by E V Lind
Maybe if she told him he’d be able to dislodge that prickle at the back of his mind, the sense that he had to remain on alert. Instinct told him it had everything to do with Beth, but he’d thought that having her here under his roof would go some way to allaying the sensation. Instead, it just made the feeling stronger.
Or maybe you’re feeling something else, a tiny voice whispered at the back of his mind. Maybe he was becoming all too aware of Beth. Of the way her hair fell forward when she ducked her head, of the lush softness of her lips or the impression her teeth made on their fullness whenever she was thinking about something. Or even the way his body had reacted when he’d tackled her on the road that day a couple of weeks back. The way it was reacting now.
Behind him the jug switched off automatically and he used it as an excuse to turn away from her. He prepared a pot of tea and put it and a couple of mugs on the table, along with a carton of milk.
Beth seemed to have gathered herself together. Some of the worry that had clearly gripped her appeared to have eased. On the surface, at least.
“I saw Aggie today,” she started.
“It’s good of you to go see her. I know mom still does but most of the people she’s known over the years have either given up or passed on.”
“I thought she was more lucid today, initially at least. But she got horribly upset with me again.”
“And that upset you? You do know that two minutes after you left she’ll have forgotten about it, don’t you? Her distress is always very real at the time, but it is always short-lived.”
“I know. Well, deep down I know that, although it’s pretty awful at the time.”
“What did she say to unsettle you?”
“She knew about the baby? At least I think she did.”
“That you found it?”
“No,” Beth shook her head vehemently. “That it was born. She didn’t refer directly to a baby but she said her mother wrapped it up and put it away. Said they were never to speak of it. And then, when I left, she looked straight at me and told me not to let her mother take my baby. Why on earth would she say that?”
Ryan shook his head. “To be frank, people have long since stopped wondering why Aggie says any of the stuff she comes up with.”
Beth sighed. “I can understand that. She talks about Lizzie as if she’s in the present. As if she’s still her mother’s prisoner.”
“If her mother knew what happened to Lizzie, then I suppose she still is in a way.”
“It felt like more than that. It felt as if Aggie believes Lizzie is still locked inside the house.”
*
Beth looked at Ryan as he turned his mug around in his big hands, as though carefully contemplating her words. Did he think she was crazy, too? He’d listened to her when she’d told him about the weird things that had happened to her physically. He hadn’t laughed at her or told her she was mad. Hadn’t, even for a second, suggested that her reactions were psychosomatic and very likely linked directly to her own abuse and what she’d read in the diaries.
“Could she still be here?” she wondered aloud.
“Living? She’d be well into her nineties by now. I guess it’s possible she could still be alive but she’s not here in Riverbend and I think it’s pretty safe to say she’s not at the house. It’s just not big enough to hide any more secrets.”
Wasn’t it? Ryan’s response had been emphatic but the unsaid question hung between them.
“What about the old shed? You said Aggie was trying to dig something out from there when it collapsed on her.”
“Aggie was rabbiting on about her daddy, but d’you think Lizzie’s maybe buried under the shed?”
He could have been ridiculing her but when she looked into his gray eyes they were clear and questioning. Beth shook her head.
“I don’t know what to think any more. It’s just that...”
“That what?” Ryan prompted her as she fell into silence again.
“It just seems so real when Aggie says it. As if she’s still living it. I know she has dementia and that she was never what others considered,” she finger-quoted in the air, “normal, but she’s so sure when she talks about Lizzie. So certain about her when she’s so vague about everything else.”
“We can check if you like? I still have to clear the old shed away anyway. It had a packed dirt floor. It’d be a simple matter to get the backhoe in there and dig it up a few feet.”
Beth stifled a shudder. And if they did dig it up? What then? Would they find Lizzie? Would finding her, would giving her and her baby a decent burial give Aggie peace at last? And what of the house? What of the dark presence that lingered there? Would that move on, too?
Find me.
The two words echoed through her mind and Beth knew she hadn’t instigated them herself. The push to do something that came with them definitely came from somewhere, someone, else. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the voice and trying to ignore the desperation behind it.
“You’d do that? Dig it all up on a whim?”
“We both know it wouldn’t be a whim,” Ryan said firmly.
Proof again that he believed her. Without question. Without derision.
“Okay,” she breathed. “When?”
“I’ll do it tomorrow if the weather holds.”
“But I’ll be at work.”
“That’d be best, wouldn’t it? In case I find anything else?”
Beth nodded. She hadn’t thought that far. If he did find something the police would have to be called again. The very idea made her throat close and her chest grow tight.
“Good,” he said firmly and rose from the table. “That’s settled then.”
They made dinner together, working in near silent companionship while Snowball wove between them. As they ate at the table Beth began to wonder what kind of man Jonathon Jones had been.
“Do you remember your grandfather?”
“A bit. He was a lot older than my gran,” Ryan said leaning back in his chair. “He didn’t marry until he was into his forties, so he was in his late sixties when I came along. Being a prisoner of war for four years left him with long-term health issues. He died when I was six or seven. Before that, I never heard him say much. He was the strong silent type, I guess.”
“Apple didn’t fall far from the tree, then?” Beth said with a small smile. “Do you think he waited so long to marry because he was waiting for Lizzie to come back?”
“So they say. He certainly didn’t hurry to marry in the meantime. There was quite an age gap between him and my Gran and once my Dad was born they kept separate bedrooms. People said he was different after the war, but then again, they probably say that about all soldiers who see active combat. More so when they’ve been a prisoner of war.”
“Where was he held?”
“In the Pacific. It was brutal.”
“Coming home must have been so difficult for him. So strange by comparison to what he’d been through and what he’d remembered home being like before he’d shipped out. Has it been the same for you?”
Ryan looked at her for a while before speaking. “Y’know, no one has ever asked me that before. Everyone I know assumes that you do your tours, you come home, you go back to work again. They forget—the way we fight might have changed, but what it does to us hasn’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
“That anyone has had to do and see what you have. Your mom mentioned that you lost your best friend when you were injured. That must make it doubly hard.”
His face changed, became remote, his expression bleak. “What makes it hard is that I should have known better. I could have prevented it that day. If I’d have done my job Tuck, hell, my whole unit, would still be alive right now.”
“You can’t blame yourself, Ryan.”
“Can’t I? Don’t you? Don’t you blame yourself for the choices you made?”
Beth flinched as though he’d struck a personal blow. She g
athered up their plates and cutlery and took them over to the kitchen sink. She looked out the kitchen window, through the darkening evening to the shadows of the cows in the distant fields, then closer to the dogs still playing in the yard, then even closer still to her reflection in the glass. In the end, everything came down to her, she realized.
“I do,” she said roughly, her voice thick with unshed tears.
“Ah shit, I’m sorry,” he growled. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Ryan’s reflection appeared in the glass behind her. His eyes met hers. His hands lifted to rest warmly on her shoulders.
“Hey, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“No,” she protested, her fingers gripping the benchtop until they turned white. “You’re right. I do blame myself for my parents’ deaths and I blame myself for being so desperate for love and belonging that I allowed myself to be manipulated by someone who never loved me. It is my fault.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Is it? If I hadn’t chosen to go away to college, a decision that put my mom and dad in terrible debt, they’d never have been driving on the road that night in awful weather when they died. If they hadn’t been in so much debt their insurance and what little savings they’d had left wouldn’t have had to be used to meet their expenses. If I’d have just hardened up and taken some personal responsibility, I wouldn’t have been working at that diner, desperate for human contact. I wouldn’t have allowed myself to become a target for a man like—”
Ryan’s hands tightened on her shoulders and he turned her around to face him, a fierce expression pulling his brows into a straight line.
“You did what any normal kid gets to do. You aren’t to blame, Beth. Your parents could have told you “no” at any time. They could have said they couldn’t afford to send you away to college. They could have told you to take out a student loan. They could have chosen not to drive to see you when the weather was so bad. You didn’t make those decisions for them. They did. And as to that bastard and what he did to you. Don’t you ever blame yourself for that. That one is definitely on him. One hundred percent.”
He pulled her against his chest. Lean muscle formed a warm hard pillow for her cheek. A taste of the old familiar terror threatened to swamp her and she instinctively went to shove against him, to pull away, but the gentle strength of his broad hands stroked her back, soothed her.
Trust him.
The nudge in her mind was faint, but there. Beth forced herself to take a breath and to relax her tense muscles. The scent of him filled her nostrils and, strangely, comforted her. There was nothing artificial or repugnant about him. Just warmth and comfort. She relaxed a little more and inside her belly her baby shifted, as if it too wanted to get just a little closer to the safety and security Ryan represented.
His voice rumbled against her ear. “You okay?”
She nodded and pulled away, wiping at the tears that had slipped through her defenses and stained her cheeks. “Yeah, thanks. Can we strike a deal, though?”
“A deal?” He cocked one dark brow. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll stop blaming myself when you do.”
She saw that mask creep over his features again. The one that made his gray eyes go from warm and caring, to cold and distant.
“It’s different,” he said bluntly.
“Is it really?”
Beth turned her back on him, something she would never have dreamed of doing with Dan in the same room as her, she was startled to realize. She ran water to rinse their dishes and methodically stacked the dishwasher before turning it on.
Behind her, Ryan made a sound of irritation then she heard him stalk from the room. Seconds later she heard the sound of the TV coming on in the living room. Seemed her host was all too good at dishing out advice and absolutely useless at taking it. Beth put the jug on and made them both a hot drink and took it through to the living room.
She was on the verge of saying something to him when the news bulletin on the screen caught her attention.
“There have been no further developments in the investigation into who killed Colleen Davies last night. It’s believed that Ms. Davies was assaulted and murdered in her home in what was initially suspected to be a home invasion and arson...”
The rest of what the newsreader had to say was lost in the roar of sound that filled her ears. Beth’s vision blurred. Her breathing halted. The two mugs of cocoa fell from fingers that had suddenly lost all feeling and the last thing she heard before she lost consciousness was the crack of the mugs shattering as they hit the wooden planks of the sitting room floor.
THIRTY-FIVE
“Beth! Beth!”
Ryan ignored the pain in his leg as he dropped down beside her and checked her over carefully—feeling for a lump on her head, feeling for anything that would have caused her to drop like a sack of bricks the way she did. There was blood on the floor and he was relieved to discover it came from a small cut on her arm from a shard of ceramic and not from any major artery. She began to stir.
“Don’t get up,” he urged, leaning over her and checking her pupils as her eyes fluttered open.
Not surprisingly, she didn’t listen. Her face was white as a sheet and her breathing came in short gasps as she struggled to get upright. Ryan pushed himself to his feet and took her arm. She seemed disoriented—not entirely surprising given how she’d passed out just now—but there was more to it than that. And he needed to find out exactly what that was.
“Th-that woman...” she started before trailing off.
“The one who was murdered? Did you know her?”
“Colleen, yes. She worked with me at the diner.” Beth stopped again and took a deep breath. “She hid me after...I called her last Sunday.”
Ryan felt a sick sensation knot in his gut and he let out a long, slow breath. Shit. This didn’t look good.
“He did it, Ryan,” Beth suddenly blurted out. “He did it and now he’s coming after me. He knows where I am.”
“You don’t know that. You can’t be sure. She didn’t even know where you’re staying, right? You didn’t tell her, did you?”
Beth started shaking her head. Refusing to listen to him. “No, I didn’t. But he’s a clever man. A detective. He’s used to finding needles in haystacks. And, on suspension or not, he has contacts. He’s coming, I just know it.”
And Ryan knew it, too. The tension he’d felt before was nothing like what gripped him right now.
“I will keep you safe, Beth. I promise.”
“You can’t promise that. You don’t know him. You don’t know what he’s capable of.”
Ryan took her shoulders and made her face him. “You don’t know what I’m capable of, either. As to him, he’s a coward and a bully. He preys on the weak. If he even finds you, he’ll find that he has to get through me first.”
“I can’t ask that of you.”
“You’re not asking. I’m telling you,” Ryan said adamantly.
“I should go.”
“Go where? Somewhere else where you’re going to have to constantly be looking behind you, wondering when he’s going to pop out of the woodwork?”
Beth chewed on her lower lip and looked away.
“Admit it,” Ryan continued. “If you run you won’t have anyone looking out for you. At least here, you have us.”
“I don’t want your mom involved. I don’t want her to know—”
“You want to believe that a murderer is looking for you, is likely to find you and yet you don’t want to warn the people around you who care about you?” Ryan said harshly. “Think about it, Beth. Be rational. The more people who know about him, the better. We can protect you and ourselves. If we face the threat head on, we can eliminate it.” And hopefully, eliminate him in the bargain, Ryan thought grimly.
Beth shook her head. “You don’t know that. You don’t know what he’s like. He controlled me for years, Ryan. Years!” Her voice rose with every syllable, fear and anger vying
for priority. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I see him again, if my fear of him will still allow him to control me.” She took in a deep breath. “He killed Colleen. He tortured her and raped her and murdered her. In her home! If she wasn’t safe there, she wasn’t safe anywhere, was she?”
Ryan closed his eyes for a minute, allowing her emotional maelstrom to wash over him. “I get that,” he said, more gently this time. “But if he’s out there murdering people, then the police are out there looking for him, too.”
“They don’t know it’s him.”
“How can you be certain it is? What makes you think it’s him?”
“Because it’s what he does.” She swallowed hard. “Look, I just know, all right?”
Beth pulled away from him and went to stand close by the fireplace as if she was suddenly chilled to the bone. He couldn’t argue with her. He understood the power of those gut feelings and he knew the danger of not listening to them. A slow sullen spread of blood through the sleeve of her shirt reminded him of her injury and he headed for the first aid kit in the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” she asked, her voice filled with vulnerability.
“Stay there, I’ll be right back. I need to dress that cut on your arm.” He hesitated when she looked as though she’d object. “Unless you’d rather I took you to an emergency clinic?”
“No,” she said with a swift shake of her head. “Sorry, I didn’t realize I was bleeding. I should clean up that mess—”
“I’ll deal with it, after I’ve dealt with you.”
He fought to keep his voice level, knowing that the wrong tone—hell, even the wrong word—would be more than she could cope with right now. She was fighting to hold her shit together. Hearing about that woman had rocked her to her core, as it would anyone. Ryan made a mental note to research more about the woman’s murder. If this asshole was coming for Beth, he needed to know what he’d be dealing with.
He was back in a moment with the medical supplies. In direct contradiction to what he’d said, she was gathering the broken mug pieces into a small pile and had laid some old newspapers over the spilled cocoa to soak up the mess on the wooden floor.
