Snapshots

Snapshots

Pamela Browning

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Thanks to Neill for “Joey” and the music, Melanie for

Low Country lore and Bethany for chai tea latte and the

prom (though like my heroine, she was never allowed to

stay at the hotel all night, either). I love y’all!

This book is for Cameron, in happy anticipation of our

snapshots together in the coming years.

Contents

Chapter 1: Rick

Chapter 2: Rick

Chapter 3: Trista

Chapter 4: Trista

Chapter 5: Trista

Chapter 6: Rick

Chapter 7: Trista

Chapter 8: Trista

Chapter 9: Trista

Chapter 10: Rick

Chapter 11: Trista

Chapter 12: Rick

Chapter 13: Trista

Chapter 14: Rick

Chapter 15: Trista

Chapter 16: Trista

Chapter 17: Rick

Epilogue: Trista

Chapter 1: Rick

2004

To say that their marriage was in trouble was a classic understatement. Sure, he and Martine had their problems like any other couple. They’d managed, though. In the past they’d congratulated themselves on their strength under pressure, their determination to make the relationship work. But this time was different.

An unwelcome guest had hitched a ride earlier when he stopped to pick up Martine at work, and it began to whine in the vicinity of Rick’s ear. He swatted at the mosquito, and the hum stopped, then resumed. He slapped at it again, harder this time, and the noise ceased.

Martine glanced out of the corner of her eye, still defiant but incredibly beautiful. “Bet you wish that was me,” she said. “Bet you’d like to squash me flat.”

“Stop it, Martine,” he said, keeping his voice even.

She turned her head away, her pale hair glimmering in the headlights from oncoming cars. “If you insist on going to this stupid party for Shorty, I have to stop by the house to get a wrap,” she said. The early-January breeze blew in on the promise of a cool night, more than welcome in Miami any time of year.

“Attendance is mandatory,” Rick said. “All the guys are—”

She cut him off midsentence. “Just don’t talk to me while we’re there, okay?”

“Fine,” he said curtly. It’s not as though he really had anything to say to Martine, except Why?

“At least we’re doing something together,” Martine said. “For once you don’t have to work late.” She didn’t even attempt to conceal her resentment.

Gunning the car’s engine as he rounded the corner onto their peaceful palm-lined street, Rick spotted the white Impala immediately. It stood out in this manicured Kendall neighborhood; one rear window was broken out, and a spreading rust stain marred the trunk. At any other time, he might have paid more attention.

“I’ll be right back,” Martine said, reaching for the door handle.

“It’s a surprise party,” Rick reminded her. “We don’t want to be late.”

As she slammed the car door, Martine cast a scathing glance back over her shoulder. Under normal circumstances, Rick would have accompanied her, maybe changed out of his jacket, shirt and tie into more comfortable clothes, but he needed time to recoup. She disappeared into the house, a typical south Florida ranch with a red barrel-tile roof.

Rick drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Ten years of marriage. Ten wasted years, and how long since he’d realized he’d made a terrible mistake? Seven years? Five? He’d wanted kids; Martine hadn’t. His paralyzing discovery of those love notes in Martine’s bottom dresser drawer, which he had opened innocently enough last night, had made so many things clear. All the nights she’d said she had to work late, the Saturday-afternoon shopping trips when she returned with no purchases, the cell-phone bills he never saw, not to mention the general air of secretiveness that he hadn’t recognized for what it was. And all he’d had in mind when he opened that drawer was to check her bra size so he could buy her a sexy birthday present for the purpose of inspiring their almost nonexistent sex life.

He felt a sting on his left ear—that damn mosquito again. He opened the car window, figuring that maybe the insect would do them both a favor and escape into the night. While the window was down, he spared the derelict white car at the curb a cursory assessment. A car parked there was by no means unusual, since the teenage girl next door often entertained boyfriends who left their vehicles at the edge of Rick’s property. Out of habit, Rick attempted to pick out the numbers on the license tag, but it was hidden in shadows from the surrounding shrubbery.

He punched the button to bring the window all the way up and massaged his eyelids for a long moment. It had been a quiet day in Homicide, affording him time to catch up on paperwork and mull over the situation with Martine. He’d never dreamed she was capable of betrayal. They’d been childhood friends, college buddies. Which proved that you really never knew another person, no matter how close the relationship.

Minutes ticked past, punctuated by the shrilling of crickets. What was taking Martine so long? Rick checked his watch. It had been half an hour since he’d picked her up at the law office where she worked, twenty hours since he’d read the incriminating letters. Last night she’d cried, he’d accused, she’d admitted everything. No, that wasn’t quite true. Not everything—at least, according to a terrible suspicion that he’d never voiced and never would.

He sure as hell wouldn’t be going to a party for his boss tonight if Shorty hadn’t encouraged him and promised a promotion to chief detective before long. All Rick wanted, really, was to lick his wounds in private. To hunker down somewhere far from here and figure out whether he was capable of living without Martine. Or maybe he should be considering whether he could still live with her. Tappany Island, yeah, that was the place. Tomorrow he’d ask for a week off, depart on a road trip to South Carolina and just hang for a while.

The front door of their house swung open abruptly. Rick, expecting Martine to hurry out, waited impatiently for her to emerge into the yellow glare of the bug bulb in the porch light. Then, in the shadows inside the house, he saw the stocky dark-clad figure pressing a knife to Martine’s throat, muscular arms gripping her in an awkward embrace. Instinctively, Rick reached for his weapon, a .38 semiautomatic tucked away in the shoulder holster under his jacket. He leaped from the car.

At this point, the action sped into fast-forward. Martine let out a small involuntary squeak at Rick’s sudden movement. Lightning quick, the knife slit a shallow cut across the creamy skin at the base of her throat. Beads of blood appeared, dark red and out of place as they slid toward the scoop neckline of Martine’s pale green dress.

“Stay away,” warned her captor in an agitated voice, his accent guttural and Hispanic. “Unless you want your wife to become fish food at the bottom of a canal.” The man seemed electric, wired, jittery, like an out-of-control marionette.

Rick recoiled, held himself back when all he wanted to do was to rush the man and blow his head off. Martine, who must have known his inclination, sent him a look of such dire pleading that it rocked him back on his heels.

All thought of their previous argument and of last night’s discovery faded in the force of Rick’s sudden, gut-wrenching comprehension. He recognized the man as Jorgé Padrón, an illegal immigrant who had been convicted on Rick’s testimony some years ago. Padrón had created a fracas in the courtroom before they led him away, kicking over a chair and yelling in broken English that he’d get even with Rick McCulloch, no matter how long it took. Since Padrón was sentenced to ten years for armed robbery and aggravated assault, Rick had known he would eventually be back on the street, but he hadn’t taken the threat seriously. The newly convicted often issued impassioned threats before being led away to serve their time.

“Drop your gun,” Padrón commanded.

Rick hesitated, bile rising in his throat. It tasted metallic, coppery.

“Rick—” Martine gasped, her eyes begging him.

“Shut up,” Padrón said, tightening his grip so that she winced. “Drop it,” he said to Rick. “Unless you want me to add a few more red beads to this pretty necklace I gave your wife.”

Bloodstains now covered the bodice of Martine’s dress. Feeling a sense of futility, Rick dropped the .38. It landed with a thud on the grass.

“Hands up where I can see them.”

Slowly, Rick raised his hands above his shoulders.

Padrón maneuvered Martine between him and Rick as he propelled her toward the white car at the curb. “No talk from you,” he warned Rick. “I’ll kill her without thinking twice.”

“Take me, instead,” Rick said urgently. “Let her go.”

“You? You’re no use to me. Comprende?”

Rick comprended, all right. The man was a convicted sex offender who had robbed a convenience store and raped the owner’s wife. He’d carved the woman’s face into ribbons for good measure.

“Open the door,” Padrón ordered Martine as they approached the driver’s side of the white car. “Do it!”

Martine’s hand, the one with his wedding ring on the third finger, inched out. Rick watched, alert for any lapse on Padrón’s part, any chance he might be able to jump the man before he reached the car. The steel skin of the .38 gleamed in the moonlight a few feet from his right foot.

“Hurry up!” Padrón said.

Martine pulled at the door; it opened. Padrón slid inside under the steering wheel and yanked Martine in after him.

“Padrón, let’s talk about this,” Rick said, refusing to panic. “We can solve your problems some other way. Let her go. Take me. I can help you.”

“Like when you sent me off to Raiford Prison? Yeah, right.” To Martine he said, “Turn the key. Start the car. You and me, we go for a ride.” He tightened his choke hold around her neck.

Martine did as he said. The car’s engine clunked to life, and a cloud of black exhaust spewed from the tailpipe. Rick hoped some of the neighbors would notice, but all the nearby houses were dark.

“Now put it in drive. No surprises, Mrs. McCulloch, and you will be okay.”

Rage flickered up past the fear in Rick’s throat, wrapped itself around his brain and squeezed. Martine…Martine. The white car began to roll slowly toward the intersection.

“Don’t call police,” was Padrón’s parting command. “Anyone follows me, she dies.”

This warning notwithstanding, Rick grabbed his gun and was behind the wheel of his Taurus sedan before the Impala rounded the corner. He grappled with his cell phone and managed to alert the police department, relieved to learn that his friend Wally was working the desk.

Rick did his best to explain, and Wally was no dummy. He knew who Padrón was. Wally had worked the case with Rick shortly after Rick had joined the force.

“Don’t worry, Rick,” Wally said, but by that time Rick was straining to keep track of the Impala, which was darting in and out of cars ahead. He almost lost it in the traffic on busy Kendall Boulevard.

Rick sped through traffic lights and ignored stop signs as the Impala bobbed and weaved, nearly running up on the sidewalk at one point, speeding up the ramp to the Palmetto Expressway. From what he could tell about the car’s occupants, Padrón stayed pressed close to Martine, and he could only imagine her state of mind at present. His wife wasn’t the most stable of women even in the best of times; in the past few months she’d been seeing a counselor for depression. Hang in there, Martine, he muttered. Despite their difficulties, she would expect him to do everything in his power to save her. Rick wouldn’t disappoint her—the consequences were unthinkable.

The expressway was its usual tangle of passenger cars and semis, with macho guys jockeying for every inch as they dodged from lane to lane, women laughing into cell phones pressed to their ears. Packs of commuters were scurrying home to outlying subdivisions. Overhead a 747 banked low, preparing to land at Miami International. Graffiti rushed by, spray painted on the metal guardrail in the median: SNOWBIRDS GO HOME. DOLPHINS ROCK. JULIO + ANA (TRULY).

The white Impala picked up speed, almost sideswiping a Mack truck. Rick jammed his foot down on the accelerator, raced past a school bus, barked out his location to Wally on the phone.

What happened next went down fast. The Impala, traveling an estimated hundred miles an hour in the passing lane, swerved to the right for a few seconds, almost clipping a red Mustang. When the Impala arced back into the passing lane, it skidded left into the grassy median.

Steer into the skid, Rick thought. He had a moment of jubilation when Martine appeared to be doing just that, but before he could draw another breath, the Impala’s tires bounced off the pavement so that the car slewed sideways into the median again. Miraculously, it straightened. Then it struck the metal barrier, sending up a plume of sparks.

For one heart-stopping, surreal moment, the Impala seemed frozen in midair, no longer a car but a graceful white wingless flying machine. Rick’s brain struggled to make sense of the scene as the car with his wife inside proceeded to land on its roof with a deafening crash, immediately bursting into flames.

Rick ran toward the twisted wreckage, heart thudding against his ribs. Other motorists stopped, and cars slowed on the highway as drivers craned their heads in curiosity. The blaze made it impossible to see anything but the outline of the car, and the heat drove him backward. Then he spotted a patch of pale green in his peripheral vision, Martine’s dress, and he changed direction, dreading what he would find when he reached her.

He knelt beside her, appalled by all the blood. Soon, sirens were keening all around as pulsing multicolored lights illuminated a nightmare scene of fire engines and police cars. Martine was unconscious, but she was alive. He let the paramedics push him aside, their brief, urgent words mere babble in his ears as they strapped Martine onto a stretcher and slid it into the ambulance.

He’d supervised a hundred emergency scenes in the course of his work, but all of them had been marked by his own detachment and his ability to function well under stress. As one of the paramedics slammed the ambulance door, he tried to bring that same sense of focus into this situation but failed. The horror of the images and the engagement of his own emotions made it impossible.

He was in his car, hitting his cell phone’s speed dial, before the ambulance pulled off the median with him following behind. The phone on the other end seemed to ring for an interminably long time, and he started muttering, “Pick up, pick up.” He imagined his sister-in-law in her condominium in Columbia, South Carolina. She’d have recently arrived home from work at WCIC, where she was coanchor of the evening news. Or maybe she was staying late at the station tonight, but he prayed that wasn’t the case. Due to her coolness under pressure, Martine’s identical twin was the person of choice to call in crisis situations.

“Hello?”

He’d planned to cushion the blow of his news, but when he heard Trista’s voice, he blurted it out.

“Tris, there’s been an accident. It’s Martine.”

A sharp intake of breath. Then, in a rush, “Is she all right?”

“She’s alive. We’re on the way to the hospital.”

“What happened?”

Keeping the ambulance in sight as he drove one-handed, he told her, his words tense and measured.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Trista said, and he imagined her heading for her closet, phone still pressed to her ear as she grabbed a duffel and started tossing clothes into it. He was approaching the hospital by this time, speeding into the curve leading to the emergency entrance, and he didn’t know what he said after that, only that they hung up.

He bolted from his car, stood jittery and on edge as the ambulance crew wheeled Martine into a curtained cubicle where he was not permitted to go. He paced the waiting room, thought about calling Trista again, but was reluctant because she’d be busy lining up airline reservations. Two officers from the department showed up and informed him that Padrón had died in the fiery crash, but Rick was too crazed with worry to derive any satisfaction from that.

The next few hours would be forever blurred in his memory. Long after Martine disappeared, a doctor summoned him to a small bare room. Rick swallowed, prepared to hear the worst.

“Your wife will recover,” said the doctor, someone Rick had never seen before. His name tag pegged him as Ethan D. Stillwater, M.D.

Rick’s knees went weak with relief, but the doctor didn’t notice. He consulted his clipboard. “She’s suffered three broken ribs, concussion, a fractured collarbone and assorted abrasions and contusions. She’ll soon be as good as new.”

Completely numb by this time, all Rick could do was try to pay attention as Dr. Stillwater rattled on about length of hospital stay and rehab. By now the issues Rick had with Martine before the accident seemed moot; he felt overwhelmingly guilty for what had happened to her. She’d never approved of his going into police work and had always resented the time he gave to his job. Maybe, in the long run, she’d been right.

“Sir, your wife has been placed in room 432,” said a nurse, briefly and comfortingly touching his arm.

“Thanks,” Rick said automatically. He took an interminable ride to the fourth floor on a jolting elevator whose mirrored walls revealed that his face was as white and pinched as those of his fellow passengers, all of whom must have urgent reasons for being there in the middle of the night just as he did.

He wouldn’t have recognized Martine if her name hadn’t been printed on a placard beside the door. A tightness gripped his heart when he first saw her, a heavy mantle of self-reproach pressing him down. Her face was bruised and swollen, her head bandaged so that only a few tendrils of hair escaped. She wore a hospital gown, its institutional print faded from many washings. When she first opened her eyes, she stared as if she wasn’t quite sure who he was, her eyes drifting closed almost immediately after registering recognition but no emotion at all.

Rick settled himself on the uncomfortable plastic-covered chair and caught a couple of hours’ sleep, waking when an aide delivered a breakfast tray. Martine was still asleep, so he forced down what he could from the tray—gummy oatmeal, a wedge of toast soaked with margarine.

After that he phoned a friend of his from the department and asked him to stop by the house. Charlie rang him back a couple of hours later and told him that Padrón had entered by disarming the security system and breaking a back window. “I’ll take care of it,” Charlie said, and Rick left it to him, knowing that he would.

Martine dozed most of the day, and Rick tried unsuccessfully to do the same. When the door swung open late in the afternoon, he glanced up sharply, expecting yet another nurse or an aide. Instead, Martine walked in, her eyes frantic. But no. His befogged brain cleared in a moment to realize that it was Trista.

Overwhelmingly relieved to see her, Rick stood immediately and pulled Trista into a hug, taking comfort from her warmth. Her bones felt fragile and her pale hair smelled of the almond-scented shampoo she’d favored for as long as he could remember. He released her reluctantly when she pulled away.

Trista turned immediately toward the figure in the bed. “I got here as soon as I could,” she said, noting the monitors and machines crowding the small space. “How is she?” She wore little makeup and a white T-shirt with jeans and a navy blazer. The back of her hair was crushed, as if she’d rested her head on the back of the airplane seat and forgotten to fluff it afterward.

Rick filled her in as best he could, though he had the feeling he was leaving a lot out. Trista nodded, looking worried and upset as she slung her shoulder bag on the nightstand and slipped out of her jacket. “I called Mom. She’s not well enough to come,” she said. A sense of calm radiated from her, and Rick drew sustenance from it. He was desperately in need of support, someone to care about him, and Trista was the closest member of their family. His parents, fulfilling a lifelong dream to teach English in China, were living in faraway Nanchung, and he seldom saw his brother, Hal, whose prissy, uptight wife, Nadia, vaguely disapproved of him.

As Trista’s glance took in his beard stubble and rumpled clothes, she moved to the side of the bed and caressed her twin’s hand.

“I can’t imagine how awful it must have been,” she murmured sympathetically. “For both of you.”

“I couldn’t stop Padrón. I tried.” As long as he lived, Rick would never forget those moments of watching helplessly as the man forced Martine into the car.

Trista’s hand reached backward for his so that the three of them were linked as they’d been so many times when they were children growing up together. Her grasp was warm, familiar, and he should have completed the circle by clasping Martine’s free hand. He didn’t. The gesture was preempted by the IV needle.

“Why don’t you take a break, Rick,” Trista said quietly and sensibly. “Grab some sleep. I’ll stay here.”

He refused. He didn’t want to leave Martine, even though Trista was more than capable of looking after her. But after he slumped over a few times in the chair and realized that he was viewing Trista’s caring face as if through a heavy fog, Rick finally admitted to himself that he’d been wiped out by an ordeal that had begun with that unwelcome discovery in Martine’s dresser drawer.

“I think I will go home for a while,” he told Trista, who had pulled a second chair close to the bedside and was still holding her twin’s hand.

“Go on,” she said. “You’re a walking zombie.”

You don’t know the half of it, he thought, but he didn’t say it. His anguish over the rift between Martine and him was coming back, invisible and unknown to everyone. Certainly, he’d feel less raw and vulnerable after a good night’s sleep.

“Go on,” Trista urged gently.

“Call me if there’s any change.”

“I will.” She smiled up at him.

It was eleven o’clock at night when Rick left the hospital. With Miami’s streets almost deserted at this late hour, he didn’t have to concentrate on his driving, only on staying awake. He pulled the car into the garage in Kendall and sat for a moment after the door descended behind him. Returning home was hitting him hard in his gut, and he had to force himself to go inside.

The house was neat and clean, thanks to Esmelda, their Guatemalan housekeeper, who cheerfully whooshed in and out twice a week bearing vacuum cleaners, solvents and a multitude of rags. The master bedroom was as he’d left it, and Charlie had already repaired the broken window in the utility room.

He showered, shaved, phoned Trista at the hospital.

“Anything new?” Rick asked.

“Martine’s resting,” Trista told him. “She’s opened her eyes a couple of times, and she took a drink of water about half an hour ago.”

Rick wanted to say, Has she asked for me? But his mouth wouldn’t shape the words and he couldn’t have forced the air out of his lungs even if it had.