Blind Trust Page 20

  “Cl … Clint!” Sherry’s weak voice came like the answer to a prayer, melting his immediate intent. She was not dead. Oh thank God, she was not dead.

  He dropped Paul to his knees and rushed to her just as Sam stepped inside, his gun in his hand, the others at his heels. Scooping her up in his arms, he held her helplessly.

  Eric Grayson barreled in and fell to his knees beside his daughter. “Oh, my soul! We’ve got to get her to a hospital!”

  Clint nodded blindly. “Take her. Hurry!”

  With the help of another officer, Grayson pried Clint’s arms loose and gathered her into his arms. When they had darted out of the boat house, Clint stood up and stalked over to Paul, who knelt in a shiver at the guns trained on him. “Get up!” he gritted, holding his gun to the man’s temple.

  Clint’s eyes were as dark as death. He cocked the pistol.

  Perspiration dripped from his brow and burned his eyes, and Paul squeezed his eyes shut. He was a kid, still a kid, as mean and vicious as the most hardened criminal. And as scared as a boy faced with a mad dog. He looked at that boy and saw through the hatred and recalled the first day he had met him. He had come to the youth group as a scruffy high school senior, for the sole purpose of getting the attention of a girl he was pursuing. Clint had befriended him to keep him coming. What had happened to him?

  Slowly, as if it took every ounce of strength he had left, Clint dropped the gun to his side and stepped out of Sam’s way.

  Sam dashed forward, but before he reached him, Paul dove between the two boats and began to swim underwater. Quickly, Sam fell to one knee and opened fire.

  Someone drove the eighteen-wheeler to the bank, shining its headlights over the rippling surface of the reservoir. And finally they saw Paul, the life gone out of his body.

  Clint only stared dully at him as some of the men waded out to bring him back. Paul Calloway was really dead, but somehow the knowledge didn’t hold much joy.

  Turning his back on the sight, Clint ran back toward the house to find what they had done with Sherry. “Where is she?”

  “In the car,” Madeline cried. “They’re about to take her to the—”

  Clint didn’t hear the rest. The car was turning around on the grass, about to leave, and Clint dashed after it. “Stop! I’m coming with you!”

  The car stopped, and Clint got in. Grayson was holding Sherry in the backseat, and Clint leaned over her as the car lurched forward. “Sherry?” His voice was on the edge of tears, and Sherry opened her eyes.

  “Is it over?” she whispered.

  He took her hand. “Yes, baby. It’s over. It’s all over.”

  Sherry closed her eyes again.

  “We’ll be all right,” Clint said hoarsely, pushing her hair back from her face. “We’ll be all right now.”

  An hour later, Clint sat helplessly in the hospital waiting room with Wes and Laney, staring at the wall, waiting to hear yet another verdict that would determine the course of the rest of his life. Would Sherry die? Would that be the tragic ending to this tragic production his life had become?

  He closed his eyes and thought back to the day he had chased her in his Bronco and run her off the road. Why had he done that? Why hadn’t he just left things alone, until he was safe? Why hadn’t he been more patient? Why hadn’t he known that Paul wasn’t really dead? If he’d just left her alone, he wouldn’t have had to bring her with him. And her life would never have been in danger.

  He searched the farthest corners of his mind and tried to find some clue that she would be all right. She had not completely lost consciousness all the way to the hospital. Maybe that was good. And she had spoken. And just before they wheeled her away in the emergency room, she had smiled at him. He had leaned forward and cupped her face in his hands. Oh, did he dare hope that she would be all right? He looked over his fingertips to the door where they had taken her. If only they had let him stay with her. If only he could be there …

  The door swung open, and the emergency room doctor came out. Clint, Madeline, Sam, and Sherry’s father all stood at the same time, none of them asking anything for fear the answer was not what they wanted to hear.

  “She’s going to be fine,” the doctor said. “The bullet didn’t even touch the bone. She also has a slight concussion from hitting her head when she fell. Besides some pretty fierce pain, she’s going to be completely well soon. We’d like to keep her for a couple of days for observation, though.”

  Clint sank onto the vinyl sofa, a sudden surge of emotion racking his body. Covering his face, he sent up a silent prayer of thanks, while the others around him expressed relief in their own ways. She was okay. She was fine. She was safe.

  “She wants to see Mr. Jessup,” the doctor said. “We’ve got her on some pain medication, but she’s pretty alert.”

  Clint stood up again. “Can I stay here with her tonight?

  I don’t want to leave her.”

  “I don’t think she’d let you go if you wanted to,” the doctor said with a smile. “Come on. I’ll take you to her.”

  Sam laced his fingers through Madeline’s hand as he pulled her with him across the hospital parking lot, lit only by yellow circles of light from street lamps overhead. He had been quiet since the incident at the boat house, and now that Sherry was fine, that had not changed.

  “Guess it’s all over,” Madeline said quietly when they reached his car.

  “Yeah. Over.”

  He leaned against the car and looked up into the sky. She followed his eyes and wondered what he saw.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  The dead end hurt her. Was the tiny bit of progress they had made toward a relationship going to fizzle out just like that? She looked down at the grimy pavement beneath her feet and frowned. She guessed it was.

  Ironic, she thought. All this time she had been afraid of Sam’s getting killed or wounded. She’d almost expected to lose him that way, now that she’d found him. She hadn’t counted on losing him to indifference.

  Clearing her throat, she turned toward him. “I think I’ll go on back in. Maybe they’ll let me see Sherry.”

  Sam nodded, as if he didn’t care.

  Lifting her chin to keep herself brave, Madeline started to walk away.

  “Madeline?” Sam’s voice was soft, reluctant, but it stopped her. Slowly, she turned around, bracing herself for an explanation about how it had been nice while it lasted. His eyes were so sad that they wrung her heart and forced her to forgive him even before he sent her on her way. “I don’t deserve to have you stay,” he whispered, “but I don’t want you to go.”

  His voice teetered on the edge of emotion, and she went back to him, hands jammed in her pockets, heart jamming her throat. “What do you mean you don’t deserve it?”

  He sighed deeply, and reached for her hand. “I mean that I’ve been such a failure throughout this whole thing.”

  “A what?” She took his other hand and gazed at him with disbelief in her expression. “How can you say that? We’re alive. We came out of it.”

  “Not because of anything I did. In fact, if I’d done my job, Sherry wouldn’t be up in that hospital bed right now.”

  “No,” Madeline argued. “If you’d done things differently, she’d be dead. And so would Clint. In fact, they would have died in that barn when it exploded the other day.”

  “One accomplishment does not erase a failure,” he said, his eyes full of anguish. “I’m a cop. I shouldn’t have let them go into that boat house alone. I should have suspected …”

  “You and the other twenty cops on the grounds thought it was all right. Are you saying that it’s okay for them to make a miscalculation, but it isn’t for you?”

  “I was Clint’s friend. I was his guard. And until today I was a better cop than those other guys.”

  “Until me,” she said as the real problem became clear to her.

  “What?” The question was meant to be innocent, but she s
ensed that she had hit a nerve. She knew he saw his feelings for her as a new weakness that interfered, and she resented it.

  “It all boils down to me. If I hadn’t stopped you, you would have gone into the boat house. If you hadn’t been with me, you might never have let them go in.”

  Sam was silent for a moment, then he dropped her hand. “I shouldn’t have let my attention be so divided when I was on duty. It almost cost Clint and Sherry their lives.”

  “And since you’re virtually always on duty,” she said in a despairing, sullen voice, “I guess that means it’s impossible for you to have any kind of relationship. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No,” he whispered. “I don’t think that’s what I’m saying.”

  “Wait a minute. Let me try again,” she said, her voice growing louder. “You think you deserve to be punished for not being psychic and not getting to Paul Calloway before he got to Clint and Sherry. So your punishment is to go through life alone, nipping good possibilities for relationships with wonderful women in the bud, is that it?”

  “No,” he said, swallowing. “I’m not looking for punishment.”

  “Then what are you looking for?” she snapped furiously. Suddenly, he smiled. “Someone to tell me it’s okay,” he whispered. “Someone to hold me and give me focus and tell me I didn’t screw up as bad as I think I did.”

  Madeline inclined her head helplessly, and her shoulders slumped in relief. “You’ve got it,” she whispered. She slid her arms around his waist, and he pulled her tightly against him.

  “I think what I was trying to say,” he whispered against her hair, “is that since I can’t really divide my attentions between romance and work, maybe it’s time for me to make a change. Maybe it’s time for me to choose.”

  Madeline felt him slipping away again, and she clung tighter. “I never put much faith in guarantees,” she assured him, almost desperately. “I don’t need them. Please don’t choose between us. I can live with your job.”

  Sam framed her face and pressed his forehead against hers. “You crazy little thing. You think I wouldn’t choose you, don’t you?”

  Madeline closed her eyes. “You don’t have to choose,” she whispered again.

  “Yes, I do,” he whispered. “Because suddenly staying alive seems pretty important to me.”

  His kiss was like molten joy poured over raw nerves, coaxing her to accept the choice he had already made, coaxing her to believe that he was offering guarantees, coaxing her to rejoice in the sacrifice that resulted in so much reward.

  And being alive seemed wondrously precious to Madeline, too.

  A little while later, Clint sat on the hospital bed next to Sherry, cradling her against him. They’d have to do surgery if they expected to separate them, he told himself. Because he had no intentions of ever leaving her side again.

  The door opened, and Eric Grayson stepped into the softly lit room. Sherry sat up and gave him a grudging look.

  With eyes as humble and frightened as she had ever seen them, he entered the room. “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Well, I’m not. I’m a little shaken,” he admitted. Awkwardly, he pulled up a chair to the bedside and sat down. “I thought I’d lost you.” He covered his face and shook his head. “I would never have forgiven myself.”

  Sherry sat up, and Clint started to get off of the bed. “I’ll step outside and—”

  “No,” Eric said. “Stay. You’re part of this family, and you belong here. Besides, I owe you a fierce apology.”

  “No.” Clint held up a hand to stem the regrets. “I did all this for my conscience, not because you—”

  “I’m not apologizing for that,” Grayson cut in softly. “I’m apologizing for undermining you by sending Gary Rivers to protect Sherry. At the time it seemed as if someone who cared for her would do a better job. It was stupid, and it must have made things so much harder for you. And it turned out to be such a disaster.”

  Clint looked down at Sherry’s palm and stroked his hand across it. “I’ll admit I cursed you for that a few times.”

  “You should have.” Grayson shook his head. “I misjudged him terribly. I never suspected—”

  Clint reached across Sherry and touched the older man’s shoulder. “Enough said. It’s over, and I think I can understand your reasoning. No hard feelings.”

  Grayson released a heavy breath, then looked at his daughter. “And now, my apology to you,” he said.

  Sherry shook her head. “Don’t.”

  His eyes were pleading. “Sherry, I probably could have handled things better. But I was so desperate to protect you. You were all I had left. Can’t you see that?”

  “You let me suffer, Dad, and I didn’t have to. You kept me away from Clint when I could have been there, helping him through it. You robbed me of my marriage, and let me think I wasn’t enough for him, that he got bored …”

  “I never meant for you to think that, Sherry. I never wanted you to feel that way. I just didn’t see another way. I thought the emotional danger was much less significant than the physical danger.”

  “You were wrong,” she said. “Emotional ties are strong, Dad. You’ve never understood them, not really.”

  “Yes, I have,” he insisted. “I understand them now. I understand that I’d rather be in physical danger, myself, than to suffer the emotional danger of losing you. Honey, I’m asking you to forgive me one more time.” His voice broke with the words, and he wilted and dropped his forehead on her mattress. He began to shake with deep, hard sobs, and Sherry’s face slowly changed.

  She looked up at Clint with tears in her eyes, then back down at her father, hurting and broken. She closed her eyes and wiped the tears from her cheek, and breathed in a sob herself. Slowly, she withdrew her hand from Clint’s, and touched her father’s head.

  He looked up at her, his face twisted and anguished. “You have to believe me, Sherry,” he forced out. “Everytime I looked in your eyes after Clint left, it was like a knife being twisted inside me. I prayed that God would intervene so that I could bring Clint back, and when we thought we found Paul’s body, I believed that was the answer. Honey, don’t cut me out of your life because of this. I want to give you away at your wedding. I want to be a grandfather to your children. They don’t have to know that their grandfather is a fool.”

  “You’re not a fool.” The words came on a whisper, and she reached out and touched his face. Eric pulled her into a hug that included Clint.

  “Does this mean I still get to be your father?” he asked.

  She breathed a laugh through her tears. “I guess so. Somebody’s got to give me away when I get married.”

  Eric let her go and wiped the tears on his face. “As soon as I leave here, I’m going for the minister. We have a wedding to plan, and there’s no time to waste.”

  Sherry breathed an enormous sigh and smiled at Clint. “Just give me a license and a ring and a few months of uninterrupted peace with the man I love. And then I’ll be back to myself.”

  “Is that possible?” Clint asked softly. “Will any of us ever be ourselves again?”

  “No,” Grayson said. “We’ve all changed. But we’re stronger now. None of us will ever take the people we love or the time we have with them for granted again.”

  Clint’s arms tightened around Sherry, reaffirming that strength that filtered into their love, promising never to be torn asunder, never to be mistrusted, never to turn against them again.

  After Eric left, a knock sounded on the door, and Clint called, “Come in.” Wes’s face was pale as he pushed open the door. He took a look at his sister, started to say something, then, overcome, just leaned over and gave her a hug. When he had found his voice, he said, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” she said. She gestured for him to pull a chair up to her bed, and as he did so, she said, “I heard you were in court today.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. He got me in
.”

  She knew he referred to their father, even though he’d never been able to call Eric that.

  “Are you two speaking now?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Wes, don’t you think it’s time?”

  Wes’s expression was stunned. “How could you say that? The man got you shot. You were almost killed because of him. He cared more about that case than he cared about you!”

  “I thought so, too,” she said, taking her brother’s hand. “But Wes, he meant well. He thought he was doing the right thing. Everything he did was to keep me from getting hurt.”

  “But it didn’t work.”

  “I’m fine,” she said. She thought about the struggles with Paul, the gunshot wound … “You know, I can keep a score-sheet of all the things that went wrong, dwell on them and get bitter over them, or I can decide that those things are not going to mess up my life, and move on. He’s still our father. He’s not perfect, and he makes mistakes. But his heart is right, Wes.”

  “But he let you hurt for all those months. He had the power to give you some peace about Clint, and he didn’t. Then he dragged you right into the fray—”

  “That’s not true, Wes. I was in it whether any of us liked it or not. Getting shot was more a result of my own rebellion than anything he had done. I shouldn’t have gone out of the sight of the bodyguards. I should have been more cooperative.”

  Wes got up and ambled to the hospital window, looked out, and then turned back to her. His face was a study in emotional turmoil, and she knew where it came from.

  “Wes, he’s not the same man who left us when we were kids. He’s changed, just like Laney changed after the two of you were married. He knows what he did was wrong, and he’s repented. God’s a God of second chances, Wes.”

  “But I’m not that good. I can’t forgive like God does.”

  “Then you’d better stay away from the Lord’s Prayer.” He looked at her. “What do you mean?”