Nothing To Lose

She paused in the middle of taking a sip of cola to blink at him. “Excuse me?”

“Hunter. You quit medical school so you can devote yourself to helping your brother appeal his conviction.”

She set her glass down quickly as if it contained rat poison. For several long seconds she said nothing, then she faced him, her chin lifted—with determination or defiance, he wasn’t sure.

“All the medical degrees in the world won’t help me save my brother’s life.”

He wasn’t sure why her sacrifice bothered him so much. Whatever she did wasn’t any of his business—he barely knew the woman. She could decide to pitch a tent in the parking lot of the prison and his opinion wouldn’t matter a whit. Still, for some reason it stung like a fresh blister that she had decided to give up her dream on such a hopeless quest.

“What do you think you’re going to accomplish as a second-year law student that Martin James—one of the most successful litigators in the western United States—couldn’t manage to do?”

“I don’t know. But I have to try. I can’t sit by and do nothing.”

“What does Hunter think about this whole thing?”

She shrugged. “He’s not happy about it, but he understands it’s something I have to do. You have no idea what its like to feel completely powerless to help someone you love.”

“Don’t I?” he murmured, clearly seeing the image never far from the surface—of a sweet little curly-blond-haired girl disappearing in a puff of exhaust while her skinny, gawky older brother frantically dug through sunbaked grass for the broken shards of his glasses.

He thought of how both he and Gage had never given up hope of finding their little sister. They had worked relentlessly over the years, following cold leads, looking for patterns, trying to see inside the mind of the sort of person who might commit such a heinous act against an innocent child and her family.

In the twenty-three years since he had last seen Charlotte running through the sprinklers of their Las Vegas front yard, he had never stopped loving her, missing her, searching for her. He had never given up—nor would he—and he knew Gage felt the same.

He couldn’t fault Taylor for her passionate effort to do anything necessary to appeal her brother’s conviction. How could he, when he had spent more than two decades chasing the ghost of his little sister?

“I couldn’t live with myself if I sat by and did nothing.” Taylor continued. “Hunter is innocent. No matter how strong the state’s case was against him, I will never believe otherwise.”

He studied her in the bright fluorescent lights of the diner. “You believe it strongly enough to change the entire course of your life?”

“How could I possibly go out into the world and try to save the lives of strangers, knowing that I did absolutely nothing to save the life of my own brother?”

“Do you miss med school?”

To his chagrin, her smile looked a little wobbly. “Like crazy,” she answered quietly, picking at her salad. “I’ve never wanted to be anything but a doctor, from the time I was a little girl. But I can always go back to med school once he’s free again. Hunter is worth any sacrifice.”

Wyatt couldn’t help comparing her devoted relationship with her brother to his own relationship with Gage. His brother, three years older, was an FBI agent assigned to the Salt Lake field office. Until a few months earlier when their paths had intersected again, they had had a polite relationship but little more than that. In most respects, they were strangers.

Once Gage had been his hero. Wyatt had idolized his older brother and wanted nothing more than to be just like him. Gage had been well-liked, athletic, the epitome of cool to his awkward nerd of a kid brother.

Charlotte’s kidnapping when he was nine and Gage twelve had changed everything. Each of them had retreated into a lonely world of remorse, regret. Guilt.

The strain and grief had been too much for their parents’ marriage and Sam and Lynn McKinnon eventually split up a year after the kidnapping that had ripped apart their world.

In what Wyatt was sure they considered a fair and logical arrangement at the time, Gage had stayed with their father in Las Vegas while Wyatt had been forced to pack up his books and his chemistry set and return with Lynn to her family’s ranch in Utah.

He had always felt that he had effectively lost not only a sister but a brother the day Charlotte was kidnapped.

He saw Gage only a handful of times during the rest of his childhood. His brother seemed to prefer things that way; their few encounters over the years had been marked by awkwardness and unease.

A few months after Gage moved back to Utah earlier in the summer, he was seriously injured during an attempt to arrest a suspect, and had met his fiancée Allie and her girls during his rehabilitation. In the process, Wyatt and his brother had begun to rebuild a relationship eroded over the years by time and distance.

He was rediscovering his brother, the strong, decent man he had admired so much during his early years, and he had to admit he was thoroughly enjoying the process.

He couldn’t imagine how difficult it must be for Taylor to have her brother’s pending execution hanging over her head.

“You called me quixotic,” she said at his pensive silence. “You think I’m tilting at windmills here, don’t you?”

He wanted to give her hope but he knew there was very little of that where Hunter Bradshaw was concerned. “You said it yourself. The case against your brother was a strong one, or twelve members of that jury wouldn’t have voted unanimously, first for conviction, then for the death penalty. You face staggering odds against overturning his conviction.”

Her eyes darkened with emotion at his words. “I know all that. But I have to try, Wyatt. I’m all he has.”

Taylor heard the raw desperation in her voice and wanted to cringe. So much for coming off confident and assured. She sounded like a crazed zealot. Her goal was to convince Wyatt McKinnon she had evidence proving Hunter’s innocence, not treat him to these maudlin displays of drama.

She had a fierce need for a little distance, and excused herself to hurry to the ladies’ room.

Martin was partly to blame, she thought. His behavior today was nothing new. Since the trial he had been evasive and hedgy. Whenever she tried to work with him on the appeal, she was inevitably shuffled to some associate or other. It was like trying to nail down the breeze.

She knew the attorney had taken Hunter’s conviction hard, had seen it as a personal failure. She didn’t—she knew Martin had worked tirelessly to see Hunter acquitted. She just wished she could get the same effort out of him for the appeal.

In the small ladies’ room, she gazed at herself in the round mirror and was horrified to see her coloring was blotchy and her eyes looked on the verge of tears. That was the problem with having auburn hair and pale skin—she could never hide her emotions. She blushed as easily as she could go deathly pale.

Out there in the diner she might have been only on the verge of tears, with not a single drop shed, but she still looked as if she’d been on a three-day crying jag.

Taylor spent several moments repairing her makeup and forcing herself to take slow, steady breaths until she felt once more in control, then returned to their booth.

She slid across from Wyatt. To her chagrin, she felt watery all over again at the look of concern on his lean features.

“I’m sorry. I’m not usually such an emotional wreck,” she felt compelled to explain. “Visits to the prison are…difficult for me.”

“I understand. I admire you for coming back week after week.”

“I would say it gets easier but that would be a lie. I hated it as much today as I did the very first time I visited.”

Taylor tried to swallow some of her salad, aware she didn’t have much time before she would have to leave for her study group. “So when you interview family members of convicted murderers, what do you usually talk about?”

“Any insights they want to offer into why the crime happened. Some people blame it on difficult childhoods, others bring up failed relationships. It varies. I usually let the interviewee lead the conversation. If you talk to me, you can bring up anything you’d like that might help me understand your brother.”

She could offer a hundred stories about how her brother had always protected her, how he had invariably stood between her and any threat, whatever the risk to himself. Telling any of them to Wyatt would be difficult, though, would expose dark family secrets she didn’t like to even remember, let alone reveal to anyone else.

If she had to, she would tell him, though. Just not here. Not now.

“There is evidence that never came out in the trial, for various reasons,” she said instead. “Evidence I believe proves his innocence beyond any reasonable doubt.”

He looked intrigued. “What kind of evidence?”

“I have a whole room full of folders and a computer full of files. If I agree to talk to you for your book, give you whatever information you might be seeking about our family life or whatever, withholding nothing, will you at least look at what I have—really look at it—and judge his guilt or innocence for yourself?”

“Of course. Even if you don’t want to be interviewed for the book I would still want to look at anything you have. Arriving at the truth is my ultimate goal as a writer. I wouldn’t be any kind of researcher if I ignored important details that might help me get there.”