On the ride back into the station, Jaxon remained quiet. Victoria had heard about the phone call, but when she asked him about it, he said the killer was just taunting him. He could tell she knew something else had happened, but she didn’t press him.
The fingerprints they had scanned into her cell phone of the boy had confirmed what they already knew. Quentin Jenson would never hack another computer again. Ever. The boys head had yet to be found. The dogs’ too.
When they were able to move the body and actually work on his computer systems, the FBI boys could do little with what they found. The Jenson kid had rigged the system to lock down if it was tampered with. Smart kid. Too damn smart. They had loaded everything up and taken it to Quantico to see if they were able to get anything useful out of it. It would take weeks and Jaxon did not have weeks.
Stopping by the Harrison house to pick up the Pemberton girl, they discovered the folks were thinking for themselves and Jaxon liked what he heard. If they could keep the killer guessing as to the whereabouts of the girl, it would buy them a little more time to track him down. The new message Jaxon got from the killer on the phone bothered him though, and he didn’t understand what was going on in the asshole’s head. The plan had changed. He was supposed to guess what that new plan was. Prick.
If he could think like a killer, then Smith would already be dead. Jaxon’s mind was not quite up to the task of sedating kids and then mutilating corpses, but he thought the killer might be gunning for the Harrison boy. It was just a gut feeling, and at this point, it was all he had.
“Are you going to let me in on the phone conversation?” Victoria said after they had been in the car for a while.
He told her.
“Is that all he said?”
He hesitated.
“Come on, Jaxon. What are you not telling me? I thought we were working on this together.”
He sighed and then coughed in his hand. “I got a little unprofessional with him.”
“And…”
“I told him I was coming for him.”
“So-I would probably have said the same thing.”
He paused again. “He told me Michael was nothing to him and I lost it. I started screaming at him and that’s when I told him I was coming for him.”
“Ah, Jaxon. I’m sorry.”
“That’s not all.”
She waited, staring at him.
“He turned off his voice altering device and let me hear his real voice. He said he told Michael I was coming to rescue him and I never showed up.”
She turned away and stared out the front windshield, silent. After a moment, he saw a single tear trace a line down her cheek.
“I don’t blame you, you know,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“I don’t blame you for what happened to Michael. I know you think I do, but I don’t.”
The air became like a dead thing in the car. Jaxon was having a hard time sucking it into his lungs.
“What are you talking about?” he said. “You left me. You said you hated me and you left.”
“I don’t think you remember things as clearly as you would like. I was out of my head with grief. I said things to lash out at anything and anyone around me. You did the same, but you decided to take all the blame and turn it into something you could hold onto. Something that numbed the pain, something that pushed me away. You drove me away.”
“You told me I killed Michael. You said that to my face.”
“I said we killed Michael.” Her voice broke. “We killed our son and I hated you for it. I hated you because I hated myself! We couldn’t stop it! We let him die and I hated myself.”
He pulled to the side of the road, angry drivers honking at them. He ignored them. “You wouldn’t look at me,” he said. “For days you wouldn’t even glance at me. Then when you did, I wished you would go back to ignoring me. I could see it in your eyes. Your baby-our baby was gone, and it was my fault. And the truth of the matter was, I knew you were right. I had let that monster have our son, let him take him away from me. I thought I was protecting him by going after the wrong madman, but in the end it was my mistake, my anger, my pride that killed Michael. And I hated myself.” He slammed his fist into the dash. “I still hate myself!”
Silence followed for a moment as he tried to get control of himself. He looked at her and saw silent tears streaming down her face.
“I would have done the same thing,” she said. “I would have gone after the bastard like you did. I’ve thought about that night every day. Thought about what we could have done differently, what I didn’t do, what we missed. I’ve tortured myself and cried until I thought I would disappear. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to join him. It didn’t make a difference. It didn’t change a thing. I’m still here and Michael is gone and no matter what, I can’t bring him back. Michael’s gone and so were you. I needed you, and you abandoned me.”
She turned toward him and looked into his eyes. “I know how much you hurt,” she said. “I know because I hurt just as much. I feel everything you feel. You didn’t believe that, but it’s true. I didn’t know how to help you then, because I couldn’t help myself. But I need you. I need you to be there for me. I can’t take another day of this. I can’t live through this nightmare we’re still in without you beside me. I forgive you.”
He couldn’t look at her. His mind was whirling and everything seemed out of focus.
“Look at me,” she said and reached up and touched his face. He turned to her and saw in her eyes everything that had meant something to him in the past. Everything that had been missing since the day his son was taken from them. He could see Michael in her eyes and something snapped inside of him. He could hear it break. A sharp, quick, SNAP! and then a release. Something eased inside and he could breath. At least a little.
“I need you,” she whispered. “I love you.”
He watched his hand move up to her face and touch her skin. The face he had loved so long ago, the face he could still trace in his mind if he closed his eyes. It was like touching an angel. A thing so beautiful and so forgiving, he gasped at the feel of her. Deep inside, buried beneath all the self hatred and loathing, he had longed to feel her, longed to see this look in her eyes, longed to love her. He pulled her to him and kissed her softly and she melted into him, the feel of her so familiar and so new at the same time. The kiss grew deeper and his hands moved over her, finding all the favorite places he remembered about her. Feverishly, he needed to touch every part of her, because he knew this wouldn’t last. Knew she would be gone and knew he would go back to feeling lost and ruined again. She clung to him hungrily and her hands clasped the back of his neck, fingers running through his hair like she always did and it drove him crazy.
Honking horns broke the trance and they looked at each other and laughed. Something passed between them and no more words needed to be said. He pulled into traffic and drove to his place where their clothes fell into a pile and she didn’t even have a chance to say hello to Reverb.
Afterward, as he held her, the afternoon sun warming their skin, she said to him, “We’re not going to let this happen to these kids. We’re not.”
He touched her face and she turned up to him. “No. We’re not.”