by Sandra Brown
She climbed the three steps and entered the main room of the rectangular structure. It was small, compact, sparsely and inexpensively furnished.
“I hope you weren’t expecting fancy,” he remarked from behind her as he closed the door and slid the bolt. “Heat works, though. You won’t be cold for long.” He reached out and brushed melting snow off the shoulder of her sweater.
She turned her head and looked at his hand where it rested there. “I didn’t even realize until now that I left without my coat.”
“Adrenaline.”
“I suppose.”
His gaze remained steady on hers. “Why didn’t you give me away?”
“You told me not to.”
“I’ve told you not to do a lot of things. You’ve done them anyway.”
“I trusted you.”
He stroked the side of her neck with his thumb, then quickly withdrew his hand and took a step back. He removed his outerwear and piled the garments on the small dining table.
“A dangerous business, Doc. Trusting me.”
“You talk about dangerous? There were two armed men just downstairs, either of whom would gladly have taken you into custody. You took a huge risk to get me out of there.”
“I had to get you away from him.”
“Jeff.”
“Your husband,” he said with palpable disgust. From his jeans pocket, he fished out the silver trinket. When he’d showed it to her on the balcony, there had been no question as to whether she would stay with Jeff or flee with Hayes.
She took the charm from him and rubbed it between her fingers. “You had it all the time I was with you?”
“Found it underneath you when I picked you up off the trail.”
“Why didn’t you ever ask me about it? I could have identified it immediately.”
“I was afraid you’d want it back.” He seemed embarrassed to have admitted that and made a defensive rolling motion of his shoulders.
“You wanted a keepsake of me? Very sentimental. And very unlike yesterday when you opened the door of the truck and said a terse good-bye. You seemed eager to get rid of me.”
“I was. Short of killing the Floyds, I’d settled my score with them. I should have left yesterday as soon as I delivered Lisa to her relatives. Driven away and not looked back.”
“Instead…,” she said.
“Instead I joined the crowd outside the hospital.”
That astonished her. “You were there?”
“Making myself as inconspicuous as possible. You were escorted inside. Jeff was detained by reporters seeking a sound bite. Didn’t look to me like he minded the attention. All pumped up and full of himself, he walked right past me. Close enough for me to get a good view of the zipper on his slick ski jacket.”
“You noticed it was missing the pull.”
“And I realized what I had.” He let that settle. “I don’t know one designer’s emblem from another’s. At first I assumed it had come off the zipper of your running jacket. Yesterday, I knew otherwise. It fell off Jeff’s jacket when he attacked you.”
“And left me for dead.” Even though she’d come to suspect that Jeff was somehow involved, it was dismaying and painful to accept he could have been so cold-blooded, heartless, and deceiving. By contrast, Hayes had risked everything to protect her.
Looking into his eyes, she said, “You came after me.”
“I couldn’t leave you to him. It was hard enough taking you back before I knew he meant to kill you.”
Jack Connell might just as well have saved his breath. What he’d told her about Hayes Bannock had no effect on her yearning for him to pull her against him and steal the very breath from her with one of his kisses. She took a step toward him, but he staved her off.
“You and me, it still can’t happen.” A second elapsed before he added, “If it could, I’d already be on you.” He spoke in a low rumble that was rich with carnal implications.
Her own voice was heavy with emotion. “Connell asked me if you had mentioned leaving.”
“He knows me. Nothing’s changed. I’ll disappear again. But not until I’m sure this murderous bastard is nailed.” He motioned for her to sit. “Let’s talk.”
She backed up to the built-in sofa and sat down on the edge of the cushion. He pulled a chair from beneath the dining table, positioned it in front of her, and straddled it backward.
“Must say, you didn’t seem a bit surprised to learn that Jeff is the culprit.”
“He tipped his own hand. Last night, he asked me who had repaired my sunglasses.” She told him about her panic attack and the conversation she’d had with Alice. “I had retold the story several times. I began to doubt my recollection. Alice reasonably pointed out that I was exhausted, on medication, and she swore Jeff couldn’t have harmed me. But it continued to nag me. Tonight I confronted him with it. His explanation for knowing the glasses had been broken was plausible, but he became defensive.”
“Defensive how?”
“I’ve long suspected that he is involved with someone else. I asked him point blank if he was having an affair, and he admitted it. He also confessed to resenting me. Not without some basis,” she added. “But to a much greater degree than I realized.”
Hayes frowned. “Problem is, resentment is a motive, but it isn’t proof.”
“The trinket is.”
He shook his head. “You could have taken it off his jacket yourself and made Jeff out to be the bad guy as payback for his cheating. Or do the investigators know about his affair?”
Regretfully, she nodded. “If I raised the question of his missing zipper pull, it would be my word against his as to where he’d lost it and when.”
“Then it’s a damn good thing I kept that rock.”
“I’d forgotten that!” she exclaimed. “You still have it?”
“Oh yeah. A hard fall could have caused a concussion. Even the gash. But you took a blow that left strands of hair on the rock. That bothered me, enough so that I thought I’d better hold on to it. That’s also one of the main reasons I didn’t drop you at an ER when I found you. If that rock had been a weapon, whoever wielded it—”
“Remained a threat.”
“Correct. As it turns out, my hunch was right. Jeff was a threat up until you took my hand on that balcony.”
“Why didn’t you share your apprehensions with me immediately when I regained consciousness? Why didn’t you explain then why you were reluctant to take me to an ER?”
“The shape you were in, would it have calmed you down if I had started asking who in your life might want to kill you?”
She had the grace to look chagrined.
“If there was a villain, I was the logical choice,” he said. “Then you found the damn rock, and that cinched it.”
“It looked so menacing,” she said, remembering her fear when she saw it. “Can fingerprints be lifted off a surface like that? What can it prove?”
“Your blood and hair will be typed.”
“A prosecutor will still have to prove how they got there. An accident? Or with intent?”
“I don’t know what good it will do, but it’s better to have it than not. Who investigated your disappearance?” After she told him about Knight and Grange, he asked, “How much confidence do you have in them? Even with two pieces of evidence that raise questions about your ‘fall,’ will they take you seriously or dismiss you as a jealous and vindictive wife?”
“I’m not sure,” she replied honestly.
“Before you stick your neck out, you gotta be sure of them, Doc.”
“Neither likes Jeff, but they’ve been deferential and apologetic for suspecting him. I lost a lot of credibility when they saw that video.”
“Video?”
“Oh! You don’t know about that.”
By the time she’d finished, he was shaking his head with self-depreciation. “I was worried about an alarm system, motion detectors, and security cameras, but a freaking nanny cam never occurre
d to me. I’ll have to remember that.”
“For the next time you commit a Class H felony.”
He arched an eyebrow. “You’ve learned a lot today.”
“More than I wanted to. Where was I?”
“You lost credibility.”
“They wanted to know who my accomplice was, and they didn’t believe me when I couldn’t name you. They questioned the Floyds, even Pauline and Lisa. They all came down with amnesia about you, too, which was very frustrating to Knight and Grange.” She told him about their excursion to the cabin.
“I’m sorry you were put through that.”
She smiled sadly. “The worst part about it was seeing your cabin ransacked.”
“It’s just wood and metal, Doc.”
“I know, but it had…significance. I was glad Jeff never went inside.”
“Afraid he would have seen your guilt?”
“I don’t feel any guilt,” she replied calmly. “I didn’t want him to taint my memories of our time together.”
They held each other’s gaze for a moment before she continued. “Throughout the day, he pretended to be a pillar of support for the wife-gone-bad. Tonight when we were alone for the first time, he vented his anger.”
“What he’s really angry over is that you showed up alive. He’s out millions.”
“I don’t think it’s about my inheritance. That’s almost too hackneyed for him. It’s about pride.”
“What about the other woman?”
“Jeff didn’t tell me anything about her except that she’s inconsequential.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Oddly I do. I can’t see him being governed by passion.” Looking down at her hand, she turned her wedding ring around her finger. “Love wasn’t his motivation for trying to kill me. I’m not sure love was ever in the equation between us.”
He didn’t press her for an explanation, but his silence invited her to provide one if she wished.
“I told you how dear my parents were to me. I mourned their deaths for a long time. Even after becoming established in Atlanta, I was still vulnerable, a bundle of raw emotions. When we were building the clinic, my friend Alice introduced me to Jeff.
“He was charming and urbane, but also the epitome of pragmatism. Controlled, cool-headed. Even when I was seized by a crying jag or homesickness for my parents, he didn’t buy into my grief. He kept himself apart from it.
“At the time, I told myself he was exactly what I needed, someone who would make me bear up, carry on, get over it. I told myself that if he tried to comfort me, I would reject his attempts as insincere.
“But he never tried. He never offered a single word of consolation. I see now that his detachment wasn’t out of consideration for me, but because he simply couldn’t be bothered.” She gave a rueful laugh. “The qualities that initially attracted me to him are the qualities that are so repellant to me now.”
She waited several seconds, then looked at him directly. “It seems I prefer my emotions raw. I didn’t realize how much until that night with you.” She reached across the space separating them and laid her hand on top of his, where it rested on the back of the chair. “Despite what Agent Connell alleges, I don’t believe you killed eight innocent people.”
Chapter 34
Were you still up?”
“Jeff?” Alice said a bit groggily. “Up? No. I was in bed, but not asleep.”
He didn’t care if he’d roused her from a coma.
“You sounded strange when I called earlier,” she said. “Why didn’t you call me back? I thought you’d be coming by to get Emory’s car. Did you make it back to Atlanta okay?”
“Nothing’s okay.”
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t even know where to start. But the upshot of it is, Emory is gone again.”
“Gone?” Suddenly she sounded wide awake.
Half an hour earlier, Sergeant Grange had joined the party. Using cop-speak and acronyms, Knight and Jack Connell filled him in on the latest development. Meanwhile, dozens of other officers were outside trying to pick up Emory’s trail. Snow was beginning to accumulate, making the search for tire tracks and footprints even more difficult.
They had, however, discovered two sets of prints just beyond the front door of the neighboring suite. The imprints of Emory’s riding boots didn’t indicate there had been a struggle or even any hesitancy on her part. Gauging by the distinctive outlines of the soles of her boots, Knight’s assessment had been that she had gone willingly with the much larger set of prints, and Connell had agreed.
It was requiring every ounce of cool reason and self-control for Jeff not to pound something or tear his hair out. But he couldn’t allow rage to overtake him. He must continue to think calmly and practically.
Almost without their taking notice, he’d excused himself to call Alice. “If Emory contacts anyone, it will be her,” he’d told them. But Alice’s astonishment had doused that faint hope.
“About half an hour ago, she split. We believe she went with that man from the now-famous cabin. His name finally came to light. Hayes Bannock.”
“Oh, Jeff.”
Her soulful groan set his teeth on edge. People were saying the dumbest, most unhelpful things to him tonight. “You don’t know the half of it. She and this man were accomplices in a crime.” He told her about the burglary.
“I can’t believe that of Emory!”
“I wouldn’t have either if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
“Did they charge her?”
“No. They figure she was coerced to participate, though I’m not convinced coercion was necessary. There was this girl.” He went on to tell her about the family of Floyds and how they factored in.
“This is all so bizarre,” Alice murmured.
“Even more bizarre is where these people live, although subsist would be a more accurate word.” In disparaging terms he described the state road by which they’d reached Bannock’s cabin. “Backwoods is an understatement of how rustic it is. The Floyds are his nearest neighbors and that isn’t by happenstance. Apparently Bannock already had the brothers in his sights over some past grievance. God knows what. Some tawdry mess, I’m sure. Connell said—”
“Who is Connell?”
“Oh, that’s the best part. He’s the effing FBI.”
“How did the FBI become involved?”
“Hayes Bannock has been eluding Connell for years. Something to do with a mass shooting.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I’m afraid so. His fingerprint was lifted in the cabin. Connell was notified. He rushed right down. Twenty minutes after meeting him and telling him about her mountain adventure, Emory bolted, almost surely with Bannock, and, as we speak, their trail is being obscured by snow.” He paused and took a breath. “I think that’s everything.”
His recitation was followed by a lengthy and teeming silence. Then Alice drew a shaky breath. “Jeff, this is a tragic turn of events.”
“You think?”
“Don’t get smart with me.”
“Then say something less banal.”
“Very well.” After a beat, she said, “It’s obvious to me that Emory has lost her grasp on reality.”
He sensed a ponderous footnote left unspoken. “Alice? Dear? Do you know something I don’t?”
“I’m not sure it’s relevant.”
“Tell me and let me decide its relevance.”
“I can’t betray Emory’s confidence.”
“Your loyalty to her is admirable, but if you keep something from me and the authorities, you’re fostering her bizarre behavior. She’s sacrificing her reputation and jeopardizing the future of the clinic. Her career—as well as mine, yours, and Neal’s—are at stake. Not only that, her life could be in danger. This man she’s with is a violent criminal. My God, Alice, screw confidentiality and tell me what you know!”
She inhaled a deep breath. “She called me from the hospital las
t night. Actually early this morning. She seemed on the verge of hysteria. She was breathing erratically, like she was having a panic attack.”
“What brought it on?”
“Her sunglasses. She asked me if I remembered her mentioning at some point during the day that they’d been broken.”
“She called you in the wee hours to talk about her sunglasses?”
“Because you had asked her about the repair.”
“Jesus, she’s really hung up on that. She brought it up to me tonight.”
“She wondered how you knew they’d been broken when she fell.”
“I didn’t. All I knew was that when she left home on Friday, the stem was intact. Yesterday I noticed it had been glued together.” He waited a ten count, then said, “Alice, what was she… Why did she call you in a panic over something so innocuous?”
“It wasn’t innocuous to her. She thought that your question about them might have been a slip of the tongue. That by asking it, you had implicated yourself.”
“Good Christ,” he exclaimed in a stage whisper.
“I told her that she wasn’t thinking clearly, that she was letting her imagination run wild, but even as we hung up, she sounded uncertain.”
“She’s the one stealing and keeping company with a wanted man, but she implicated me. Unbelievable.”
“I didn’t know about the break-in and all the rest last night when I spoke to her. But even then she seemed irrational, and I told her so. I said that perhaps she was transferring her own guilt onto you.”
“Her guilt over the burglary?”
Alice didn’t respond.
“Guilt over something else?”
“Jeff, I can’t—”
“She slept with him, didn’t she?”
Alice held her tongue.
He sneered, “Ah, the resonate silence of a confidante and friend.”
“Not that good of a friend,” she said with contrition. “I’m sleeping with her husband.”
“She knows.”
“Oh my God,” she wailed.
“Relax, Alice. For God’s sake. I didn’t name you, but I did confess.”
“Why? Why now?”
“Emory backed me into a corner. Even after today’s shocking disclosures, she had the gall to ask me outright if I was having an affair. In anger I admitted it but didn’t tell her with whom.”
