by B. J Daniels
Bud was going ballistic, screaming at the sight of the handcuff dangling from his wrist and trying to hit her. But she had hold of the other cuff and was hanging on for dear life.
She grabbed the steering wheel, trying to hook the other cuff to it. The pickup began to swerve.
Bud knocked her away, breaking her hold on the other cuff. The pickup was skidding sideways in the mud. Bud was fighting to keep it on the road.
With both his hands busy, she tried again, only to have him grab her by the hair and hold her down with one hand as he tried to right the pickup.
From her position facedown on the seat between the two of them, she couldn’t reach the steering wheel. Her inspired plan took on a new twist, this one truly suicidal, but she’d run out of options and knew after this Bud would kill her and take the letter, then dump her body along the road and Mitch would find her in some ditch.
She snapped the other cuff to her own wrist—just an instant before the pickup careened off the road and came to a bone-jarring stop. Her head smacked the gearshift and the lights went out.
CHARITY AWOKE aware that she was being carried, the ground uneven, then flat. She opened her eyes. Rain fell on her face. There was no light at first. Then she saw the small glow at the employee entrance of Dennison Ducks. He was taking her to the plant.
At the door, he stopped to set her down, sweating from the effort of hauling her. “I should kill you right now,” he said, waving a gun at her with his free hand. “Nina was much easier to kill than you. But then, Ethel had already coldcocked her good with a decoy.”
She could tell he wanted to shoot her, but he was already winded from carrying her. He needed her to walk to wherever they were going. Otherwise, she’d already be dead.
He dug out his key, cursing her, then opened the door and shoved her through it. The handcuff chaffed her wrist painfully as she stumbled inside and he jerked her back to him.
She looked around for a weapon. Her purse was in the pickup and she could see nothing within reach that she could use as he dragged her back through the shelves of ducks, never letting her get close enough to grab one. It grew darker and darker as they moved away from the light near the entrance.
At the back of the building, Bud turned on a small lamp over a workbench, picked up a hacksaw and, with the sweep of his free arm, cleared off everything within her reach.
When he turned to look at her, his face was distorted in anger. “I can’t believe you did something so stupid,” he spat at her as he dragged her closer to the workbench. Dropping the hacksaw, he grabbed the front of her jacket and jerked her to him. He ripped the jacket apart and the letter fell to the floor.
He stared down at it for a moment as if surprised Nina had really written it. Or maybe just surprised at what he’d had to go through to get it.
Pulling Charity down with him, he retrieved the letter from the floor. She watched him open it, dying to see what was inside. What could be in the letter that was worth killing over? Surely not Nina’s true paternity. Who cared after twenty-seven years?
It had to have something to do with Angela’s kidnapping. “You kidnapped Angela!”
“Prove it.” Bud curled a lip at her, then pulled a lighter from his pocket, flicked it on and touched the flame to the paper without even a glance in her direction.
“No!” she cried, grabbing for the letter. But it was too late. The paper caught fire in an instant, and as he dropped it to the floor, the flame turned what was left of the letter to ash.
She wanted to cry. But she had much worse problems. Bud had disposed of the letter. Now all he had to do was dispose of her. No one would suspect him, after all. The deputy who’d seen him grab her had only seen a man in a mask and cape driving a black pickup. Even with Rogers dead, no one would know it had been Bud behind the wheel.
Bud was going to get away not only with Angela’s kidnapping but with two murders.
She told herself that Mitch would get here. The deputy had called him. Mitch would find the black pickup in the ditch. He would find her. Eventually.
Bud picked up the hacksaw and seemed to realize he couldn’t both cut with the saw and hold the gun on her. He moved the gun out of her reach, shifted the hacksaw to his left hand and clumsily began to saw on the metal between the two cuffs, cursing a blue streak as he did.
Her mind raced. She knew that once he got the cuffs apart that would be it for her. She could try to run, but there was no doubt in her mind he would shoot her down. And what were the chances of anyone’s coming here on Halloween night? She couldn’t depend on Mitch’s getting here in time, either.
She listened to the grating of the saw, horrified to see how quickly the blade was cutting through the metal. Must have been cheap handcuffs.
“You know you’re not going to get away with this,” she said.
He shot her a look that said that line only worked in movies. Of course he was going to get away with it.
Over the rasp of the saw, she thought she heard a sound, a soft whoosh like a door opening. Mitch? No. If it really was the door opening, then it had to be someone with a key.
Something moved at the window next to her. A shadow. She glanced out of the corner of her eye, but saw only a tree limb brush against the glass. Just her imagination. Just like the sound of a door opening?
Bud was working at the handcuff. A few more moments and he would be free of her. She needed to make her move the second the cuffs came apart….
That was when she smelled wet night air. Someone had come in through the employee door. Bud didn’t seem to have noticed.
She couldn’t see who’d entered the plant because of the fully stocked shelves.
The saw cut through the link of metal that connected them. In that instant, Charity lunged for one of the decoys on the shelves off to her left and her hand closed around a drake’s neck. She stepped back toward Bud and swung, catching him in the temple before he could pick up the gun. The gun fell, skittering across the concrete and sliding under one of the shelves.
He stumbled back and she turned to run, only to find herself staring into the business end of another gun. Holding it was the last person she’d expected to see.
“Daisy?”
Her theory about Daisy hiring someone to get rid of Angela suddenly came back to her in a rush.
“Don’t move,” Daisy ordered, pointing the gun at Bud now. Daisy’s gaze moved to the ashes on the floor at his feet. “So you got to the letter and destroyed it.” Her gaze was hard as stones.
Charity held her breath, not sure Daisy wouldn’t kill her if she moved. If Daisy really had hired Bud to kidnap Angela, then why was she pointing the gun at him? Unless she planned to kill him to keep him quiet. With Nina dead and the letter gone…
“Nina told me she knew who kidnapped Angela,” Daisy was saying. “I thought she was bluffing. She said lucky for me she loved revenge even more than money and that she’d written a letter to the newspaper. Charity would get it on Halloween and the masks would be off. I guess the mask is off, Bud.”
Bud licked his lips and looked nervously around.
“Where is the private investigator I hired?” Daisy asked. “I saw his truck…”
“He’s dead,” Charity offered. “Bud was driving the truck. He was getting ready to kill me when you came in.”
Daisy didn’t seem to hear. She narrowed her gaze at Bud and said, “Where is my daughter?” Her eerie calm made the hair stand up on the back of Charity’s neck. “Oh God, I should have known it would be you who took my daughter. You’d do anything for money. Where is Angela?”
“I don’t know, I swear to God, Daisy.” Bud was leaning against the workbench as if his knees wouldn’t hold him. “I sold her to some lawyer. He never gave me his name.”
Bud glanced behind Daisy as if he saw something in the darkness by the decoy shelves. Or someone. Fear distorted his face. He was shaking his head as if suddenly more afraid.
Charity saw what he planned to do. She ope
ned her mouth, but it happened too fast. Bud dived for his gun, which had slid under a decoy shelf.
He came up with it, rolling and firing at Daisy. The air boomed with gunfire and the smell of gunpowder met Charity’s nostrils.
Charity saw Daisy stagger, her shoulder blooming with red as she crumpled to the floor. Then she heard Bud cry out as another shot exploded.
In the same instant, the window shattered behind her, showering her with glass. She was knocked to the floor and Mitch was there.
Then Charity was in Mitch’s arms and he was holding her close and she was crying as he stroked her hair and whispered, “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.”
And Wade was there, rushing to Daisy’s side, a gun in his hand. Charity was the only one to see Bud’s expression. He was looking at Wade and trying to speak, but no words came out as he clutched his chest where he’d been shot, and died.
Epilogue
In the days that followed, the talk at Betty’s was about nothing but the murders—and the twenty-seven-year-old kidnapping. Another Bigfoot sighting on the edge of town went by barely noticed.
Mitch had pieced the story together as best he could for Charity. Nina had been planning to meet Wade at the decoy plant Tuesday night, but instead, Ethel Whiting had shown up. They’d fought and Ethel had hit Nina, knocking her unconscious.
Bud had been outside, planning to kill Nina. He’d found her, killed her and dumped her and her car in the ravine. The problem was, he wouldn’t have been able to do that without help. Maybe his wife had driven the second car. She wasn’t talking. In fact, she was packing, moving away from Timber Falls. Or maybe it had been someone else in town. Charity wondered if they would ever know the truth.
Bud had killed Nina to keep her from exposing his part in Angela’s kidnapping. At least that was the theory. Charity had one of her own. If Bud had kidnapped Angela for money, then he could have killed Nina for the person behind the kidnapping.
Or there could have been no conspiracy at all, Mitch reminded her. Maybe along with Wade, Nina had been blackmailing Bud. Only, Bud was never planning to pay.
Daisy was recovering from a gunshot wound to her shoulder at a hospital in Eugene. When Charity went down to visit her, the room was full of flowers from residents of Timber Falls. Shooting Bud Farnsworth had gotten her back into the town’s good graces, it seemed. People were willing to give her another chance.
“Did you see the letter before he burned it?” Daisy asked her.
Charity had to tell her she didn’t. “I don’t think Nina knew where Angela was.” She wasn’t sure if that had been the case, but she thought it would make things easier for Daisy, who’d hired Kyle Rogers to get the letter—if Nina really had written a letter to get her revenge like she’d told Daisy she planned to do. But all Rogers had gotten was killed for it. And no one would ever know now what Nina had written Charity about the kidnapping or Bud Farnsworth.
DNA tests had confirmed that Wade was indeed Nina’s father. Charity had heard that Desiree hadn’t taken it well. It was hard to say how Daisy took the news. She still seemed too calm to Charity, like a woman on the edge, barely hanging on.
When Wade entered the hospital room, Charity left. She couldn’t forget Bud’s fear just before he’d gone for his gun. Or his attempt to speak to Wade at the very end of his life. She still had nightmares.
Mitch had been sleeping on her couch in the weeks since. She’d decided it was all right to show a man that she needed him. At least for a while.
Ethel hadn’t gone back to work at Dennison Ducks even after Wade apologized to her and she was released on bond, trial pending. No one thought she would get any jail time. Wade was advertising for a new secretary. Charity’s newspaper circulation had increased and she was actually showing a pretty good profit. But she had realized something. Mitch didn’t care if she wrote a Pulitzer prize-winning story or not. How about that?
On her way back from visiting Daisy at the hospital in Eugene, she drove into town in time for a late breakfast at Betty’s Café.
Betty slid a piece of banana-cream pie and a diet cola in front of her as she took her usual stool.
“See that guy over there?” Betty whispered.
Charity turned to see a dark-haired man in his thirties sitting in the far booth poring over a stack of papers. He wasn’t bad-looking. But he was no Mitch Tanner.
“He looks too stodgy for you,” Charity said, turning back to her pie. “Anyway, I thought you were seeing that new bartender at the Duck-In.”
Betty blushed. “Bruno? Who told you that?”
Charity just laughed. “Don’t tell me that’s Bruno over there.”
“No, he’s that scientist—the one who did that horrible article on Liam Sawyer. Said the photos Liam took all those years ago of Bigfoot were just part of an elaborate hoax.”
Ford Lancaster. Charity glanced over her shoulder at him. “So what’s he doing in town?”
“That’s just it,” Betty said. “No one knows. I guess it’s probably this latest Bigfoot sighting, but I wonder if it could have anything to do with Liam being back in town.”
Charity certainly hoped not. She didn’t want to see her friend Roz hurt anymore by all that old stuff about her father. “So tell me about your latest heartache in blue jeans.”
The bell over the door tinkled.
“Speaking of heartache,” Betty said under her breath, then called out, “Good mornin’, Sheriff. Saved you a piece of banana-cream.”
“No pie for me this morning, Betty.” Mitch slid onto the stool next to Charity, and Betty placed a cup of black coffee in front of him before disappearing discreetly into the back.
“GOOD MORNING, Charity.” Mitch looked over at her and felt his heart leap at just the sight of her. It was overcast outside, clouds low and gray, rain threatening again. But it was like there was sunlight all around her. Her auburn hair seemed on fire this morning, and her face seemed to light up like springtime.
He told himself it was the banana-cream pie, not him.
“Morning, Sheriff.” She took a bite of pie, closed her eyes and smiled. He hadn’t seen her smile in days and felt a rush of pure pleasure just watching her.
She opened her eyes. “Care for a bite?”
Oh, he was tempted. But not by banana-cream pie. In the days since he’d crashed through a glass window to save Charity, he’d thought a lot about the two of them. He didn’t know how he felt about anything—just that he couldn’t stay away from her. Didn’t want to.
Not that he wasn’t still scared. Last night he’d had dinner with his father and Jesse. It hadn’t been all that bad. He was trying to see the man that Jesse had always known. It would take time.
But he wasn’t as afraid of himself. He’d always worried he was too much like his father. Now he wasn’t so sure that was a bad thing.
As for Charity… “I was wondering…” His mouth was dry as cotton. He took a sip of coffee. “Do you have any plans for this weekend?”
She raised a brow in surprise.
“Saturday night. I was thinking…” That old voice in his head tried to stop him, but he wasn’t listening anymore. “Maybe you’d like to go to the community-center dance. We could have dinner first.”
Charity was speechless. It was always something to behold. “Are you asking me for a…date?”
“I believe I am.”
She grinned. “Well, you’re in luck. I just happen to be free Saturday.”
He reached into his pocket, feeling bashful, as he set the box with the bracelet on the counter. “I thought you might want to wear this.”
Her eyes were big as pie plates when she saw the bracelet she’d eyed at the Eugene jewelry store. “Oh, Mitch.” Tears welled in those eyes and she bit her lower lip. Then she kissed him.
He felt himself falling, out of control, falling, only this time it didn’t seem quite so frightening. But then he saw himself clear as day in a black tuxedo standing at an altar, and next to him—
> “It’s just a dance,” he said when the kiss ended.
Charity smiled that secret smile of hers. “Whatever you say, Mitch.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6170-3
MOUNTAIN SHERIFF
Copyright © 2003 by Barbara Heinlein
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