Free Faith (Rescue Me, A Contemporary Romance) by Elizabeth Nelson Page B

years earlier, or called to turn her father in years ago, but she hadn’t. She’d helped him choose his victims, helped him stalk them, find out where they lived, even helped him torture and murder them if he’d demanded it.
    She’d confessed everything to the Ketchikan police to help lead them to the whereabouts of her evil, twisted father, but without any success, creating what the local news was calling, ‘the biggest man hunt in Alaskan history.”
    “Nope, this wasn’t your fault or her fault.” She repeated again. “Not really.”
    She sighed, wondering if anything she said would get through to him at some point.
    “The police will catch him Liam.”
    “So what,” he answered.
    “So what?” She repeated, confused.
    “Yeah, who cares if they catch him. I mean, I hope they do and they fry him in the chair, but it won’t bring dad back will it.”
    He was right. Nothing would bring Mac back. Not even when they captured the man responsible for his murder.
    “No, it won’t bring your dad back,” Faith agreed. “But it might give us some satisfaction and peace to know that he can’t hurt anyone else. No other family will have to go through this.”
    “I don’t care about anyone else,” he said gruffly.
    At that, she pulled the car roughly onto the side of the road and turned to him. Surprised he stared at her, headphones forgotten.
    “Don’t say anything like that ever again, do you hear me?” She asked him roughly. “Those are not the words of the kind, gentle, loving son I raised. Your father would hate to hear you say that. And I hate to hear you say that. You think Mac died in vain? Did that monster kill him for nothing? No. For some reason that girl of his came back to our house, none of the other victims ever saw them again, but she came back to our house and let herself be taken into custody. She confessed to the police after she killed our Mac.”
    Faith was shaking with fury and indignation. “Do you think that’s a coincidence? This was supposed to happen. It makes me sick to know that Mac was used by fate in this way, but damn it Liam if you won’t admit that your father’s death may have served to stop this sicko, then you and I have a lot of conversation left and we’re not moving from this stop until you give your father the respect his death deserves. He died and no one else will have to die if the police can find the man that did this. Mac did that. It was the last heroic thing he ever did, but he did that.”
    She was crying now and Liam was weeping too, his head against the window, not looking at her.
    “I miss him so much mom,” he cried.
    “Me too baby, me too.”
    She grabbed him and pulled him close to her like the little boy he would always be to her. He didn’t fight her embrace, just let himself be clutched tightly and cried into her hair and shoulders while she cried into his.
    They sat like that for what seemed like an eternity. Crying and reaching out for Mac’s spirit to be with them.
    Finally they sat in silence. Each emotionally spent and weary of the tragic turn their lives had taken.
    “Do you know the last thing your father said to me?” Faith asked Liam gently.
    He shook his head and rubbed his eyes.
    “He told us to live.”
    Liam just looked at her confused.
    “Did you hear me,” she demanded louder now. “The last thing your father asked of us was for us to live.”
    His blue eyes, so much like his fathers, looked back at her, wet with tears and red with sadness.
    “So what are we going to do about that?” She asked him.
    At first he didn’t move; didn’t look at her, but she could see the wheels moving in his head as he thought about what she’d told him.
    She watched as he steeled his shoulders, arming himself with an inner resolve.
    C’mon Liam, she thought as she gazed silently at him, find it in yourself to get through this baby.
    Finally, he turned to her, his blue eyes awash with unshed tears, but shining with a new steely