Fortunately, now that they'd proven they were completely committed to what they'd started three years ago, they were beginning to gain the attention of local and state officials. A state senator had promised to attend a fund-raising event at the Hyatt next weekend, bolstering Skye's hopes for more generous contributions.
"I feel an obligation to do something, Sher. When we met, he asked if we help men. He seemed.. .embarrassed, as if it was emasculating in some way. I told him we try to help as many people as we can, regardless of 31
gender, age or ethnicity."
"So what did you promise him?"
"An appointment with Jonathan. I thought we should find out if his suspicions about his wife had any foundation in fact, but then he never came back. I called him several times, trying to touch base, but it was right before Christmas and, when I didn't hear from him, I assumed he was out of town with his family. Then.. .this." She bit her lip, terrified that another life had been lost--a life she might have been able to save. "I should've been more diligent, should've driven over to his place--"
"Skye, what you assumed was perfectly reasonable. We still don't know what happened. Maybe he left because he found some sort of proof that he wasn't safe."
"No. He would've taken the kids if the situation had become that desperate."
"Okay, we'll see what Jonathan can do to track him down." Sheridan tried to follow this statement with a smile, but Skye could sense the effort behind it, the worry. She hadn't seen her friend so concerned about TLS
since those rocky months after they'd first launched the charity. That they were overextended wasn't a big surprise, given the number of cases they'd taken on after the last newspaper article had heightened public awareness of their existence. She should've been more sensitive to their limitations. But it was always difficult to choose whom to help. And she wasn't especially in tune with their financial situation to begin with. Sheridan handled the accounting; Skye oversaw or taught the classes they offered in self-defense, self-esteem, trauma recovery, and, as an adjunct, gun safety and target shooting. Jasmine worked with investigators to find evidence, people, anything that had gone missing. Beyond that, they each spearheaded different cases, acting as a sort of director by determining what was needed, what was available and how to mesh the two.
"Our next fund-raiser is a week from tomorrow, right?"
"That's right. Saturday evening."
"I have a few bucks left over in my account this month." Because she had bills that would now have to wait, but she wasn't about to admit that to Sheridan. "I'll pay Jonathan."
Closing her eyes, Sheridan shook her head. "Skye--"
Skye nudged her. "The organization can pay me back if the fundraiser is as good as we hope. Okay?"
Sheridan sighed but nodded. "Okay. Let's get out of the cold. It's starting to rain."
She turned to go inside, but Skye caught her long enough to give her a 32
quick hug. "Thanks for understanding."
"Of course I understand. That's what we do. That's why we're here."
She held the door. "By the way..."
Skye dropped her keys in her purse. "What is it?"
"Have you got a date for the fund-raiser?"
"Not yet. It doesn't make sense to me. Why do we need an escort?"
she asked as they moved down the hall.
"I told you. It's all about public perception. The majority of our financial backers are businessmen, bankers, farmers, ranchers, dairymen.
You know, conservatives who favor law and order."
"So what?"
They reached the reception desk, which was unstaffed until the volunteers began to arrive later in the day, and Sheridan sat down to sort through the mail. "So the senator who's agreed to come is also very conservative. When his aide called, he hinted that they have to be very careful about whom they appear to support."
Skye rested her elbows on the counter and watched to see if anything had come in for her. "What's wrong with supporting people who help the victims of violent crime? Who've been victims themselves? What could be unpopular about that?"
"We're not exactly friends with local law enforcement, for one thing.
That makes us seem like a bit of a gamble. And we've gotten so engrossed in our work that we've let our private lives go."
They'd talked about this before. They discussed it more often as they wandered further and further from what others would term "a normal life."
But Skye wasn't in the mood to address the subject again. Not when she was giving up her grocery money to hire an investigator. "He said that?"
"No. But..."
"What?" Skye said, growing impatient.
Sheridan set two letters aside for Jasmine, threw out some junk mail and handed what looked like a card to Skye. "He hinted that he wanted to avoid any speculation about our sexual orientation."
That immediately diverted Skye's attention from her mail. "No way!"
"I wouldn't make that up."
"I hope you told him to go to hell."
"No, I assured him that associating with us wouldn't threaten the support of the people who got the senator elected."
"I would've told him to go to hell."
"No, you wouldn't. You would've realized that it's a small sacrifice for the cause."
33
Skye sighed and checked the return address on her envelope. It was from Joanna Lintz, a woman she'd helped when The Last Stand first opened.
"Maybe," she admitted. "But it really galls me to let someone else direct what I do with my personal life." Opening the card, she glanced through it.
Joanna wrote that she was happy and doing better than ever. But even that news wasn't enough to counteract everything else that had happened today.
"What does speculation about our sexual orientation have to do with fighting crime?" she asked Sheridan.
"We spend a lot of time together. We don't go out very often. We have no men in our lives." Sheridan grimaced. "Well, at least, no one who isn't on our 'needs help' list. Even Jasmine hasn't been with a man since God knows when. You don't see anything wrong with that picture?"
Skye put the card in her bag and tossed the tail of her knitted scarf over one shoulder. "Nothing that should concern anyone else! Besides, Jasmine's been married."
"That doesn't mean anything and you know it."
"It's just.. .annoying."
"I agree, but this fund-raiser has to work."
No kidding. Skye wouldn't have running water and electricity if it didn't. "Fine. I'll find someone to drag along on Saturday," she grumbled.
"Anything else for me?"
"Not today." Sheridan set the rest of the mail aside. "And make sure it's someone who cleans up well," she added. "It's formal, and we want to make a good impression. This is our chance to network with people who have serious money and to make contacts in the political world."
Skye started toward her own office but turned back at the door.
"Getting a guy who makes a good impression isn't as easy as it sounds.
Remember Charlie Fox at the Christmas party?"
"I told you not to ask him." Sheridan stood and slid the chair back under the desk. "He's still crying in his beer over the divorce."
"You didn't say that, Sher. You said your neighbor was lonely. That it might be nice for him to get out and circulate."
Sheridan wouldn't look her in the eye. "I'm pretty sure I warned you,"
she said as she made her way to the office directly across from the reception area.
"No, you didn't. You said he was sweet, harmless."
"Which is true."
"True? That sweet, harmless man drank so much he reduced himself to a blithering idiot before the evening was half over. By the time I drove him home, he was snoring in the passenger seat and I could hardly get him 34
to wake up."
Sheridan pushed her door open. Skye suspected she was hiding a smile. "I'm sorry it didn't work out. Maybe this time you should ask someone you might actually be interested in."
"Oh, no, you don't," Skye called after her. "There is no one."
Her friend pivoted to face her. "Yes, there is."
Skye waved an irritated hand. "He's married."
"He's divorced."
"Doesn't matter. He'll get back with her. He always does. He stays with her as long as he can take the tension, then he leaves. But he sees divorce as an admission of failure, and he's too stubborn to let himself fail."
"There is that," Sheridan agreed.
"And she's got the one thing he really cares about," Skye said.
Sheridan's expression grew serious. "He cares about you, Skye."
Skye stepped into her office. "Not as much as he cares about his son."
"It's Oliver!" Noah Burke snapped, his blue eyes revealing his dismay.
Knowing her husband was on the phone made Jane's limbs go heavy and cold. She'd just spent an hour making love to his older brother and was lying naked in bed. Whenever her mother-in-law took Kate for the weekend, Noah dropped by. He always came under the guise of fixing a leaky faucet or mowing her lawn--so his wife wouldn't suspect--but it still wasn't good that Oliver had caught him at the house.
"Yes, I'll accept the charges," she heard him say, then he raked his fingers through his thick sandy hair.
"He never calls on Saturday mornings," she whispered apologetically.
The cloud of euphoria that had engulfed her moments before disappeared as she sat up. Noah hadn't intended to answer the phone. He'd been hoping to find a pizza place that was open now that it was nearly noon-- only to be surprised by an operator, who had Oliver on the line and promptly announced what Jane had heard hundreds of times herself: This recorded call is from an inmate at a California state correctional facility.
What lousy timing. According to Oliver, there was one telephone per tier at San Quentin, which meant fifty-four guys were constantly vying for a turn. But he always managed to contact her when she least wanted to speak with him....
Of course, lately she hardly ever wanted to speak with him. He acted as if she should be excited about his parole, but what made him think he deserved a happy homecoming after everything he'd put her through? Maybe he wasn't guilty of attempted rape, but he'd broken their marriage vows long before she had. And that had led to the biggest heartache Jane could 35
imagine. She'd lost everything and her dignity, too. No one else in her circle of acquaintances had to live with the shame of having a spouse in prison. It would've been bad enough had he been accused of embezzling or some other white-collar crime. But attempted rape reflected on her as much as it did him. The experts claimed it was about power, not sex--God, how many times had she heard that?--but it still held a stigma, made her seem incapable of satisfying her man. If he's getting what he needs at home, why does he have to look elsewhere? No one had actually asked her that, but she could tell by the way they watched her that they wondered.
She wished they could see her with Noah. Much taller than his brother, Noah had a construction business that kept him in great physical shape, and he couldn't wait to get his hands on her.
Not that she felt good about what they were doing. Her zealously religious aunt, who'd finished raising her when her own parents were killed in an automobile accident, was probably rolling over in her grave. Besides, Jane loved her sister-in-law and Oliver's parents, all of whom would be hurt if they knew.
Covering the mouthpiece, Noah motioned to her, as if to ask, What the hell am I going to tell him?
Desperate for an immediate response, she resorted to the excuse she'd given her mother-in-law when Betty Burke had visited unexpectedly last week and found Noah standing in the kitchen. "Tell him my toilet's stopped up and you came over to take care of it," she murmured. "He knows you help me occasionally. He's grateful."
He rolled his eyes at "grateful," and hung his head, which tempted her to take the phone. Sometimes Noah's guilt weighed on him even more heavily than Jane's weighed on her. She feared it might drag the truth out of him someday. But Oliver had no doubt heard Noah's voice. It'd seem odd if he didn't say a few words before putting her on the line.
Sending her a helpless glance, Noah rubbed his left temple as he spoke into the receiver. "Yes.. .that's right, it's me. How are you?.. .Fine.
What's been happening down there since my last visit?.. .No kidding? I'm glad you're getting out.. .Sorry I didn't come more often this past year.. .I know. Business has been crazy.. .Still, I should've found the time...."
Jane got up and crossed the room to sit at Noah's feet, oddly tempted to moan or make some other noise that would give them away. Oliver deserved the pain that knowing about their involvement would bring. If he hadn't allowed Skye Kellerman to lure him to her house, they wouldn't be where they were now.
But Jane knew she'd never tell him or anyone else about Noah. She 36
couldn't. Letting that secret out would destroy too many relationships, impact too many lives--including her daughter's. Then there was Wendy.
Jane didn't want to repay her sister-in-law's many kindnesses by revealing such a betrayal.
"So you'll have a parole officer for a few years?" Noah was saying.
"What'11 that be like?"
Jane imagined her and Noah in the room from a bird's-eye perspective and was sickened by what she saw. She, who'd once been a model wife and mother, was having sex with her husband's older brother. She was a terrible person....
"Mom and Dad are looking forward to seeing you, too." Noah gave her a sad smile. Maybe that was why she was so addicted to him. He treated her as if she was important, a priority. As if her feelings mattered. Besides, the affair wasn't all her fault. She wouldn't have fallen in love with Noah if he hadn't come over so often, trying to help her with the house and with Kate. Oliver had left her drowning in a sea of pain and loss, and she'd been grabbing for something, anything to cling to until she could right her world.
"Too bad about the dental practice. You'll find something else, though," he said as he played with a few strands of her hair. "You bet. We'll get together as soon as you're home. Okay, here's Jane."