Vow To Protect. Ann Voss Peterson

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СКАЧАТЬ sorry, Mel. I’m so sorry. But right now you have to get out of here. You have to come with me.” He reached out, trying to grasp her arm.

      She yanked it away. “If you don’t leave, I’m calling the police.”

      “Call them.”

      “What?”

      “Call the cops. Go with them. I don’t care. You just have to get out of here before Kane shows up.”

      “Okay. I’ll call them. Now go.”

      “I’ll stay until they get here.”

      “Not necessary.” She gave the traffic a quick glance. Something caught her eye beyond the building afternoon glut of panel vans and sports cars. A flash of yellow turning off a side street.

      “He might be watching us right now.”

      “I don’t want your help. You’ll only make things worse.”

      “Listen, I’ve seen what guys like this can do, what they enjoy doing. It ain’t nothing nice.”

      “Leave me alone.”

      “I’m not leaving until I know you’ll be safe.”

      She glanced down the street again. Behind a blue minivan and a white sedan, the bright yellow school bus barreled toward them.

      “What are you looking for?”

      A thick ache lodged in her throat. “Nothing. Nothing at all.” The school bus rumbled up the street, desperation drilling deeper into her bones the closer it came.

      Chapter Three

      Lines dug into Mel’s smooth forehead as the school bus’s brakes squealed to a stop at the bottom of her driveway.

      Cord had expected her to be upset to see him. He’d expected her to be scared. He hadn’t expected her to be more nervous about a damn yellow bus than she was about Dryden Kane.

      The red stop sign swung out from the driver’s side, and the door opened. A skinny boy shouldered a backpack far too big for him and clomped down the bus steps. He hopped onto the pavement and started up the drive’s slope. Looking up at Melanie, he offered her a little smile, a playful light twinkling in his ice-blue eyes.

      Eyes identical to Cord’s.

      Identical to Dryden Kane’s.

      Cord jerked back as if he’d been kicked in the grill. He fought to regain breath, to regain thought. “How old is he?”

      Melanie tensed beside him, but she didn’t answer.

      “How old is he, Mel?”

      “Ten.”

      Ten years old. He didn’t have to ask if the boy was his son. He knew. Down to the marrow of his bones, he knew.

      “I found out the day you killed Snake.”

      And she hadn’t told him. She hadn’t come to see him in jail. She hadn’t come to his trial. She hadn’t even answered his phone calls.

      The boy ambled up the driveway toward them. Lanky and skinny, he moved as if he was growing too fast for his coordination to catch up. Eight more years, and he’d be eighteen. Legally a man. The age Cord was when the kid had been conceived. When Cord had been thrown in prison.

      He tried to speak, to move, to do anything that didn’t involve standing and staring, but he came up empty.

      “I had to get him away from the neighborhood. I didn’t want him to live that life, to spend his Sundays in a prison visiting room like I did. I didn’t want him to follow that path. I—”

      He held up a hand to cut her off. She didn’t have to explain. “You were right not to tell me. You were right to give him a better life.” The life they’d planned together before he was arrested. The life Melanie had dreamed for them both.

      Her gaze burned hot on the side of his face. “Don’t say anything. Please. He doesn’t know you’re his father. I told him his father died.”

      Cord had died in prison. He’d died every day since he’d killed Snake. “He won’t learn it from me.”

      The boy crested the drive and started up the walk. The afternoon sun slanted down on his face and illuminated the dusting of freckles sprinkling the bridge of his nose, almost invisible under the remnants of his summer tan. His sandy-brown hair fell low on his forehead, straight as straw, refusing to cooperate with its new back-to-school cut. And though not large, his ears perked out from the sides of his head as if on alert.

      It was like staring at a photo of himself as a child.

      Numbness gave way to heat swirling in his head and burning down the back of his neck. An empty feeling hollowed out under his rib cage.

      “Hey, Mom.” The kid gave Melanie another small smile, as if the two of them shared a funny secret, a special joke. Then he looked at Cord, focusing on the tattoos ringing Cord’s biceps and stretching down his arms. Barbed wire. A headless snake. The writhing forms of dragons. The lines thick and chunky, more symbols than art.

      What was the kid seeing? Did he notice the resemblance? The eyes they shared? The rectangular chin? Or was he just seeing the ex-con? The criminal? The man with no future?

      “Ethan, this is Cord.”

      Ethan. His son was named Ethan.

      The boy nodded. “Hi.”

      Cord willed his voice to function. “Hi.”

      “Cord was just leaving. And so are we.”

      He managed to tear his eyes away from Ethan and direct them to Mel. The void in his gut seemed to widen. “I’ll follow you to the police station. Make sure you get there safely.”

      She looked away. “Do what you want.”

      “You’re a cop?” Ethan’s eyebrows dipped low over his eyes.

      “No.”

      “He’s someone I knew a long time ago. That’s all.”

      Cord nodded. That was all. He’d killed the rest as surely as he’d killed Snake. As he’d killed his own future.

      Tires screeched, the sound echoing from the street.

      Cord spun around just as a police cruiser whipped into the driveway. Three cars followed. Jolting to angled stops, the cops hunkered down behind the open driver’s doors, guns drawn.

      “Police!” a voice barked, deep and threatening. “Hands up! As high as you can reach! Now!”

      Cord’s mouth went dry. He raised his hands, stretching as high as he could. The familiar mix of adrenaline and humiliation tightened his throat and coated his tongue.

      Movement СКАЧАТЬ