I leaned as far over the table toward her as I could. “Chase’s mother is my mother.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“Simon and my mother had an affair. It was eighteen years ago, before Simon’s wife died and before he became a minister. You know Simon’s background. The whole world knows. He was just an auto worker. He and my mother were working on an assembly line together, a year or two after my mother ran out on Dad and me. Simon had learned that his wife was having an affair. It crushed him. He had the affair to get back at his wife. My mother was convenient. It was brief, but long enough to produce Chase.”
“That’s unbelievable.”
“Simon’s wife got sick shortly afterward. Then she died. Simon loved his wife very much. It tortured him that he’d done it.”
“So Kacey and you are almost related.”
“Chase is our half-brother.”
She leaned back in her chair. “And Kacey knows?”
“She does now.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?”
“There are too many things going on here for it all to be coincidence,” I said. “Somehow there’s a connection. You have information I don’t have. I’m hoping you can help me figure it out.”
“I hate to be so blunt, but isn’t it obvious that your mother was behind the blackmail?”
I waved a hand in the air. “Believe me, when it comes to my mother, you should never be afraid to be blunt. She would seem to be the obvious suspect, but Simon didn’t believe it and neither do I. If she wanted to blackmail him, she could have done it years ago. She gave Chase up for adoption when he was small. Besides, why would she leave a note on Simon’s windshield saying, ‘I know about the boy’? She was in a position to be much more direct. And a man called Simon with the demand, not a woman.”
“She could have been covering her tracks and she could have had an accomplice.”
“True. As I said, though, Simon was convinced it wasn’t her. I feel the same way. There’s no way yet to be sure.”
“Where does your mother live?”
“Southlake. She came to Simon’s house yesterday. I had an investigator find her. It was the first time I’d seen her in twenty years.”
She shook her head. “What a story! I’m happy for you. It must be nice to get your mother back after all those years.”
I frowned. “I’m not yet prepared to jump to that conclusion.”
She studied my face but must have decided not to follow up on that one. “So, if it wasn’t your mother, it had to be Elise. She was the only other one who knew, besides Brandon.”
“There could have been others. We don’t know who Elise told, or Brandon, or my mother for that matter. I do know that Brandon was upset with Simon for firing him. Brandon had a drinking problem. I told you it was complicated. Are you following all of this?”
Without so much as a smile, she said, “Not at all.”
I laughed. The man in the blazer gave me a dirty look. It was apparent his day wasn’t going as planned.
“Too bad this is off the record,” Parst said. “I guess it doesn’t matter, though. I’d need a flow chart to keep this story straight. Maybe Brandon should be suspect number one, but if he was blackmailing Simon, why would he give the information to me? You would think that he wouldn’t want anyone to know that he knew about the boy.”
“No one sticks out as a clear favorite. There’s more, though. A couple of things about Elise’s suicide don’t add up. For one thing, she wrote the suicide note—”
Katie raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, you were right,” I said. “There was a note. It was typed on computer paper. The bottom of the sheet was torn off.”
“That’s odd.”
“I thought so. The police weren’t nearly as inquisitive. It gets even odder. We found the note on the desk in her house, but we never found her laptop. It wasn’t in the house and it wasn’t in her car. There was a printer and a docking station for the laptop, but no computer.”
“What a great feature story this would be.”
“Remember, I’m counting on you not to print it.”
“I can dream, can’t I?” She took a sip through her straw.
I glanced out the window. The wind had picked up. An empty Wendy’s bag flipped and bounced along the curb like a suburban tumbleweed. As I was turning back to Katie, the black Honda that I had seen earlier edged around the front corner of the Starbucks and down the narrow street that ran parallel to our side of the cafe. I watched it from the corner of my eye. As it came up beside us, it slowed.
Katie must have seen my expression change. She moved her straw away from her mouth just as the car stopped, not ten feet to my right. “What is it?” she said.
She was turning to look when the rear window of the car slid down. I couldn’t see into the backseat. But I did see a long, black silencer extend through the open window. It was pointed straight at Katie.
Katie’s eyes opened wide when I dove across the table. My shoulder slammed into her chest, flipping her plastic glass into the air. A cold shower of tea and ice sprayed my face and neck and back as we hurtled toward the floor.
Just before we hit the tile, I felt one more thing—something hard and hot slamming into my side.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
IN THE TWELVE YEARS before I met Katie Parst at Starbucks, I had served on a Dallas SWAT team, protected heads of state in the Secret Service, and even taken a piece of shrapnel in my rear end. I had watched my father die in my arms, raided a terrorist hideout in Beirut, and killed four men. But I had never been shot.
I suppose that’s one more reason not to hang out with reporters.
When the tables and chairs stopped cartwheeling and the glass stopped breaking, I was lying face-to-face with Parst, my right hand mashed between her head and the tile floor. Her eyes were still as wide as they’d been when I dove across the table.
Besides the burning in my side, the first thing I felt was a stabbing pain in my middle finger. I didn’t want to move, because I had a strong hunch that the pain was only going to get worse. I turned my head to look out the window. The Honda was gone.
I looked back at Parst. “Are you okay?”
“I think so.” Her voice was high-pitched but steady. That was good. The less she panicked the faster I could figure out how badly we were hurt.
I took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay, listen to me. I want you to move your head slowly to the right, before you move anything else.”
She lifted her head slightly and moved it, freeing my hand from beneath her.
My middle finger above the first knuckle was bent at a grotesque angle. Blood dripped from it, and as I turned my hand to the side, I saw something white jutting from the bloody spot. I assumed it was a bone. I resolved that looking at it was not going to do me a bit of good. I turned my head away and forced myself to think.
“Okay, I’m going to roll off of you now.” The pain was so intense that my voice was barely more than a whisper. I fought hard to keep it a steady whisper—no sense scaring her even more. “Before you try to get up, I want you to wiggle each of your major body parts, one at a time, starting with your feet and toes, to make sure you don’t have anything hurt in a major way. Take your time. We won’t be going anywhere for a while.”
I gritted my teeth, braced my good hand on the floor, and pushed myself off of her. Pain exploded from my finger and shot up my arm all the way to my neck. I must have blacked out, because I don’t remember how I ended up on my back with the manager of Starbucks kneeling over me and staring into my eyes.
The woman’s long blonde hair fell from her shoulders and dangled to my cheeks, tickling my nose as she spoke. “We’ve called 9-1-1. Just lie still. They’ll be here in a minute. Do you want some water?”
I swiped her hair from my face with my good hand. “Where’s Katie?” I tried to prop myself on an elbow, but the pain jerked me down.
“I’m right here.” Katie leaned over me. “Don’t try to move. You’ve been shot.”
“But I don’t get shot.” Granted, not the smartest thing I’d ever said.
Katie placed a wet napkin across my forehead. “Apparently you do now. It looks as if you caught a bullet intended for me. Thank you.”
I tried to lift my head just enough to see my side, which felt as if someone had taped a hot curling iron to it. I couldn’t see it, but I could see the floor. There wasn’t too much blood there. I took that as a good sign. My finger seemed to be the bigger problem. The pain alternated between deep throbs and stabs so vicious that I envisioned some horrible little creature gnawing at my skin from the inside, trying to burst free and scamper toward the door. That would have been fine with me. If he was causing pain like this, the sooner he left the building, the better.
The room began to float. I found Katie’s face again and fought to keep her in focus. “Anybody hurt?”
“It doesn’t look like it. Just you.”
I closed my eyes and found that made it easier to think. A woman and child were crying near the front of the store. Without opening my eyes, I said, “Scary, huh?”
Katie patted my shoulder. “Less scary than it would have been. You’re a brave woman.”
I almost said, “Or a stupid one.” For once, though, I gave myself a break. Even I could see that I’d done something good. I’d tried to save Dad and he died; I’d tried to save Simon and he died. This time, I’d done my job. I’d saved Katie Parst. She was right here, alive and breathing—because of me. Despite the pain, I allowed myself to smile.
Within a few minutes sirens were blaring and paramedics and cops were everywhere. I must have blacked out again, because the next thing I knew, they were wheeling me into the back of an ambulance parked in front of the Starbucks. Katie stepped in behind the gurney.
The paramedic held up a thick hand. “I’m sorry, ma’am. You’ll have to meet us at the hospital.”
“She saved my life. I’d like to ride with her.”
By that time they had given me a shot for the pain. I was feeling woozily talkative. “Can’t she ride along? She’s my sister. Mom will want to know what’s going on.”
Katie looked at me and raised an eyebrow. I raised mine right back at her. Then, if that hadn’t been enough to red-flag my lie, I gave her an exaggerated wink.
A crowd of people had gathered on the sidewalk, and two police officers were doing their best to hold them back. The pain medicine was great stuff. I lifted my head and waved with my good hand, as if I were homecoming queen. The crowd clapped and whistled. A man in the back shouted, “Way to go, lady. You’re a hero!” The crowd clapped again.
The paramedic looked at the crowd and then back at Katie. “Sister, huh?” He smiled. “Hop in.”
Katie jumped in the back just before he closed the doors. The inside of the ambulance began to whirl, and I remember Katie squeezing my good hand and saying, “Whether you like it or not, from now on I’m part of your life.”
Days later Katie told me that I responded, “Thanks. I love you, Mom.”
CHAPTER
TWELVE
IN THE HOSPITAL I learned that the bullet wound would be more of a nuisance than anything. The bullet had sliced through the skin just above my hip and lodged in the base of the table next to where Katie and I had been sitting. The man in the blazer had left just in time. A second bullet smashed into the espresso machine behind the counter, showering beans everywhere, but missing the barista, who had bent over to pick up the luckiest straw she’d ever dropped.
The doctors slapped a bandage on my side and gave me a tetanus shot. If that had been all of it, I’d have been on my way that day. My finger was the bigger problem. It came between Katie’s head and the tile floor. When the bone snapped, it sliced through the skin. By the time the doctors surgically rearranged things, it was clear my shooting hand would be out of commission for at least ten weeks. They insisted on keeping me in the hospital overnight while they dripped antibiotics into me to hold off infection. The pain was nauseating. Fortunately, though, they introduced me to an amazing painkiller that had a remarkably brightening effect on an otherwise miserable day.
Kacey arrived shortly after I came out of surgery. She and Katie Parst sat with me until nearly eight o’clock that evening. Kacey and I had been through a lot together during the past nine months, but this was the first time I’d seen her so rattled. I supposed that after losing her father, she figured I was basically all she had left. That would be sufficient to rattle anyone.
She was crying before she even got through the door of the hospital room, something I had never seen her do, not even after her father died.
In my entire life, I couldn’t recall a single person who had ever cried for me. In retrospect I recognize how sad that was. My mother left when I was nine, and even when she was around she was too emotionally bedraggled to cry for anyone but herself. My grandparents had died by the time I was six, and I barely knew them anyway. Dad loved me, but he was a Special Forces officer. They don’t cry much. Besides, by the time I was seventeen, he was dead and I was alone. There simply wasn’t anyone else.