by Delores Fossen, Rachel Lee, Carol Ericson, Tyler Anne Snell, Rita Herron
“And that’s why I’m doing this myself. Oh, but I did get Scotty to set up Zeller,” Kingston added. “You know, by planting that tracking device on his computer. All smoke, I assure you, since Scotty had already hacked in and gotten the address.”
Caroline figured Scotty had done all of that for money. Lots of it, which Kingston could have gotten his hands on. Scotty probably hadn’t figured the hacking would get him killed.
“And Lily?” Jack pressed. Like her, he must have decided to get all they could from Kingston.
“Nothing to do with me, but I had Scotty do some hacking in her files, too, and she was a naughty girl. Very involved in the sex trafficking. Tell you what. You can have those files for free. Just get them from my computer in my home office. I’ve got her bank records and some personal emails. There should be enough there for you to convict her of multiple crimes.”
“Enough to convict her of murder?” Jack snapped.
“No. Not that.” He stopped. “Oh, I see. You think Lily might have murdered that woman, Nicola, and your dad. Nope. Lily scared some woman into disappearing, but she didn’t kill anyone.”
“Skylar’s alive?” Caroline managed to say.
“Alive and in hiding. If Lily had gotten to her, I would have heard about it. And it was Eric who did Nicola. Don’t know the full story on that, but their paths crossed.”
So, Skylar hadn’t been murdered after all, and once Lily was behind bars, Skylar would likely surface. It didn’t surprise Caroline that Eric had killed Nicola, but there was a huge piece of this that didn’t fit.
“Eric didn’t kill Jack’s father,” she said. “I was with Eric when Buck Slater was gunned down.”
Caroline couldn’t see Kingston’s expression, but she could see Jack. His eyes went dark, and she could feel the dangerous edge whipping off him. And she knew why. Kingston was almost certainly smiling.
Because he’d been the one to kill Jack’s father.
“Eric needed a distraction,” Kingston said. “He wanted gunfire to draw the attention off him so he could get away.”
Her knees nearly buckled. The weight was so heavy on her chest that it felt as if someone was crushing her heart in a tight fist. And despite all of that, Caroline knew what she was feeling was a drop in the bucket compared to Jack. He’d just listened to the man responsible for his father’s murder dismiss it as a mere distraction.
Caroline tried to give Jack a steadying look. A silent “calm down” because she didn’t want the rage overtaking him so that he charged at Kingston. They just needed more time. Time that maybe she could buy them.
“You can’t think you’ll get away with this,” she said to Kingston.
“Depends on what you mean by getting away with it.” She felt his shoulder move in what she thought might be a shrug. The arrogant SOB. “With my lawyers, I doubt very seriously that I’ll be declared competent or sane enough to stand trial. And my psychiatric records will prove it.”
Records that Kingston had likely doctored. Or else Scotty had done that for him. But Jack and she could try to use his confession to prove otherwise. And even if they couldn’t, he would still spend the rest of his life locked up in a mental institution. Not exactly justice, but it would have to do.
Caroline finally saw what she’d been looking for. Gunnar. He crept in behind one of the shrubs near Jack. Kingston must have seen him, too, but he didn’t react. Probably because Gunnar didn’t have any better angle of a shot than Jack did.
“Once Caroline’s dead, there’ll be no more loose ends,” Kingston announced, and the muscles in his arm and hand tightened. He was going to do it.
Kingston was going to kill her.
Caroline was going to make sure that didn’t happen. Gathering her breath, she directed her anger and fear to her voice and let out a vicious shout as she rammed her elbow into Kingston. She dropped her weight, getting her neck away from that knife. She felt it cut her again, on the side of her head, but she ignored that and scrambled away from Kingston.
Jack moved in. As fast and as mean as a snake.
Caroline had managed to get only a few feet away before Jack was on the porch. He kicked away the knife.
And tossed his gun aside.
When Kingston lunged at him, Jack went after the man with his fists, and Jack was a lot better at it than Kingston. He rammed his fist into Kingston’s face, causing the man’s head to flop back. Jack hit him again. And again. His fists pounding Kingston even as the man dropped to his knees on the porch. Jack might have kept it up, but Caroline touched his shoulder.
“Let Gunnar arrest him,” she said, trying to keep her voice as calm as possible.
Caroline wasn’t sure that would be enough to get Jack to stop.
But it was.
Jack froze, his fist still poised midair and aimed at Kingston’s face. Kingston was crying now, his breath coming out in wet, loud sobs. Jack stared at the man several long moments before he stepped back. Caroline was right there to pull Jack into her arms.
Gunnar rushed forward. The deputy hurried onto the porch and cuffed Kingston, hauling the man to his feet. “Jack, I’ll take care of this,” Gunnar said, sympathy all over his face. “And I’ll get the ambulance out here for Caroline and Clarie.”
“I’m fine,” Caroline assured him, and she thought that might be true. Kingston had cut her, but it wasn’t serious. Even if it had been, she probably wouldn’t have admitted it. Not now. For now, she needed to hold Jack and get him through this.
“Kingston killed him,” Jack muttered. “He killed him. And he tried to do the same to you.”
“He failed,” she reminded him, and she eased back so he could see her face. Her eyes. She wanted him to know that she was okay.
Jack shook his head like a man coming out of a trance, and his attention landed on her arm, then the side of her head. Where he no doubt saw blood.
“You need the EMTs,” he insisted.
He snatched up his gun, holstering it, before he jumped down off the porch, pulling her down and into his arms. But he didn’t stand her on the ground. Jack started carrying her toward the front of the inn.
“I can walk,” she said.
However, she didn’t fight him on this. It was something Jack needed, and she soon realized she needed it, too. She dropped her head onto his shoulder and let him soothe her in a way that only Jack could. Yes, there were still plenty of things unresolved, but she took these moments of comfort from him.
When they reached the front of the inn, she was thankful to see Clarie up and moving around. Manuel had brought in the other cruiser, and that was where Gunnar headed with Kingston. Clarie was rubbing her head and pacing in front of the other cruiser while she talked to someone on the phone.
“Don’t worry, I’ll let the EMTs check me out,” Clarie immediately told Jack. “I just wanted to fill in Kellan. He’ll meet us at the sheriff’s office.”
Caroline was exhausted, but she knew the night wasn’t over, and she wanted to be there when Kellan booked Kingston. Actually, she wanted to be there for Jack and his brothers.
In the distance, Caroline heard the wail of sirens from the ambulance. But she also heard something else.
A shout.
“You bastard,” someone yelled.
Jack immediately stood Caroline on the ground so he could pivot and draw his gun. But he was too late. The shot blasted through the air.
It took a moment for Caroline to fight through the shock and see what had happened. And then she spotted Grace. The woman was on the side of the front porch, a gun gripped in her hand.
A gun she’d just used to fire the shot.
At Kingston.
Grace hadn’t missed, either. The shot had gone straight into Kingston’s chest.
“You bastard,” Grace repeated, the tears streaming down her face. She dropped her
gun, and it clattered onto the porch. “That was for Scotty,” she said before she lifted her hands in surrender.
Chapter Seventeen
Jack wasn’t sure if it was a good sign that he did not feel anything but relief that Kingston was dead. As a lawman, he knew it would be a more fitting punishment for a killer to live out his life in a cage. But because there’d been the possibility of a mental facility rather than a prison, Jack was having a hard time seeing the man’s death as a bad thing.
What was bad was that Grace would have to pay for what she had done. She might be spending the rest of her life in prison, and while that did bother him, Jack knew there’d been nothing he could have done to stop it. He hadn’t seen Grace in time because he’d been so focused on getting help for Caroline and Clarie. Still, he wished he could have done something.
“Mentally beating yourself up?” Caroline asked.
Jack stopped his pacing so he could look at her. She was still on the treatment table in the ER while a nurse finished up the three stitches she’d needed for her head. Four more stitches had already been put on her arm. Jack knew the nurse, Mary Ann Colley, and knew she was good at her job. She’d even stitched him up a few times.
Caroline’s injuries were minor, he reminded himself, but Jack knew there was nothing minor when it came to Caroline. For the rest of his life, he’d see Kingston cutting her, and that was yet another reason he wasn’t sorry the man was dead.
He nodded in response to her question, causing her to frown. Probably because she didn’t believe beating himself up was necessary. But it was. He should have done a better job protecting her.
They’d gotten lucky. Not just with Caroline’s injuries but with Clarie’s, too. The deputy had also needed stitches and had a concussion, but she was going to make a full recovery and would only end up missing a couple days of work.
It could’ve been a lot worse. And not just with the injuries. Grace could have hit someone else when she’d been aiming at Kingston. Gunnar had been right there, but thankfully Grace’s shot had hit only her intended target.
“Are you okay?” Caroline asked. She reached out, caught his hand and gave it a squeeze.
He knew what she was asking. This wasn’t about the injuries now, or the aftermath of dealing with the attack. She wanted to know if Kingston’s confession was eating a hole in him. In some ways, it was. The grief was right there at the surface. As fresh as it had been a year ago. But there was another side to this particular coin.
“I needed to know the truth,” he settled for saying. “It’s the start to dealing with this.”
Caroline nodded, and he hated when he saw the tears she was blinking back. She quickly swiped one of them away. “Eric claimed a lot of lives,” she whispered. “Kingston’s included.”
Jack huffed. “Now who’s doing some mental beating up?” He got right in her face despite the fact that the nurse was there next to him. “I won’t let you blame yourself for anything Eric did. And as for Kingston, he had a choice. He didn’t have to do anything for Eric. Kingston did it because he wanted to do it. Hell, he took pleasure in it.”
No way could she argue with that. Caroline had been there, with Kingston’s knife to her throat, when the man had gloated and bragged. He likely would have turned into a killer even without Eric.
“All done,” the nurse finally said. She stepped back from Caroline and took her hand to help her off the table. The woman handed Jack a piece of paper. “That’s a script for some pain meds in case she needs it. The pharmacy’s closed for the night, but if you give them a call, they’ll open for you.” She patted his arm. “Take good care of her, Jack. Give her lots of TLC.”
Mary Ann added a wink, which meant she probably knew that Caroline and he had started up their relationship again. Heck, everybody in town probably knew. Jack frowned at that, not because of folks knowing, but because he wasn’t sure exactly what his relationship was with Caroline.
He loved her, yes, and heck, they’d had sex twice since she’d gotten her memory back, but there hadn’t been time to talk of the future and such. No time to do anything except try to hunt down a killer. With that done, Jack figured it was time for Caroline and him to have a long talk.
A talk that would apparently have to wait.
Jack realized that when he led Caroline out of the treatment room and spotted his brothers. All three of them. And they weren’t alone. They had their fiancées, significant others and kids with them, too. On the surface, it looked to be an impromptu family reunion, but they were all there to try to deal with the grief of losing a father.
His brother Owen stood from one of the seats where he’d been sitting with his fiancée, Laney. She was holding Owen’s toddler daughter, Addie, who was sacked out and totally unaware of the storm they’d all just weathered.
Eli stood with his girlfriend, Ashlyn. He was holding Ashlyn’s adopted daughter, Cora. Cora was only a few months old and seemed entertained by all the people milling around.
Kellan was there with Gemma, and it was Gemma who came forward first and pulled Caroline into a gentle hug. She, too, was blinking back tears, and Jack figured Gemma was remembering her own nightmarish past with Eric, when he’d tried to kill her.
“I’m all right,” Caroline assured her. Jack didn’t know how she managed it, but Caroline even added a smile. One that looked surprisingly genuine.
“Caroline stood up to Kingston,” Jack told Gemma. It wasn’t pride in his voice. Okay, maybe it was a little of that, but it was mostly relief. It would likely make Caroline feel stronger now that she had done that. She hadn’t been a victim tonight.
“I heard.” Gemma glanced down at his raw knuckles. “And I heard you got in some punches. Good,” she added before Jack could say anything. “I wish we could have all punched him a time or two.”
So did Jack, because it had indeed helped to take out some of his grief and pain on his father’s killer.
When Gemma stepped to the side, the others swarmed in. There were more hugs, more whispered words of comfort. His brothers and he all shared that silent conversation. A pact and a promise that they would get past this and get on with their lives.
Exactly what their father would have wanted them to do.
“Gunnar took Clarie home about ten minutes ago,” Kellan explained. “She’s fine, but I wanted her to get some rest.”
That sounded like a darn good idea to Jack. He wanted the same for Caroline. “I’ll need a vehicle.” That was because Caroline and he had come to the hospital in an ambulance.
Kellan nodded. “Figured as much. You’ll be taking Caroline to your house?” But Kellan waved that off. “Of course, you will be,” his brother added at the same moment Caroline said, “Yes.”
Jack looked at her to see if she had any doubts about that. Apparently, she didn’t, since she brushed a kiss on his mouth. “Yes,” she repeated.
Fighting a smile, Kellan took a key from his pocket. “Take my truck. Gemma and I can get home in one of the cruisers.”
Jack thanked him and took the key. On the way to his place, he’d call the pharmacy and get those meds for Caroline. She didn’t seem to be hurting, but that might not last. He fully intended to give her the meds and that TLC.
“The San Antonio cops have picked up Lily,” Kellan continued a moment later. “The CSIs are going through Kingston’s office. They’ve already found some things. Doctored files and such. She’ll be charged with multiple felonies.”
Jack knew he should probably care a whole lot more about that, and later he would. He wanted the woman punished for anything wrong she’d done. But for now, he had enough issues to deal with. And speaking of dealing, one of his current issues came through the door and into the hospital waiting room.
Zeller.
Hell. Jack hoped this didn’t turn into a big blowup. Caroline didn’t need that, and he wanted to get her out of
there so she could rest. Apparently, his family had the same idea, because they, too, started to file out. All except Kellan. His brother stayed back, maybe because he thought there’d be some trouble between Zeller and him. If it was left up to Jack, there wouldn’t be.
Jack went to Zeller and met him eye to eye. “I’m sorry,” Jack told him.
Zeller opened his mouth. Clearly, the man had geared up for some kind of argument, but then he groaned softly and shook his head. “Everything was pointing to me. I looked guilty.”
“Yeah, because Kingston paid Scotty to set you up.” Jack didn’t point out that if Kingston hadn’t confessed, there might still be a dirty smear on Zeller’s reputation. Or at least the questions and gossip.
“How’s Grace?” Zeller asked.
Before Jack could answer, Caroline came to his side and slid her arm around his waist. Showing her support, no doubt. Jack appreciated it. Heck, he needed it, but he didn’t like that Caroline was going to have to listen to what would likely turn into a chat about the wrap-up of this investigation.
“Grace is in custody,” Jack told him. “I’m recommending a psych eval. Her mental state definitely played into what she did tonight.”
Ironic, since Kingston had been planning on using that card for his own defense. In Grace’s case, though, it might be true. Still, even if she went to prison for the rest of her life, it had been her choice to pull the trigger. That was something Jack needed to remember.
Zeller nodded. “Good, but don’t hold it against me if I say I’m glad that Kingston is dead. He tried to set me up. And he nearly succeeded.”
Yeah, he had, and Jack figured there were a lot of people who wouldn’t be mourning Kingston’s death.
When Zeller stepped away to talk to Kellan, Jack knew that was his cue to get Caroline out of there. Unfortunately, the rain hadn’t stopped. It was no longer coming down in buckets, but it was still drizzling.
“Wait here,” he told her. “I’ll bring Kellan’s truck up to the door.”