She smiles. “When people didn’t get on board with what Carson was doing, sometimes he could make them disappear. But other times it was best if it looked like an accident.”
My legs are incredibly weak, but the pain from the cramping has subsided. Replacing the pain is a numbness spreading throughout my body.
I try to take a step forward, but instead I drop to my knees on the carpet.
I feel like I’ve been given a sedative, and no matter how hard I try, I won’t be able to keep unconsciousness at bay.
“You won’t get away with it this time,” I say. “No one will believe that Willow and I both died of natural causes.”
“Oh, you’re not going to die from what I put in your food,” Jessica says. “I’m going to shoot you.” She gestures to Willow, whose unconscious mouth is drooling onto my jersey. “Then I’ll shoot her and put the gun in her hand. Murder-suicide.”
“No one will buy it.”
She laughs. “Everyone in town thinks you’re fucking Ariana Delgado,” she says. “Willow even has a song on the radio about how girls shouldn’t date a Texas Ranger. People will think she finally had enough and snapped. Everyone will believe it.”
Chapter 110
ARIANA STANDS IN the middle of Harris’s old office with the phone pressed to her ear, her heart racing. She knew Susan was murdered. Just knew it in her gut.
Now she has validation.
“So the peanut allergy didn’t actually kill her?” Ariana asks.
“Not only did the peanut allergy not kill her,” Freddy says, “I think it was used as a decoy. A distraction.”
“I’m not following,” Ariana says.
Freddy believes whoever killed Susan Snyder gave her food that was laced with both peanut oil and belladonna. The person would have known she’d use her EpiPen, so the peanuts would not be enough. But anyone examining the body would assume that her allergic reaction to peanuts was what killed her. No one would bother looking deeper and noticing there was another toxic substance that actually did her in.
“Belladonna isn’t the kind of poison a medical examiner routinely searches for,” Freddy says. “If the body shows symptoms that point in that direction, a medical examiner might check. But in this case, whoever looked at her would have been distracted by all the swelling and redness of the skin. Belladonna actually causes a paralysis of muscle function. She probably died because her lungs stopped working. Or her heart.”
He explains that every part of the plant—seeds, roots, stems, flowers—is toxic. The berries are sweet and could be used in sugary desserts. The plant itself is dark green with either purple or yellow flowers and berries that resemble blueberries.
“Apparently,” Freddy says, “just brushing up against the plant can cause a terrible rash for some people. It’s that noxious.”
Ariana thinks of the rash on Rory’s hand and how they assumed he’d had an allergic reaction to something out on McCormack’s property. Maybe he’d brushed up against this deadly nightshade, not realizing what it was. She tries to remember if they saw any plants with berries or purple or yellow flowers when they were walking that path through the trees.
“So this grows naturally in West Texas?” Ariana asks.
“Oh, no,” Freddy says. “Absolutely not. It’s way too dry there. But someone could grow it—legally, I might add—in a greenhouse or garden.”
Ariana’s breath stops in her chest.
“You’re looking for someone who would have known about Susan Snyder’s allergies and is a skilled gardener,” Freddy says.
But he’s talking to an empty line.
Ariana has dropped the phone and is sprinting through the police station to her motorcycle.
Chapter 111
I’M ALREADY ON my knees, but I can’t even keep myself upright. I slump back against the wall. None of my limbs seem to be working. The viselike cramps that had gripped my muscles earlier have eased, and now I feel only numbness. Meanwhile, my heart is racing like a thoroughbred being flogged by a maniacal jockey. I try to take deep breaths to keep up with the oxygen intake my heart is demanding, but for some reason my lungs just won’t work fast enough. The room was so bright before, but now everything seems to be in shadow.
I’m close to passing out.
“What did you give me?” I mutter.
“I put deadly nightshade in the pie and the french toast,” Jessica says, smiling as if proud of her craftiness. “The sweetness of the berries blended with the other flavors. Just like in Susan’s cookies.” She gestures toward Willow. “I also roofied the coffee. I’m glad I did because she hardly touched the food. She ingested some of the poison,” she adds, unable to keep from grinning, “but not nearly as much as you.”
Jessica goes on to explain that a medical examiner might find benzodiazepine in Willow’s system, but he’d just think that she took something to calm herself before killing her cheating boyfriend.
“I’m sorry, Rory,” Jessica says, raising the gun and aiming it at my chest. “I need to make sure the bullet kills you before the poison does. That would raise some red flags during the autopsy.”
“You said you hated guns,” I sneer, suddenly mad about that betrayal on top of all the others.
She laughs. “I said I loathe guns. It’s true. I much prefer poison.”
She puts her finger inside the trigger guard.
“Good-bye, Rory,” she says. “I really did like you. I just wish you and Ariana had eaten the damn food I gave you the night you left.”
I remember the grocery bag of food she’d packed that was in my truck when it burned. It was only luck that Dale had brought pizza that night. Otherwise, we all would have died of poisoning out there in the desert hills.
But it looks like I only delayed my fate. I’m tempted to close my eyes and welcome death from the darkness behind my eyelids. And if it was only my life at stake, I might. But Willow is going to die, too, and I can’t stop fighting for her. My body is useless. The only thing working is my mouth. I have to talk Jessica out of this.
“Let Willow go,” I say. “Let the poison in me run its course. She’ll wake up sick but won’t die. Don’t make her pay for what I did.”
“Sorry,” she says. “It has to be a murder-suicide. Otherwise, the autopsy will—”
She stops, cocks her head, listening.
I hear it, too: the rumbling sound of a motorcycle.
Jessica smiles. “Good,” she says. “This is even better. Now I can make it look like Willow killed you and your lover.”
Chapter 112
ARIANA ROARS INTO Tom and Jessica’s driveway and slides to a halt in the gravel next to the garage. She looks around and sees no one. Jessica isn’t in the garden, nor is she looking out any of the windows of the house. No one is peering down from Rory’s apartment, either.
She tells herself that it’s possible Jessica isn’t home. Or maybe Rory and Willow went to get breakfast before he planned to come into the office. There are perfectly rational explanations for why no one noticed her racing into the driveway on a loud motorcycle. But she tells herself to follow her gut.
And her gut tells her something is wrong.
She dismounts her bike, draws her gun, and starts toward the stairs on the side of the garage. She sees the rows of berries and spots one plant with dark berries and yellow flowers. Rory must have brushed it with his hand.
Ariana takes the steps two at a time, but before she gets to the top, she hears Rory cry out, “Jessica has a gun! She killed Susan—”
“Shut up!” Jessica snaps.
Ariana freezes a few steps from the top, unsure how to proceed.
“He’s right,” Jessica calls out. “I have a gun. I want you to come on through the door, keeping your hands where I can see them. Any sudden moves and the country singer dies.”
Ariana holsters her gun and moves slowly up the stairs. She eases the door open and walks in with her hands raised over her shoulders.
Jessica is kneeling behind Willow, who
is unconscious on a wooden chair. Jessica is holding a gun—it looks like Rory’s pistol—against her head and using the woman’s body as a shield.
Rory is slumped against a wall, and, for a moment, Ariana thinks he’s been shot. His entire body is limp—the kind of dead weight that comes with death. But his eyes are open and he’s looking at her. He’s not dead.
Yet.
“You killed Susan?” Ariana says to Jessica, hoping to get the woman to talk so she can have time to think.
Jessica laughs. “That’s not all.”
Ariana takes a moment to understand what she’s suggesting, but then it occurs to her. Besides Susan’s murder, what is the one other piece of the puzzle they haven’t solved yet?
“You stole my grandfather’s gun?” Ariana says. “You took it out to Gareth McCormack? After he shot Skip, you took it back and put it under my bed?”
“You’re good, Ariana,” she says.
Ariana realizes something else. The morning Harris came to the paper and broke Tom’s nose and hauled Ariana out to McCormack’s ranch, the chief hadn’t shown up because he saw the truck out front.
“You called Harris and told him I was looking for Tom,” Ariana says.
“Yes,” Jessica says, “and I wish he would have shot you on the spot instead of pistol-whipping my husband. If Carson was still alive, John Grady would answer for that.”
Ariana looks over at Rory and sees his eyelids struggling to stay open. Whatever Ariana is going to do, she needs to do it fast.
“You can’t get away with this,” Ariana says.
“Rory said the same thing, but you’re both wrong,” Jessica says, shifting the gun away from Willow so it’s pointed directly at Ariana. “It’s simple. Willow found out you and Rory were screwing around and then she killed you both before turning the gun on herself.”
Ariana can’t believe what’s happening. She’s known Jessica since she was a teenager going to the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions for her parents.
“Why are you doing this?” she asks.
“Because you two couldn’t just let things go. You came in and screwed up everything in Rio Lobo. You know the town isn’t going to survive without Carson’s money. The newspaper will fold. The pharmacy will fold. A year from now, Rio Lobo is going to be a ghost town.”
“The people of Rio Lobo make this town what it is,” Ariana says. “Not Carson McCormack’s money.”
Jessica begins arguing with her, but as she is talking, Ariana remembers watching the video of Rory in the bank. He dropped to his knees, drew his gun, and fired on the men before they could shoot him. She needs to do the same thing now.
Only she doesn’t have a clear shot at Jessica. Jessica’s head is sticking up over Willow. If Ariana misses, she might put a bullet through the top of the singer’s skull. Then she thinks of the shot Rory made to kill Carson McCormack—how he took the shot even though Ariana was in the line of fire.
In everything that happened in the last few days—in the open space and out at McCormack’s ranch—Ariana didn’t shoot anyone.
She’s never shot anyone.
But Rory told her she had what it takes to be a Texas Ranger.
Now it’s her time to prove it.
Chapter 113
I WATCH FROM the floor as Jessica is about to shoot. I can see it in her body language, the way she steadies my pistol, tightens her finger over the trigger. I want to shout to Ariana to warn her, but I can’t. My mouth is as paralyzed as the rest of my body.
All I can do is watch.
What happens next takes only a couple of seconds.
Three at the most.
Ariana drops down right as flames shoot from the pistol in Jessica’s hand. Wood splinters explode from the doorjamb behind Ariana. Ariana folds into a crouch and yanks her gun from its holster just as Jessica lowers the pistol, trying to get a second shot.
Jessica is using Willow as a shield, and I want to scream for Ariana not to shoot.
But she does.
Jessica’s head jerks back as blood mists the wall behind her. She leans back, her gun arm still extended, and crashes onto the carpet. She keeps her arm stiff for a moment, pointing the gun at the ceiling, then loses her muscle function, and her arm falls to her side, limp.
Willow’s body slumps out of the chair onto the floor. She’s still unconscious, but the bullet never touched her. It passed inches over her head.
Ariana runs to my side. She pulls out her phone, calls 911, and shouts, “Texas Ranger down! I’ve got a Texas Ranger down!”
She yells into the phone what our location is, then turns her attention to me. Her eyes are filling with tears.
“You’re going to be okay,” she says, cupping my face.
I stare at her, wanting to tell her how much she means to me, how proud I am of her. I want to tell her that she’ll make the best goddamn Texas Ranger this state has ever seen.
But I can only croak out two words.
“Save…Willow.”
She stares into my eyes for a moment—just a moment—then leans down to kiss my forehead. She runs over to Willow and lifts her flaccid body in a fireman’s carry. I watch as she squeezes through the door, and I listen as her footsteps bound down the staircase.
My eyes close, and I feel a mixture of relief and sadness.
Relief because both of the women I love are safe.
Sadness because I’ll never see either one of them again.
Chapter 114
ARIANA STANDS AT the edge of the Rio Lobo cemetery, watching Tom Aaron out among the gravestones. He is kneeling.
Weeping.
She’s been dreading this moment, but she feels she needs to face it. She walks along the pathway, passing several new grave markers. One for Dale. One for Skip. One each for the other bodies they found on McCormack’s ranch. They were all given big funerals. Practically everyone in town came out to see them laid to rest.
But no one came to the funeral today.
No one came to see Jessica Aaron interred.
Except for Tom, of course.
Even their kids, in finding out what Mom did, wouldn’t attend. They drove back from their colleges to take care of their father and mourn. But they refused to honor her passing.
Ariana finds Tom hunched over the fresh dirt, his back heaving. He is shaking all over, shaking more than when she was staring down the barrel of the gun that Jessica aimed at her.
“Tom,” she says softly, and his body stops convulsing. “I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am.”
She wants to say that if there had been any other way, she wouldn’t have squeezed the trigger. But now she’s crying, too, and she’s afraid she won’t be able to speak. Tom rises and turns around to face her, his eyes red. The splint on his nose is gone, but some of his skin is still black and blue, which makes his bloodshot eyes even more menacing. He takes a deep breath.
“I don’t blame you,” he says to Ariana.
She sobs in relief.
They hug and cry, and then, afterward, they walk back through the cemetery, talking. It’s a beautiful morning. The heat will be unbearable later, but now, walking among the freshly cut grass, the temperature is pleasant.
“You know,” he says, “when I was looking through the old yearbooks, I told Rory about the picture I saw of you and Gareth. But I found an even older one, from when Jessica and Carson were in high school, that made me suspicious. She’d never talked about him, but there they were, standing in front of a line of lockers, smiling like they were the best of friends. Carson was a senior and Jessica was only a freshman, but they looked as thick as thieves.”
He says the picture gave him a bad feeling, but he pushed it away. Then, after his nose was broken, Jessica rushed to the medical center, and when she saw him, she said, “I can’t believe they did this to you.”
“It was the way she said it,” Tom explains. “Like she felt betrayed by someone she’d had a deal with. I pushed it out of my mind then, too.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Ariana says. “She fooled us all. And if it’s any consolation, she did everything for you. I think she really did love you.”
“It’s not a consolation. It actually makes it worse. I feel like I’m to blame somehow.”
Tom explains that all his life he’d fancied himself a good journalist, but he’d been blind to what his own wife was hiding. When he and Jessica had the opportunity to purchase the pharmacy, she suddenly inherited a big chunk of money. Now he realizes that money came from Carson—as did a lot of the advertising revenue that kept the newspaper in the black all these years.
Ariana says, “You’re not to blame at all. In fact, if it wasn’t for your help, this case never would have been solved.”
She doesn’t mention that if Tom hadn’t helped, he likely could have gone on forever under the illusion that his wife was who he thought she was.
“I never kept a secret from her,” Tom says. “It turns out that all she did was keep secrets from me.”
They arrive at Tom’s Land Cruiser, which is a little more scratched up than it used to be, thanks to Ariana stealing it and taking it out into the open space.
After they hug good-bye and Tom drives away, Ariana climbs aboard her motorcycle. She rumbles into town and heads straight to what has been quickly renamed the Rio Lobo Medical Center. As she enters, one of the nurses at the front desk intercepts her and says, “Miss Dawes checked out this morning. She wanted me to give you this.”
She hands Ariana a handwritten note.
Dear Ariana,
I can’t thank you enough for everything.
You have a friend for life.
Willow
Ariana smiles. She unfolds the page farther and sees there’s a postscript.
P.S. He’s all yours.
Ariana laughs.
When she pushes through the door into his hospital room, she finds Rory sitting up in bed, reading a John Grisham book. He looks pale, a little on the thin side, but still handsome as hell.
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