Secret surrender, p.22
Secret Surrender, page 22
Dean sat quiet for a while again, this conversation far too polite for his comfort. “Is this you trying to help me?”
If so, why?
The sheriff put his pen down and peered up again. “Let’s just say I didn’t trust your first story weeks ago, so I did a little research.”
Dean scoffed. “You must have found something glowing in that research that I don’t know about.”
“Not glowing, Mr. Holloway. Inconsistent.” The sheriff narrowed his eyes, his attention sweeping over Dean again, as though he questioned whatever he had to say next. “Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re not in trouble here, son. You’re in a whole heap of it, and a prison van will be here within the hour to take you far from Harlow.”
He leaned in and pointed Dean’s way, the man’s focus zeroing in. “But you’re also one lucky son-of-a-gun, because in all of this, there’s one person who’s defied all common sense and done something to help you.”
Thirty-Seven
“Seems strange to me, Mr. Holloway, that you would be a Marine on the rise one minute, only to go uncharacteristically postal on your staff sergeant the next.”
The sheriff settled back in his seat, his expression relaxing like he’d been waiting a long while to let loose with that observation.
“Isn’t going postal meant to be standard army guy behavior?” Dean narrowed his stare, not sure what the sheriff’s point was, which further bolstered his decision to match that point with his own brand of sarcasm. “You know, gun-slinging meathead who just saw too much misery and hit his limit?”
“I looked up your court documents.” The sheriff shrugged, hinting he didn’t buy Dean’s explanation. Even the sheriff’s reply didn’t clarify his earlier comment about some mystery person “defying all logic” to help him.
Given the sheriff’s change of subject, maybe that person was Ramos—Dean’s only friend and from his army days at that—though Ramos connecting with the sheriff seemed hugely unlikely. Things had escalated at Maynard’s only hours earlier, and not even Ramos was that quick to find shit out.
“Good for you, Sheriff, but my memory of my legal woes isn’t so damaged that I need the recap.”
“You were in Afghanistan.” The sheriff’s brow crinkled, the corners of his mouth tensing like he edged on annoyance. “You claimed you attacked your sergeant in an attempt to stop a sexual assault. He, on the other hand, claimed the same about you. No witnesses backed either story, but you took the hit all the same. Now, I’ve been around long enough to know that what happens in a court doesn’t aways reflect the truth—”
Dean laughed, a quick and barking sound. “Nice theory. I should have hired you as my lawyer.”
Despite the joke, the sheriff’s hard expression remained. “Tell me what happened to get you kicked from the Marines.”
“I don’t have to.” A slow realization took shape in his brain, that realization stealing his breath and rocking his belly with instant sickness. “Sarah told you, didn’t she?”
There’s been one person who’s defied all common sense and done something to help you.
That’s who the sheriff had been talking about.
Why? Why would she still help when she needed to focus on getting as far from him as possible?
Don’t start getting hopeful, asshole. You’re still going to prison.
The sheriff’s silence, coupled with the slow drop of his shoulders, confirmed Dean’s theory, even if the man didn’t say anything more than, “I imagine time in prison and a Bad Conduct Discharge, didn’t seem fair at the time.”
“It wasn’t, but shit happens.” Dean fought an urge to look away, but he wanted to see where all this went.
“Sometimes, yes.” The sheriff nodded as though, as someone somewhat older than Dean, life and his profession might have given him first-hand knowledge on the subject of injustice. “No one spoke for you, though it seems as though there should have been plenty who could. I wouldn’t wholly blame a man for abandoning his care for the law after that.”
The sheriff’s brown eyes mellowed, conveying an unshakeable sort of understanding. Still, any sign of compassion rubbed against Dean’s years of warranted mistrust, so he laughed and offered, “Is this your way of saying you’re letting me go?”
The sheriff threw back his head and let out a genuine but unexpected laugh. “You know I can’t do that. Heck, I’d be grilling you for all sorts of information if it weren’t for the fact that you’ve already given me Luciano Conti’s name. Besides, I’m sure you’ll get more grilling from far more qualified detectives once I pass you onto the state prison system.”
The sheriff paused, his focus remaining forward as he rolled up one of his shirt sleeves, revealing a faded tattoo of an American flag on his inner forearm. Dean had to squint. There was a picture of military dog tags underneath, but he couldn’t make out the numbers. Meanwhile, he grappled against the idea that someone as straightlaced as the sheriff even had a tattoo.
The sheriff used the end of his pen to tap at the ink on his skin. “First Gulf War. I have some idea what it’s like, putting your life and sanity on the line. And for all your trouble, Mr. Holloway, you got sent home and your name smeared.”
Dean stared across the desk, still not too sure of what to make of all this or why the sheriff even believed his story. “You’re telling me this because…?”
“Because, besides myself, if there’s anyone in this town who’s a decent judge of character, it’s Sarah Overton, even if she doesn’t think so lately. I’ve never seen her trust someone who was wholly untrustworthy. Reckless, maybe, but not untrustworthy. I also never let go of my suspicions over your link to Anthony Stucco, so I can’t say I do outright believe you, but I believe Sarah. She says you’re not a bad person, even though you’ve had a whole lot of bad come your way. All the evidence since your arrival in town points to you trying to, as you say, change. To make the most of the nothing that life gave you.”
“Why would she vouch for me?”
The sheriff put down his pen, his face holding a blank expression as his head did a small, wobbly sort of shake. “Are you really that empty in the skull?”
Dean frowned. “What?”
The sheriff pressed his eyes shut and swore under his breath before addressing Dean again. “Never mind. Anyway, Miss Overton wants a few words with you. I’ll need you in your cell before I can allow that.”
Dean nodded and the sheriff stood, heading for the door. “You never know, Mr. Holloway, you might be in some kind of luck. If what you say about Luciano Conti is provable, perhaps any half-baked lawyer might argue your actions were performed under extreme duress.”
The sheriff held the door open, and Dean followed in silence, not mentioning the evidence he’d collected over the years. Frankly, he needed a break from talking about Luciano and the syndicate. In no time at all, his whole life would no doubt be consumed with talking about little more than that.
The sheriff held Dean’s cell door open, the heavy metal gate soon clinking shut behind him. He sank down onto the plastic mattress against the wall and buried his face in his hands. He’d expected anger and disregard, not the sheriff’s compassion, much less his attempts to understand. And somehow, compassion and understanding hurt more—seemingly soft emotions—with enough aching precision to cut him to the core.
His thoughts slipped back to that little boy. Him. A black trash bag heavy in his hands, a bag containing a few sets of clothes and not much else. He’d needed compassion then, and decades on, compassion continued to duck away from him, leaving him on the losing side of any change he tried to enact.
The door outside his cell clicked open. He understood who likely stood across from him now. Watching. Waiting. His mind caught on the heat behind his eyes and his time “keeping peace” overseas.
Little girls, some babies, sold to older men. Some said to help with “domestic duties,” but everyone knew different. The women. The children. They always suffered the most. And that night with his staff sergeant? Dean had only tried to intercept one moment of misery, but he’d fought an unwinnable war on more than one front.
An intense pain gripped his chest, and he sucked in a sharp breath, the wall he’d built to lock away his nightmares had a giant fucking crack in it. Nothing could stop the darkness from filtering through.
He lifted his head out of his hands, his gaze slamming into Sarah. She stood some yards away, still watching, still waiting outside the metal bars.
“Why?” The question fell from her pale lips, the skin around her eyes red and splotchy. Blaine was beside her, his arm around her shoulder.
For one brief moment, he’d wanted life to be simple, and his brief moment had come at her expense. Of all the shitty things he’d done over the years, this was the worst, but all he could offer was a useless, “I don’t know.”
His husky voice scraped at his throat, dry and brittle. He wanted to give her a better answer, but it all sounded so selfish now.
He’d gotten what he wanted, what he’d always wanted—someone to give a damn about him. Somewhere he belonged…
She shook Blaine off and strode forward, the first signs of her innate inner strength bursting through. “Dean, just tell me why.”
But he couldn’t speak and his focus rose to her ruffled hair and down to the dried blood over her cheekbone. A wound she had sustained trying to defend him.
What an asshole. I’m such a selfish fucking asshole.
“Don’t torture yourself here.” Blaine padded to just behind Sarah, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulder again. “He’s got nothing good to say. Let’s go.”
Blaine shot Dean a tight look, one that was deserved and spoke volumes about how little he thought of him.
Still, Sarah pushed him away again.
“No. Despite what you all seem to think of me, I’m not crazy. I know this man.” She lashed her glare at Dean, one that once again commanded him to speak. “Go ahead. Tell me I’m not crazy.”
But her sanity wasn’t what she really wanted him to endorse.
What she really wanted to hear was that she hadn’t imagined the goodness in him.
But he saw nothing good here. Not in him. Not for her. Even if his time in Harlow had briefly convinced him otherwise, the ordeal at Maynard’s only verified he’d lost sight of who he was years ago. All he’d ever done was pretend. Until, of course, reality inevitably caught him.
“I’m sorry.” His apology fell from his lips, habitual, low, and weak. What more could he give her? So, he turned to Blaine. “I’m sorry to you too, and I’m glad you got your woman in the end. I guess, good or bad, the past finds us all, eventually.”
His attention stayed on Blaine long enough to see the man’s expression fall, his posture turning slack like he hadn’t expected any kind of remorse. At least that was one absolution to all this.
Meanwhile, Sarah shook her head, and her eyes glistened again, like she didn’t want to hear him confirm the truth of who he was and what he’d done. Or maybe that this really was the lackluster ending they would get.
She shuffled forward some more and clutched her fingers to the steel of his cell, her knees collapsing beneath her, as she slid to a defeated crouch on the floor. A once strong woman, broken.
Yet another thing to haunt him through the years.
For the longest time she said nothing. Her tears fell from her eyes, those eyes squeezed shut while she pressed her forehead to the bars, her sobs mostly muffled. She tapped her forehead against the metal, as though that might end the pain or the reality, ripping him to shreds in the passing minutes.
He’d wanted her. Wanted the life she’d offered. Blinkered himself to the consequences of what loving him entailed.
Love?
He scrubbed his hand over his face. The sheriff had called him empty in the skull, and now Dean knew why. As always, he sat ignorant to what went on within. Within him. Within Sarah.
She’d vouched for him, publicly, when she’d expended so much energy making it clear she wasn’t the type to fall easily. Though nothing about this relationship was easy, he’d fallen too, and almost certainly first.
Blaine hunched over her and hooked his hands under her armpits, helping her stand. “Come on. Don’t cry.”
His third attempted exit held far less vitriol than the others, like maybe he’d twigged there was so much more here than a bad guy taking advantage.
This time, Sarah did as she was told, even though she shook him off so she could walk on her own. “I’m not crying. I don’t cry.”
Her gaze hit Dean, and she stopped just before the door. The scrunched heartache was gone from her face, replaced with something harder and more unreadable, her old and familiar defenses seemingly restored.
“I hope you stay in a cell forever.” She pressed her trembling lips together for a moment, as though her harsh words hurt her as much as they did him, evoking more pain than he’d experienced in years—not since that little boy pushed alone into the world by a mother who’d perhaps never cared.
But Sarah did care.
So maybe the hurt here was worse.
She released the tension in her lips and drew a slow and shaky breath. “I didn’t want to love you, but you let me, anyway. So, for that—for the years of hurt you’ve lumped on me—I hope you stay in a cell forever, and I hope my face haunts you for just as long.”
Thirty-Eight
“Oh dear, no one expected you’d come in tonight.”
Sarah ground her teeth together and blinked in silence at Maureen. The no one in her statement suggested everyone had been talking about the fight between Dean and Blaine, with her thrown in the middle. She shouldn’t have expected any different, but four days had passed, and she’d hoped some of the frenzy might have died down.
The misery of being at home alone, bored, with too much time to think, had gotten to her. So, she’d come to work seeking an escape. But an hour into her shift, everyone still kept staring at her. The incessant whispers laid the sympathy and speculation on her far too thick, each person stuck somewhere between pity and fear.
A wash cloth still lay clasped between her fingers, and she slapped it down onto the bar top, leaning a hip against the counter’s edge. At least Maureen here dared to speak to her. “Did you all think I’d hide forever?”
Then again, she’d given a criminal a reason to stay in town. How fucking embarrassing. Everyone’s fear wasn’t unfounded.
“No, of course not, dear.” Maureen patted her hand over the bar, perhaps because Sarah didn’t get close enough to let the woman touch her. “Work can be one way to heal a broken heart.”
Sarah took her gaze away and stared down at her hand over the cloth. Words of sympathy were hard enough; words about her broken heart were unbearable.
I wish Dean never happened.
An all-too-familiar swelling took up space in her throat, and she swallowed at the permanent lump there—the discomfort, as always, refusing to budge. In the wake of her break up with Blaine, she’d been adamant about never wanting to fall in love again. The problem with Dean, there’d been no choice. Love had just happened. It had dragged her, kicking and screaming, into happiness and misery unlike anything she’d experienced before.
Frank sat beside Maureen, Aggie on the other side, the next to speak. “I for one don’t blame you.”
Sarah scoffed. Blame her for what? Falling for Dean? Or just for entangling the whole town in his trouble? As much as the old woman attempted to comfort, her statement only confirmed that some people did blame Sarah for something.
“That’s right. We were all wrong.” Frank spoke, though Sarah kept her gaze lowered and couldn’t see him. “We all assumed Dean was a good guy, and ouch—”
She flicked her gaze up to Aggie glaring at Frank and Frank rubbing his arm, the action suggesting Aggie had pinched him into shutting up.
Aggie’s words, and her intervention now, left Sarah wondering. Did Aggie know about Sarah’s doubts? That, as much as everyone here, including her, wanted to paint Dean as an out-and-out evil person, a gentler internal voice kept reminding her that she knew his story. That he’d tried, in a roundabout way, to tell her who he was.
Like a naive fool, she’d ignored all signs. And still like a naive fool, she wanted to believe she knew the man. That some of what they’d shared had to be real.
Her stomach roiled and a good portion of her energy left her body. That she still felt anything for him even though he’d hurt people close to her. He was a monster and now he was turning her into one too.
And even as that harsh sentiment worked its way through her brain, another part of her still clung to the sheriff’s kernel of hope. That Dean might bargain his way to freedom, that he still had the potential to turn into the man he’d claimed to be.
What a mess.
How could she pin her hopes on potential?
How could she ever want him near her or anyone she cared about again?
She rubbed her cloth against the already clean counter, her movements jerky, uninterested in speaking about what had happened. Even if no one here did blame her, she blamed herself. For all her caution, she’d let yet another disastrous relationship become far more than it ever should have.
She growled under her breath and pushed the cloth away, unwilling to answer why she’d done any of what she’d done. Shared a bed with him. Shared intimate details of her life. Shared a giant piece of her heart that she would never get back. It was far easier to tell herself over and over again that Dean was a bad person with no redeeming traits.
She turned from the group, not offering so much as a final glance or goodbye, unable to voice any words as she headed for the kitchen and bolted for the back door. Outside, an aptly empty field stretched into the darkness ahead, the night lonely and hollow.
