"I didn't hurt him!" he insisted, hearing the whine in his own voice. But it was true. He hadn't hurt him enough to kill him, at least, not on purpose.
That had been an accident. Just an accident. He wasn't a killer-he'd never murder anybody. Who could be blamed for an accident?
She stepped back inside for a moment, and when she came back out, she was holding a small plastic bag, thick with folded bills. She shoved it toward him. "Your money, all you had in your room and your account before you got picked up. I held on to it for you. Plus I put in every dollar I had in my purse. Now, get gone, boy. Just get gone. I'll keep praying for you-just like I pray for that little boy you killed. But prayers are all you're getting from me."
She slipped back into the house without another word, shutting the door again, slamming the bolts home, leaving him standing there on the porch. Alone. Rejected. Homeless. And completely loathed by the woman who'd given birth to him.
Anger flooded through him. Not at her; he couldn't be angry at her, not ever. But at the authorities who'd hunted him, who'd thrown him in that courtroom and dragged out that ugly trial that his ma had had to sit through. She'd been in the courtroom when that blond cunt had testified. She'd seen the pictures of that kid.
It was their fault he was in this mess. It should never have happened-that FBI lab was corrupt; his own lawyer had said it. He should never have had to go on trial. Should never have had to see that look of hatred in his own mother's eyes.
He staggered off the porch, wandering aimlessly down the street. Nowhere to go. Nobody who even wanted to know him. Jeez, he might just as well go back to the prison and give himself over to rape and beatings for the rest of his life. Or just die now.
Suddenly, a ringing sound intruded on his misery. He'd forgotten all about the cell phone Ms. Vincent had given him. It was in his pocket, untouched, since he hadn't had a single person to call.
He gingerly removed it, not even sure how it worked, then pulled it open. "Hello?" he said, cautious and tentative.
"Hello, Jesse."
The voice sounded strange, tinny and fake. Like one of those automated ones you got whenever you tried to call just about any customer-service number. "Who is this?"
"I am your benefactor, Jesse. The person who hired Ms. Vincent to represent you."
Reaching a covered bus stop, which was deserted, he ducked inside for privacy. "You heard, then? That she got me out?"
"I heard. Congratulations. How are you enjoying freedom?"
He kicked his toe against some gravel on the cement floor. "S'okay."
A pause, then the voice said, "I almost hate to tell you this, but there might be a problem. I have heard through some very reliable sources that the FBI agent who testified against you, the one whose body was never found, might not actually be dead."
Five minutes ago, Jesse had been ready to give up, to die or go back to prison. Now, though, when he thought of that woman, realized she might still be out there, sheer fear, combined with a healthy dose of panic, roared through him. He lurched back in the shelter, collapsing onto the bench, sucking in deep breaths. "This is some kind of joke, right? "
"I'm afraid not. I believe the authorities are seeking her out now, and expect if anyone will find her, it's her former colleagues. One Supervisory Special Agent Blackstone might even know where she is already."
Jesse pounded his head back on the wall of the stand. "This can't happen. Can't. Happen."
"Cheer up. I don't think it matters. Obviously she was wrong about your guilt, and now that you have an alibi, it really isn't an issue. At least, as long as that alibi holds up."
Fuck. The alibi from some guy he'd never even heard of, this Will Miller he'd supposedly been drinking with at the bar he'd never been to in his entire life? How well would that hold up if they tried to put the screws to him again, with that Fletcher bitch leading the way?
"Lucky for you, Mr. Miller remembered talking to you at the bar that night. It certainly wouldn't be good for you if anything happened to him. If it did, and Ms. Fletcher were to return, you could be in some very serious trouble." The person on the other end of the call suddenly tsked. "Or, well, I hate to even bring it up, but if this Agent Fletcher is a vengeful woman, things could be even worse."
Vengeful? Despite being slim and pale, the woman had looked ready to rip him apart with her bare hands from up there on the stand.
"I mean, she was an FBI agent, after all. Good with weapons, I suppose. And if she thinks you got off on a technicality, well…"
"Oh, God." He leaned over, clutching his stomach, sure he was gonna puke. "She might come after me. What am I gonna do?"
There was a long hesitation. Then his anonymous benefactor quietly murmured, "If this does come to pass, Mr. Boyd, I think there is only one thing you can do."
"What?"
Something clicked, like some kind of metal against the mouthpiece of the phone. And when the voice came back, it sounded different. Thicker. Almost seething.
"You have to get her before she can get you."
Chapter 11
Wyatt spent most of Thursday night calling himself an idiot. All the promises he'd made himself, all the resolute certainty that what he felt for Lily was sympathy and protectiveness, and he'd let himself kiss her as if he needed her kiss to survive.
He wished he could regret it. He really did. But when he evaluated his most base response, his innermost reaction, it wasn't regret he found.
It was hunger.
Hell, maybe he did need her kiss to survive. Maybe he needed that warmth, that vibrancy, that keen mind, and the will that seemed to grow stronger by the day.
Maybe he did. That didn't, however, mean he should take it. Because he wasn't what she needed. Whatever she said about not regretting it, not wanting him to, and not needing to be protected, he was still her former boss, still the man taking care of her, still ten years older and a good deal more jaded.
Well, perhaps not that. Lily had seen things in the past few years that could harden even the most tenderhearted person.
"She's not hard," he reminded himself as he sat outside on the back patio Friday morning, sipping the steaming cup of black coffee he'd just made. The enclosed courtyard behind the town house offered privacy and was lush with vines and vegetation that made it seem more like a secret garden than a backyard. He'd had the stone wall heightened and the plantings increased soon after he'd inherited the house, so now neither next-door neighbor could look down from a higher floor and see anything other than the top canopy of shady trees and flowering shrubs.
No, Lily was not hard. The strength she'd fought for, that stamina and will, hadn't come at the cost of her kindness and her good heart. Lily hadn't buried her former self to become the powerful woman she was today. She'd simply blended two parts, the old and the new, until an altogether different woman had been formed. Not the innocent girl she'd been long ago. Not the angry, scarred woman he'd known this past spring.
She was neither. She was both. She was so much more.
And she was walking out the back door toward him right now, wearing a short, silky bathrobe and carrying her own cup of coffee. Wyatt looked away, not liking the sudden flash of interest that had shot through him at the sight of her long bare legs, revealed nearly to the tops of her thighs. High enough for him to see the puckered flesh, the scars. Yet she wasn't self-conscious about it anymore, as if she knew there was nothing about her he could look at and find unattractive.
"Morning," she said, sitting opposite him. She smiled, as if their tense evening hadn't happened. And it had been tense. After he'd come back into the house, they'd barely exchanged ten words beyond his telling her how to find her room.