by Becki Willis
Between the two of them, they managed to slide the bulky weapon to the nearest door. It wasn’t until they opened it that they realized there was no porch, and the ground was at least four feet below.
Faced with yet another obstacle, Madison turned back to shout at her friend. She had to yell to be heard over the roar of their ragged breathing and their pounding hearts. “I’d rather have a broken arm,” she yelled, “than one blown to kingdom come.”
“I’ll go first,” he offered.
Madison shook her head. “Takes too long to turn around,” she huffed out. She rested against the opened door for only a second. “I’m already here.”
“Let the cannon fall. Don’t try to hold it,” Derron advised. “Make yourself limp and just go with the flow. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Literally.” She tried to smile, but it required too much effort.
Using all the energy she had left, she pushed the cannon through the doorway and followed it down.
The four-foot tumble was the longest yard and a half of both their lives. Despite the two-hundred-pound cannon hurtling them to the ground, Madison swore there was time to watch a movie during the descent—the movie of her life. She saw flashes of the highlights: the birth of the twins, her wedding to Brash, a snapshot of the five of them at the Big House.
All too soon—and yet long, agonizing seconds later—she smacked into the hard surface of the earth. The impact knocked the wind from her lungs and rattled stars from the rafters of her brain. Tears stung her eyes as she landed with her face in the dirt and one arm beneath the barrel. Just before Derron pummeled atop her, she realized the chain on the handcuffs had snapped in two.
Even though his body was petite for a man, it felt like a whale had crashed into her. She lay in stunned silence, trying to breathe, trying to move, and failing miserably at both. Between the pain in her arm, the roar in her ears, and the crushing weight upon her lungs, Madison clung to consciousness by a thread. As stars continued to burst in her head, she imagined holding on for dear life and riding them down.
“M—M—Move,” she finally croaked. In her mind, she poked his shoulder.
Derron didn’t budge. As Madison managed to squeeze air into her lungs, she pried an eyelid open. Derron’s blond head rested against the cannon, his body sprawled atop hers. There was a bright red slash from the edge of his mussed hair down to his temple, and something poured down the side of his cheek.
It took a moment for the scene to register in her befuddled brain. That red stream was blood, and there was too much of it to be a simple scratch. “D—Derron. Move.” With tremendous effort, Madison wiggled her shoulder enough to jostle the body atop hers. The movement sent off a wave of nausea, but she gritted her teeth and tried again. “Wake up. Derron, wake up.”
She pulled her right arm from beneath him and clumsily shook his shoulder. The blood still flowed from his head, spilling over the side of his face and pooling in the collar of his shirt. “You—You’re ruining your shirt,” she mumbled, knowing how much pride he took in his appearance. “Come on, Derron. We have to move back. Have to… have to keep moving.”
She wasn’t quite sure of the details—her mind was still fuzzy, complicated by the pain in her left arm, the nausea in her stomach, and the roar floating among the stars—but she knew there was some sense of urgency. Some reason she had jumped out of a house wearing a two-hundred-pound parachute. Three-fifty, when she added the dead weight of her friend. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember the particulars, but she knew it was imperative that they get safely away from the house.
A deafening trill broke through the roar in her head. In response to the mobile home’s smoke alarm, neighborhood dogs began to bark. Each yap felt like a nail driven into her brain, but Madison reasoned that if she could move, she could get away from the terrible racket.
She pulled her arm from beneath the cannon barrel, which was beneath Derron’s prone body. She screamed out in pain as she tugged herself free. Fighting another onset of nausea, she had to stop several times as she struggled out from under him and into a kneeling position. Her left arm hung limply at her side, no doubt broken. She vaguely remembered something about it being blown off.
No. Not blown off. But there had been the possibility of it…
Still fuzzyheaded, she knew the screeching alarm and the memory were trying to tell her something. Madison tried again to wake her friend, but he had chosen now to take a nap. She saw a severed rope around his chaffed wrist and noticed it, too, smeared with blood.
It was nothing like the blood still flowing from his head.
“Not joking. Move.” She poked him in his ribs, a surefire way to get a response from the ticklish man. Still nothing. “Gotta be. Kidding me.” With a grunt and a driving sense of urgency she still didn’t understand, Madison pushed her friend, rolling him off the barrel and onto the ground. Using her one good hand, and sometimes her shoulder, sometimes her feet, Madison rolled Derron across the lawn until they were a least a dozen feet away from the house.
Smoke rolled from the open door of the mobile home, and she thought she smelt fire. Madison ignored the drama behind her, intent on rolling her friend to safety. When pain and exhaustion overtook her, she collapsed there on the ground beside her friend, their bodies draped across a stepping stone bearing the image of the Alamo.
Eventually, the black powder inside the house caught fire and went off with a huge bang. The reverberation was enough to engage her car alarm, but neither Madison nor Derron ever knew.
But with the boom came the fire department.
Help was on the way.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Madison awoke with a start. She felt disoriented and out of place, even though she recognized the pale sage green on the walls and the Egyptian cotton linens beneath her leaden limbs. The fresh bouquet of wildflowers on the nightstand stirred a warm feeling in her heart and evoked a memory seeded deep in her soul. This was her bedroom, and the warm body stretched out beside her belonged to Brash. She couldn’t as easily identify the murky fog inside her head or the faint memory of… something. It was just beyond her reach, but she knew it posed an immediate danger. A bomb, perhaps?
She gasped, wondering why such a thought would enter her mind, even as her mother’s instincts took over. Were the kids okay? Has something happened to Bethani and Blake? To Megan? She tried sitting up, but her left arm felt unusually heavy and stiff.
“Shh, sweetheart. Calm down.” Brash was there beside her, gently stroking her forehead. “You’re fine. You’re safe.”
“The—The kids? Are the kids okay? You’re okay?” Her eyes were wild as she looked around for proof that her world was in order. She clutched at his arm with her right hand, wondering about the weakness in her limbs.
“Yes, of course, sweetheart. We’re all fine,” he crooned gently. “It’s you that we’re worried about.”
“Me? Why me?”
“You don’t remember what happened?”
Her forehead puckered. “No.” But even as she managed a tiny shake of her head, the memories flooded in. Collette. Nigel. A homemade cannon. Black powder and blood. And Derron.
“Derron!” she cried in alarm. “How is he? Is he okay?”
“Yes, babe, Derron is going to be fine. He’s in the hospital for observation, but the doctors say he’s going to be just fine. He had a nasty gash on his head, and both of you have a concussion, but with time and rest, you’ll both be good as new.”
Madison looked down at the cast on her arm. “I broke my arm?” she asked needlessly. She thought back to the pain and the nausea after the fall. Definitely a break.
“Yes. But at least it’s your left arm, and at least it wasn’t any worse. I don’t have to tell you how lucky you two were. You could have been killed, sweetheart.” His voice dropped to a deep rumble as he spoke, and in his beautiful brown eyes, she saw the pain caused by the very thought of losing her.
“I know,” she whispered,
closing her eyes to the memory.
They popped wide open again as she remembered the rest. “Collette! It was Collette all along. She killed them all, and she would have killed us. The woman is insane!”
“Shh, sweetheart, sit back. We have Collette in custody, and she’s not going anywhere, anytime soon.”
“How did you know?”
“You kept mumbling her name last night. Something about shrimp and a Bible and DNA tests. You wouldn’t let the doctor treat you until he promised to write it all down and tell me. And you said he had to do it over the phone, before the orange car got away. I pieced enough of it together to put out a BOLO and bring her in for questioning.”
“She’s crazy, Brash.” Madison’s voice was steeped in sadness. “Stark-raving mad. She said killing people was a necessary evil, like going to the dentist. She believed Nigel’s fortune rightfully belonged to her, and nothing and no one would get in her way.”
“We’ve been piecing the details together all afternoon. It seems—”
“What time is it?” she broke in sharply.
“Almost eight at night. You’ve been out of it all day.”
“Are you serious? I can’t believe I slept that long.”
“We didn’t get back home until the wee hours of the morning. And the doctor gave you something to help you sleep,” he assured her. “You can have more for the pain, if you need it.”
She shook her head. “It’s not too bad. Before I take anything more, I want to hear how things turned out, and I want to see the kids.”
“I have several pieces of good news to share. All charges against Tony have been dropped, and the ADA has scheduled a press conference for Monday morning to issue a formal apology and announce pending charges against Collette.”
“Only pending charges?”
“There’s so many, they’re still tallying them up. Murder, attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, assault with a motor vehicle… the list is extensive. But Barbara Barrett Motte pulled through surgery and, barring complications, should make a full recovery. She and her brother Earl, Jr. appear to be the heirs apparent for Nigel’s estate.”
“I feel so guilty about Barbara. I practically led Collette to her!”
“She knew Jeannie had a niece. I’m sure she was already on her hit list.”
“Some investigator I’ve turned out to be,” Madison groaned, pulling the covers up around herself in chagrin. “I couldn’t find Jeannie, even with Collette pushing me in the right direction.”
“It was a bit complicated,” Brash admitted. “She had a son with a man she never married, and then took three husbands. That’s a lot of different surnames, especially when she didn’t go by her own given name.”
“And I had some bad information,” Madison murmured.
“Granny Bert had a feeling you might say that,” Brash said with a grin. “She said to tell you that her intel was good. The Eric her sources mentioned obviously were referring to the man she didn’t marry, the Erickson who fathered her child. And Winston was, in fact, the name of her last husband, even though his friends called him Stony. So she claims she’s still batting a hundred.”
An indulgent smile accompanied her groan. “That woman!” She shook her head at her grandmother’s antics, even though the movement caused her pain. The smile soon fell as less-pleasant memories flooded back in. “You were right about Bobby Ray. He didn’t die of natural causes. Collette killed him, too. But I was wrong about Joel Werner. I actually thought he might have been responsible for Nigel’s death. I guess I owe the man an apology, if only mentally.”
“Hold up on that,” he advised. “I hear the Walker County Sheriff’s office has uncovered new evidence and is reopening the suicide case he was suspected of being involved in. No matter how that comes out, we all know the man is underhanded and will stoop to unscrupulous means to get what he wants.”
“Hey, where do you think you’re going?” she asked when he stood and crossed the room.
“I promised the kids I’d let them know when you woke up. By the time they got in last night from their ski trip, you were already at the emergency room. They’re anxious to see you, sweetheart.” He went to the intercom and pressed a button. “Sleeping Beauty is now awake and seeing select dwarfs. Would Hungry, Cheery, and Perky please report to the inner chamber?”
Madison laughed at the names he had assigned their children. Hungry was the perfect moniker for Blake, and while Bethani and Megan were both cheerleaders, Megan was the perpetually perky one. All the names fit.
“Thank you for my flowers, by the way. They’re beautiful.”
“I thought you might like seeing those when you woke up.” He swooped down to drop a kiss on her lips, but she snagged him around the neck with her good arm and held him there.
“Your face,” she whispered, “was all I needed.”
“Happy anniversary, Mrs. deCordova. One week today.”
“And what a week it’s been!”
Brash crawled atop the covers again and settled in beside her, careful of her arm. “Wonder if every week will be this eventful?”
“I hope not!” she laughed. “I don’t think I can stand that much excitement all the time!”
“Are you referring to time spent under house arrest for skipping out on your honeymoon, or the other events of the week?” he wanted to know, nuzzling her hair.
“Definitely the other events,” she assured him. “I’m thinking of turning myself in for a number of offenses, real or alleged, if it lands me under house arrest again.”
“I’m sure that can be arranged.” Brash gathered a handful of hair as he cupped her face and leaned in for a thorough kiss.
“Hey, I thought you told us to come in!” Blake’s voice protested from the doorway. “None of that X-rated stuff. Not before dinner, anyway.”
“Hey, Mom, how you feeling?” Bethani wanted to know, skipping across the room.
Megan was close on her heels. “You worried us, Momma Maddy!”
“It’s so good to see you!” Madison beamed as she stretched out her good arm for hugs. “Come on up here. There’s plenty of room. I want to hear all about your ski trip!”
All three teenagers piled onto the bed with their parents, in what was a tangle of arms, legs, and laughter. The stories flowed, each told louder and faster than the last, each a competition for the best memory or the worst catastrophe.
The worries of the week paled in comparison to the joys of that moment, shared as a family.
They didn’t know it then, but it was a new family tradition in the making. A lazy Saturday when they could lounge on the bed and rehash the events of the week. A quiet strengthening of their band of love and togetherness. As Brash taught his daughter long ago, that band could stretch to include others, but it always held close those dearest to the heart. This new Saturday tradition was a time to recharge and reconnect, and it was exactly what this family—every family—needed.
Over the tops of the teenager’s heads, Brash caught his bride’s eye and winked. Somehow, the girls had wormed in between them, and soon he and Blake were relegated to the foot of the bed, sprawled across the lumpy covers. On the air rode the scent of wildflowers and wild stories, and neither of the newlyweds had ever known a sweeter moment.
It might not be the honeymoon they had envisioned, but it was exactly the life they had dreamed of.
And the best was yet to come.
The deCordova-Reynoldses and all their friends and family in The Sisters invite you to share in more adventures in the near future!
If you enjoyed this story, please leave a review on the site of your choice. It only takes a moment of your time but makes a huge impact on the success of a novel. Thank you for reading! You can connect with me at [email protected] or https://www.facebook.com/beckiwillis.ccp/.
