Chapter 12
“Martin said he talked to Jerry for about fifteen minutes, but he has no idea how to find him,” said Gwen.
“Not at all. I don’t even think he wanted me to believe him.”
“What do you mean?”
Gwen put her hand on the dashboard of the car, her heart suddenly pounding in her chest. “I don’t want to go this way.”
“But this is the way to Becky’s.”
“We’ll have to find another way. Get off at the next exit, please.” Her voice held an element of alarm.
“What’s the matter, Gwen?”
“I don’t know. I just know that as soon as you started driving on this road, I felt we were in danger. We need to get off of it, now.”
Colin shook his head as he quickly moved to the right-hand lane. “You get feelings like this a lot?”
“Often enough that I know when to listen.”
“Do you know what kind of…” he stopped speaking mid-sentence, his eyes wide on the rear-view mirror.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think we’re being followed.” Gwen immediately moved to turn around, and Colin put his hand on her knee. “Don’t look now.”
“What do you see?”
“A big sedan. It got on with us, then cut over when I did and got off, too.” He put on his turn signal and pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store.
“What are you going to do now, mister?” he asked the other car.
It continued past the entrance without slowing down.
Colin pulled back onto the road, headed back toward the expressway.
“North please, not south,” said Gwen.
“I want you to turn around in your seat and look out for that car.”
They were at the very top of the on-ramp before she spoke. “I see it. They’re just getting on the on-ramp.”
“Damn it.”
“Coming our way, quickly.”
Colin pressed hard on the accelerator and slipped into the passing lane. The late afternoon traffic was oddly light, providing little cover.
Gwen had spent time in Boston before she and David were married, teaching art classes while he composed his first soundtrack.
Her brain worked to remember the exits ahead.
“Up over that hill, there’s an exit with a rotary.
A bunch of roads meet. If we can get there first, he won’t know which way we went. ”
“Good idea.”
Gwen watched as the needle on the speedometer crossed one hundred and continued to rise.
She closed her eyes, saying a silent prayer for their own safe travels and those of the drivers around them on the road.
A feeling of peace was punctuated by clear direction.
“Take the first right on the rotary,” she said to Colin.
“Where does it go?”
“I have no idea. Just take it.”
“What the lady wants,” he said under his breath as the car crested the hill. The exit ramp was visible five hundred feet down the road, and he hit the breaks quickly to take the turn. “Can he see us?”
“Not yet, not yet…” she said, watching the top of the hill behind them. They were nearly out of view when the other car popped over the horizon. “Yes!”
“Is he following?”
“Yes.”
A sharp turn in the road forced Gwen against the car door.
“Sorry,” said Colin.
“Quite all right.”
The exit ramp circled down a full level beneath the highway, shielding the other car from view.
Colin took the first right on the rotary at a speed that made her cringe.
Gwen squinted through the trees, trying to make out the other vehicle.
“He didn’t see us,” she said, the relief in her voice evident.
“Clearly, we got someone’s attention at that bar.”
“Not a good someone, either. I wonder if it was Martin,” said Gwen.
“You said you didn’t believe him.”
She squinted her eyes. “Well, no. Not completely. He was endearing, but I just got the feeling he wasn’t being completely truthful with me. Then he got talking about the riptide up at Sandwich Beach this time of year.”
“Sandwich?”
“Yes. He said it’s on the Cape.”
“I know where it is.” Colin shifted in his seat and sat up straighter. “Do you think he was trying to give you a clue?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe.”
“That map was interesting, too.”
“What did you find out?”
“It was like a complete history of the Irish Mafia in Boston, with key events, accomplishments, deaths and arrests. It even had information on politicians they controlled, and how many girlfriends they had. It was nuts.”
“Was there anything else about Jerry?”
Colin nodded. “His face was painted on a pigeon’s body next to Mickey Brady, the former leader who was brought down by Jerry’s testimony, and on a rat’s body next to Brady’s right-hand man.”
“People he testified against?”
“Yes. But he wasn’t even mentioned next to two others, who he also testified against.”
“That is strange.”
“Our buddy, Mike Gallente, had his own entry. It said he was a beloved member of the organization who was tragically incarcerated.”
“That would support the theory that Jerry helped to bring in a new regime.”
“I thought of that myself. I think tomorrow we should go to the aunt’s house and look for Jerry.”
“Agreed. Perhaps we should check out Sandwich as well. We’ll just find a hotel for the night, and I’ll let Becky know we’re not heading back to her place.”
“At all?”
Gwen sighed. “I feel like we would be bringing danger to her door. I don’t want to do that.”
“I know. I’m going to give Rowan a call and have him wire us more money. Let’s put some distance between us and our friend, then we’ll find a hotel for the night,” he said confidently, but he couldn’t help but wonder who was chasing after them, and when they would meet again.
Colin hung up the phone and placed it on the hotel room desk. Rowan was sending more money, small comfort for the fact that Colin had only the shirt on his back and a prepaid cell phone. He never left home without his wallet and smartphone and felt decidedly unprepared to deal with this mess.
He and Gwen had stopped to buy more clothes when they passed a department store, using all but a hundred dollars of their cash-on-hand. They didn’t have the money for a second hotel room, even if one had been available.
He heard the water come on and knew Gwen had gotten into the shower. The image of her naked body so near to him would normally have gotten his pulse racing, but as he sank onto the bed he was overwhelmed with guilt and self-loathing.
It was all his fault.
An image of David formed in his mind, as much as a brother as Rowan ever was.
Their estrangement had been hell for Colin, even worse now that he was able to admit his responsibility.
At the time, he insisted to himself that Gwen was as guilty as he, truly believing she had feelings for him instead of David.
Now he knew he’d been wrong. Gwen may have been attracted to him, but she had only ever loved her husband. Colin had been a young pompous ass who cared more about himself than he cared about his own family.
He had seen only what he wanted to believe, and it had cost him his relationship with David and hurt the woman he claimed to care for.
What would it have been like, to have been friends with them both? Visits to Vermont, skiing with his friend. Maybe he even would have been on the mountain next to David when David’s past came back to haunt him.
An image played in his mind like a movie, himself skiing off the lift beside David, at his side when he first recognized Michael and knew there might be trouble. He felt a physical pain in his abdomen at the possibilities lost, an opportunity to save the friend he loved.
The past was in the past. There was nothing he could do to change it, but he could damn sure respect the memory of his friend and stay away from David’s wife—a woman who clearly still didn’t want a relationship with Colin.
It was the least he could do. He would fix the mistakes in his past, make amends as best he could.
He would find the person responsible for David’s death, make them pay.
And he would send Gwen on her way, free to make a new life with someone else.
She was young, beautiful. She could marry again, become a mother if she wanted.
Colin pictured her cradling a sleeping infant with rosy cheeks, a physical pain appearing in his gut at the knowledge that the baby would never be his.
Colin moved to the bed away from the window, leaving the one with a view for Gwen.
He wouldn’t bother her tonight, or ever again.
Colin had to find a way to get her to safety and look for Jerry on his own.
Now that he was seeing clearly, he understood that he had only allowed her to join him on this trip because he wanted the chance to be physically close to her, a mistake that could have gotten her killed.
I am an arrogant ass.
The water turned off and Colin braced himself for the evening ahead. Suddenly nervous, he didn’t know what to do with Gwen if he wasn’t actively pursuing her. He busied himself with the television, mindlessly flipping through channels as he waited for her to come out of the bathroom.
Gwen ripped the tags off the pink brassiere and held it up to the light, its fine lace and shimmering ribbons mocking her serious expression. She had already slipped on the matching panties and stood in the steamy bathroom as she finally admitted the truth.
She wanted Colin. She wanted Colin very much.
The lingerie set had caught her eye in the department store and she thought nothing of it, tucking the items under a dress and two shirts already in her hands.
But more than an hour later as she dressed to confront Colin in the intimacy of the hotel room, she knew she had purchased the items in anticipation of something more.
Gwen closed her eyes and hugged the bra to her chest, both for fear of crossing the line she long ago drew in the sand and for her own eagerness to be done with pretenses.
She and Colin had driven in silence after they lost their pursuer, a comfortable silence that reminded Gwen of everything she had once held in her hand and had long since learned to do without.
Friendship. Companionship. Physical love.