she whispered, “For years I’ve tried to see a face hidden by the dark and the shadow of the tree—the face of the one boy whose mask I ripped off. But there’s never anything.
“Then, tonight, there was. Only a sensation of recognition. No one person, nothing concrete, only an air of discomfort. The smell of fear. Then it was gone.” A bitter laugh rattled in her throat. “I’m babbling, making no sense.”
Drawing her hands through her hair, sweeping it from her face, she hardly noticed when it fell against her throat and cheeks again. “Maybe I wanted it so badly I imagined it. Maybe—” Stopping short, her head jerked in violent denial. “No.”
Turning to him, not caring that the sheet slipped to her waist, she met his hurting gaze. “I’m not wrong. I don’t know who, perhaps I never will, but one or all of them were there tonight.”
Jericho drew a harsh, grating breath, desperate to hold her, to comfort her. But as much as he needed it, she needed the exorcism more. At last he said quietly, “You weren’t wrong.”
At the leap of surprise in her eyes, with two fingers he touched her cheek. “No, I don’t know who they are, but I know the type. Few of our classmates who are living in Belle Terre would have missed the celebration, or the chance to see you.”
“To discover what the tacky girl from the wrong family had become?” Maria wondered aloud. “Or testing my memory?”
“A little of both, I suspect.” She’d walked among her tormentors head high, a calm, gallant smile for everyone. What had the men who’d been the boys who hurt her thought? Had they gloated? Cringed in fear of recognition? And, Jericho wondered, had any felt remorse? “We’ll never know, sweetheart.”
“Unless I remember.” Taking his hand in hers, lacing her fingers through his, she recalled the gentleness of his touch, when others had been cruel. “But you don’t think I ever will, do you?”
“I’m sorry.” His thumb caressed the back of her hand, offering comfort for his doubt. “Not after such a long time.”
“She would be eighteen, and a summer girl, if they’d let her live.” Clinging to his hand and the stability of the present, in her mind she returned to a night so long ago. “The diner closed late, and I was hurrying to meet you on the beach. They were waiting, hidden in the shadows of the old oak. If I’d paid attention. If I’d been wary, she would have had a real birthday. Perhaps not the one we expected, but not the one they gave her.”
“What could you have watched for, Maria Elena? What should you have been wary of?” Jericho refused to let her shoulder any part of the blame for the miscarriage of their child. “Belle Terre was the safest of places then. A sleepy town of unlocked doors and open windows. No one could have anticipated or predicted what happened.
“If anyone is to blame, it would be me. Until your shift was done, I should have waited for you at the diner, not on the beach.”
“But you couldn’t have known,” Maria protested.
“No, I couldn’t.” Jericho made the point he intended as she rushed to defend him. “And neither could you.”
Maria sank into silence, a somber look replacing the joy of the hours before. Gradually her frown softened. “I went by the cemetery, I saw the flowers. I thought you might forget.”
“It isn’t a date I’m likely to forget.” Every year on a mid-summer evening, he visited the secluded spot. There was only a tiny stone, its inscription simply Baby Girl. This was how Maria Elena had wanted it. To protect herself, or him? Or even the baby? He’d never had the chance to ask. She’d been too physically and mentally wounded to question.
Then, before he knew it, before she was truly recovered from the ordeal, she had gone, leaving behind the horror of Belle Terre. Leaving him. For these years he’d accepted this as what she wanted. And for years he’d left a small bouquet on the tiny pauper’s grave.
“Thank you for that, Jericho.” After a moment she added, “It’s ironic, isn’t it, that the museum would open and I would catch the assignment at exactly this time.” Wearily, fatigue returning, her voice grew hoarse, her words an effort. “Or was it fate?”
Jericho didn’t answer. Drawing her into his arms, he held her while they watched the morning sky. Too soon she would be leaving. The horror of a gentle seventeen-year-old girl was still too strong. Too vivid. He was losing her again. But until then, he would hold her and keep her safe.
He sensed the exact moment she drowsed. Her body grew heavy, the hand clasping his uncurled. Her breaths slowed to a measured rhythm. And he hoped that just for a while, she could rest.
Jericho had drifted into a somnolent state himself, when the jangling chime of his doorbell roused him. Slipping his arms from Maria Elena and covering her carefully, he pulled on his discarded slacks, then hurried to answer the summons.
“Court!” The deputy’s normally spotless uniform was stained and smudged with soot. “What’s wrong?”
“A problem at the museum.”
“What sort of problem?”
“Just after dawn, a kid hot-wired a rental car in the museum parking lot. The culprit was the wannabe delinquent, Toby Parker.”
“And?”
“The car blew him across the lot. Lucky for the kid it did. He’s toasted around the edges and bruised, but he’ll see his day in court. The rental burned to a twisted heap.”
Startled, Jericho tried to think. “The museum isn’t officially open. Why would a rental car be left in the lot?” Abruptly, like a knife in his heart, he understood. Maria Elena.
“We found enough of the tag to trace. That’s how we know it was a rental. Ms. Delacroix’s.”
Jericho’s head cleared, his response was coolly concise. “You’ve secured the area? Everyone knows what to do?”
“Yes, sir. No one touches anything until you get there.”
“Good. Make sure nobody does. I’ll be five minutes behind you.” Closing the door after his deputy, Jericho stood with his hands on the heavy panels, his thoughts a morass of fear and worry. A light step and the rustle of cloth made him turn. Maria was there, in the bedroom doorway, a beautiful waif lost in the folds of his robe. The woman he loved, and must keep safe. “You heard?”
“I wondered what effect my homecoming might have on my old friends in Belle Terre.” She was ashen, but calm. “Now we know.”
“We don’t know anything yet,” Jericho contradicted. “Not even if it was a bomb. But whatever it was, it could have been gang related, targeting the kid who got singed. That it was your rental could be purely coincidence.”
“Gangs in Belle Terre?” Maria made a doubting grimace.
“Damn right. Belle Terre isn’t the sleepy, peaceful town you left eighteen years ago.”
“Perhaps not,” she conceded. “But you don’t believe the bomb in my car was a coincidence any more than I believe it.”
“I don’t know what I believe,” he admitted honestly. She was too astute not to recognize evasion. “We both know I can’t make a judgment until the investigation is complete. For that reason I’ll feel better when you’re on the plane and out of reach.”
“There’s just one catch, Jericho.”
His thoughts filled with the carnage she’d barely escaped, he looked at her, a questioning expression on his face.
“I won’t be on that plane.”
“Like hell you won’t.”
“Sorry, Sheriff.” Oblivious of his robe puddling at her feet and flowing inches beyond her hands, she crossed her arms and leaned against the doorjamb. In a voice that was ominously pleasant, she declared,