Love Inspired Suspense June 2015 - Box Set 2 of 2: Exit StrategyPaybackCovert Justice

by Shirlee McCoy

And then he smiled, the kind of smile that said he was still in control, the kind that said he knew exactly what she’d been trying to do, and that he was going to make sure she failed.

  “My dear,” he murmured, walking toward her, that smile still fixed in place, those eyes still cold. “I’ve been so worried about you.”

  “You have a funny way of showing it,” she responded, barely managing to get to her feet, to stand in front of him without cowering.

  “I had no idea that John had you locked in the trailer. I thought you were there of your own accord. Meditating and praying about your future.” He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “You must know that I would never be part of what he did. As much as we will all mourn John’s death, it’s better this way. The community would have had to exile him, and that would have been painful for everyone.”

  “It’s great that you’re so concerned about other people,” Cyrus cut in, his arm settling around Lark’s waist—a silent show of support that she needed more than she wanted to. “Too bad you weren’t concerned when Lark was trussed up, lying in filth on that old trailer floor.”

  Elijah’s eyes flashed. “You are a liar. A man ruled by the dark—”

  “Enough,” Sheriff Johnson said quietly. “You said you had some things to return to Lark. I’m giving you that opportunity.”

  “Yes. Of course.” Elijah smiled again. “I brought your car keys, your phone. All the things you turned in when you entered the compound. And this.”

  He lifted something from the box. A small envelope splattered with dark red drops.

  Blood?

  Ice ran through her veins, and she tried to back up, didn’t want to take what he was offering.

  “It’s for you,” Elijah said. “John removed it from the scene of Joshua’s accident before the police arrived. You were distraught, of course, and didn’t notice it lying on the table.”

  He held it out, but she didn’t take it, was afraid of what it might be.

  “Go ahead.” He thrust it toward her, his eyes alive with something that looked like glee. “Take it. John and I wanted to protect you and Joshua’s family, but Radley says you want the truth. That’s it. Right there in your husband’s hand.”

  She took it, her fingers numb, her body numb as she saw her name scrawled across the front. The writing was Joshua’s. She recognized the curve of the L, the little heart he’d always used for the A.

  “Open it,” Elijah urged, and she turned the envelope, lifted the flap, felt Cyrus’s hand tighten on her waist as she pulled a lone piece of paper out.

  TEN

  “I love you. I’m sorry.”

  Black words on white paper that had been stained with blood. Cyrus knew that’s what it was. He wasn’t sure that Lark did.

  She turned the paper over, her hand steady, her breathing even. Whatever she was feeling, she wasn’t going to give Elijah the satisfaction of seeing her reaction to the note.

  He was glad.

  The man was a charlatan, and he needed to be ousted from his position of power.

  “Well?” Elijah demanded, his voice booming into the silence.

  “He didn’t kill himself,” Lark said, sliding the note back into the envelope and putting it in the box.

  “That note says different,” Elijah snapped. “I would have given it to you weeks ago, if you’d been honest about why you’d returned to Amos Way.”

  “Like you’ve been honest about what you’re doing in the compound?” Cyrus demanded, and Elijah turned toward him, eyes blazing with the kind of zeal usually associated with delusional fanatics. Cyrus had thought Elijah to be a schemer, a fake, a man who was using people to gain wealth, who had become a religious leader to exert whatever flimsy control he could.

  Maybe he’d been wrong.

  Maybe the guy was nuts.

  “I,” Elijah spat, “do not need to answer to you. My God is my judge. He is my—”

  “I think it’s time for you to go, Elijah,” Sheriff Johnson said wearily.

  “You’re kicking me out of your office? After I took you in? Tried to get you on the right path. Tried to teach you God’s—”

  “I’m kicking you out. I suggest that you stay away from Lark. No contact at all.”

  “I do not force my ideals and faith on others.” Elijah seemed to have reeled himself in, gotten his emotions under control.

  “This isn’t about your faith,” Lark said, her gaze on the box and the envelope that was in it. “It’s about truth. I’m going to find it, Elijah. I’m not going to stop until I do.”

  Elijah stiffened, his shoulders straightening beneath the crisp white tunic he always wore. “May God’s will will be done.”

  “You don’t know God,” Lark continued, and Cyrus would have told her not to yank the tail of a rattler, but she had a right to speak her mind. She needed to speak it, and this was the safest place to do it. “If you did, Joshua would still be alive. Ethan would be alive. There are probably others. People who are buried in the woods somewhere, dead because you know nothing about love and everything about selfishness and greed.”

  Elijah moved so fast that Cyrus barely had time to react. He just managed to snag the man’s wrist before his hand hit Lark’s cheek.

  “That,” Cyrus growled, twisting Elijah’s arm up behind his back, “was a mistake.”

  “Trouble?” Boone asked from the doorway.

  “Nothing that I can’t handle.”

  “I’ll handle it,” Sheriff Johnson said, his tone flat. “Let him go.”

  Cyrus hesitated.

  What he wanted to do was teach Elijah a lesson he wouldn’t forget.

  But getting himself arrested wasn’t going to do Lark any good.

  He let Elijah go, positioning himself between him and Lark.

  “You go home, Elijah,” Sheriff Johnson barked. “Stay home, because I’m going to be paying you a visit. We’re going to have a long talk about what’s going on in Amos Way, and I’m going to want some answers.”

  “You’re not welcome on my property, Radley. Not anymore. Not since you betrayed the faith.” Elijah pivoted sharply, shoved past Boone and disappeared.

  “Well,” Boone said. “That was fun.”

  “Not from where I was standing,” Sheriff Johnson growled. He reached into the box, pulled out the envelope. “Do you mind if I take a look, Lark?”

  She shrugged, stepping around Cyrus and heading toward the door.

  Boone blocked her path, doing exactly what Cyrus knew he’d been told to do—keep her in place, make sure she didn’t disappear again.

  “I need some air,” she said.

  Boone met Cyrus’s eyes, and Cyrus nodded. He’d follow her, make sure she didn’t find her way into more trouble.

  He walked down the hall a few steps behind her, followed her into the stairwell and down a flight of steps. She paused on the landing, glancing over her shoulder, her eyes misty gray. “I don’t want to talk.”

  “Okay.”

  “And I know what was on the envelope and letter.”

  “Okay,” he repeated as he stepped onto the landing. Lark had changed into jeans and a T-shirt that Stella had pulled from her overnight bag. The jeans were loose and long, the T-shirt hugging slender curves. She was even smaller than she’d seemed when she’d been wearing the long skirt and sweater, her collarbones jutting out of the V neck, her upper arms muscular and lean.

  “It’s probably his blood,” she said as if she hadn’t heard him, as if she were working through what she’d just seen, figuring it all out.

  “Maybe.” Maybe not. Elijah was trying to cover his tail, and he’d do anything, fabricate anything to keep the police from entering the compound and conducting a thorough search. It was too late for that, but Elijah didn’t know it. That was going to work out well for Sheriff Johnson. If he wasn’t working behind the scenes to help his brother.

  Lark sighed, easing down onto the step, wrapping her arms around her knees. She looked vulnerable and sad, her expr
ession so open, so filled with anguish, that he sat beside her, tugged her close, his arm around her waist, his fingers caressing her side.

  He meant to comfort her, but when she leaned into him, when her head rested against his shoulder, he felt an odd sense of rightness, of certainty. As if he were, for just that moment, exactly where he was supposed to be, doing exactly what he should be doing.

  “He didn’t kill himself,” Lark said so quietly he almost didn’t hear. “He wouldn’t have. But that was his writing on the envelope. He always put a heart where the A was.” Her voice broke, and he wanted to go down the stairs, find Elijah and shake the truth out of him.

  “Writing styles can be copied,” he said, but she shook her head.

  “He had a unique way of writing my name. I’d recognize it anywhere.” Her eyes were dry, but her voice sounded thick as if she were struggling to hold back tears.

  “He could have been forced to write it.”

  She shook her head. “If he were going to die anyway, he wouldn’t have given in to the request. He’d have refused, because he wouldn’t want me to think he’d purposely left me.”

  “It sounds like he was a good guy.”

  “He was.” She offered a shaky smile. “He was so…kind and funny. Everyone loved him, and he loved everyone. Including the people in Amos Way. Even after going to college and realizing that some of Elijah’s doctrine was false, he still loved the place. He liked the idea of living a simpler life.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that,” he said.

  “No, I guess not, but it’s what got him killed.” She eased away from his arm, stood.

  “Do you think Joshua suspected the truth about Elijah?” he asked.

  “I know he did. By the time he died, Joshua and I were looking forward to leaving Amos Way. Joshua had a lot of integrity, though. Once he started suspecting that Elijah was hiding something, he couldn’t just walk away and let things go. He wanted to find out the truth.”

  “Do you think he found it before he died?”

  “I don’t know.” She tucked a strand of deep red hair behind her ear, fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. “He wasn’t saying much the last couple of weeks. It was the first time in our marriage that I had to wonder what he was thinking. That plays with my mind if I let it. I start wondering if all the good things we had were my imagination, if maybe that last month was the truth about our relationship. All the silences, all the secrecy, maybe they were glimmers of a problem I didn’t want to admit.”

  “He was trying to protect you, Lark,” Cyrus said. He’d never met the guy, but it’s what he would have done in Joshua’s place.

  “Maybe so. He’s not here to tell me one way or another.” She sighed, looked up toward the third-floor landing. “I guess I’m going to have to go back.”

  “Not if you don’t want to.”

  “You’d sneak me out?” she asked with a grin, some of the sorrow gone from her face and her eyes.

  “I’d walk you out in full view of anyone who cared to see. You’re not a prisoner, Lark. You haven’t done anything wrong. If you want to leave, you can.” As long as Cyrus and the team were with her. He decided not to add that. Lark had been through enough. He’d get her through this. Then, he’d try to get her to see just how much danger she was still in.

  “Good to know, but I can’t just walk out and go back to my life. Elijah still hasn’t gotten what he wants from me, and I don’t think he’s going to give up trying for it. I want to look in that box he brought. See what he packed in it. I know Joshua was really digging around that last month. He discovered something. Maybe he hid the information somewhere.”

  “Did you bring everything of Joshua’s back to the compound?”

  “No. There wasn’t much, and I didn’t want to give all of it to my in-laws.”

  “Is that what they wanted?”

  “I don’t know.” She headed back up the stairs. “They asked for some photos.” She frowned, a small line etching itself into her brow. “Actually, now that I think about it, they asked for photos and any mementos that I had. It struck me as odd, because photos are frowned upon in Amos Way. So are knickknacks and keepsakes.”

  “Did you question them?”

  “Not really. My father-in-law said that Elijah had given them special permission to keep some of Joshua’s things. Since I’d been thinking about going back to the compound, I let it go.”

  “Your father-in-law is Eric Porter?”

  “Right.”

  He’d met the guy, hadn’t gotten much out of him. He hadn’t been allowed to speak with Maria Porter, Eric’s wife. She’d stayed inside their home unless she was at church or prayer meeting. He’d gotten the impression that Eric called the shots and she was just along for the ride. “I spoke with him a couple of times. He didn’t have a lot to say.”

  “He never does. Even when Joshua and I lived in my in-laws’ house, Eric didn’t say a whole lot to me.” She slowed as she neared Sheriff Johnson’s office, her feet dragging.

  “You don’t have to do this, Lark.”

  “You’re right. I don’t. I could run, but then I’d just have to keep running. And you know what, Cyrus? All the running in the world couldn’t put any distance between me and my memories.”

  She walked into the office without another word.

  He followed, struck by her determination, by her strength. He’d rescued her from the compound because he’d owed Essex. Things were changing, though. It was becoming less about repaying his debt to Essex and more about Lark.

  That could be a problem if he let it be.

  Minimal emotional involvement had been his motto since Megan’s death.

  He hadn’t planned to change that, didn’t really want to change it, but he thought that maybe he was about to.

  *

  It didn’t take long for Lark to go through the box.

  She sat at the sheriff’s desk, pulling out one item after the other. Elijah had packed everything she’d brought into the compound. Her street clothes folded neatly at the bottom of the box. The wedding photo. A few pictures that had been taken while she and Joshua were dating.

  She lifted one, looking at Joshua’s smiling face and then her own. They’d been so happy, so filled with hope.

  They’d had no idea what life was going to bring.

  “What do you think?” Sheriff Johnson asked. “Is everything there?”

  “Yes.” She lifted the envelope that he’d left on his desk, studied the handwriting. She could imagine Joshua leaning over the page, looping that L, making the heart. Had he written the note inside?

  She slid it out, held it carefully, not wanting to touch the drops of blood that had seeped through the envelope and stained the page.

  Joshua’s blood.

  Thinking about it made her heart pound and her ears buzz.

  She wasn’t going to pass out, but she almost wanted to.

  Anything to stop thinking about Joshua’s last moments, to stop seeing his body lying on the floor, blood seeping out from under it.

  She shivered, and someone dropped a coat onto her shoulders. Not Cyrus, he was standing at her elbow, so close his knee touched her leg.

  She could have shifted away.

  She didn’t.

  There hadn’t been much that had comforted her in the days after Joshua’s death. People in the compound had tried. Eric and Maria had tried. When she’d returned to Baltimore, old friends had come to visit. They’d offered condolences and distraction, but no one had been able to give her what she’d needed—a sense of comfort, a feeling that everything was going to be okay.

  She’d had her faith. She’d had God. It had been enough, but there had been nights when she’d lain in bed crying for something more. What she’d wanted, what she’d needed more than anything else was to not feel so alone.

  Cyrus had sat on the steps with her. He’d put his arm around her, and for just a moment, she’d felt comfort and a sense of belonging that had died with Joshu
a.

  She didn’t want to let that go even though she knew she should.

  Her hand shook, so she laid the paper on the desk, read it a dozen times as if rereading it could change the words.

  “I love you. I’m sorry.”

  Just five words. Not enough to leave for someone you loved.

  “The L is different,” Cyrus said, leaning down to get a closer look, his bandaged arm brushing her cheek.

  “What?” Sheriff Johnson asked.

  “Lark said her husband always wrote Ls the same way.” He lifted the envelope, pointed to the looped L.

  He was right, and Lark’s pulse jumped at the knowledge.

  She grabbed the letter, studied it more carefully. The L was different. Curved but without the loop. “He didn’t write this.”

  “If he didn’t, someone else did,” the sheriff said grimly.

  “I guess Lark’s idea about her husband being murdered wasn’t so far-fetched after all,” Boone said.

  Sheriff Johnson frowned, lifting the envelope, studying it intently. “I’m going to take this in for evidence, Lark. I want to see if the blood matches your husband’s. If it does, this was written the day he died. If it doesn’t, Elijah fabricated it later. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  “Either way,” Cyrus responded before Lark could. “The letter is evidence that the shooting wasn’t accidental.”

  “That’s the way I’m seeing it,” Sheriff Johnson admitted. “We’re trying to push the search warrant through quickly. I want to get on the compound before my brother has a chance to clean things up.”

  “Clean what things?” Lark stood, her body stiff, her muscles tense. She felt a thousand years old. She’d suspected that Joshua had been murdered, but seeing that letter, the blood, the curly loop of his writing, it made it so much more real, the accusation so much more awful.

  “Those storage sheds for one. I’d like to know what he has delivered and what he’s shipping out.”

  “You know about that?” Cyrus asked, lifting the coat from Lark’s shoulders, urging her to slip her arms into the sleeves.

  “I’ve been keeping tabs on my brother for years. If I had probable cause that they were committing crimes on the compound, I’d have been in there searching two years ago. I don’t know what my brother is up to, but it’s bound to be trouble. And not just for people living in this county. Elijah thinks big. It’s one of his greatest strengths and his biggest weaknesses.”