Lethal Lawman

by Carla Cassidy

  It would still be hours before the riotous sounds from downstairs wound down and eventually died, but she was tired of working on the computer and there was nothing else to do but try to sleep despite the noise.

  She’d discovered on the first night here that the television on top of the chest of drawers didn’t work, so numbing out to a mindless sitcom was out of the question.

  Despite her desire to the contrary, she found as she closed her eyes in an attempt to sleep that her head filled with thoughts of Frank Delaney.

  Her heart ached for what he’d been through with his wife, for the tragedy that he’d survived, but she had a feeling he’d allowed that misfortune to define him, to decide the way he would live the rest of his life...with hookups and temporary company, but always alone at the very core.

  She’d been on her way to that place, isolated and determined never to allow anyone to get close to her again, but if she chose that path for herself, then Matt McGraw won. He would have effectively killed her without laying another finger on her.

  Matt didn’t get to win, and neither did the creep who had her in his evil sights now. She would survive this and live well, open her dream bakery and find a man who would be the love of her life.

  Never again would she allow anyone to stop her from attaining her dreams, from reaching out for love and the family she’d always envisioned for herself.

  She must have fallen asleep, for when she opened her eyes it was to the darkness in the room and the silence that let her know the tavern had shut down for the night.

  A glance at the illuminated clock on the nightstand let her know it was just after three. What had awakened her? Normally once she was asleep she remained that way until morning unless she had a nightmare. She knew it hadn’t been a nightmare that had awakened her.

  She shifted positions and closed her eyes once again, and then froze as she heard the distinctive sound of a creak on the floorboard nearby.

  Her heart clunked hard against her ribs as she sat up. “Hello?” Her voice was a mere whisper that was answered by another distinct creak. “Is somebody there?”

  A bright beam of light came out of nowhere. It shone full in her face, forcing her to raise a hand against the blinding illumination.

  Before her brain could process the danger, before a scream could even begin to form in her throat, she was thrown back on the bed and a cloth was pressed tightly against her nose and her mouth.

  She caught a whiff of something sickly sweet and knew she shouldn’t breathe it. She fought to get away, flailing her arms and her legs, but whoever hovered over her was big and strong, and she knew that eventually she was going to have to take a breath.

  Tears burned her eyes as she struggled and tried to exist on what little air was left in her lungs, but it wasn’t enough. She had to draw oxygen into her burning, air-deprived body.

  With a sob, she breathed in and instantly felt a numbing, weighty exhaustion sweep over her, and as she breathed again, the darkness of the room filled up the inside of her head and she knew no more.

  * * *

  The ring of his cell phone awakened Frank from a dream he didn’t want to leave. He was in bed with Marlene in his arms, and he’d felt whole and happy for the first time in a very long time. She was magic in his arms, her laughter warmed his heart and the burn of the ice he’d always believed to be so cold heated him with myriad emotions that shot pleasure through him.

  As the phone rang a second time, he sat up from the sofa, and noted that it was almost five and that it was Marlene’s number on his display. Any irritation about an early-morning call immediately disappeared.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “And a good morning to you.”

  The deep male voice shot Frank to his feet as his blood chilled. “Who is this?” he demanded, his hand swiping out to turn on the nearby lamp.

  “I like to call myself the Avenging Angel.”

  “Where’s Marlene?” Frank’s heart beat so hard he thought he might be on the verge of a heart attack. This can’t be happening, a voice screamed in the back of his head. She was supposed to be safe. How had this happened?

  “She’s here with me and will never be with you again. Justice will be served.”

  Frank grabbed his gun, as if somehow he could make things right, finding somebody to shoot. “Don’t hurt her. Just tell me where she is, where you are, and we can talk about what...”

  The click of the phone shot a helpless panic through Frank. He quickly dialed back Marlene’s number, not surprised when it went directly to voice mail.

  He called Jimmy first and then Steve, the process taking far too long as his fingers trembled as he punched in each of their numbers. He told them both to meet him at the Wolf’s Head Tavern as soon as possible.

  His brain went into autopilot as he picked up pants and a shirt, dressed, and then grabbed his keys and headed to his car.

  Only when he was behind the wheel did his emotions flare out of control. His chest hurt from the angry, frightened beat of his heart.

  Somebody had Marlene. Despite their caution in attempting to keep her safe, their plan hadn’t succeeded. The Avenging Angel had found her and she was in imminent danger and he didn’t know how to fix it.

  Somebody had Marlene and intended to do her harm. He squeezed his hands into fists around the steering wheel as he headed toward Travis’s house. Although he had enough fear, enough adrenaline to rip the tavern front door right off its hinges, he knew they needed to follow protocol.

  He called ahead, and by the time he reached Travis’s, the man stood in his driveway, the keys to the tavern in hand. Frank got out of his car, grabbed the keys and within seconds was hauling ass toward the tavern, knowing that Travis was probably just moments behind him.

  His head spun, playing and replaying the brief conversation he’d had with the perp. He hadn’t recognized the male voice, but he’d definitely picked up on the glee it held, a delight that burned a hole of horror in the pit of Frank’s stomach.

  How had he gotten to her? The fire escape up the building in the second bedroom? Had he been a customer who had hidden out in the building until closing? Even if he’d been in the building, how had he gotten past the dead bolt on Marlene’s door?

  By the time he arrived at the tavern, both Jimmy and Steve were there waiting. Frank nodded to them tersely, his stomach too sick to speak as he tried to fit the key into the lock of the tavern’s door.

  Maybe it was some sort of a sick joke and Marlene was really upstairs sleeping. Maybe some drunk had stumbled upstairs and stolen her cell phone. His mind whirled with scenarios that would make her alive and safe and upstairs when he knew none of them were true, that the person calling himself the Avenging Angel had her in his grips.

  Once the door was opened, the three of them raced through the main room and into the kitchen, where the back door had been broken. Obviously the point of entry, Frank processed as he took the stairs two at a time.

  The sight of Marlene’s open door nearly cast Frank to his knees. He reeled inside, gun in hand. He wasn’t sure who was right behind him but somebody turned on the overhead light to see...nothing except remnants of the woman who had once been there.

  Her pink duffel bag was on the floor, her laptop on the top of the nightstand. Her smaller black-and-pink bag was just inside the bathroom door and the floral scent of her was everywhere.

  The only thing not there was Marlene.

  “I’ll contact the cell phone company and see if we can ping her phone,” Jimmy said, breaking the tense silence that had accompanied the men up the stairs.

  “And we start processing this room as a crime scene,” Steve said. “I’ve got booties and gloves in my car. Frank?”

  Frank stared at Steve in despair, his mind whirling in a million directions all leading to guilt.
“I was up here earlier to see her. The other night I came up here. I must have been followed. It’s all my fault. I must have led the perp right to her.”

  Steve placed a hand over Frank’s, and Frank realized he still held his gun. “Put that away before you shoot somebody you don’t mean to. We’ve got work to do here. Hopefully we’ll find something that will tell us who took her and where they are now.”

  Frank holstered his gun and stared around the room frantically. They had to find something here. Whoever took her had to have left a clue behind, a hint of a trail that would lead them to Marlene.

  He couldn’t think that they might be too late, that whoever had taken her had killed her instantly. If that was the case, surely her body would still be in the bed. The perpetrator wouldn’t have carried off a dead body.

  He tried to hang on to this thought for comfort, but there was little relief to be found as he stared at her things and thought of the phone call that had pulled him from his beautiful dream of her.

  Had he brought danger to her? Had the price for his desire just to see her again been her life? God, he couldn’t go there. If he functioned on the thought that she was already dead, he’d curl up in a corner and be comatose.

  He was in a nightmare and he didn’t know how to end it.

  He still stood just inside the doorway when Steve returned with gloves, booties and an evidence kit that they would use to collect anything that could be a clue.

  Jimmy had disappeared downstairs, and Frank knew he was probably on the phone trying to contact somebody at the cell phone company to see if they could trace a signal from Marlene’s cell.

  He and Steve had just put on their booties and gloves when Travis came rumbling up the stairs, his face a study of concern as he halted just outside the door. “Crap, I was hoping this wouldn’t happen.”

  Frank turned to him. “Did you notice anyone unusual hanging around tonight? Anyone who was reluctant to leave when you closed up the place?”

  “It was the usual Friday-night crowd. I didn’t see a face I haven’t seen a dozen times before, and no, nobody acted unusual or hung around when it was time to close up.” Travis frowned. “But it had to be somebody who knew their way around a bit.” He looked pointedly at the door to the room. “It’s not broken down, so obviously somebody knew where I had the keys to these rooms.”

  “And where do you keep the keys?” Steve asked.

  “In a kitchen drawer next to the stairs.” He gave Steve a sheepish look. “Guess it was an easy find for somebody looking.” He hesitated a moment and then continued. “I just called Larry Samson. He’ll be here around seven to put in a new back door for me.”

  Frank stared at him, wondering why on earth the man was babbling about new doors being installed when Marlene was missing.

  Just like her aunt, and we’ve never found her. Liz Marcoli had been gone for months and nobody knew what had happened to her. And now Marlene was missing and in the hands of somebody who called himself the Avenging Angel. Had Marlene disappeared as Liz had? Frank mentally shook this terrible thought out of his head.

  It wasn’t the same. As far as they knew, Liz had never received notes. There had been no Avenging Angel eager to take responsibility for the missing older woman.

  This was something different, and they had to find something. They had to figure it out fast or he feared for certain Marlene would be dead.

  Chapter 15

  Marlene came to slowly, her brain foggy and her head pounding. For a moment she didn’t open her eyes, afraid that the simple action would make her headache more painful.

  She tried to raise a hand to her forehead, but realized she couldn’t move her arms. Her eyes snapped open and she looked around wildly. Her hands were tied behind her back, stretching her shoulder muscles painfully. Her ankles were also tied, to lower rungs on the wooden chair where she sat in a tiny kitchen she’d never seen before.

  Predawn light seeped in through dirty muslin curtains at one of two small windows in the room. The living room was next to the kitchen, and from her vantage point she could see a broken-down maroon sofa, a matching recliner and that was all.

  She would have screamed but duct tape kept her lips pressed tightly together and made only moans and grunts possible. The only sound was the frantic beat of her heart and the ever-present banging in her head.

  She felt slightly nauseous, but didn’t know if it was because of her yawning fear or whatever had been used to knock her unconscious. She had yet to see the face of her attacker and couldn’t imagine who it was or why she’d been brought here, wherever “here” was.

  Her fear threatened to make her crazy. Her impulse was to buck and kick, to scream herself hoarse beneath the duct tape.

  But she refused to give in to it. At the moment she might be in danger, but she was alive and she knew the best thing she could do was try to stay as calm as possible.

  If he’d wanted to, whoever had brought her here could have entered her room at Travis’s and killed her in the bed while she slept. The fact that he hadn’t was potentially a positive sign. At least that was what she tried to tell herself.

  She worked at the ropes that held her hands, and found them tight and well tied. It was the same with her ankles; there was no give to the ropes that held them in place.

  She was still clad in her pink silk nightgown and matching panties, and she wished desperately she’d gone to bed wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She felt particularly vulnerable in her skimpy nightclothes.

  As far as she was concerned, she had only one option, and that was to attempt to work the ropes around her wrists in an effort to loosen them.

  By the time the sun had risen higher in the sky, her headache had cleared, the nausea was gone, and her wrists were raw and painful from what so far had been futile efforts to ease the pressure of the ties that bound her.

  Her fear had grown bigger and more difficult to ignore as the minutes had ticked by. She knew sooner or later she would be confronted by the man who had brought her here.

  She paused in her struggles to give her wrists a rest, and thoughts of Frank exploded in her head. If she’d only allowed him to come over and stay and make love to her last night, then instead of being tied to this chair in some unknown location she’d probably be awakening now with his warm body next to hers.

  Who had done this? The only people who had known she was in the room upstairs at the tavern were Frank and his partners and a handful of cops. Was there a cop on the force who hated her? Somebody she’d interacted with in the case of her missing aunt?

  She had no money. She wasn’t worth a ransom to anyone. And in any case, she knew this wasn’t about a kidnapping for ransom, because she was certain the person who held her was the same one who had tried to shoot her at the store.

  She couldn’t think. She couldn’t imagine.

  Once again her thoughts filled with Frank. She could have loved him...did love him, but what he was willing to offer her in return wasn’t enough.

  And in any case, now it was too late. She didn’t believe she would ever see Frank again. He and his partners had had no clues to follow, nothing to identify the man who had tried to shoot her and had sent her the threatening letters. She could be certain that last night when he’d taken her from the room, he hadn’t left any clues behind.

  Tears burned at her eyes as she thought of her sisters. Roxy, with her tough exterior, and Sheri, who had a heart of gold―she would never see them again, either.

  Memories of their childhood together exploded in her brain...the three girls putting on a play for Aunt Liz, her aunt laughing so hard tears trekked down her cheeks. Other memories intruded: Roxy helping her get ready for a school dance, beating up some bully who had made fun of Sheri’s stuttering.

  The three of them deciding to make tents out of the clean sheets that had be
en hanging on the clothesline in Aunt Liz’s backyard. When Aunt Liz had found them, they’d feared her wrath, but instead she’d crawled into the makeshift tents with crackers and juice for all.

  Marlene sucked back the tears, knowing that when she cried her nose stuffed up, and with the tape making it impossible for her to breathe through her mouth, her grief could potentially suffocate her.

  A fight-or-flight response surged up inside her and once again she began to work to loosen the ropes around her wrists. When she could stand the pain no longer, she closed her eyes and envisioned herself wrapped in a pink blanket of security.

  Her eyes snapped open again as she heard the sound of running water coming from someplace in another room. The bad guy apparently was not only awake but was in the shower.

  Adrenaline filled her as she realized within minutes she would know who had brought her here, and hopefully before he killed her she would finally know why.

  Every nerve in her body burned and nausea reappeared once the noise of the running water stopped and was replaced by the sound of somebody moving about.

  Had she been too hard on Abe at the shop? Had Edward Cardell decided to make another Marcoli disappear? Who could be behind all this? Who was the Avenging Angel and what did he want from her?

  Familiar faces flashed through her mind, acquaintances and coworkers whose features were now twisted with rage. As she heard the sound of approaching footsteps, she wondered who was going to walk into the kitchen.

  When the tall, thin man walked in, it wasn’t fear or horror that coursed through her. It was utter confusion. She had never seen the man before in her life.

  His hair was dark and long, and his jaw sported more than a day’s worth of whiskers and a bad case of acne. His blue-gray eyes were overbright as his gaze landed on her.

  A wide smile split his mouth as he rocked back on the heels of his shoes. “Gotcha,” he said and then laughed.

  The search for clues at Travis’s place had yielded nothing, and Frank felt as if he were losing his mind. He and his partners and several other officers headed to the station.