Cutting Edge

her.

“Hello, Lorraine.”

Lorraine smiled. “You finally came to visit.”

Nora strode to the chair opposite Lorraine and sat down. “This isn’t a visit. Quin is in trouble and I think you know why.”

Lorraine pouted. Quin wore the identical expression all the time, but Nora just now realized it came from their mother. The childlike frown was not appealing on a woman of sixty.

“Did you punish her because she came to visit me?” Lorraine asked.

Her tone was innocent, but Nora watched her eyes. When she’d been a child, she’d avoided Lorraine’s eyes because they seemed too sharp, too all-knowing. But now-that’s where the truth would be told.

Lorraine watched Nora under hooded lids. A neat trick, but Nora had learned interview techniques from the best.

“Maggie killed seven people and will kill Quin if you don’t tell me where she’s hiding out.”

Lorraine’s mouth dropped open. Her eyes were confused, glancing down at her hands, then up again. “I don’t believe you.”

“You know Maggie isn’t right in the head. You’ve seen her every month-or more-for twenty years. You’re far from stupid, Lorraine. You had to see that Maggie is wired differently.” Nora leaned forward, keeping her face hard, her eyes cold. “Maggie killed Quin’s boyfriend because he showed up while she was waiting for Quin. I know Maggie has Quin. I want her safe. It’s me Maggie really wants to kill, but she’ll kill Quin if she thinks that’ll be the way to hurt me. So if you care at all about Quin, you’ll tell me where Maggie is.”

Lorraine leaned forward, her eyes as cold as Nora’s. “Go to fucking hell.”

Nora didn’t flinch. Inside, she was petrified. Was this why Lorraine had manipulated her to come down here? To get her away from Maggie and Quin, to give her the personal satisfaction of telling her to go to hell for turning her over to the police? Maybe she didn’t know anything. Maybe she was ignorant of Maggie’s lunacy.

No. No one could spend that amount of time with someone like Maggie and not know the truth.

“You miss your freedom,” she said.

“You stole it from me.”

“You chose to commit those crimes. You had to pay the penalty.”

“I did everything for you.”

“You lied to me, you used me, you left me time and time again. You lied to Quin, told her that Randall Teagan was her father. You intentionally put a wedge between me and Quin because you could not stand it that we were happy.”

“Happy? Quin hasn’t been happy since you sent her mother away to prison.”

Nora couldn’t help but wonder if that was true. Quin had troubles for years. She’d experimented with drugs, she’d cut herself in junior high, she’d slept around. She was constantly searching for something, and Nora didn’t understand what, but maybe now she did. It wasn’t a mother, it wasn’t even Nora. It was herself. Lorraine was imperfect, horrid in many ways, and a criminal. But she was Quin’s only lifeline to her identity, and nothing Nora could say was going to change that.

That’s why Quin had needed to see Randall Teagan. To believe that he was her father. So she could believe, even if deep down she knew it wasn’t true, she wasn’t the by-product of a one-night stand.

Nora had tried to counsel Quin herself, and maybe that’s where she’d gone wrong. She was too emotionally close to her sister, and to stand apart, at a distance, to compartmentalize her feelings in an attempt to help Quin overcome her problems she’d taken away the one thing her sister needed from her. Unconditional love. She couldn’t be everything to Quin, but she could be a sister.

Lorraine was watching Nora closely, and suddenly said, “You killed Maggie’s father and were never punished for it.”

“I didn’t pull the trigger.”

“You might as well have.”

“You told Maggie about that night,” Nora prompted.

“I told her the truth.”

“Your truth,” Nora said, pushing back the waves of anger that threatened to explode. She couldn’t afford to get angry. That’s what Lorraine wanted. Nora saw it in her eyes, in her posture.

Nora did the opposite. She leaned back in the chair, against the instinct of every nerve and muscle in her body, and stared directly into her mother’s eyes. “Let me lay it out for you, Lorraine. Either you help save Quin-your daughter-or you won’t be going outside for the rest of your life.”

“You can’t do that.”

Nora raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” She pulled out her badge. “You were right, Lorraine. Law enforcement are a bunch of fascist pigs, and I’m the biggest oinker you’ll meet. You will never see the sun except through bars in the rec room. And if Quin dies? You’ll be in solitary for a year. I have records that you’ve been meeting with Maggie regularly, and those meetings have increased in the last two years since the arson fires started in Sacramento. She used similar bomb techniques that you and Cameron Lovitz employed. You taught her everything you knew.” Lorraine didn’t have to know the bombs were common and generic. Nora hoped she squirmed.

“She killed three college students-people you would have liked, people who believed in your cause-because they no longer would help her,” Nora continued. “She killed them with jimsonweed. Now, I remember some lessons you gave me about poison. And if you think I won’t testify, you know that’s not true because I testified against you before, and I will do it again.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Nora pushed back her chair and stood. “I’ll take this as a sign that you don’t choose to cooperate.” Nora shook her head. “And Quin thought you actually cared about her. I told her you never cared.”

“You know that’s a lie.”

Nora put her hands on the table. “Since you won’t be having any more visitors, I don’t suppose you will ever convince her of that. When I find her, she’ll never want to visit you again. She’ll never write, she’ll never visit, she’ll never even think of you. And Maggie will be in prison far, far from here, so you won’t even have your crazy lovechild to talk to.”

“Maggie won’t hurt her!” Lorraine said. “They’re sisters.”

“Maggie is using Quin to get to me. She has already hurt her,” Nora said. She didn’t have proof, but she had Maggie’s history to predict her behavior. “She will kill Quin if I don’t find her soon.”

Lorraine said nothing.

Nora’s stomach threatened to rebel, but she willed her insides to be still. Had her mother ever cared about her? About Quin? In the back of her heart, Nora had imagined that there was a time when Lorraine had looked at her and liked her. Wanted her. But she saw no evidence of this now, and maybe it was all a fantasy Nora had created to get through the long, long days and nights of loneliness.

I’m here waiting for you.

Now she had someone waiting for her. Someone who wanted to be with her. But any future happiness with Duke would be impossible if Quin died.

“You have sixty seconds,” Nora said coldly.

“I don’t know where she is.” It was a lie, as automatic as the sunrise.

“Fifty-five seconds.”

“You’re just another drone of the Establishment.”

Nora stared at her. “Fifty seconds.”

“You can’t take away my exercise time. It’s my right! I’ll sue the prison system.”

“Tell it to the judge. Forty seconds.”

“Maggie won’t kill Quin. I promise you. She loves Quin.”

“Thirty-five.”

“I love Quin. If I thought she was in danger, I’d tell you. I would! I don’t want her hurt. You have to believe me. Just follow the trail and you’ll find her.”

The trail? What did that mean? Nora said, “Twenty-five seconds.”

Lorraine froze. “You’re bluffing. You won’t do it.”

“Twenty.”