Colton by Marriage

by Marie Ferrarella

  “I wasn’t aware that I needed anything,” Duke said, his voice a monotone.

  “That just means that you need it more than the rest of us,” Wes told him with a knowing smile. “Not a single one of the Almighty’s creatures does better without love than with it.”

  Annoyed, Duke asked him with more than a small touch of sarcasm, “You thinking of becoming a philosopher now, too?”

  Wes took no offense. He hadn’t expected Duke to suddenly profess how he felt about the girl. Duke had trouble coming to grips with feelings, they all knew that.

  “No, just happy someday, if the right woman crosses my path,” Wes qualified.

  Duke sighed and shook his head. He was not about to get into a discussion over this. “Just get back to me on that,” he instructed, nodding at the note.

  Wes rose and walked with his brother to the door. “Don’t let that bit about being ‘a servant of the people’ fool you, big brother. Just so we’re clear, I find this guy, I’ll handle it, not you.” There was no negotiation on this point.

  Though he wouldn’t say it in so many words, Duke gave his younger brother his due. “Whatever,” he muttered as he walked out.

  “Nice talking to you too, big brother,” Wes said to Duke’s back.

  The phone in Susan’s office rang as she got up to walk out for the evening. She looked longingly toward the doorway.

  It wasn’t like her to ignore a call. Susan was one of those people who felt a compulsion to answer every phone that rang, whenever it rang. But she knew that if she picked up this time, she’d wind up leaving the office and town later than she wanted to.

  She didn’t want to have to amend her schedule. What she wanted to do was hurry home and get ready for her evening with Duke. Granted there was nothing special planned—just being together was special enough as far as she was concerned—but she wanted to take her time getting ready tonight. That meant actually indulging in a bubble bath for a decadent twenty minutes—fifteen minutes longer than she usually spent in the shower.

  And there was this new scent she wanted to try out, something that she had ordered via the Internet and that smelled like sin in a bottle. She was anxious to wear something as different as possible from her usual cologne whose light scent brought fresh roses to mind. After being on the receiving end of all those dead roses, roses were the last thing she wanted wafting around her as she moved about.

  Susan had almost made it out of the office when she finally stopped. Guilt got the better of her.

  Turning around, she hurried back to her desk and picked up the receiver just as her answering machine clicked on.

  “This is Susan,” she told the caller, raising her voice above the recorded greeting. “Wait until the tape in the answering machine stops before talking.”

  But her instructions came too late. Whoever was on the other end of the line had hung up.

  Well, she’d tried, she thought, replacing the receiver into its cradle. At least this way, she told herself silently, she didn’t have to feel guilty.

  Guilt was the last emotion she wanted lingering around when Duke was with her.

  Glancing one last time at the package she was bringing home with her—she’d made beef tenderloin with a green chili and garlic sauce as well as a double serving of grilled vegetables for dinner tonight—she smiled and hurried out.

  The dinner’s warm, welcoming aroma followed her to her car and then filled up the space around her as she closed the door. Susan started up her car.

  Ultimately, this aroma would probably tempt Duke more than the expensive perfume she just bought would, she thought.

  But she hoped not.

  Reaching home, she parked her car, grabbed her package and raced inside. It struck her, as she closed the door behind her, that she’d left it unlocked again. She was forever forgetting to lock the door when she left in the morning. But this was Honey Creek, she reasoned. Other than Mark Walsh’s death—and those stupid notes along with the dead flowers—nothing ever happened here. It was a nice, safe little town.

  Hurrying, she took the warming tray out of the cabinet and got it ready to be pressed into service once she finished her bubble bath. She put the package on the counter beside the tray and raced off to the bathroom.

  Too excited to come close to relaxing, Susan shaved six minutes off her bubble bath and utilized that extra time fixing her hair and makeup.

  She’d decided to show Duke that she wasn’t just another fresh-scrubbed face. That she could be pretty—maybe even more than a tad pretty—if she set her mind to it, given the right “tools.”

  So she carefully applied the mini battalion of shadows, mascara and highlighters she’d amassed and redid her hair three times before she was ultimately satisfied with the woman she saw looking back at her from the mirror.

  Throwing on a light-blue, ankle-length robe to protect the shimmery royal-blue dress that only went half way down her shapely thighs, Susan hurried back to the kitchen. She wanted to do a few last-minute things to the dinner so she could put the meal out of her mind until it was time to serve it.

  Just as she entered the kitchen, Susan could have sworn she saw something hurry past the large window located over the double sink.

  Probably just some stray animal, lost, she decided, and looking to find its way back.

  Aren’t we all? she mused, grinning.

  It wasn’t unheard of to catch a glimpse of a stray deer every so often, although now that she thought about it, there’d been fewer sightings in the last couple of years.

  That was the price of progress, a trade-off. Two-legged creatures instead of four-legged ones.

  Plugging in the warming tray, she froze, listening. She was certain she’d heard a noise coming from the front of the house.

  It wasn’t her imagination. She had heard something.

  Her parents—even her mother—didn’t just come over without either calling first or at the very least, ringing the doorbell to give her half a second’s warning before they walked in. And she knew that Duke wouldn’t play games like this, making noise to scare her. The man didn’t play games at all.

  Grabbing a twelve-inch carving knife out of the wooden block that held the set of pearl-handled knives that her mother had given her for her catering business, Susan tightly wrapped her fingers around it.

  “Is anyone there?” she called out.

  Susan thought of the gun her father had tried to convince her into taking when she had moved in here. She wished now that she hadn’t been so stubborn about it. A gun would have made her feel more in control of the situation.

  It was probably nothing, she told herself as she inched toward the front of the house. Just the wind causing one of the larger tree branches to bang against the living-room bay window.

  It was the last thing to cross her mind before the searing pain exploded at the back of her skull.

  The next moment, everything went black.

  Susan dreamt she was drowning. She struggled to reach the surface and gulp in air. It took her a beat to realize that she wasn’t in the creek, desperately trying to swim for the bank while Mark Walsh tried to pull her back under. She was in her house.

  And then she gasped, trying to breathe. Someone had just thrown water in her face. A lot of water, all at once.

  Coughing and gasping, it took her another couple of beats before she became completely aware of her surroundings. She was still in her house, in the kitchen. But instead of standing by the counter, she was sitting on a chair. Not just sitting but sealed onto it. Duct tape all but cocooned her waist and thighs, holding her fast against the wood. Her hands were bound behind her. She couldn’t move no matter how hard she pulled against the silvery tape.

  Afraid, wild-eyed, Susan looked around, trying to understand what was going on. Her head felt as if it was splitting in half, the pain radiating from the back of her skull to the front.

  She couldn’t see anyone but she knew that there was someone in the house with her. Someone w
ho had hit her from behind and then bound her up like an Egyptian mummy. But who could have done this?

  Maisie?

  Linc?

  And if not either of them, then who? And why?

  Her thoughts collided as she struggled to control the hysteria that threatened to overwhelm her.

  “Who’s there?” she cried. “Why are you doing this? Show yourself,” she demanded, doing her best to sound angry and not as afraid as she really was. “Show yourself so we can talk. You don’t want to do this.”

  She heard someone moving behind her and tried to turn her head as far as she could in that direction. But she needn’t have bothered. The person who had put her in this position moved into her line of vision.

  “Oh, but I do,” the thin-framed, weatherbeaten, nondescript man told her. “You can’t even begin to understand how much I want to do this.”

  Susan stared at the man. He was maybe as tall as she was, maybe shorter. She didn’t know him. His face meant nothing to her and no name came to mind. No frame of reference suggested itself.

  Why did he hate her?

  “Why?” she managed to ask hoarsely, fear all but closing up her throat. “Why do you want to tie me up like this?”

  “I don’t want to tie you up,” he informed her condescendingly. “That’s just a means to an end.” He brought his face in close to hers. The man reeked of whiskey. Had he worked himself up, seeking courage in a bottle before going on this rampage? “I want to hurt you,” he said, enunciating each word. “I want to make you slowly bleed out your life, just like she did.”

  This was a mistake. It had to be a mistake. She needed to get this man to talk, to make him see that what he was doing was crazy.

  If nothing else, she needed to stall him. To stall him until Duke came to save her from this maniac.

  “Like who did?” she asked urgently. “Who are you talking about?”

  His face contorted, as if someone had just hit him in the gut and the pain was almost too much to bear. “My wife. My wife killed herself because that worthless scum you’re playing whore for walked out on her.” Again he stuck his face into hers. “Do you know how that feels?” he demanded. “Do you have any idea how it feels to know that your wife would rather kill herself than come back to you?”

  He straightened up, reliving the memory in his mind. Staring off into space, he sucked in a long, ragged breath.

  “I thought my gut had been ripped out when I had to go and identify her body. They found her in her car, her wrists slashed.” There were angry tears shimmering in his eyes. The next second, the tears were replaced with rage. “Well, that’s what I want Duke Colton to feel. I want him to feel like he’s been gutted when he looks at what I’ve left behind for him.”

  Picking up the knife that she had dropped when he’d knocked her unconscious, Hank McWilliams held it for a moment, as if contemplating the would-be weapon’s weight and feel.

  A strange look came into his eyes as he looked back at her. “Had a notion to become a doctor once. Studied on my own. Didn’t matter, though. Never got to be a doctor because there weren’t enough money.” The smile that slipped across his lips made her blood run cold. “But I know where every vital organ is. And I know how and where to cut a man so that he stays alive for a very long, long time.” His smugness increased. “Same goes for a woman,” he concluded, delivering the first cut so quickly, she didn’t even see it coming.

  Susan heard the shrill, bloody scream and realized belatedly that it was coming from her.

  The next second she felt the sting of his hand as he slapped her across the face.

  “Damn it, whore,” he exclaimed, then seemed to regain control over himself. “My fault,” he mumbled under his breath. “Forgot that you’d scream.”

  Leaving the knife on the floor for a second, McWilliams ripped off an oversize piece of duct tape and clamped it hard over her mouth. He smoothed it down over and over again to make sure it stayed in place.

  “That should keep you quiet,” he announced, deftly slicing her two more times in her chest and abdomen. As the blood began to flow, he laughed gleefully, his eyes bright and dancing. “This might go quicker than I thought,” he told her, his tone as unhurried as if he was timing something in the oven instead of watching her life drain from her.

  Susan struggled to stay conscious, trying to focus on what time it was. How long had she been out? Where was Duke?

  And then she remembered. He’d said he was going to be late tonight.

  Fear wrapped itself around her, making it all but impossible to breathe as the blade of the maniac’s knife sliced through her flesh as quickly and easily as if she was only a stick of butter.

  The duct tape stifled the scream that tore from her throat, defusing it. Susan still screamed for all she was worth, her head spinning wildly from the effort and from the pain.

  She was barely hanging on to consciousness by her fingertips.

  He slashed into her flesh again, twisting the knife this time.

  Chapter 15

  Duke had worked at a quick, steady pace all afternoon, taking no breaks, creating shortcuts when he could. Though he told himself he was only being practical and that working this quickly would get him out of the sun faster—a sun that was beating down on him without mercy—he knew that he was just feeding himself a line of bull. That wasn’t the real reason he was working this hard and he knew it.

  The real reason had soft brown eyes that could melt a man’s soul and even softer lips. Lips that made him forget about everything else. Lips that, for the first time in his life, actually made him glad to be alive instead of just feeling as if he was marking time until something of some sort of import happened.

  For him, it already had.

  He’d met someone he’d known, more or less, for most of his life. Certainly for all of hers. Someone who, the more he saw her, the more he wanted to see her.

  Damn, he didn’t even know where all these complicated thoughts were suddenly coming from. What was going on with him anyway, Duke scolded himself as he drove up to Susan’s house.

  Stopping the truck, he took one last look at himself in the rearview mirror, angling it so that he could see if his hair still looked combed or if the hot breeze had ruffled it too much.

  He’d taken a quick shower and changed before coming here but still looked sweaty. It had never bothered him before, but now it mattered that he looked his best.

  Though he’d never told her, he liked the way Susan ran her fingers through his hair, liked the way she looked up at him, half innocent, half vixen. And when he came right down to it, he didn’t know which half he liked better. Was a time he would have known, would have picked vixen hands down.

  Now, though…

  Tabling his thoughts, he got out of the truck. Duke walked up to Susan’s front door and raised his hand to knock.

  The sound of a man’s voice, coming from within the house, stopped him. There wasn’t another car parked in the driveway to give a clue as to who it may be.

  That wasn’t her father, he thought. The timbre of the voice was all wrong. Donald Kelley had a raspy, coated voice, the kind that came from decades of sipping whiskey on hot, summer nights. This voice belonged to someone else.

  To another man.

  Duke glanced at his watch. He was early, at least earlier than he’d told her he’d be. Was she “entertaining” someone else while she waited for him?

  Well, why the hell not? It wasn’t as if any pledges had been made between them. Hell, there wasn’t even any wordless understanding. They were both free to do whatever they wanted with whomever they wanted.

  Even so, the thought of Susan being with another man angered him more than he thought it would. More than he’d ever felt before.

  He glared at the door. He could hear the man talking again.

  The hell with her.

  He didn’t need this, didn’t need the aggravation or the humiliation. Turning on his heel, he started to walk away. He was be
tter off giving the whole breed a wide berth, just as he had before he’d gotten roped in by doe eyes and a shy smile.

  Shy his as—

  Duke’s head whipped around toward the door.

  Was that a scream? It sounded awfully muffled if it was. But what he had absolutely no doubt about was the streak of fear he’d heard echoing within the suppressed scream.

  Making up his mind to go in, he tried the doorknob and found that it wouldn’t give. She’d finally learned to lock her door, he thought.

  There it was again. A muffled scream, he’d bet his life on it.

  Duke’s anger gave way to an acute uneasiness, which in turn gave way to fear, even though he couldn’t logically have explained why.

  Susan was in trouble. His gut told him so.

  Instead of calling out to her, Duke braced his right shoulder, tightened his muscles the way he did whenever he lifted one of the heavier bales of hay on his own and slammed his shoulder hard against the door.

  It gave only a little.

  With a loud grunt that was 50 percent rage and 50 percent fear, Duke slammed his aching shoulder into the door again. As he braced himself for another go-round, he caught a glimpse of Bonnie Gene and Donald coming out of their house and heading in his direction. There was a puzzled look on Bonnie Gene’s face.

  Had they heard the strange scream, too? Or were they coming because they’d heard him trying to break down Susan’s door?

  He had no time to explain what he was doing or why he was doing it. For the same mysterious reason that was making him try to break down her door, his sense of urgency had just multiplied tenfold.

  The third meeting of shoulder to door had the door splintering as it separated itself from the doorjamb. What was left of the door instantly slammed into the opposite wall as Duke ran in, bellowing Susan’s name at the top of his lungs.