Today you rubbed my back after I got sick. It felt so good. It’s like you’re the mother now and I’m the child. You’re a natural-born caretaker, CeeCee. How did I get so lucky to have you as a daughter?
She climbed into Tim’s van and leaned over to kiss him, and she knew right away that he was nervous. His smile was brief and false and he didn’t hold her gaze the way he usually did. Instead, he started driving.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing. I just don’t want to talk in front of your house.”
He probably thought Ronnie would be watching from the window.
“Should we go to your house?”
He shook his head and turned the corner into the parking lot of an old Baptist church. “Marty’s there,” he said, “and I want to talk to you alone.”
Oh, God. He was going to propose.
He turned off the ignition. “It’s getting kind of chilly out. Will you be okay if we just sit here for a while?”
“I’m fine,” she said.
The parking-lot lights filled the car and he looked pale, almost sick, in their glow. “I’ve got something heavy to talk to you about,” he said.
She couldn’t stop her smile. “Okay.” She would have to be very kind when she turned him down, very loving. She’d make sure he knew it was the timing that was wrong, not the proposal itself.
Tim rubbed his palms together as if trying to warm himself up.
“There’s a way you can help Andie,” he said.
Surprised, she swallowed the words she’d been ready to say. He was not going to ask her to marry him. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed.
“How?” she asked.
He looked at her squarely for the first time since she got in the car. “I’m not sure how to tell you,” he said, pressing his hands together. “I guess what I need to say first is that Marty and I have been working on a plan. But it’s illegal.” He watched her face for a reaction. “And it’s dangerous,” he added.
She clutched his arm. “What are you talking about?” She remembered the waitress, Bets, who told her Tim was a dangerous man, and she felt a quick, sharp fear that she could lose him. He could get arrested and locked away, the way Andie was.
“You don’t have to say you’ll do what I ask. Okay?” He covered her hand with his. “I mean, I love you, babe. I’m going to go on loving you whether you help me with this or not. Is that clear?”
“Yes,” she said, “but—”
“Do you want me to tell you the plan or would you rather not know?”
“Well, I have to know what I’m saying yes or no to, don’t I?”
“If I tell you, you have to swear that you won’t breathe a word to anyone. Not Ronnie or anyone. So, if you might have a hard time doing that, please let me know now so I don’t—”
“I won’t tell anyone,” she said. “I promise.” They were planning to break Andie out of prison. What else could make him this jumpy and anxious? Maybe they’d ask her to drive the getaway car or something. If that was the only way to save Andie’s life, could she do it? “Dangerous” was an understatement. “If she’s on death row,” she said, “won’t it be nearly impossible to get her out?”
“What?” Tim looked confused. “Oh. No, that’s not it, CeeCee.” He let go of her and ran both hands through his hair. “You know we’ve tried every legal way to get her sentence reduced, right?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Now, we have to play hardball. Listen to me.” He took both her hands in his. “Marty and I are going to kidnap Governor Russell’s wife.”
“What?” She giggled. “Are you kidding?”
He looked away from her, not a hint of a smile on his face, and she knew he was not kidding at all. “I’m very serious,” he said.
“Tim.” She let go of his hand, reached up and turned his face toward hers. “This is crazy,” she said. “This is like something Marty would come up with. Is this his idea?”
“Mine, actually,” he said. “And it’s not crazy. We’ve got it all worked out.”
“I can’t believe you’d even think of doing something like this.”
“I won’t tell you anything more about it, then,” he said. “Just don’t say anything to anyone.”
“I told you I wouldn’t. But I’m not following you at all. How will kidnapping the governor’s wife help Andie?”
“We’ll let her go when he commutes her sentence.”
“Then you could end up in prison, too,” she said.
“I won’t.”
“What if he won’t do it?”
“I believe he will.”
“But you—”
“Look.” He raised his hands sharply in the air, suddenly angry. “It’s going to work, okay? I need it to work. So please, cool it with the ‘but this’ and ‘but that.’ It doesn’t help.”
It was the first time he’d ever raised his voice to her and she had to struggle to keep from crying. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He pressed his palms against his eyes, his breathing harsh. “Shooting holes in a plan you know nothing about…it doesn’t make it any easier on me, CeeCee.”
She bit her lip, unsure what to say. When he dropped his hands from his face, his eyes were red and wet.
“It’s my sister, damn it!” He pounded his fist on the steering wheel. “I have to help her.”
“I know,” she said, “and I know how much you love her.” She leaned forward to embrace him, wanting to absorb some of his pain. “What exactly did you want me to do?” she asked.
“Don’t worry about it. We can get somebody else to do it.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his jacket and lit one, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs. “There’s this girl in SCAPE who’d probably—”
“Tell me what you wanted me to do,” she repeated.
He sighed, rolling his head back and forth as though the conversation was making his neck ache. “It’s like this,” he said. “Some relatives of ours have a cabin on the Neuse River near New Bern. Do you know where that is?”
“Sort of,” she said. “It’s a couple of hours from here?”
“Right. They don’t ever use it this time of year, so that’s where we’ll take the wife. Then Marty and I will stay in this other house in Jacksonville and communicate with Russell—the governor—from there. Once Russell says he’ll do it, we’ll go get the wife and return her to him. Unharmed,” he added.
“You’ll just leave the wife alone in the cabin? Won’t she—” She caught herself. She was shooting holes again.
“That’s where you’d come in,” he said. “You…or the girl from SCAPE or whoever…you’d stay with her.”
She tried to imagine herself, sixteen years old, trying to keep a grown woman under lock and key. “I don’t think I could do it,” she said.
“I know you don’t think you could.” He touched her cheek, and she was relieved that his anger had passed. “You don’t want to do it, and that’s cool. You’re just someone Marty and I knew we could trust. We need someone who’d make sure the wife stays safe and who’d take care of her. You’re really good at that kind of thing. I don’t know the girl from SCAPE all that well, but maybe she’ll be good at it, too. You care about Andie and Marty and me, so it just made sense to ask you.”
Guilt rested on her shoulders like a lead weight. He’d done so much for her. The girl from SCAPE, sure of her values and ready to fight for them, would be willing to help them when she didn’t even know them.
“Tim.” She leaned across the space between their seats to put her arms around him, careful to avoid the cigarette. “I wish you wouldn’t do this. It’s too dangerous.”
He let out a long sigh and she heard both frustration and disappointment in the sound. “It’s the only choice we’ve got, CeeCee,” he said, turning the key in the ignition. “And we’re going to do it. With you or without you.”