BlackJack (A Standish Bay Romance Book 1) (16 page)

For the rest of
the night Shannon sat on the floor trembling, trying to convince herself she’d
imagined the whole thing. The light could’ve been anything, and the shadow the
play of the moon’s rays. She’d hit the ground so fast, she wondered if she’d
gotten a good enough look. And she admitted to herself she hadn’t. But she knew
what she saw and it brought back memories of Chicago. She would be much more
aware of her surroundings from now on.

In the morning,
Shannon lazily walked the beach and sat on the jetties. She even skimmed rocks
into the water, anything to occupy her time. Occupy her mind. This time next
week she would be out on the west coast traveling from Washington State to
Southern California then off to Las Vegas. She would be gone two weeks, and she
had been looking forward to it. But now she didn’t know if she had the strength
or energy she needed to sustain such a hectic schedule. After the events of
last night it would be good to get away. Would a crazy murderer really follow
her across the country? Probably not.

 The other
thing she had to look forward to was she would be away from John. She could
contact Cole and hopefully...hopefully what? Hell, she didn’t know. She did
know if she told him about last night, he’d come running. So okay, she would
make the call and hire a bodyguard. If nothing else, it would put her mind at
ease. Being jumpy and anxious as hell was detrimental to her health.

After
acknowledging several joggers on the beach, she went back to her house just as
the mail arrived, and the thought of making the phone call vanished. Shannon
stood frozen in fear as her heart pounded against her chest, threatening to
break through. The court transcript had arrived, and she suddenly felt
terrified to read it. What if there were things in it that shocked her and
changed her mind about Cole’s innocence? She truly believed he was innocent,
but should she risk opening Pandora’s Box? Feeding that one little percentage
of her brain constantly nagging maybe, just maybe he did it? You bet, and she
tore it open immediately.

After brewing a
fresh pot of coffee, she spent hours reading through everything. And it was not
the most pleasant of reads. She spent hours switching from anger, to pain, then
back to anger. She had read court transcripts before, but these truly shocked
her to the core. They were a joke. He was railroaded by the judicial system. They
had nothing on him, circumstantial evidence at best, which was probably why the
judge had been lenient on his prison sentence.

Cole had never
taken the stand in his own defense. Probably a mistake, she mused, but it was
too late. They would never know one way or another. Her heart bled for him all
over again. Imagine being twenty-three and totally alone. His wife murdered by
someone else, and he was blamed, tried and convicted. My God, the despair he
must have felt when they’d read the verdict and led him away to a maximum
security prison. Actually, she knew how he had felt as he’d told her, but she
could understand more now after reading this. And hell, she had watched most of
the trial on television, but reading it now pained her to her core. She was
emotionally involved now, and she hadn’t been then because she hadn’t known him
then, hadn’t loved him then.

From what he
had told her, surviving prison hadn’t been easy. But the main thing was he had
survived. And he was thriving again and doing what he was born to do, making
incredible music.

Shannon picked
up the phone to call him. Her hands shook so badly she replaced the receiver. What
could she possibly say? Sorry for the way he had been treated? Sorry he spent fifteen
years of terrible loneliness, anguish and torture for a crime he clearly didn’t
commit? What she wanted to say was she loved him and she needed him. In the end
she didn’t call. She took out a notebook, put on a warm jacket and went down to
the beach. Pen in hand, she began making an outline of the case including a
list of possible suspects and motives. Depending on how many guys Lindsey had
slept with, there could be many suspects with many motives. When she completed
her list, she felt the familiar tug of her creative juices flowing. She had
never written a nonfiction book, but Cole’s story was begging to be written,
and she started making notes of everything she knew and everything he’d told
her.

Someday, with
his permission, she would like to tell the world his story. Let them meet and
get to know who the real man, Cole Jackson, had been and was today. She became
lost in her writing, writing page after page, her hand flying at top speed, out
of control and barely keeping up with the words exiting her brain. She reveled
in the wonder and exhilaration at finally having so many words to put down on
paper.

If it hadn’t
been for darkness descending all around her, she would have continued. When she
stepped inside her house, it hit her how tired and chilled to bone she was. After
turning up the fireplace, she lay down on the couch under a fleece throw and
contemplated the fact she never called for a bodyguard—first thing on her
to
do list
tomorrow. Exhaustion overtook her and she slept soundly until
morning. She never heard John’s frantic message left on her answering machine
or the one from Cameron. She never saw the man watching her sleep from her back
deck.

Chapter
Twelve

Shannon awoke
the next morning stiff and sore from sleeping on the couch, but all that aside,
she felt rested and ready to charge forward on a new day. She planned to do
more work on Cole’s case and the book she hoped to write someday with his blessing.
She sat down with her first cup of coffee to read over her writings from
yesterday when the doorbell rang. Who could possibly be here on a weekday? Wasn’t
everyone she knew working? She combed her fingers through her mussed hair and
opened the door to the last person she expected to see there. John. Before she
had a chance to slam the heavy wooden door in his face, he stuck his foot out
and stepped inside uninvited and unwanted. It was then she noticed the worried
lines around his mouth and forehead. The dark circles surrounding his eyes
casting deep shadows. The anger and hurt from last week melted and she reached
out with her suddenly trembling hand to touch his arm. “John, what’s wrong?”

He folded
Shannon into his arms and cried out, “Cameron’s gone. He ran away.”

Shannon choked
back a sob, her knees buckled, refusing to carry her weight. Fortunately for
her, John supported her and carried her up the stairs to the couch. She clung
to him and cried as he told her what he knew, which didn’t amount to a whole
hell of a lot.

***

Cameron sat
curled up in the last seat of the bus, hugging his coat close to himself as he
tried to sleep. The bus was nearly empty, cold and smelled like exhaust fumes,
but he didn’t care. It represented his ride to freedom. He was still too upset
at the turn of events of the past twenty-four hours to sleep. His brain buzzed
along running a marathon, but his body had been left behind at the starting
line. So what if his father caught him getting high in his room, no big deal. But
to Lieutenant McKenzie it was a big deal. His Dad,
Saint John
, like he
never got high when he was his age?
Please
. What did he take him for, an
idiot? But that was just the beginning. He tore through his room spilling
drawers, emptying the closet until he found his stash.

Okay, so he had
some pot, a pipe and some pills in his closet. It wasn’t like he was going to
turn into a drug addict or anything? His father had gone on and on about how he
was turning into a derelict and going down the road to Nowhereville. That had
stung. Cameron couldn’t ever remember his dad speaking to him so hurtfully
before. He had taken his best and favorite guitar and smashed it against his
bedpost over and over until it splintered into a thousand pieces. Then Cameron
saw the look on his face and was afraid of his father for the first time in his
life. He thought for sure he was going to hit him. His father’s eyes were black
and glazed over, his face beet red, and Cameron could see the muscles tensed up
in his neck and his veins bulging in his forehead. His hands were fisted
tightly at his side and Cameron could tell he struggled for control. Cameron
wiped the tears pooling in his eyes as he remembered it.

The only other
time he had ever seen his father so upset was during the fight with Cole. He’d
never been like that with him before, and he’d never said such hurtful things
to him before either, not to mention the fact he ruined his favorite guitar. And
that was the problem. His dad didn’t understand him.

Couldn’t
understand him.

Didn’t want to
understand him.

He shouted at
him, asking why he couldn’t be like most sixteen-year-olds, thinking about
sports, working a job or planning for college. Why did he just sit in his room
writing music and lyrics and playing his guitar? And oh, don’t forget about
getting high. His father told him he was throwing his life away. Well guess
what Dad? It was his fucking life to throw away if he wanted to and his father
be dammed.

That night he
packed his backpack and his old guitar and waited until dawn to sneak out the
door. He’d left a note for his father and a message on his mom’s answering
machine. He crashed in the woods near the bank, waiting for it to open. He withdrew
everything he had. It was quite a bit, he had eighteen-hundred dollars, and it
would get him far across the country until he decided what to do from there.

After
hitchhiking his way to the Braintree T-station, he took the subway to the bus
depot and bought a one-way ticket cross-country to Los Angeles. He figured he’d
look Cole up when he got there, and maybe he could live with him for a while. He
knew his mom would be really sad. First she lost Cole, then him, but this was
something he had to do.

All this
thinking caused his chest to ache, but at least it took his mind off his
rumbling stomach. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, and he hoped
the bus stopped at a rest area soon.

***

Cole entered
the hotel room at midnight after another sold out show in Philadelphia. Pittsburgh
had also been sold out, and he still tingled numb over it all. Tomorrow he flew
to California for a parole check, then off to Chicago. He tried not to remember
the last time he visited Chicago. The ache in his heart was excruciating. He
tried not to think about the deranged killer’s attempt on Shannon’s life but
the good things they shared. Shannon, God, how he missed her, missed being with
her, missed her laugh, missed her smile and everything else about her. He spent
the last half hour in the bar downstairs staring at a glass of Jack Daniels while
he sipped a soda water with lime.

It had been
tempting. Oh so tempting. He didn’t know what he was trying to prove to himself?
That he had restraint and self-control? Or was he trying to slide into
self-destruction mode and ruin his life all over again? He finally got up and
left totally disgusted at himself for his self-pity. Enough was enough. He had
to stop. So what if he had been dealt more raw deals than most people
? Get
over it.

He dreamed during
the night of the early days with the band, before Lindsey’s affairs, before his
self-destruction tendencies. Those had been the days of his innocence and youth.
Those were the days of loving Lindsey, his music, AJ, Ted and Brad.

Why and when
had things gone so terribly wrong?

***

AJ awoke to his
heart pounding like a runaway freight train heading for derailment. He fought
with all his might to breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth,
hoping to calm his heart rate and bring it under control. After he succeeded,
he sat up in bed, turned on the bedside lamp and tried to remember what he
dreamed about.

Lindsey. He’d
dreamed about Lindsey. But there’d been more. Flashes and bits and pieces of
the past. Some of it coincided with his memory, but some of it was strange and
foreign to his mind. There was yelling and fighting between he and Lindsey
which was odd as he didn’t ever remember fighting with her.

Aside from the
dream, the most bizarre thing of all was the cryptic message he’d received that
morning. Someone accused him of killing Lindsey. The no-name person claimed he
was hiding in the Jackson suite at the time and saw him, yes him, stab Lindsey.
AJ’s whole body shivered in dread. “
Could it be true
?” And why after
reading the note, which had an unusual odor, did he feel lightheaded and
strange?

***

“Where could he
have gone?” Shannon asked as she paced the floor of her living room for the
hundredth time since learning of Cameron’s running away. Nobody answered her,
which she’d expected, because nobody knew the answer.

Her body
twitched and her heart raced from all the caffeine she’d drunk and poisoned her
body with. She paused and looked out the windows. Mother Nature was in a rare
mood. The clouds hung low, dark and menacing. It would only be a matter of time
before the rain pelted them in wind driven sheets. Gusts howled and the waves
were a surfer’s dream come true. The ocean looked like one large endless white
cap after another.

The weather
could not have depicted Shannon’s mood any better. As she turned her back on
the windows and surveyed the gloomy faces of her family, she wondered what the
hell she was doing here. She should be out looking for her son. It had been two
days and not a single word had been heard from him.

When she craved
his voice, she listened to his message on her machine. “Mom, I’m sorry but I
can’t take Dad anymore. Don’t worry about me. I love you.” She had sat in the
dark the first night she’d found out he’d run away and listened to the
recording over and over, at least fifty times. She finally had to stop as her
grasp on sanity hung tenaciously by a thread. If she hadn’t stopped, she would
have lost it and who knew if she would have come out of it.

Shannon had not
seen nor spoken to John in two days. Every time she called, Cheryl told her he
was locked in Cameron’s bedroom. He wouldn’t come out, nor let anyone in.
Jesus
John, a fine time to fall apart.

So, to take
matters into her own hands, she called anyone Cameron was even remotely
friendly with, and unfortunately no one had seen or heard from him. She called
the bank and knew he had cleaned out his account. Shannon had felt a small,
short-lived relief knowing he at least had money on him. The next thing she did
was call her private detective friend, Scott Danvers and hired him to find Cameron.
And so far she had heard nothing from him. They couldn’t trace his phone
because he’d left his cell at home.

Her brother Mitch
arrived with take out, jarring her out of her thoughts. She’d not had time to
speak to him in private about the vice-president lady he was in love with to
find out what happened when he went to her home in Texas to fly her back to
Boston. Shannon hoped he had something good and juicy to tell her because she
needed a break from the constant state of worry and doom her life had become.
She knew at some point she needed to confide in her family about the incident
in Chicago, but they had enough to worry about with Cameron without adding that
to the mix. So once again, she put the danger to herself into the recesses of
her mind to be visited later.

Ever since John
told her about Cameron, she felt as though something physically squeezed her
lungs, choking off her air supply. Add to that the walls were moving in, and
she had to constantly stand on her porch gulping air as her pulse raced and her
head spun. Needless to say it was not a pleasant feeling, and she didn’t see
things changing anytime in the foreseeable future, unless she heard from Cameron.

She loved her
family dearly, but their hushed voices and their eyes constantly following her
everywhere, expecting her to breakdown any minute, was not helping her anxiety
attacks any.

“Shannon, honey,”
said her mom in her placating tone. “Come eat while the foods hot.”

She walked over
to the table, sat down and stared at the food on her plate. Eggplant Parmesan,
pasta and garlic bread sticks, her favorite food from her favorite Italian
restaurant. If only she could stomach it. Even sitting here smelling the food
was too much for her tonight. She went for the wine her brother poured for her
instead and downed every last drop. Perhaps if she got good and drunk she’d
pass out.

Glancing around
the table, she realized this pictured not your typical Gallagher gathering. No
talking, no laughing, no jokes and no wild story telling. The only other time
Shannon remembered such a somber dinner happened the day she told her parents
she was pregnant. And oh God, what an awful day that had been as her mother
proceeded to cry all day and her father couldn’t look her in the eye as though
he were ashamed of her. Ashamed of what she had done with John. She could read
her father’s thoughts—How could his little girl have sex?

All she had to
say was thank God they’d liked John. It had made it a little easier for them to
handle the fact their oldest daughter was pregnant and getting married at seventeen.
And now here they were some seventeen years later. Her mother trying hard not
to cry and her father once again having a hard time meeting her in the eye, but
she knew it was because he felt helpless to solve the crisis. Bridget and
Rachel were quiet, not like themselves at all. And not once had Bridget made a
comment about Cole.
Thank you, God.

Now—Mitch—God
love him, sat in his seat and tried his hardest to act normal, but he couldn’t
do it alone. He had taken several days off from work and had moved into her
guest bedroom while her parents were sleeping at Bridget’s house in her extra
bedroom.

She appreciated
her family wanting to be close to her, but at this very moment she needed
space, she needed air. She heard herself mumble something unintelligible, and
then she left the table, grabbed her jacket and ran down to the beach. The rain
had finally begun, and in no time her hair stuck plastered to her head and she
couldn’t tell whether it was her tears or the rain blocking her vision as she
stumbled down toward her favorite jetties. Or what was left of them because the
tide had risen so much higher than normal thanks to the storm.

Shannon stood
shivering on the rocks, battling the wind and trying to keep her footing on the
slippery surface while the spray from the ocean beat against her face. The wind
whipped her body from every direction, the waves crashed and churned out in the
ocean while the rain flew sideways, pelting her from every conceivable angle.

Everything
happening around her was also happening inside her body. Never had her insides
hurt so badly.

Before she knew
it, she threw her arms out, lifting her face up to the sky and screamed, “Cameron,
where are you?” Of course, her screams were swallowed up by storm sounds surrounding
her and her heart bottomed out. How would he ever hear her?

***

“John, you
can’t stay in there forever,” he heard his wife say through the closed bedroom
door. He could hear the concern laced in her voice, making him feel worse.