Chapter 16
Colin walked along the boardwalk as gulls screeched overhead. There was a bench, right where he was told it would be, and he sat down to wait.
He could feel Gwen’s spirit, worried for him, and reveled in their connection. She claimed she didn’t feel it, but how could that be? Was it possible such a thing could ever be one-sided?
Memories of last night flashed through his mind.
In the stress of the day and the hunt for Ahearn, Colin hadn’t allowed himself the luxury of remembering his lovemaking with Gwen.
Now he bathed in the images, subtle scents and sensations that swarmed him, wrapping around him like an all-consuming blanket.
It had been better than any fantasy, more intense than he could have imagined. Gwen Trueblood had touched him, body and soul, like no woman before her ever had. He could hardly wait to do it again.
She’s going to be mad as all hell.
He reached up to rub at his neck. He knew the woman well enough to know there would be repercussions for his actions this morning, he didn’t care as long as she was safe.
The sound of the surf seemed to intensify, one mother earth defending another.
Colin’s eyes were drawn to the horizon, the wind-whipped water reflecting the bright sunshine of a cloudless summer day.
A heron appeared, tiny at first, gliding gracefully to the water and swooping low to catch a fish in the shallow water.
Colin turned his head toward a movement down the boardwalk.
It was a man, head bent against the blowing sand, his gait a familiar stride that clawed at Colin’s heartstrings.
The recognition surprised him. This was Jerry Ahearn, David’s father.
Colin had been a young child the last time he saw Jerry, yet still he remembered.
Time dangled as the man approached, finally reaching the bench and sitting down so lightly that the seat barely moved beneath him. His posture was stooped, his jacket lightly pulling at his paunch. “It’s been a long time, Mitchell.”
The voice was familiar, too. More like David’s than he remembered. Colin took in Jerry’s wrinkled eyes, the gray and white hair atop his head, the pale fingers. Mentally he juxtaposed this old man with the beautiful Emma, her radiant youth only making Jerry seem older.
What had she seen in this man, that she would abandon her life and her family?
Jerry shook his head. “You’re all grown up, Mitchell.”
“I am. So you must be what, mid-sixties?”
He nodded.
“But your wife is only thirty.”
“Emma said she explained.”
“Maybe you can explain it better.”
He cleared his throat. “The boy isn’t mine, Mitchell. Emma was pregnant before I met her.”
“Who’s the father?”
He shrugged. “I never asked her. It didn’t matter to me.”
“You were in love and that’s all that mattered? I’m not buying it, Jerry.” He narrowed his eyes harshly. “Too much of a coincidence. I’m looking for the man who killed your son, and I run into my boss’s long lost daughter, who just happens to be your wife. Don’t you find that–”
Jerry grabbed his arm. “Killed my son?” His mouth worked. “David was murdered?”
Damn it. He’d forgotten that Jerry didn’t know. “I believe so. I’m sorry, Jerry.”
Jerry sank back on the bench, his jaw slack.
Colin wanted to feel sorry for this man, but all he could conjure was blame.
Jerry could have sold cars, or worked construction, and David and his mother would be alive right now.
Jerry was responsible for every tragedy that befell his family.
He made a choice to engage in organized crime, he turned state’s evidence, and he couldn’t stay clean.
“They said it was a skiing accident.”
“That’s what we thought.” Colin chastised himself again for not interviewing Gwen himself at the time. He knew now it was cowardice that had kept him away. “David recognized someone on the mountain that day. Someone from his childhood named Michael.”
Jerry frowned. “Michael Gallente?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. David said it was someone he went to school with.”
“They both went to Holy Cross. They were friends. That’s the only Michael I remember.”
“You testified against his father.” Colin couldn’t keep the accusation out of his voice. His own life’s work was seeing that those who testified were kept safe, yet here and now, when it was his friend who had paid the ultimate price, he hated Jerry for what he had done.
“I thought we’d be safe, protected. Or I never would have done it.”
“In WITSEC.”
“Yes.” He shook his head. “But we were betrayed.”
Betrayed. Bullshit, they were betrayed. Colin had heard it before in his role as U.S.
Marshal. It was a failure to take responsibility for your own actions, an inability to accept that you had created the very mess that worked to destroy you.
“Adele was unhappy. She contacted her mother,” said Colin.
Jerry’s gaze was sharp. “What do you know about it?”
Reaching into his back pocket, Colin extracted his wallet and showed Jerry his badge. The other man met his eyes accusingly.
“Talk about your coincidences,” said Jerry.
“What do you mean?”
“I go to prison, and the grandson of the woman who takes custody of my boy becomes a U.S. Marshal.”
“I became a Marshal because I wanted to help people like David. He lived with us after you went back to prison. It wasn’t a coincidence at all.”
Jerry sighed. “You’ll forgive me if I’m not impressed.”
“I don’t forgive you for shit, Ahearn. I don’t forgive you for the crimes that put you in WITSEC, I don’t forgive you for the death of your wife, and I don’t forgive you for the death of my friend or the grief of his widow.”
Jerry jabbed at him with his finger. “You ride in here on your high horse and think you know everything. Well, you don’t know a goddamn thing, Mitchell. You’ve swallowed anything they put in front of you, hook, line and sinker.”
A sudden cold breeze whipped off the water. “I don’t have time for this crap,” said Colin.
“Graham Walker killed my wife.”
Colin opened his hands, flexed his fingers.
His own lack of faith in Walker wouldn’t allow him to defend the man, and he hated himself for it.
“Your wife killed herself when she contacted her mother. You can’t put that on Walker or anyone else, except maybe yourself.
If you hadn’t lived the life you led, forced her to leave her family behind, she wouldn’t have been in that situation in the first place. ”
Jerry stood. “She didn’t contact her mother. Walker made that up after he shot her.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Let me guess, he’s a friend of yours.” Jerry spit on the ground. “They were having an affair, Mitchell. From the time I first entered the program.”
“How do you know?”
“My wife was pregnant, but she hadn’t slept with me in almost a year.”
Colin’s heart stopped beating. Adele wasn’t even two months along when she died. Jerry couldn’t have known she was expecting unless she told him herself.
Or could he?
Had someone told Jerry about the coroner’s report? Someone on the inside? Colin’s thoughts reeled. He needed time to think, to sort out this new information.
An image formed in Colin’s mind of Graham Walker and Adele Ahearn. Was it possible? The young deputy and the gangster’s wife, caught in a love affair that could only end badly?
If Jerry was correct, Walker could have lost everything—his career, his wife. He might have been desperate, and desperate people did desperate things. Colin bit the inside of his cheek. “Go on.”
“I went to see her at the beauty shop where she worked. We’d been fighting since she told me about the affair.” He hung his head. “She wanted to leave me, take David with her and be with Walker. I was tired of it, defeated. I told her she could go to him if she wanted.”
“Walker was going to leave June for her?” Colin pictured Mrs. Walker, beautiful and ever devoted to her husband. He couldn’t imagine Walker ever choosing someone else over her.
Jerry shook his head slowly. “That was what she wanted, but he didn’t want her.
He said he never loved her, that he wouldn’t leave his wife, and wanted Adele to get rid of the baby.
He was coming to give her the money that day, but she didn’t want to do it.
She was hysterical, crying like a little kid.
” He wiped at his eye with the back of his hand.
“She begged me—begged me—to forgive her. She said we could keep the baby and no one would ever know it wasn’t mine, that she’d be a good wife to me again.
” His face crumpled as he let out a sob.
He shook his head quickly. “I told her no. No way. My pride was so hurt. I wasn’t going to raise that bastard’s child. ” Tears fell unchecked down his face.
“I didn’t leave her a choice, don’t you see?
She needed me and I turned her away. She hustles me out the door, says he’s coming.
She’s going to convince him they can make it work with the baby.
” Jerry pressed his lips together into a tight line.
“Two hours later, I get a phone call from Walker. She’s dead.
He tells me she contacted her mother, someone walked into the shop and killed her, but I knew the truth. ”
Colin listened to Jerry’s quiet sobbing as he watched an orange car pull into a parking lot some hundred yards away. “Did you tell anyone what you’re telling me now?”
“Hell no.”
“Why not?”
Jerry crossed his feet and tucked them under the bench, his body huddled against the cold wind. “David.”
The single word spoke volumes.
“It was just him and me, now. I was all he had…” his voice cracked and he cleared his throat.
“Walker was my contact at WITSEC. If he suspected I knew about Adele, I’d be dead, either by his gun or with a simple slip of the tongue.
I had to stay alive to take care of my son. I couldn’t touch Walker.”
Colin wanted to say he was wrong, that there were enough checks and balances to keep any one man from having such power, yet he knew Jerry spoke the truth. To him, Walker was omnipotent, untouchable. But Jerry had managed to find Walker’s Achilles heel, his singular weakness. “Until Emma.”
Jerry nodded, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly. “I didn’t plan it.”
A flock of seagulls landed on the beach, squawking.
In the distance, a man walked toward them on the boardwalk.
Colin thought of Walker, the man who represented authority and patriotism and integrity.
He wanted to say Jerry was lying, but the story he told held a ring of truth that resonated deep in the pit of Colin’s stomach.
“I came to see Walker when I got out of prison. I waited outside his office to talk to him and I could hear him fighting with his daughter. She was pregnant and he told her to get rid of it, and she was crying so hard…” His eyes met Colin’s, their depths clear and bright.
“Don’t you see? It was my chance. My chance to make everything right. ”
“Your chance to get back at Walker.”
“Yes. But I could take care of Emma, give her a safe place to have her baby.” His chin quivered. “I could do for her what I didn’t do for Adele.”
Colin turned away, staring at the horizon. It was incredible. Two worlds had overlapped, usurping an entire person from one world and placing her in another. “She stayed with you all these years.”
“We care about each other. We’ve raised a child together.”
“Are you telling me you’re in love?”
His smiled slightly. “As much as a beautiful young woman can ever be in love with an old man like me. I’ve done my best to be a good husband to her. The boy has been a joy.” A shadow crossed Jerry’s features. “Just like my David, even if Luke doesn’t share my blood.”
“One more question, Jerry.”
“Yeah?”
“Why’d you go to Walker’s office that day?”
The loud crack of a gunshot ripped across the beach.
Jerry and Colin’s eyes met in horrified confusion.
Where had the shot come from? Had either of them been hit?
Blood appeared on Jerry’s chest and Colin watched it spread, the color so dark it was almost black, then Colin fell to the ground like a dead man.