He smiled and the blood coursing through my veins froze. I’d never seen so much hatred in anyone’s eyes. “How about you? You going to put up a fight?”
I inched backwards, hoping I could make it to the bedroom where the door might slow him down enough I could escape through the window.
Just as he raised the butt of the rifle to connect with another blow, I turned and dove for the bedroom then frantically kicked at the door. I leapt up and locked it then ran for the window. Every second mattered as I knew the door wouldn’t hold, let alone the lock. The moment I jerked aside the blinds, the door shattered. He was on me before I knew it. Pounding his fists into my face, my stomach, my back as I fought him off, I screamed out and fought back with everything in me. I fought for Cole and Emma, and for Ivy.
I scratched at his face like a wildcat. I bit his shoulder, ripping through his shirt with my teeth, tearing into his flesh.
“You bitch!” He drew back to pummel my face but I drove my knee deep into his groin. He bent, clutching himself, giving me time to kick away and escape the bedroom, but the reprieve didn’t last long.
He grabbed me from behind in the kitchen and slammed me hard onto the floor. Brick-hard kicks to my side and kidneys took my breath. On my stomach, I tried to pull away from the beating, but he was too strong. I rolled over to face him, to know what was coming. He drove the rifle butt downward, but I rolled out of the way as the end of the gun crashed into the floor.
The gun in the pocket of my sweatshirt fell out and skittered across the floor. I scrambled for it just as Brady brought his own rifle up and took aim. I grabbed the Glock and just as I pulled the trigger, Ridge screamed my name.
Brady fell on top of me, his eyes shadowed with death. I screamed hysterically, trying to push away from the weight of his body. Ridge was over us, pulling Brady’s body off of me. He was screaming into the radio attached to his shoulder.
I dropped the gun and kicked away, scrambling backwards, pressing my back into a corner cabinet. Hysterical, my entire body shook violently.
I had shot him. I had killed this child. But the boy that lay dead in the floor wasn’t a child, he was a monster. The child had died long ago.
CHAPTER 27
An EMT I didn’t recognize dabbed a cloth to the side of my head where the skin was split. Numb to the pain, I wondered if it hurt. I wondered if I should cry. I had no tears left for physical pain. I had taken beatings before at Tommy’s hands, so I knew the pain of broken skin, the tenderness of a bruise, yet I couldn’t cry. The shock wouldn’t let me.
From inside the back of the ambulance, I watched Ridge brief Steve Sullivan and a small cluster of other deputies. His jeans and shirt were dark with the dampness of blood. I wondered if the dampness was the same as when you were caught in the rain. The temperature was dropping and it was too cold to be in wet clothes. Dingy clouds overhead dropped clusters of snowflakes like wayward confetti. Ridge’s black hair was spattered with white. Ivy’s coat? Did I ever get Ivy’s coat? Did she have a pair of mittens? Three little kittens lost their—
“You’re going to need a couple of staples to close this up,” the EMT said, still working on the wounds to my head. Her name tag read Hannah. White engraved letters on a black nametag. Tiny particles of gray dust had settled in some of the corners of the letters.
I looked away and saw Bosher Garrett, the medical examiner, coming out of the trailer. He stopped to speak to Ridge before leaving. Two transport techs maneuvered a stretcher up the steps, the body bag resting on the stainless steel, shiny and new. I knew my heart was heavy; I just couldn’t feel it.
I had fed him. I had given him sanctuary.
Ridge lightly clapped Sullivan on the shoulder then walked over to the ambulance. Hannah was wiping the blood from my hands with a disposable cloth and alcohol.
Ridge took the cloth and bottle from her. “Mind giving us a minute?”
She smiled then disappeared into the small gathering of first responders milling around the yard.
Ridge wet the cloth with the alcohol then gently rubbed at the blood on my hands.
“How’d you know?” I asked, my voice so shallow I barely heard it.
“When we questioned Brent this morning, he said Brady had borrowed the coat last night when he went out. And Blackwell from the Ranger’s Office called and said they had surveillance video of a truck in a separate parking lot at Porter’s Peak the day you were shot at. Tags came back registered to Brady.”
I slowly nodded, accepting the pain the tiny movement sent running through my head. “But how did you know he was here?”
“I went to pull him out of class to talk to him and saw he was absent. I didn’t know if he’d be here or not, but I didn’t like the idea of you being here by yourself anyway.”
“He called her a whore.” I watched him wash my hands, so tenderly and caring. So lovingly. “He called Ivy that bastard child.” My heart tightened, squeezing the breath out of me. I choked back a flood of tears as my hands, the hands he was holding, the hands that a short while ago had killed a boy, shook uncontrollably.
Suddenly, the sound of tires crunching gravel and squealing brakes blasted through the low chatter. Megan O’Reilly was out of their Beemer, screaming, running to the house. Both Ridge and Sullivan ran to intercept her, with Sullivan reaching her first. He grabbed her around the waist and turned her away just as the transport techs brought Brady’s body out.
The whole scene looked like a horrific photograph, dulled by a surreal fog. They moved in exaggerated movements in slow motion. She was screaming, I could see her mouth forming the word “No!” but the sound was muted, a faint distant hum, like the sound of a refrigerator in the middle of the night.
Then Brent was there and more deputies fought to restrain him as his son’s body was wheeled by. He collapsed to the ground, on his knees, begging God, begging anyone to let it not be true. He crawled after the stretcher, pawing at the ground with his fists, the dead grass covered in a light dusting of snow.
Megan pulled away from Sullivan and lunged at Brent, pounding him with her hands. “You bastard! You bastard! You did this!”
Sullivan grabbed her and pulled her away while Ridge consoled Brent. How did you comfort someone who had just lost their child? Whether that child was a monster or not.
Ridge hung the last drape over the windows then stood back to admire his handiwork. “What do you think? Want them open or closed?”
The glass was so clear it sparkled. I stared through it into the woods, beyond the bank of the river where not long ago, Brady stood, raised his rifle, and tried to kill me.
That was a few weeks ago. Today Emma was stretched out in front of the fireplace watching videos on her tablet while Ivy played dress-up, pretending to be a princess. I couldn’t help but smile when she waddled in her plastic high heels over to Cole to help her with her dress. He grumbled, but obliged, then went back to watching a college football game on the television.
Not a day had passed that I didn’t worry about him. He pretended everything was okay in the way teenage boys did. He was starting to open up to Ridge some, confessing the guilt he felt in bringing Brady into our lives. It was the only thing Ridge would tell me, choosing to not betray Cole’s trust.
Ridge had won the election by a landslide for his second term and Ed Stinger and his videotape slunk off underneath the rock he had crawled out from under.
Life went on, but it would never be the same. “You can close them. It’ll help keep the cold air out.” I tucked my hands into the sleeves of my sweatshirt.
Ridge frowned slightly but pulled the drapes across the windows then joined me on the sofa. I leaned my head against his shoulder; he leaned over and kissed me softly on the lips.
“You okay?”
I nodded, but I wasn’t. Brady’s death had been ruled self-defense, but
it didn’t lessen the pain for me or his parents. In that moment, the moment I pulled the trigger, I knew it was kill or be killed, but it didn’t make it any easier.
He was buried with little fanfare, a simple private service held at the gravesite. No dozens of distraught teenagers crying over a lost schoolmate like with most kids’ deaths. Cole didn’t go. Ivy squealed for Cole to help her with the plastic tiara, slamming it in his hand. “Look, little girl,” he said as he adjusted it on her head. “You’re interrupting my game. Go bug Emma.”
Ridge tilted his head in their direction. “Sounds like they’re getting along well.”
I rolled my eyes then went back to picking through the stuff I was able to salvage from Ivy’s keepsake boxes. I had everything spread on the coffee table, sorting through what had been damaged in the fracas. The little green and pink notepad where Trish had recorded Ivy’s milestones was speckled with blood. I didn’t want to toss it because the dates were written in Trish’s playful script. It would be the only notes written from her mother Ivy would ever have. Blood specks or not.
Judging by her bank account, Trish had begun poaching to support herself and Ivy when her art couldn’t pay the bills. I couldn’t find fault with her for that. I’d been a single mom most of my adult life. You did what you had to do.
But she wasn’t a whore. The uncashed check proved that. Her mistake was loving a man who wasn’t free to love her back. She was no more a whore than Ivy was a bastard child. Ivy was a beautiful, beautiful little girl loved by many.
Snow fluttered against the office window and clung to the glass. The wood stove was cranking out the heat so the ice particles didn’t cling long before melting. It was Wednesday, and although the office was officially closed for Thanksgiving, I was there wrapping up November’s invoicing. Nola was off on a cruise to some tropical island; Ridge and the kids, including Ivy, were on a mission to find the perfect Christmas tree. Cole and Emma didn’t want me to go—they wanted to surprise me. I hoped Ridge would be able to tell them “no” if the need arose.
I queued the invoices to print then went into the kitchen to refill my coffee. I had just added the creamer when the bell above the front door jingled. My nerves weren’t where they used to be, but they were getting better. Still, my heart quickened its pace as I carried my coffee back to the front. As I turned the corner, I stopped as if I’d walked straight into a brick wall. Brent O’Reilly stood by the stove warming his hands.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “I was riding by and saw your car here. I hope you don’t mind.”
I swallowed hard, my nerves still on edge. He didn’t appear to be a threat. But neither had his son. “I was just finishing up.”
He nodded and looked down at his outstretched hands over the stove. Neither of us said anything for a long moment, then he spoke and his voice was faint, like he was talking more to himself than to someone else. “I loved her,” he said. “I was going to marry her.”
I leaned against the wall, taking small sips of the coffee. I held the cup with both hands to keep them from shaking so badly.
“She was…she was so kindhearted. She had a gentle soul, a true artist’s soul as I’ve heard it referred to. And she was so alive—you know what I mean? She never worried if her makeup was perfect, hell, she hardly ever wore it. And her laugh. Oh man, when she laughed, you knew it was real. She was real.” He wiped tears from his cheek with the back of his hand and sniffled. “She didn’t deserve to die like she did.”
No one deserved to die like Trish had. Not even Brady. “I’m sorry it all ended the way it did, Brent. I truly am. If I could take back those last few minutes, I would.”
He nodded quickly and wiped his face again. “But you can’t. No one can.”
I tried to imagine his pain, to understand the devastation and feeling of loss. But he hadn’t been the one to see a cold-blooded killer in the body of a sixteen-year-old boy. Or looked in the cold abyss of eyes no longer human. I had. He continued to warm his hands over the stove although I was sure they were no longer cold. “I resigned from the school. Probably for the best.”
“What are you going to do?”
He looked up, gazing around the office, anywhere but at me. “I don’t know. I have a sister in Florida. She wants me to come down there. Megan wants a divorce, so there’s nothing holding me here.”
My breath hitched. What about Ivy?
As if reading my mind, he spoke about his daughter. “I was in the delivery room when Ivy was born. That’s why Trish went to Asheville to have her—no one knew us there. We could be just…like any other new parents. She was this little bundle of…” he chuckled, “…chubby little rolls. Pink skin covered in peach fuzz. Blond wispy hair. And her little nose—it wasn’t round like a lot of babies’. It was upturned, just a little, like Trish’s. She has a birthmark on her left knee.” Tears rolled down his cheeks and he didn’t move to wipe them away. “Did you know Megan tried to pay her off? Gave her ten thousand dollars to go away. Trish showed me the check.”
“Do you think Megan knew Brady was the one who killed her?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve looked back at every moment since Trish died, looking for something that would tell me she did…but I just don’t know.”
I gazed out the window at the snow falling heavier now. I wondered if Ridge and the kids had found the perfect tree yet and what surprise it held. Tomorrow we’d sit down to dinner as a family, together, and later decorate the tree. With Brent’s daughter hanging an ornament in memory of her mother. “Brent…about Ivy—”
“I’ll sign whatever papers you need.”
I inhaled and exhaled, slow and steady, not wanting to sound presumptuous. I wanted Ivy but didn’t want to discount his loss.
He turned and looked at me with eyes that radiated calm. “Maybe one day when she’s older you can tell her what happened.”
I nodded. “I want to adopt her.”
“I won’t stand in your way. Just do me a favor and let her know how much she was loved. Will you?”
“Is loved. Despite everything that’s happened, that won’t ever change.”
He smiled warmly, nodding slowly. “Is loved.”
The baby that belonged to no one would never be without a home.
About the Author
Lynn Chandler Willis has worked in the corporate world, the television industry, and owned a small-town newspaper (much like Ava Logan). She’s lived in North Carolina her entire life and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Her novel, a Shamus Award finalist, Wink of an Eye, won the SMP/PWA Best 1st PI Novel competition, making her the first woman in a decade to win the national contest. Her debut novel, The Rising, won the Grace Award for Excellence in Faith-based Fiction.
Books in the Ava Logan Mystery Series
by Lynn Chandler Willis
TELL ME NO LIES (#1)
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