Something flickered in Adam’s eyes. A muscle pulsed in his cheek. But he made no comment, said nothing. He just waited.
“I told Adam to just leave. He had a car.… I … Ah, well.” She grimaced and shrugged. “We’d swiped out the plates on his car with those of an old junker that had just been wrecked. It would make it harder to find his car for a few weeks, I figured. There was a friend of mine in Indy that he was going to crash with. I made all those calls from a pay phone in Hanover, just in case. Everything was set up and ready. David had clothes. He was dying to get out of here. But something clued Diane in and she followed him, listened in. She had a gun.”
The arm Adam had around Lana’s waist went tight.
Lana closed her eyes as the hazed images from that night started to spin through her head. “She had her phone, held the gun on us while she called Peter.”
“The phone records showed a call from her cell phone to their residence that night. It was the only call the police could dig up.… People always speculated she’d been out with David and there was car trouble or something,” Adam murmured against Lana’s hair.
“She was calling him to come get their son. Because there was a problem,” Lana bit off. That was one of her clearest memories, the look in Diane Sutter’s eyes as she spoke of the problem. She’d stared straight at Lana. Diane was going to deal with Lana, but she’d leave it up to Peter to take care of David. “A problem. She saw me as a problem—she’d deal with me, and Peter would have to discipline their son. Again.”
“Deal with you.” Adam’s arm was rigid, the muscles all but trembling.
“She wanted me dead.” Lana curled her fingers into his shirt. “I saw it in her eyes. She wanted me dead and she was ready to kill me. I knew it, and so did David. He attacked her. Ran at her and knocked her down. The gun went flying. It must have gone off, because I remember glass shattering. She screeched—the sound was like a banshee—and she chased us.” Lana touched a hand to her side.
Adam covered her hand with his.
“I don’t remember her cutting me. I don’t remember it hurting, although I know it must have. Everything was a blur. The blood was so hot on my side. I remember that. But I couldn’t stop. I was so afraid for him, because I couldn’t let his dad get him. Not again.” Slowly she lifted her head. “I remember thinking we had to get out of there.… We were running. And then there was the blood. It was so hot. David was on the floor, and his mother was shouting at him, pointing the gun. I…” She licked her lips and shook her head. “I don’t remember killing her. I think I hit her. I remember seeing her on the floor. But—”
* * *
Her breathing hitched, and when she lapsed into silence Adam cupped his hand over the back of her neck and just held her. Held her, and waited. Fine tremors racked her entire body and she stood so rigidly, he thought she might shatter at the first wrong move.
Under his hand, her skin felt cold.
If he thought it would help, he’d take her into the living room and build a fire—screw the fact that it was late August and he’d sweat to death.
But the cold she felt came from within.
He, however, was a raging, burning pit of fury. That anger, scalding hot, didn’t serve him right now, but that didn’t make it easier to shove it down.
Anger, fear, frustration …
And confusion.
She’d called him.
That night.
He knew the ins and outs of every damn thing that happened that fateful night—at least everything that had been made public knowledge. He even knew plenty that wasn’t public knowledge, information he’d begged and bribed out of people. He’d made it his business to know. That phone call from Diane Sutter had taken place at 10:22 p.m. Lana had called him almost two hours later.
Somebody had spoken in the background.… I trusted him.…
Just whom had she trusted?
Abruptly Lana took a deep breath and it was like somebody had just popped the cork—some of the massive tension drained out of her and she eased away, starting to pace. “I understand why you don’t have any booze here,” she said, her voice low and rough. “But I could sure as hell use a drink.”
“I can go get something for you,” he offered.
“No.” She shoved her hair back. “I won’t do that to you. I just…” She closed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t drink much, either, really. For the same reason. I never had a problem with alcohol. It was always pills. But … why risk it?”
She opened her eyes and that pale, soft grey gaze locked with his. “Everything from that night is surreal. Huge chunks of it are just gone from my memory. I don’t know if it’s emotional trauma, or from when I’d hit my head—the headaches were awful and it took weeks for me to recover from it. Whatever it was, though, there are some things that I just don’t remember—that I can’t remember. I remember seeing her with the gun. I remember seeing David on the floor. Then he was grabbing me and we were running. He … One minute he was fine. Then there was blood all over him and I was trying to keep him upright. I think I screamed. That’s what—”
She stopped. Just stopped, and when she opened her mouth, no words would come out. She couldn’t force the words to come. Shuddering, shaking, she closed her eyes, pressed her head to Adam’s chest and groaned, a low, strangled sound of pure frustration.
“You’ve come too far to not finish this,” Adam said softly.
“I know,” she whispered. Swearing, she pulled away from him and paced a few steps away. Turning to look at him, she curled her hands into fists, watched him. “I screamed. And we were at the Frampton house. You know who owned that place, right? People would say it was haunted, that crazy noises were heard from it. Cops would investigate. And the judge…”
Her words trailed off.
Realization slammed into Adam. “Old Max,” he whispered. “Any time old Judge Max heard a fucking sound from there, he’d be out there with that damn Remington of his.”
Lana nodded. “David and I made it onto the porch. I remember seeing the old man. I saw the rifle, but I wasn’t afraid. Not of him. I’d always loved that old grouch. I thought he was like the best thing ever. And he saw us.… I just knew everything would be okay.”
A fragment of memory worked free as she murmured those words and Lana felt herself spinning back.
* * *
The judge might have hit his sixties, but his hands were strong and steady as he guided them both off the porch, put them in the little area against it where they’d be out of sight. “Now, you two, stay there,” he said, his voice flat and hard. “It will all be okay.”
He stood, his thick white hair a halo around his head—he looked like a vengeful angel. Maybe Gabriel would have looked like that, if he was sent to earth and forced to age. A grouchy old fighter. Judge Max climbed the stairs, his face set in a mask as he mounted the steps.
The door opened.
Lana craned her head around and peered up, terror turning her heart into a hammer. It battered her chest and she could hardly breathe as she watched Diane move out onto the porch.
“Hello, Diane,” the old judge said, his voice level and easy. Like he wasn’t speaking to a woman with blood running down her temple. Like she wasn’t clutching a gun in her hand. Like there weren’t two scared, bleeding kids on the ground, just feet away.
“Max.” She smiled. Lifted the gun. “Please step out of my way.”
“I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.”
“Oh … you’ll get out of my way, or I’ll move you out of my way,” Diane said, her eyes glinting with madness. “I have a problem with my son and I have to fix it.”
“You have a problem sure enough. But you’re just going to stay there.” He lifted his rifle, pointing it toward her. “Why don’t you give me that little phone you’re always showing off? I need to make a call.”
“No.” Diane smiled, a rather dazzling smile. “You know, it’s fascinating to me that you
want to get involved in my life … now. Where were you before?”
The judge sighed. “Does any of that matter now, girl? Give me that phone. Don’t make me do this.”
She lifted her gun.
The judge moved.
* * *
“He moved really fast for an old guy,” Lana murmured. She rubbed her hand across the back of her mouth as that bit of memory, lost for so long, settled into place. “He spun the rifle around and just clubbed her with it. She went down, and she went down hard. Then he looks at us, tells me that he needs five minutes. I don’t know if David has five minutes and I told him that. So he came over, looked at David and made that little grumbly-grunt he makes and said, He’s got five, easy. Just wait here. Like I could go anywhere. He drags her into the house and then he’s back outside, moving around quicker than I probably could.”
“My dad told me that Judge Max was Special Forces when he was in the army. I don’t think you ever really lose that once you get in.” Adam brooded, staring out into the night as he turned everything she’d told him over. “Why didn’t the judge just take you to the hospital, call the cops?”
Lana swallowed and then, slowly, like her muscles couldn’t support her anymore, she sank to the floor.
“Because I begged him not to.” She drew her knees to her chest and hid her face against Adam. “You know about Cronus now. How many of them there are, how deep it goes. David had been being passed around for almost three years, and he still didn’t know how many there were. A lot of them went masked with him, because he’d gone to the cops once. It turns out the chief of police was actually involved, too.”
“The chief.” Adam stared at her. He dropped down onto the floor and stared at her, fury knotting his muscles while disgust churned in his gut. “You’re telling me that Chief Andrews, the good old boy who attended church Sunday morning, Sunday night and every fricking Wednesday, the one who ragged on my ass because I cussed like a heathen and I dated a few too many of the wrong girls and I drove too fast … that son of a bitch was involved with the Cronus bastards?”
“Yeah.” She rested her head against the cabinets at her back. “So was one pediatrician, an OB/GYN and one of the elders that Pete Sutter was all buddy-buddy with … Harlan Troyer. He was one of them.”
“I already know about Harlan.” Adam surged upright and started to pace, the rage pulsing inside him.
“I think your friend Rita suspected. Or she found something and put it together. She couldn’t take the guilt and she killed herself over it.”
Adam stopped in his tracks and glared at Lana. “Fuck. Yeah, Rita knew but there was something else going on besides that. There had to be. She didn’t do shit wrong, and once it really hit her, she called the cops. She would have found her mad soon enough. Her father wasn’t worth her life.”
“No. He wasn’t.” Lana wrapped her arms around herself, shivering, her gaze locked on the floor. “I begged Max, begged, pleaded … and David … well, he was all but screaming. The thought of going to the hospital turned him into an animal, and even though he could barely walk, he shoved the door to the car open … while Max was driving … and tried to throw himself out. I guess that caught the judge’s attention and he asked me just what was going on. So I told him. It never occurred to me that he wouldn’t believe me.”
“I take it he didn’t?”
“Oh, no.” Lana rubbed her fingers against her mouth absently, staring off into the night. “The judge believed every word. And he started to think, to plan. He had to split us up, he said. Both of us needed medical care, but he couldn’t take us to the hospital, because he wasn’t going to trust the sheriff—not after what we’d told him. And if he couldn’t trust Andrews, he wasn’t trusting the city boys, either. The first thing they’d do if we were taken to any of the local places was call David’s family, and the son of bitch had a long reach.”
“Why not someplace in Kentucky?”
“No place close enough. Even Clark Memorial was almost an hour away, and he didn’t want to risk having anybody call the police. Not until he had made a few calls, he said.” She uncurled her legs and slowly climbed up, moving stiffly, like every muscle in her body hurt. “He knew officers with the state police—up in Indy, not people who were local. Judge Max knew plenty of people who weren’t going to be intimidated by Sutter, or involved with Cronus. He was trying to help.”
She moved to the coffeepot, reaching for the coffee beans Adam kept in the cabinet overhead. A few minutes later, the scent of coffee filled the air and she turned back to look at him. “Max has … well, a lot of unusual acquaintances. I don’t know what all happened that night—what I was told was a lie, I think. But Max took David to one of the Amish families, one who had medical training. I wasn’t hurt as bad. Max told me he’d actually helped fix me up—may had been trained as a medic.… I guess he has all sorts of secrets about his years in the army. Once he had David settled, he took me to a different family. I remember him walking into the little workshop he had in his garage. That’s where I was when the police were searching. I called you from there, I guess. I don’t remember that, but I remember him checking the wound, forcing me to drink some water, take some medicine. He told me he had to wait a few hours before he could take me anywhere. Things blur in and out.… The next thing I remember was waking up in this little house. No air-conditioning. I looked outside and I saw Max talking to this Amish guy. I thought I was in another world. He came in and talked to me, told me they’d take care of me, that he’d be in touch. He had to see to David.” She forced herself to smile, but it faltered, then faded. Turning back to the coffee, she said, “I wanted to go with him, check on David, but he said I needed to rest.”
She made a face. “I should have pushed. I never saw David again. I know he’s still alive. Max would have told me if he wasn’t. So at least I have that much. David got out. And that is the thing that matters the most. I’d fucked up so bad, but at least I didn’t get him killed.”
* * *
Taut seconds passed while Lana sipped from her coffee. She put the mug down, unable to take the silence. Turning to stare at Adam, she saw the hard, angry lines of his face.
Everything inside her went cold.
Here it was, then. Now he knew. Now he knew how terribly she’d failed. Her gut twisted as misery and shame settled deep inside her. Pain grabbed her heart and started to fester there. She’d hoped he would— The cynical voice in the back of her mind started to mock her before the thought even finished. Hoped he’d what? Understand? Understand how you fucked everything up and ran away, while other kids were hurt?
She set her jaw, swallowing the misery inside. There was nothing to understand. She had fucked up. There were no excuses. She’d thought they’d stopped it when Peter died, cutting off the beast’s head.
But this wasn’t a beast. It was like that freaky dragon out of Greek myth. A hydra. They’d cut off one head and three more emerged. Smoothing out her expression, she braced herself for whatever Adam had to say. She’d take it. She’d deal with it.
He paced closer to her, lifted a hand.
Her heart banged against her ribs as he pushed his fingers into her hair, tangled the long strands around his fingers. “Not good enough,” he said, his voice low and rough.
“You think I don’t know that?” She stared at him, dry-eyed, while her heart turned to ashes in her chest.
He didn’t even seem to hear her. “You weren’t even seventeen, trying to fix a mess that would bring adults to their knees—hell, look at the town now. Nobody here has any idea what to think. But you tried to take it on, all on your own.”
“Ah—”
He cut her off. “And Max just let you try to handle it. You tried to take on the world, tried to fix it all on your own, and it bit you on the ass, but you didn’t fuck up. The judge fucked up. Old Max ought to be knocked on his ass for not doing better by you.”
Something jagged and sharp cut into her. She didn’t know what it was, b
ut twenty years of poison tried to spill out. “He…” She stumbled over the words, licking her lips. “He tried. Things just got—”
“Bullshit. The man was a fucking judge. But he goes all vigilante—” Adam stopped, his eyes widening. “Vigilante. Son of a bitch. He’s the one targeting all the members of Cronus now.”
“No.” Curling her hands into fists, she pressed them to her temples and turned away from Adam. The thought of that cut into her mind, and try as she might, she couldn’t push it out.
And a memory rushed at her, just days ago—two? Maybe three?
I had the names, you know. David gave them to me. I took care of them, each one of them. On my own. Max, sitting on his porch, staring out over the river.
You … You took care of them? There was a heart attack. A car crash.
Easy enough to make it appear that way. If you know how. I knew how.
“No.” She licked her lips and rubbed her eyes, trying to make the images in her head go away. They just wouldn’t. Harlan had been stabbed. She’d heard about another death—a man basically poisoned, by chocolate. Allergic to it. A bizarre sort of horrified appreciation rolled through her, despite herself. “Max can’t be behind that. He’s eighty years old.”
“Actually, he’s older than that.” Adam’s voice was grim, his face a stark mask. “It makes sense. He’s not taking on anybody young, and he’s not doing anything that involves a whole hell of a lot of risk. Troyer was drunk and had Benadryl slipped into his whiskey.” He slid her a look and shrugged. “That’s not common knowledge just yet. I know a girl who works at the police department. The autopsy came in a few days ago. Once he was out of it, seems like the killer slid a knife into his heart, directly in. Whoever did it knew exactly how to kill. And Max would know how to do that. Quimby was taken out just as easy—half the people in town knew the man had major allergy issues. Chocolate, peanuts, tree nuts and eggs. He’d bitch about everything on my menu when he came in, and half the time he tried to come into the kitchen to watch the food get prepared, even though he knows that’s not going to happen. They were assassinated, all there is to it.”
Sweeter Than Sin Page 23
