“It’s public record. It’s just shit I don’t want dragged up and printed, that’s all.”
Which still wasn’t an answer. “Tell me.”
He was quiet. This time, watching him, I could tell it wasn’t because he was shutting me out. It was because he was trying to find the words.
I waited. The silence stretched so long that I knew that whatever it was was bad. Maybe the worst.
“I lied to you about something,” he said finally.
My stomach dropped for a sickening minute. “What?”
“I told you that my prison stretch was the worst thing that ever happened to me.” His knuckles were white on the wheel. “It wasn’t. Not by a long shot.”
“Okay,” I said.
He was quiet for another minute, finding the words again as the traffic flashed by. The lights of the city were on our left, beautiful under the night sky. “I told you that Cavan split after our mother died,” he finally said.
“Yes,” I said softly.
“What I didn’t tell you was that she was murdered. Our mother. She was killed by her boyfriend. He choked her unconscious, then stabbed her in the chest with scissors. He’s on death row. I was sixteen.”
The air was sucked out of the car; it was just gone. I felt unmoored, as if we were in a capsule gliding through space instead of on a California highway. “Devon,” I managed.
“Cavan was eighteen. Our dad left when we were little kids, and Mom was on her own. She had boyfriends. Some of them were good, some bad. We knew the last one was a bad one, but there was nothing we could do. She wouldn’t listen to us. She’d only been dating him two months when he killed her.” He kept his hands on the wheel, his gaze straight ahead. “Cavan was an adult, but I wasn’t. He left town. I went underground to avoid the foster system. I bunked with friends, mostly Max.”
He’d been homeless at sixteen? “Oh, my God,” I said.
But he held up a hand, briefly and sharply, cutting me off. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t get worked up. My parents hated each other, and after Dad left Mom barely took care of us as it was. I was already basically on my own, even before she died. I was used to it. And even as a kid, I was a tough little shit. I’m not a victim. I took care of myself. You understand?”
I shook my head. My life, growing up with my sister and my has-been mother in Hollywood, seemed ridiculously soft. “But what did you do?”
“I learned to fix cars,” he said. “I slept in Max’s basement. Max’s dad was a drunk, and he barely knew what was going on. And LA is an easy place to stay lost in. I worked at a mechanic’s for pay under the table, and I tried to study the same as if I was in school. And I learned to drive.”
No wonder he was so closed off, so alone. That had been Devon Wilder’s life, one I couldn’t picture. But all of that was past, and he didn’t want my sympathy, my pity. “So,” I made myself say, “you think the media will dig this up.”
“My mother’s murder case is public record,” he said. We were pulling in to Shady Oaks now, the building lit by its dim corridor lights in the darkness. “Anyone who does a basic search will find it. I don’t particularly want that shit dredged up, but there’s nothing I can do. It happened. He went away for it. It’s fact. The only good thing about the press might be if Cavan happens to read the article. Maybe then he’ll find me.”
He stopped the car and put it in park. I stared out the windshield, feeling helpless. I said the only thing I could think of. “I just wish I could do something. That I could help.”
He leaned over, cupped my face in his hands, and kissed me. It was a good kiss, a powerful kiss, one he used to say all the things he didn’t know how to. It was sex—it was definitely sex—but it was more than that. It was him and me. What we’d been from the first time we’d passed each other in the corridors of Shady Oaks, the first time our eyes had met. He was telling me it mattered. I mattered.
He broke it off. “You do plenty,” he said, his voice low.
I curled my hands over his shoulders. “Okay,” I said. It would have to be good enough. “Call me tomorrow.”
He waited while I went through the front gates, while I climbed the steps to the second floor. His car was still there when I put my key in my door and opened it. I turned and gave him a wave, and he drove off while I watched. Then I turned to go inside.
“Hey there,” said a voice.
I turned. A man was coming toward me, his footsteps hard on the wet floor of the corridor. I didn’t recognize him. He wore a bulky jacket and a baseball cap.
It took me a split second, but it was a split second too long. I tried to duck into the open doorway of my apartment, but his hands were already on me. I opened my mouth to scream, but his palm was already there. He pushed me down the corridor to the stairs, open to the rain, their surface slick as they descended to the courtyard.
“Tell Devon Wilder this is a warning,” he said, and he pushed me. And everything went black.
Chapter 21
Devon
My cell phone rang at three o’clock in the morning. I jerked out of sleep, wondering at first what the hell Craig Bastien wanted with me in the middle of the night. But then I recognized the ring tone. It was the phone from my present life, not the phone from my past.
I’d given the number to almost no one, but still I didn’t recognize the number that came up on the screen. I answered it, my voice growly from sleep. “Yeah?”
“Devon?”
It was Olivia, and something was wrong. In an instant I was fully awake. “Olivia. What is it?”
There was a pause. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I woke you up. It’s late. I just… I need a ride.”
I was already out of bed, searching the floor for my jeans. “Where are you?” I said. “What happened?”
She sighed. She sounded tired, so tired. “I’m at UCSF.”
The hospital? “What is it? Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. But I fell down the stairs at Shady Oaks, and I passed out, and I guess an ambulance came. I don’t remember.” Her words were tumbling out of her, as if she couldn’t quite control them. “They checked me out, and my wrist is sprained, but otherwise I’m fine. They discharged me. And I suppose I could take a cab home, but the battery’s dead on my phone and I can’t charge it, and it’s so late and I just—” Her voice cracked a little. “I called you instead.”
“Hold on,” I said. I had pants and shoes on now, and I swiped a shirt from where I’d tossed it on the end of the bed. “I’m coming. Just tell me where you are and hold tight.”
Olivia exhaled a breath. “I’m at a pay phone in the lobby.”
“Is anyone near you? Anyone around?”
“A few people. Doctors, nurses. But it’s pretty quiet.” She paused. “I shouldn’t have called. It’s so far for you to come. I wasn’t thinking. It’ll take you time to get here.”
“Sweetheart,” I said, “it won’t take me any time at all.” Still holding the shirt, I set the alarm, slammed the front door behind me, and got in my car. “Just don’t move. Don’t go anywhere. And don’t talk to anyone.”