Chapter 28
The moment he saw Maleah, Derek sensed
she was on the verge of collapse. Not that anyone else would even
notice. She managed to hide her emotional stress remarkably well,
especially considering what he suspected she had just endured at
Browning’s cunningly cruel hands. What Derek wanted to do and what
he did were two entirely different things. He wanted to grab her,
hold her, and tell her it was all right to fall apart because he’d
be there to take care of her. What he actually did was walk over to
her, give her a casual glance, and ask her if she was ready to
leave.
“Yes, I’m ready,” she told him, her
voice deceptively calm.
They both shook hands with Warden
Holland and thanked him.
“Will you be scheduling another
interview?” the warden asked.
Derek wanted to shout “no way in
hell.”
“No. This was the final interview,”
Maleah said, absolute certainty in her voice.
As they walked together out into the
parking area, he waited for Maleah to speak first and was prepared
to take his cue from her on how to proceed. If she wanted to talk,
he’d talk. If she wanted to be quiet, he’d keep his mouth shut. If
she needed time alone when they returned to Vidalia, then he would
give her some time alone. But within a few hours, he would have to
tell her about Saxon Chappelle’s niece. Only sixteen. Sweet sixteen and never been kissed. He hoped the lyrics
to that old song weren’t true in Poppy’s case. He hoped the girl
had been kissed at least once by a young boy who had made her toes
curl.
Sixteen was far too young to
die.
As Derek and Maleah approached her
Equinox, she pulled her keychain out of her pocket and tossed it to
him. He caught the chain mid-air, keys jangling together when he
grasped the large silver “M” to which the chain was
fastened.
“You drive, okay?” Maleah did not make
eye contact.
“Yeah, sure,” Derek said.
For a woman who usually insisted on
driving her own car and even the rental cars they had used in the
past, a woman hell-bent on always being in control, handing over
her keys and asking him to drive meant only one thing. Maleah
didn’t trust herself to drive. Outwardly she appeared to be
completely fine, but it was obvious to Derek that she was far from
all right.
This was the second time she had asked
him to drive after a visit with Browning. The first time, her
request had taken him by surprise. This time, he had known she
would ask. He had expected her to come out of this final interview
in bad shape. What he didn’t know was just how bad it really
was.
He unlocked the doors before they
reached the SUV, and then he opened her door. But he stopped
himself just short of actually touching her, despite wanting to hug
her to him and then ease her gently into the passenger seat. By the
time he rounded the hood and slid behind the wheel, Maleah had put
on her seatbelt and sat there ramrod straight, her fisted hands
crossed at the wrists and resting in her lap.
As soon as they were on the road, he
asked, “Want some music?”
“Not especially.”
“Want to stop for—”
“No, please, I don’t want anything. Not
right now. Nothing except peace and quiet. All right?” She leaned
back her head and closed her eyes.
“Yeah, sure.”
They spent the next twenty-one miles in
complete silence. Derek kept his eyes on the road, not once
glancing at Maleah. But she was all he could think about. If only
she’d make a sound. A gasp or a sigh or even a hiccup or a sneeze.
It was as if she had hit some sort of mute button inside
her.
Less than thirty minutes after leaving
the penitentiary, Derek turned in at the Vidalia Hampton Inn,
parked the SUV and killed the engine. When Maleah didn’t open her
eyes or say anything, he came damn close to grabbing her and
shaking her. But the minute he looked at her, really looked at her,
his heart stopped. God in heaven!
“It’s going to be okay, Blondie,” he
told her in the calmest, most reassuring tone he could muster.
“It’s going to be okay.”
He undid his seatbelt, got out,
pocketed the keys, and rushed around to her side of the SUV. When
he opened the door, she sat there unmoving. He reached in, unhooked
her belt, and very gently reached down and peeled back the clenched
fingers of her right hand. She had clutched her hand so tightly
that her short, neat nails had dug into her flesh so deeply that
her palm was bleeding. He repeated the process with her left hand
and found it to be in the same condition.
“Ah, Maleah, sweetheart . . .” He
pulled a white monogrammed handkerchief from his inside jacket
pocket, wiped the bright red droplets of blood from each palm and
wrapped the handkerchief around her right hand. “Come on, let’s get
you out of here and into the hotel.”
When he grasped her shoulders and
turned her sideways, she opened her eyes and stared at him. After
slipping his arm around her waist, he lifted her up, pulled her out
of the SUV and straight into his arms. Then he eased her down onto
her feet.
She looked up at him. “Thank
you.”
Keeping his right arm around her waist,
he caressed her cheek with a gentle backward swipe of his left
hand. “You’re welcome. Come on. You need to lie down and rest for a
while.”
She nodded and then followed him into
the hotel and down the corridor to the elevator. He kept his arm
around her, supporting her, sensing that without him, she would
spiral down to the floor and curl up in a ball. He didn’t bother
asking her for the key to her room; instead he walked her straight
to his room. He unlocked the door and led her over to his freshly
made bed. She didn’t protest when he eased her down onto the edge
of the bed. But when he moved away from her, intending to take off
her shoes before getting a washcloth to clean her hands, she
reached out and grabbed him. The bloody handkerchief wrapped
loosely around her right hand slipped off just as she gripped his
shoulders.
“Don’t leave me, Derek. Stay, please.
I—I . . .”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he told her.
“I just want to take off your shoes so you can lie back and relax.
Then I’m going to get a warm washcloth and wash your hands.
Okay?”
“I won the game,” she said. “Browning
told me everything he knows.”
Derek lifted a stray tendril of glossy
blond hair that had escaped from the soft bun atop her head and
wrapped it behind her ear. “I never doubted for a minute that you
would beat him at his own game.” But at what price
to you, Maleah?
“I need to tell you what he said,
everything about—”
Derek tapped his index finger over her
lips, effectively silencing her. She gazed up at him with
questioning eyes.
“You can tell me everything. Just not
right now. You need to rest for a few minutes. You need to let me
take care of you. Just this one time. All right?”
She nodded. “All right. Just this one
time.”
He smiled. “That’s my girl.” And in
that moment, Derek Lawrence admitted an undeniable truth—he thought
of Maleah as his. His girl. His woman. His to care for and
protect.
Heaven help us
both!
Derek knelt in front of her, removed
her sensible pumps, set them under the bed, and then lifted her
feet and legs. He turned back the covers at the head of the bed,
stacked one pillow on top of the other and gently eased Maleah down
until her head rested on the double pillows.
“I’ll be right back,” he told
her.
A few minutes later, he returned with a
warm, damp washcloth and his shaving kit. He sat on the edge of the
bed and tenderly washed her hands. And then he took out a tube of
salve from his kit and rubbed the soothing cream into the shallow
nicks her nails had made in her palms.
She lifted her hands, one at a time,
inspected them and said, “Thank you. I didn’t realize what I was
doing. I was just trying so damn hard not to fall
apart.”
He leaned down, kissed her forehead and
said, “I know, Blondie. I know.”
“I’m all right. Really. I’m just a
little shell-shocked.”
He set his shaving kit on the floor,
dumped the washcloth on top of it, and then turned his attention
back to Maleah. “Tell me what you want right now. Tell me what you
need.”
“What I want and what I need aren’t the
same,” she told him. “I want to forget everything Browning said to
me, every question he asked, every innuendo, all the memories he
made me dredge up from my childhood. I want to pretend that I
didn’t let all those horrible memories make me feel the way I did
when I was a child and a teenager. Helpless. Frustrated.
Frightened.” She grabbed Derek’s hands and curled her fingers
around them. “What I need is to exorcise
whatever remains of those old demons. I thought I’d done that in my
twenties during a few years of therapy sessions, but apparently,
the roots of those memories were buried a little deeper than I
realized.”
“Then talk to me. Let’s dig up those
roots and burn them to ashes.”
“If anyone had ever told me that I’d be
asking you, of all people, to be my father confessor, I never would
have believed it,” she said, the corners of her mouth lifting in an
almost smile.
He eased his hands from her death grip,
tapped her playfully on the nose, and then sat down beside her. He
focused on her eyes. “Anything you say will stay between the two of
us for as long as we live. You already know my ugly secrets. You
know that I despise my own mother, my money-grubbing, social
climbing mother who drove my weak, spineless father to drink and
eventually to suicide. And she’s never felt guilty about it a day
in her life. And you know that when I was young and stupid, I did
some pretty awful things. You know that I’ve killed
people.”
He took her hands in his and held them
so loosely that she could easily pull away. The last thing he
wanted was for her to feel trapped by his superior male
strength.
“Nothing you ever did could be half as
bad as what I did.” He lifted her right hand, kissed it, then
lifted the left and kissed it.
She pulled her hands out of his and
eased up into a sitting position, her back against the headboard.
“When my father was alive, we were all so happy. Mama and Daddy and
Jackson and me. Then my father died when I was just a little girl.
And my mother, my weak, lonely, needy mother, married a
monster.”
“My mother was married three times, but
both of my stepfathers were decent guys. I sort of felt sorry for
them. If anyone was a monster in those marriages, it was my
mother.”
“Nolan Reeves was a sadist.” Maleah
clutched the sheet on either side of her hips. “He abused my mother
every way a man can abuse a woman—physically, sexually,
emotionally, mentally. And he beat Jack unmercifully for years,
until Jack got big enough to stand up for himself. I think by the
time Jack left home and joined the army, Nolan was halfway afraid
of him. He wasn’t as mean to Mama for a couple of years before Jack
left. But then, later, when Jack was gone . . .”
Derek circled her wrists, moved his
hands downward and opened her clenched fists. He held her hands.
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
“When I was thirteen, I saw them,”
Maleah said. “I saw my mother running from Nolan. She was naked,
her body and face were bloody and bruised and . . .” She gulped
several times. “He caught her and threw her on the floor and . . .
and . . .”
Derek squeezed her hands
tenderly.
“I didn’t do anything. I just stood
there in my bedroom door, frozen to the spot and scared out of my
mind,” Maleah told him. “I closed the door, got back in bed and
covered my head with a pillow so I couldn’t hear her crying while
he raped her.”
Tears trickled down Maleah’s
cheeks.
“You were a child, even at thirteen.
There’s nothing you could have done.”
“I know that. As an adult, I know. But
on an emotional level, that thirteen-year-old girl blames herself
for not trying to stop him.” Her gaze locked with Derek’s. “He . .
. he told me that if I ever interfered in what was a private matter
between my mother and him or if I ever told anyone our family’s
private business, he would kill Mama and me.”
Derek pulled her gently into his arms
and held her. She wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on
his shoulder. And while she cried, he tenderly stroked her back and
whispered reassurances.
“That’s it, honey. Let it all out. I’m
here. I’ll take care of you. No one can hurt you.” More than
anything, he wanted to take away her pain. If he could, he would
suffer it for her.
During their flight from Knoxville to
London on the Powell jet, Meredith had, thus far, kept to herself
as much as possible. Her escort, Saxon Chappelle, had not pressed
her to carry on a conversation, not even when they had eaten a meal
together. She greatly appreciated how considerate he was. From the
moment he had shaken her hand and said, “Please, call me Saxon,”
she had sensed that he was a good man. She instinctively trusted
him and felt at ease around him, neither of which was true when it
came to a great many people.
She suspected that he had been told
enough about her so that he knew when she touched him she would be
able to “read him” to a certain extent. And that’s why he had
immediately shaken hands with her, to reassure her, to let her know
he was a decent human being.
Even when she couldn’t see Saxon and
wasn’t touching him, she occasionally could pick up on his fleeting
thoughts, flashes of memory, and even his feelings. And the same
held true for the pilot and co-pilot. Saxon loved his mother and
worried about her. A young girl named Poppy kept slipping in and
out of his thoughts. She was his niece and he worried about her,
too.
Meredith wasn’t sure if it was the
pilot or the co-pilot who kept thinking about women. Their breasts.
Their legs. Their hips. Kissing them. Fondling them. She had
deliberately shut out those sensual thoughts. They were far too
personal and absolutely none of her business. It wasn’t that she
wanted to invade other people’s privacy. She didn’t. But she
couldn’t help it. For as long as she could remember, she’d had “the
gift.” Her Granny Sinclair had had the “second sight,” too, and
people in their small Louisiana town had called her a witch. Some
people even accused her of practicing Voodoo. It had been Granny
who had learned about Dr. Meng and made plans to send Meredith to
the woman who was now her mentor. She’d been seventeen when Granny
died and old lawyer Dupree had read Granny’s will.
“She wants you to go to London,” Mr.
Dupree had told her. “To a doctor over there, some woman named
Yvette Meng. She managed to set aside money for your plane ticket
and enough for you to live on for at least a year, if you live
frugally.”
In the six years since she had become
one of Dr. Yvette Meng’s protégés, Meredith had progressed from a
frightened, awkward, hostile and misunderstood girl to a cautious,
curious, often outspoken woman who was still, on occasion, quite
awkward, especially around the opposite sex. Men were not attracted
to her. She wasn’t pretty. She was short, plump, and plain. And
covered in freckles. Her hair was carrot red, wild and curly and
untamable. The best she could do with it was pull it back into a
ponytail. And even if a man could get past her lack of beauty, he
would certainly be put off by her ability to read his
mind.
But she couldn’t actually read
minds.
She sensed thoughts.
And when she touched someone, she could
feel what they were feeling.
Yvette had told her that she had never
known anyone whose “gifts” were as varied or as strong as
Meredith’s were.
“You are very special,” Yvette had told
her. “Once you learn to harness and control your abilities, there
is so much good you can do.”
And that was why she was on the Powell
jet, heading to London, straight into the arms of a man she feared.
From the moment she had met Luke Sentell, she had known he was a
killer.
As hard as she had tried not to think
about Luke during the flight, he kept creeping into her mind. She
had read for a while, watched a movie, taken a nap, and meditated.
Without those quiet, still, soul-refreshing moments of meditation,
she didn’t believe she could survive.
And now they were over the Atlantic, on
their way to a city that held so many good memories for Meredith,
memories that included her first meeting with Yvette and her
introduction to other gifted people. When Yvette had moved her
academy / sanctuary from London and resettled all of them in the
U.S., at Griffin’s Rest, Meredith had hated leaving London. But
eventually she had become accustomed to her new home in the U.S.
and oddly enough now dreaded returning to London. When they landed
at Heathrow, Luke Sentell would be waiting for them. No doubt he
would whisk her away, via a limousine, to some fancy London hotel
where he would keep her a virtual prisoner while he watched her,
pushed her to the brink of exhaustion, and guarded her from the
outside world. She would force herself to delve into the unknown
mystical realm of her mind and use her psychic gifts because Yvette
had asked her to help Griffin Powell. And if she failed to give
Luke the results he wanted, he would move her to another city, to
another country, to wherever he thought she might “pick up the
scent” of their prey. He treated her as if she were nothing more
than a hunting dog.
She had been sent to London on a
mission and Saxon Chappelle would hand her over to Luke, a man she
neither liked nor trusted, so that she could help him find a man
named Malcolm York.