She Can Kill

by Melinda Leigh

  “I’m not hungry.” Lucia slipped onto the stool on Sarah’s right.

  Cristan frowned. “How about some hot chocolate?”

  “OK.” Lucia shrugged.

  Sarah’s heart squeezed. She wrapped her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah.” Lucia rested her head on her shoulder. “I wish you were my mom.”

  “Me too,” Sarah said.

  The doorbell broke the moment. Cristan went to the door. A few seconds later, Mike’s voice carried from the hall. He walked into the kitchen, his baby-blue eyes scrutinizing Sarah and Lucia. “How are you two feeling this morning?”

  “Better,” Sarah said.

  Mike jingled his keys in his hand. “Can I talk to Sarah alone for a few minutes?”

  “Of course.” Cristan herded Lucia out of the room.

  Mike took the stool next to Sarah. He took her hand in his. “Troy’s dead.”

  “What?” Shock numbed her. Had she heard Mike correctly?

  “We found him in the woods behind his house. He died from a single gunshot wound to the head. The cause of death isn’t official, but it’s likely he killed himself.”

  Shock closed Sarah’s throat. Her next breath was a loud wheeze. Troy had seemed so intent on hurting her; it seemed impossible that he’d taken his own life.

  Mike opened kitchen cabinets until he found glasses and filled one with water. He handed it to her. “Take a drink.”

  She sipped.

  “He destroyed the house and took guns and ammo from the store. His computer search history was full of articles on husband/wife murder suicides.” Mike rubbed her arm.

  She’d never expected Troy to give up. Ever.

  “I don’t know why I’m surprised.” Sarah’s voice broke as sadness nearly overwhelmed her. “He tried to kill us both.”

  “Are you all right here? Do you want to come home with me?”

  “I won’t put Rachel in danger.” Sarah shook her head. “Cristan is taking good care of me.”

  “Good. You deserve it.” With a final pat to her hand, Mike stood. “We’ve seen no sign of Eva Vargas, so don’t let your guard down.”

  Sarah rose onto her toes and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks, Mike.”

  He left the room and she heard voices. Sarah settled in the chair. Troy’s death would take a while to sink in. The combination of relief and sadness swirled in her belly.

  Could it really be over? Troy had turned into a monster, but he hadn’t always been that way. And she had never wished him dead. How would she tell the girls?

  Cristan returned. He and Mike exchanged a few words, and then Cristan came to her. Sarah stood and turned her face to his chest. He wrapped his arms around her body. She cried in long, ragged sobs until her tears soaked his shirt. Cristan’s hand rubbed a circle in the center of her back.

  When she could breathe, Sarah pushed away, reaching for a napkin and drying her face. “I’m sorry.” She sniffed. “Where’s Lucia?”

  “She’s upstairs.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes. She’s reading something.” He brushed a thumb under her eye. “It’s going to be all right, Sarah.”

  “How can you say that? Troy can’t hurt us anymore, but Eva is still out there. And how will I tell the girls their father tried to kill me and committed suicide?”

  “You’ll find a way. Don’t keep the truth from them. It will only hurt them more if they hear it from someone else. They’re stronger than you think.”

  Light-headed, Sarah fought for control of her breathing. “Even if they catch Eva, what will happen to you and Lucia?”

  “I would hope that if anything happened to me, you would care for Lucia.”

  “Of course.”

  “Sean has arranged a meeting for me with friends of his at the ATF and FBI. They want to offer me a deal. Immunity for information. Apparently, Aline isn’t talking, and her operation has been on their radar for a long time, and they want all the background they can get. I don’t know how useful twelve-year-old information will be, but I’ll tell them everything I know. The potential charges against me for falsifying documents are trivial compared to Aline’s organization. I also suspect Mike and Sean lobbied hard for me. They both seem very well respected in the law enforcement community. I can be Cristan Rojas. They can arrange for Lucia and me to have official documentation.”

  “Like witness protection?”

  “Just like that.” He kissed her. “Lucia gets to stay in the place she loves. I can stay here with you, and that makes me very happy.”

  Sarah almost smiled, then she remembered his murderous wife. “But we don’t know where Eva is.”

  He glanced away. “That isn’t entirely true.”

  “What?”

  “Eva stopped here last night. She won’t be bothering us again.” He went to the cabinet and took out a small box. “She gave me a letter for Lucia. An apology. Eva recognized that she isn’t mother material.” He handed her the box.

  “I don’t understand.” Sarah couldn’t believe that Eva was no longer a threat. Wrapped in plain, brown paper, the box fit in her palm. “Do you know what it is?”

  “No. She said it was her way of thanking you for saving Lucia. She also said you were the kind of woman Lucia deserved. She seemed sincere.”

  “Do you trust her?”

  “No,” he said. “But I believe she was telling the truth.”

  Sarah unwrapped the box and opened it. Her hand went to the scar on her temple, and her breath caught.

  Inside, nestled on plain white cotton, sat Troy’s high school ring.

  An hour later, Cristan showed Mike and Sean into his office.

  Mike took one of the chairs that faced Cristan’s desk. “I hope you don’t mind. Sean was with me when you called.”

  “Not at all.” Sitting behind his desk, Cristan reached into the top drawer and pulled out the box with Troy’s ring in it. He handed it across the desk.

  “What is this?” Mike asked.

  “Sarah says it’s Troy’s high school ring.”

  Mike shifted. “And how did you get it?”

  “Eva gave it to me.” Cristan summed up her visit to the house.

  Sean whistled. “I know she tried to kill you, but you have to admire her style. If she were a dude, she’d have brass balls the size of Texas.”

  Mike set the box on the desk. “And you didn’t think to call me when she was here?”

  “Eva is no longer a threat to us,” Cristan said. “I know her. She might be a killer, but lying was never one of her faults.”

  Mike rubbed his forehead as if it hurt. “I’ll need to take the ring as evidence, but frankly, I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with it.”

  “Troy’s dead, and Aline is sitting in a prison cell. So Eva got away. The only person she wanted to kill is Cristan, and he seems fine with it. Two out of three isn’t bad.” Sean lifted both shoulders. “You can’t have everything.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  “You still look awful, and this is from someone who was shot a week ago.” Sarah sat at Rachel’s kitchen island.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You are not.” Sarah shifted in her chair. The wound in her shoulder was healing, but it still hurt plenty.

  “I’m taking her to see Quinn tomorrow.” Mike lifted a turkey breast from the oven and set the roasting pan on the stove. The three girls were in the barn with Cristan, checking on Lady and giving Snowman carrots.

  Rachel sulked, but she was pale and pasty-looking. “A little food poisoning isn’t a big deal.”

  “You’ve hardly eaten all week,” Mike said.

  The back door opened. Alex raced in, breathless and excited. “Cristan says call the vet. Lady is going to have her baby soon.”

&n
bsp; They rushed to the barn. The mare was lying in the center of the foaling stall. Sweat coated her flanks, and her sides heaved with effort. Cristan was outside the stall, leaning on the half door.

  Looking scared, Lucia stepped up next to Sarah. “She looks like she’s in pain. Are you sure she’s OK?”

  Sarah smiled and put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “She knows what to do.” But she wished Alex and Em weren’t here. What if something went wrong? They’d dealt with enough trauma this week. She looked at her daughters. They were standing on a bale of straw looking through the bars that topped the wooden wall.

  The mare heaved to her feet and pawed at the straw bedding.

  “She is restless.” Cristan watched the horse with critical eyes. “It should be any time now.”

  Empathizing with the horse’s discomfort, Sarah sighed. “I remember those days. Poor thing.”

  Rachel swayed. Her face was pale as marble.

  Worried, Sarah put a hand on her sister’s forehead. “You don’t have a fever, but you look awful.”

  “Thanks.” Completely focused on getting to her horse, Rachel’s retort held no heat.

  Cristan leaned over the door and scanned the bedding. As they watched, Lady got to her feet, paced a circle around her stall, then lay down again. She rolled to her belly and back to her side.

  “Oh, no.” Rachel hurried to the tack room and came back with a box. Lifting the lid, she removed surgical gloves and a pair of scissors from a plastic bag with shaking hands.

  “What are you doing?” Lucia asked. “What’s wrong?”

  Cristan stepped forward. “Let me. I’ve done this before, and you’re hardly in any condition to pull a foal.”

  “You’ve done what before?” Lucia stared at her father.

  “Are those sterile?” Stripping off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves, he nodded toward the scissors.

  “Yes.” Rachel hesitated, then handed him the gloves and scissors.

  Lucia’s lip trembled. “What’s wrong?”

  “The foal is in trouble,” Rachel said in a shaky voice. “The placenta is coming first. That means the foal isn’t getting any oxygen. If it isn’t born very quickly, it won’t live.”

  Mike wrapped his arm around her waist, and she leaned into him. Lucia sniffed back a tear, the girls started to cry, and Sarah hugged the three sets of shoulders. “Do you want to go to the house?” she asked.

  “No.” Alex answered for all of them.

  In the stall, Cristan donned the gloves and crouched behind the horse. He carefully cut the membrane with the scissors. Two tiny hooves, encased in a white sack, emerged. Cristan handed the scissors over the door to Rachel, then returned to the horse. He gently broke the white sack with his hands, then grasped the foal’s legs and pulled. Forelegs followed hooves, then a nose. As soon as the head emerged, Cristan removed the sack from the foal’s head and cleared its nostrils. Then he grabbed hold of the forelegs, leaned back, and pulled harder. Shoulders slid onto the straw. A few seconds later, the rest of the foal slipped from the horse and flopped on the straw, its thin legs thrashing.

  Everyone exhaled at once. Rachel nearly fell over. Sarah felt tears on her face and blotted them on her sleeve. The baby lifted its head. Crouching in front of it, Cristan removed the white sack from the rest of the body. He glanced over his shoulder. “Could I have a towel?”

  Sarah fetched a clean towel from the box of foaling supplies and took it to him. He rubbed the baby down and smiled back at Rachel. “It’s a colt.”

  He was dark red with a white star on the center of his forehead.

  “He looks like his daddy.” Rachel wiped her face. Now that the baby was safe, Sarah’s concern shifted back to her sister.

  Lady lifted her head, looked back at her baby, and nickered softly.

  “Is the baby OK?” Lucia asked. Next to her, Alex and Em stared up, wide-eyed.

  Cristan stood. “He’s perfect.” He exited the stall, tossing the damp towel over the door. Peeling off the surgical gloves, he threw them in a garbage pail in the aisle.

  “You should get back to bed before you fall down,” Sarah said to her sister.

  Rachel shook her head. “I need to make sure he nurses.”

  “I’ll stay,” Cristan offered. “And your veterinarian should be here soon.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you for your help,” Rachel said, her voice breaking.

  Cristan glanced at Mike. “No thanks are needed. Friends help friends, right?”

  “Right,” Mike answered, turning Rachel and steering her toward the door.

  Sarah followed them. “She needs to see a doctor, Mike.”

  Opening the door, Mike glanced back at Sarah. “I’m going to call Quinn.”

  As they left, Sarah could hear her sister protesting, which was a good sign. A compliant Rachel would have worried her even more.

  Lucia hung over the door, her face full of wonder. “Oh, look! He’s trying to stand.”

  “He’s so cute,” squealed Alex.

  With a dreamy smile, Em leaned on Sarah.

  In the stall, Lady got to her feet and turned to lick her baby. The colt splayed his forelegs, his first attempt to rock to his feet sending him sprawling face-first into the straw.

  Cristan stood next to his daughter. “Do you mind if we stay here for the rest of the night?”

  “I want to stay.” Without looking at him, she said, “I didn’t know you could deliver a baby horse.”

  “There are many things you don’t know about me. I’m sorry about that.”

  “Will you tell me now?” She turned her head and studied his face.

  He smiled. “Right now, I need a clean shirt. But yes, I will tell you what you want to know.”

  She nodded and went back to watching the horses.

  “All right then.” He stepped away from the door. “Can you watch them for a few minutes? I need to wash up.”

  “OK.” Lucia rested her chin on her crossed forearms.

  Cristan went out to his car and grabbed a gym bag from his trunk. Sarah grabbed his jacket and followed him to the wash stall. He stripped off his bloodstained shirt and washed his hands and arms.

  “It would be warmer to do that up at the house.” Sarah reached for a clean towel from a shelf on the wall.

  “I’ll survive.” He took the towel and rubbed his body dry.

  Sarah tried not to stare at the lean muscles rippling in his chest and arms. There was no question the man was hot, but it was the gentleness he’d shown the mare that attracted her. Troy had been an athlete with a rocking body when she’d married him. Looks were nice, but they didn’t mean much in the long run. Kindness was for keeps.

  “Thank you for saving my sister’s horse. You have no idea what that mare and baby mean to her.”

  He tugged a clean T-shirt over his head. “I think I do, and it was my pleasure.”

  “Lucia was impressed.”

  “I’m just happy she spoke to me. Perhaps someday she will even forgive me.”

  “I think she will. She just watched you save Lady’s foal. That’s bound to help.”

  Lucia was smiling when they returned. “He’s trying to stand up again.”

  The little girls oohed and ahhed as the colt staggered to his feet and careened the few steps to Lady’s side. Instinct drove him to nuzzle at her flank. A few seconds later, he was nursing. Sarah’s eyes filled with tears again.

  Mike poked his head into the barn. “I’m taking Rachel to the emergency room. She just fainted.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Sarah jogged to the door.

  “No.” Mike shook his head. “If you and Cristan could see to the horses, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Of course we will.” Worry filled Sarah. “You’ll call me when you know something or i
f she gets worse?”

  Mike nodded. “Thanks, Sarah.”

  The vet pulled up just as Mike’s SUV left the driveway.

  An arm came around her shoulders. Lucia. “It’ll be all right, Sarah.”

  Sarah hugged the girl back and rested her cheek on Lucia’s head. “Thank you for your help.”

  “That’s what friends are for,” Lucia said. “Right Dad?”

  “Yes.” But as Cristan met her gaze, she saw her own worry reflected back at her.

  Dr. White walked into the barn, his huge frame outfitted in the usual coveralls and heavy boots. Cristan showed him to the mare’s stall.

  “You missed the whole thing.” Lucia gave the vet the details on the birth.

  “You are worried about your sister?” Cristan took Sarah’s hand.

  “Yes.” What would she do if something was really wrong with her sister?

  Sarah took her phone from her pocket and turned up the ringer. She didn’t want to miss a call from Mike. Not much kept her sister down, and she’d been waiting for this foal for many long months. If she let Mike talk her into a trip to the ER, she must be much sicker than she’d admitted.

  Hours later, Cristan watched dawn break clear and bright over the field. Sarah had taken a half-asleep Lucia up to the house a few hours before. Alex and Em had been carted off to Mrs. Holloway’s place down the road. Rachel’s sole employee, a young man named Brandon, arrived to clean stalls. Cristan helped him feed the horses, then checked in on the mother and baby again. Lady nuzzled her baby as he suckled. After the dangerous and hurried birth, mare and foal had showed no signs of complications.

  The sound of a car door pulled him to the barnyard. Mike and Rachel got out of the SUV. Mike gestured for Cristan and he walked to the house.

  The scent of brewing coffee greeted him as he entered through the mudroom. In the adjoining kitchen, Sarah stirred a huge pan of scrambled eggs. Lucia put bread into the toaster, and the scent of bacon made Cristan’s stomach growl. The sight of his daughter and Sarah working in the kitchen together warmed him. Twelve years ago, he would never have guessed this scene would appeal to him. But now, he couldn’t imagine anything better.