That I'd let him leave. That we'd let him go. I yelled and yelled and yelled, but nobody came out of the woods. Alicia never came out."
Kitty laid her hand on his shoulder. "You saved the children."
He turned his head and looked at her. "Damn it, that's what everyone said. They kept saying it. But I didn't save Alicia." He pushed his hands through his hair. "I couldn't leave the kids alone, though. I didn't know if there was an accomplice nearby or if the first man would circle back for the kids if I left them to search for Alicia. I just couldn't leave them, you see?"
"Of course I see that," Kitty said. "Everyone does. It's why you're a hero."
"Hero." The word twisted like a knife in his gut. "Every damn case I've worked since, every child I've looked for, every person I've found or protected has been a way of trying to truly earn that. But I never do. I left the place I love and the work that I wanted and it's still not enough."
"Why?" Kitty said. "Why isn't it enough?"
He closed his eyes. That was the one question he hated answering the most. "Because when I went roaring down that hill toward Alicia, I thought I was being a hero. I didn't doubt for a minute that Hot Water's Golden Boy could save the day, just as I'd saved the final high school football game. The Big Coach in the Sky was putting me in a life-and-death competition and I wasn't even afraid." He sucked in a long breath, and finally uttered aloud the thought that had tortured him for eight years. "The truth is, my hell-bent-for-leather ride may have escalated the situation. Maybe because of me, Alicia is dead."
"Oh, Dylan," Kitty whispered. She grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him into her arms. Her chest heaved on a sob.
God help him, he took the comfort she offered. He wrapped himself around her, entwining his hands in her long hair. He could feel her heart beating against his skin, and underneath the barbed wire he'd worn for eight years, his heart joined its tempo.
She always made him feel so damn good.
She always had.
"Kitty." He held her away from him to look into her face. "Come back to L.A. with me."
She stilled. "What?"
He swallowed hard, one hand moving to touch his St. Barbara medal. "After Heritage Day. Come back to L.A. with me."
"Why?"
"I could show you around. We could - "
"Dylan - "
"Don't answer now." Not when he was scared shitless at the thought of what he'd just asked. But he wasn't ready to say it was a mistake either. He brought her back against him, then closed his eyes and rested his cheek on her silky hair. "We'll talk about it later. We'll talk about it after the divorce."
There. That made him feel better. Saying that gave him a little more time and space.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Two evenings later, Kitty cut through the cemetery on the way from her house to the park. She imagined the at-peace residents of Hot Water were enjoying the annual Odd Fellows barbecue as much as the livelier denizens of the town. The aroma of grilling chicken and hamburgers wafted through the air, and over the excited shouts of children came the cheery twang of the county's famed old-time fiddlers playing "Turkey in the Straw."
For the past twenty years the barbecue had preceded the Heritage Day festivities. This morning when they'd left her house together, she and Dylan had agreed to meet there - an hour ago.
But her tardiness couldn't be helped. Although in the summer months she was supposed to be responsible only for working in The Burning Rose, since she was "head" of the one-person advertising and PR department of the Hot Water Preservation Society, Heritage Day itself ignited a dozen fires that apparently only she could extinguish. At 6 A.M. she'd been unearthing the missing bunting from the city hall basement. At 6 P.M., when she was supposed to be meeting Dylan, she'd made a dash to Kemper's Market for the brass polish needed to spiff up the bells on the wagon horses' halters.
Next year the last-minute errands would be someone else's job, she reminded herself. Strangely, the thought didn't cheer her up.
She didn't know if anything would. Since Tony and Sylvia's party, she hadn't been able to shake the stomach-churning notion that she was strapped to railroad tracks, a train heading straight for her. Yet she had a