by Debra Webb
Addington stopped wiggling his legs to find the ladder. He stilled completely. A smile stretched across his face.
“Son of a bitch.” Billy grabbed for the man’s arm.
He let go of the ledge, almost pulling Billy down with him before he slipped out of his grasp.
Addington hit the floor some ten feet below.
Billy watched a moment to make sure he didn’t move. Then he felt around for his weapon and scooted away from the hole. He stood and hurried to find Rowan, following the sound of her voice in the darkness. She was shackled inside one of the stalls.
“You okay?” He shoved his weapon into his waistband and cupped her face, felt her damp cheeks.
“I’m okay.”
“You’re not injured?”
She shook her head. He felt the movement and relief roared through him.
“Do you know where the key is?”
“He has it.” She shuddered. “Oh my God, you’re bleeding.” Her hand had found the place on his forearm that Addington had sliced into.
“Don’t worry. Help will be here any second. I need to go down into that hole and make sure Addington is dead and get the key.”
“Please be careful.”
Billy kissed her and hurried back to what he now understood was a trapdoor, not a hole. He peered down to the place where Addington had landed.
He was gone.
Fury coursing through his veins, Billy climbed onto the ladder and hurried down into the cellar or basement or whatever the hell it was.
He grabbed the flashlight and looked around. No sign of Addington in the small room, he pointed the flashlight into the tunnel that split off from the small room. Nothing there either. His weapon readied to fire, he moved down the narrow corridor. The corridor ended in a larger room. Addington lay on the floor in the middle of the room. He’d dragged himself that far but didn’t appear able to move any farther.
The sound of voices echoed overhead. Billy recognized Lincoln’s.
Help was here.
His attention moved back to Addington. The bastard was still alive.
Billy stepped forward and the beam of light landed on a skull.
He stalled. “What the hell?”
He roved the beam over the walls, turning all the way around.
Bones and skulls lined the walls.
Addington grunted something like a laugh.
Billy snapped his attention back to the bastard on the floor. He walked to where he lay and crouched down.
“You see now what you’re getting into, Chief Brannigan?” Addington coughed, the sound gurgling.
Billy had heard that sound before. He’d helped rescue a couple of cavers. One had serious internal injuries with bleeding. He’d suffered that same gurgling cough.
“Julian Addington, you’re under arrest,” he said, wanting the bastard to know he had lost before he took his last breath. He listed off a litany of charges.
The old man tried to speak again, the sound more of that nasty gurgling. Then he stopped trying to speak or move.
“Brannigan!”
Lincoln. “Down here,” Billy called back. He checked for a pulse. Nothing.
The bastard was dead.
Footsteps echoed in the tunnel. Lincoln burst in followed by Pryor.
“Is he dead?” Lincoln asked.
Billy stood. “He’s dead.”
“What happened with Dressler?” Pryor demanded.
Billy checked Addington’s pocket, found the key he needed. “He was the leak. He’d been working with Addington his whole career. He said the bastard made him a legend.”
Pryor tossed out another question, but Billy was through talking for now.
He pushed to his feet and walked past the man.
Pryor shouted after him, but Billy ignored him.
Four of Billy’s officers were moving through the barn. A paramedic and Officer Pace were with Rowan. Billy moved between them and freed her from the shackles.
She hugged him hard and he did the same. The tears burning his eyes could not be fully contained and he didn’t give a damn.
Rowan drew back. “Is it over?”
He nodded. “It’s over.”
The paramedic was urging Billy to let him have a look at his injuries, but Billy wasn’t listening. All he could do was hold Rowan against him.
It was finally, really over.
Epilogue
Six months later...
Rowan held the paint chips against the wall. She couldn’t decide between the rosemary mint green and the pastel sweet pink.
She smoothed a hand over her protruding belly. “How could there be this many decisions to make for one tiny baby?”
For the first time since she was a child Rowan was completely happy. Julian Addington was gone forever by his own hand. He had made the decision to ignore Billy’s offer of help and to let go of that ledge. Two weeks after that awful night she had realized she hadn’t had a period in a while. She’d taken a pregnancy test and it was positive.
Two months later she and Billy were married. They made the decision that she would move into his home. She liked that it was out of town and had lots of acres of peace and quiet around them. Charlotte was now running the day-to-day operations of the funeral home. Two new assistants had been hired. DuPonts had operated the funeral home for a century and a half but Rowan didn’t want this baby growing up as the undertaker’s daughter.
This little girl was not going to grow up surrounded by death.
Rowan surveyed the progress on the nursery. The furniture was here. The bedding...everything had been decided except the wall paint color.
She had narrowed it down to two colors. Billy would just have to make the final decision. Leaving the paint chips on the white dresser, she headed outside to find her husband. She paused in the kitchen and watched Billy from the window over the sink. He told her every day how happy he was. How grateful he was that she was his wife and that they were having a baby. He also loved that the baby was a girl. His parents were over the moon.
The investigation into Julian Addington was now closed. The FBI had discovered undeniable evidence that Josh Dressler had worked with Julian since his career began. The brown wig had been found in the car Josh had been driving that night. He had helped Julian murder his ex-wife and her friends. There was no way to know how many other murders he had been involved with. In Josh’s home they had discovered evidence that suggested he was Addington’s biological son. Since Josh’s parents were dead, there was no way to know how that came about, but DNA confirmed it was true.
Rowan never wanted to think of the case again. Last month she’d had a bit of a scare. She’d been in Tullahoma shopping and she’d run into Robert Johns, the last of her mother’s protectors.
They hadn’t spoken. The length of a storefront window had stood between them. For a long moment they simply stood there and stared at each other. Finally, he smiled, gave her a nod and walked away.
Rowan wasn’t looking back anymore except to admire photos of her parents and to cherish the good memories.
She was looking only to the future and it looked amazing so far.
* * *
Look for the next book in Debra Webb’s
Winchester, Tennessee Thrillers series coming
in December wherever Harlequin Intrigue
books are sold!
Halle Lane’s best friend disappeared twenty-five years ago, but when Liam Hart arrives in Winchester, Halle’s certain he’s the boy she once knew. As the pair investigates Liam’s mysterious past, can they uncover the truth before a killer buries all evidence of the boy Halle once loved?
Read on for a preview of
Before He Vanished
by USA TODAY bestselling author
Debra Webb.
Before He Va
nished
by Debra Webb
One
NOW
Friday, March 6
Winchester, Tennessee
Halle Lane listened as her fellow newspaper reporter droned on and on about the upcoming community events in Winchester that he planned to cover, which was basically everything on the calendar for the next month.
She couldn’t really complain. Halle was new. Hardly ninety days on the job, but she knew Winchester every bit as well as Mr. Roger Hawkins. She couldn’t bring herself to call him Rog. The man was seventy if he was a day and he’d covered the social events of Winchester for about fifty of those years.
How could she—a fading-star investigative journalist from Nashville—expect to get first dibs on anything in Winchester? Hawkins had the social events, including obituaries. Her boss and the owner of the newspaper, Audrey Anderson-Tanner, generally took care of the big stories. The only potential for a break in the monotony of covering barroom brawls and petty break-ins was the fact that Audrey was pregnant. At nearly thirty-eight, she was expecting her first child.
Halle had wanted to jump for joy when she heard the news last month. She was, of course, very happy for Audrey and her husband, Sheriff Colt Tanner, but mostly she was thrilled at the idea that she might actually get her hands on a real story sometime this decade.
So far that had not happened. Audrey had covered the big federal trial of Harrison Armone last month. His son’s widow, the sole witness against him, had been hiding out in Winchester for months. Surprisingly for such a small town, Winchester had more than its share of big news happenings. This time last year a body had been discovered in the basement of this very newspaper building. Halle’s gaze shifted to the head of the conference table, where her boss listened with seemingly rapt interest as Hawkins went on and on.
It seemed Winchester also had more than its share of family secrets. A man posing as a Mennonite had turned out to be a former member of a Chicago mob. Not a month later, Sasha Lenoir-Holloway had uncovered the truth about the deaths of her parents. Cece Winters had come home from prison a few months back and blown open the truth about her family and the cult-like extremists living in a remote area of Franklin County.
Nashville had nothing on Winchester, it seemed.
“This all sounds good, Rog,” Audrey said, her voice pulling Halle back to the here and now.
The boss’s gaze shifted to her and Halle realized her mistake. She had been silently bemoaning all the stories she’d missed and now it was her turn to share with those gathered what she was working on for this week’s Sunday edition.
“Halle, what do you have planned?” Audrey asked.
For five endless seconds she racked her brain for something, anything to say.
Then her gaze landed on the date written in black across the whiteboard.
March 6.
Memories whispered through her mind. Voices and images from her childhood flooded her senses. Blond hair, blue eyes...
“The lost boy,” Halle said in a rush. The words had her heart pounding.
Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of that last month or the month before?
Audrey frowned for a moment, then made an “aha” face. “Excellent idea. We’ve just passed what? Twenty-four years?”
“Twenty-five,” Halle confirmed. “Andy Clark was my neighbor. We played together all the time as kids.”
Brian Peterson, the editor of the Winchester Gazette, chimed in next. “What makes you think Nancy Clark will allow an interview? She hasn’t in all these years.”
Audrey made a frustrated face. “That is true. You tried to interview her for both the ten-year and the twenty-year anniversaries, didn’t you?”
Brian nodded. “I did. She refused to talk about it. Since her husband passed away year before last, she’s practically a shut-in. She stopped attending church. Has whatever she needs delivered.” He shrugged, shifted his attention to Halle. “Good luck with that one.”
Halle’s anticipation deflated. Hawkins looked at her as if she were something to be pitied.
“Still,” Audrey said, “if you could get the story, it would be huge. Maybe since you and the boy, Andy, played together as children before he vanished, she might just talk to you.”
Halle’s hopes lifted once more. “I’m certain she will.”
The conference room started to buzz with excitement. Titles were tossed about. Potential placement on the front page above the fold.
All Halle had to do was make it happen.
* * *
Halle cruised along the street on the east side of the courthouse, braking at a crosswalk for a mother pushing a stroller. That little ache that pricked each time she saw a baby did so now. Passing thirty had flipped some switch that had her yearning for a child of her own.
Now that she was back home, her chances of finding a partner, much less having a child, had dropped to something less than zero.
Winchester was a very small town compared to Nashville. With a population of around ten thousand, if you counted Decherd in the mix, it truly was the sort of place where everyone knew everyone else.
There were times when this could be a very good thing. Like when Andy Clark went missing twenty-five years ago. Halle had been just a little kid, but she remembered well how citizens from all over this county as well as those surrounding it had rushed to help look for Andy. Headlines about “the lost boy” scrolled across every newspaper in the state. His face was all over the news. Detectives and FBI agents were in and out of the Clark home for months.
But Andy had vanished without a trace.
Halle turned onto South High Street. The Clark home was on the corner of South High and Sixth Avenue. The historic Victorian was among the town’s oldest homes. A meticulously manicured lawn and sprawling front porch greeted visitors. She pulled to the curb in front of the house and shut off the engine. The ancient maple on the Sixth Avenue side of the lawn had been Andy’s and her favorite climbing tree.
Next door was Halle’s childhood home. Her parents, Judith and Howard, had been thrilled when she’d announced last Christmas that she would be moving back to Winchester. They had, of course, insisted that she move back into her old room. As much as she appreciated the offer and adored her parents, that was not happening. Eventually the two had talked her into taking the apartment over the detached garage where her aunt Daisy, the old maid everyone always whispered about, had once lived, God rest her soul.
Considering she would have her own parking spot and a separate entrance, Halle decided it wasn’t such a bad idea. She would have her privacy and her parents would have their only daughter—only child, actually—living at home again.
A win-win for all involved. As long as she didn’t dwell on the fact that she had turned thirty-two at the end of last month and that her one and only marriage had ended in divorce two years ago or that her ex-husband had since remarried and had a child—no matter that he had said they were too young for children when she had wanted one.
Not.
Maybe the garage apartment was fitting considering her mother’s peers all now whispered about her unmarried status. Bless her heart, she’s like poor Daisy.
Halle heaved a weary sigh.
The divorce had turned her world upside down, shaken her as nothing ever had. She’d lost her footing, and the upheaval had shown in her work. Just as she’d begun to pull her professional self together again, she’d been let go. Cutbacks, they had said. But she’d known the truth. Her work had sucked for two years.
It was a flat-out miracle they had allowed her to keep working as long as they had.
Luckily for Halle, Audrey was open to second chances. She had understood how one’s life could go completely awry. Though the Winchester Gazette was only a small biweekly newspaper, it was a reasonable starting place to rebuild Halle’s career.
She c
limbed out of the car, draped her leather bag over her shoulder and closed the door. The midmorning air was crisp but Halle much preferred it to what would come between June and September. The melting heat and suffocating humidity. The not-so-pleasant part of Southern living.
Stepping up onto the porch, she heard the swing chains squeak as the breeze nudged this wooden mainstay of every Southern porch gently back and forth. On the other end of the sprawling outdoor space stood a metal glider, still sporting its original green paint, offering a restful place to sit and watch the street. But Mrs. Clark never sat on her porch anymore. Halle’s mother had said the lady rarely stepped out the door, just as Brian had also mentioned. But Mrs. Clark did come to the door as long as she could identify the person knocking or ringing her bell. Whether she opened the door was another story.
Halle hadn’t attempted to visit her in years. She was relatively certain she hadn’t seen the woman since her husband’s funeral two years ago. The one thing Halle never had to worry about was being recognized. With her fiery mass of unruly red curls, the impossible-to-camouflage freckles and the mossy-green eyes, folks rarely forgot her face. The other kids in school had been ruthless with the ginger and carrottop jokes but Andy had always defended her...at least until he was gone.
God, she had missed her best friend. Even at seven, losing your best friend was incredibly traumatic.
Halle stepped to the door and lifted her fist and knocked.
“What do you want?”
The voice behind the closed door was a little rusty, as if it wasn’t used often, but it was reasonably strong.
“Mrs. Clark, you might not remember me—”
“Of course I remember you. What do you want?”
It was a starting place.
“Ma’am, may I come inside and speak with you?” She bit her bottom lip and searched for a good reason. “It’s a little chilly here on the porch.” Not exactly true, but not entirely a lie.
A latch clicked. Anticipation caught her breath. Another click and the knob turned. The door drew inward a couple of feet. Nancy Clark stood in the shadows beyond the reach of daylight. Her hair looked as unruly as Halle’s and it was as white as cotton. She was shorter than Halle remembered.
