Anything but Mine (23 page)

“Do you think he can hurt me worse than he already has? Blowing up the courthouse, killing my father, our baby?”

“It may not be the same guy. Falconetti seems to think it’s not. I’d feel better if you came home with me. You can use the extra bedroom.”

A shiver ran over her and she glanced at the darkness beyond the window. What was she more afraid of—the unknown threat or living with Stanton again? “I’ll think—”

“Sorry for interrupting.” At Madeline’s flat voice, Autry jerked. She glanced at her sister, standing just inside the door, two vases of flowers in hand. “I left my purse earlier.” She stepped forward. “These were downstairs.”

Autry shifted, uncomfortable with her. “Thank you for bringing them up.”

Madeline set them on the bedside table and gathered her purse from the window ledge. She slung it over her shoulder. “I’ll see you later.”

“You don’t have to go.” Autry made herself smile for Madeline’s benefit, cringing a little at the memory of her emotional outburst.

Madeline cast a pointed look at Stanton, who’d risen to his feet, arms folded over his chest. “Oh, I think I should. I’ll come by tomorrow.”

Autry sighed. “Madeline…”

“You want the cards from these?” Madeline tugged the tiny white envelopes free and held them out. “I’m going to go look for Nate.”

“Thanks.” As her sister slipped from the room, Autry slid the first card from its covering. A smile tugged at her lips and she held the vellum square up to Stanton. “From the sheriff’s department. Tick’s handwriting.”

He chuckled and took the card. “Which means the others are probably from him and Falconetti.”

She checked the envelope while she pulled the card free. “Different florist.”

The black block letters jumped out at her and she dropped the square, fear pushing into her throat. She swallowed. No. Lord, not now.

“Autry?” Concern shook Stanton’s voice. He lifted the card from her lap. “Oh, shit.”

Autry closed her eyes, but it didn’t make the words go away. They remained, imprinted on her mind.

I’m still here.

Stanton frowned at the dispatch report. The radio room was up and running in their temporary quarters, and they were working full rotations again, despite four injured officers and the loss of two patrol cars.

Somehow, they’d missed two calls in as many days. The first, an abandoned vehicle call, a local state trooper had picked up.

The second, a prowler call, from Mrs. Milson, early that morning. Nobody had yet picked up that one. Stanton dropped the report on his desk and rubbed a hand over his nape. Obviously, he needed to tighten the reins. Between attending countless funerals, he’d spent the last few days closeted with Tick and Will Botine’s agents, sifting through evidence and scenarios while Cookie oversaw the department’s involvement in the ongoing rescue mission. He’d been too wrapped up in other things to fully watch over the day-to-day operations.

He really needed a chief deputy. Tick had taken those duties as they crafted a new department, but Stanton needed him able to focus on the investigative division. He scribbled a note for Lydia to call the newspaper, run an employment ad. After everything he’d had to say to Ray Lewis when he’d phoned to place Claire’s obituary, it wouldn’t do for him to call. Lewis was after his head, running a series of editorials blaming the sheriff’s department for “security lapses” at the courthouse the day of the bombing. In the last he’d outright called for Stanton’s resignation.

There were times when Stanton wondered whether he should. Quit and go back to the bureau. He rubbed a thumb over the framed photo on the corner of his desk. Hadden and John Logan grinned at him from the candid shot and he’d tucked a small printout of Claire’s sonogram in the corner. Were these the same doubts Autry was facing?

She wasn’t talking to him. They were having conversations, but those interactions were mere surface talk. Nothing real. Just hi-how-are-you-what’s-new kind of stuff.

It was driving him absolutely-fucking-nuts. He wanted to force his way beneath the layers of self-protection she was building, make her see him, push her to really talk to him, confide in him.

And that was the quickest way to lose her he could envision. His daddy hadn’t raised a fool and he knew when not to push. What scared him was the insistent little voice that whispered he’d already lost her.

No. Not yet. It wasn’t over yet. She’d agreed to keep the relationship on a casual level. Granted, she’d sounded like her old lawyer self at the time and he’d half-expected her to draw up a contract, but that was something. She hadn’t told him to get the hell out of her life.

His gaze fell on the phone. The need to connect with her, to hear her voice, was like a physical urge. Even if it was a hi-how-are-you-what’s-new conversation.

God, he was a sap.

A sap with no willpower.

The scary thing was he didn’t care.

He reached for the phone, punched in the direct number for her hospital room and listened to the rings.

“Hello?” Her voice was breathless, a little husky, and he closed his eyes. His body insisted on equating that tone with making love to her and he shook off the shiver sliding over his nerves. He was in sad shape.

“Hey, it’s Stanton. Thought I’d check in, see how you felt today.” He rested his head against the back of the chair. Yeah, he was smooth. Like a fourteen-year-old calling the girl he liked for the first time.

“Um, pretty good, actually.” Cloth rustled over the line. “Jay said I could go home today.”

“That’s great. Want me to drive you? I could take off—”

“No, that’s okay.” She spoke too quickly, the words tripping over themselves. “Madeline’s here. She’s going to run me home, probably hang out for the afternoon before she heads back to Mama’s.”

“All right.” He suppressed the pinpricks of hurt. Casual. She’d agreed to casual. Not her fault his feelings went a lot deeper than that. The image of those words blocked on that florist card pulsed in his head. He’d tried tracking down who’d sent them, but had run into a brick wall with the harried and overloaded business owner. “And Autry? Be careful.”

“I will.” Her voice softened slightly.

He cleared his throat. “Mind if I run by this evening?”

“That’s fine.”

“I could pick up some takeout.”

“Um, sure.”

Frustration curled through him and he resisted an urge to grit his teeth. Patience. He would be patient if it killed him, but it sure felt like it would. “Great. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Bye.” The line went dead.

He replaced the receiver and pinched the bridge of his nose. This was like beating his head against a wall. He lifted the dispatch report again. Maybe rather than send out a deputy, he’d pick up the slack and go himself.

Because he really needed to get out of the damn office before the walls closed in on him.

Autry let her fingers linger on the receiver, fighting the impulse to call Stanton back and tell him, yes, she’d like him to drive her home.

But letting him come over for dinner was probably muddying the waters enough. She needed some time to stand on her own, take charge of her life, before she allowed him any closer. The last few weeks, with them together—she’d looked upon him as a protector, the father of her baby. She needed to back off, look at him as a man, figure out what she needed from him before they moved forward.

“Ready to go?” Madeline breezed in, her dark hair swept up in a chic, messy knot. An orderly waited at the door, wheelchair ready.

Autry grimaced. “Can’t I walk?”

“It’s the rule.” Madeline smiled, perfectly plucked eyebrows lifting. “You’re always the one following the rules, remember?”

“Yeah.” Autry rose, the healing incision pulling a little, and walked to the chair. Following the rules, making the safe choices. Where had it gotten her?

Madeline shouldered the overnight bag. “Let’s rock and roll.”

At the pun, Autry rolled her eyes and glowered at her sister. “You’re in an awful good mood.”

As they maneuvered down the hall, Madeline chuckled. “Called the department, told them to expect me back Wednesday of next week. The idea of leaving this place always makes me happy.”

Autry fingered the stitched seam along the front of the wheelchair seat. “So the funeral arrangements are final?”

Madeline darted a look at her. “Yes. Monday, eleven o’clock.”

Autry nodded, looking away as the orderly punched the down button at the elevator. Monday morning. And Monday afternoon, she and Stanton would bury their daughter. She laid her hands over her abdomen. They’d talked about those arrangements last night, in a tense, uncomfortable exchange before he left. A private burial, just the two of them, a few close friends and family.

At least she’d have two days to prepare herself to face the emotional hell that day would be.

Madeline’s car waited under the portico downstairs and Autry folded herself into the passenger seat and closed her eyes. The engine revved and Madeline shifted into gear. “I’m surprised Reed wasn’t here this morning.”

On a sigh, Autry opened her eyes. The restored historic district, with its quirky, trendy shops set in old houses, flashed by. “He offered to drive me. I said no. He’s bringing dinner over tonight.”

Madeline made a sound in her throat, suspiciously like a snort. “He’s a sucker for punishment, isn’t he?”

Autry rolled her head on the seat and glared. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve told him it’s over and he’s still hanging around.”

“It’s not over.” Autry shifted, uncomfortable with the conversation. “It’s…I need some time to make up my mind about what I want from him.”

“Bullshit.” Braking for the stoplight at Highway 19, Madeline looked at her from the corner of her eye. “You either know or you don’t. You’re scared.”

She was not. Autry swallowed the denial. “Can we talk about something else, please?”

Madeline waved a hand in the air and swung into a left hand turn. “Whatever you want. Pick a subject. Anything to foster sisterly bonding.”

“Like you’ve ever wanted to bond with me.”

“Nice to know you can be something other than perfectly mannered at all times.”

Her head ached. Maybe she should have let Stanton pick her up. “There’s no talking to you.”

“You sound just like Daddy.” Madeline’s fingers clenched on the steering wheel and she pressed down harder on the accelerator. The little car jumped forward and the chicken plant flashed by, followed by the Coney city limits sign.

“Don’t start.” Autry tightened her seat belt. “He’s dead, Madeline. You won’t have to listen to him anymore. Not like you ever did.”

“You did enough listening for both of us. And Daddy didn’t talk. He handed down dictates.”

“That is not true.” Autry pushed her hair away from her face, the strands limp against her fingers. “You never quit, do you? He’s
dead
, Madeline. Your stubbornness outlasted his. You won. What more do you want?”

“You think I won?” Madeline’s laugh was short, disbelieving.

“You’re the one who said you’d come home over his dead body.”

Madeline paled. “You’ve conveniently forgotten what he said. You think I have? Him standing at the bottom of those stairs, yelling at me?”

Autry blinked. He had shouted. She’d been fourteen, accustomed to her sister and father’s battles, but her reserved father raising his voice had been new, frightening. “I don’t remember what he said. I remember the two of you yelling, your door slamming, Mama crying. But I don’t remember what he said.”

Madeline laughed again, an ugly, cynical sound. “Well, I do.”

Autry frowned, trying to focus on the memory beneath the emotions.

If you walk out that door, Madeline, don’t bother coming back.

Her daddy’s voice, rough with pain, hoarse from yelling, rose in her mind. Autry shot a quick glance at her sister. Madeline drove, fingers flexing on the wheel. “He said, if you walk out that door…”

“Don’t bother coming back.” A harsh smile touched Madeline’s mouth.

“And you didn’t.”

“What was the point?” Madeline shrugged. “He’d said what he had to say and I wasn’t crawling back to be his mindless robot.”

Autry turned to watch the pine trees as Madeline slowed to turn left onto River Road. “That’s what you think I am.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth. I
think
you loved him and wanted to please him and maybe you got in the habit of putting aside your own wants and needs to make him happy. And maybe, just maybe, you’re afraid the same thing will happen with Reed.”

A chill wrapped around Autry’s heart. Was that it? Was she afraid of losing her identity to Stanton’s?

Madeline threw on the brakes and stopped short of the stop sign at the Flint crossroads. “Fuck.”

Autry looked up. “What?”

“We’re supposed to be going to your house and we’re halfway to Mama’s. Why didn’t you say anything?”

Because she hadn’t been thinking. Someone else had been in the driver’s seat and she’d been along for the ride. Looked like that was turning out to be the story of her life.

Autry sighed. “We’re this close, we might as well go see her. It’ll make her happy.”

Madeline chuckled and pressed the accelerator. “There you go again, thinking of everyone but you. You’d better wise up, little sister, and start looking out for number one.”

Stanton knocked at Mrs. Milson’s front door and waited. A chilly breeze ruffled through her azaleas and hydrangeas, planted close to the house and seriously overgrown. He frowned. That near her windows, they offered too much cover to a would-be burglar.

Footsteps creaked in the hallway and the door eased open. Mrs. Milson glared up at him, her eyes hazy behind her large lenses. “Yes? What do you want?”

He’d so been here, done this before. He produced a professional smile and lifted his badge with identification showing. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Milson. You called the sheriff’s department? About a prowler?”

She folded her arms over her chest. “Took you long enough to get here.”

He nodded. “Yes, ma’am, and I apologize for that—”

“He’s done gone anyway.”

“Ma’am?”

She waved a hand toward the ramshackle shed taking up one corner of her yard. “He ran off this morning. Saw him headed into the woods.”

Stanton studied the shed. The door hung open at an angle, the interior dark. Overgrown yellow-tip shrubs surrounded the building. Beyond the shed was a rusted wire fence, the posts listing at a drunken angle. “What did he look like?”

Mrs. Milson huffed a sigh. “Only saw him for a moment. Tall, skinny, dark hair. He was walking funny.”

Stanton nodded. “All right. I’m going to check out the building. Stay here, please.”

He pulled his flashlight from its ring and unsnapped his holster. Approaching the outbuilding with caution, he glanced through the dusty windows. Weak sunlight broke up the shadows, but nothing moved within. He edged to the door, but saw only an ancient lawnmower and assorted junk. A pile of tarps and drop cloths lay in one corner, near a stack of rusted paint cans. Stepping inside, he shone the flashlight over and behind the accumulated junk.