by B. J Daniels
“But you damn sure tried,” he said, wondering about this strange bond between Nicci and Ambrose. A deadly bond that went back nine years. Was it possible that Ambrose was the only person Nicci ever felt she could trust because of that deadly secret—and apparently no love—between them?
Nicci ratcheted the gun and pointed it at his head. “All secrets die here today. Move over by Ambrose.”
Dalton saw the look in her eye and did as she asked. This way he would be closer to Georgia, might be able to shield her. He didn’t believe Nicci was ready to kill him. This would have been so not like her to end this quickly, humanely.
“Killing more people is only going to get you executed,” he said as he joined Ambrose on that side of the kitchen and Nicci turned, her back to the door.
Dalton thought about making his play now, but Nicci anticipated he might try something. She swung the barrel of her gun toward Georgia.
“The police can’t prove anything,” Nicci said, swinging the gun to point it at him. “But I couldn’t bear to see anyone I cared about get on the stand and tell them my secrets in a way that would make them sound like a confession.”
Nicci’s eyes narrowed, her trigger finger tightening. Dalton must have blinked, anticipating the intense burn of the bullet as it entered his body.
The blast inside the small room was deafening. He heard a soft, surprised sound come out of Ambrose. He looked over at her shocked face an instant before she dropped, her gun dropping as she hit the floor.
Dalton didn’t think. He just dove for the gun, putting his body in front of Georgia. He heard Nicci scream “Don’t!” but he already had Ambrose’s gun in his hand and was coming up with it.
The sound of the shot seemed far away. He didn’t feel the pain, didn’t even realize he’d been hit, until he felt his legs give out under him and a sick hot blackness take him to the floor.
GEORGIA SCREAMED and lunged toward Dalton, but Nicci stopped her, slamming the butt of the gun into her shoulder.
She let out a cry and stumbled back. Nicci shoved her down into the chair, the barrel of the gun now pointed between her eyes.
Dalton lay on the floor bleeding. Georgia stared over at him, not daring to move and felt her pulse leap at the sight of his chest rising and falling. Thank God, he wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway.
“I’ll reinvent myself after tonight,” Nicci said more to herself than to anyone left alive in the room. “I have money stashed all over the world. I’ll find another Ambrose.” She frowned and for a moment Georgia thought she might cry. “I might even find another Dalton Corbett.”
The lantern light flickered over Nicci’s face. Georgia saw that her eyes were empty. No soul, she thought with horror.
She didn’t see Agnes move, didn’t even realize she had until she heard the tumbler of water hit the floor. The thin glass shattered, sending shards flying into the air. Slivers found Nicci’s bare ankles and blood bloomed from the tiny cuts.
“You clumsy old hag,” Nicci cried and lunged across the table to backhand her. The glancing blow caught Agnes on the cheek and she slumped over onto her knitting without a sound.
Georgia leaped to her feet when she saw Nicci reach across the table to hit Agnes. She lunged for Nicci’s arm to stop her, failing, but managing to knock the gun from her hand to the table.
Georgia grabbed the gun and aimed it at Nicci. “Don’t move or I’ll shoot.”
Nicci laughed. “You’re going to shoot me? Get serious.” She took a step toward Georgia. “Didn’t you just see what a bullet does when it rips through flesh?”
Georgia took a step back, the weapon wobbling in her hand. She stilled it by clutching the gun in both hands. She heard Agnes moan and saw her lift her head from the table. She looked dazed.
“You’ve probably never even held a gun before,” Nicci was saying. “Wouldn’t even know how to fire it, even if you weren’t too nice and sweet to pull the trigger and kill someone.”
Georgia could hear the truth in Nicci’s words. The gun in her hand suddenly felt too heavy. The barrel bobbed. She fought to keep it on Nicci.
“Come on, Georgia, you know you couldn’t live with yourself if you took my life.” Nicci’s smile broadened as she took another step toward Georgia. “That is the difference between us,” she said as she lunged for the gun.
Georgia closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.
The sound was deafening in the large kitchen. It echoed off the walls as the gun jerked in Georgia’s hand. Nicci let out a cry and clutched her side. Her green eyes darkened. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but no words came out.
Georgia stared at her in horror as Nicci slumped to the floor. The gun dropped from her hand as she stumbled to where Dalton lay bleeding on the floor. She knelt next to him and felt for a pulse. She could hear Agnes get up and go to the phone on the kitchen wall to call the sheriff.
“Tell him we need an ambulance!” Georgia cried.
For a moment, she didn’t feel a pulse and felt panic rise in her. Not Dalton. God, no, not Dalton!
Then she felt his blood coursing through his veins. His pulse was weak, but he was still alive. He stirred, his eyes opening, slowly focusing on her face. A smile curled his lips. He whispered something she couldn’t hear.
“An ambulance is on the way,” she said, listening to Agnes’s conversation on the phone behind her. “Don’t try to talk. Everything is going to be all right. Just hang in there. Please. I can’t lose you. Not now.”
He whispered something again she couldn’t make out. Bending down, she put her ear closer.
“Nicci.”
He was asking about Nicci? “She’s—” The rest of her words were lost as she heard the click of the revolver and felt the cold steel pressed into her temple.
Georgia hadn’t seen Nicci crawl over to the gun, but Dalton had.
“Say goodbye, Georgia. How perfect. You get to die leaning over your almost lover,” Nicci said and laughed.
“NICCI, DEAR?” The woman had always underestimated her, Agnes thought. Nicci had completely forgotten about her. Behind her, Agnes put down the phone and picked up her knitting from the table.
She’d heard the things Nicci had said to poor Georgia and known them to be true. Georgia wasn’t a killer. She would have trouble living with the knowledge if she’d killed someone.
Agnes, though, well, she was old and didn’t have that many years to live with anything—especially guilt or regret even if she could have felt remorse over killing someone as depraved as Nicci Angeles.
She pulled the needles out of the lovely baby afghan she was making and stepped to where Nicci was crouched with the gun to Georgia’s temple.
“Nicci, dear?” she repeated. “I wonder if I might trouble you for a cup of tea?”
Nicci half turned to look up at Agnes. Her look said she thought Agnes the doddering old woman she had been pretending to be.
Agnes drove the sharp points of the knitting needles into the spot where Nicci’s heart should have been.
Nicci reared back in surprise and Agnes was able to take the gun from her fingers. She’d never liked guns and would be glad when she could turn it over to the sheriff as soon as he arrived.
Blood bubbled from Nicci’s lips. “I should have known it would be you,” she said and reached for Agnes as if grasping for her throat to strangle her.
Agnes took a step back and waited, making sure that when Nicci went down this time, she wouldn’t be getting back up.
Epilogue
“A triple wedding?” Kate cried and clapped her hands together laughing.
“Why not?” Dalton said, smiling over at his bride-to-be.
Georgia met his gaze, her brown eyes shining with happiness. “Why not? We all discussed it,” she said, glancing around the Trails West Ranch table. Both Maddie and Faith nodded and echoed her words. “We think it will be wonderful.”
“We’re all going to be one big happy family so why not start with one big
happy family wedding?” Dalton said, sounding as happy as he felt. He never dreamed after Nicci that he could ever have a happy ever after.
“A big happy family,” quipped Lantry.
Grayson raised his margarita glass in a toast. “To my sons and their beautiful brides-to-be.”
Everyone chimed in.
Dalton looked around the room at his family, his gaze coming back to Georgia. He had what he always wanted, a sense of belonging to something greater than himself, being accepted and most of all, being loved.
He couldn’t believe it. He was still pinching himself. He never dreamed this possible. But he and Georgia had shed the weight of the past. They were both looking to a future, anxious to start their lives together.
Because of everything that had happened to them, they didn’t want to spend another minute apart.
“I got a postcard today from Agnes,” Georgia said retrieving it from her pocket. “I think you’d better read it to everyone.” She handed the card to Dalton, who frowned and read out loud:
“Having a great time on my extended vacation in the islands, but plan to be back for the wedding at the end of the month. Regards to Maddie and Faith. I saw your triple wedding in a dream. It is going to be beautiful!
Your friend, Agnes.”
Dalton looked up at Georgia. “Did you tell her—”
“Tonight was the first time Maddie and I and Faith even discussed a triple wedding, and as you can see Agnes’s postcard was mailed over a week ago.”
Dalton laughed, shaking his head. “There is no one like Agnes. Do you know she asked the sheriff for her knitting needles back after he closed the investigation. She said they were her lucky ones.”
Everyone laughed.
“She is one amazing woman,” Georgia said. “She saved our lives.”
“And then she decided to live a little by going on this tropical island vacation,” Dalton added.
“You know, I was thinking I’d like to ask her to be one of my bridesmaids,” Georgia said, reaching for Dalton’s hand. “If it’s all right with you.”
He beamed at her. “Of course.”
“I’ll have to get word to her,” Georgia said, then laughed. “But I have a feeling she might already know.”
THE WHITEHORSE SEWING CIRCLE would be talking for years about the triple wedding of Dalton Corbett and Georgia Michaels, Shane Corbett and Maddie Cavanaugh, and Jud Corbett and Faith Bailey.
“It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” said Pearl Cavanaugh, whose mother had founded the sewing circle years before.
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I cried when I saw those three brides come out,” confessed Alice Miller, one of the oldest of the group. “They couldn’t have been more beautiful.”
“And Agnes, you were a sight for sore eyes,” Lila Bailey Jackson said. She had come back for her daughter Faith’s wedding and decided to stay a few days after saying she’d missed the quilting group.
“I loved your dress. It was so…different from most bridesmaids dresses but then you weren’t the usual bridesmaid, now were you?” Ella said.
Agnes smiled. “It was the dress I wore when I married my Norbert, God rest his soul. It was Georgia’s idea that I wear something that meant the most to me.”
“Well it was certainly an exciting wedding,” Pearl said as she took a stitch and smiled in memory. “The matron of honor having her baby right after the ceremony put quite the exclamation point on things.”
“Have you seen Rory’s baby? Devlin Jr. is adorable. Ten pounds, four ounces,” Alice said. “We finished his baby quilt just in time.”
Everyone chuckled since the Whitehorse Sewing Circle had been making a quilt for each new baby, since it had begun.
“Whose baby quilt are we starting on next?” Arlene Evans asked.
The women glanced at one another around the table.
“After that wedding, I think we’d better plan on making three in the next nine months,” Pearl said. “Those Corbett brides all had that certain look in their eyes. Amazing, but I think the population of Whitehorse is about to grow and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was another wedding before long,” she said, looking over at Arlene, who only smiled shyly and took another stitch.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-3471-4
BIG SKY DYNASTY
Copyright © 2009 by Barbara Heinlein
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†Whitehorse, Montana
†Whitehorse, Montana
†Whitehorse, Montana
†Whitehorse, Montana
†Whitehorse, Montana
†Whitehorse, Montana
†Whitehorse, Montana
*Whitehorse, Montana: The Corbetts
*Whitehorse, Montana: The Corbetts
*Whitehorse, Montana: The Corbetts
