Chapter 10 #2
“No. The decision is already made. We’re supposed to deliver Paulette—and all the intel we have on this—tomorrow. To the FBI. Then... well I don’t even want to think what will happen to that sweet baby then—some foster care family—probably in some secret location.”
“Not ideal. But then, her situation is not ideal no matter what—given the fact that Father Donahue is her father.” Shana heard the unspoken words: and a slave to the Russian mob is her mother.
Shana forced herself to process the situation.
Something her own father told her once came to mind.
You can’t save them all. You can’t even protect your own kids all their lives let alone all the innocent kids in the world.
He’d worked on only that one child murder case—that she knew of.
But he was a man and he didn’t have that stabbing pain in the uterus area the way she did this very moment.
It was anxiety, but it was the kind of anxiety she’d never known before.
She wondered again what Dane had experienced, what kind of horror made him back down so quickly on this.
“I’m going to talk to Dane and find out what has him so tied in knots.”
“Sure—for all the goddamned good it’ll do—”
“It’ll do me good to know. I need to know.” I need to keep respecting him. She didn’t say those last words out loud, but Cap could read between the lines as well as anyone—probably better than most men she knew. So he would know.
He stayed silent a beat.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, “one way or another.” They signed off.
After pacing around her room for a while rehearsing ways to broach the subject of his past nightmare case involving a baby, Shana got tired of waiting for Dane to show up.
The damn man had better be planning to show up.
She was sure he would. It was late, but she wasn’t tired, only tired of pacing around the lovely area rug decorating her large lovely guest room. The others must be up too.
“Hell if I’m staying cooped up in this room by myself,” she spoke out loud.
Checking her watch and frowning at the time, she ventured out and downstairs, back to the study in spite of the hour.
She’d track Dane down wherever he was. She couldn’t stand to let this go unresolved between them for another minute.
When she got there, she was surprised to find the study empty but she heard some voices. They were coming from the hall leading to the kitchen and she wasn’t above tracking them down even if this was the governor’s mansion.
She arrived at the kitchen door to find Peter, Madeline, and Joe lined up at the massive island and having a drink of something.
“I’ll have one—of whatever it is,” Shana said and walked in and sat at the counter. Joe got up and nodded and played the role of bartender again. The guy was good at it.
“You know anything about this?” The governor himself, one of Dane’s oldest and best friends and one of the people Dane admired most in the world, was asking her—as if she might really know something he didn’t about the legend of Dane Blaise.
She stood, frozen like the proverbial deer in the headlights, and stared at him. Joe handed her a drink. It was a cup of coffee. The smell wafted up and restarted her brain.
“I don’t. Know anything about it.” Shana took a gulp of the hot coffee.
“It had to be a pretty awful mission of some sort involving the loss of a baby, or maybe more than one,” Madeline said.
“It wasn’t exactly a mission. It was a personal vendetta. Against me.”
Shana whipped around to see if Dane’s face matched the desolation of his voice.
Her heart leapt with a pain so acute she was ashamed she’d worried about her wrenching uterus pain.
Her heart must be breaking. The poets were not being fanciful or using their imagination when they spoke of heartbreak.
The pain she felt was real and she stumbled forward to him, careless that heart failure could be lethal.
Dane’s eyes held hers and everything else disappeared—she wondered if this was another symptom of heart failure—fading eyesight, loss of any sense of her surroundings.
She didn’t care. She needed to touch him, to console the stark desolation, the horrible pain she saw in his eyes and felt along with him like a scalding chainsaw splitting her chest.
“Dane.” She reached him. He’d only been three steps away, but she felt like she’d dragged herself across hell to get to him.
She wrapped him in her arms and he wrapped her, stronger and warmer and bigger and she melted against him, consoling her as always.
It was Dane who held up and made things all right. Still, even in his wounded state.
“I’m okay. I’m sorry, Shana,” he whispered into her hair, caressing her.
She reveled and absorbed him and his pain. The tightness in her chest eased and the searing across her heart faded until she thought she must have been crazy thinking she’d had a heart attack.
She felt him shift and heard his friend speak.
“You don’t have to tell us,” Madeline said.
Shana saw her put a restraining hand on Peter who, like her, wanted nothing more than to hear all about it—to solve the problem, to take it away and relieve the burden.
But Madeline Grace was right and her husband the governor heeded her.
Dane let her go from his hold, but Shana couldn’t disengage herself—not all the way. She kept one arm wrapped around one of his arms as he moved into the kitchen and joined his friends.
“It’s about time I dealt with it. It’s been years. I don’t think about it much, but the scar is deep and permanent and its effects seem to control me in a counterproductive way.” Dane stopped and looked at Shana and pulled her in by the shoulders.
“I should be able to help my partner with this case—I thought I could. Maybe. But—”
“No, you don’t need to worry. I’ll—”
“You’ll do what? You’ll interfere with the FBI and kill your career? You’ll keep Paulette and do what?”
She knew it was the pain talking, but she felt her chin go up all the same. She barely kept her mouth in check thanks to a look from Madeline. Dane was wounded. Deeply.
“If it’ll help you to share the story,” Madeline said, “you know we’ll listen—without judgment. Without expectations.”
“You’ve already done your part in this case, Dane,” Peter said.
Dane shook his head and Shana’s gut butterflied, hoping there’d be a chance still, to redeem their mission, to not let Paulette down, to not let her go to the Department of Social Services or somewhere into the cold failing system of so-called care for lost children.
“I’ll tell you about it,” Dane said. “But I’ll need some of that coffee first.”