I added, “I take full responsibility for what happened.”
“Yeah? And what does that mean, exactly? Full responsibility?”
The cell buzzed again. “This probably isn’t the best time to talk about this.” I drew the phone out of my pocket, and the caller ID told me the number belonged to Hank Burlman.
Burlman? Did they find Kayla?
Sean came closer until he was within arm’s reach. His eyes were narrow, his jaw set.
Amber pleaded, “Please-”
“Quiet!” he hollered.
“I said”-my voice was firm, resolute-“don’t take it out on her.” Regardless of whether or not it was wise to intervene, I was not going to let him yell at Amber.
Return the call in a minute. Settle things here first.
I silenced the phone and placed it on the end table.
“Guys,” Lien-hua said authoritatively. “Just, everybody, take a breath and calm down.”
But things were not just going to calm down. When men get jacked up like this, they don’t just decide the issue wasn’t such a big deal after all, give each other a big hug, and sit down to a cup of tea. Something has to happen.
And it did.
Sean shoved me, not hard enough to send me flying, but assertively enough to let me know he was not joking around.
“See, this is the reason!” Amber shouted. “How you lose your-”
That stopped him. “The reason? The reason you and my brother were-”
“No! The reason we can’t make things work, you and me!” By now she wasn’t even trying to hold back her tears. “Why I can’t stay with you anymore!”
“You’re leaving?” His eyes shifted toward me. “To what? To be with Pat?”
“No,” I said.
Lien-hua stepped forward, valiantly, one last time. “If we could all-”
Sean lunged at me, two hands against my chest, thudding me into the wall. With my injured ankle it was a struggle to keep from toppling to the floor. “We broke things off,” I said, “before they went too-”
“Kissing her wasn’t going too far?”
“No, you’re right, it-”
“Maybe you wouldn’t mind if Lien-hua and I took a little time to-”
I positioned myself in front of him. “That’s enough.”
“Stop it!” Amber implored. “Both of you!”
Sean clenched his hands into fists, and I braced myself. This was something he needed to do, and, honestly, I felt like I deserved it. I could have ducked, could have blocked the punch or stepped aside, but I didn’t. I just said, “I’m sorry that things-”
Then it came, fierce and hard, a haymaker to the jaw. The force of impact whipped me around, and I slammed into the wall. A sailboat painting a couple feet away crashed to the floor corner-first and sent a shower of glass shards spraying across the carpet.
A moment later I heard Tessa’s footsteps on the stairs.
“I never meant to hurt you,” I said to Sean and I meant it. Facing him, I wiped some of the blood from my lip. He was a powerful man and he hadn’t held anything back. I felt dizzy from the blow. “I’m very sorry.”
“You kept this from me all this time.” Now the anger in his voice had turned into something harsher, deeper-a sense of betrayal.
It’s your fault, Pat. This is all your fault!
Amber’s eyes were wide with tears, and she had her hand over her mouth. She took a step toward us but paused as Tessa appeared at the doorway.
“What’s going on? I heard-” She saw my bloody, already-swollen lip. “What happened to you?” Her eyes tipped toward the shattered picture. “Oh…”
Sean cut into me with his eyes. “What you did wasn’t right.” Just those five final words, and that was all. It was as if he’d forgotten that Amber was even in the room with us.
“I wish it’d never happened. Believe me. I knew it wasn’t right.”
“This is…” Tessa said, putting two and two together. “Oh man.”
Sean brushed past me and headed for the stairs that led to the garage.
“Where are you going?” Amber’s voice was slight and uneven.
He didn’t reply, just snatched his truck keys from the peg board at the bottom of the steps, and then he was out the door. He could have slammed it, but instead he let the door drift closed slowly, and that seemed to accentuate his anger even more forcefully than if he’d banged it shut.
Amber retreated to her bedroom, and even from this end of the hallway I could hear her sobbing. Lien-hua left to console her.
You did this, Pat.
Five years ago you set this all into motion!
My cell phone sat on the end table beside me. I picked it up to redial Burlman.
“Are you okay?” Tessa said.
“Oh, I’m on the brink of perfection.”
I tapped at the screen to get to the missed calls.
“I mean your face.” She sounded quite concerned.
Frankly, I felt like I’d been blindsided with a two-by-four. I touched my split lip gently. “I’m fine.”
Sean’s truck roared to life in the driveway.
“Well, go after him.”
“This isn’t the time, Tessa.”
“Are you kidding?” She pushed my arm, lowering my hand holding the phone. “This is so the time. Go make things right.”
“Tessa, there’s nothing I could say right now that would make things right.”
“Tell him you’ll do whatever it takes. Because you love him. Because he’s your brother. Quick, do it. Before he drives off.”
Our conversation earlier about forgiveness and denial and guilt seemed to be fueling her admonition for me to make amends.
She was staring at me beseechingly, waiting for my reply. “Well?”
If there’s any way to fix this, Pat, you should at least try.
I processed everything for a second. “Okay.”
I retrieved the keys to the cruiser and redialed the last incoming number, then grabbed my jacket and jogged as quickly as I could manage on my taped ankle down the steps.
A man answered the phone, but it was not Hank Burlman; it was Alexei Chekov. “Agent Bowers, I’m going to tell you where Kayla Tatum is.”
“I’m listening.” I threw open the door. “Talk to me.”
77
“Kayla is at the Schoenberg Inn.”
“No.” I stepped into the frigid night. “We already looked there.”
“There are rooms that would not have been searched.”
“Where?”
“The basement.”
“I don’t believe you.”
I fought my way through the seething snow toward the police cruiser. Why is he using Burlman’s phone and not the phone from the station?
“The Eco-Tech team paid the manager for exclusive use of certain rooms,” he told me. “I offered him substantially more than they did. When you get there, ask about the rooms in the south end of the basement.”
Wouldn’t the officers who searched the hotel have known about them?
Maybe, maybe not.
Cranking open the car door to the cruiser, I climbed inside. “Is she all right?”
“I anticipate that she should be fine.”
Key in the ignition. “How did you get Burlman’s phone?”
“The laces in my boots have metal-tipped ends.”
I froze.
He picked the cuffs, the cell’s lock. Tait didn’t listen to me. He let Burlman stand guard!
“What did you do to him?”
“I spent a few minutes with him. I didn’t need five.”
My teeth clenched. “You killed him?”
“No. But I’m not sure he’ll walk again. Both of his tibias are quite severely fractured.”
The bone gun. He got into the evidence locker!
I knew that Tait had left the station earlier, but the man working in the dispatch room would’ve still been there. “What about the dispatcher?”
“He’ll be all right. The dispatch system, though, I’m afraid that will be down for a bit.”
The taillights from Sean’s pickup were a quarter mile down the road already. Once again I thought that even if I did catch up with him, I was the last person on earth he would want to see right now.
Unsure what to do, I let the engine idle.
“Why are you telling me all this?”