by CJ Lyons
"Couldn't be Sarah, she was in Albany."
"We've been looking at this like a crime of opportunity because we thought Wright did it. What if this was a well-thought out, orchestrated plan and the only opportune part of it was Wright's arrival to act as patsy?"
"I don't understand. You think someone planned to kill Sam and Josh, planned to hide their bodies, then framed Wright as an after thought?"
"Murder 101—look to the family first."
He straightened, his jaw muscle spasming again. "I told you, Sarah had an iron clad alibi."
"Doesn't mean she couldn't have hired someone to do it for her. Maybe she's the one who called Logan, got him to send Richland? Or maybe poor old Richland really was just caught in the middle like Wright. Maybe she hired someone to kill Sam and Josh and things got out of hand."
For a moment Sam couldn't breathe. It was as if the darkness had entered his lungs, smothering him from the inside out. Surrendering to the flood of memories, he gazed around the clearing. His steps were jerky as he walked to the tree line and squatted, patting the ground.
"Here." The syllable sounded as shaky as the leaves rustling in the night breeze. "This is where it happened."
Sarah rushed to his side, joining him on the ground, her hands encircling his arm. He was trembling but her touch released the constriction in his chest and he could breathe again. He had to tell her everything, he knew that. At least he wouldn't be re-living it alone.
"There was a man. I saw him taking pictures of the kids, spying. I told Hal about it, he told me he'd call the feds, keep an eye on him." He shrugged. "I guess he must've used my name and it sent a signal to the wrong person. Anyway, two days later a US Marshal named Richland came knocking, said I had to leave immediately.
"You were in Albany, so of course, I said no, I couldn't. Then he drew his gun." He slapped his palm against the dirt at his feet, the memory of his helplessness surging through him. "That's when Josh came in, distracting Richland. I tackled him, yelled at Josh to run, run up to our safe place."
"Your safe place?" Her grip tightened painfully on his arm. Anger flooded her voice. Not much he could do about it except explain.
"I was always worried something like this might happen, so Josh and I had a secret hiding spot up the trail a bit. I taught him to go there if anything ever happened—it's a cave stocked with supplies. Just in case."
"Just in case." The words came in a whisper tight with fury. "And you never thought to tell me?"
"I thought about it every second of every day," he protested. "But how could I ask you to accept the risks of a life like that? How could you ever love the man I was? The man I am," he added with regret.
Her hands dropped and suddenly he felt light-years away from her. "Just tell me what happened."
"I knocked Richland down, scrambled out the door, figured I'd lose him in the woods. Or at least slow him down, take him in a different direction from Josh."
"Why didn't you go into town? Flag down help?"
"Who was I supposed to trust? I still have no idea how Richland found me, I'm not sure if it had anything to do with Damian Wright or not. At least I wasn't then. So I did the best I could."
"You ran."
"Yeah. But he caught up with me here. Shot me."
The scar on his side burned with the memory. His hand rose to rub it, silence it, but the pain spiraled into his gut, as vivid as the day it happened.
"The movies have it wrong," he continued, his gaze fixed on the small patch of earth that had almost become his grave. "You don't fly back or crumple to the ground. I didn't even hear the shot at first—it was like my brain was roaring, I couldn't hear anything. Then I felt this burning and I looked down and blood was everywhere."
Her hand covered his, gently tugged it away from his shirt. He sat on the cold ground and allowed her to pull his flannel aside, raise his T-shirt up. The scar tissue glistened an ugly pale silver in the moonlight, the heaped up edges twining around his side like a viper. He flinched when she reached her hand to it, drew back from anticipated pain.
She traced the area with her fingers, ever so gentle. The area was wider than two widths of her palms. It had taken a skin graft to cover it. Sunken like a crater from the missing band of tissue, it was a misshapen hollow the rigid muscles of his abdomen defining its boundaries.
"Here," she whispered. To his surprise, her touch soothed the angry burning.
"Yes. I was in the hospital almost ten weeks—by the time I got to a doctor, it was infected. Took three surgeries to get it looking this good. I was in a coma for a lot of the time, delirious most of the rest. It was three months before I could walk farther than the bathroom without falling down."
She tilted her face up to meet his gaze, her palm laying flat over the center of the wound. "You're lucky to be alive."
"Luck had nothing to do with it. I had to stay alive. I was Josh's only hope."
CHAPTER 30
Sarah snatched her hand away. She rocked up to her feet and looked down at the man sitting on the ground below her. Who was this man she had married and begun a family with? A stranger, a total stranger—yet somewhere inside him was the man she had loved, the man who risked his life to save his son.
But also the man who had placed her and Josh in danger.
She backed up, anxious to have some breathing room. As the temperature plummeted, the mist the mountain was famous for swirled around her ankles. A cloud covered the moon, plunging them into near-total darkness. With a blink of an eye, Sam had vanished.
Her throat tightened and she reached out a hand—her body wanted him back, wanted him near. Leaves rustled nearby and in the darkness the nocturnal stirrings of the forest seemed magnified. Moonlight filtered through the cloud as it passed and Sam's outline came slowly into focus. He remained where she had left him, staring up at her with eyes filled with sorrow and regret.
An owl called out its mournful dirge. Tears welled up behind her eyes. God, how she wanted to take him into her arms, run away with him, forgive him everything. Her heart told her to trust him, to have faith in the man she loved.
She blinked back her tears and held her ground. She'd been fooled before by her heart and its urgings. Never again.
"Richland shot you." The words dried her mouth out. She swallowed and started again. "What happened next?"
Sam climbed to his feet, stared at her a long moment before backing into the shadows, leaning against an oak trunk. "Richland came close, ready to shoot again. I tackled him—well, fell on top of him would be more like it. We struggled and he hit his head on a rock, was knocked out. I grabbed his gun and headed up the mountain to where Josh was waiting." He tilted his head and smiled at her. "He's so much like you. Practical, no-nonsense. He helped me patch up my wound, never panicked. I think he thought it was an adventure."
The thought of Josh needing to cope with any of this made her stomach heave. She crossed her arms over her chest. "How'd you get over the border?"
"I kept a four-wheeler in the cave. We rode it over the mountain to Merrill where I had a storage locker. There I had all our paperwork, some cash, and a truck ready. Then it was just a question of not passing out before we made it across the border. My landlady found me the next day, burning up with a fever, delirious. The infection was so bad, eating away at the skin and muscles that the doctors thought it was caused by a burn."
"Who watched over Josh?"
"Mrs. Beaucours. My landlady. You'd like her—she's a grandmother four times over and loves Josh like he's one of her own." He shuffled his feet as she glared at him, waiting for him to answer her unspoken question.
He said nothing, so she asked it. "Why didn't you call me? Tell me? Let me know you were alive?"
"I did—I tried," he faltered, withdrawing deeper into the shadows. Tendrils of fog began to swirl between them, forming a ghostly barrier. "I tried calling, but Alan answered, so I hung up. Then when I got out of the hospital, I drove here to see what was going on." He pa
used. The wind whipped at Sarah's hair and she hugged herself in earnest, shivering. "I snuck up to the house. You and Alan were laughing, having dinner—candles and wine and everything."
Her head snapped up at his wounded tone. "That was November. We were celebrating the first day I was able to go back to work, to start my life again. Alan called it my return to the world."
"Anyway, I couldn't risk your letting Alan know the truth—he'd kill you."
"To hell with Alan. What about telling me the truth? Letting me know my son was still alive?"
"How could I with Alan all over you? He has your house bugged as well as your phone and computer. I went to your school once, was going to reach you there, but then I realized it wouldn't work. If you had suddenly disappeared, Alan would immediately know it had something to do with me, come looking.
"I kept coming back, I couldn't stay away. Until one night Alan almost spotted me. I realized that by coming here I was endangering both you and Josh. A thousand times I thought about getting a message to you. But let's face it, Sarah, you're about the world's worst poker player. I couldn't risk Josh's life on that."
Her fingers curled into themselves as his frustration poured over her. He was right, she couldn't act her way out of the proverbial paper bag. If he had told her the truth there was no way she could have kept it hidden from Alan.
"If it was just the two of us," he went on, "I could have figured something out. But not with Josh in the mix. I just couldn't chance it. Then I heard Korsakov was getting out, so I didn't have a choice."
"And here you are, back in my life."
He stepped out from beneath the tree, his strides separating the mist between them. "Here I am." He opened his arms wide, palms up, in surrender. His voice was earnest, honest. "I'm still the man you loved, I'm still the man who loves you. I wish you'd believe me—give me that small comfort before you leave."
Sarah could hold back no longer. She rushed forward into his arms, buried her head against his chest, holding him tight. "Before I leave? I'm not going anywhere without you. We need to go get Josh, get away from all this."
His sigh caught in his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and for a moment they stood there, wrapped in moonlight and fog, together for the first time in two years. "Josh. You need to leave, go get him, take the money I've set aside and run as far as you can."
She shook her head, felt her hair trail through his fingers, and tilted her head back to meet his gaze. "Alan said he would kill you."
"He'll keep me alive long enough to get his money."
"What money?"
"I told him I could get him Korsakov's money. A hundred million."
"Money?" She stepped back, fury simmering through her once again. "That's what this is all about, money? Is that why he came here, why he—" She choked on the thought of how she'd given Alan her trust, her friendship.
"He wanted the forty-two million I stole from Korsakov before I sent him to prison. It's in a Cayman Islands bank and Alan couldn't get to it without you."
"Me? What do I have to do with this? I didn't even know about the money—"
"Since I'm legally dead, you inherit it. Once you're dead, your husband..."
Sarah put her hand up to stop his words. Her pulse hammered against her temples and the swirling mist threatened to swallow her whole as her vision blurred. She blinked, drew in a breath of cool, crisp air.
"Sonofabitch!" She whirled, would have raced down the trail, hunted Alan like the animal he was, but Sam's fingers wrapped around her arm, held her in place. Her breath came in short gasps. He pulled her to him, his warmth waking her from her visions of vengeance. Josh. She had to get to Josh before any of this ugly mess could touch him.
"It's not Alan I'm worried about." Sam's words penetrated her haze. "It's Korsakov. He won't care about the money. He'll come for revenge. On me and everyone I love."
"So we need to make sure Korsakov never learns you're really alive."
He pressed his lips against hers. Her body responded with a hunger that was unquenchable. She wrapped her hands behind his neck, drawing him into her, devouring him, savoring his taste, his scent, his warmth.
How could she risk losing this again?
When they finally parted, she was shivering. Mist filled the clearing, insinuating its chilly fingers around her heart. When she was a kid they used to make stories about the ghostly figures the mist formed, stories about Indian princesses, heroic warriors, lovers betrayed.
Sam held her close, sharing his warmth, banishing the ghosts. At least the ones from her childhood memories. They had something far more dangerous to face here and now. "I left my truck up the mountain, at the Colonel's cabin. If you hurry, you'll be with Josh when he wakes up in the morning."
The thought of seeing the look on Josh's face when she woke him, the feeling of him filling her arms, lanced through her. She stepped out of Sam's embrace, her jaw tightening as she tried to puzzle a way through the labyrinth they had landed in. "What about Alan?"
"He's not getting anywhere near you. Ever again. You're going to leave. Now."
She snapped her head up, glared at him. As if he had any right to give her orders, or even suggestions, after what he'd done. "And you will? Do what?"
"I can't come with you. Once Alan tells him I'm alive, Korsakov won't stop until he hunts me down. There's only one way out of this."
"So you have a plan?"
He ignored the sarcasm in her voice. "I have a plan. It's so simple nothing can go wrong."
"Go on."
He pulled a gun from behind his back. It wasn't shiny like the one Alan had held earlier, this weapon was flat black, squared off, utilitarian. "I kill Alan, Korsakov, and anyone else who comes after me. While you take Josh and run."
CHAPTER 31
Alan drove through town and down into Hopewell's newer, if you could call seventy-odd years being newer, neighborhood where his rented bungalow was situated. He'd chosen this house because of the privacy screen of evergreens on one side and a seven-foot tall fence on the other. It also had an attached garage with no windows. He could care less about the stunning views of the gorge above the dam to the east or the spectacular sunsets to the west.
He left his car in the driveway, knowing that by this time Logan's would be hidden in the garage. Sure enough when he entered, he found Logan lounging beside the fireplace, a glass of Alan's Johnny Walker Blue in his hand.
"I've got a job for you," he told the former FBI agent. "Let's go."
Logan took a final sip of his whiskey and climbed to his feet. "What's the rush? Korsakov can't be here already."
"I need you to babysit Sarah."
"Ahhh...is the groom getting jitters? Don't tell me she said no!"
Alan held the front door open, forcing a smile when what he really wanted to do was to slap the smirk off Logan's face. "I didn't have a chance to ask. Stan is back from the dead."
That got Logan's attention. The former FBI agent did a slow pivot, his eyes narrowed. "Son of a bitch. He must have killed Richland."
"Maybe. What I need now is for you to keep an eye on Sarah so he doesn't get a chance to talk to her or take her away."
Logan followed him through the darkness to his car. They began driving back up the mountain to Sarah's house. "Did Stan say what he did with Leo Richland? Where's his body? How'd he get the drop on him?"
"Your lazy ass associate is no concern of mine. Except that he owes me a hundred grand for my having to clean up after his mess."
"You realize that if Stan is still alive—"
"I know, I know. We're screwed if he tells Korsakov what really happened. Don't worry, I have a plan."
"Yeah, you always do. That's why it's taken us two years to get close to the money. Don't fuck it up now, Easton."
Alan stopped the car in front of Sarah's house and pivoted in his seat to stare at Logan. "Is that a threat? You have just as much to lose in this as I do, so shut up and let's finish the job your associate screwed up
two years ago."
He left the car and slammed the door on whatever reply Logan made. Sarah's house was dark. Good. He'd fed her enough wine during dinner that she should have been out for the night.
"What line are you giving her?" Logan asked as Alan opened the unlocked front door.
"I'm not. She's had her chance. You just keep her here, out of sight, and off the phone, until I figure a way to get the money from Stan."
"Hope you're not planning to take off and leave me holding the bag. 'Cause that would be a major, major miscalculation on your behalf, counselor."
"Can it." Alan paused outside Sarah's bedroom and listened. Nothing. He turned the knob and pushed the door open. Logan drew his gun. "Put that away," he whispered, "we still need her alive."
Logan frowned but re-holstered his weapon. Alan crept inside the dark room. The bedcovers were rumpled, drawn up over the pillows. Poor Sarah, must have had another one of her night terrors. Her flailing often activated the camera in here, to the point where he routinely ran out of storage space on its disk.
Alan froze as a floorboard creaked beneath his weight. The huddled mass on the bed didn't stir. He reached out and yanked back the quilt, ready to throw his weight on her if she resisted.
All he found was a pile of blankets.
"Where the hell is she, Easton?" Logan demanded, flicking the light switch on. The room was empty. Alan rushed into the bathroom. Empty as well.
"Search the house. We need to find her before Stan does."
"And what if we're too late? What if your bird has flown the coop?"
Hal and Caitlyn argued about Sarah's possible involvement in the deaths of her husband and son, finally agreeing to disagree as they waded through the boxes of paperwork and evidence. After several hours and two pots of coffee, Hal excused himself to use the restroom while Caitlyn hauled the box of phone records that he'd left her with onto the table.
She finished her coffee as she sifted through the musty reams of paper. These were no good, they were the reports from the tips called into the hotline, not the actual records of Hal's departmental phone conversations.
