by Barb Han
Another swish of the door and she realized she’d been holding her breath.
“It’s all good,” Holden said, reclaiming the duffel. He had a second helmet and she figured he must’ve left it at Rose’s on a prior visit.
Ella followed him out the door, surprised at the stabbing pain in her chest at leaving. She’d lost so much already and Rose had managed to wiggle her way into Ella’s heart in the short time she’d known her. Rose’s eyes belied her smile. There was emptiness there, a hollowness that Ella couldn’t ignore.
“I’d like to check on her when I get my life back,” she said to Holden. “We have our annual fall festival coming up in a few weeks. Maybe she’d like to come.”
“When this is over, you can do anything you want,” he said. He wasn’t arguing against the idea but he came off like he didn’t care either way. Was he reminding her that they’d go on to live their separate lives by then? She couldn’t see his face with his helmet on.
Leaving Rose was harder than Ella expected it to be. Her heart broke a little as she climbed onto the back of Holden’s motorcycle. She was glad that he didn’t notice the tears welling in her eyes at the thought of leaving Rose by herself.
The highway was long and empty when they first started out. Traffic thickened as they headed east and neared major cities. After riding on the back of Holden’s motorcycle so long Ella’s arms felt like they were being dragged down by hundred-pound weights, they exited the highway.
Holden located a dirt path about a mile off the highway and Ella lost count of how many minutes they’d been on it until he finally stopped.
After Ella climbed off the back of the bike, Holden threw his leg over and hopped off.
“I thought we’d camp for a few days. I have camping gear in my duffel,” he said. With his helmet on, visor down, she couldn’t read his eyes.
Ella balked. “Seriously? Out here?”
“Sure. Why not?” He removed his helmet to reveal concerned, pinched eyebrows.
“Mosquitoes for one. They’ll eat me alive. Showers for another. You won’t want to be anywhere near me without one.” She was getting nowhere and could tell by his tense expression.
And then his face broke into a wide smile, revealing near-perfect white teeth.
“You think this is funny?” She really was working herself up now and it seemed to amuse him all the more.
“Actually, I do.” He turned and walked to a clearing where one of those tiny houses stood. He was jiggling what sounded like keys.
Ella blew out a frustrated breath as she watched him unlock the door.
“Coming?” he asked, and there was a contrite quality to his voice. “Or do you plan to stand out here and become mosquito bait?”
“Think you’re funny?” she shot back with a look meant to freeze boiling water.
“I used to,” he said under his breath.
And that made her laugh as she walked past him. She couldn’t help herself. It was most likely the stress of the past few days and how out of control her life had become, but she laughed.
“I don’t know what shocks me more. The fact that you made me laugh or used to think you were funny,” she said as he opened the door.
A laugh rumbled from Holden’s chest and it was sexy. Ella wanted to shut off her attraction to him. But it felt impossible at the moment. No matter how much she tried to hold it back, she couldn’t. So she gave in and it was probably the stress that they’d been under more than anything else, but both of them laughed until she had to sit down.
“That felt good,” she said, ignoring the feeling like champagne bubbling up her throat as she wiped tears from her eyes.
“It did.” Holden stood at the door, leaning against the jamb, arms folded. “Life used to be...more funny.”
“How long did you say you’ve been living like this?” she asked.
“Twenty-five months.” His smile faded.
“That’s a long time.” She stood.
He nodded and she thought he said, “Too long.”
“What about Rose? Will she be safe now that we’re gone?” she asked.
“That’s the idea. But if they figure out her connection to me...” He stopped as though he couldn’t finish the thought let alone the sentence.
“Would she be safer at my family’s ranch?” Ella asked. “I could have someone pick her up. No one would have to know.”
“She’s stubborn.” He was already shaking his head. “There’s no way she would leave her precious garden for more than a few days.”
“What if I talked to her? Maybe she’d listen to me if I came up with a good argument.”
“You’d be wasting your breath,” he responded.
“It’d be worth a try,” she argued.
“You really think you can change people, don’t you?” Holden asked, and the question took her off guard.
“Why do you make it sound like a bad thing?” Her defenses flared.
“It’s good.” He shrugged. “Probably naive. You do realize that you can’t save every stray.”
“Maybe.” She probably shouldn’t speak her mind to the one person who seemed intent on helping her. Especially when she was about to send out a zinger. “But at least I don’t quit.”
That brought an amused smile to Holden’s face. “And that’s what you think I did?”
“Obviously. You got into trouble and you’ve been hiding ever since,” she surmised.
“I’m sure it looks that simple from the outside.” He picked up the duffel and brought it over to one of the chairs. The living room of the place was too small for a couch, but there were two reasonably sized, comfortable-looking chairs with a small table in between. The kitchen was more like a kitchenette with a microwave and a hot plate. Ella’s dorm room in college had been bigger, and yet she was never happier to be in a space. There was a full-size bed on the back wall. It would be way too small for a man like Holden Crawford. And a closed door that she assumed led to an equally small bathroom, which was fine because this was so much better than being out there in the elements, exposed.
“How’d you know about this place?” His comments still stung, which meant there was a tiny bit of truth. Ella didn’t believe in lost causes. Everyone could be saved. Except those who refuse help, a little voice reminded.
“Belongs to a friend of mine.” He pulled out the makings for coffee.
She must’ve balked because he got a defensive look on his face.
“I have friends,” he said, defensive.
She wasn’t touching that statement. “Are you tired after that long ride?”
“Not really. Riding helps clear out the clutter in my head.” He moved to the kitchen and held up a mug.
“Yes, please,” Ella said.
“Our conversation is churning through my mind.” He heated water on the small stove before filtering the grinds.
“Anything stick out?”
“I just got to thinking about your life, your activities and who might benefit from your death.”
“No one, really. The ranch would continue to run. Dad had a trust set up years ago in order to protect jobs in the event something happened to his kids. It’s part of the reason his employees were always loyal to him. He looked out for them,” she said. “Ed Staples, the family attorney, would oversee it and then he’d name a successor. There are a lot of controls built in so no one can override the document or successfully challenge it in court. I wish I’d paid more attention to that part but I honestly never thought I’d need to know. My dad was such a presence. I just never believed anything bad would happen to him.”
Holden paused long enough to make eye contact before continuing. The look seemed meant to be reassuring.
“But we have no suspects and we’re no closer to figuring out what happened than we were after the first rock to my head,”
she said, frustrated.
Holden handed over a mug of fresh steaming brew.
Ella took a sip and mewled with pleasure. “I will never tire of the taste of your coffee.”
Her response netted another smile and she liked the way his lips curved.
“You figure out how to make do with what you have in your environment,” he said.
“Where are we, by the way?” she asked, realizing it hadn’t occurred to ask before now. She’d been too busy laughing and her stomach still hurt.
“We’re in Texas,” he said.
“I figured that much out,” she quipped before taking another sip.
“A couple of hours from Cattle Barge,” he said. “I keep rounding back to the fact that we need to be near here in order to track down leads. We might be able to clear this whole thing up if you could talk to people.”
“Agreed.”
“Don’t get any ideas because you can’t go back home,” he said. “It’s too risky and we have to give the sheriff time to do his job. He has more evidence to work with now.”
Ella got quiet for a long time. If she could stay alive, Sheriff Sawmill should be able to find the person after her, especially after that last attempt. “I know you make an amazing cup of coffee, and I mean pretty much anywhere with whatever’s around. But I don’t know much else about you.”
Holden’s gaze narrowed and his lips thinned, and for a long moment she didn’t think he was going to respond. “I told you that I was set up for murder before. Doesn’t that make you a little scared to be around me?”
“Why should it? You’re innocent.” She didn’t hesitate.
“I am. But how do you know?” An emotion passed behind his eyes. Hope?
“I’ve been around bad men before. I’m not as naive as you believe. Dad taught me how to tell the difference a long time ago. Said he was protecting me. When a man’s truly evil he has a dead quality to his eyes. A darkness that no light can fill. A man capable of murder, even if it was a passion killing, would have those eyes,” she said.
“I was out jogging that morning when it happened,” he said after a thoughtful pause. “Came back and found her stabbed to death.”
There was an almost-audible thud in Ella’s chest at the tight-clipped pain in his voice—pain that he’d held inside for too long. “What happened?”
“As in details? You don’t want to know.”
“Maybe that’s true on some level. You haven’t spoken to anyone in more than two years and I think it’s time you got this off your chest,” she said quietly.
Holden blew out a sharp breath, and for a minute she thought he’d change the subject. There was so much pain behind those pale blue eyes—eyes that had spoken so much to her when she’d first seen them while the rest of his face was buried underneath that beard.
He took in a sharp breath. “Her name was Karen. Blood was everywhere. I bolted over so fast that I didn’t even look to see if anyone else was around. Everything moved in beats after that. One beat and I’m standing in the doorway in shock. In the next, I’m beside the bed. My field training told me that pulling the knife out of her chest would make everything worse. Her eyes were already fixed, open...blank.”
Ella didn’t speak, even when Holden looked like he might not continue. She just sat there, still, patient. Wishing there was something she could do to help ease his heartache.
“Another beat and I’m trying to stem the bleeding, performing CPR. None of my years in the corps mattered because I couldn’t bring her back.” He clenched his back teeth. “A few beats later, cops are there. Looking back, that part was strange because I never called them. Guess I just assumed one of my neighbors had heard her screaming. Another beat and EMTs arrived. The whole place was chaos by then. A few more beats and I’m in the back of a squad car being taken in to give my statement, and that should’ve been my first clue that something was off. Looking back, why wouldn’t the cops have had a witness ride in front? And then the cop pulls off on this back road. I had blood all over me, my hands, Karen’s blood. I was in shock so it took a minute to register that the cop wasn’t heading toward the station anymore. I was in a fog. He orders me out of the back and pulls out his service weapon. Throws a cord at me and tells me to wrap it around my neck.”
Holden paused. Ella touched his arm for reassurance. She was listening. She cared about the truth.
“Cop gave me two options. Wrap the cord around my neck or be shot. I told him he forgot my third choice.” Holden looked high and away from her like he could see the past there. “Run.”
“How did he react?” she asked.
“I dropped down and caught his leg as he tried to shoot me. He went over backward, landed pretty hard and started calling for help on his radio,” he said.
“And that’s when you got away,” she finished.
“My father was tortured and killed a few days later and that’s when I knew something big was going on. I still don’t fully understand why I was set up to look like a murderer in the first place. I’d only been dating Karen for a few months when the whole thing went down. And, yeah, it was my blade, but I wasn’t even in the house when it happened.” Holden stared at a spot on the wall for a long moment and she could only imagine the horrors of what he’d witnessed.
“Wouldn’t the evidence have cleared you?” she asked.
“If the officers in charge of the investigation had followed it, I would’ve been fine. They didn’t. The officer who took me in supposedly to give my statement never intended for me to live long enough to say what really happened,” he said.
Ella gasped.
“Within days of my disappearance reports started showing up about me suffering from PTSD, going berserk and killing my girlfriend and then my father.” He made a disgusted face and grunted. “They were so off base and I was angry. But someone important was pulling the strings. Had to be, and I realized how far they would go the minute they killed Pop.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
Silence sat between them for a long moment.
“What did you do?” she finally asked.
“At first, I’ll be honest. I thought I’d bide my time and then creep back into the shadows. Figure out who committed these crimes. Make them pay with their own lives. The thought of revenge kept me moving forward when I wanted to die,” he admitted.
“And now?”
“I remembered a promise that I made to Pop once about looking after Rose if anything ever happened to him. We were fishing and I guess he was getting older. Started thinking about the day he might not be around any longer. She was his only friend when he lost his parents and had to live with a relative in New Mexico. He was kicked around from place to place after that, to whoever would take him. But he and Rose managed to get back in touch,” he continued. “She was his North Star and helped him get his life together when it was falling apart. They kept their friendship a secret so none of his relatives knew where to look for him. He’d show up at her parents’ place when life got too real and they’d take him in. I guess it never occurred to them to go public with their friendship once they were adults. When I was born and my mom took off, Rose urged him to join the military to straighten himself out. He did. We moved around a lot before settling in Virginia, where my father established a moving company, but we had each other and we had Rose. Pop might not have been perfect, but he did the best he could, and I respect that in a man.”
Ella could relate to those feelings. She and Holden weren’t so different no matter how much he wanted to be a man stranded on an island. At least he was talking to her, revealing something about his past and why he was in this predicament. She couldn’t imagine walking in to find someone she loved—that word pained her to think about when it came to Holden and another woman—murdered. She shuddered at the thought. And then to find out that your father had been tortured and killed and y
ou’d been blamed. The worst part was that she could see why Holden would hold himself responsible for all of it even though something else had to be going on. Would it really be any different for her?
There was a storm brewing behind Holden’s blue eyes as he spoke. He’d lost two people he cared about in a very short time and he held the blame for both. Two long years. So much pain.
“Were the two of you in love?” Ella surprised herself with the question.
“I thought I might have been at the time,” he said.
“What changed?” She didn’t look at him and scarcely registered that she was holding her breath, waiting for his response.
“My definition.”
“How so?” she asked, still not able to look him in the eyes.
“I met you.”
Chapter Eleven
Light peeked through before Holden seemed to quash it by turning away from Ella. When he looked at her again, he was all business.
Ella had no idea how to process what he’d just said, but she couldn’t ignore how his words made her feel. Before she could gather her thoughts to speak, he said, “Tell me more about what kinds of projects you were working on leading up to the attack at Devil’s Lid.”
Ella stretched out sore legs and pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to make her head stop pounding. Refocusing might give her a chance to get a handle on her runaway emotions. “I’m on a committee that was formed to clean up the creek along Slider’s Rock. Another to raise funds to build a bigger playground at the elementary school in town. Both of those met recently. And then there’s our recycling program. We’re always trying to drum up support and raise awareness of the benefits of recycling in schools and at parks. Let’s see. What else?” It was hard without having her schedule in front of her to work from. “We’re working on raising awareness for elder abuse and neglect. So many in our community don’t have enough money to run AC in the summer or have to resort to eating canned dog food when their Social Security check doesn’t stretch far enough.”
