“You can’t get away with this forever. If I die, Liam will hunt down my murderer like a dog.”
“Dead dogs don’t hunt.” Fairfax laughed at his own black humor. “I’ll kill you, and then next time, instead of hiring someone to take a potshot at Andrews, I’ll shoot him down myself.”
So that’s who’d shot at Liam. No doubt he’d also been the one chasing them the night Liam was released from the hospital.
“No one will believe two women died in this same house from freak accidents,” she pointed out, appealing to his brain rather than his nonexistent heart.
“They won’t be able to prove otherwise. Besides, if I’m going down, you’re going down with me.”
He ran a callused finger from her chin to her gut.
“Too bad I can’t cut you open, feel your warm blood in my hands, watch it ooze out of your body. Funny thing, I have to stab those homeless men in the back, so they don’t see my face. Just in case. One day I want to run my knife down a woman. Watch her eyes as the life drains from her body. Maybe today’s my lucky day.”
Oh God, she had to distract him from this path. His breathing had gone huskier, and excitement crackled in his eyes. Would he lose control if he dwelled on this fantasy? Her mind scrabbled for a distraction.
“Wait! You were seen coming here today.”
The excitement in his eyes melted. “You’re lying.”
“No. I was warned you were coming.”
“Yeah, by who? Your make-believe shadow dweller?”
“He’s here.” Harper turned her face away. This was her one chance. He was out there, she was sure of it. She was not crazy. Whoever he was, he wasn’t a killer. Fairfax was the murderer, not him.
“Help me,” she screamed. “Please!”
“Shut up.”
Fairfax lifted her in his arms as though she were as weightless as a rag doll, as though her kicking and flailing fell harmlessly against an armor of steel.
A flash of white materialized in the dark shadows, followed by a pop of brilliance as the lights switched on. The shadow dweller appeared, a cutlery knife clutched in one dirty hand.
“Drop her, Fairfax.”
“What the hell?” he asked, bewildered.
His arms loosened, and she fell to the floor, scrabbling crab-like away from Fairfax and toward the other man.
Fairfax growled and lunged at her would-be savior. A sickening thud of flesh and bones hit the floor. He was astride the smaller man in a trice.
Outside, a siren sounded. Even though faint, she took heart that help was on the way.
She had a choice. Make a run for the door—or help the man who’d tried to save her. Damn it. That really wasn’t a choice at all.
Harper ran past both the sprawling figures and returned to the dining room for that glass candlestick she’d missed earlier. The glass felt smooth and hard in her fist as she returned to the wrestling men. The smaller guy was pinned, and Carlton had seized the knife from him. He raised it, poised for a death blow.
“No!”
Fairfax paused, glancing up as if he’d just remembered her presence. It bought her a moment. With all her strength, Harper swung the candlestick, and the blow landed on his left temple. Blood erupted and arced over her and the floor. Fairfax dropped the knife, covered the wound with both his hands and then curled into a fetal position.
The shadow dweller snatched the knife and rose.
They faced one another in the darkness as outside the sirens drew nearer. He, knife at his side, and she, grasping the bloodied candlestick holder. Behind them in the shadows, Carlton groaned.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “For saving me.”
“You saved me,” he countered.
“We saved each other.”
The siren’s blare had reached near-deafening level. Blue lights strobed into the den through the curtain cracks. Any moment, the cops would burst through. This was her moment.
“You’re real. I did see you the night Presley died. You were there.”
“I tried to help her. But it was too late. So, I ran away and hid. Like I always do.”
“Where did you hide when—”
Pounding rained down on the front door. “Harper? Are you there? Open the door, honey.”
Liam. The adrenaline that had fueled her energy—for what seemed to be hours but couldn’t have been more then fifteen minutes—crashed and burned, leaving her exhausted. Her legs were concrete pillars, and it took a mammoth effort to walk the twelve feet to the door and unlock it. “I’m coming,” she called through the barricade.
Sunlight and fresh air touched her face before Liam pulled her in for a quick, tight hug. “You okay? Where’s Fairfax?”
Liam let go and entered the den. His hand reached for his sidearm. “Who are you?” he demanded of the shadow dweller.
“Ralph.” The man’s voice broke, and his skinny frame trembled so violently she was afraid he’d drop into a dead faint.
“It’s okay,” she rushed in. “He helped me. Fairfax is on the floor by the dining room window. I—I hit him.” Belatedly, she stared down at the candlestick holder she still grasped.
Bryce entered, gun drawn. “I’ll watch this guy,” he told Liam. “Find my...find Carlton.”
She set the candlestick holder on an end table and eyed Bryce as he stood there, gun aimed on Ralph.
Presley’s lover. The father of the unborn baby that never had a chance at life. “Your dad confessed,” she told him. “Did you know he killed Presley?”
Bryce didn’t look at her, but the gun in his hands shook. “I suspected,” he admitted.
From behind them, Liam’s voice rang out. “Call an ambulance while I cuff him and read him his rights.”
Oh, God. How badly had she hurt him?
“Bitch tried to kill me,” she overheard Fairfax grumble.
“Too bad she didn’t.” Liam’s voice boomed through the house as he read Fairfax his rights.
And then pandemonium.
More cops arrived and stormed through the door. She sat down on the sofa and indicated for Ralph to sit beside her. An unmistakable odor clung to him, but she was too tired and grateful to care. A stretcher was pushed through the door and Carlton was strapped onto it. Bryce loomed over his father, his face stricken. “Why did you have to kill her?”
Carlton didn’t even pretend to not understand. He reached out a hand. “I did it for you, son.”
Bryce ignored his father’s outstretched hand and took a step back, signaling for the EMT workers to wheel him away.
“I did it for you,” Carlton again insisted as he was pushed out the door.
Liam knelt in front of her, taking her hands in his. “Did he hurt you?”
“No.”
He eyed her skeptically. “The side of your face is swollen. He hit you.”
The outrage in his voice touched her. “It’s okay.” She squeezed his hands reassuringly. “If you need to go make reports, I understand.”
“No way. That can wait.” He cocked his head to the side, indicating the unlikely hero seated beside her. “How did this guy come to be here?”
Bryce shut the front door and returned. “Got two officers escorting my dad to the hospital. If you’d like, I can take this person down to the station and question him,” he offered. “While you stay with Harper and get her statement.”
“I want to hear more from him first,” Liam insisted.
Actually, so did she.
Bryce positioned himself at the door and waited.
“My name’s Ralph Poundstone.” He gave them a wobbly smile, exposing a set of brown, crooked teeth. “Although people around here better know me as the shadow dweller. This has been my home off and on for a couple decades.” He shot her an apologetic nod.
Her head reeled, her mind not f
ully wrapping around his bombshell news. “You’ve been living...here? In this house?”
“I’ll show you.” Ralph arose, and she and Liam followed him upstairs and then down the hallway past her bedroom. At the last guest bedroom on the right, Ralph unerringly headed to the closet and then pointed up for them to look.
A tiny crawl space in the ceiling was open, the small panel that normally covered it pushed aside.
“I never even knew this was here,” she said wonderingly.
“Leads to the attic,” Ralph offered helpfully. “Take a look for yourself.”
He pulled a small bench in the closet directly under the opening and crawled through.
“You don’t have to go up there,” Liam said. “Why don’t you wait for me downstairs with Bryce?”
“And miss this?” She gaped at him and shook her head. “I want to know everything. I need to see what’s been happening right under my own nose. It will help me come to terms with my past.”
Liam went in first, then reached a hand down and helped her as she wiggled through the narrow opening.
Her eyes watered at the smell as she scanned the tiny four-feet-by-six-feet enclosure that Ralph claimed as home. It was a walled-off portion of the attic. An old sleeping bag lay on the rough wood planking, surrounded by empty candy wrappers and litter. She recognized the mason jars of her mom’s canned produce and preserves, and a pile of her father’s old clothes. A few of her old books from middle school lay spread open on the floor.
“Why?” she asked him, shaking her head in bewilderment. “Why here?”
“It beats staying in the cold and the rain. Come spring and summer, I’d take my leave and ride the rails. Once the cold hit, I’d come back home.”
He called her home his own? She shuddered and rubbed her arms. “We never saw you.”
“I’d wait until you were all out of the house and then I’d slip back in. Easy to pop the lock on that back door. You should really get that fixed.”
Hysterical laughter welled in her chest. The missing food, the unexplained noises, the smell, the sixth sense that screamed she wasn’t alone in the house. And of course, that night he’d hovered over Presley. She should be furious, angry at the violation. While all that was true, it was also true that a weight had floated off her shoulders. She wasn’t crazy.
“Why us? Why our house?” she asked.
“I was coming into town one day and happened to see your family getting in a car and going out. I was tired, cold and hungry. It occurred to me to check the doors and windows. Lucky for me, the back door was easy to pick. I came in and ate. Everything was all warm and cozy-like. So, I thinks to myself, why not stay? I looked around and found this hidey-hole. Hadn’t planned on staying long but discovered I kinda liked it.”
“Trespassing and theft.” Liam quirked a brow at her. “We’ll go on and take him into custody.”
But she needed to know more. “Were you in the kitchen that night?”
“Presley.” His hollowed-out eyes sank in deeper. “She was a good girl. She fed me several times over the years. Even brought me a blanket once.”
Harper’s looked at him in horrified disbelief. “She knew about you?”
“No. Not that I lived in your house. We met a few nights when I’d gone out for a bit of fresh air. She saw me shivering and brought me food and drink. I slept in your utility shed some that winter.” He gestured at the tiny space. “Sometimes I felt closed in and needed a break. Anyway, that winter, I’d hear her sneak out at night. I saw who she was meeting, too. And then that night her boyfriend snuck in, I went downstairs to check on her. Heard them whispering in the basement, making plans. Then when her boyfriend left, that other man snuck in. The one that tried to kill you today.”
“Carlton Fairfax. Go on.”
“I seen him hit her in the back of the head and she was out cold. He carried her to the kitchen, all limp in his arms. Already dead, I think. He set her body on the floor and started fiddling around by the stove. He suddenly hightailed it out of the house, and then came the explosion. I didn’t know what he was doing,” Ralph assured her quickly. “It all happened so fast. When I saw the flames, I went straight to her. But it was too late. She was already gone.”
None of them spoke, and in the silence, Harper sent up a little prayer to her sister. We found him, sis. The man who murdered you. I’ll make sure he’s punished.
“So that explains what you saw that night,” Liam said. “Being a firefighter, Fairfax knew how to make a small, untraceable explosive. Figured there had to be a logical explanation.”
“It was you who planted the jacks on the stairs and in my bed,” she said in a flash of understanding. “And it was you who sent me the messages to get out of the house. Not Kimber.”
“I picked up a thing or two when riding the rails. Even got me an email account. So I used it to reach out to you. I tried to warn you. To scare you off. I was afraid he’d come back one day and hurt you, too. But you wouldn’t listen.”
“You’ll have to find another place to live now,” Liam said. “You can’t stay here anymore.”
She completely agreed, even while pitying Ralph. “But where will he go?”
“For now, he’ll go with Bryce and make a statement. We’ll keep him a few days in jail on trespassing charges until we can find a shelter with an opening.”
Ralph nodded, and tears ran down his dirty cheeks. “Can I bring something with me?”
“Depends on what it is.”
Ralph picked up a tattered copy of Charlotte’s Web and held it up for her permission.
“Of course, take it,” she urged.
Her emotions were all over the place as she and Liam watched Bryce take Ralph into custody.
“That odor. Think your shadow dweller has bathed any the past year? Going to be a long ride for Bryce.”
She laughed, the relief from escaping her ordeal draining away. “I should have offered him use of my shower and a pair of Dad’s old pants and shirt.”
“Nah, Bryce deserves it after all the hard times he’s given me these last few months. Once Ralph gets to the detention center, they’ll make sure he’s thoroughly washed before issuing him a uniform.”
“I still can’t get over that he’s been living with us all these years and we didn’t even know it.” She shivered and rubbed her arms. “So creepy. Even though he’s turned out to be harmless.”
Liam’s face grew serious. “You’ve been through the wringer today. Sure you’re okay?”
“Yes,” she answered, surprised at the truth. “I feel relieved now that I know what happened to Presley and that her killer’s been discovered.”
She buried her head against Liam’s chest. “Fairfax knocked her out and then started the fire. Can you imagine anything so horrible? And he had no remorse. None.”
Warm fingers caressed her scalp, and she closed her eyes, concentrating on nothing but the comforting feel of his touch. Liam kissed her forehead, and she raised her eyes, finding love and concern written in his darkened eyes.
“When I knew Carlton was at your house...” His voice grew gruff, and he swallowed hard. “I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
And this was a man who’d been shot at and faced danger every day. “I’m okay,” she murmured, bestowing feather kisses along his jaw. This time, she was the one offering him comfort.
“I don’t want another day to go by without telling you something I should have said almost from the very start. I love you, Harper.”
She couldn’t imagine a better ending to this strange, stressful day. His declaration of love helped counter Carlton’s murderous revelations. Much as she’d always be saddened by Presley’s death, it was time she moved forward with her own life. “Liam,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck, “I love you, too.”
Epilogue
H
arper followed Kimber around her old home, marveling at the changes she’d made in the last six months. A fresh coat of paint, combined with new flooring and light fixtures, gave the old structure a fresh boost.
“It’s never looked better,” she told Kimber.
“Thanks to your decorating skills. I didn’t have a clue about paint colors and all that other stuff you picked out for us.”
“Glad to help. Besides, it’s good exposure for my new design firm.”
“How’s business?”
“Surprisingly good,” she was happy to report. “Thanks to all your contacts.”
“Good. Told you so.” Kimber bounded up the stairs as she spoke over her shoulder. “Everything’s on schedule for the tourist season starting next month. We’re booked solid for weeks. And wait until you see what Richard and I have done with the attic.”
Her old friend was beaming, like she hadn’t in years. Harper obligingly entered the attic and blinked.
Drywall replaced the old brick and rough planks, and the same walnut flooring from the hallway extended here. The window had been replaced and enlarged. Sunlight poured through the room. Built-in shelves filled with books lined one wall, and a love seat and wing-back chairs were arranged in a casual sitting area.
“It’s a reading room for our guests,” Kimber said proudly. “A place they can privately relax in the evenings if they choose.”
Curious, she stepped over to the far side where the plywood wall had been removed. Ralph’s old, cramped hidey-hole was no longer. To think that for years, he’d made it his own winter home was still hard to wrap her mind around.
Unmasking the Shadow Man Page 18
