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"Rafferty! There's someone here to see you."
Jack scrambled to a sit. He shoved a hand through his
disheveled hair and peered through the bars. "Lissa?" She stepped away from the jailer so he could see her
better. "Hi, Jack."
The jailer opened the cell and ushered Tess inside. "Normally I wouldn't let you in, you understand, but Ed Warbass says you can be trusted. No funny business, right?"
Tess nodded and swept into the small, dank cell. The metal bars clanged shut behind her. A key jiggled in the lock, then footsteps echoed down the hall, and they were alone.
She sat beside Jack on the narrow, sagging cot and twisted around to face him. She reached out, took his hands in hers. There were so many things she wanted to say, so many arguments she'd prepared herself to make, but now, sitting here in the filthy darkness with him, all she wanted to do was cry. "You shouldn't have come," he said quietly. She snapped her head up to meet his gaze, and the urge to cry disappeared. "I shouldn't have to." "Lissa?"
"Don't you 'Lissa' me, Jackson Rafferty. I've had enough of your melodramatics, do you understand? No more hiding."
"What do you mean?" He tried to withdraw his hands, but she wouldn't let him. She clung tightly, squeezing hard.
"You know exactly what I mean. I want you to try to remember."
"Don't you think I've tried?"
The agony in his voice tore through Tess's resolve. She had a sudden urge to take him in her arms and stroke his brow, tell him everything would be all right. But she didn't
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move. Everything wouldn't be okay, goddamn it, if he didn't try.
She stared deeply into his eyes, trying to will him to see the goodness in himself. "It's all in there, Jack. In your head. Every memory, every moment, is stored inside. You just have to believe."
"I can't?"
She pressed a finger to his lips. "I'm not asking you to say you didn't kill those people?even though you didn't?I'm just asking you to admit maybe you didn't."
Fear filled his eyes, made his breathing speed up. He shook his head slowly. "What if?"
She let go of his hands and grabbed his shoulders. "What good are your precious 'what if s' to your kids, Jack? Your kids, who are sitting at home right now, crying, terrified they'll never see their father again?" She flipped her leather skate bag open and wrenched out the girls' letters, waving them beneath Jack's nose. "Read these, Jack, and tell me they don't matter."
With shaking fingers, Jack opened Savannah's letter. By the time he reached the bottom, his eyes were sheened with tears. He looked up at Tess, his face twisted with pain. "What do you want from me?"
"What if you're not the murderer, Jack? Did you ever think about that? If you're innocent, we're still in danger?the kids and I are alone out at the farm. Alone. And I couldn't shoot a barn if I was standing in front of it."
He swiped his eyes and sighed. "Christ, Lissa, who else could it be? I'm the only crazy on the island."
"Joe and Kie Nuanna borrowed a gun from the Hannahs during your blackout. They returned it splattered with blood." She paused to let the facts sink in, then added, "Human blood."
A spark of hope flared in Jack's eyes.
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Tess seized on the moment. "Have you ever hurt anyone, Jack? And I don't mean getting to Johnny too late; that was just bad luck, pure and simple. I mean hurting someone yourself. With your own hands." He frowned. "No. But that doesn't prove?" "And what about the Dwyers, Jack? You knew them, for God's sake. Selina was killed in her own home. She died clutching the baby dress she was knitting. She was soaked in her own blood, and her face was a mass of bruises. Did you do that, Jack? Did you shoot Henry Dwyer in the back of the head, then beat Selina Dwyer senseless and shoot her, too?"
Horror rounded Jack's eyes. The color seeped from his skin. "Christ Almighty ..."
Tess shook him hard. "Did you do that, Jack? Could you do that?"
Jack stared into her pale, determined face and felt the first crumbling sense of doubt. It was nothing really, just a spark, a flicker of hope. "I don't know...." "You do know, Jack."
He squeezed his eyes shut. A memory of last night flashed through his mind. As he'd sat in the middle of this lonely cell, pouring his heart out onto that scrap of paper, he'd felt... reborn. And yet here he was now, clinging to the same old fears, reliving the same old horrors.
