Faceless

by Alexandra Ivy

  She moved closer, standing next to the bed.

  What was going to happen when he left the hospital? She couldn’t imagine he would be strong enough to return to the farm. The sensible thing would be for him to go to one of the senior housing apartments in town. Or even to come and stay with her.

  But when had Sander Moore ever been sensible?

  A wry smile twisted her lips. Her grandpa wasn’t the easiest man—in fact he was downright cantankerous—but she loved him.

  From the time she was old enough to walk, she’d trailed behind him, discovering the beauty of the farm. She’d chased around the chickens and splashed in mud puddles. As she grew older she helped repair fences and put up hay in the summer. There was nothing better than spending her days in the fresh air.

  Her grandpa was always happy to have her company, never seeming to get tired of a young girl with her incessant questions. And it was his suggestion that she build a greenhouse where she could start a small garden. By the time she was fifteen she’d been selling her own fruits and veggies to the locals for some extra money.

  It was her grandma in Pike who’d given her a love for cooking, but this man had been the driving force in her appreciation for clean, fresh-grown ingredients. She wasn’t sure she’d truly realized what he’d taught her during those hot summer days.

  Reaching out, she lightly touched his hand that was gnarled by age. The hands of a man who’d worked hard his entire life.

  Without warning, the older man released a soft moan, turning his head from side to side. “Edgar . . .”

  Wynter leaned forward. “No, it’s Wynter.”

  “Edgar,” the man repeated, his voice hoarse. “Stupid idiot. Weak. Like his mother. No spine in his back.”

  Wynter frowned. Was the older man having a bad dream? “Grandpa, it’s Wynter.”

  Sander’s wrinkled face softened, a small smile curving his lips. “Ah, sweet Wynter. My pride and joy. You have the Moore blood running through your veins. Strong. Brave. Too brave sometimes.”

  “Shh.” She patted his hand. “Just relax.”

  He stilled, almost as if he was slipping back into sleep, and Wynter started to step back.

  “Wynter.” Without warning, his eyes opened and he tried to lift his hand.

  “I’m here.” She leaned forward so he could see her without moving.

  He released a hissing breath, as if the air was being squeezed from his lungs. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t say that,” she breathed, guilt blasting through her. She would never, ever forgive herself for putting this man in danger. “I’m the one who’s sorry. If it wasn’t for me, you would never have been hurt.”

  “No, no.” He clutched at her hand, the tubes and wires rattling. “Never you. You’re the only good thing left in my miserable life.”

  “Please, listen to me,” she urged. “You mustn’t get upset.”

  “I want . . .” His words trailed away and his eyes fluttered closed.

  “Just rest,” she whispered.

  Again she started to pull away, only to be halted when her grandpa’s eyes snapped open. “I want the truth.”

  Wynter glanced toward the door. Should she get a nurse? The last thing she wanted was for her grandpa to hurt himself. But she was scared to struggle against his surprisingly tight grip.

  Maybe the best thing to do would be to humor him until he dropped back to sleep. “You want the truth about what?”

  “Laurel.”

  Wynter was caught off guard. Why would her mom be the first thing on his mind when he woke? They obviously hadn’t been close when she was alive. Then again, maybe he’d realized when he’d been shot that it had something to do with the death of his daughter-in-law.

  “I don’t know.” Wynter couldn’t disguise the frustration in her voice. “And every time I try to find out it only makes everything worse.”

  Sander turned his head, gazing sightlessly at the ceiling. His throat contracted, as if he was having difficulty swallowing.

  “They should never have married,” he muttered. “I warned Edgar, but she bewitched him.”

  Wynter felt a familiar pang of annoyance. Her mom wasn’t a saint, but then again, neither was her dad.

  “They both made mistakes,” she insisted.

  “Yes,” Sander rasped. “Young. Selfish. Extravagant. Watching them together was like watching a raft hurtling toward the edge of a waterfall. It was obvious they were destined for disaster.”

  Wynter frowned. This man was plainspoken. Usually too plainspoken. It wasn’t like him to use such flamboyant language. Was it his personal disappointment in his son’s choice of a bride that caused such an extreme reaction? Or had her parents truly been so out of control?

  “Many first marriages fail,” she pointed out in reasonable tones. “People divorce and move on.”

  Sander made a sound of disgust. “Not those two.”

  “Why not?”

  “Obsession.”

  Wynter shivered. She told herself it was the chill in the air. The hospital was rocking the AC as if it was ninety degrees outside, not barely above forty. But that wasn’t it.

  Obsession.

  The word struck a nerve. Like a theme running through a horror flick.

  There was the love/hate marriage between her parents. Drake’s fixation on the woman who’d stolen his heart. Dr. Peyton’s lust for her talent. Even Tonya’s desperate dream to create her pottery studio.

  And a faceless monster lurking in the shadows, just waiting to pounce again.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore, Grandpa,” she tried to reassure him. “It’s in the past.”

  Sander grunted. “It was. It was buried. Forgotten.” He turned his head to glare at her. “Why did you dig it up again? Foolish girl.”

  She flinched at his harsh tone. She’d heard him use it often enough with other people, but never when he was speaking to her.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said in soothing tones. “Just rest.”

  He squirmed beneath the thin blankets that were tightly tucked around him, as if he was feeling trapped. “I can’t.”

  “Are you in pain? Do you need a nurse?”

  “No.” His eyes locked with her worried gaze. “I need . . .” He paused, his breath rasping loudly in the silence of the room. “Forgiveness.”

  Chapter 28

  Wynter made soft, soothing noises. She didn’t know what was causing the older man’s agitation. Was it a reaction to coming out of the coma? Had the drugs given him nightmares?

  “I forgive you,” she assured him.

  Sander gazed at her with a pleading expression. “Do you?”

  “All that matters is getting you better.”

  His grip on her hand tightened until tiny shafts of pain darted up her arm. He was as strong as ever. A good thing, she told herself as she struggled not to yank her fingers out of his grinding grip.

  “You understand that I had no choice,” he implored.

  “Of course.”

  “She was going to ruin us.”

  Wynter stilled, concern for her grandpa driven from her mind as a strange sensation crawled through her. Goose bumps prickled over her skin that had nothing to do with the chill in the air. “She?”

  “Your mother.”

  She should walk away. Her grandpa was groggy from the drugs and in no condition to make any sense. But she couldn’t move. As if something had frozen her in place.

  “How was she going to ruin you?” The question was out of her mouth before she could stop it.

  His jaws bulged, his eyes smoldering with hatred. “She turned your father into a joke,” he snarled. “Everyone in Larkin knew she was sleeping with anything that moved.”

  “Grandpa—”

  “It wasn’t bad enough that he acted like a sissy. Always prancing around with his nose stuck in a book. Now he was a man who didn’t have the balls to satisfy his wife.” He overrode her efforts to halt his grievances. “Pathetic.”
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  Wynter pressed her lips together. Her grandpa might be injured, and maybe even delusional, but she felt compelled to defend her parents.

  “Why are you so hard on him?”

  “Because he’s the last of the Moores,” Sander snapped. “We come from a long line of courageous pioneers. We work with our hands and tend to the land. We don’t sit on our ass in some fancy office.”

  Wynter swallowed a sigh. She’d heard this story a thousand times. Of how her ancestors had braved the long voyage from Ireland to settle in New York. And how they built wagons with their own hands and pawned the family silver to buy two horses to travel west. Sometimes the story included battles with Indians, other times they fought off bandits, but in the end they persevered and settled a homestead that had been in the Moore family ever since.

  “It’s not the eighteen hundreds,” she reminded him in soft tones.

  His brows snapped together. “It’s a Moore tradition.”

  “Okay, okay. I get it,” she murmured, even though she didn’t. Every family that wasn’t indigenous had come from somewhere to settle. It didn’t make them special.

  As if sensing Wynter’s lack of pioneering pride, Sander clicked his tongue. “That wasn’t all.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “No. It was the money.” The older man’s tone was peevish. “The school loans, the mortgage, the endless credit cards. Edgar was at my house every week with his hand out.”

  It took Wynter a second to realize they’d moved on from Sander’s annoyance at his son’s lack of manly attributes and her mom’s infidelity.

  “Why didn’t you just say no?”

  “Laurel.”

  Wynter waited as Sander stared at her with a mute plea in his eyes. At last she realized he was waiting for her blessing to continue. She hesitated. A whisper of warning urged her to walk away. She could get a nurse who would give the older man something that would calm him while she went to the waiting room for a cup of coffee. She was in desperate need of caffeine.

  But instead, she spoke the fateful words. “What about her?”

  “She discovered my one weakness.”

  Sander Moore was confessing to a weakness? She never thought she’d hear that come out of his mouth. “What weakness?”

  “You,” he whispered. “I would do anything for you.”

  An aching emotion tugged at her heart. This man had been the one constant in her life. A rock she could cling to no matter how stormy the seas might get.

  “I know that, Grandpa.”

  “She threatened to take you away.”

  Wynter jerked. That was the last thing she expected. “Mom?”

  “Yes, your mom,” he snarled.

  Wynter was confused. There was no way Laurel Moore would ever take her away. Not when it would make her a single mother.

  “I’m sure you must have misunderstood.”

  “No, there was no misunderstanding,” he growled. “She walked into my home, waving around her stack of bills, and said if I didn’t give her money, she would leave Larkin and I would never see you again.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I couldn’t bear it.” The old man blinked back tears. “I couldn’t.”

  “Please,” she whispered. “Don’t say anymore.”

  “I had to stop her.” Sander used his grip on her hand to tug her closer, nearly bending her over the steel bed rail. “You understand, don’t you? I couldn’t let her steal you from me. Not after she’d destroyed everything else.”

  “Dad would never have let her leave,” she assured him, wincing at the press of hard steel against her waist.

  “Bah. That moron wouldn’t have the spine to stop her.”

  “Of course he would. You said yourself they were obsessed with one another—”

  “I had to do something,” he interrupted. “I had to protect you from that evil bitch. No court in the land would convict me for doing that.”

  Convict him? That was an odd phrase. Especially for the older man.

  “What did you do?”

  “What I always do. Solved the problem.”

  The chill in the room seeped into Wynter’s skin. Remaining posed over the bed, she took in Sander’s defensive expression and tear-filled eyes.

  This wasn’t a man confessing that he’d paid off Laurel so she wouldn’t move away with his granddaughter. He’d already admitted he’d given them money.

  A sense of foreboding curled through the pit of her stomach. “How? How did you solve it?”

  “I couldn’t go myself.” Her grandpa glanced away, as if he couldn’t bear to look her in the eye. “So I told him I would give him the money he needed.”

  Wynter shook her head. Was the older man confused? Had he forgotten what they were discussing?

  “We were talking about Mom and her threatening to take me away,” she reminded him.

  “I know what we’re talking about,” Sander bit out.

  “I don’t understand. You said you gave him the money he needed,” she repeated his words. “Needed for what?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? I paid him to make sure she never came back from Pike.”

  Wynter slowly straightened, a strangled laugh wrenched from her throat. Just for a crazy second she’d almost thought her grandpa was confessing that he’d paid someone to kill her mom.

  But that couldn’t be right. Could it?

  “No,” she breathed.

  Sander muttered a curse. “I couldn’t believe the idiot would do it in front of you. What sort of monster would kill a mother in front of her child?”

  In front of her child . . .

  Wynter stepped away from the bed, staring at Sander in numb disbelief. Eventually she would feel the sharp pain of betrayal. For now, she was too shocked to absorb what he was telling her.

  “You paid someone to shoot my mom?” She had to hear the words from his lips.

  “I never wanted things to go that far.” His tone was pleading. “But she kept pushing and pushing. She demanded more money every week. She even suggested that I sell the farm to pay off her debts.” He released a sharp, humorless laugh. “That land is my legacy. It runs in my veins and she . . .” His words trailed away as a wave of weariness appeared to wash over him. “I knew the blackmail would never end, so I did the only thing I could to protect you and your inheritance.”

  Wynter struggled to swallow. There was a lump stuck in her throat. “Who?” she finally managed to rasp. “Who shot my mother?”

  A low, familiar voice whispered from the door behind Wynter.

  “I did.”

  Chapter 29

  Noah drove back to Larkin, intending to stop by the lumberyard to pick up a sheet of plywood and order the new window. He wanted to finish the repairs ASAP and head back to the hospital. He didn’t worry Wynter was in danger, but he knew she was upset.

  Hell, he was upset.

  Each day he woke up thinking things couldn’t get worse, and each day he was proven wrong. More lies were uncovered, secrets revealed, and dead bodies were turning up at an alarming rate. It was enough to make him consider packing a bag and moving Wynter to Miami. The only way she would be truly safe was to put this town and her family far behind her.

  He was driving past the police station when he caught sight of Chelle standing in the parking lot. Abruptly he turned the steering wheel to pull in beside her. It was a perfect opportunity to report Linda Baker’s vandalism, as well as to reveal the fact that Edgar Moore had potentially been in Pike the night his wife was murdered. He wasn’t trying to point the finger at Wynter’s father, but the cops needed every scrap of information if they were going to stop the madness that had infected Larkin.

  Stepping out of his Jeep, he moved to stand next to Chelle. Before he could speak, she nodded toward the wrecker that was unloading an old pickup with a smashed front end, dripping water.

  “I was going to say we have to stop meeting like this, but I’m not in the mood for jokes,” she murmured.

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nbsp; Noah arched his brows as a half-dozen men in dark suits moved to stand around the pickup. His reason for pulling into the lot was forgotten as he stared at the strangers.

  “Who’re the men in black?” he asked.

  “The DCI.”

  “Ah. The cavalry rides into town.”

  “They arrived an hour ago.”

  There was a sour edge in her voice. Noah sent her a knowing glance. “You don’t like them.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Chelle grimaced. “Territorial aggression. I don’t like handing over the case to a bunch of strangers. The chief, however, insists we’re out of our league.” She met his gaze with a wry smile. “You were the one who warned me before joining the force that I don’t play well with others.”

  He laid his hand on her shoulder, sensing her frustration. “You’re a good cop, Chelle. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.”

  She visibly forced her stiff muscles to relax. “Good or not, I haven’t had much success in finding out who is wreaking havoc in my town. Maybe the guys from Des Moines will have more luck.”

  Noah nodded, keeping his thoughts to himself. His friend would always struggle to accept her role as a junior officer. She wasn’t arrogant, but she had a natural confidence that made it hard for her to take orders from anyone. And it didn’t help that her chief had made it clear he didn’t think women should wear a uniform.

  “What’s their interest in a wrecked car?” he instead asked.

  “Their interest is in the person driving it.”

  Noah frowned. He didn’t recognize the truck. “Who was it?”

  “Jay Wheeler.”

  “You found him?” Noah felt a flare of hope. Had the man wrecked his truck trying to flee town? It would be their first stroke of luck since Wynter had opened that envelope in Pike.

  “Yeah. He’s at the morgue.”

  Noah grunted at Chelle’s blunt retort. Well, hell. Of course he was at the morgue. Only a fool would expect anything else.

  “What happened?”

  “It looks as if he drove off the bridge and ended up in the river.”

  “Was he drunk or just trying to leave town in a hurry?”

  Chelle glanced toward the truck, her expression hard with frustration. “The coroner is doing the autopsy now, but the men in black seem convinced he was on the run.”