Buch lesen: «Daredevil's Run»

This book is for DAVE and TIM…the two sweet, wonderful guys who have dedicated themselves to making my daughters’ lives happy (a task requiring more than a small measure of patience, empathy, and of course, love). How on earth did my girls get so lucky?

A SPECIAL THANK YOU…To Dawn, my firstborn (who calls to my mind words from The Sound of Music: “Somewhere…I must have done something good…”) and to the other wonderful people at Kern River Outfitters in Wofford Heights, California—Dwight Pascoe, his wife, Trudy, whitewater photographer Bob Walker—for making it possible for me to ride the river without once getting my feet wet.

Prologue

Part 1

It started the way it always did, with the dream of waking up in the darkness, of being afraid, terrified. Heart racing, pounding, sweating and shaking, wanting to cry but knowing he was too big to cry. He didn’t want to be a baby, did he?

He didn’t cry, he didn’t. But his chest and throat hurt as if he did.

Then the noise. Terrible noises—things crashing, breaking, thumps and bangs, voices yelling…screaming. A man’s voice yelling. A woman’s voice screaming.

There were other voices, too, small frightened voices—not his!—whimpering, “Mommy…”

And finally…finally the other voice, the one he’d been waiting for, praying for, soft as a breath blowing warm past his ear. “Shh…It’s okay…it’s gonna be okay. I won’t let him hurt you. Nobody’s gonna hurt you. You’re safe now. It’s okay.”

He felt safe then, and warm, and when the loudest noises came, he crouched down in the warm darkness and waited for the crashing and banging and screaming and yelling to stop and the lights to turn on, so bright they hurt his eyes. So bright he woke up.

“Wade—Wade—”

Mattie’s voice. Mattie was standing beside his bed, poking him, shaking his arm.

“Wake up, Wade. Wake…up!”

“I am awake. Stop poking me.” He glared up at his brother’s face, just a dark blob in the darkness of their room, and scrubbed furiously at his eyes. “What’s the matter? What did you wake me up for?”

“You were crying.”

“Was not.”

“Yes, you were. I heard you. Did you have a bad dream, Wade?”

“Maybe. So what?” He was the older brother, after all. “Big deal. It was only a dream. Go back to sleep, Mattie.”

Mattie’s shadow didn’t move, just went on standing there beside Wade’s bed. A small voice said, “I can’t. I’m all awake now, too. Can I get in bed with you, Wade?”

Wade let out an exaggerated breath, but the truth was, he didn’t mind. “Okay…but you better not kick me this time, or I’m pushin’ you on the floor.”

He scooted over and Matt lifted the edge of the blankets and crawled in beside him. For a few minutes Wade lay still, listening to his brother’s uneven breathing, feeling the warmth of his body drive away the last lingering chill of nightmare.

After a while, he heard a whisper.

“Was it the pounding dream, Wade?”

Wade’s voice felt gravelly as he answered, “Yeah.”

“And…did he come?”

“Did who come?”

“You know who. The angel. The boy angel.”

After a pause, Wade said on a long breath, “Yeah…”

“I knew it,” Mattie said, wriggling down into the pillow with a yawn. “He always comes when you need him….”

A moment later his breathing became a soft snore, and a moment after that, Wade, too, was asleep.

Part 2

Wade dialed the phone from his hospital bed. He closed his eyes as he counted the rings, but it didn’t help to shut out the image of his brother the way he’d last seen him, making his way slowly and awkwardly through his apartment in his wheelchair.

The rings stopped after only two, surprising him. Always before when he’d called, it had taken at least six rings for Matt to get to the phone.

“Man,” he said, “that was fast.”

“Cell phone,” his brother said. “Who’s this?”

“It’s me—Wade. How are you, buddy?”

“Hey…Wade. Wow—been a while.”

“Yeah.” He gritted his teeth against a double whammy of pain waves, one from his leg, suspended in a sling and swathed in surgical dressings, the other in his heart. Pure guilt, that one. “Listen, about that—”

“Forget it, bro. It’s cool. I understand. So…how you been? Bad guys keepin’ you busy?”

Wade laughed—tried to do it without moving anything that might hurt. “Yeah, well…I guess I’ve been better. But hey—that’s not why I called. I’ve got somebody here who wants to talk to you.” He paused. “You sitting down?”

“Oh, yeah, funny. Very funny. So who is it? Hey, don’t tell me. You got married?”

Wade looked at the woman standing beside his bed, reached for her hand and squeezed it tightly. “Not quite,” he said in a voice gone raspy with emotions he knew better than to try and hide. “Not yet. Soon though. We want you to be there. And I promise you, man, you’re gonna love her. No—this is…” He paused, looked up at the other faces bending over him, and muttered half to himself, “Jeez, I didn’t think this was going to be so hard. Uh…Mattie? Remember those nightmares I used to have? I told you about ‘em, remember? There was this voice—you said it was—”

“An angel. Sure, I remember. I was a kid—what can I say. So? What about it?”

Wade took a deep breath and grinned up at the man standing poised, his face a mask of suspense that didn’t come close to hiding his emotions, either.

“Well, little brother…guess what? He’s real. And here he is. In person.” His voice broke, and he barely got the rest of it out as he handed the phone over to Cory. “Mattie, say hello to our Angel. The brother you didn’t know you had.”

Chapter 1

Alex Penny gave a start when the front door to the offices of Penny Tours, located in the tiny town of Wofford Heights, California, opened to admit a stranger. Almost nobody used the front door, since most people wanting to make reservations did so by telephone or online, and when they showed up in person, they would have been directed to the Rafting Center farther along and on the other side of the highway. Guides and drivers coming in from the equipment yard and warehouse used the back door.

Once in a great while, though, someone did wander in looking for information on available tours, or maybe directions to the Rafting Center, so she gave the visitor an automatic smile and was well into her customary speech. “Hi. If you’re looking for the Rafting Center, it’s about a block down on…” Then the man’s face came into full focus.

Behind rimless glasses, the stranger’s eyes were a dark and penetrating blue, but it was his smile that made her heart give a kick she wasn’t prepared for.

“I think I’m in the right place. I’m looking for Alex. Are you…?”

“That would be me.” She could hear her own voice, hear that it was even more hoarse than her normally froggy croak, and she cleared her throat as she clicked the save button and pushed back from the computer.

“We spoke on the phone. I’m—”

“Yeah, you’d be Matt’s brother. Cory, right?” She was on her feet, hand extended, the expected words—she hoped—on her lips. But her mouth was on autopilot and her heart in overdrive, because her brain had temporarily disengaged, having gotten hung up, for the moment, on that smile.

Mattie’s smile.

“Cory Pearson. I hope I haven’t come at a bad time. You did say afternoons were usually best.”

“No…no, this is, uh…fine. Can I get you anything? Water? Coke?”

“Water’s fine. Thanks…”

Ridiculously glad to have a specific job to do, Alex darted into the kitchen alcove, opened the refrigerator and took out two bottles of water. She turned to find that the stranger—who was no stranger at all, it seemed—had followed her.

“Nice Lab,” he remarked, gazing at the large slumbering form sprawled on the floor, taking up most of the space between the fridge and the small sink and counter.

“That’s Annie.” Alex stepped over the dog to hand one of the bottles to her visitor. The other she cracked open for herself. “She was Matt’s, actually. She’s pretty old, now. Mostly just sleeps. So—” she took a gulp and waved the bottle at the empty office “—you said you wanted to—”

Before she could finish it, the back door opened a crack and a voice called through it. “Hey, Alex, Booker T just called. The Las Colinas group’s on its way in. I’m heading over to the center, unless you want—”

“I’m kinda busy right now, Eve.”

The door opened wider, and Eve Francis, one of the river guides who sometimes doubled as office staff, stuck her head through the opening. Her blond hair was caught up in its usual style—messy ponytail with wisps flying around—and sticking to her face, which, since she’d been working all morning in the warehouse, was red-flushed and sweaty. And she still managed to look disgustingly gorgeous. Partly, Alex was sure, because of the smile that lit up her face when she saw they had a visitor.

“Oh—hey!” She turned the smile, full wattage, on Cory Pearson. “I didn’t see you come in. Welcome to Penny Tours.” The smile didn’t dim as she switched it to Alex. “I’ll take care of him, if you want to go. Those guys were kind of your babes, I know.”

Cory looked a question at Alex and had his mouth open to spit it out, but she waved it aside before he could say the words. “No—no, it’s okay. You can take it. This is something I need to, uh…” She paused to take a breath. “Eve, this is Matt’s brother. Matt Callahan, my, uh…”

Eve’s smile went out like a light. “Oh yeah! Matt—your old partner—right. So…well. Okay, I guess you…” She cocked her head to give Cory a long look, eyes glittering with curiosity and something Alex couldn’t define, then shrugged. “Hey, I’m gone. See you later.” Her head vanished and the door thunked closed.

“Look,” Cory said, “if you need to go take care of something, I can wait.”

Alex waved a hand at the chair she’d vacated and settled her own backside onto the edge of her desk. “No, it’s just that…well, the kids from Las Colinas Academy are kind of a special bunch, is all. Teenagers. They’re all mentally disabled.”

As he took the relinquished chair, the visitor’s eyes lit up with a new kind of interest, and Alex remembered what Matt’s brother Wade had told her—that their longlost and recently found older brother was a journalist. A reporter, and a fairly famous one at that. “You take disabled people down the river rapids?”

“Oh yeah, sure. We take all kinds—physical and mental disabilities both. These people come every year. Have a ball, too—you should see ‘em. But hey, Eve can take care of things. She’s a guide—also a friend. She won’t mind.”

She drank the last of the water in the bottle, then looked around for a place to put it. Finally she set it on the desk with great care, as if she’d never done such a thing before. After that there was no place else to put her eyes that wasn’t Matt’s brother Cory. And since he looked way too much like Matt, she went on staring at the bottle. The silence stretched.

Which they both broke at the same time.

“You said you wanted to—”

“I guess Wade told you I—”

Cory’s face broke into Mattie’s smile as he gestured for Alex to go first.

So she did, in a voice gone gruff and edgy again. “Yeah, so…Wade said you got separated from him and Matt when you were little, or something?”

“I did.” Cory still smiled, though there was a deep sadness in his eyes now, and Alex remembered the way Matt used to smile like that, sometimes, in a way that made her heart ache. That last day…“How much did Matt tell you about his childhood?”

She shrugged and shifted the empty water bottle from one spot to another on her desktop. “Just that he was adopted—he and Wade—when they were little. He told me he had a happy childhood, though. Said his adoptive parents were great—older, but nice. Good people. I don’t think he even remembers anything before that.”

Cory nodded. “Wade didn’t, either. Actually, I was hoping you could tell me—”

“So, what happened?” She broke in on the question, hoping to stall it. “How did you guys get separated?”

He smiled again, wryly, and his eyes told Alex he was onto her tactic and okay with it—for now. “Wasn’t just us ‘guys,’ actually. We have two sisters, too. Twins. They were toddlers at the time.” He hitched a shoulder apologetically. “Haven’t had any luck finding them, yet.”

Alex glared fiercely down at her hand and the empty bottle, daring the burn in her eyes and the ache in her throat to produce tears. She won that battle but didn’t trust her voice, and finally just shook her head.

“Our father was a good man, before Vietnam changed him,” Cory said softly into the silence. “I was born before he left, old enough to remember how he was then. I remember his gentleness, and the way he liked to tell me stories. Then he was gone. And he never came back. Some stranger came in his place. Wade and Matt were born after that, and then the twins. But Dad never told them stories. He’d drink instead. And he’d have flashbacks. At those times, Mom would lock us kids in the bedroom and tell me to look out for them—keep them safe. Then she’d try to talk Dad back from whatever hell he’d gone to. She took…a lot from him, to keep him from hurting us, or himself.”

He drew a hand across his face, and the movement caught Alex’s gaze like a magnet and held it fast so she couldn’t look away even though she wanted to.

“Then…one night I guess she couldn’t bring him back. He tried to break down the door to the bedroom where us kids were hiding. I don’t know exactly what happened, but…anyway, that night he shot her, and then himself.”

“God…” The whispered word slipped from her before she could stop it.

“We were taken away to some sort of shelter—a group home. I don’t remember much about it. Then we were divided up among several foster homes. I kept running away from mine, trying to keep in touch with the others. I was considered a disruptive influence, I guess, because nobody would let me see them. Eventually, I landed in juvenile detention. While I was there, Wade and Matt and the twins got adopted by two different sets of parents. I got out when I was eighteen, of course, but nobody would tell me where they were. Nobody would tell me anything. Which was probably a good thing, I suppose, in retrospect. I was angry enough, I don’t know what I’d have done if I’d been able to find the little ones. Kidnapped ‘em maybe. Something stupid, I’m sure.”

“So…how did you find them? I mean, after so long—that had to be, what, twenty-five years ago?”

“Well, it hasn’t been easy. I have my own resources, but we didn’t make any real headway until we hired a P.I. who specializes in this kind of thing—reuniting adoptees with biological parents. A man named Holt Kincaid. He’s the one that made this happen. He found Wade first. Up in Portland. And Wade put us in touch—”

“With Matt.” She folded her arms across her middle and frowned at him, concentrating on keeping all traces of emotion out of her voice. “So…have you seen him?” How is he? How does he look? Does he still have the smile, now that he can’t walk? Can’t climb, can’t do any of the things we both loved to do.

“Matt, you mean? I’ve talked to him,” Cory said. “On the phone, a couple of times. I’m on my way to meet him now. But I wanted to…” He shifted abruptly, leaned forward and propped his forearms on his knees, hands clasped between them, head bowed in what seemed almost an attitude of prayer. After a moment he cleared his throat and looked up at her. “I wanted to talk to you first,” he said carefully. “I need to know what I’m in for.”

Alex pushed away from the desk, scooped up the water bottle and went to drop it into the recycling bin that stood beside the door to the warehouse. “What can I tell you?” she said without turning. “I haven’t seen him since he left rehab.”

“I mean, about the accident. You were with him when it happened.”

She shrugged. “We were rock climbing, he fell, broke his back, now he’s paralyzed. That’s about it.”

“Come on.” The smile in his voice made it a gentle rebuke. “That much I got from Wade.”

She spun back to him, firing questions in a breathless rush, again hoping maybe with the sheer volume of them she might hold him off a little longer. “How is Wade, by the way? I didn’t even ask you—he told me he got shot? What’s up with that? And he said he’s getting married? Man, that’s just…I didn’t think Wade would ever settle down. I don’t think cops do too well with relationships. So I’m really surprised. What’s she like? Have you met her?”

“I have,” Cory said, while his eyes regarded her steadily from behind the rimless lenses in a way that made her feel he could see inside her head. And knew how desperately she was trying to avoid this—talking about Matt. Thinking about Matt. “Tierney’s…something special.” He paused, then added with a secret little smile, “I think she and Wade will do well together.”

“What about you?” She tilted her head back, still smiling at him, though his steady eyes told her it wasn’t fooling him one bit. “Are you married?”

And she watched his face light up in a way that altered his whole being. It reminded her of watching a film of a land blooming from winter into spring in fastforward. “Yes, I am. My wife’s name is Sam—Samantha. She’s the reason for all this, you know. The reason I decided to start looking for the little ones.”

“Wow,” Alex said, her own smile hanging in there, resolute and meaningless. “Sounds like there’s a story there.”

“Several, actually.”

Cory studied the young woman facing him with arms folded and smile firmly in place, barricades she struggled valiantly to maintain. She wasn’t tall, he’d noted, but looked wiry and fit, with long, thick dark hair worn in a single braid. Not beautiful, but definitely attractive. Her skin was a warm golden brown, with a sprinkle of freckles across her nose and the tops of her cheeks that gave her face a poignancy she probably wasn’t aware of and would have hated if she’d known. Beyond any doubt, her eyes were her best feature, hazel fringed with thick black lashes. They had a brave and haunted look now, and he felt a deep sympathy for her, along with an aching sense of familiarity.

I know what you’re doing, Alex Penny. I know because it’s what I used to do. Ask the questions to keep from having to answer any. Concentrate on someone else’s story to avoid having to tell your own.

He said gently, “I’d gotten very good at burying everything that had happened to me…the loss of my family. That, along with the anger. Fortunately, I’d learned to channel that anger into writing, and I think I took to writing about—and reporting on—wars because on some level I was trying to understand what had happened to my dad. But I never let myself think about my brothers and sisters. That was an emotional minefield I didn’t cross—didn’t even want to try. Sam changed all that. But not before I almost lost her, trying to keep my secrets.”

There was a silence, one that seemed longer than it was. Then she let out a breath and unfolded her arms, and although she remained distant from him, she relaxed enough to lean against the wall. “Okay, so what do you want to know?”

“How did it happen? How did my brother fall?”

“I don’t know.” She slapped that back at him, defensive again, chin thrust out. “The rigging failed. That’s all I know. Believe me, if I—”

“I’m not blaming you for what happened,” Cory said quietly.

“Well, swell, that makes one of us!” Her eyes seemed to shimmer, but with anger, not tears. Then she lowered her lashes to hide them, and after a moment went on in a wooden voice, as if reciting something she’d committed to memory long ago.

“We were going to expand the business—offer combination adventures, rafting and rock climbing. We’d already checked out several climbs—this one wasn’t any more difficult than some of the others we’d done. We were almost to the top. I was ahead of Matt. I heard him shout—not a scream, like he was scared, just…a shout. There was some scraping, the sound of rocks falling. I looked back, and Matt was lying on a ledge about halfway down. I knew he was hurt. I thought, you know…I was afraid he was dead.

“When I got to him, he was conscious, and I was just so glad he was alive. I didn’t even think about anything else. But he had this scared look on his face. Like…he knew. He told me he couldn’t move, and I kept telling him not to move. I made sure he wasn’t bleeding anywhere—well, except for some cuts and scrapes—and I went for help. They got him out with a helicopter. They were good, those guys—they handled him like he was made of glass. They did everything they could—”

“I’m sure they—and you—did everything you could.”

Her freckles stood out almost in relief against her golden skin, and he wished he knew her well enough to go to her and offer more comfort than the words she’d probably already heard too many times before.

“So…” And he hesitated, the journalist in him struggling against the compassionate man he was and the brother he was only just learning to be, trying to put the question he had to ask in the least hurtful way he could. “After my brother got out of the hospital, and had been through rehab, whose decision was it for him to stay in Los Angeles?”

“His, of course.” Again, she swatted the words back at him, as the hurt she’d so far been able to hide spasmed across her face like summer lightning. “He…broke things off with me. Told me it was—quote—better for both of us. I wanted him to come back, stay and run the business with me. I tried to convince him. I told him it didn’t matter—” She broke off, looking appalled, probably because she’d said so much, and to a total stranger.

“I wonder why,” Cory said, keeping his voice dispassionate—the reporter’s voice. “You told me you take physically disabled people on the river. It doesn’t seem as though being in a wheelchair should have kept him from continuing on with you in the business, if he’d wanted to.”

“Yeah, well…that’s the point, isn’t it?” Her voice was quiet, and rigid with controlled anger. “Evidently, he didn’t.”

Cory studied her thoughtfully and didn’t reply. There were so many things he could have said…asked about. Things like his brother’s pride, and hers, and whether she’d ever told Matt how she felt about him. Whether she’d ever asked him to stay—actually said the words. It was obvious to Cory, who’d spent a good part of his life ferreting out the feelings behind the words people employed to hide them, that Alex Penny’s feelings for his brother ran deep. The kind of anger and pain he’d seen in those golden eyes of hers didn’t come from nothing. There’d been something more between those two than a business partnership—a lot more. In Alex’s case, at least, the feelings were still there.

And he’d be willing to bet she’d deny it with her last breath.

He looked at his watch and rose, smiling apologetically. “Wow, look at the time. I’ve taken up more of yours than I intended to. I’d figured on being halfway to L.A. by now.”

“You’d have hit rush hour traffic,” Alex said stiffly. “Probably better this way.”

“Yeah, maybe. Well—” He held out his hand. “I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.”

“No problem,” she said as she took his hand and shook it—a quick, hard grip.

“It’s been a big help. I think I understand a little better what I’m dealing with now.”

“Glad one of us does.” She said it with a smile, but her voice had the funny little rasp to it that told him she was keeping a tight grip on emotions she didn’t intend to share.

They exchanged the usual goodbyes and thank-yous and Cory left the offices of Penny Tours feeling lighter of heart and of mind than when he’d arrived, for reasons he couldn’t quite explain.

After Matt’s brother had gone, Alex made her way to her desk and lowered herself carefully into the chair he’d just vacated. She felt shaky and weak in the knees—a fact that both frustrated and infuriated her.

“Damn you, Matt,” she said aloud.

As if she’d heard the name, or—which was more likely, since she was practically deaf—sensed something, the dog Annie came padding across the room to thrust her white muzzle under Alex’s hand. After receiving her expected ear fondle and neck hug, the old Lab collapsed with a groan at Alex’s feet and went instantly back to sleep.

That was where they both were some time later when Eve returned from the Rafting Center.

She opened the back door a crack and peeked through it, then, seeing Alex was alone, came to claim the chair at the empty desk next to hers. She slouched into it and spun it around with a noisy creak to face Alex.

“Hey,” she said, with a poorly suppressed grin. “Your visitor take off?”

“Yeah,” Alex said, rousing herself. “So, how’d it go with the Las Colinas kids?”

“Great. Everybody had a ball, as usual.” The grin blossomed. “Bobby got dunked.”

“No way.”

“Oh yeah, way. Twice, actually—he’d just managed to climb back in the boat when he went over again. The kids loved it. Randy got some great footage.”

“Nice.” Alex produced a grin in return, though her heart wasn’t in it.

In the silence that followed, Eve rotated her chair back and forth with that annoying creaking sound, and finally said, “So, the dude with the glasses. You said he’s Matt’s brother? Sure didn’t look like a cop.”

“Cop? Oh, no, no, different brother.” Alex waved a hand dismissively, hoping Eve would take the hint from that and leave it alone. The last thing she felt like doing was explaining Matt Callahan’s family to Eve. The last person she wanted to talk about in any way was Matt Callahan.

He was the last person she wanted to think about, too, and she knew she was going to do that whether she wanted to or not, as well.

“So, what did he want with you? I thought you and that guy were finished.”

Alex scrubbed her burning eyes with the hand she’d used to try to fend off the question. “We were—we are. It’s not—it’s nothing to do with me, actually. He just…had some questions about Matt. About the accident, and…stuff like that.”

“That’s kind of weird, isn’t it? Why ask you? Why not just ask his brother?”

“It’s not that simple. He doesn’t really know Matt. He hasn’t seen him since they were little kids. Look, it’s a long story, okay? And I don’t really feel like talking about it right now.”

And instantly she thought, Damn, why did you do that? You know Eve’s going to have her feelings hurt.

And yes, now she was looking like a kicked puppy. Which she really didn’t deserve.

“Sorry,” Alex said gruffly. “Hey, you know me. I just…really don’t want to talk about it. Okay? I’ll tell you all about it later, I promise.”

“Well, you better,” Eve said sternly, then grinned as she levered herself out of the chair. “Hey, the guides are getting together at The Corral to toast Bobby’s double dunking. You coming?”

“I…dunno. I have a killer headache and a bunch of paperwork to do here before I can call it a day. You go on. Maybe I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Okay.” Eve paused at the door to look back at her, head tilted. “Hey, Alex.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s not thinking about coming back, is he? Your ex? I mean, you’re not thinking about taking him back?”

Alex gave a short hard bark of a laugh. “Oh, hell no.”

“Well, good. Because the guy ran out on you, right? I mean, I remember how it was. It was pretty rough around here for a while.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Alex said with a flip of her hand, as if she were swatting at a fly. “Matt Callahan and I are ancient history.”

Eve hesitated, then nodded. She gave the door frame a slap. “Okay. See you later. I’ll save you a cold one.”

For a few minutes after she’d gone, Alex sat without moving. Then, slowly, she swiveled to the desk and reached for the phone. Picked it up. Held it for a long time, then put it back in its cradle without dialing the number she still remembered, even after five years.

Just as she remembered the words they’d spoken to each other then. Words she didn’t want to remember. Words that made her cringe to remember.

“Ah, jeez, Matt. Don’t do this.”