Trust Me (27 page)

"As if the government owes it to every prisoner to reeducate him.

Prisons aren' t built to serve people who break the law. Prison is supposed to be a punishment, a deterrent to future crime."

"But I didn't do anything wrong to begin with."

"You went home with her, didn't you?"

The bitterness in her voice shocked him. "Who are you?" he asked at length. "I don't know you anymore!"

Her eyes narrowed. "So? That's not nearly as frightening as the fact that I might not know you!"

He glanced away because he didn't like the ugliness in her face. "So, after everything I've been through, you're going to doubt me? Is that how it's going to be? I haven't suffered enough?"

They glared at each other. Then, deflating like a punctured balloon, Jane covered her face with her hands. "I-I'm sorry. I'm tired and--and worried, that's all. And that detective. He's getting inside my head."

"What detective? Willis?"

"Who else?"

"Has he been harassing you?"

"Not really. He's just so.. .certain."

A moment earlier, the pain from his knife wound had made it impossible to lie in any position except one. Now Oliver was so preoccupied 171

he could scarcely feel his injury. "You used to be just as certain I was innocent."

"I still am." She smiled, but there was no commitment in her voice, no faith in her eyes.

Suddenly, he wanted her to leave, to get out of his sight. When had she gotten so hideous? "Can you find my spiral notebook?"

"It's in the trunk of my car, with your other belongings. But.. .you're hurt. Do you think you can write?"

"I have to write. It helps me sort out my thoughts."

"Yeah. I remember." She shrugged wearily into her coat and placed the strap of her purse over her shoulder. "No problem. Anything else?"

How about a little loyalty? And some gratitude for the money and social status I provided before Skye managed to bring it all to a grinding halt? "No, thanks." He smiled despite the anger surging through him, which wasn't that difficult. He prided himself on being able to hide what he was really thinking and feeling. He could fool just about anyone, even his parents.

"I'm sorry, Oliver," she said. "I--I know you've been through a lot.

Prison must've been terrible."

Eager for more pain medication, he pressed the nurse's call button.

"I'm glad to be out." He allowed some of his disappointment to show because he knew it'd heighten her guilt. "You'd think having me home would be a positive thing for you, too."

"It will be. I mean.. .it is. We've got a lot of time to make up for, that's all."

"I understand." He poured enough warmth into those words that she finally nodded.

"Okay, I'll run and get your book."

"Can you turn on the TV before you go?"

"Sure." She changed channels until she found the local news, then bent over the railing of his bed to kiss him in a rather awkward brush of the lips. "I'll bring your notebook in a few minutes."

"Thanks," he said. Then he made a face at her back and turned to the television, hoping it'd entertain him until a nurse arrived.

A short brunette wearing a blue smock responded to his summons shortly after Jane had brought him his notebook, but by then he wasn't feeling much pain. He was preoccupied again. And not with writing.

"Good morn--"

"Shh!" He lifted a hand to indicate absolute silence. The announcer hadjust started talking about something Oliver didn't want to miss. A delta 172

woman had shot and killed an intruder last night.

Her picture flashed across the screen before the announcer could give her name but Oliver didn't need to hear another word. He recognized the woman instantly: It was Skye Kellerman.

"How are you feeling today?" the nurse asked when his eyes, if not his thoughts, shifted back to her.

"Better," he said. "I'm ready to go home."

"I don't think I can do this." Jane's voice shook as she held her cell phone with one hand and the steering wheel with the other. She'd left the hospital twenty minutes earlier, was on her way to Sacramento, but she'd had to wait to call Noah until he reached his office. She'd used the plugged-toilet excuse too many times. And everyone in Oliver's family knew she wasn't at home, anyway. "How am I going to get through the next year? Two years, five years..."

"What do you mean?" he asked. "Surviving Oliver's prison term--that was supposed to be the hard part. Now you'll have some support."

"It doesn't matter. This is worse. There's nothing left. I--I don't love him anymore. I don't want to...to be his wife. I--"

"Don't say that," he interrupted. "He just got out yesterday, and he couldn't even go home like we expected. This is a stressful time for everyone."

"No kidding." Even Noah's loyalties were split. She couldn't win. She sobbed, a little hysterically, then noticed that the woman driving the car next to hers was watching, as if a crying woman was some kind of carnival act.

Jane's stomach twisted. Hadn't she already endured more than her fair share of unwanted attention?

"Yes, I'm a freak," she shouted, even though the woman couldn't hear her. "My life is shit because my husband's a fucking murderer!"

"Jane!" Noah yelled. Obviously, he was appalled, but she had no idea whether it was her burst of temper, the obscenity or the slight to his brother that bothered him. She didn't care. She couldn't have him. She couldn't break up his family, add more pain and stress to the lives of those she loved. She wasn't sure she'd be able to steal him, even if she decided to put her own needs ahead of everyone else's. And that called into question Noah's love for her. Something she'd been relying on that might no longer exist. Oliver's release was changing everything.

The gawking driver slowed to get another look at her. So Jane gave her the finger and laughed mirthlessly as the other woman sped away. Jane could almost hear her thinking, "My God, that woman's lost her mind."

Maybe she had lost her mind. Maybe, after everything that had 173

happened, she was finally cracking up....

"You don't really believe Oliver's a murderer," Noah was saying, trying to calm her by using his "soothing" voice. "He's as innocent as I am.

And this has been tough on him, too."

"So I'm supposed to feel sorry for him?"

"He was asking for trouble when he went home with Skye Kellerman," he conceded. "But he's not what the detective claims."

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and dried it on her sweater. "I'm beginning to wonder," she said.

"You're upset, and you've got every reason to be, but don't lose faith, Jane. He's Kate's father."

"I can't help losing faith." Reaching across the seat, she fumbled in the glove compartment for a napkin. "After what you told me about Skye coming to visit you--"

"She has nerve, I'll give her that."

"But she wouldn't have approached you unless she really believes Oliver's dangerous. She doesn't have anything to gain."

He didn't seem to have a good argument to counter that, so he responded with an aside. "She had no business snooping around in the first place. I resent her butting in."

That was a whole other issue. Now her husband's victim, if victim was the right word, was watching her every move, prying into her private life.

But the fact that Skye had caught Jane with Noah and hadn't done anything about it, other than warn them to be careful, made Jane wonder if Skye could really be the evil bitch she wanted to believe.

Jane had to believe Skye was lying in order to trust that Oliver was telling the truth. But now... "She's probably frightened, too," she mumbled, letting herself imagine, for the first time, what Skye had to be feeling--what she must have felt all along--if she was being honest about what had happened. Had Oliver really crept into her bedroom with a knife? Tried to rape her?

That kind of behavior was so far from what her husband was capable of. She'd known him since he was sixteen!

But Willis believed Skye....

"Willis came by last week," she told Noah. "He warned me to keep a close eye on Oliver."

"You don't need to hear that crap," he said, sounding disgusted. "He's just being selfish."

"How?" she demanded. Everyone had a different view, and they were all so confident in their opinions. Except her. She seemed to be the only one 174

bouncing around like a pinball, hating Skye Kellerman one minute, pitying her the next. Missing Oliver one day, fearing him the next. It was all so damned confusing.

"Look at it practically, Jane. Willis is trying to close some old cases.

He doesn't want them on his desk anymore. We've talked about this. He can't prove anything. He's tried and tried to pin those murders on Oliver and hasn't been able to. That should tell you something."

Slowing for traffic at the bridge, she scrabbled in her purse for correct change to pay the toll. Normalcy was finally supposed to return--yet her life felt more foreign than before.

After blowing her nose, she wiped away her tears before the toll-taker could stare at her the way that other driver had. She was so tired of feeling conspicuous, different, somehow tainted because of her connection to Oliver. "It tells me that one of them is wrong. But I'm no longer so sure it's Willis."

"Babe, knock it off!" Noah said. "That's my brother you're talking about. I feel bad enough already, for...for what we've done."

"If he killed those women, he did it before we started seeing each other."

"Good morning." The toll-taker put her hand out for the toll, but Jane had been silly to worry about unwanted attention here. The woman didn't even glance in her direction. She looked completely bored as she listened to music on the radio in her narrow booth and stared down the line of cars.

"Thank you," came the woman's mechanical response to the money.

Then the light turned green, and Jane gave her old Lincoln--Oliver's parents'

cast-off--some gas.

"Jane, I just told you he didn't kill anyone," Noah said.

"You don't know that."

"He's my brother," he said miserably. "My little brother."

Noah would never believe that Oliver was dangerous, not in the absence of irrefutable evidence. Had she been leaning on the brother of a killer? Someone who couldn't see the truth any more clearly than she could?

And how would that affect her future, Kate's future, the future of any other woman Oliver might meet--and, God forbid, want?

A shiver crawled up Jane's spine as she remembered that odd weekend when she and Oliver had been experimenting with sexual-enhancement drugs. That experience suddenly seemed stranger than ever before.

You're convinced my husband is a murderer....

Completely....

Why did Oliver shave? Was it possible that he could be hiding more 175

than a few illicit affairs?

The conversation she'd had with Noah, when he'd called to tell her that Skye Kellerman had visited him at work, came back to her.

Skye Kellerman knows about us....

But...that's impossible? How?

The car in front of your house? It was her.

Why was she there?

It's not enough that Oliver's been in prison for three years, I guess. She wants to punish him even more.

After that comment, terror had almost immobilized her. So she's going to tell him?

An awkward pause had ensued. No. At least, she said she wouldn 't.

Why would she keep our secret?

Because she claims he'll kill us both if he finds out.

Initially, they'd scoffed at that. But Jane couldn't explain why Skye would approach Noah unless she believed what she'd said.

Or maybe she was just showing off. It wasn't as if Jane had been very kind or friendly to Skye. Now, she was embarrassed by the harsh things she'd put in some of the letters she'd sent to The Last Stand.

"Are you still there?" Noah asked.

Jane had to pull herself out of her thoughts. "I'm here," she said. But she wasn't the same woman she'd been even yesterday.

The musical ring of her cell phone, a snippet from Sheryl Crow's

"Soak Up the Sun," woke Skye at two o'clock in the afternoon. She was still groggy. She'd finally taken a sleeping pill, which hadn't quite worn off. But she knew it was probably Sheridan or Jasmine calling, trying to wake her for the fund-raiser, so she made an effort to rouse herself. She needed to get there early to help out, make sure the event went off without a hitch.

Then she'd spend the evening trying to forget the nightmare of another intruder with one completely unsexy, unappealing Charlie Fox.

"Argh..." She shoved her head under the pillow on the couch where she'd dropped off to sleep. She didn't want to face the day. Neither did she want to face what had happened last night. The memories were already pressing close--the panic, the chaos, the body lying in the hallway. Who was that guy? Who'd sent him? And where had he come from?

The questions were worse than the memories, bad as they were.

Skye was tempted to ignore the phone and slip back into the dark void that had brought her a short reprieve from conscious thought. But the fundraiser was too important. Jasmine might not make it back from Ft. Bragg in time to attend. Skye couldn't leave it all to Sheridan.

176

I want to soak up the sun...

Kicking off the blanket, she stumbled through the living room to the kitchen and found her cell phone on the counter.

"Hello?"

"It's me. Did I wake you?"

David. His voice was enough to fill her with yearning. She hated how deeply and effortlessly he affected her. "Yes."

"I tried to wait until later, but.. .I've been worried. I had to be sure you were okay."

"I'm still breathing." And her intruder wasn't. She supposed that was something. It could easily have been the other way around.

"How are you feeling?"

"I don't know yet. I.. .I need to get my bearings, figure out who that guy was and why he was after me."

"His name was Lorenzo Bishop, originally from L.A."

"AFIS came through?"

"Immediately. He's got a rap sheet a mile long, been in and out of prison, mostly for petty crimes--assault and battery, possession, spousal abuse."