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.
And so he hung up. Even though he was exhausted, he lay awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling. He kept thinking of the first time he’d seen Trista and Martine, long ago at Eugene Field Elementary School. How they’d become fast friends immediately, and where they’d gone from there. How until recently the future had always seemed just around the corner, bright and shining as the sun.
If Rick had learned anything in his thirty-two years, it was that life had a way of rearing up in your face or skidding along in unexpected twists and turns, like now. And the worst of it was that you couldn’t go back and change any of it afterward.
Chapter 2: Rick
2004
After Martine’s accident, Trista and Rick alternated shifts at the hospital, and Rick was thankful that Trista could stay on in Miami to help him out. They didn’t see each other often, mostly brief hellos and goodbyes as one left Martine’s bedside and the other arrived.
Though Martine was more alert by the third day after the accident, she didn’t talk to him much. The nurses told him that she needed her rest while her body healed. Rick suspected that Martine was more forthcoming with Trista, and he considered whether she might be filling her sister in on their personal situation during the long hours when Trista sat at her bedside. Even if that was what was going on, he knew that Trista would respect Martine’s confidence and that she would never speak of their marriage difficulties with him.
Rick returned to work in Homicide, but his heart wasn’t in it. More than anything, he wanted to patch things up with his wife, but he was reluctant to broach the subject while she was recovering. He was still wallowing in guilt. In his heart, he believed that the kidnapping would never have happened if he hadn’t gone against Martine’s wishes by choosing police work as a career.
Five days after the accident, Rick was sitting in the backyard of their house, watching the light from the moon dancing in the dense tropical shrubbery and thinking things over. Not that he got very far with it—his mind kept playing back the scenes with Padrón and the horror of watching the car roll over and explode into flames. When he heard the glass door behind him slide open on its track, he snapped out of his reverie and swiveled quickly in alarm. Since the break-in, he’d remained jittery and on edge. He sagged in relief when he saw that it was only Trista advancing toward him through the shadows.
“Hi, Rick. Martine practically pushed me out of her room and told me to get lost,” she said.
It struck him how pretty she was, and though her features were the same as Martine’s, Trista’s were softer somehow, as if they were the same picture captured by a more flattering lens.
“She seems to be feeling better today,” Rick said. He’d been encouraged by the color in Martine’s cheeks and the fading of her bruises.
“So what are you doing out here all by yourself?” Trista asked.
“Thinking,” he said.
She paused, skewering him with a glance. “About?”
He sighed. “A lot of things.”
“Do I have to drag it out of you?” she asked with an impish grin, but he wasn’t in the mood to be teased.
“I need to figure out where to go from here. I thought I could do a lot of good by working in law enforcement, and yet I endangered Martine. I can’t forgive myself for that.”
Trista’s expression changed, became serious. “You didn’t cause Padrón to do what he did. He’s responsible for his own actions.”
“Tris, I’ve learned the hard way that when you’re dealing with the criminal element, you open yourself to things that should never happen.” He was more than serious. Somber, even.
“We both figured that out a long time ago, didn’t we?” Trista said, and he knew she was remembering her father, a prominent South Carolina attorney. Seven years ago, Roger Barrineau had been murdered by a former client, gunned down in cold blood on the steps of the Richland County Courthouse.
He nodded. His father-in-law had been Rick’s friend and role model, and the shock and grief of his murder had never completely gone away. Now, years later, to be faced with nearly losing his wife in a similar situation had not only been terrifying, it had
