Countdown to Danger: Alive After New Year / New Year's Target. Hannah Alexander
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the weapon in the glove compartment, she’d never actually had to use one for self-protection. She couldn’t go in with John, but she didn’t want to sit in the car. And why was she so uncomfortable about that? It didn’t make sense. John would be interviewing the only suspect they had, so it wasn’t as if a prospective killer would be hanging around the car.
“Hey, I have an idea,” she said. “You have your Bluetooth earpiece, right?”
He patted his pocket.
“And I have mine in my purse. Why don’t we link up? If Dodge says something untrue, I can tell you. I can follow the interview that way.”
He frowned. “Interesting thought. We might be in iffy territory, though. You’re the victim, and a victim should never be in the same room as a suspect.”
“I wouldn’t be in the same room. He might think he’s being recorded if he sees the earpiece, but he won’t know I’m on the other end.”
“Okay, get your earpiece out and call me when the time comes.”
She let out a lungful of air she hadn’t realized she was holding. “Thanks. I think I need that connection right now. I’m getting a little nervous.”
“Just remember you’ve got me right here between the two of you. He can’t get to you.”
“I know.” She always felt safe when she was with John. “Um...you remember that thing we argued about last night?”
“Which thing? We argued about more than one—”
“I’m talking about the main argument.”
“Oh, you mean the one you wrote to me about this morning?”
She giggled, an embarrassing trait she had when stressed. “I heard you laughing. I think it woke Mom up.”
“Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry, John. This is all so terrifying. I might behave like a cantankerous old bull, but I’m really scared.”
He hesitated, glanced at her. “So am I.”
“Not what I wanted to hear.”
“Just being honest. We can’t predict what’s going to happen next. That’s why we have to take everything so seriously and watch our every move.”
“Yes. And I will. And you know that other...argument? You know, about my not being your...you know...your wife? I wasn’t trying to be hateful at all.”
“I knew that, Lynley.”
“It’s just that I learned at a young age not to let others control my life, and when I did, I was sorry.”
“And the reason you’re sorry is because of the person you married. Trust me, marriage to the right person? Totally different experience, I can assure you.”
Despite the fact that she’d often encouraged him to talk about his wife and his marriage, this time his remark felt a little like a jab. As if maybe she’d made the wrong choice, and that was the only chance she’d ever have. Or that maybe Sandra really was the only woman for him. Ever. She pushed away the thought.
“If you hadn’t been here yesterday,” she said, “I don’t know what I’d have done. And about the marriage thing...”
“You don’t have to explain that to me. I think we’re both on the same page with that.”
“Which would be...?”
“Which would be that I find you beautiful and exciting, Lynley.” He glanced across at her, and his foot automatically eased from the accelerator.
She stared at him with parted lips.
“You’re a definite temptation to abandon my lonely life, and I’m just now realizing how much of a temptation that is.”
She caught her breath, ready to tell him the same thing. But she let him continue.
“Several weeks before Sandra died, she told me she wanted me to find a wonderful woman, someone who would make me happy. Her final wish was for me to remarry and raise a family.”
“She was ri—”
“But I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to make her final wish come true.”
Lynley couldn’t believe the sting of disappointment she felt at his words.
“We’d been trying to do just that,” he said. “Have a family. That was when we discovered her cancer.”
Lynley swallowed. Hard. There was a thickness in her throat as she thought about the pain he’d endured. It was at that moment that she realized how very much John Russell had become entangled in her heart. When she would have expected to feel jealousy over his inability to recover from the death of his dead wife, she felt as if she was sharing his pain, instead. Although she felt rejected by his words, she also ached for his awful loss.
“I hate that,” she said. Her voice caught, and she realized she was close to tears. For him. “I wish, for your sake, that Sandra had never gotten sick, that she’d lived and thrived and given you a whole house filled with happy children. I can’t imagine a single unhappy child growing up in a household with parents like you and Sandra.”
He stared straight ahead, hands turning white with his grip on the steering wheel. “Thank you, Lynley.” It sounded as if he, too, was having some difficulty with thickness in his throat.
“I mean it. I know God knows what he’s doing, but I’ll never understand all the hardships we see. Not in this lifetime.”
“While Sandra battled her cancer physically,” John said, “I joined the same battle with prayer. I can’t tell you how many times I fell asleep praying for her to heal, and then awakened with the same words on my lips.”
“But God didn’t answer your prayers.”
“Not what I’d asked for at all, no.”
Why, God?
Of course, she knew better than to ask. “God allowed me to struggle many times in my life, and made me watch Mom’s pain with my father’s behavior. It seemed to happen to me more often than with most of my friends.”
John looked at her. “But after your struggle to get past your anger, looking back you could see how you’d grown during those times.”
“How’d you know?”
“The day Sandra died,” John said, “I shut down.”
She nodded.
“I was barely able to face the funeral—all those trite, unhelpful sayings I’d once blabbered, myself, for lack of knowing what else to say. You know the words...God had another plan for Sandra...God wanted her in heaven...she was better off now...it was God’s will.”
“I know the words well,” she said softly.
“I cut myself off from friends and family. When the Russell clan started pressuring me too much to jump back into life and just ‘get past it,’ I turned off my phone and stopped answering when the doorbell rang.”
“Did you get those who’d also lost loved ones that felt the need to load you down with their stories?”
“That, too.”
“What did you do?” They’d never talked about this before. Until now, Lynley had kept the subject of Sandra’s death off-limits, just as she’d kept the subject of her father’s behavior off-limits.
“I asked for an interdepartmental transfer at work and changed churches. Even though I loved my church, they couldn’t understand that I’d become a different person. I stopped teaching Sunday school, quit choir, stopped committee work, and they decided I’d lost my faith.”
“And yet you didn’t shut God out of your