Page 78 of Colton's Secret Weapon
“With enough evidence to prove that Fletcher hired him?” she asked, not meeting his gaze, but not shutting the door in his face, either.
“No,” Mitchell said and, seeing her shoulders close in, quickly added, “Because Fletcher didn’t do it. Not your studio. Not untyingLadybird, or watching your house. He wasn’t the one who took your father, leaving him out on the embankment, nor was he responsible for your near abduction.” He had no idea why he was listing it all out. He just felt a need to do so.
A need driven by her. By her reactions to his words. The more he said, the more she seemed to be listening. To be taking it in.
And if there was one thing he knew about Dove St. James it was that what she took in came out right.
“Who was it?” she asked, when he sensed that he needed to fall silent. “Why?”
He didn’t answer. Just watched her. And, eventually, she met his gaze. Holding on long enough to ask again, “Who? Why?”
That’s when he knew what he had to say. “Can I come in, please? It’s going to look odd to your neighbor staring at us from her porch down there if I stand here much longer.”
Such a Mitchell thing, concerning himself with every aspect of a situation, looking for negative consequences. And yet, fittingthat him doing so got him exactly what he needed from Dove in that moment.
“Please,” she said, “come in.” There was no… Dove in her tone. Just propriety. He took note.
Followed her into the room just off the door. A living space with a couch, a chair. A table with a small television set. And a full wall of bookcases that had books lining it, books on the shelves in front of other books, books sideways on the edges of shelves. Books stacked in rows on both sides of it.
He wanted to smile. But couldn’t. Not without Dove sharing the moment with him.
So he sat on the chair, lowering her satchel to the wood floor by his feet. She sat, too. On the end of the couch closest to him. He took that as a good sign.
“It was Oscar Earnhardt, Dove,” he told her. And then, as quickly as he could, he got the rest out there for her to access it all when she was ready.
“Once I knew you were okay, I was sitting in the waiting room until I could see you, and Eli started asking me about everything I could remember from the crash.”
He stopped, watching to make sure she was up to hearing such details, and saw her watching him with an intentness he hadn’t seen from her before. “Eli was at the trauma center?” she asked.
“Of course.” The answer rote to him. But to someone like Dove, who didn’t know that family came running in times of tragedy… “He was there, first to see how you were and—” he added something he never would have admitted before Dove, or to anyone but her “—to see how I was holding up…then to get all the details he could. The entire local ABI office and of course Shelby police department were working on the accident.”
She swallowed. Blinked. And though his mind told him to stop, to give her time, he trusted something deeper and kepton talking. “I remembered the truck, remembered having seen it before, at the bar…the day we saw Oscar. Welding put out an APB on his car and person, found him at the closet clinic to Shelby, compelled a DNA sample and had forensics start running the rapid DNA. Welding called another officer to sit on Earnhardt until he could be booked and headed back here to pull up every description of every crime scene, checked them against Oscar’s known whereabouts during each incident, and by the time Oscar was stitched up and his broken leg had been set with a cast, Welding had the warrant for his arrest and the prosecutor standing by to press charges.”
He’d skipped some interim stuff. But she had the gist of it.
“But…why?” Mouth open, she was staring at him. And for a second there, he had a glimpse of the woman he’d slowly begun to understand had changed him forever.
“First place, he was drunk—partially why he escaped the crash with no internal or head injuries. But after a few minutes with Peter Welding, he confessed to the rest.” Mitchell paused before addressing her question. And then, when he meant to state the facts, said, “He was a man not in touch with deeper truths, Dove. He didn’t understand that the power to change his life came from within himself.”
She blinked. Twice. Hard. Trying not to cry. The conclusion was pretty obvious. What he didn’t get was why Dove would hold back tears. It wasn’t her way. And he said, “He blamed everything bad that his drinking had brought onto him on you and your dad. Your father for firing him because how could he? He drank right alongside him. And then you because his wife was your client and he says you filled her head with crap. If you hadn’t done, she’d never have kicked him out or filed for divorce.”
Why he was just putting it right out, almost as though placing blame himself, he had no idea. He just had to get it done. Haveher hear it all at once because she was going to find out at trial, anyway.
“His wife… I never gave her any advice at all,” Dove said, as though that was the key point in the moment. “She came to the studio for exercise,quiet exercise, as she called it. I didn’t even know she’d filed for divorce until after Dad told me. I knew she was troubled. I told her I was available if there was anything I could do—more because of Dad’s friendship with Oscar than anything else. But she said that Oscar needed our friendship more than she did. And that…” she paused, frowned then said, “…she’d gotten far more from me than she’d paid for.” With a blank look, she stared at Mitchell, as though he had answers she couldn’t access.
“I’m guessing she learned how to find her inner peace through your example,” he told her. And then, for no logical reason whatsoever said, “I know I have, Dove. Before you came barreling into my office I was living a two-dimensional life. You showed me that the way I feel matters as much as how well I think. That trusting one’s instincts matters as much or more as facts. That loving is far more than doing. It’s living through heart as much as mind.”
He was beginning to sound like a damned greeting card.
And had one more thing to say. “You mentioned once that you were led to me so that I could help you. Well, you were only partially right, Dove St. James. You were also led to me so thatyoucould helpme.”
She started to sob then. Big, painful, ugly sounds that, strangely enough, sounded a bit like heaven to him. A heaven that acknowledged pain and suffering, that wouldn’t stop challenges and couldn’t always spare tragedy but that would be there always. With warmth, a steady hand, healing. And more joy than there would ever be sorrow.
And he had Dove to thank for showing him it was there.
She’d come close to losing her way. Would never have believed there could be a time when she’d be unable to access understanding. Unable to feel. To believe.
And yet…even then…her spirits had been there. She hadn’t had to believe in them. They’d been there anyway. In the form of Mitchell Colton.
