The Best Man's Secret, page 15
The doctor grinned, handed the crutches to Dave, then turned and walked away without commenting.
“I’m fine. Considering. Come on, I want to go. Just not home. I want to go somewhere I’ll need to bend my knee. Because I finally can.”
“Okay. Just remember not to overdo it. This isn’t going to be instantaneous. It’s still going to be a while before you can walk without stiffness, and even longer to walk unaided.”
She grinned at him. His heart fluttered in his chest. “Funny, I just heard all that exact same stuff a minute ago. Thank you, Dr. Dave.”
“I remember what it was like, that’s all,” he muttered, trying to sound grumpy. But instead of feeling grumpy, he felt scared. Not the usual kind of scared, a different kind.
He was terrified this was the end. She was doing fine, so he had no more excuse to spend every spare minute with her, or even a few minutes that weren’t spare.
He gulped. “I’ll go anywhere you want.”
They continued slowly to the elevator. Once inside she raised one hand above the panel, and let it hover. “Isn’t this where one of us hits the button to stop the elevator between floors and we talk about something really important that we can’t let anyone else hear?”
“Maybe.” He probably should have grinned, but he couldn’t.
“This is going to sound strange, but I changed my mind. I want to go home. I want to get Chinese food and eat in the kitchen, at the table, with my leg bent. We can make that tea you like so much, and just relax. With my knee bent.”
“Okay.” He noticed she’d said the part about bending her knee twice. He remembered what that felt like, so he didn’t say anything.
Small talk had never been so painful. By the time they made it to her kitchen their conversation had dwindled into silence, and he felt like he’d been pulled through a wringer. Twice.
Ashley maneuvered herself into a chair while he put the kettle on to make the tea.
As he turned around, she looked up at him. “Why does this feel so awkward?”
Dave’s stomach churned. He hadn’t been hungry before, and now that they were in the kitchen he felt like he needed to vomit more than he needed to eat. “Because this should be the point where I had planned to say you’re going to be fine, and we go our separate ways.”
“You don’t need to do that. I’ve honored your request not to ask you any questions about it since you asked me not to, but I think we’ve passed that point. I know the person you are. I don’t think there’s anything you could have done that would change that.”
Dave gulped. “Yeah. There is.”
“Please. Sit down.”
He dragged the chair beside her, sat, and grasped her hands. But his vocal cords wouldn’t work.
She looked at him, eye to eye since they were both seated. “Do you trust me? The answer is yes or no. If it’s yes, then you can tell me.” She stopped, swallowed, and her eyes began to get glassy, tearing up. She cleared her throat, and her voice came out sounding almost strangled. “If it’s no, then get up and leave, and we’ll never see each other again.”
That was pretty blunt, and she was right. It did come down to trust, and this really was a yes or no answer.
In only ten short weeks, he’d fallen totally and completely in love with Ashley. He wanted to tell her so. If she loved him, that was the time for her to say she loved him back, except he hadn’t given her the complete picture of who he was. Before she could love him back, she needed to know the truth.
He clasped her hands tighter. “I trust you. What I’m going to tell you is something you can never, ever tell anyone, ever. Only a few people know, and it’s got to stay that way. Even if you never want to see me again, I’m going to trust that you will never tell this to anyone, no matter what.”
One side of her mouth quivered. “You’re making this sound like CSI Los Angeles. You told me you weren’t a secret agent.”
“I’m far from a secret agent.” He cleared his throat, and looked down at their joined hands. “Here goes. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Before I was an accountant, I was a high school math teacher. A bunch of my students were on a community ball team and one Saturday they invited me to watch. While I was there one of the boy’s sisters lost her little dog, so I left the game to help look for it. The dog ended up going into the community center building. It was a real small dog, and somehow it got into one of the storage closets.”
“How did you find it?”
“The leash was trailing, I saw a bit of it sticking out. I got the key from the maintenance guy and went in to get the dog. Its hair had gotten tangled up on a broken metal shelf that had collapsed. While I was trying to get the dog free the door closed behind me, but I didn’t care, I had a key, I wasn’t locked in or anything. It was dark, so I got my cell phone out of my pocket and used it for light, and then I heard voices. They started talking about a shipment of drugs coming in. It wasn’t just a drug deal. This was big-time trafficking. Heroin. They were talking shipyard.”
Dave paused to let the magnitude of what he was saying sink in.
“What did you do?”
“I stayed really, really quiet. I was all alone, locked in a closet with a potentially yappy dog. Fortunately she didn’t bark. I didn’t know if I should pick her up at that point, so I didn’t. As a teacher I saw some drug abuse with a few of the students, so that’s always a major issue with me. But these weren’t students, they were parents. One of them was the parent of one of my students. Since I had my phone in my hand I took a video of the conversation through the vent, which included stealing a car and extortion as well as the drug import. This was a big-time gang deal. I got almost the whole conversation.”
Ashley gasped. “Weren’t you scared?”
“More scared than I’d ever been in my life. Up to that point, anyway. When they left I found a knife and cut the dog’s hair to get it free, gave her to the little girl, and went straight to the police. With what I gave them, they made a huge drug bust, arrested dozens of people, and pretty much shut down the cartel. There was a lot of jail time sentenced for a lot of people over that.”
“Then that’s good. Isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Yes, but not everyone got arrested. The other man on the video was the cartel leader, who got a lot of jail time. He might never see the light of day outside prison walls. One that didn’t get arrested was his son due to lack of evidence. With his family in jail and his source of income yanked out from under him, he was not a happy guy. A few days after the trial was over I had just got to the bank and he came up behind me at the ATM. At first I didn’t recognize him, but he was fidgety and making me really nervous. When there was only one person in line ahead of me I turned around and recognized him. Instead of going to the machine, I stepped out of the line and left really fast. He didn’t go to the machine either. He busted out of the line, and I ran. Execution style, he raised his gun and fired at me as I was running through the parking lot.”
Ashley pulled her hands out of his, pressed them to her mouth, and gasped.
“If you’ve heard enough, I’ll stop.”
“Don’t stop. Did he hit you?”
Dave pressed one hand to his shoulder. “Yup. It still hurts when the weather changes.”
“Did they catch him?”
Dave made a wry smile. “You know that saying that there’s never a cop around when you need one? It’s not true. One of the customers who was standing in line at the bank was a cop on his lunch break. He ran out when the shots started firing and took him down.” He closed his eyes, and sucked in a deep breath. “I’ll never forget what that felt like, running for my life with a gun pointed at me. I dove behind a car. That’s probably why he didn’t hit any vital organs.”
“That’s how you know what it’s like to be shot. How horrible!”
“That’s not the end. Remember, this wasn’t small-time. This was a huge cartel, and my testimony was the last link that took down the whole organization, locally anyway. After both the father with all the higher-ups and then the son got arrested I thought I would be okay. I was driving through the park one day when out of the corner of my eye I saw a guy in the car beside me pointing a gun at me. I’d already been shot once, so I didn’t give this a lot of thought. The line I was in was barely moving, which left me a sitting duck. I undid my seat belt and scrambled out of the car, but in the middle of a bridge I had nowhere to go. This was just a park, so they didn’t have high side railings. I wasn’t going to run the length of the bridge with a guy pointing a gun at me, so I ran through traffic to the other side and jumped over the railing and into the water. It turns out the water wasn’t very deep, and that’s how I broke my leg.”
She sat there in silence, staring at him like he’d grown another head.
“That time was a targeted hit. There’s a contract out on me, confirmed by an informant, which they figure will last until both the father and son die. So they faked my death, I had some plastic surgery, lost forty pounds, and they changed my name, moved me across the country, and put me into witness protection.”
He stopped, waiting for her to say something.
After a minute or so of silence, Dave stood. “I think it’s time for me to go. If you can live with that, you know where to find me.”
* * *
Ashley heard the door close, but she couldn’t get up. Not that her legs couldn’t move—they just wouldn’t.
Of all the reasons she’d imagined for his secrecy, and there had been many, this hadn’t been one of them. She wasn’t even close.
Witness protection. Now she knew why he dyed his hair and wore that ball cap all the time. That was also why he hid from all cameras and didn’t go out much in public places.
She tried to think of this in practical terms, but it was so far out of her realm of experience she didn’t know where to start.
The only thing she could think of was to phone Tasha.
Her fingers shook as she hit the buttons on her cell phone. The longer it took Tasha to pick up, the harder she clenched her teeth with every ring.
“Hi, Tasha, it’s me. Ashley. I need to talk to you. Have you got a minute?”
“Sure. What about?”
“It’s about Dave. I know what it is he’s been hiding from me.”
“It’s about time. How did you find out?”
“He told me.” Now that he had, she could understand why it was so hard for him, and why it took so long. The level of trust had to be one hundred percent.
“Is it bad?”
She opened her mouth, but no answer came out. In a personal sense, it wasn’t bad in the way her father had cheated on her mother, or in the way that Steve had been ready to throw her to the media like taking a lamb to the slaughter. It was worse, because a modern-day version of the mob had a hit out on him, and that was very bad. But she couldn’t tell her friend he was in witness protection. That would compromise his safety. “I can’t say.”
“What did he do?”
Again she opened her mouth, then she snapped it shut. Everything that happened had either been in the courts, in the news, or in the public eye. It all was public record, but he couldn’t in any way be linked to a single event because being identified could mean his death in the wrong hands. “I can’t say.”
“Was it legal?”
That she could answer. He’d testified in court to do the right thing to stop the flow of illegal drugs, and to put the bad guys in jail. “Yes.”
“Okay... Is it really such a big secret?”
The biggest. Exposing him could mean his death. As she nearly said that, she snapped her mouth shut. Talking on a cell phone was a huge lack of security. A few times she’d heard her neighbor’s cell phone conversation on the wireless speakers for her television. She certainly couldn’t say anything over the cell phone that could compromise Dave’s safety. “Yes.”
“This is crazy. You phone to talk, and you haven’t really told me anything. Is this an item of national security or something?”
That answer, she knew. It was yes. Which she couldn’t say. But she couldn’t say that she couldn’t say, because if someone were listening, anything other than a no would be taken as a yes.
“Ashley? Are you there? What’s going on?”
Even in one short conversation, she was beginning to understand what Dave had to go through, every minute of every day of his life. He’d done this for the safety of people he didn’t even know, just because it was the right thing to do.
Not only was he her own personal hero, he was the hero of hundreds if not thousands of people, and they didn’t even know his name.
“I’m here. What’s going on is that I’m in love with Dave. It was great talking to you. I’ve got to go.”
Chapter 17
Since he didn’t have a couch, Dave sat on the small mattress on the floor that had been his bed for the last few months and stared blankly at the wall.
His renter had already moved out a couple of weeks ago, so all he had to do was pack up what little he’d brought, donate the few pieces of furniture he’d bought to Goodwill, and he was free to go back to his real home, as much as he could call it home. He was ready to leave there with only a few minutes’ notice, too.
Such was what his life had to be.
He couldn’t blame Ashley for not wanting to get involved with him. If it were the other way around, he probably would have felt the same way. Hindsight was a wonderful thing, and now he was wishing he hadn’t told her. Even though there was always something missing, at least they had a relationship. He’d never spent time with anyone and been so happy, even before the ugliness that changed his life.
If only he could take back his words. The shock on her face told him everything he needed to know, and when she didn’t try to stop him as he left, that confirmed it. He couldn’t blame her for not wanting to get involved with him. The reality of what his life had become would scare any sane person away, especially someone so pure and full of life as Ashley.
Except for not telling her about what he’d been five years ago, she was the only person who knew him as he really was, and she liked him anyway.
After he was gone from her life, he had no doubt that she would keep his secret. She was honorable and fair, and everything he could have wanted in a life partner, if that were even possible anymore.
Obviously it wasn’t.
He swiped his hands over his eyes, then got up to blow his nose. Everyone left home at some point, some further than others. Lots of people never went back. The difference with him was that he had no choice. It was painful, but not unbearable.
Having to be separated from Ashley, on the other hand, felt like he’d been ripped in two.
Since he was alone, and he was going to stay that way, while he was behind closed doors he took out his contacts and put his glasses on, then looked at himself in the mirror. If he’d learned anything from Ashley, this was a good time to watch the goose movie, and he could, because she had an extra copy and had given it to him.
He returned to the living room, picked up the remote, dragged the mattress into the living room, tossed the large pillow he’d bought against the wall, plopped down on his makeshift couch, and aimed the remote at the television.
Just as he hit the button, banging came from the door.
He froze and broke out into a cold sweat.
“Dave?” Ashley’s voice echoed through the door. “It’s me. Ashley. Can I come in?”
At first he relaxed, then he stiffened and looked to the bathroom. He needed to put his contacts back in. But then again, she already knew everything there was to know. She could see him as he really was, and it wouldn’t matter.
He stood, walked to the door, and opened it.
“I want to...” her voice trailed off. “You’re wearing glasses.”
“Would you like to come in?” he asked and stood back for her to enter.
Using the cane, she hobbled in, then stood in the middle of his nearly bare living room.
“I’d offer you a seat, but I don’t really have one. I can bring you the chair from the desk I have in the bedroom.”
At he said “bedroom” her head turned toward the mattress on the floor.
“It doubles as a couch during the daytime.”
“Have you been living like this for the past ten weeks?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t spent much time here. It’s been adequate.”
She turned back to his face. “You have beautiful eyes. They’re blue.”
“I normally wear colored contacts.”
“But your driver’s license said your eyes are brown, and it didn’t say anything about corrective lenses.”
He shrugged his shoulders again. “I know. It’s part of the cover. You probably already know I dye my hair, too. It’s really a lot lighter than this.” He ran his fingers through his dark brown hair. “It’s probably time for me to touch up the roots again.”
She wobbled a bit, leaning on the cane. “Can we sit down? I don’t mind sitting on the mattress. I’ll just need help getting up again.”
It was rather embarrassing, but it really didn’t matter. He had nothing left to lose.
Once they were settled she turned to him. “Tell me about the real Dave Ducharme. That isn’t your real name, is it?”
“No. My real name is Dale Bellamy. They said it’s important for the new first name to start the same way as the old one. That’s so it’s easier to respond automatically when people call me by the wrong name.”
“Would you like me to call you Dale?”
“No. I’m Dave now. Dale Bellamy is dead.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled a couple of photos out of his wallet. First he handed her the photo of his cemetery marker. “This is my gravestone. They staged a car accident in which I died. Which was too bad. I had a really nice car. They had a funeral for me and everything. The only ones who know I’m not really dead are my parents and my sister.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I hated to do that to my students. My mother told me all about my funeral. Half the school was there. There were photos of me everywhere, and I got a great memorial write-up in the yearbook that year.”
