Public Secrets

good. Including your lady.”

Slowly, Michael unclenched his fists. “I’m getting close. I know it. It’s not like it was twenty years ago. It’s like it was yesterday, and I was there, right there going over every step.”
“Like your old man.”
“Yeah.” He braced his elbows on the desk to scrub his hands over his face. “I’m going crazy.”
“You’re just overcharged, kid. Take a couple hours. Ease off.”
Michael stared down at the papers on his desk. “I’ll buy you a steak. You help me run the make on Blackpool.”
“Deal.” He waited while Michael shrugged into his jacket. “Why don’t you give me a couple other names? Marilyn’s on a new kick and we’re getting nothing but fish this week anyway.”
“Thanks.”

E MMA STOPPED THE car and looked at the house through the rising mists. She hadn’t consciously decided to drive to it. Years before she had sat in the car with Michael and studied the house. It had been sunny then, she remembered.
There were lights in the windows. Though she could see no movement, she wondered who lived there now. Did a child sleep in the room where she had once slept, or where Darren’s crib had stood? She hoped so. She wanted to think that more than tragedy lived on. There had been laughter in the house as well, a great deal of it. She hoped there was again.
She supposed Johnno had made her think of it, when he had talked of growing older. Most of the time she still saw them as they had been in her own childhood, not as men who had lived for nearly a quarter of a century with fame and ambition, with success and failure.
They had all changed. Perhaps herself most of all. She no longer felt like a shadow of the men who had so dominated her life. If she was stronger, it was because of the effort it had taken to finally see herself as whole, rather than as parts of the people she’d loved the best.
She looked through the gloom to the house nestled on the hill, and hoped with all her heart she would dream of it that night. When she did, she would open that door. She would stand, and look, and she would see.

Releasing the brake, she started down the narrow road. Six months before, she knew, she wouldn’t have had the courage to come alone, to open herself to all those feelings. It was good, so good not to be afraid.
The headlights flashed into her rearview mirror so close, so fast, they blinded her. Instinctively she threw a hand up to block the glare.
Drunk and stupid, she thought and glanced for a place to pull over and let the car pass.
When it rammed her from behind, her hands clamped automatically on the wheel. Still, the few seconds of shock cost her, and had her veering dangerously close to the guardrail. Dragging the wheel back, she heard her tires squeal on the wet pavement. Her heart jackhammered to her throat as she slid sideways around the next turn.
“Asshole!” With a trembling hand she wiped a smear of blood from her lip where she’d bitten it. Then the lights were blinding her again, and the impact of the next hit had her seat belt snapping against her breastbone.
There was no time to think, no room for panic. Her rear fender slapped against the metal guard as her car shimmied. The car behind backed off as she fought her own out of a skid. She saw the tree, a big leafy oak, and used every ounce of strength to jerk the wheel to the right. Panting, she concentrated on maneuvering around an S turn, pumping her brakes to slow her speed.
He came again. She caught a glimpse of the car, burned the image into her brain before the lights glared against her mirror again. Though braced for the impact, she cried out.
He wasn’t drunk. And he wasn’t stupid. In one part of her mind the terror screamed out. Someone was trying to kill her. It wasn’t her imagination. It wasn’t leftover fears. It was happening. She could see the lights, hear the crunch of metal against metal, feel her tires skid as they fought for traction.
The car came up on her left, punching hers toward the drop. She was screaming; she could hear herself as she laid on the gas and tore around the next turn.
She wouldn’t outrun him. Emma blinked the glaze out of her eyes and tried to think. His car was bigger, and faster. And the hunter always had the advantage over the hunted. The road cut through the hills gave her no room to maneuver, and there was no place to go but down.

He pulled up again. She could see the dark shape of the car, creeping closer, and closer, like a spider