Silent Run - Barbara Freethy [115]
Since Sarah had spent most of her life hiding her own history, she could hardly quarrel with Cather-ine’s decision just to keep moving forward. Sometimes there was no point to looking back. Her big mistake had been to lie. She shouldn’t have tried to be someone else. She should have had more confidence in herself.
“There you are,” Teresa said, spotting her in the doorway. “Get in here, for God’s sake. Are you all right? What did the cops say?”
Sarah moved into the room and sat down on the couch next to Catherine. “I have to go back in the morning to talk to some more people, but the bottom line is that I don’t think any of us are going to be charged in Victor’s death. The police seem to believe it was self-defense, and Rick has been talking about the other murders that Victor was involved in, so my fingers are crossed that it will be all right. I hope so, anyway. I certainly don’t want to see Jake arrested for murder when all he did was try to protect me, nor do I want to go to jail. But I would rather it be me than anyone else.” She paused. “How do you feel, Teresa?” She watched Teresa take the ice pack off her head with a grimace.
“Like a big Russian guy knocked me out with the butt of his gun,” Teresa said dryly.
Sarah smiled. Teresa was a tough-talking, no-nonsense brunette who made up for her lack of height with a generous amount of bravado. She’d missed talking to Teresa—having her in her life. She should have left Chicago when Teresa wanted to go, but instead she’d chosen Victor—another bad mistake. She’d certainly made a lot of them.
“How are you?” Teresa asked.
“Not bad.”
“Did you make things right with Jake?”
“I’m not sure I can.”
“But you want to.”
“I really do.” She shook her head. “I don’t know that he can forgive me for what I did.”
“He sure as hell should forgive you. You were running for your life.”
“With his child under my arm. He doesn’t see it in quite the same light as me, and I can’t blame him. I did put Caitlyn in danger. I can’t deny that.”
“She would have been in danger if you’d left her with Jake,” Teresa said firmly. “Victor is the one to blame, not you. You did what you had to do.”
“Okay, my turn,” Catherine interrupted. “I want to know why you never got in touch with me, Jessica. I looked for you in Chicago. I stayed there for two weeks, searching the streets, talking to your friends.”
“I sent you a note as soon as I could,” Sarah said, knowing that what she’d done wasn’t nearly enough. But at that point she truly had been running for her life.
“A cryptic note that you could have been forced to write at gunpoint.”
“I was afraid to make contact with you again. And for a while I couldn’t physically do it even if I wanted to. I was in Witness Protection. Then Victor sent Shane to kill me in the safe house. If he’d found me there, he could find me anywhere. I had to run. I had to stay in the shadows. I was afraid one wrong move would bring him straight to me, or to someone else I cared about.”
“You told Andy. What did you think—that his comic-book superhero could protect you?” Catherine asked.
Sarah saw the pain in Catherine’s eyes. So many of her decisions had hurt the people she loved. “I needed a new identity. Andy was the only one who could do that for me. But he died for it.”
“He died because of Victor,” Teresa put in again.
“He died because he helped me,” Sarah said, “and because Victor thought Andy knew where I was. So many people have been hurt because of me, including the guards in the safe house who were supposed to protect me. And then poor Mrs. Murphy got beaten up and Amanda got burned out of her apartment. I’m like a hurricane, bringing trouble in my wake.”
“You could have brought it my way,” Catherine repeated. “I would have helped you.”
“You finally had what you wanted, the art school scholarship, the glamorous life in New York. I didn’t want to take that