Caitlin was stunned speechless. She got up and took five steps away from the sofa, her cheeks filling with blood. “You’re asking me to compromise every principle I hold dear.”
Tom’s eyebrows went up again. “Am I? I don’t think so. I’m just asking you to forgo the glory of breaking the case—and only for a little while, really. You could still write a book about the case, after Forrest was in prison. Or dead.”
The blood drained from her cheeks. She felt as though he’d slapped her face.
“I’m sorry to put it so bluntly,” Tom said gently. “I know your work is your passion. It means more to you than almost anything else. Maybe more than everything.” He smiled sadly again. “Only you know the answer to that.”
Caitlin wanted to argue, but she couldn’t find her voice. Her throat felt like something had lodged in it, blocking the air. But the worst thing was that Tom had read her innermost desires as accurately as a gifted physician diagnosing a disease. She brushed back her bangs and looked around the room like someone seeing the world for the first time.
“I can see the idea doesn’t appeal to you,” Tom said. “But before you decide, let me make the existential argument. Because despite what happened at Brody Royal’s house last night, you don’t seem to grasp the reality of the danger. Think about your baby, Caitlin. Think about Penn and Annie. Think about Peggy and me. Is anything more important than that?”
“The truth,” she said in a taut voice, but the word sounded hollow even to her.
Tom took another deep, labored breath. “Most times I’d agree with you. But please believe me: if you go after the Knoxes as you intend to, they will kill you. Penn will lose his second wife, Annie her second mother.”
“Don’t do that!” Caitlin snapped. “Don’t put that on me.”
“That’s where we are,” Tom said sadly.
“Because of you!”
“Absolutely. The guilt is mine, inescapably and forever.”
He said this with such desolation that guilt knifed through her own heart. “Tom—”
“Melba must be frozen solid by now,” he said, getting to his feet and walking toward the kitchen.
“Wait.” Caitlin darted after him and grabbed his arm. “What will you do if I won’t help you?”
Tom shrugged, refusing to meet her gaze.
A paralyzing fear had bloomed in her belly. “Tell me you won’t just wait here for them to find and kill you. Promise me that right now, or I’m calling Penn.”
Tom took hold of her hands. “No. That’s not it.”
Caitlin realized she had tears in her eyes. “Don’t lie to me. Please. Do you think that if you’re shot while on the run, the investigation into Viola’s death will end and everybody else will be safe?”
Tom sighed heavily. “Last night that thought actually crossed my mind. When those gunmen showed up at Drew’s place . . . I thought about simply letting them finish me.” He squeezed her hands tight again. “Then I got your text message about being pregnant. And it was like a switch being thrown in my chest. I knew I had to survive, Cait, for as long as I could, anyway. For that child, for you and Penn . . . for Peggy. Less than a minute later, I killed a man because I wanted to live so badly. So, don’t worry that I’m going to throw my life away.”
As Caitlin wiped tears from her eyes, Tom smiled through his white beard and gripped her shoulders with surprising strength. “I’m glad you’re pregnant.”
“Without benefit of clergy?”
He laughed deep in his chest. “I won’t have it said I’m a man of hidebound morals.”
Caitlin wanted to laugh, but she felt tears running down her face. “Goddamn it, Tom. Can’t we just call Penn? If something happens to you out here, he’ll never forgive me for it. Never.”
“I’m sorry to put you in that position,” he said. “But I’ve got to remain free until Walt gets back. And there’s no way Penn would allow me to do that. All he sees is his father in danger. Walt’s who I need now.”
“What do you really think Walt can do? I’ve told you Mackiever can’t even save himself.”
“It’s not just Walt,” Tom said soothingly. “Think about where you are. It’s Quentin, too. That’s a lot of legal firepower, Cait.”
“Quentin thinks you’re doing the right thing?”
Tom nodded, his eyes as steady as she’d ever seen them.
“Jesus, you make life hard. How long do you expect me to keep this from Penn?”
“Twenty-four hours. If I can’t do what I need to by then, I’ll go to the FBI and tell them I killed John Kennedy, if that’s what it takes to get protection.”
A hysterical laugh escaped Caitlin’s throat. She knew she shouldn’t agree to be complicit in his deception, but after refusing his request to hold off on covering the Knoxes in the Examiner while covertly helping the FBI, she couldn’t bring herself to deny him this. “You swear?”
Tom grinned. “Cross my heart.”
“God.” She shook her head and broke eye contact with him. Tom Cage had to be the most persuasive man she had ever met. “Let’s get Melba back in here.”
“Wait,” he said sharply. “What are you going to be doing for the next twenty-four hours? I know you won’t be content just sitting on the sidelines, writing stories based on Henry’s work.”
“No. I have a line on the place where Pooky Wilson’s body may have been dumped. And maybe Frank and Snake Knox’s father’s as well.”
All the levity went out of Tom’s face. “Elam Knox? Where’s that?”
She thought about holding her silence, but Tom couldn’t betray her secret to anyone. “Have you ever heard of something called the Bone Tree? Before reading my newspaper story, I mean?”
Tom focused somewhere in the space between them, like an old man looking deep into the past. “Ray Presley once told me he’d heard that story about the Wilson boy being crucified out there.”
Caitlin wasn’t surprised. “Did he know where the tree was?”
“No. But he spoke of it like a real place.”
“Is that all you know?”
Tom sat on a bar stool and drank some of the tea she and Melba had made. “It’s gone cold.”