A Creed in Stone Creek

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Shut up,” Carter rasped, poking Martine harder with the gun.

  “Easy,” Steven said, in a tone he usually reserved for spooked horses and unfriendly dogs. “You don’t want the kind of trouble you’ll be in if Martine gets hurt. Believe me, you don’t.”

  Carter was sweating, and his pupils seemed to be spiraling in the centers of his eyes. He was high, or drunk, maybe both. Very bad news. Drugs, alcohol and stupidity didn’t make a good combination.

  “She’s lying about the money,” the thief growled. “She won’t tell me where the money is!”

  “I just have what’s right here in the till,” Martine insisted, in a frantic squeak. “We’ve been selling a lot of gas and beer and soda and stuff, with all these people in town for the parade and the rodeo, and the boss wanted most of the money in the bank—”

  “I told you to shut up,” Carter said. Then, quicker than Steven would have thought anybody could move, especially when they were stoned, he turned the pistol in his hand and used the butt of it to whack Martine hard in the side of the head.

  The sound was like a baseball bat striking a water-melon.

  Melissa screamed, more in objection than fright.

  And Steven pitched himself over the counter at Carter, who, in that split second, was fumbling with the weapon.

  A shot ripped through the air, shattered the glass in the front window.

  The alarm began to shriek.

  Steven landed on Carter and they both went down, in a tangle, not far from where Martine lay, perfectly still and bleeding.

  The quarters were close behind that counter. Carter still had the gun—Steven could feel it pressed sideways between him and his adversary, knew the other man was groping for the trigger, and if he managed to get a finger around it—

  Sirens sounded in the distance—too far in the distance.

  The struggle for control of the gun seemed never-ending, although it couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds. When the pistol went off, Steven froze, waiting for the bullet to tear through him.

  But it was Carter who’d been hit.

  He looked up at Steven, smirked and then closed his eyes.

  Steven raised himself slowly, got as far as his knees, then took the gun from the dead man’s fingers—there was blood everywhere by then, some of it Carter’s, some of it Martine’s.

  Melissa scrambled, half crawling, around the base of the counter, her eyes huge, her face chalk-white. Her gaze found Steven, clung to him for a fraction of a moment, skittered over Nathan Carter and fixed itself on Martine, who was beginning to stir. Moaning a little.

  “Are you hit?” Melissa asked. And when she didn’t get an answer in the next second, she repeated, “Steven, are you hit?”

  “No,” he said. The bloody pistol made a thunking sound as he reached up and set it on the counter.

  She wriggled past him, and Carter, to reach Martine. “Hold on,” she murmured to the other woman. “Please, hold on. Help is coming. Do you hear the sirens? You’re all right now, you’re safe—”

  The sirens were louder.

  Closer.

  Steven hauled himself to his feet, dazed.

  Flashing lights swiped at the windows, a slap of red, a slap of blue.

  He blinked.

  Melissa was still on the floor, trying to comfort Martine.

  Tom Parker burst in, gun drawn, still wearing his fancy parade uniform. “What the hell—?” he said.

  “You can holster that thing,” Steven told him, in a remarkably calm voice. “The shooting is over.”

  Tom hesitated as two deputies piled in behind him, their own service revolvers out and ready.

  Tom raised a hand, evidently a signal that any immediate danger was past, and ordered, “Tell the EMTs it’s okay to come in, and make sure—make damn sure—nobody else sets foot in here. I don’t want this scene messed up.”

  The deputies obeyed.

  Things had been happening at warp speed right along, but now time seemed to move even faster.

  The EMTs appeared.

  Steven took Melissa’s hand, and pulled her out from behind the counter, held her close while the medics worked to stabilize Martine.

  “I’m all right,” Martine said, over and over again.

  Steven tightened his arms around Melissa when she began to cry.

  Martine was carried out on a stretcher, and loaded into a waiting ambulance.

  Tom rounded the end of the counter to look down at Nathan Carter, who was so obviously dead that the paramedics hadn’t bothered with him.

  “What happened?” Tom asked, in the thunderous silence.

  Outside, the world was still a noisy place, a thrumming void, threaded through with panicked shouts and carnival music and the screech of tires on asphalt as the ambulance sped away. Instead, that store was like the bottom of a lake. Or an ocean.

  Melissa buried her face in Steven’s shirt, avoiding the blood for the most part, and trembled against his chest.

  Slowly, Steven recounted what had happened.

  The State Police arrived, along with their crime scene techs. The store was secured, and Tom told Melissa and Steven to go on home, because there was nothing more to be done here.

  “You can’t let Matt see you with blood all over your clothes,” Melissa said, when they were outside in the warm night.

  The statement reassured Steven that she was all right. She was coming back to herself. Back to him.

  “I know,” he said, weary to the core of his soul.

  Bystanders shouted questions to them, questions Melissa fielded with an upraised palm and, “Tom will make an announcement when that’s appropriate. In the meantime, I hope you’ll all cooperate and let the authorities complete their investigation with no interruptions.”

  “Is Martine gonna make it?” someone called out.

  “Yes,” Melissa said, her arm around Steven, just as his was around her.

  He wasn’t sure who was supporting whom.

  The roadster was still parked at the pumps, its paint job shining under the outside lights.

  Steven steered Melissa in the direction of his truck—whatever happened, he wasn’t ready to let her go—and they were almost to the driver’s-side door when a man in a hat stepped out of the shadows.

  “Boston? Does all that blood belong to you or somebody else?”

  Brody. Steven felt a rush of emotions, but at the moment, relief was the only one he recognized.

  “I’m all right,” he said.

  Brody swept off his beat-up old hat, nodded politely to Melissa. “How about you, ma’am?”

  She simply nodded, leaning into Steven a little.

  “Dad and Kim are over at the fairgrounds, with Matt,” Steven said to his cousin. “Find them and bring them out to the ranch, will you?” He paused, looked down at his clothes. Tom hadn’t said so, but the police would probably want them as evidence, and he’d be questioned, without a doubt. This was likely to be a long night.

  Brody nodded. “I’ll do it,” he said. He took Melissa’s arm and escorted her to the other side of the truck, helped her into the passenger seat.

  He could be a gentleman, when he chose.

  Steven was behind the wheel by the time Brody returned to look in at him through the open window.

  “Maybe you’d like a little time to get out of those duds,” Brody observed gravely. “If Kim and the little guy see you looking like you lost a gunfight, they’ll freak for sure.”

  Steven nodded. “Give us an hour,” he said.

  He shifted into gear, backed the truck out, shifted again.

  “Do you want me to drop you off at your place?” he asked Melissa, as an afterthought.

  Steven was more than relieved when she shook her head no.

  They drove to the ranch in relative silence; both of them were probably in shock. When she saw that there were lights burning in the old house, and Brad’s tour bus was gone, replaced by Davis and Kim’s RV, she sat up a little straigh
ter.

  “You’ve moved into your house?”

  “It’s more like we’re camping out,” Steven answered, smiling. It felt good—and strange—to smile, as if he’d forgotten how to do it and then suddenly remembered. “But it’s shaping up. Matt’s in his room and I’m in mine. The kitchen works, and so do the shower and the bathtub.”

  She looked down at her clothes, when Steven stopped the truck and shoved open the door, causing the interior lights to come on.

  “I’m a mess,” she said.

  “You can borrow something of Kim’s,” Steven replied, getting out.

  Before he could go around and open the door for her, Melissa had alighted on her own.

  They met behind the truck.

  “You’re—you’re really okay, Steven?” she asked.

  He started to touch her, drew back his hand at the last moment. “You might say I’ve seen the light,” he said, after giving a nod.

  She moved to his side, slipped an arm around him, and they started toward the house.

  Inside, Zeke was barking his head off, waiting to greet them.

  Eager to greet anybody.

  They entered the house, and Steven acknowledged the dog, then crossed the kitchen and plucked a couple of garbage bags from the box under the new stainless steel sink. He offered one to Melissa, pointed her in the right direction. “You take the first shower,” he said. “There’s a robe on the hook on the back of the bathroom door.”

  “What about you?” she asked, her voice quiet, worried. “Matt would be beside himself if he saw you—”

  “Brody will make sure he doesn’t,” Steven said. His cousin was about the least dependable person he knew, but when it mattered, Brody always came through.

  “Still,” Melissa argued.

  Steven put a hand on the small of her back and steered her to the bathroom door.

  “Go,” he said from behind her and close to her ear. “I’ll go out to the RV and swipe something for you to wear. Put your clothes in the garbage bag—there’s a good chance the forensics people will want them.”

  She nodded, without turning around to look at him, then pushed open the door and disappeared into the bathroom.

  He waited until he heard the shower running, then retraced his steps to his bedroom. He stripped and stuffed his clothes into the second bag, and pulled on a pair of sweatpants he’d been meaning to throw away. After one last hurrah, their time would come.

  Steven got out a shirt, socks and sneakers. He heard the shower stop, and imagined Melissa stepping naked out of the stall, drying off quickly, reaching for his robe and shrugging into it, cinching the belt up tight. The thought made him smile.

  It also made him want to hold her. Skin to skin, yes. But the desire was more about knowing that Melissa was safe than it was about sex.

  They met in the hallway.

  “I’ll make coffee,” she said.

  “Good idea,” Steven replied.

  Fifteen minutes later, when he joined her, she was sitting at the kitchen table the movers had brought from his condo in Denver—it looked too modern for a ranch house and too small for that kitchen—but Melissa looked just fine.

  She turned her head and he knew by the look in her eyes that her brain was in top gear.

  Amazing, considering what she’d been through earlier in the evening.

  “Hold on,” he said, sounding gruff. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He took the keys to his parents’ RV from the hook beside the back door and headed outside, taking Zeke with him. While the dog sniffed around and lifted his leg against an old wagon wheel half buried in the dirt, Steven unlocked the fancy RV and went in.

  There were a couple of suitcases on the bed in the master space, both open, but Davis and Kim hadn’t unpacked yet.

  Steven helped himself to a likely looking pair of jeans and a T-shirt with “Lonesome Bend Pioneer Days” imprinted on the front, but he didn’t touch the bras and panties. He didn’t know for sure, but he figured it was a fairly good bet that women didn’t like wearing each other’s underwear any better than men did.

  No, Melissa would just have to go without. The thought made him smile again. And that was remarkable, considering.

  He returned to the house, Zeke frolicking happily at his heels, and offered the jeans and T-shirt to Melissa.

  Still sitting at the table, she accepted the neat little pile of clothes without comment, got up from her chair and went back to the bathroom to put them on.

  She returned in time to drink the fresh coffee Steven had just poured into her mug. She reached for the cup and breathed the aroma in gratefully.

  Kim was taller than Melissa, so the jeans and T-shirt looked a little big on her, but she didn’t seem to care.

  “What happens now?” she asked, after dropping back into her chair.

  Zeke walked over and laid his muzzle in her lap, as if to offer comfort.

  “Tom calls us in for questioning,” Steven said, though he was sure she’d only asked rhetorically. “Maybe tonight, probably tomorrow.” He turned a chair around, sat astraddle of it, with his arms resting across the back. “We’re witnesses, counselor.”

  And I killed a human being, Steven thought.

  A brief flash sparked in her eyes. “I know that,” she said. “I was talking about—I meant—what happens between us?”

  A grin tugged at the side of his mouth. “Not too long ago, a lady told me, with some emphasis, that there is no us.”

  Melissa sat up straighter, one hand curled around her cup, the other stroking Zeke’s head. “That was before she—I—came face-to-face with my priorities. That happens, when you think you might die.”

  Steven nodded. His heartbeat quickened, but she had no way of knowing that, of course. A good thing, to his way of thinking. “What are your priorities, Steven?” she asked.

  He took his time replying, even though the answers lived in the very cells of his body, little holograms, each one containing the whole. “Matt. His health and happiness and freedom, my own, my family’s, and everybody else’s. Knowing, when I’m about to fall asleep at night, that I did what I thought was right that day, even if things didn’t turn out the way I hoped they would.” He allowed himself a measured pause. “What about you? What are your priorities, Melissa?”

  “The people I love matter most,” she said, after taking a few sips of coffee. Her gaze was fixed on the far side of forever. “The law matters, because without some kind of social order, we’re all in trouble.” She looked down at Zeke. Smiled tenderly. “Animals mean more to me than I ever realized—they’re so devoted and so loyal.”

  “Thinking of getting a pet?” Steven asked, when another silence fell.

  She smiled, shook her head. “Not right away,” she said. “But I think I’d like to work for Olivia’s foundation, once my term as prosecutor is up. Livie and I used to talk about it a lot, how I could serve as a kind of animal advocate.”

  Steven took that in, along with a few sips of coffee. Tried not to look too pleased by what she’d just revealed. He would have bet his best saddle that this woman would remain the Stone Creek County prosecutor until her hair was tinted blue.

  “That’s—interesting,” he said.

  Zeke lifted his head off Melissa’s lap and started barking again.

  They heard the sound of an engine, the slamming of a door.

  Brody poked his head into the kitchen a few seconds later. “Is the coast clear?” he asked.

  “It’s clear,” Steven said.

  Brody’s smile broke over his face like a summer sunrise, full of light. “Good,” he replied. “I’ll go get Kim and Davis and the boy.”

  As quickly as that, he was gone again, and Zeke went with him.

  Zeke had long since appointed himself the official welcoming committee.

  Melissa bit her lower lip. “I know I should ask you to take me home, but—”

  Steven closed his hand over hers. “But?”

  “But I don’t really
want to be alone, and my family would make such a fuss over all the things that could have happened—I don’t think I can face that, tonight, anyway.”

  “Stay with me,” Steven suggested, husky-voiced. “I’ll hold you. Nothing more than that, I promise.”

  Tears filled her eyes as she searched his for any sign of deception.

  “Okay,” she said, just as Matt burst into the house, with Kim and Davis and Brody and Zeke close behind.

  MELISSA NOTICED THE PICTURE taped to the refrigerator door only after Steven had given Matt and the others a watered-down version of that night’s events. Kim and Davis and Brody all listened intently.

  He left several pertinent details out of his account—the fear they’d all felt when Martine was struck down with the butt of Carter’s pistol, the struggle for that weapon, the shot that ended the robber’s life—but he still managed to convey a lot.

  Yes, someone tried to rob the Stop & Shop. Yes, Melissa and I were scared. Both of us. No, I wasn’t a hero.

  “Yes, he was,” Melissa disagreed, pulling her gaze away from the drawing of the stick-family Matt had mentioned earlier, in town, when the parade was about to end.

  Kim smiled and tugged Matt onto her lap. “Why don’t you get your pajamas and your toothbrush and come spend the night in the RV with your grandpa and me?”

  The boy’s eyes widened. He looked tired, but the things Steven had said had apparently calmed his fears.

  “You’ll be okay, Dad?” he asked.

  “I’ll be fine,” Steven promised.

  Matt turned to look up at Kim. “Can Zeke come, too?”

  Davis answered for her. “Sure, he can,” he said, his gaze moving to Brody, who was leaning against the counter, with his arms folded, watching them all. “There’s plenty of room out there,” he added.

  Brody grinned, gave a little salute as an answer.

  He was good-looking, Melissa thought, strangely detached.

  “Will you still be here in the morning?” Matt asked, coming to stand next to Melissa’s chair and looking up at her with what she read as a combination of concern and hope.

  It was a tricky question. Melissa looked to Steven for help, but he said nothing.