Legend (Arizona Vengeance #3)(71)

“Yeah…I got this,” I tell him.

“As a last resort, we have a sharpshooter trained on Lida. We don’t want it to go there to keep Charlie as safe as possible. Anything you can do to get that kid in your arms safely, you do it.”

    “Got it,” I tell him, and I think of Pepper’s face and how she watched me cry for my kid and loved me even more.

She has faith in me.

I so totally fucking got this.

I start the walk toward Lida. She’s at least a couple hundred yards away and I feel the weight of her stare with every step I take. She has Charlie wrapped in a blanket and held up against her chest and shoulder so I can’t see any part of my daughter.

When I reach her, I come to a stop about twenty feet away, just as Nordstrom advised me to do until I could get a feel for how jittery she might be.

She gives me a relieved smile and her voice sounds like I’m the most wondrous thing she’s ever seen. “You came.”

For Charlie, not you, I think to myself.

But I smile back. “Of course, I did.”

“I wasn’t sure,” she says and then drops her gaze away.

“What are you doing, Lida?” I ask her slowly. “What’s with parking on the bridge here?”

Her eyes snap back to me. “They trapped me. I had nowhere else to go.”

“You’re making me kind of nervous being so close to that railing with Charlie,” I tell her gently as I take one step toward her with my hand held out. “How about you come away from it a bit.”

Her body hunches protectively around Charlie, eyes filled with suspicion and she actually takes a step back from me so her back comes up against the steel.

    “Hey,” I call out to her and take two steps back myself to give her space. “It’s fine. You and I are cool. I’m not here to hurt you or anything.”

She throws her head toward the end of the bridge where there’re at least ten cop cars parked. “They want to hurt me. Take me away to jail.”

I take in a breath and hope to fuck I can sell this lie. “They don’t, Lida. Pepper is fine, and so is Lucy. I’ve let them know the stress you’ve been under, and well…you’ve had medical issues that will obviously explain all of this. Come with me and we can work on being a family.”

“You think I’m stupid,” she hisses at me. “Pepper and Lucy may be fine but I still shot one and hit the other. I kidnapped Charlie. I know damn well what that means. There’s no family when I’m in jail.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“All right then,” I say as I throw my arms out helplessly. “What do you want from me? Why did you ask that I come here?”

She looks unsure and to my relief, she moves Charlie from her shoulder and cradles her instead so I can see her face. She’s awake and smiling up at Lida.

Lida looks at me with tears in her eyes. “Look at that…she knows who I am. She knows I’m her mom.”

I decide to run with that. I’m not about to tell her Charlie smiles at everyone.

I take a few steps closer and crane my neck to look at my daughter. “Wow. Look at that.”

Lida looks at me again and she’s beaming a wide smile. “I knew she’d remember me.”

    I smile back at her and it’s the most fake, dishonest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I feel greasy for doing it.

“The mother-child bond,” I murmur gently and inch another foot closer. “It transcends everything, doesn’t it?”

Lida stares at me a moment and nods. Her gaze goes back to Charlie. “I just wanted to see her. If you’d only let me see her, none of this would have happened.”

My knees wobble and almost give out as guilt slams into me. I’d been so sure the correct thing to do was keep her away. Did my hard-ass stance drive Lida to do this?

“You know I had no choice,” she says quietly before regarding me again. Her voice is calm and her words come out as if meticulously planned. “I had to see her. It was tearing me up not to. And I thought that perhaps we could be a family. It’s why I shot Pepper. I thought with her out of the way you’d let me back in.”

I don’t say a word to her because my blood is boiling like a volcano getting ready to erupt. I’m also shocked she’s admitting the motive to her crimes to me.

She must read it on my face because she grimaces when she says, “Except Lucy walked in on it and saw me there. I knew then my plan wouldn’t work. That I’d have no choice but to just take Charlie.”

“You can’t just take her away from me,” I say with a bit of pleading to my tone. “I love her and I think you know that. And Lida…I don’t think you ever wanted to hurt me in all this.”

“No,” she agrees and runs a finger along Charlie’s cheek. “I didn’t want to hurt you. You’re a good dad. I knew you would be.”

    My breath catches when she bends to kiss Charlie and then walks up to me without any hesitation. I have to control myself so I don’t snatch my daughter away from her.

Air fills my lungs as she places Charlie in my arms. “Will you tell her I loved her from the very beginning?”

“Yes,” I say, wondering how I’m going to explain to my daughter that her mom is in prison for a lot of bad things. Regardless of that, I do believe Lida loves her. “Of course. I’ll tell her.”