Joey, and the only way you can stop me is by using that gun you’re holding. My opinion of you right now isn’t the greatest, but I don’t think you can bring yourself to shoot an unarmed woman.”
Releasing him abruptly, she picked up her purse from the dresser beside them and stalked over to Joey’s backpack, on the floor beside the bed. She bent stiffly and grabbed one of its straps, but as she lifted it the flap opened and the contents of the bag tumbled out onto the floor.
Tess squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden prickling of tears she could feel behind her lashes. They were tears of anger and frustration, she told herself. They weren’t tears of fear or worry. This wasn’t working out the way she’d planned, but in a few minutes she could still be on her way with Joey. In a couple of hours they would be on Navajo Nation land, where Virgil Connor’s bullying tactics would slam up against a solid wall of red tape when he attempted to—
“I’m not going to shoot you, Tess.” He didn’t sound bullying, he just sounded tired. “For what it’s worth, it won’t come to that and you know it. Look at me.”
She ignored him. Squatting down on her heels, she began to gather up the collection of small-boy treasures that had fallen from Joey’s backpack, replacing them as carefully as she could manage with her trembling fingers.
There was a dog-eared collection of baseball cards, held together by a doubled-over elastic band. Joey was obviously a baseball nut like she was, Tess thought, trying to distract herself from the man standing silently beside her. It would be something they could talk about on the drive ahead of—
“Look at me, Tess.”
There was a reluctantly hard note in his tone. Her fingers closed around a carefully folded piece of paper before she unwillingly raised her eyes to his.
“Don’t bother.” Despair washed over her. “I know what you’re going to say.”
A muscle moved in his jaw. “I’d better say it anyway, just so we’re clear here. I’m a big man. You’re what…five-three? Five-four?”
“Three,” she answered him tonelessly. “I get it, all right?”
He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “I wouldn’t even have to try, Tess. But I don’t want it to go down that way and I don’t think you do, either. Hand me the car keys.”
He needed the keys because she’d left her own gun locked in the glove box. Tess understood he wasn’t going to let this situation get out of control again.
That was what Virgil Connor was all about, she realized. He liked well-defined boundaries, smooth-running operations, everything falling into place the way it should. He could react to the unexpected, the illogical, but his immediate response was to bring it back under control, which made his actions with her a moment ago all the more inexplicable. Despite her accusations, she knew instinctively he’d crossed a line with her that he’d never crossed before in his life.
And that knowledge was supremely unimportant. All that mattered was that she’d failed a small boy who’d thought she could protect him. She looked at the paper in her hand, recognizing it for what it was before she began unfolding it.
“They’re in my purse,” she said flatly. “Get them yourself.”
In the creased newspaper photo she was dressed in some kind of pseudo-camouflage outfit and standing in a desert. The wonders of computer graphics, she thought briefly. The picture had been taken in the Eye-Opener’s parking lot, her figure superimposed against a generic desert scene later on. The tabloid’s photo-tech had also punched up the Rambo-like smeared grease under her eyes and the fake blood soaking one arm of her fatigues to a brilliant red, probably because it had looked too much like the ketchup it was.
The surrounding article had been torn off. Joey likely knew it by heart anyway, she thought.
“Is that you?”
Tess hadn’t even noticed that he’d hunkered down beside her to retrieve her purse. She let him take the picture from her.
“No, that’s not me.” She began to gather up the rest of the scattered odds and ends that had fallen from the backpack. “That’s who Joey thinks I am, but that’s not me.”
“What are you supposed to be doing here?”
Under the bed was another photograph facedown, this one not a clipping from the tabloid but a tiny photo-booth snapshot that must have originally been attached to a strip of pictures. She reached past him for it.
“I’m covered in blood so I guess I’m supposed to be taking a breather after going up against Bigfoot or a mutant lizard or something,” she replied curtly. “You said you were going to tell your area director to send someone out. Will Joey and I be riding back to Albuquerque in different vehicles?”
“That’s correct procedure.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw him shrug. “You’re my arrest. He’s my witness. I’ve pulled enough stupid plays tonight without adding to them by transporting the two of you in the same car.”
He looked away. “And if I could take back just one of the mistakes I’ve made since spotting you in that diner it would be the way I moved in on you a few minutes ago. I behaved like a jerk. If you’re wondering whether I’m going to be the one taking you in, don’t worry, I’ll hand you over to the agents Jansen dispatches when they come.”
He got to his feet. “I’ll make that call now.”
“That’s not why I asked.” Still clutching the second photo, she stood, too. “Can you give me some time alone with Joey? Just a few minutes, that’s all I need.”
Dark brows drew together. “What for?”
“To tell him he was wrong about me,” she said unsteadily. “I owe him that much, Connor. Joey Begand came to me thinking I was someone I’m not, and I should have set him straight right away. Instead, I let him go on believing in a bunch of faked photos and stories, and told myself I was doing it for him.”
She lowered her gaze. Aimlessly she turned over the small picture in her hand. “It’s too long and dreary a story to get into, but it’s more likely I was doing it for myself. I think I needed to believe that for once in my life I could—”
The breath in her lungs suddenly vanished, taking with it the rest of her unfinished sentence. A giant fist wrapped around her heart and squeezed, tighter and still more tighter. Her hand shaking, Tess brought the tiny photo up until it was only inches from her face.
It couldn’t be, she thought in shock. It just couldn’t be—life didn’t operate that way. Connor was right, she’d been living in the Eye-Opener’s fantasy world for so long that she’d lost touch with reality. Coincidences this colossal were reserved for the outlandish stories she dreamed up, not for—
It wasn’t a coincidence at all. It was why Joey’s mother had read everything she’d written, she realized, her throat closing in pain, why Darla Begand—so that was the name she’d taken, Tess thought achingly—had made Tess Smith out to be a hero to her small son. It had been the only connection Darla been capable of making with a past she’d tried to blot out.
“I can’t leave you alone with Joey, but I’ll let you explain things to him.” Connor was watching her. “He’s a kid, Tess. He’ll get over it the way kids do when they find out there’s no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny, for crying out loud. Right now you should be worrying about yourself. You’ve convinced me that you didn’t have anything to do with Leroy and what happened at the safe house, but you’re still facing serious charges. Kidnapping a child’s the worst of them.”
“Not if I had the right to take Joey. Not if I was his guardian, for all intents and purposes.”
Tess met his eyes and saw the impatience, quickly suppressed, that flickered through them. Connor’s lips tightened, and when he spoke, some of the harshness he’d previously displayed had crept back into his tone.
“But