The Hero's Redemption

Seeing her uncomprehending stare, he knew he was wasting his breath. She’d stalled on the certainty that, as the driver, she and only she was responsible.

“Erin?”

She blinked a couple of times and finally focused again on his face.

“Were you hurt?”

“I had a concussion. Broken collarbone and arm and ribs.” Apparently without noticing, she touched each place on her body, all on the left side. “I was in the hospital for a few days. It was nothing. Not compared to—” She started breathing too fast.

Nothing? he thought incredulously. She meant she wasn’t dead.

“Were you charged? Did anybody blame you?”

Her forehead wrinkled with what looked like perplexity. “I wasn’t charged with anything. But I’m sure some of the parents blamed me. They trusted me to take care of their daughters, and I didn’t.”

He’d known guys in prison who were stuck, kind of like this, but in reverse. Phil Mumford didn’t think he’d gotten any justice. It wasn’t his fault. He’d just gone along for the ride. None of it was his idea, so why should he get the same prison term as his two buddies? Or Ronnie Ferrell. Cole must’ve heard him say the same thing a hundred times. If I’d just jumped out and run, those cops never would have caught me. I should’ve just jumped out and run. I’d’a got away for sure. If I’d just jumped out… Cole wasn’t the only one who avoided both Ronnie and Mumford. He never bothered to say the obvious. Every single inmate should have done something different. If they had, they wouldn’t be there.

Yeah, Erin’s problem was the flip side of Ronnie’s or Mumford’s. She was so damn determined to accept responsibility for all those deaths that she never let herself hear people say, It wasn’t your fault. He even understood. Cole had read about soldiers who were the only survivors out of their entire platoons. They spent the rest of their lives asking, Why me? Imagining all the accusing eyes…

Survivor guilt. He knew the term.

He became aware that Erin held herself as if she was waiting for something from him. Reassurance? Cole seriously doubted that. Plenty of people must have already tried. Judgment, then? Condemnation? Probably.

“Have you had any counseling?” Ah, the irony of his suggesting it, when he’d balked at attending any counseling sessions when he was in the pen. “I mean, a chance to talk about this?”

“At first.” Erin shrugged dismissively. “It didn’t do any good. How could it?”

“If you’re suicidal, you need help.”

“I’m not! I told you—”

“You’re playing word games,” he said flatly. “And you know it.”

She kept staring at him, her eyes luminous with gold and green and a hint of earthy brown he hadn’t noticed before.

He huffed out his breath. “That’s why you weren’t scared of me, isn’t it? You figured if I slit your throat, hey, that’s just another way of making it happen.” Hammered by what he’d realized, Cole dropped her hand and straightened. “Is that why you hired me? Did you hope I was a killer?”

“No!” She scraped her chair back. “I’m not that far gone.”

“Sure you are.”

“I’m not.” She said it softly. “Most of the time, I’m not. I just…feel this pressure building.” She pressed the heel of her hand to her breastbone. “It’s as if they’re all waiting for me. I can almost see them. Hear them.”

Cole swore and let his head fall back. “You really don’t know how illogical you’re being.”

“What do you mean?”

Pinning her with his gaze again, he asked, “Were you close to those girls? Did they care about you?”

She bit her lip. “Yes. They…came to me with problems. I think they really trusted me.”

Which made their deaths even harder for Erin. But he said, “You make it sound like they’re baiting you. Like they want you to die. If you’d died and only one of them had survived, wouldn’t you be glad for her—if you could know?”

“Yes, but that’s different. The accident wasn’t their fault. It was mine.” She’d circled right back, her mental tape in a loop.