returned to work this week. But it was there, skimming just under the surface. She’d sensed the tension in him when he had called in the evenings to chat. He had mentioned he didn’t leave work behind as easily as Marsh did, but he ducked her questions about it. Good news that left him tense-she rubbed her thumb alongside his and wondered who it was that had been arrested.
Chapter Eleven
“THEY’LL BE HERE, AMY,” Luke reassured softly. He had made the two pages a short time ago and thought the first of the sisters was no more than ten minutes out.
She turned from watching the moonlight shimmering across the frosted ground. “I know.”
He had expected the nerves and the uncertainty. He hadn’t expected the sadness. It seemed to press in on her like an enfolding blanket. Amy wasn’t ready for her sisters’ arrival, and he didn’t know what to say to help her.
The music clicked over to something softly romantic, and he nodded toward the food. “You ought to eat something or have a drink. I know it’s hard to wait, so let me be a bit of a distraction.”
She smiled at him, and it was the full smile he remembered from years before. “Trust me, Luke; you don’t need help to be a distraction. It was very nice tonight, stepping out of the car and seeing you waiting for me. I appreciate all the arrangements.”
“Caroline helped me out.” He saw her lifted eyebrow. “Former army, former cop, a very good friend when you need someone to trust. I’m doing my best to convince her to unretire.”
“Bad shooting?” she asked softly, anticipating the cause.
“One of the worst the department ever had.”
“I’d like to meet her.”
“You will. She’s around here somewhere; she simply excels at being discreet.”
Amy smiled. “I wonder what she’d say if she knew reality. I’m trying to trust you, Luke. It’s just not that easy anymore to trust anyone. Without that-” she shrugged-“it kind of precludes about anything else, even the friendship we’ve been skirting around since we first met.”
He served himself a plate and nodded for her to join him. “Eat something or those aspirins you’ve been popping are going to just make the headache worse.” She joined him, and he considered her thoughtfully a moment. “Do you still trust God?”
She looked over, startled.
“I understand entirely the doubts that surface when you look at someone and can’t totally be sure if what you are seeing is the real story. You ran into a lot of people with a dark, dangerous side. But is it trust that is the problem, or is it discernment of who is safe and who is not?”
“Good question. I’ve never really thought about it in those terms.” She stuck toothpicks into a couple meatballs and two of the sweet pickles. “‘God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases.’” She shrugged. “That was the only verse in the psalms that made the most sense over the years. He let me get hurt, and maybe I was naive, but that didn’t fit what I thought was the expectation about being a Christian. Not the kind of deep, damaging hurt I took after I spent a lot of time praying about dating Greg. I never really even sensed a back-off check in my spirit about the relationship. Maybe I was deaf, but I didn’t get the warning I thought I would for what was coming. I assumed there would be protection or at least an end to the harm in a reasonable time, that God would keep me safe. Eight years and a dead cop later-that kind of changes things.”
“God is against you? or unconcerned about what happens?”
“That’s probably where my head was at the first few years. I was in too much panic and stress to be anything more than horrified that even prayers for safety didn’t seem to be getting answered.” She walked over toward the couch and sank down into it to enjoy the warmth from the fire. “Maybe time changes things, but I’m past the worst of that reaction now, I think. I know the evil is not past yet. But this is earth, not heaven. And the reality on earth is it’s the good days that are the exception in this life, not the bad. Once that settled in, it changed my perspective and made this easier to face.”
She turned to face him as he settled into the chair to her right. “Now… God hasn’t changed. He’s still loving, righteous, and in charge. And evil and free will still exist. God could change this, but it doesn’t necessarily mean He will. I still pray He’ll end the dilemma I am in, but I gave up expecting it to happen tomorrow. Everyone gets their own unique mess to try to survive in life, and mine came when I was in my thirties.”
“You have survived it, Amy. It hasn’t knocked you into pieces and left you unable to function, unable to cope. And even in all this-God hasn’t forgotten you. He cares about your days, every one of them.”
“I know. I’ve grown up quite a bit, I think. There were many days I wondered if I could take even one more hour of it, let alone another month. I don’t like to run, Luke. I don’t like to be afraid. But part of me has started to cope with the fact I’m doing both. That’s been by God’s grace. Accepting where I’m limited and figuring out there will be some way through the latest wrinkle. Someone wants me dead; that’s the stark reality that leads every other one. The hatred is too strong now for it to ever disappear, not even after the money and last ledger are turned in.”
She looked toward the window and the night. “I worry about what this will do to Marie and Tracey when they know the truth. Sometimes it’s a whole lot easier to live with what you think is the truth than to have to face what is the truth.”
“As bad as the truth will be, you’ll still be comforting them just to let them know you aren’t dead.”
“And when they spend the next weeks and months worrying every day about my safety?” Amy shook her head. “It’s like asking them to drink poison, not enough to be lethal, just enough to haunt their days. When I have to go silent, when I have to run-what then? They live afraid for me, frantic to know where I went and if I’m okay. When I run I can’t have them coming after me.”
“When you run, they become the easier targets. That’s reality too. Protection that encompasses only you won’t help them, and protection that encompasses only them won’t help you-not really. You need to come in from the cold and let this be managed properly.”
She turned her head to look at him, and while he knew she was accepting his argument, it didn’t mean she was agreeing with it or accepting the implications of that. She wasn’t ready to cross that line and face what it would mean to totally trust someone else for her safety, and he could understand that fine line. “You’ll have to trust me as a simple leap of faith. Just like you’ve chosen to keep trusting God. I’m not infallible, but I’ll promise you my best. There’s no other way for you to cross that threshold to trust me but to just risk it.”
He saw lights cross the windows and so did she. She rose, and he took her plate for her. “You want to do this alone or with some company?”
“Stay… please.”
He rested a comforting hand on her shoulder. “They love you. Remember that.”
“This isn’t the way home,” Marie realized as Connor turned off the interstate. “Where are we going?” She looked over toward him.
He turned his head to briefly smile at her before looking back at the road. “There’s been a stop added to the evening that I think you might enjoy. We’re almost there.”
“What?”
He reached over and squeezed her hand. “Trust me. It’s in the category of being nice.”
“Daniel set something up?”
Connor shook his head. “You’re welcome to turn on the mirror light and check your makeup if you like. You look gorgeous, but you can fuss a few minutes anyway.”
“Now I’m really wondering.” She picked up her purse.
He turned again, and in the night it looked like an expensive area of homes, vast expanses of land stretching between gated entrances; the home that must be back on the private roads so far back as to not be visible from this road.
She brushed out her hair and touched up her lipstick. Someone Connor wanted her to meet? Surely his parents didn’t live out this way; surely he’d warn her before a meeting like that. Meeting just anyone when it was after nine o’clock didn’t seem likely. Was there a place back here he knew about? Cops did know a lot about the area.
