by Lauren Carr
“Poppy, I—we need you here.” He squinted at her. “Izzy looks up to you. She’ll be devastated if you leave.”
“Sometimes—most of the time—the people you look up to, admire, and even love leave.”
J.J. got up from the chair. He looked down at her. “You really don’t like people, do you?”
“I’ve never made that any secret,” she said. “You’ve been more blessed than I have, J.J. Your whole life, you’ve been surrounded by people who have your back no matter what—that’s why you’ve gone to bat for Noah. It’s who you are. Me—I haven’t been so blessed. My own mother accused me of murdering her husband—a man who she knew was raping me.”
“I can’t even imagine a mother doing that to her child.”
“So you understand why I don’t trust anyone. They can’t disappoint you if you don’t give them your trust.”
“I know that there are a lot of bad people in this world, Poppy. The news throws it in our faces all the time. But I also know that there are a lot of good people, too. Soldiers who leave their families behind to travel across the world to fight evil people who are determined to destroy us and our way of life. Police officers who kiss their families good-bye every day and go out and protect a society that doesn’t appreciate them. And those are just a couple of examples off the top of my head.”
“You mean like the cops who didn’t believe me when I told them my stepfather had killed my dad?”
“Sometimes mistakes are made,” J.J. said. “No system or organization is one hundred percent. There are some detectives who rush to judgments—not necessarily because they’re bad people but because of the information they have at the time. Sometimes a country—or a state or a county—can become corrupt when one evil monster like your stepfather gets into a position of power and the other people in power don’t have the guts or morals to stop him. But I believe that in the end, good does win out—as it did in your case.”
“I almost went to jail for the rest of my life.”
“If you hadn’t had the guts to kill your stepfather, how many other people would he have hurt? You’re a Christian. Don’t tell me that God didn’t have his hand in that jury’s decision.”
She looked down into her coffee mug.
“I couldn’t spend my life not trusting anyone,” J.J. said. “Without trust, you lose your sense of faith, and without faith, you have no hope. If you don’t have hope, you have nothing.”
“If you’re so big on trust, why don’t you trust Cameron?”
Without answering, J.J. took their plates to the sink to rinse them off.
“Oh, we can talk about me, but not about you.”
J.J. turned around. “There’s nothing to discuss, and it isn’t that I don’t trust her.”
“Then what is it? She’s a nice-enough person. She gave Noah a fair shake. She figured out who killed Suellen. She went all the way across the state to find out who killed Dylan Matthews so that Suellen could be at peace. Do you think she did all that for kicks? She did it for you. She’s one of those people you were just talking about. So why don’t you give her a break?”
“I need to study.” J.J. threw the sponge into the sink. “Make yourself at home.”
On the spur of the moment, Cameron turned the steering wheel of her police car into the parking lot of the general store at Laughlin’s Corners, which rested on the Pennsylvania side of the state line. She had a sudden craving for a chocolate candy bar that she couldn’t shake—even if it meant getting soaked on the way from the cruiser to the door.
“There! Ask her! She’ll tell you!”
When she walked through the door, the store owner, Bud, greeted her so abruptly that she instinctively reached for her service weapon on her hip.
Bud was almost a textbook example of a good ol’ boy. A happy-go-lucky sort who greeted every customer by name, Bud was the fourth-generation owner of the family-owned general store that occupied one corner of Laughlin’s Corners. He and his family lived on the farm beside the store, which they ran themselves from six o’clock in the morning until ten o’clock at night every day except Sundays, Christmas, and Thanksgiving.
Bud’s ability to instantly know what a customer was looking for with one glance made him seem almost psychic. Upon seeing Cameron, he ordered the customer before her, a grizzly older man with an enormous beer belly, to repeat his story to her and then hurried down the candy aisle.
The customer with the beer belly looked Cameron up and down before stopping at the gun on her hip.
“She’s Cameron Gates,” Bud said as he returned to his post behind the counter. “The detective investigating Monica Brady’s murder. You gotta tell her what happened, Vern, or she could lock you up.” He slammed a twin pack of Snickers bars down on the counter.
“Well,” Vern said with an uncertain drawl, “a little more than a week ago, I was coming up Route Seven from Steubenville, and I saw this guy hitchhiking. The guy was soaking wet, but it wasn’t raining. He looked like he had just crawled out of the river.”
Before Cameron could say anything about kids swimming in the river all the time, Bud said, “But he wasn’t a young kid. Tell her, Vern.”
“He was an old man!” Vern said. “I mean, you don’t see old men swimming in the river. Maybe this guy was, like, an old hippie or something. He had a long ponytail all the way down his back. I asked what he had been doing in the river—and get this!”
“Get what?” Cameron asked.
“He was faking his death. I felt shivers go up and down my spine when he said it. Dummy me, I asked him why, and he said it was because he had killed a couple of people. And then he said that since he had already done that, he might as well take care of a couple of other young upstarts who had done him wrong and needed to be taught lessons. And finally he said that if I didn’t stop asking questions, he would add me to his list.” He took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “That was when I pulled over, but before I could stop my truck, he reached under my seat and took out the gun that I keep under there in case I get into trouble, and he aimed it right at me.”
“Sounds like at that point, you were in trouble,” Cameron said.
“Only I was on the wrong end of my own gun,” Vern said. “This old guy told me that he had memorized my name—it’s on the truck driver’s permit that I have pinned to my visor—and that if I ever told anyone about him, he’d hunt me down and slash my throat.”
“This was over a week ago?” Cameron asked.
Bud slammed his hand down flat on the flyer that the police had given him. It had Clyde Brady’s picture on it. “Vern says it was Clyde.”
“Yeah,” Vern said. “That’s why I was just telling Bud about it now. I saw the flyer on the counter.”
“Tell her where he wanted you to take him before you kicked him out,” Bud said.
“The Russell Ridge Farm and Orchards.”
Cameron sucked in a deep breath. “And he said he had a couple more murders to commit, and now he has a gun!”
Vern nodded his head. “He took my twenty-two Smith and Wesson.”
Forgetting the candy bars, Cameron grabbed her radio from her hip and ran through the door. “Dispatch, I need units sent to the Russell Ridge Farm and Orchards ASAP!”
Even after living in what he still considered to be Suellen’s home for more than a week, J.J. was struggling with guilt and with the feeling that he was intruding in her home. Pushing his guilt aside, he trotted down the stairs to the lower level, where Suellen had kept her office. The stairs ended in the family room, which contained a pool table and a bar. The French doors opened to the stone patio, which contained a spa and an outdoor kitchen.
When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he noticed a pair of muddy footprints—and that the mud was still moist. With his heart pounding, J.J. followed the tracks backward to the French doors, where he turned arou
nd and saw that whoever had made them had gone up the stairs.
So it isn’t paranoia! Someone has been watching me, and now he’s in the house!
Poppy was seriously considering a second slice of cherry pie. Her nerves needed to be soothed, and nothing did that better than a sweet slice of Tracy’s cherry pie—or her apple pie or her chocolate pie with a scoop of ice cream, of course.
Deciding not to go down that road, she slammed the refrigerator door closed with a vengeance.
What is it about J.J. that gets under my skin? Ever since the night he had insisted that they become friends—the night he had first flashed that grin with those dimples at her—she’d been unable to resist the urge to get closer to him.
That is wrong on so many levels.
For one thing, he was mourning Suellen’s death. He was seeking only a platonic friendship with her, but every fiber of her being wanted something much more.
Also, she had a strict rule about not getting close to anyone. You get close, and then you get hurt. As much as she wanted to believe that J.J. was different and that he would never betray or disappoint her, like every other person in her life had, she didn’t want to take that chance.
Getting hurt by J.J. would cut her like a knife.
“Maybe another cup of coffee,” she said out loud. And when she turned to fetch the canister of coffee from the cupboard, she came face to face with Clyde Brady, who was standing at the other end of the kitchen counter.
The elderly man looked like he had just slithered up from the bottom of the Ohio River. He was covered in mud from head to toe. He was so filthy that his gray hair was black. Wet mud was dripping from his chin, his arms, and his hands, which were clutching the revolver that he was aiming at her.
“I knew you and your lover boy would be movin’ in here and taking over before Suellen’s body was even cold.” He took a step toward her. “I didn’t want to believe it. Josh was always such a nice young man. I thought that maybe, it was just my imagination. But then you showed up here so conveniently and took my job right out from under me—”
“That isn’t the way it happened!” Poppy said with a plea in her voice.
“It never is!”
“Poppy!” J.J. screamed, drawing Clyde’s attention away from her. She took the opportunity to dive behind the counter.
As he turned toward his adversary, Clyde fired his gun, but J.J. was already advancing into the kitchen and firing a series of shots to take out the man who was bent on killing them.
Even though three of J.J.’s shots hit his mark, Clyde managed to fire his gun twice before he fell back onto the kitchen counter and sank to the floor.
Cowering behind the counter, Poppy watched the gunfight happening only a couple of feet in front of her. A scream escaped from deep in her gut when she saw Clyde Brady’s bloody body slip down to the floor.
His dead eyes were staring accusingly at her.
“Poppy, are you okay?”
She rose to rush into his arms for comfort only to see that J.J. was looking questioningly at her as though he were trying to figure out what was wrong with the scene.
To her horror, two red spots appeared on the midsection of his blue work shirt.
As the gun he was holding in his limp hand dropped to the floor, J.J. fell to his knees before her.
“J.J.! No!” She dropped down to the floor to hold him.
“You’re safe now. I promised I’d protect…you.” He slid into her arms, unconscious.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“If only I had gotten there a couple of minutes earlier.” Cameron buried her head in her hands. “Just two minutes.”
Joshua draped his arm across her shoulders and held her close. “It’s not your fault.”
“I should have listened to my gut two weeks ago,” Cameron said. “Lillian said Brady had left the area.”
“Tad thought that the floater found down in New Cumberland was Clyde,” Joshua said. “Everyone had it wrong. Ended up being an old drunk who Clyde had met up with in East Liverpool.”
“His general description matched Clyde’s,” Cameron said. “It was all part of Clyde’s plan to fake his death so that he could take his revenge on J.J. and on Poppy, who he thought stole his job.”
Clutching Joshua’s hand in both of hers, Cameron sucked in a deep, shuddering breath and took in the hospital waiting room, which was filled with J.J.’s family and friends and even with some employees from the farm. Izzy was offering comfort to Poppy, who looked shell shocked. She had been hysterical when Cameron and the police had rushed in seconds after J.J. had fallen into her arms. He had been shot twice and had a collapsed lung.
Clyde Brady, who had three bullet wounds in his chest and stomach, was dead.
“Where has he been all of this time?” Cameron asked, thinking that she was asking a rhetorical question. “He looked like he’d been living in a sewer.”
“The stone piles,” Poppy said. “J.J. said that ever since he’d moved back into the house, he’d felt like he was being watched. I know that Clyde wasn’t living in the barn, and Noah said that they had caught coyotes making dens in the stone piles. Right before the storm, J.J. swore that he’d seen someone run into the backyard, which is right across from the stone pile up by the riding arena.”
“The stone piles would’ve been the perfect place to watch J.J. from,” Joshua said as his cell phone vibrated on his hip. “There are piles all over the farm, and no one would suspect that anyone was hiding in them.” Seeing that the caller was Murphy, he stood up and took the call outside.
“He’s been in surgery for so long,” Donny said, giving voice to what they were all thinking. “J.J.’s going to make it, right? I mean, he’s young and strong.”
“He doesn’t deserve to die,” Poppy said. “Neither did Suellen.”
“Or Monica Brady,” Cameron said. “Clyde Brady was a good man with a sterling reputation. He went to church. He stopped drinking and doing drugs all for the woman he loved. And then he lost his mind to dementia and killed her—”
“Why?” Izzy asked.
“There’s no telling what was running through his mind,” Cameron said as Joshua came back into the waiting room.
“Murphy is on his way,” Joshua said. “He got a charter flight. He’ll be flying into Pittsburgh, and he’ll rent a car. He’ll be here in about three hours.”
When Dr. Tad MacMillan, who had been operating on J.J., entered the waiting room, they all rose as if they were dignitaries. Joshua held his breath and awaited his announcement.
“J.J. made it through surgery,” Tad said. “He’s in postoperative care now. He’s lucky that they were small-caliber bullets and that we got them both. One of his lungs collapsed. We have him on a ventilator.”
“But he’s going to be okay, right?” Izzy asked, holding onto Donny for support.
“Right now, his condition is critical,” Tad said. “The next twenty-four hours will be the most serious.”
After not receiving a guarantee that J.J. would fully recover, even though he knew that Tad could not offer such a guarantee, Joshua sank down onto the sofa.
“You know we’re doing everything we can,” Tad said. “He’s in God’s hands right now.”
Afraid that a sob would escape his lips if he tried to respond with words, Joshua only nodded his head.
Over the next two days, Joshua, Cameron, and their children took turns sitting with J.J. as he drifted in and out of a drug-induced sleep. Their sister Sarah had flown in the next day from Annapolis, where she was a cadet in the naval academy.
By then, Tad had taken J.J. off of the ventilator without complications, which was a good sign. But J.J. was still attached to a chest tube, and Tad said that he might need to be attached to it for days.
Joshua refused to leave the intensive-care unit, where J.J. was being kept. Fearing th
at the worst would happen and that he would not be there for his eldest son when it did, Joshua remained by his bedside and stared at him while he slept, watching his chest rise and fall and looking for any signs that he was improving.
“You need to get some sleep,” Cameron whispered into Joshua’s ear, which startled him out of his snooze. Without realizing it, he had drifted off into memories of J.J.’s childhood.
With a moan, J.J. turned his head in their direction.
Anxious that his son was waking up, Joshua squeezed his hand. “J.J. Son, it’s me. Dad. I’m here.”
His eyelids fluttered for only a second.
“Sleep is what’s best for him,” Cameron said in a low voice. “And you need it, too. You haven’t eaten in two days. You’re not going to be any good for J.J. if you end up sick. Tracy is taking Donny and Sarah back to the house so that they can get some sleep. She’s going to cook dinner. Why don’t you go with them? Get something to eat and sleep for a few hours, and then come back.”
Joshua shook his head. “If I leave, something bad will happen.”
“If you don’t leave, something bad will happen,” she said. “You’ll get sick, and Tad will have to set up a bed next to J.J.’s.”
Knowing that she was right, Joshua turned to her and saw his daughter Tracy waiting in the doorway. They weren’t giving him a choice.
“I’ll sit with him,” Cameron said. “I’ll have my phone with me, and as soon as he wakes up, I’ll call you.”
“We’ll be less than ten minutes away,” Tracy said.
Cameron wrapped her arms around him. “Please, hon. J.J. needs you, but he needs you to be one hundred percent.”
Joshua returned her embrace. “I know.” He suddenly realized how weak he was from stress, hunger, and exhaustion.
