“He’ll talk to me. He doesn’t know I’m a cop.”

“What is it with this guy, Angie? Why won’t you see him for what he is?”

“Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t judge men based on what they’ve done in their past.”

“Is that supposed to hurt me?”

“Let me talk to him,” she pleaded. “You can watch his house until morning, make sure he doesn’t go out. If he’s got that little girl, then he won’t touch her without you knowing. I’ll go to the car wash tomorrow morning and sit him down and talk to him.”

“You think he’s going to confide in you?”

“If he’s innocent…” She nodded. “Yeah. I can make him talk.”

“And if he’s not?”

“Then you’ll be there.” She actually tried to tease him. “You’ll protect me, won’t you, Willy?”

“This isn’t anything to joke about.”

“I know.” She was looking over his shoulder again, watching the girls. “I need to get back to work.”

“I don’t like this,” he said. “I don’t like any of this and I don’t want to do it.”

“That’s nothing new for either of us, is it?” She put her hand to his cheek, brushed her lips against his. “Go away, Will.”

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

FEBRUARY 10, 2006

7:22 AM

John sat on a stool at the counter of the Empire Diner. He had walked in the door ravenously hungry, but for some reason when his food came, he could only bring himself to take a few bites. Nerves had his stomach in a death grip as he waited for his life to begin.

He had spent most of the night with Kathy and Joyce, trying to come up with a plan of action. Kathy wanted to go to the police, but if there was one thing the Shelley children could agree upon, it was that you could not trust the police. Michael would never talk. He was too smart to leave himself open. John’s credit report might raise some questions, but the answers could very well come back and bite John in the ass. In the end, they had decided that Joyce would use her contacts at the county records department to try to find out where Aunt Lydia was living. Uncle Barry had only been married to her for a few years before he died, and they hadn’t been able to find anything under the Carson family name. There had to be a trail somewhere. Once they found it, the Shelley children would confront Lydia about her role in framing John. She had obviously confessed her sins once before. They would not give her a moment’s peace until she confessed them again—this time on the record.

As far as John’s own confession went, he had not told his sister and her lover everything that had happened. He’d been as honest as possible up to a point. He had not told them about Michael’s next-door neighbor. The thought of what he had done, the depths to which he had sunk, made him sick. All this time, John had believed Michael was the animal, but in that one moment when the opportunity had presented itself, John had been just as sadistic, just as vengeful as his cousin. Was this what Emily had fought for? Was this why his mother had spent hour upon hour writing in her notebooks, so that her little Johnny could get out of jail and mutilate a fifteen-year-old girl? For the first time in his life, John was glad his mother was gone, glad that he would never have to look into her beautiful eyes and know that she was looking at someone who was capable of such atrocities.

“Top you off?” the waitress asked, but she was already filling John’s mug with coffee.

“Thanks,” he mumbled.

The door opened and he glanced up into the mirror behind the counter to see Robin standing with her hands on her hips, looking around for a table. The restaurant was fairly busy, so she didn’t notice him staring.

John fought the urge to turn around. He wanted to call her over, point to the empty stool beside him and listen to her talk. Too much was going on now, though. He had blood on his hands, guilt in his heart. He looked back down at his mug, staring into the murky liquid, wishing it could show him his future. Would there ever be a woman in his life? Would he ever find someone who knew what had happened to him, what he had done, and not run away screaming?

“Hey, you.” Robin slipped onto the stool beside him. She was dressed differently. Her hair was in a ponytail and she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt instead of her usual hooker garb.

“Hey,” John returned. “Off the clock?”

“Yeah,” she said, turning over her coffee cup and signaling for the waitress.

Something else was different about her, but John couldn’t pinpoint exactly what that was. It had nothing to do with the way she was dressed or the fact that she wasn’t wearing a pound of makeup. If he knew her better, he might say that she was nervous.

She said, “You ever think that you just hate your job? That maybe you should just run away from home and never look back?”

He smiled. He had considered running away from home the whole time he was at Coastal. “You okay?”

She nodded, then gave him a sly smile. “Are you stalking me? First the hospital and now this.”

He looked around. “You own this place or something?”

“This is my regular breakfast hangout.”

“Sorry,” he apologized. “Just looked like a good place to sit awhile.” He’d had money in his pocket for the first time in forever and he’d wanted to treat himself.

She said, “I lied to you.”

“About what?”

“My first kiss,” she said. “It wasn’t my little brother’s best friend.”

He tried to make a joke of it, even though his feelings were hurt. “Please tell me it wasn’t your little brother.”

She smiled, poured some cream into her coffee. “My parents were speed freaks,” she said. “At least my mom and whoever it was she was banging were.” Robin picked up her spoon and stirred the coffee. “The state took me away from her when I was a kid.”

John didn’t know what to say. He settled on, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I was in and out of foster care for a while. Met a lot of foster dads who were real happy to have a little girl living under their roof.”

John was silent, watching her stir her coffee. She had the smallest hands. Why was it that women’s hands were so much more attractive than men’s?

“What about you?” she asked. “Did you come from a broken home, too?”

She had said the words sarcastically. John had met plenty of felons who claimed they were victims of circumstance, their dysfunctional families forcing them into a life of crime. The way they told their stories, you wouldn’t think they had a choice in the matter.

“No,” he told her. “I came from a perfectly normal home. Wonderful, cookie-baking, scout-leading mom. Kind of distant father, but he was home every night and he took an interest in what I was doing.” He thought about Joyce. She was probably on the phone right now working her magic. He didn’t know whether or not Aunt Lydia would do the right thing, but John thought he could live the rest of his life in peace just knowing that for the first time in twenty years, Joyce believed in him.