened. Try to think of some way to make her understand. He'd been so confused by then, and he'd figured she'd know what to do. She was smart, levelheaded, his Nancy. And she cared about him. She loved him. She wouldn't turn her back on him the way so many other people had. But just as Everett had made the decision to go see her, he'd heard sirens erupt behind him. Someone must have seen him turn, caught a glimpse of his license plate or decided he was suspicious, and they'd come after him.

And that was when Everett had really panicked.

He'd stomped on the accelerator as hard as he could, and his car had shot forward with enough speed and force that he'd nearly driven right off the road. He hadn't given a thought to where he was driving, had only known he needed to get away. He'd run red lights, cut people off, nearly run down a trio of pedestrians. He hadn't cared. Hadn't even noticed. He'd just driven.
And he'd kept driving until he left the city limits. But the car following him had stayed with him somehow.

At last he felt sure he'd lost his pursuer, and he risked stopping to buy something to fill his empty stomach. But not long after leaving the diner he'd braved a look in the rearview mirror and had seen an ordinary black sedan, the kind used by federal law-enforcement officers, following him again. And the next thing Everett had known, he was driving into the mountains, and there was nothing for miles but trees and trees and more trees.

Even though he'd known it was useless, that there was no way he would lose them, he'd turned onto a dirt road and kept driving. Higher and higher into the mountains, farther and farther from Portland. And still he hadn't been able to think clearly, still he had simply reacted to the panic and terror that were, by then, overtaking him. He'd finally stopped his car and jumped out. But not before grabbing the gun that Charlie had given him so long ago, and which Everett, repulsed by the ugly thing, had stuck in the glove compartment and forgotten about. He'd started to run into the woods and he'd fired over his shoulder as he ran.

He'd run farther into the woods after that, until he'd feared he was well and truly lost, but had stumbled back out on the edge of the highway just after dark. He'd risked accepting a ride from a trucker, figuring since the man was driving toward Portland, he couldn't have seen any of the local news reports yet. But he'd still asked the man to drop him off on the outskirts of the city. From there Everett had jogged the half-dozen miles to Nancy's apartment.

He couldn't have hit anyone, he tried to reassure himself, recalling again the way he had fired blindly at
the agents. He hadn't even been looking where he was pointing the damned gun. And FBI agents always wore bulletproof vests, didn't they? He couldn't have hit them. Couldn't have hurt them. He didn't think he'd be able to live with himself if he found out he had. It was going to be bad enough having to deal with the things he'd already done.

Oh, please, God, don't let me have hurt anyone. Not any more than I already have…

Everett squeezed his eyes shut tight and sent the silent plea up into the dark night overhead. But when he opened his eyes again, he saw that the clouds were so thick and black above him that he wasn't even sure his words had reached the place he wanted them to go.

Nancy, he thought again as he gazed up at the big brick building. He needed to talk to Nancy. She'd know what to do. She'd take care of him. She was a good woman. Everett really didn't deserve her. But he hoped, after he told her all the things he needed to tell her, that she'd at least try to see beneath it all to the man he used to be, the man he could have been, if only things had been different. Maybe she'd even come with him when he left Portland, which he knew he had to do. Tonight.

He waited a few more minutes to gather his thoughts, to make sense of what he wanted to say to her. But there was so much, so many things he needed to tell her, and he wasn't sure he'd be able to make her understand. So in the end, he just decided to start at the beginning and do his best to figure it all out as he went. With one final deep breath to steady his irregular pulse, Everett smoothed out his rumpled clothes, straightened his wrinkled tie and wiped the perspiration from his brow with the handkerchief he always kept in his pocket. And
then, squaring his shoulders, he circled the perimeter of the building to the front and entered it.

The short walk down the hall to Nancy's front door seemed to take him forever to complete. Even when he arrived, he stood there for a moment, just looking at the tarnished brass number affixed to it. Finally, though, he lifted his hand and knocked. Once, twice, three times, four.

After a moment, he heard a voice on the other side, Nancy's voice, soft and sweet, call out, “Who is it? Who's there?” But she sounded scared, obviously concerned about who would come to her door at this time of night.

“Nancy,” Everett called out, loud enough for her to hear, but quietly enough so as not to rouse any of her neighbors. “It's me. It's Everett. I need to talk to you.”

“Everett?” she repeated, her voice full of concern now.

But he heard her slip the chain from its groove and then open the two bolts that kept it locked. When she opened the door, he could see that he'd woken her from sleep. Her short brown hair was messy, a little flat on one side where she must have been sleeping on it. And her hazel eyes were squinting at him, as if unused to even the scant light of the hallway outside. She wore a plain white cotton nightgown and had thrown a blue plaid robe over it. But never had Everett seen a more beautiful sight.

“What is it?” she asked quietly. “My goodness, Everett, you look like the hounds of hell have been snapping at your feet.”

Close, he thought. That was close to what he'd experienced today. Too close, in fact. “I need to talk to you,” he told her without preamble. “It's important.”

She nodded. “About what?”

It all came crashing down on Everett then, everything that had happened to him since leaving St. Louis. And
even before that. Joleen's confession about his real identity. His struggle to get through college. His trouble in high school. His sadness and loneliness as a child. But most of all, everything he had done since meeting Charlie Prescott. How could he explain? he wondered. How could he tell her and make her understand? How could she still care for him once she knew?

“There's so much, Nancy,” he said helplessly. “So much I need to tell you. I scarcely know where to begin.”

She still looked concerned, but she smiled tentatively and reached for his hand. “Just start at the beginning,” she told him. “And it will be all right.”

Everett wasn't sure that was true, but he held her hand tightly and lifted it to his mouth for a brief kiss.

“Come in,” she said, tugging him inside. “I'll put on some coffee and then you can tell me everything.”

 

Bridget was jolted to a rude awakening by the rapid-fire chiming of the doorbell. Squinting at the clock through the gray light of morning, she saw that it wasn't even six o'clock. She'd slept for less than four hours, and only fitfully at that. No wonder she felt so groggy.

Then it hit her. Someone was ringing her doorbell before 6:00 a.m. That couldn't possibly mean they had good news. Leaping from bed, she hurtled herself down the stairs and pulled open the front door without even bothering to see who was on the other side. And when she saw that it was Special Agent in Charge Steve Pennington—without Sam—it was all Bridget could do not to fall to her knees and weep.

“Sam…?” she said.

Pennington met her gaze levelly, his mouth grim. But all he said was, “I'm sorry, Bridget.”

No, she thought. No, no, no, no, no. “Where is he?” she demanded. He couldn't be… He must just be injured. Maybe unconscious. He wasn't… “What hospital is he in?” she asked.

Pennington's eyes closed for a moment, then opened again. But he remained stone-cold steely when he said, “He's not in the hospital, Bridget. He's dead.”

No! No, no, no, no, no!

The words wouldn't leave her mouth, though, just kept ricocheting around in her head, burning her every time they hit. She shook her head, slowly at first, and then more adamantly. No. He wasn't… He couldn't be… He was supposed to be coming home. They were supposed to talk. They were supposed to be together. Forever.

For God's sake, she
loved
him! He couldn't be…He couldn't.

“He and Davis caught up with Everett Baker about an hour north of town,” Pennington continued, even though Bridget was barely registering what he had to say. What difference did it make how it had happened? Sam was… And nothing would change that. “When Baker realized they were following him, he pulled to the side of the road and jumped out of the car and started running toward the woods.”

Pennington paused there, seeming to realize Bridget wasn't really listening. “Bridget?” he asked.

“What?” she said numbly.

“Baker was armed,” Pennington continued. “He shot at our agents. He hit Sam. I'm sorry. I wish I could give you better news. I know you and Sam… Well, I know you two became friends during the investigation. I'm sorry it ended this way.”

Bridget nodded, grateful for the encapsulated
version.
Friends,
she repeated to herself. Right. “I'm sorry, too,” she said.

“There is some good news, though,” Pennington added.

Oh, goody, Bridget thought sarcastically. Whatever it was, it was sure to take the sting out of Sam's death.

When she said nothing in response, Pennington continued, “Thanks to our investigation of Charlie Prescott's computer records, we have all the information we need about how the black-market baby ring operated. Prescott kept meticulous records of every illegal transaction that incriminated not only himself and Kosanisky, but Everett Baker, as well. We'll have no trouble at all putting things to right again. And when we catch Baker—and I promise you, Bridget, we will catch Baker—we'll have enough evidence to put him away for a long time, whether he cooperates with us or not.”

Bridget nodded. Yay. Hooray. None of it brought Sam back. Nothing would do that.