Surviving the Truth

by Tyler Anne Snell

  “Stay here,” Kenneth yelled at Willa as he followed the man out, gun high. “Barricade the door behind me and don’t open it for anyone else.”

  Willa let out a soft okay.

  Kenneth was at the stairs and yelling for the man to stop.

  He wasn’t listening.

  On solid ground, he ran off into the backyard without any indication that he was ready to slow down despite being shot.

  Kenneth wasn’t going to let him get away.

  He jumped the last few steps leading to the concrete of the driveway and was on the man’s heels.

  They tore through Willa’s sister’s yard and right into the side yard of the neighbor behind her. A small wood fence was up ahead. If the man wanted to flee, he was going to have to jump it.

  That would give Kenneth enough time to close the gap between them.

  But the man made a startling choice. Instead of jumping the small fence, he barreled through it.

  The crack of the wood against his legs made Kenneth inadvertently flinch.

  “Stop! Or I’ll shoot,” Kenneth yelled out.

  The man made no move to listen. His pace even picking up as he ran through the remainder of the yard and into the street.

  A stitch pulled at Kenneth’s side. Where he’d been hit across his face throbbed in pain. It had been a while since he’d run this hard. It had been a while since his veins had been filled with nothing but adrenaline.

  That didn’t mean he could keep chasing the man indefinitely. He needed to end the pursuit sooner rather than later.

  As Kenneth approached the street, he tried to remember the layout of the neighborhood. Maybe there was a way to cut the man off if he—

  The sound of a car’s brakes locking up screeched through the air.

  A heartbeat later, that same car slammed into the ski-masked man. Like the fence, he became the object that gave.

  His body rolled up onto the car’s hood and crunched into the windshield. The driver yelled out. When the vehicle stopped, both Kenneth and the driver watched as the man tumbled onto the asphalt.

  “Sheriff’s department,” Kenneth yelled out to the driver. “Stay inside!”

  The driver did as he was told as Kenneth converged on the masked man. This time there were no surprises. Willa’s attacker was down and out for the count.

  * * *

  THE SIRENS CAME, along with Kelby Creek law, but Willa stayed put in her apartment. The man had broken her door so, as the detective had suggested, she’d barricaded it. First with a kitchen stool, then with an armchair that she’d pulled along the floor.

  The same floor she had been pinned against.

  She stood back and stared at the door, her phone clutched in one hand, her other hand trailing across her neck where a man’s gloved hand had been.

  Willa didn’t cry.

  But she didn’t move, either.

  Not until she heard it.

  Footsteps rushing up the stairs. Heavy and belonging to one person.

  “Willa?” That person called through the door. “It’s Kenneth. Detective Gray.”

  That’s all she needed to hear.

  Willa pulled the armchair back enough to give the detective room to push inside.

  She didn’t bother moving the stool out of the way and he certainly didn’t wait for her to move it.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, closing the space between them, hands going up to her face but not touching it. Instead his hands hovered, concern in his eyes.

  “Is he—? Did you get him?”

  The detective nodded.

  “The first two responding deputies are with him now on the street over.” He motioned with his head in the direction he’d chased down the man. “I came back to make sure you were okay. Are you?” His gaze dropped to her neck. There must have been a mark. His brows drew together even more. He was upset. Just as he had been when he’d saved her.

  “You came.” She didn’t answer his question but maybe because she wasn’t sure how to. A part of her felt numb. Shock, maybe.

  Detective Gray nodded. “You were in trouble,” he said. “Of course I came.”

  Willa knew that, logically, rescuing people who called for it was part of the job when it came to law enforcement. That she was no different, just as her savior had reacted the same way his colleagues might.

  Yet the part of Willa that was so close to shaking inside couldn’t stop seeing the detective in front of her, ordering her to stay behind him, and only shooting when he knew that he was blocking her body with his.

  And then he’d come back for her.

  Full of concern, dark eyes running over her, trying to find out if there was something he could fix. Something he could help with.

  Willa didn’t realize what she was going to do until it was already happening.

  She pushed up on her tiptoes and her lips pressed against the detective’s with what she could only describe later as reflex. She wrapped her arms around his neck to anchor her there, anchor her against him, and let the weight of what had happened and her appreciation move through her lips to his.

  The detective didn’t move right away. They were still in an embrace that neither had expected.

  But then he broke the kiss, using his hands to take her upper arms and gently move back.

  Willa might have felt the pang of embarrassment or rejection, but the moment the cool air from her apartment, the apartment that had just been violated, hit her lips, the part of her that Willa had been holding off broke through.

  Tears didn’t start to prick at the corners of her eyes. They came out like waterfalls, rushing down her cheeks as her chest tightened and her breathing became hitched.

  Her neck hurt, her leg hurt, her wrist hurt, her apartment was trashed, and she was afraid.

  Willa hung her head.

  Detected Gray didn’t say a word.

  But he didn’t need to. Not when his hands dropped from her shoulders and, instead of pulling away, he pulled her against him.

  She felt his chin rest on top of her hair as Willa lost it completely.

  Her body racked against his with sobs, yet the detective didn’t move.

  He held her against him as though he knew that he was the only thing keeping her up.

  That was good. Because he was.

  * * *

  THE NEIGHBORHOOD BECAME a cacophony of sound. It seemed that half of the responding deputies weren’t communicating with the other half. Some went to the house and the garage apartment, some went to the street behind where the man had been hit, and others scoured each street. Looking for what, or who, he didn’t know.

  But he wasn’t bothered. Not with what had happened or what he knew would happen next. He simply stood in his backyard, staring at a pool float shaped like a flamingo, and marveling at how some people’s timing was impeccable while others’ was far from it.

  “Honey?”

  He turned around at the sound of his wife’s voice. The smile he reserved for his home life pulled the corners of his lips up.

  “Yes, dear?”

  She had a dishtowel in one hand and her phone in the other. She used the former to cover the receiver of the latter. That meant she was about to tell him some gossip that she’d just learned.

  “Mrs. Appleton said she just saw the ambulance take a man away. The burglar Tim hit with his car.”

  “Is he alive?” The chain of information from two streets over wasn’t always accurate. What one person would swear to be true, another would swear to be false. It made everything more challenging but wading through the verbal muck to get to the truth was a worthwhile challenge if it meant keeping you alive and free. The ability to get the facts and stay ahead of everyone else seemed to be something the man who’d been dumb enough to get hit by a car in a neighborhood that had a speed limit of twenty
miles per hour hadn’t possessed.

  “As far as Mrs. Appleton is concerned, yes. But she said she heard he wasn’t moving much when they put him on the stretcher before they got him into the ambulance.”

  He shook his head, his wife’s eyes still trained on him.

  “It’s a dang shame something like this could happen in our neighborhood,” he decided to say. “It looks like I’ll be double-checking the batteries on our alarm system today.”

  His wife nodded with fervor.

  She had no idea the things he could do to her without batting an eye.

  Instead, she looked at him like he was the only man in the world who could completely protect her.

  That smile that he saved for his personal life grew.

  “I’ll be in in a second,” he added. “I need to make one more call.”

  She nodded and was back on the phone with Mrs. Appleton in a flash.

  Until he was sure she was on the other side of the house, he listened to the sirens moving off into the distance.

  Then he took the piece of fabric out of his pocket.

  Despite the years that had gone by, the bloodstain was as dark as it had been the day it had first been soaked.

  He sighed into the afternoon air. It smelled like rain.

  Rain was good.

  It had a way of making everyone forget.

  And what the rain wouldn’t do, he would.

  Chapter Seven

  The sky was dark.

  It matched everyone’s moods.

  Willa absently rubbed at her neck. She picked through the wreckage in her apartment, trying to assess the damage. She’d heard a deputy who’d seemed friendly with Detective Gray, say what had happened looked like a smash-and-grab. One that she had interrupted, despite trying her best to hide.

  The detective didn’t seem as convinced. Then again, Willa didn’t know him well enough to understand all of his expressions. Had she been a betting woman, though, she didn’t think he believed the man in the ski mask had had such a simple task in mind.

  Or maybe Willa was projecting.

  The most expensive items she owned were more or less intact. The man hadn’t brought a bag or anything else to carry his stolen loot with. Instead, he’d turned her home over without so much as lifting her computer, her TV, or even her jewelry, which had been out in the open on the top of her chest of drawers.

  Not to mention he had broken in during the daylight hours, while her car was parked in the driveway, and he’d brought a gun.

  If that was a simple smash-and-grab, she’d hate to see what a more complex operation looked like.

  Willa walked back to her bedroom again. She knew that Martha would be there soon and if she saw the mess and the mark around Willa’s neck, she would lose it. So while the detective finished up with another Dawn County Sheriff’s Department colleague, she started to straighten the room as best she could.

  She didn’t make it far. After coming across a jewelry dish that her mother had made her a few birthdays ago, broken in pieces on the floor, Willa sat on her bed and tried not to cry again.

  If she had any more tears left, that is.

  After kissing the detective, it seemed every tear she had in her had poured out onto the man.

  If she cried now, it would just be her going through the movements without the mess.

  A little knock pulled her attention from the broken dish to the bedroom’s doorway. She felt a flush come over her as she locked eyes with the man who had saved her.

  “Detective,” she greeted.

  He put his hand up to stop her.

  “Please, call me Kenneth, Miss Tate.”

  Willa smiled at that. “Please, call me Willa, Kenneth.”

  He returned the small dose of humor with a nod. “Will do.” His eyes went from her to the room around them, scanning the mess. He did that a lot. Looked around, like he was building a catalog in his mind. He was probably good at the details, which only made him that much better at his job.

  He also had proved to be quick on his feet.

  “You got here really fast,” Willa noted. “After we talked on the phone, I was sure it would take you longer to get here. I also thought you’d wait for backup.”

  Kenneth was modest about it. He shrugged. “I was actually already looking for you when you answered my last call. It was lucky that I wasn’t that far away.”

  Heat, pleasant and at the same time uncomfortable, rose into her cheeks. She smiled.

  “It’s a good thing you wanted to meet today.” Willa felt her smile flip. She gave the man a questioning look. “I haven’t had the chance to ask, but why did you want to meet?”

  Kenneth didn’t seem excited about his answer. Still, he gave it.

  “I wanted to ask you some more questions about Josiah Linderman. And I wanted to take another look at the box—”

  Willa jumped up and winced at the pain in her leg.

  Her focus, however, pinpointed on the one thing she should have already thought about.

  In that moment, she felt like a fool.

  “The box! Of course, I’d forgotten about the dang box!”

  She rushed back into the living room, purpose driving her heels into the floor. Everyone from the sheriff’s department was gone, but still she lowered her voice when she got to the window seat.

  “I haven’t told my sister, or anyone, about me looking into Josiah Linderman or this box,” she explained. “Martha is really nosy sometimes, not that that’s always a bad thing, but sometimes that nosiness gets her to snooping into my stuff.”

  Willa lowered herself to her knees and bent over the side of the open window seat. Her hair swung down in her face but she didn’t need to see to know exactly where the box was. She reached out to the farthest left corner that she could access and felt the worn wood beneath her hand.

  When she pulled it out, she couldn’t help but feel a little guilty about having a hiding place specifically from her sister.

  “Since I found this, I’ve been putting it in here and covering it with blankets.” She motioned to the quilt she’d hurriedly thrown out as she’d gotten inside the window seat to hide from the intruder. “Martha may like to snoop, but if it’s too much trouble, she doesn’t bother herself with it. So, at least as far as I know, she never found the box and no one else knows it exists.”

  Kenneth gave her a look she couldn’t quite decipher. She led him to the counter, where she put the box on its top.

  “If you’re wondering about my thought process on why I hid this and didn’t tell anyone about it, let me remind you that Kelby Creek doesn’t have the greatest track record when it comes to mysteries. I mean during the last two years there have been some really wild ones that have overtaken the town.” Willa tapped the top of the box. “I was hoping I could solve one by myself without getting caught in something slightly terrifying. In my mind that could happen if I was the only one who knew about it.”

  “To be honest, that is a very fair point when it comes to Kelby Creek,” Kenneth conceded.

  He didn’t open the box right away.

  Willa watched as his expression changed again to an emotion she couldn’t read. She was about to ask him point-blank what he was thinking, but he pulled the lid open before she could.

  Willa’s gaze stayed on his expression before falling to his lips and staying there for half a second too long. She hadn’t addressed the fact that she had kissed him and he hadn’t addressed the fact that he’d held her for a long while before his colleagues had showed up. Maybe because they both knew it was an overflow of emotions brought on by a traumatic event, but Willa found that a great big part of her wanted to feel the man against her again. To feel his warmth and steadiness. To feel his heart beating at a steady rhythm against hers, reminding her at every beat that he was there.

  But wh
ile she was daydreaming about his touch and how it had made her feel safe, Kenneth became rigid with tension.

  Willa looked down at the box.

  She gasped.

  “Judging by your reaction, I’m assuming you’re not the one who took the piece of fabric out, are you?” Kenneth’s voice wasn’t cold but it was clipped. Professional. He was back to being Detective Gray.

  “No. I didn’t,” she answered. Willa’s palms became sweaty. She felt sick. “No one knows about the box, just like I already said. And I was already hiding with it when that man first broke in. He had no time to take that cloth. How was it gone if he didn’t take it and no one else knew about it?”

  Kenneth shook his head.

  “If this box contained evidence of an unsolved murder, then outside of you and me there is at least one other person who knows what was and is supposed to be in here.” He gave her a long look. How she wished she could be in his arms instead of on the receiving end of words that chilled her to the bone. “The killer.”

  * * *

  “HIS NAME IS Leonard Bartow and he’s been a nuisance to this department since before The Flood.”

  Deputy Carlos Park had made a face when he’d said the man’s name and that off-key expression only soured further as he’d said “The Flood.”

  Kenneth had no doubt he didn’t look happy, either, at the mention of the latter, to be fair.

  The Flood was a town-wide nickname for the disaster that had created a rift between the locals and those in positions of authority years before. Friends, families and neighbors had all gone from trusting those with a badge or influence to automatically assuming they were part of the conspiracy surrounding the abduction of Annie McHale, the daughter of one of the most beloved families in Kelby Creek. Or that those same people were crooked in some other way.

  It was the main reason why so many closed cases needed reevaluating and why any cold case related to those who had been caught in the conspiracy were being reopened and double-checked.