by Sandra Brown
“I met with the electrician and walked him through the projects I needed him to do. By the time we finished, it was getting dark and I had to return to town. I decided Millicent could spend a day or two in your shed. I didn’t get back up here before the storm moved in.”
Suddenly, they heard several more bursts of gunfire. No closer than before.
“Now I wonder what that signifies?” William asked rhetorically.
Lilly wondered, too. She groped her mind for another question that would keep William talking. Before she could form one, he asked one of his own. “Is it true that you and Tierney met months ago?”
“Last June.”
“Dutch was right to be jealous, wasn’t he? I can see it in your face every time I mention Tierney’s name. You go all glassy-eyed and wistful.” He glanced toward the rumpled blankets on the mattress in front of the fireplace. When his gaze came back to her, he frowned with contempt. “Beautiful people. You always find each other, don’t you? Never looking twice at the rest of us.”
“I’ve never been unkind to you.”
“But if you’d been stranded in this cabin with me, that bedding wouldn’t stink of copulation.”
“William—”
“Shut up! I’m talking.”
She shut up and let him talk.
“It’s ironic, and sort of romantically poetic, the way it’s going to end, with both of you dead and everybody thinking that he killed you, when actually he was your lover. See the twist? Isn’t that rich? But one thing puzzles me. Why did he leave you here handcuffed?”
To keep me from trying to fight him, or trying to run from him when I saw Millicent’s body, she thought. Tierney hadn’t wanted her to do something that would precipitate a fatal asthma attack. He’d made a desperate and time-effective move to guarantee she didn’t. She understood that now. She understood a lot. She was in love with Tierney and had been since the day they met. Furthermore, she realized that he loved her.
Softly, very close to tears, she said, “He was trying to save my life.”
“Unfortunately for you, he didn’t try hard enough.”
Moving so quickly she couldn’t react, he slipped the blue ribbon around her neck and pulled it taut.
“No! Please!”
He smiled at her cruelly and pulled the ribbon even tighter. “I’m certain you realize the futility of begging. I’ll tell you what I told all of them. You’re about to die.”
She tried to kick him, but he sat on her thighs, anchoring them to the floor while he increased the pressure of the ribbon. “It won’t take long. Your asthma will speed it along. But if you could please accommodate me by dying quickly, because I hear the helicopter returning.”
Indeed Lilly heard its approach, but it could still have been minutes away. The ribbon was biting painfully into the skin of her neck. Her fingers flexed and clenched as she struggled for breath. Her body arched as her lungs sought air.
Was this how she was doomed to die after all? Unable to breathe?
With no warning, no sound, nothing, Tierney bounded through the bedroom door. Before William Ritt had time to register his unexpected appearance, Tierney kicked him in the head.
CHAPTER
33
THE KICK LIFTED WILLIAM OFF THE FLOOR like a character in an animated cartoon. He landed three feet from Lilly, rolled onto his back, and tried to sit up. The side of his head just above his ear was bleeding. He slapped his hand to it and gaped at Tierney as though he had come back from the dead.
He did look like a survivor of the apocalypse. His right arm was hanging at an odd angle from his shoulder. His clothing on that side of his body was saturated with blood. His face was as gray as death except for a bleeding cut on his cheekbone. His eyes were sunken and darkly shadowed, and he never took them off William Ritt.
He must have found an unlocked window in the bedroom, knowing that it would be a surprise attack if he came in that way.
“Lilly?” His voice was gravelly.
“He’s Blue.”
“I figured.” Keeping his eyes trained on William, he bent down and placed his pistol in her cuffed right hand. “Got it?”
“Yes.”
“If he gets the best of me, kill him. Without a moment’s hesitation.” He pulled the ribbon from Lilly’s neck.
His gait was gawky and uneven, but he bore down on William, who had regained some of his wits and was trying to scramble away. Tierney reached down with only his left hand, grabbed a handful of William’s parka, and hauled him up, then let go just long enough to smash his fist, still holding the ribbon, into William’s face. The blow spun the pharmacist around. He stumbled and landed hard, face-first, against the wall, then practically bounced off it.
Tierney covered the back of the man’s head with his wide hand and slammed his face into the wall. Twice. He punched him once in the kidney, causing William to scream, then grabbed his shoulder and turned him around, stapling him to the wall with the fingers of his left hand around his neck. The ribbon was still entwined in Tierney’s fingers. It trailed down William’s chest.
His face was a bleeding pulp. His eyes were wild with fright. Tierney said, “I ought to wrap this ribbon around your own fucking throat and choke you very slowly.”
His voice was weak. Blood was puddling around his feet. He paused to take a breath, but his grip on William Ritt remained inescapable.
“God knows I want to kill you. I want to tear your heart out with my bare hands. But I won’t because I don’t want you to get off that lightly. You don’t deserve a quick death.
“No, I want you to live a long time. I want you to rot in a cell for decades. I want you to stay locked away in anonymity, getting raped every day by bull queers who don’t enjoy it until they see you bleed. That’s what they do to child killers in prison, you know. And Torrie was only fifteen. Fifteen!” His voice cracked. “And when you die, at what I hope is a ripe old age, you’ll go straight to hell and burn for eternity, you miserable piece of shit.”
Tierney was barely able to stand. He was swaying on his feet when he opened his hand to release William’s neck. The little man slid to the floor and slumped to one side.
Tierney stood over him for a moment longer, then turned and started walking back toward Lilly.
“Tierney!” she cried.
He spun around just as William uncapped a syringe, which he must have had secreted in a pocket of his parka. But it wasn’t intended for Tierney. He jabbed the needle into his own neck.
Tierney was on him in an instant. William was trying to depress the plunger and inject air into his vein; Tierney was fighting to keep him from doing so. With his left hand, he caught William’s wrist in what must have been a bone-snapping grip. The man cried out, not only in pain but in frustration and outrage, because somehow Tierney had managed to pin his other hand to the floor with his knee.
The cabin door burst open and crashed against the interior wall. “FBI! Don’t anybody move!” Two men dressed in full SWAT gear and black ski masks swept the room with their rifles, then trained them on Tierney and William.
“Drop the weapon!” ordered a stern-looking man who had entered behind the others. He was dressed in an ordinary overcoat, but Lilly was so impressed by his authoritative air, it took her a moment to realize that he was addressing her. She opened her hand and let go of Tierney’s pistol. It clattered onto the floor.
Another agent, who was younger and slimmer and wearing eyeglasses, had a pistol aimed at the back of Tierney’s head. “Release him, Mr. Tierney.”
“He’s got a syringe in his neck, trying to kill himself.”
The intimidating gray-haired man strode over to them, bent down, took a moment to assess the situation, then unceremoniously yanked the syringe out of William’s neck. “Cover him,” he said to the man in the glasses.
“He’s Blue,” Lilly said in a rush. “His name is William Ritt.”
“I know his name,” the agent said.
“He’s the man
you want, not Tierney. William Ritt is Blue.”
“How do you know?” he asked.
“He told me. He was going to kill me.”
During this rapid exchange, Tierney had braced his left hand against the wall and used it for support as he stood up. The older agent took a large white handkerchief from his back pants pocket and wordlessly handed it to him. “This might help with the bleeding.”
Tierney took the handkerchief and pressed it into his shoulder. “Thanks.”
“So.” The agent nudged William with the toe of his shoe, but he was looking at Tierney when he said, “You finally found Blue.”
Tierney nodded.
Lilly looked from one to the other with confusion.
The federal agent turned to her. “Ms. Martin, I’m . . . Oh, my apologies. Hoot, search Ritt for the key to those cuffs.”
“He didn’t handcuff her. I did.”
The older man looked at Tierney with surprise.
“The key is in my coat pocket. It’s zipped. I’m not sure I can—”
“Allow me.” He unzipped the pocket Tierney indicated and withdrew the small key. “I’m Special Agent in Charge Begley. That’s Special Agent Wise.” He knelt in front of Lilly and unlocked the handcuffs, then assisted her to stand.
“Pleased to meet you.” She pushed past him and rushed to Tierney, who was still holding himself up against the wall. Her hands moved over him, although inches away from actually touching him out of fear of hurting him more. “Lord, Tierney, look at you.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“What?” She looked up into his sunken eyes, then shook her head. “No.”
“But I did. In the shed—”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I had to do it.”
“I understand. I do.”
For several moments their attention was riveted on each other, but they simultaneously became aware of their audience. She addressed the senior agent. “Tierney arrived just in time to stop William Ritt from killing me. Millicent Gunn’s body is in the toolbox in the shed. I found it there this morning.” She looked at Tierney. “You found it the night you went for wood and searched for the ax. That’s why you were so brusque.”
He nodded. To Begley he said, “Like Lilly says, I found the body night before last. I didn’t touch it, so it’s just as I found it. Unless Ritt moved it when he got up here.”
“I don’t think he did,” Lilly told them. “He came straight into the cabin.”
“Where’s this shed?” Begley asked.
She told him. “William admitted to me that he killed Millicent and hid her body there temporarily. He confessed to—boasted of—the other killings as well.”
“Get him out of here.” At a nod from Begley, the two tactical officers seized William under the arms and dragged him facedown toward the door. He hung limply between them, as though he’d finally passed out from the beating Tierney had given him.
“Restrain him, put him in the chopper. Wait for me there.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hoot?”
“Sir?”
“Call the nearest RA. We need a crime scene unit up here ASAP. Remind them they’ll need a chopper.”
“Right, sir.”
Agent Wise got on his cell phone. Begley turned back to them. “How’s the shoulder, Mr. Tierney?”
“Busted.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t gone into shock.”
“Any minute now.”
“Want to sit down?”
He shook his head. “You’d never get me back up.”
“We set the chopper down in the road about fifty yards from here,” Begley said. “Followed your blood trail the rest of the way up. Our pilot already radioed for a CareFlight helicopter to pick you up. It should be here momentarily.”
“Thanks.”
“Feel like talking?”
“Talking may keep me from passing out.”
Begley grinned as though he understood that logic. Then his expression turned serious. “I owe you an apology, Mr. Tierney. We didn’t learn until minutes ago that you’re Torrie Lambert’s father.”
Lilly looked up at Tierney, speechless.
“Her mother and I divorced when Torrie was an infant,” he said, addressing his explanation to her rather than to the FBI agent. “Her stepfather adopted her, gave her his name. But she was my daughter.”
“Which explains a lot,” Begley said. “Obviously, you didn’t trust us or the local police to solve the case, so you’ve been doing your own sleuthing over the past two years.”
“That’s right.”
Begley harrumphed and looked at Tierney wryly. Lilly got the impression that, had it been his daughter who was missing, he would have done the same. “Whose handiwork is that in the kitchen?”
He was referring to the message she had scratched into the cabinet. It seemed he missed nothing. “Mine,” she said. “For a time, I thought . . .” With remorse, she motioned toward Tierney.
“Well, you weren’t alone in that assumption,” Begley said. “Mr. Tierney, were you on to William Ritt?”
“No. I thought it was Wes Hamer.”
“Wes Hamer?”
“I became acquainted with Millicent by shopping in her uncle’s store,” he said. “She developed a . . . a . . . an attachment to me.”
A crush, Lilly thought.
“This was during my trip here last fall. One night I returned to the lodge, and Millicent was there waiting on me. It made me uncomfortable. I didn’t invite her inside my cabin, but she started unloading a very sordid story about her, Wes, Wes’s son, a pregnancy and a miscarriage.”
Lilly had always thought Wes Hamer was a colossal jerk. According to Tierney’s story, he was considerably worse than that.
“When she returned from the clinic for eating disorders, she wanted to get back together with Scott, but he would have nothing to do with her. She asked for my advice.” He shook his head ruefully. “I had my own agenda and sure as hell didn’t want to get mixed up with anything like that. But then, when she was reported missing last week, well, I thought that maybe Wes had disposed of a problem, and that his crony Dutch was covering for him.”
Turning to Lilly, he said, “That’s why I didn’t tell you what I was doing. If I explained myself, I was afraid you’d feel honor bound to tell Dutch, and he would protect his pal Wes. Even if Wes had turned out not to be Blue, my cover would have been blown, and Dutch would have found a way to block my amateur efforts to find my daughter.”
“What were you doing on the mountain the day of the storm?” she asked.
“I never gave up trying to find a trace of her on one of these hiking trails. The day of the storm, I discovered . . .” He paused, cleared his throat. “Graves. Four of them, and a fresh one dug for Millicent. The shovel used to dig it had been stashed in some underbrush.”
“The handcuffs?”
“Those are mine.”
“You also bought a transponder,” Begley said. “For tracking purposes, I presume.”
He nodded, looking abashed. “I never got to use it, but obviously you did your homework.”
“Actually, that credit goes to Special Agent Wise,” Begley said, indicating the other agent.
He had ended his cell phone call to the RA, whatever that was. He’d been listening to Tierney’s story and now stepped forward. “I also owe you an apology, Mr. Tierney. On paper, you looked like a viable suspect.”
“On paper, I suppose I would. Why were you looking at me in the first place?”
“Your initials appeared several times in Millicent Gunn’s diary. She indicated that you were nice to her.”
Tierney shrugged but didn’t comment on that.
“About the graves?” Begley prompted.
“I tried not to disturb the area around them, hoping they would provide forensic evidence. Whoever Blue turned out to be.”
Begley asked for directions. Tierney told them where they could find his car.
“They’re about a hundred fifty yards north-northeast from where it’s parked. It’s a rugged climb, but obviously doable, even for a man carrying a body.”
“The ribbon?” Lilly asked. It was still lying on the floor at their feet, stained with his blood as well as William Ritt’s.
“Just as I told you. I saw it fluttering on a branch. Ritt must’ve dropped it when he was digging the grave. I took it because I was afraid a valuable piece of evidence would blow away before I could lead somebody back up there.”
To Begley he said, “I used latex gloves when handling the shovel. It’s in the trunk of my car. Hopefully you’ll lift Ritt’s fingerprints off it.” Lilly saw that tears had glossed his eyes. “You’ll at least find my daughter’s remains.”
His voice had grown even more thready with the telling of his story. Considering how much blood he’d lost, Lilly didn’t know how he was remaining upright. She slid her arm around his waist. “Why don’t you sit down at least?”
He smiled down at her. “I’m okay.”
“It was Dutch who shot you, wasn’t it?”
He looked into her face for a moment, then turned to Begley. “What about him and Wes Hamer?”
“Collier, one of the tactical team, stayed behind with them.” Begley glanced at her uneasily, then asked Tierney, “Is it as Ms. Martin says? Chief Burton shot you?”
“I threw down my pistol,” he said bitterly. “It didn’t matter.”
“He shot you, knowing you were unarmed?”
“That’s partially my fault, Ms. Martin,” Begley said in response to her dismay. “Chief Burton considered Mr. Tierney a dangerous criminal.”
“I knew that.” Tierney explained how he’d heard over her car radio that he was wanted for questioning. “When I saw Dutch and Wes Hamer, I figured they were a hunting party out to capture me, dead or alive.”
“He was also angry over the two of you being up here together,” Begley said. “A bad combination of vigilantism and jealousy.”
“That’s why I took off running when I saw them,” Tierney said. “I hoped to contact you—the FBI—before they got to me. I figured I would have a better chance of explaining myself to you. I doubted I’d have the same luck with them, and I was right.”