Susan Mallery - Hot On Her Heels

She jumped up, grateful for the interruption, and crossed the small room. After flipping both locks, she let Lexi and Skye into her condo.

“It’s actually cold out there,” Skye said as she slipped off a light jacket. “I’m so ready for winter.”

Dana grinned. “It’s sixty-five.”

Lexi rested her hand on her pregnancy bump. “Speaking as someone who is starting to swell professionally, I’m all for cooler weather.” She grabbed Dana’s arm. “Did you get him? Is he in jail, becoming Bubba’s love slave?”

“No. He was questioned and released.”

“Damn.”

“It’s fine,” Izzy said, standing and hugging both her sisters. “I promise. Look, you need to sit down. There’s something I have to tell you.”

Both Skye and Lexi turned to Dana. “What has she done now?” Skye asked.

Dana held up her hands. “This is not my party. I’m simply a neutral location. But you might want to take a deep breath. It’s going to be quite the ride.”

Lexi and Skye exchanged wary looks before sitting on the sofa. Dana stayed by the door, thinking Izzy’s announcement was going to cause an amazing explosion. She wanted to be able to see everything.

Izzy shook her head, then fluffed her curly hair. “I have an announcement,” she began.

“We got that,” Lexi said, keeping a protective hand on her stomach. “What is it?”

“It’s about Garth. As you know, I talked to him right before Nick and I got back together. He took Nick’s side and responsibility for what had happened.”

“As he should have,” Skye snapped. “The man goes out of his way to destroy everything you two had worked toward. It just makes me so mad.”

“Excuse me.” Izzy shook her head. “I was talking. While I was with Garth, I had an epiphany. I realized that he’s our flesh and blood. Okay, I’ve known that for a while now, but they were just words. They didn’t mean anything.”

Lexi look at Dana. “Where is this going?”

“I am staying neutral here.”

Lexi turned back to Izzy. “What’s your point?”

Izzy smiled. “We’ve been trying to defeat him for months and it hasn’t worked. The strategy is totally flawed. We shouldn’t be fighting him. We should be protecting him from himself. That’s what I wanted to tell you both. Garth is our brother and it’s our job to bring him into the family. We’re going to save him.”

Skye and Lexi stared at their sister. They were both wide-eyed with shock. Their mouths fell open.

Dana folded her arms across her chest and shook her head. “Welcome to the show.”

“SAVE HIM?” LEXI SHRIEKED, coming to her feet and glaring at Izzy. “Are you insane? Are you still on some kind of medication from your eye surgery, because you’re talking crazy. We’re not saving him. He tried to kill you. You were nearly left blind. That’s not okay. That can never be okay. And he’s still bent on ruining all of us. Save Garth? From what? For what?”

“You need to stay calm and sit down,” Izzy told her sister. “Think of the baby.”

“You leave my baby out of this. If you were so concerned about my baby, you wouldn’t be worried about a man who is doing everything he can to make our lives hell.” Lexi pushed her blond hair off her face. “Dammit, Izzy, I expect better of you.”

Dana moved toward the sofa. If necessary, she would get between the sisters to make sure things didn’t get too ugly.

Izzy stiffened. “You can expect all you want. What matters is I talked to Garth. He’s family, Lexi. He’s as biologically related to us as we are to each other. He’s been hurt. Dad screwed him and you know it.”

“Fine. Jed was horrible to both Garth and his mother. But that doesn’t give him the right to come after us. We had nothing to do with it.”

“He’s not responsible for the oil rig exploding. I believe him and Nick believes him. Look, think of him like Darth Vader. He needs to be saved from himself.”

“You really think that using movie examples will help your case?” Lexi asked.

Dana glanced at Skye who was listening intently, but not saying anything. Izzy’s strategy was flawed. Skye was the more emotional of the sisters. If Izzy wanted the three of them to cooperate, she should have convinced Skye first. Then the two of them could have worked on Lexi.

“He’s our brother,” Izzy repeated stubbornly. “I saw something inside of him.”

“The ravages of a black and empty heart,” Lexi muttered.

“I saw who he was supposed to be.” Izzy leaned forward. “I saw flashes of the fourteen-year-old boy who begged his own father, a man who had never acknowledged him, for the money to save his mother from a brain tumor. Jed turned him away. Jed threw him into the street. Jed is the reason he wants revenge.”

“We all know this,” Skye said quietly.

“But the person he should have been is still there. Imagine what Garth would be like if his mother had never gotten sick. Imagine if we’d met him when we were ten or fifteen. If we’d grown up together. We would have been a family.”

“It’s too late to go back,” Lexi said flatly.

“But it’s not too late to go forward. If you exclude the explosion, then he hasn’t really hurt us.”

“Not for lack of trying.”

“He wanted me to get together with Nick,” Izzy said.

“He’s the reason you broke up in the first place,” Lexi reminded her.

“Agreed, but he realized he was wrong. He came to me and pleaded Nick’s case. Nick didn’t know he was doing that. Garth had no reason to help us, but he did. He’s not all bad.”

Lexi and Skye looked at each other. Izzy saw the exchange and pounced.

“Why would he do that and lie about the explosion? He admitted to everything else.” Izzy glanced at Dana. “Not in a way that can be used in court.”

“I figured that.”

Lexi sighed and turned to Dana. “You didn’t try to talk her out of it?”

“I tried,” Dana told her. “But she’s very much her own person. Which is mostly your fault. She’s your baby sister. You should have repressed her more as a child. But no. You had to nurture her. This is what you get as a thank-you.”

“Very funny,” Lexi said. “Do you have anything serious to add?”

Dana glanced at all of them. “Izzy’s not an idiot and she has good instincts about people. Do I think she’s right? I don’t know. Am I willing to say she’s totally and completely wrong?” She hesitated. “No.”

Izzy grinned. “See. Dana believes me.”

“That’s not what I said,” Dana told her.

“Close enough.” Izzy smiled at her sisters. “We’ve got big-time pressure here. I want Garth in the family fold by Christmas. Then we can all celebrate together.”

“I’m sorry I’m going to miss that,” Dana said, almost meaning it. Talk about an uncomfortable day.

“You won’t,” Izzy told her, grinning.

“You’re the one he tried to kill,” Skye said, speaking for the first time. “You’re totally sure he wasn’t responsible?”

Izzy’s smile faded. She leaned forward and stared into Skye’s eyes. “I swear. I believe him. He’s not innocent in this. But he had his reasons for acting against us and he’s our brother. I know down to my soul that bringing him into the family is the only way to stop all this. To make it better.”

“Jed will never accept him,” Skye said.

“This isn’t about Jed, it’s about us. Jed has proven again and again that none of us matter to him. But that’s okay because we have each other. And now we have Garth.”

Skye was quiet for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Okay.”

Izzy jumped to her feet. “I knew you’d understand.”

“Maybe she does, but I don’t,” Lexi said. “Even if I accept he didn’t try to kill you, which I don’t, big deal. What about everything else? He still has a lot to answer for.”

Skye nodded. “Lexi’s right. We have to be sure. We all have to be sure this isn’t a trick. That he hasn’t come up with a new strategy. Maybe he wasn’t responsible for the explosion. Maybe that was just bad timing or something. But there are other questions that still have to be answered.”

Dana cleared her throat. “Technically this isn’t Garth’s strategy. It’s Izzy’s. I don’t think he wants to be drawn into the family.”

“Which will make the process even more unpleasant,” Lexi murmured.

“We have to do this,” Izzy said stubbornly. “We have to save him.”

“If he’s worth saving,” Skye said. “How do we know for sure?”

There was a moment of silence as the women looked at each other. Suddenly Izzy grinned.

“Piss him off,” she announced happily. “If I’m right and there’s a nice guy just waiting to get out, he may be annoyed but he won’t act out. If he’s as horrible as you three think, he’ll show his true colors. Stress brings out a person’s real character.”

“She’s right,” Skye said slowly. “If we can get in his face, we’ll figure him out pretty quickly.”

“We need to provoke him in an obvious way,” Dana said, moving toward them, liking the idea of annoying Garth.

Skye smiled. “What about if one of us shadows him? Two birds with one stone-either we catch him being evil to someone else or he reacts to our personal surveillance.”

Lexi nodded. “If he’s everything Izzy claims, he’ll understand. If not, maybe he’ll get mad and show us what’s underneath that tough facade. It’s a win-win. I like it.”

“I don’t,” Izzy said, “but I see the point of it. So which one of us should it be?”

Dana thought about everything that had happened in the past few months, how scared her friends had been and about Garth’s ruthless actions. She thought about how Jed had ignored his own daughters, virtually leaving them on their own to handle a situation he’d created. She thought of how much each of the Titan sisters meant to her.

“I’ll do it,” she said, looking at them. “I’ll take a leave of absence and stay on Garth full-time.”

“You can’t,” Skye said.