by Emily James
When I next remembered opening my eyes, I was in a room with tan walls. My shoulder still ached, and I felt the sling before I focused enough to see it. I ran my good hand over my torso. Someone had bandaged me up.
Soft male voices started to register. Ones I recognized. Mark? And Russ?
My stomach knotted. The use of my full first name wasn’t solid proof that he hadn’t sent that note. Maybe he was the kind of person who would always write my full name even though he called me Nikki.
And whoever wanted to get rid of me had almost succeeded a second time. I wasn’t going to test the old saying that the third time’s a charm. After I figured out whether I was seriously injured, I needed to talk to Mark alone.
I turned my head. Russ and Mark stood outside what I now realized was my hospital room. Someone must have spotted the fire or found me.
“Hey.” Russ pointed toward me. “She’s awake.”
They strode into my room, and Russ moved to my bedside and laid a hand on my shoulder.
I recoiled, my body reacting instinctively even though my mind was unconvinced Russ could have done this to me.
Russ jerked his hand back. “Sorry. You’re probably sore, aren’t you?”
“How did I get here?” I asked. My voice came out raspy, and it hurt my throat to speak.
“Noah saw flames when he was coming home last night.” Russ scrubbed his hands over the top of his head. “He called 9-1-1 right away and went straight to the spot. He found the sugar shack burning and you passed out about forty feet away. That’s when he called me and I called Mark.” He wrung his hands together. “I thought you might want him here.”
I struggled to sit up. Mark helped me. The blanket slumped down, revealing a blue hospital gown. I wasn’t going to ask where my clothes were. They probably hadn’t been salvageable. “Am I okay?”
Mark sank down into the chair next to my bed. “Other than a dislocated shoulder, your wounds were relatively minor cuts and bruises. The doctors wouldn’t tell us anything at first, so I used your cell phone to call your mom and had her give them permission to share your medical information with me since she couldn’t be here.”
I scrunched my eyes shut. Perfect. Now my mom would think staying was an even worse idea, and she’d also think Mark and I were involved. The idea of her daughter dating a doctor might almost make up for the fact that I nearly died. “You talked to my mom.”
“I hope that’s okay.” His voice carried a hesitant note. “I waited until after the hospital notified her, of course.”
I forced open my eyes and smiled at him. Thinking logically, he’d done the right thing. I’d clean up the Mom mess later. “No, that’s fine.” I pulled the blanket up a little higher. The thin sheet and even thinner hospital gown weren’t nearly warm enough, and it felt like my bra had gone wherever the rest of my clothes had. “Did they say when I could leave?”
“Assuming your neurological scans come back clean, later today.”
I felt my head. “I don’t think I hit my head when I fell.”
Mark flashed me his dimples. “They have to check. You were unconscious when Noah found you, and we had no idea what happened.”
The unspoken question of what had happened hung in the air. I flickered a glance toward Russ. “Could you go call Chief Wilson for me, please? I assume he’ll want to take my statement.” That might not take him long enough for what I needed to do. “And would you try to find me a cup of coffee? I could really use something warm to drink.”
A relieved look flashed across Russ’s face. I got the feeling from the stretched-thin look around his eyes and the way he held stiff like he was afraid to touch anything that he didn’t like hospitals. He’d come here, to a place that made him uncomfortable, for my sake. That either made him especially caring or especially smart, since playing the role of concerned friend would help him seem innocent.
“’Course,” he said. “I’ll find you a snack too.”
He waddled out of the room, squeezing hand sanitizer into his palms from a tiny bottle he’d pulled from his pocket. I wouldn’t have pegged him for a germaphobe.
I twisted the hospital blanket into a clump in my fist. What else didn’t I know about him? Maybe he had done this.
Mark’s hand rested on my bed railing, and I longed for the comfort of human touch. For a second I found myself actually wishing my mom or dad had been worried enough about me to come up, even though I knew they wouldn’t actually have made it here by now. I wanted to curl into someone’s arms and be hugged for a few minutes and feel safe.
Because I clearly wasn’t safe here.
If we didn’t find who did this, I might never be safe here.
“I can’t stay here unless we figure out who did this,” I blurted out.
Mark took my hand and wrapped it in his. He rubbed his thumb along my knuckles. “Slow down. Start from the beginning and tell me what happened.”
I recapped everything for him, including the note.
He gave a slow nod of his head. “That’s why you sent Russ away.”
Tears built behind my eyes. In my mind I heard my mom’s voice lecturing me about image and strength, especially in a female lawyer. I swallowed the tears down even though no one other than my mom could really blame me for wanting to cry when I’d narrowly escaped being roasted alive. “I don’t want to believe he did this, he’s been so kind to me, but his name was on the note.”
“You also said he addressed it to Nicole, not to Nikki.”
I nodded. “But I can’t take the chance. Right? I shouldn’t take the chance.”
I wanted to pinch myself to make me shut up. I knew I was sounding a touch hysterical. The first time could have been an accidental gas leak. This time had to be intentional. No one had ever tried to kill me before, and I wasn’t exactly a brave person. I was the opposite of brave. Now that I was safe for the moment, all the mental resolve I’d had earlier crumbled around me.
His thumb kept stroking in soothing motions. “You shouldn’t take the chance. We’ll have to tell Carl about the note, but I think he’ll also want to find out if Jason had an alibi for last night.”
“Does Russ have an alibi for last night?”
Mark’s shoulders drooped. “He was alone when Noah called him.”
Four hours later, I signed my release forms. I’d sent Russ back to Sugarwood to deal with clean-up and to assess what we’d need to rebuild a replica shack, and I’d given my statement to Chief Wilson, who promised to check Jason’s alibi for last night before the end of the day.
I didn’t believe he actually would until my phone rang while I limped down the hall after Mark, wearing a pair of yoga pants and a t-shirt he’d brought for me. They weren’t mine, and I’d had to roll the pant legs up to keep from tripping on them. I didn’t know where he’d gotten them from. I didn’t ask. If I was wearing his wife’s clothes, I didn’t want to know.
The caller ID identified the police station, and I nearly dropped my phone in my haste to answer it.
“Are you alright?”
The phone slipped again, and I gripped it tighter. The voice on the other end wasn’t Chief Wilson. It was Erik.
“I just heard about the attack,” he said.
Mark waved at me from a few feet away and mouthed the words you okay? I held back a fidget and nodded. It was more than a little uncomfortable talking to Erik while standing with Mark.
“I will be.” The words served to answer both men’s question about my well-being. “I scratched myself up escaping from the sugar shack and then dislocated my shoulder in the fall. But nothing that won’t heal.”
Mark made a walking motion with his fingers and then mimed driving. I bit my bottom lip a touch and smiled. He was such a goof for a medical examiner. I nodded to let him know he could bring the car around front and I’d meet him there.
Erik cleared his throat in the way that I was beginning to recognize signaled nervousness. “Listen, I have some bad news for you. About the susp
ected arsonist.”
My stomach dropped. Did he mean Russ or Jason? I prayed to Uncle Stan’s God that he wasn’t about to tell me they had evidence that Russ was the one who tried to kill me.
“We went out to Beaver’s Tail Brewery today to check into Jason Wood’s alibi for last night.”
“Oh,” I said.
It was all I could force out past the relief. This had nothing to do with Russ. If the bad news was about Jason, I didn’t care what it was.
“As we drove up,” Erik said, “I spotted him sneaking off into the woods behind his place, so we followed him. We caught him working an illegal still with two other guys. From the look of their setup, they were trying to find a way to distill marijuana into beer.”
“That sounds like good news.” But that nervous, regretful tone was still in his voice. I was missing something. “What’s the bad news?”
“The men he was with alibied him for both last night and the night Stan died.”
I sank into a nearby chair. With Jason alibied out, that meant… “Could they be lying?”
“That’s always a possibility.” He blew out a breath. “But that’s not my read on it. They admitted to everything else in exchange for a deal. They’d have no reason to give Jason an alibi for Stan’s murder or for attempting to murder you. I’m sorry. I think the guy who attacked you is still out there.”
I hunched over, my good elbow propped on my knee, phone still to my ear. He didn’t understand the real blow. If it wasn’t Jason, it had to be Russ.
18
I stumbled zombie-like out to Mark’s truck, or at least I was expecting to see Mark’s truck. Instead I saw my car. It was such a small thing…but it was a huge thing. To not have to climb into his truck when I was hurting.
I slid in and ran my hands lovingly over the upholstery.
“Russ thought you’d be more comfortable in your own car,” Mark said.
Russ thought. I thumped my head back against the headrest. More than once.
Mark shot me a look that said he wasn’t sure whether he should drive or take me back in for a psych eval.
I kept my head back and my eyes closed. “Jason has an alibi. He’s not the one who locked me in last night.”
Mark didn’t say anything in response. He put the car into drive and pulled away from the hospital.
I didn’t know how much time had passed before I realized he was driving us in circles.
“Are you figuring out how to apologize again?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood.
He gave me a half-smile, but it died before it could fully form. “I’ve known Russ my whole life. He was engaged to my aunt before she died of cancer. I’ve never even heard him raise his voice, let alone… I just don’t…” He shook his head.
I didn’t get it either. “The question I still can’t answer is why. Why kill my uncle? If Russ isn’t naturally a killer, isn’t naturally violent, then it should have taken a much bigger trigger to push him into killing his best friend, shouldn’t it?”
Mark shrugged. “I would have thought so.”
Or perhaps we were both blinded by the kind of man we wanted to see Russ as. If I only knew why, maybe I could accept it better. Sure, some people killed for the pleasure or challenge of it. Most people needed a more concrete motive.
A thought that had been swimming around in my subconscious finally made its way to the surface. Tom McClanahan said Uncle Stan changed his will about a month ago. Who had been set to inherit Sugarwood before he left it to me? Now that I’d seen how much love he’d poured into the place and its employees, I had a hard time believing he would have left it to my father, who disdained every aspect of Uncle Stan’s life here. “What time is it?”
“Just before five. Why?”
“I need to go to Tom McClanahan’s office.”
Mark gave me another glance hinting he wanted a closer look at my head, but he pulled a U-turn anyway. “Are you going to tell me what we’re doing when we get there?”
I didn’t want to talk about it, but I owed him that much at least. He’d sat with me in the hospital all day, and now he was driving me wherever I asked him to. “I have an idea about what Russ’ real motive might have been, but I won’t know for sure until we get there.”
He parked out front and tried the door. It was locked.
I checked my watch. 5:01 pm. I pressed my face close to the glass. Ashley sat at her desk inside. Hopefully that meant Tom McClanahan was still here as well.
I pounded on the door, making the glass rattle.
I could almost hear Ashley’s condescending sigh. She crossed the room and cracked the door.
“We’re closed,” she said in a tone that suggested I must be stupid for not understanding the locked door.
Her gaze ran over my clothes in that way some women have of implying they’d never be caught in public looking like you. I swear her lip actually curled a little.
Normally a look like that would have withered me, just one more reminder of how I failed to live up to my potential and to what was expected of me. This time it made me sad for her instead. Maybe the soot still clinging to my hair, the sling on my arm, and the too-large clothes had a shielding effect. Or maybe almost dying did have a way of putting things into perspective the way people said it did.
Mark pressed in beside me. “Is Tom still in? We just need a minute.”
She drew her shoulders back, making her cleavage almost impossible to miss. To his credit, Mark didn’t even sneak a peek.
Ashley opened the door wider. “Why don’t you come in and I’ll check for you?”
The smile she flashed him belonged in a dental ad, too wide and all teeth and fake as her veneers.
The urge to lie and tell her she had lipstick on her teeth was almost more than I could stand. But that would have been mean. And petty. And while I could have met her attitude with snark of my own, that wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to be. Bad enough I had a tendency to lie and manipulate.
I lowered my achy body into one of the waiting room chairs. I’d barely made it down when Ashley emerged from Tom McClanahan’s office, followed by the man himself.
He shook hands with Mark. “Is there an emergency?”
Mark stepped aside to reveal me slumped in the chair that was cushy enough I was considering a nap. “I’m here as support only. Nicole’s actually the one who needs to speak with you.”
Tom McClanahan pushed his wire-rimmed glasses a little higher up his face. “Why don’t you both follow me.”
If it hadn’t been for Ashley, I might have talked to him in the waiting room so I didn’t have to leave the chair. As it was, I hoisted myself up and we trailed him into his office like obedient puppies.
This time he didn’t take a perch on the corner of his desk. He moved straight to his chair, sat, and steepled his fingers. “I admit, you have me curious.”
I already felt like the life force was draining out of me and slopping all over his carpets. The sooner I could return to my bed at The Sunburnt Arms, the better. No subtlety this time. “I’m going to assume that you were my Uncle Stan’s lawyer for as long as he lived in Fair Haven. Last time I was in here, you told me he recently changed his will. Do you have a copy of the previous version?”
McClanahan shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Previous versions of the will aren’t valid, so we dispose of them.”
Okay, so we wouldn’t have the solid evidence I hoped for, but McClanahan was a respected member of the community, and his testimony would still be weighed heavily if it came to that. “Do you remember who he left Sugarwood to prior to bequeathing everything to me?”
“Of course,” he said. “I have an excellent memory for each of my clients, despite their number. He’d originally left Sugarwood to Russell Dantry.”
Crap. Crap crap crap crap crap. Expecting it didn’t make hearing it any better.
Mark buried his face in his hands.
Tom McClanahan leaned back in his seat, a bemused expression
on his face. “I gather that’s not what you wanted to hear.”
I shook my head and rose to my feet. “Unfortunately not. But thank you for taking the time to see me after hours.”
I brushed my fingers across Mark’s shoulder. He raised his head. His face was drawn.
I’m sorry, I mouthed.
He nodded and we left the office together.
When we got back into the car, we sat there without talking for at least ten minutes. When Uncle Stan refused to move forward with the partnership, Russ must have felt he had only one option to get Sugarwood for himself. Sometime in their partnership discussions, it must have come up that Russ was already in Uncle Stan’s will to inherit the place upon his death. What Uncle Stan must have neglected to tell Russ was that he switched it to me. He’d probably been waiting for the right time, since they weren’t regularly speaking and he hadn’t even had a chance to tell me yet.
I couldn’t tell what Mark was thinking based on his expression, but I swung from denial to anger to an irrational sense that I was betraying Russ by taking this information to the powers that be. Which was stupid. He’d tried to kill me. It had to have been him. He loved Sugarwood.
What must it be like to know so strongly what you wanted from your life? I’d never want to kill someone to have my desire fulfilled, but I’d like to at least feel that certainty of what I wanted.
“I have to tell Chief Wilson.” My voice sounded strange, all small and hollow, in the abnormally silent interior of the car.
“I know,” Mark said.
He turned on the car and drove. Without him saying anything, I knew he was headed for the police department.
Mark slammed a fist on the steering wheel and let out a low curse. I jumped.
“Sorry.” He glanced my way. “I’m not excusing what he did, but Sugarwood was his whole life. Something inside him must have snapped when he thought he might lose it.”
It was my turn to say, “I know.”
Chief Wilson clearly knew as well. When we marched into his office and told him everything, from the note to what we’d learned, he sent men to arrest Russ for the murder of Uncle Stan.
