“I hate what he did. How scared I am of him. I really believe he’d have killed me and somehow justified it. But...he’s done so much good, too. He really is a hero to the rest of the world. It’s just such a shame that it all has to come tumbling down.”
“It doesn’t have to. He can go home. Leave you and Ethan alone to live your lives.”
“I don’t think he’s capable of that.”
She thought about that last night in Asheville, when he’d come to her apartment. His eyes had been glazed. He’d been like a madman. No one was going to keep him from his wife’s grandson.
Not his grandson. His wife’s.
“When I look back on the three of us as a family... I think my father always struggled with his shadow side. Whether it was the adrenaline rush from work, the need to be strong and forceful to do what he did, or events from his past... I don’t know, but after my mom died, I was always afraid to be alone with him.”
“You said he never hit you, or your mother, while she was alive.”
“He never did. When my mom was around, he was different. I liked being with him then. It was like she tamed something in him, quieted whatever lion roars inside him. After she died, it all fell apart.”
He touched her face and she turned to look at him in the moonlight. “As I went through puberty, matured, he drank more, lost his temper more, got meaner and meaner. He said it was because of my belligerence, my inability to do what was right. But I think it was because I resembled her so much. I’d cringe when people mentioned how much I looked like her in front of him. I was a constant reminder, a stab of pain every time he looked at me.”
“Then as far as I’m concerned, he’s lost the right to look at you,” Tad said softly, leaning over to give her a kiss. It wasn’t sensual. Or passionate.
But it made her cry.
* * *
In the end, Miranda opted for Tad to call Chantel. There’d likely be plans to make and she figured the two detectives were better suited to do that than she was.
That was the moment Tad knew she’d placed her trust in him.
Chantel suggested they hole up in a safe but off-the-grid hotel for the night. And call her back in the morning.
“She said they’re watching your dad,” Tad relayed to her as they looked for a place. “He drove around like a maniac for hours, she said, checking every place you’ve been in the past week.”
“He was there all that time, watching me.”
He thought so, too.
“And then he bought a bottle of whiskey and is holed up at your place. He has to realize you aren’t going back to the cottage with him there.”
“I’ve given up trying to figure out what he knows. My guess is he’s planning. And has to have somewhere to sleep. He believes he owns us, so he owns my house, too. Believes he has a right to be there. Could be he’s searching through all my things, looking for whatever he can use to get to me.”
“He did that a lot, didn’t he? Find out what hurt you, what you cared about, what made you vulnerable, and then used it against you.”
“He used it to get me to go along with him.”
It would be best if the chief caught a plane to North Carolina and then hoped that Tad never had cause to return to the state.
“I’m going to put my house in Charlotte on the market,” he told her. It was something he’d thought about doing. “Have everything packed up and shipped out here.”
She stared at him in the half light. “This marriage. It was just to get me away from him. You don’t have to go through with it.”
He’d spotted a motel and pulled in. Turned to her. “I want to go through with it,” he said. “If you do.”
She touched his face, studied his eyes. “I do, Tad. But I’m scared. I’m just so scared.”
He nodded. Started to tell her he was afraid, too, but went inside to get them a room instead.
* * *
The sun was shining when Miranda woke up the next morning. She didn’t know where she was at first, and then felt a leg brush up against hers.