Lethal Legacy: A Novel (Guardians of Justice) Read online

  He looked at her for a moment, as if debating how to respond. Then he leaned back against the counter and gripped the edge. “For the past few years, my relationships with women have been superficial. But I can tell you with absolute honesty that I’m not looking for that with you.” One side of his mouth hitched up. “And for what it’s worth, my sister would approve of this relationship. She’s been after me to find a churchgoing woman to date.”

  His last comment brought up a whole different issue. One that had been on Kelly’s mind for a while and was just as important—if not more important—than the first one. As long as they were tackling the tough stuff, she might as well put this on the table too.

  “Why does she want you to date a woman who attends church?”

  His knuckles whitened and his features grew taut. “Because I walked away from God a few years ago. When I said before that Alison is vocal about my relationships, that includes my relationship with him.”

  A sudden hiss from the coffeemaker intruded on their quiet conversation, and Kelly jerked.

  “The coffee’s ready.” He took a step away from the counter. “Would you excuse me a minute while you pour?”

  “Sure.”

  He exited the room into the hall, and a few seconds later she heard a quiet click as he closed the bathroom door.

  Slowly she let out her breath. Was he closing the door on their discussion too? Did he regret revealing so much personal information? Was he aggravated that she’d delved into such private subjects?

  His reaction to the subject of faith also troubled her. A lot. While he’d been quick to acknowledge his dating history and told her he wanted to make a change, he’d made no such claim about his relationship with God. In fact, he’d shut down when that subject came up. Walked away.

  And that kind of attitude could be a deal breaker.

  Spirits plummeting, Kelly picked up the coffeepot, filled her cup, and gazed into the black depths. It was better to know Cole’s feeling on the subject now, of course. Before she lost her heart completely.

  As for the part he’d already claimed . . . she had a feeling that would be his forever.

  Hands braced on the bathroom sink, Cole stared into the mirror. How in the world had he and Kelly gotten into such a serious discussion?

  And where did he go from here?

  He hadn’t minded answering her questions about his social life. He’d known from day one she was a woman with rock-solid values, and meeting her had been the kick he’d needed to get his act together on that score. Far more effectively than Alison’s badgering or Jake’s more subtle prodding, her sweet goodness had made him take a hard look at himself and convinced him he wanted to be worthy of someone like her.

  No. Scratch that. Not like her. Her, specifically. He was becoming more and more certain of that with each day that passed.

  But the faith issue—that might be a stumbling block unless they could talk it through, come to an understanding.

  Except he’d never discussed that painful piece of his history with anyone.

  Maybe, though, it was time. Since he’d turned his back on the Lord, lost his way spiritually, the emptiness in his soul had intensified. And Kelly, with her quiet faith and absolute trust in God, had forced him to acknowledge that lapse as well.

  Could she perhaps help him rectify both his social life and his spiritual life?

  With sudden decision, he opened the door, flipped off the light, and returned to the kitchen. It was deserted. He found her at the dining room table, hands wrapped around her coffee cup, her pumpkin bars untouched on the plate in front of her.

  As he slid into his seat, he forced his lips into a smile. “Sorry to keep you from your dessert.”

  She lifted one shoulder. “I’m still full from dinner.”

  The subtle wariness in her eyes, the caution in her tone, told him she was afraid she’d overstepped and annoyed him the same way his sister often did. He needed to put those fears to rest.

  “Me too. But these are excellent.” He tapped the half-eaten pumpkin bar she’d retrieved from the counter and placed on his plate, along with the two whole ones.

  “Look, Cole, I’m sorry if—”

  “Don’t apologize.” He touched her fingers, cold despite her grip on the coffee cup. “The issues you raised are important to you—and to how you perceive the future of our relationship. That makes them important to me too. Although I’ll admit I didn’t expect them to be on the menu tonight.”

  His attempt to tease her into a smile didn’t work.

  “But now that you’ve put them on the table, let’s talk about them. Starting with my recent dating history. I can’t change the past, but I can shift gears and move to a slower lane in the future. And I promise you I will. Is that good enough to make you feel comfortable about moving forward with this relationship when the time comes?”

  He held his breath as she searched his face. For someone like Kelly, it might not be good enough. But he hoped she could find it in her heart to forgive his past mistakes and trust his promise for the future.

  She nibbled at her lower lip, her expression conflicted. “I think so. I’m still processing everything you told me, but to be honest, the faith issue is an even bigger hurdle.”

  “I suspected that was the case.”

  He slid his plate aside as his pulse began to pound. He had to be honest. A future built on secrets was a future built on sand. Yet he also knew honesty could make her shutter her heart. But he wouldn’t sugarcoat the truth.

  “I used to have a strong faith. Maybe the strongest of all the Taylor kids. Then, four years ago, I walked away from God. I tried to fill up the empty place in my soul with work and a very active social life and a few too many happy hours on Friday nights, but I’m beginning to realize I’ve been searching for consolation in all the wrong places. And I’m starting to think I need to reconnect with my faith. That nothing will fill that empty spot except a relationship with God.”

  She broke off a piece of pumpkin bar with the edge of her fork but didn’t eat it. When she spoke, her question was cautious. Tentative. “Is there a particular reason you walked away?”

  Oh yeah.

  The image of Sara lying in a pool of blood, lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling as the lights of emergency vehicles strobed through the night, flashed across his mind.

  When the silence between them lengthened, Kelly spoke again. “You don’t have to answer that.”

  Forcing himself to block out the image burned into his memory, he refocused on the woman across from him. She was clinging to her cup, her face taut.

  “I want to.” Reaching over, he touched her cheek, the tender gesture meant to reassure. And it worked. She exhaled, and the tension in her features eased. “I’ve never told this story to anyone.”

  Her eyes widened slightly. Rather than wait for her to ask the question he knew she was formulating, he answered it.

  “Because you need to know exactly who you’re getting before we decide to take this relationship forward.”

  He picked up his coffee and took a slow sip, buying himself a few seconds to collect his thoughts. And for the first time in years, he turned to God, asking for the courage to at last put into words the incident that had driven him away from the faith that had always sustained him.

  “Four and a half years ago, a twenty-three-year-old woman was found unconscious in an apartment complex stairwell. The neighbor who called 911 told responding officers she suspected domestic violence, and had often heard disturbances in the adjoining apartment. I went to the hospital to talk with the woman, who was suffering from a concussion and multiple abrasions. Her name was Sara.”

  The last word came out in a rasp. He stopped. Swallowed. He’d never spoken Sara’s name to anyone. As it reverberated in Kelly’s hushed dining room, the traumatic memories he’d ruthlessly suppressed morphed from past to present in a heartbeat. Clenching his hands into fists, he forced himself to keep breathing.

  Kelly w
aited in silence until he was ready to continue.

  “When I questioned her, she insisted she’d fallen down the steps. Denied she’d been abused.” His words were shakier now, but he kept going. “I didn’t buy it. I’d been a cop long enough to recognize the signs, and I told her that, straight up. But she didn’t budge from her story. So I resorted to scare tactics. Told her situations like hers didn’t get better. That her best and safest option was to walk away. She refused.” He raked his fingers through his hair and focused on his black coffee. “There’s not much we can do if people won’t press charges or take some initiative to change their situation.”

  “I have a feeling you tried anyway.”

  At Kelly’s gentle comment, he looked up. The warmth and empathy in her eyes tightened his throat.

  “Yeah.” He took another sip of his cooling coffee. “I discovered early on in this job that you can’t save the world. Trying to do that will leave you with an ulcer or heart attack or chronic insomnia. So I’d learned to walk away from situations like Sara’s and commend them to God. But there was something about her . . .”

  He paused, recalling the sweep of her long dark hair against the white sheet on the hospital gurney, the velvet brown of her irises, the graceful curve of her jaw. And how her beauty had been marred by puffy red swelling and a collage of purple and black bruises.

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged, blocking out that image. “She just seemed so scared and vulnerable. I left her my card, the name of a shelter, and a hotline number, as I always did in cases like that. But I also gave her my personal cell number and told her if she ever needed a friend, or someone to talk to, she could call me.”

  “And she did.”

  “Yes. About a month later. It was a weekend, and I was off duty. She was crying. She said her husband had gone out drinking and she needed to hear a friendly voice. So I talked to her. I’d done some homework after we met, and I knew the guy she’d married was an ex-con who’d served time for armed robbery. I also knew she was a product of the foster care system and that she’d disappeared from the official radar at the age of fifteen.

  “To make a long story short, she ended up calling me periodically over the next six months. We met now and then for coffee, when her husband was passed out after a binge of drinking and it was safe. As time went by, I learned her whole story. How she grew up in a dysfunctional home and was put into the foster system, where she was abused by one of her foster fathers. That’s when she ran away. She was barely eking out a living when she met her Prince Charming. Things went downhill from there.”

  “Why did she stay with him?”

  “Fear. Like a lot of abused women, Sara was afraid if she left he’d come after her and kill her. Nor did she want to end up back on the street. So she stuck with him.” His tone flattened. “But in the end, he killed her anyway.”

  “Oh, Cole!”

  At Kelly’s exclamation of dismay, he sent her an apologetic look. “Sorry. This isn’t the best dinner conversation.”

  “I asked. I wanted to know. I’m just so sad for her.”

  “Me too. Because it was preventable—and because it was partly my fault.” The words tasted bitter in his mouth.

  Confusion clouded her eyes. “How can that be? You tried to convince her to leave.”

  He did his best to distance himself from the narrative. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to finish. “I also talked with Sara about my faith. That prompted her to start attending church. She found a congregation on her own, and ended up sharing her story with the minister. Unfortunately, he convinced her that marriage vows were forever and encouraged her to try and persuade her husband to seek counseling rather than leave him. He also convinced her that prayer would keep her safe.”

  Cole clenched his fingers again, fighting to contain the wave of anger nipping at his self-control. “There were a few times I was tempted to go over to that church and have a heart-to-heart with the guy. Instead, I kept working on her from my end. Encouraging her to follow through on the GED program she’d started. Reminding her she had options. That she didn’t have to stay with him. That there were plenty of resources available to help her until she got on her feet. That the system could keep her safe. And I did a lot of praying myself. She deserved a better life. She was smart and funny and caring . . . and despite all the bad stuff that happened to her, she never let it beat her down. She always had hope that tomorrow would be better.”

  He blinked to clear his vision, struggling to hold on to his composure. To finish this story—and perhaps put it to rest once and for all. “Anyway, she followed the minister’s advice and stuck with her husband. Then one morning someone from her apartment building called 911 to report a guy walking around in a bloodstained shirt. I burned rubber getting there, but it was too late. She died at the scene. After a night of drinking, he’d beaten her to death.”

  Silence fell in the room, broken only by the faint ticking of a clock in Kelly’s kitchen. Cole picked up his cup. The liquid sloshed close to the edge, and he realized his hands were shaking. He wrapped his fingers around the cup and lifted it to his lips. Took a sip. The coffee had grown cold and bitter—much like his heart had after Sara’s death.

  Carefully he set the cup back in its saucer and ventured a glance at Kelly. She’d lost a little color during the story, but at least it was almost over.

  “I see a lot of carnage in my job.” His voice came out scratchy. Worn. Weary from the pain that had darkened his soul for four long years. “But that crime scene gave me nightmares for months. On bad days, it still does. The whole experience left me angry with God and disillusioned about prayer. How could a minister, a man of God, counsel a woman to put her life in danger in the name of religion? And why did prayer fail? From the first time I met Sara, I asked God to show me what to do. To tell me how to intervene. I waited for his direction, but none ever came. So I prayed every day that he would guide Sara, and save her. But in the end, he failed her. Her minister failed her. I failed her.”

  Kelly leaned closer and covered his hand with hers. “I don’t think that’s entirely true.”

  At her quiet comment, he frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I agree her minister was misguided. I don’t agree that you failed her. You tried to help. But you couldn’t force her to leave her husband. All you could do was offer her reasons why she should. It was her decision to stay. As for God not answering your prayers—I think he did. Thanks to you, Sara found her way to him. And she was saved in the eternal sense. Maybe that’s the role God intended you to play all along. To be the instrument of her salvation.”

  Cole stopped breathing as he mulled over that possibility. Had his prayers been answered after all—but in a different way than he’d hoped?

  Pressure built behind his eyes, and he tried to blink it away. “That’s an angle I never considered.”

  “Sometimes a third party can offer a more objective perspective.” She wrapped her fingers around her cup. “You cared about Sara a lot, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” He’d started this story determined to be honest, and he intended to stay the course. “Too much. It was the only time I ever let personal feelings get in the way of my job, and it was a big mistake, professionally and personally. We never did more than talk or meet for coffee, but she was married—and I was falling for her. Between guilt over that and worry about her safety, my life was a train wreck. Somehow I managed to hold it together at work, but Alison cued in to my mental state and started calling me almost every day. I sidestepped all her questions, but she never stopped calling. She never knew it, but she was my lifeline.”

  “Kind of like you were for Sara.”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “What happened to her husband?”

  He gritted his teeth. “He’s back in prison. Where he belongs.”

  “And you’ve been in a prison too. Of a different kind.”

  At her soft comment, he frowned. Had he? It was true that his guilt and
anger had isolated him in many ways. While that wasn’t his usual concept of prison, it did fit.

  “You’re right. But you know what? I think I’m finally ready to deal with that.” He twined his fingers with hers and managed to summon up the hint of a smile. “Thank you for listening.”

  She squeezed his hand, took a deep breath, and gestured to his coffee cup. “That has to be cold. How about a refill?”

  “How about a rain check? I think we could both use some time alone to digest more than our food.” In truth, he’d prefer to hang around. Just being in Kelly’s presence lifted his spirits. But he’d dumped a boatload of heavy stuff on her. She had to be reeling.

  “You might be right. Let me wrap those up for you.” She stood and picked up the plate with his pumpkin bars, her immediate acquiescence to his suggestion proof he’d read the situation correctly.

  When she joined him in the foyer a couple of minutes later, he’d already opened the door. The porch light spilled in, picking out the bronze highlights in her russet-colored hair, and it took every ounce of his willpower to resist the impulse to pull her into his arms.

  “I’ll call you, okay?” He shoved his hands in his pockets to keep them out of trouble.

  “Okay.” She moistened her lips, calling his attention to their soft fullness.

  His mouth went dry. “I need to leave.” The words came out hoarse. And abrupt.

  A flash of uncertainty ricocheted through her eyes, and she took a step back. “Okay.”

  She’d misread his haste. He didn’t have a single regret about what had happened tonight, and she needed to know that.

  Slowly, he removed one hand from his pocket and reached over to touch her lips with his index finger. She gave a soft gasp but didn’t pull away. “This is why I need to leave. If I stay, I’m going to kiss you, and we’re not ready for that yet.” That was a lie. He was more than ready. “I want to be smart about this—and try to stay in the slow lane. We’ll leave the kissing until after we wrap up your father’s case.” He managed a grin as he retracted his hand.