Tribute Part 36

"But you keep sending the police here, to our home. Again this morning,with their questions and suspicions, with your accusations." Mrs. Hennessy drew in a ragged breath. "I want you to go away. Go away and leave us alone."

"I'd be happy to. I'd be thrilled to. You tell me what it's going to take to make him stop."

"Stop what? He's got nothing to do with your troubles. Don't we have enough of our own? Don't we have enough without you pointing your finger at us?"

She would not back down, Cilla told herself. She would not feel guilty for pushing at this small, frightened woman. "He drives by my home almost every day. And almost every day he parks on the shoulder, sometimes for as long as an hour."

Mrs. Hennessy gnawed her lips, twisted her fingers together. "It's not against the law."

"Trespa.s.sing is against the law, cracking a man's skull open is against the law. Breaking in and destroying private property is against the law."

"He did none of those things." The fear remained, but a whip of anger lashed through it. "And you're a liar if you say different."

"I'm not a liar, Mrs. Hennessy, and I'm not a wh.o.r.e."

"I don't know what you are."

"You know, unless you're as crazy as he is, that I'm not responsible for what happened to your son."

"Don't talk about my boy. You don't know my boy. You don't know anything about it."

"That's absolutely right. I don't. Why would you blame me?"

"I don't blame you." Weariness simply covered her. "Why would I blame you for what happened all those terrible years ago? There's n.o.body to blame for that. I blame you for bringing the police down on my husband when we did nothing to you."

"When I went over to his van to introduce myself, to express my sympathy, he called me a b.i.t.c.h and a wh.o.r.e, and he spat at me."

A flush of shame stained Mrs. Hennessy's cheeks. Her lips trembled as her eyes shifted away. "That's what you say."

"My half sister was right there. Is she a liar, too?"

"Even if it is so, it's a far cry from everything you're laying at our door."

"You saw the way he looked at me last night, in the park. You know how much he hates me. I'm appealing to you, Mrs. Hennessy. Keep him away from me and my home."

Cilla turned away. She'd only gotten halfway down the ramp when she heard the door shut, and the lock shoot home.

Oddly, the conversation, however tense and difficult, made her feel better. She'd done something besides calling the police and sitting back, waiting for the next a.s.sault.

Pushing forward, as that was the direction she was determined to go, she swung by the real estate office to make an offer on the first house she'd selected. She went in low, a fair chunk lower than she felt the house was worth in the current market. To Cilla, the negotiations, the offers, the counters, were all part of the fun.

Back in the loaner, she contacted the agent in charge of the second listing to make an appointment for a viewing. No point, she decided, in letting the moss grow. She drove back to Morrow Village, completed another handful of errands, including a quick grocery run, before heading back toward home.

She spotted the white van before Hennessy spotted her. Since he came from the direction of the Little Farm, she a.s.sumed he'd had time to go home, talk to his wife and drive out while she'd been running around Front Royal and the Village.

He caught sight of her as their vehicles pa.s.sed, and the flare of recognition burned over his face.

"Yeah, that's right," she muttered as she rounded a curve, "not my truck, since you beat the h.e.l.l out of it last night." She shook off the annoyance, took the next turn. Her gaze flicked up to the rearview mirror to see the van coming up behind her.

So you want to have this out? she wondered. Have what Ford called a face-to-face? That's fine. Great. He could just follow her home where they'd have a- The wheel jerked in her hands when the van rammed her from behind. The sheer shock didn't allow room for anger, even for fear, as she tightened her grip.

He rammed her again-a smash of metal, a squeal of tires. The truck seemed to leap under her and buck to the right. She wrenched the wheel, fighting it back. Before she could punch the gas, he rammed her a third time. Her tires skidded off the asphalt and onto the shoulder while her body jerked forward, slammed back. Her fender kissed the guardrail, and her temple slapped smartly against the side window.

Small bright dots danced in front of her eyes as she gritted her teeth, prayed and steered into the skid. The truck swerved, and for one hideous moment she feared it would flip. She landed with a bone-jarring thud, nose-down, in the runoff gully on the opposite shoulder as her air bag burst open.

Later, she would think it was sheer adrenaline, sheer p.i.s.s-in-your-face mad that had her leaping out of the truck, slamming the door. A woman ran across the lawn of a house set back across the road. "I saw what he did! I saw it! I called the police!"

Neither Cilla nor Hennessy paid any attention. He shoved out of the van, fists balled at his sides as they came at each other.

"You don't come to my house! You don't talk to my wife!"

"f.u.c.k you! f.u.c.k you! You're crazy. You could've killed me."

"Then you'd be in h.e.l.l with the rest of them." Eyes wheeling, teeth bared, he knocked her back with a vicious shove.

"Don't you put your hands on me again, old man."

He shoved her again, sending her feet skidding until she slammed into the back of the truck. "I see you in there. I see you in there, you b.i.t.c.h."

This time he raised his fist. Cilla kicked him in the groin, and dropped him.

"Oh G.o.d. Oh my G.o.d!"

Dazed, adrenaline seeping out like water through cracks in a dam, Cilla saw the Good Samaritan racing down the road toward her. The woman had a phone in one hand, a garden stake in the other.

"Are you all right? Honey, are you all right?"

"Yes, I think. I ... I feel a little sick. I need to-" Cilla sat, dropped her head between her updrawn knees. She couldn't get her breath, couldn't feel her fingers. "Can you call someone for me?"

"Of course I can. Don't you think about getting up, mister. I'll hit you upside the head with this, I swear I will. Who do you want me to call, honey?"

Cilla kept her head down, waiting for the dizziness to pa.s.s, and gave her new best friend Ford's number.

He got there before the police, all but flew out of his car. She'd yet to try to stand, and would forever be grateful that Lori Miller stood like a prison guard over Hennessy.

Hennessy sat, sweat drying on his bone-white face.

"Where are you hurt? You're bleeding."

"It's okay. I just hit my head. I think I'm okay."

"I wanted to call for an ambulance, but she said no. I'm Lori." The woman gestured in the direction of her house.

"Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Cilla-"

"I'm just a little shaky. I thought I was going to be sick, but it pa.s.sed. Help me up, will you?"

"Look at me first." He cupped her chin, studied her eyes. Apparently what he saw satisfied him enough for him to lift her to her feet.

"Knees are wobbly," she told him. "This hurts." She laid her fingers under the knot on her temple. "But I think that's the worst of it. I don't know how to thank you," she said to Lori.

"I didn't do anything, really. You sure know how to take care of yourself. Here they come." Lori pointed to the police car. "Now my knees are wobbly," she said with a breathless laugh. "I guess that's what happens after the worst is over."

SHE TOLD the story to one of the county deputies as, she imagined, Lori gave her witness statement to the other across the road. She imagined the skid marks told their own tale. Hennessy, as far as she could tell, refused to speak at all. She watched the deputy load him into the back of the cruiser.

"I've got stuff in the truck. I need to get it out before they tow it."

"I'll send someone back for it. Come on."

"I was nearly home," she said as Ford helped her into his car. "Another half mile, I'd have been home."

"We need to put some ice on that b.u.mp, and you need to tell me the truth if you hurt anywhere. You need to tell me, Cilla."

"I can't tell yet. I feel sort of numb, and exhausted." She let out a long sigh when he stopped in front of his house. "I think if I could just sit down for a while, in the cool, until I, I guess the phrase is collect myself. You'll call over, ask a couple of the guys to get the stuff out of the truck?"

"Yeah, don't worry about it."

He put his arm around her waist to lead her into the house. "Bed or sofa?"

"I was thinking chair."

"Bed or sofa," he repeated.

"Sofa."

He walked her into the lounge so he could keep an eye on her while he got a bag of frozen peas for her temple. Spock tiptoed to her to rub his head up and down her arm. "It's okay," she told him. "I'm okay." So he planted his front paws on the side of the couch, sniffed at her face, licked her cheek.

"Down," Ford ordered when he came in.

"No, he's fine. In fact ... maybe I could have him up here for a while."

Ford patted the couch. On cue, Spock jumped up, bellied in beside Cilla and laid his heavy, comforting head below her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Ford eased pillows behind her head. He brought her a cold drink, brushed his lips lightly over her forehead, then laid the cold bag at her temple.

"I'll make the calls. You need anything else?"

"No, I've got it all. Better already."

He smiled. "It's the magic peas."

When he turned away, stepped out onto the back veranda to make the calls, the smile had turned to a look of smoldering fury. His fist pounded rhythmically against the post as he punched numbers.

"Can't go into it now," he said when Matt answered. "Cilla's here. She's all right."

"What do you mean she's-"

"Can't go into it now."

"Okay."

"Her truck's about a half mile down, headed toward town. I need you to send somebody down to get whatever she picked up today out of it. Hennessy was at her, and now the cops have him."

"Holy sh-"

"I'll call you back later when I can talk about it."

He clicked off, glanced at his hand and saw he'd pounded it often and hard enough to draw some blood. Oddly, it helped.

Deciding he was calm enough, Ford stepped back inside. Because she lay quiet, eyes closed, one arm over the dog, he opened the window seat to take out one of the throws stored inside. Her eyes opened when he draped it over her.

"I'm not asleep. I was trying to remember how to meditate."

"Meditate?"

"California, remember? Anyone living in California over a year must meet minimum meditation requirements. Unfortunately, I always sucked at it. Empty your mind? If I empty part of mine, something jumps right in to fill the void. And I know I'm babbling."

"It's okay." He sat on the edge of the couch, turned the bag of peas over to lay the colder side on her temple.

"Ford, he really wanted to kill me." Her eyes clung to his, and he saw the shadow of pain in them as she pushed herself up to sit. "It's not like doing grand jetes through the woods while the reanimated psycho killer chases you. I've had people dislike me. My own mother from time to time. I've even had people try to hurt me. I dated this guy once who slapped me around good one night. One night," she repeated. "He never got the chance to do it again. But even he didn't hate me. He didn't want me dead.

"I don't know how to resolve that someone does. I don't know how to fit that into my life and deal with it."

"You don't resolve it. You don't resolve something that has no sanity or logic. And, Cilla, you are dealing with it. You did. You stopped him."

"A really lucky kick into seventy-, maybe eighty-year-old b.a.l.l.s. I was so p.i.s.sed , Ford, that I didn't think. Do I stay in the truck, lock the doors, call nine-one-one, or you, or the half a dozen guys a half mile away like a rational person? No, I jump out and confront this ... this lunatic who's just tried to run me off the road, like he's going to fear the sharp lash of my tongue. And I'm still so p.i.s.sed when he starts shoving me, I don't take off. Like I couldn't outrun a man old enough to be my grandfather?"

"You're not a runner." He laid his finger over her lips when she started to speak. "You're not. Do I wish it had occurred to you to lock yourself in the truck and call me? Maybe. Because then I could've come speeding to the rescue. I could've kicked him in the b.a.l.l.s. But the fact is, I feel some better knowing that when somebody tries to hurt you, you know how to take care of yourself."

"I could go a long time without having to take care of myself like that again."

"Me too." He stroked her hair when she laid her head on his shoulder. "Me too."

And maybe he could've gone a little while longer without realizing he was in love with her. He could've strolled into that, the way he strolled across the road to her house. Casual and easy. Instead, he'd had it slammed into him, clutched in the meaty fist of fear and rage, in one hard and painful punch when he'd seen her sitting on the side of the road.

Nothing to do about it now, he told himself. Bad, bad timing. What she needed now was a shoulder to lean on, somebody to get her a bag of frozen peas and offer a quiet place to ... collect herself.

"How's the head?"

"Strangely, it feels like I bashed it against a window."

"Will you take some aspirin?"

"Yeah. And maybe a session in your hot tub. I'm a little stiff and sore. I got jostled around pretty good."

He had to fight to keep his grip on her from tightening, to stop himself from squeezing her against him. "I'll set you up."

"Thanks." She turned her head to brush her lips against his throat. "Thanks especially for helping me stay calm. You too," she said, and kissed Spock.