“And your sister was Gabrielle,” Sarah added in a whisper. “I didn’t think you would remember me, but I’d hoped...”
Each word put him through an emotional wringer. Because they could be true. He cursed that feeling again. The tug deep within him that told him that this could indeed be his mother.
“I’m Sarah Prior,” she said, extending her hand for him to shake.
He put out his left hand, without even thinking about it. Mainly because he couldn’t take his attention off her. Then, he fired off a text to Jericho, asking for the sheriff to run a quick background check on the woman’s name.
“May we sit down and talk?” she asked. “I have some things to tell you.”
“And I have some things to tell you.” Of course, he didn’t sound anywhere near as friendly, and frail, as she did.
Cord got another look at that frailness when he stepped back, and she came inside. She was limping, and judging from the way she maneuvered herself, the limp had been with her for a long time. Maybe an old injury.
She sat down at one of the tables, glancing over at the detective who was watching them. “Will he arrest me?” she asked. “Will you arrest me?”
Cord had to relax his jaw muscles before he could speak. “What have you done to warrant an arrest? Did you hire those two armed men in the kitchen?” He didn’t tell her they were dead. Because if she was behind this, she might think they were in there spilling their guts to the cops.
Her eyes widened, and her hand went to her mouth, muffling yet another gasp of surprise. “No. Of course not. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. I love you.”
A burst of air came from his mouth. Definitely not humor. “If you’re really my mother, then you abandoned me at a gas station. That doesn’t sound like love to me.”
That put some tears in her eyes, and even though what he’d said was the truth, Cord suddenly felt bad about it.
There was some movement to the side. Karina. She stepped around the officer in the doorway, but she didn’t come closer. Not until Cord motioned for her.
“Is she your mother?” Karina asked.
“The jury’s still out on that. This is Karina Southerland,” he said. Great. He was making introductions now. If this kept up, he’d be hugging the woman.
Much to his disgust, it was something he wanted to do.
“I’m Sarah.” The woman shook Karina’s hand, too. “Willie Lee works...worked for you.”
“He did. And I don’t think he’s the Moonlight Strangler. I don’t believe he could hurt anyone, and I’ve known him for years.”
Well, since Sarah and Karina had brought it up, it was time to get this conversation moving. The cops likely wanted to start processing the scene and get them out of there for statements.
“Start from the beginning,” Cord ordered her. And it was an order. “Tell me what happened. If you lie, or even if I think you’re lying, you will be arrested.” He had no idea what the charges would be, but he’d come up with something.
Sarah nodded, nodded again and then took a deep breath. “Willie Lee and I got married thirty-four years ago when I was pregnant with you and your sister. Samuels wasn’t his last name then. It was Joyner. Willie Joyner. He didn’t start using Willie Lee Samuels until, well, later.”
That explained why no one had been able to find birth certificates for Addie and him, but there was no official name change on record for Willie Lee. However, he could have just started using the name without making it legal.
Cord would want to know all about that later part she’d mentioned, but he wanted to hear more of the beginning. He motioned for her to keep going.
“We were happy, for a while anyway,” she finally continued. “Money was tight so Willie Lee took a lot of jobs. Sometimes, he had two or three at once. I complained about never seeing him, and I think that’s what made him desperate. Because he got mixed up in something with some bad men.”
“Money laundering?” Cord asked.
“Yes. I don’t think he knew what was going on. Not at first. And then it was too late.” She pulled one of those tissues from her purse and dabbed her eyes. “Things got bad. One of the men involved in that mess took Addie. He kidnapped her, and he did that to keep Willie Lee quiet.”
That meshed with some of the things Addie had learned and remembered about some man taking her to a woman’s house. Obviously, Addie hadn’t been hurt, but she darn well could have been. It sickened him to think of that even now.
“How did you get Addie back?” Cord asked.
She tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, twisted the tissue in her hand. “I’m not sure. Willie Lee worked that out. And we moved, he changed our last name and started a new life. Things were better for a while. And then he came.”
“He?” Cord persisted.
Another breath. “I don’t know who he was. A stalker. It started with hang-up calls and...escalated. He started leaving pictures of your sister, you and me. Pictures I didn’t know he was taking. Some of them were taken from my bedroom window when I was dressing.”
Karina winced a little. Probably because she had her own version of a stalker with Rocky and his club friends.
“And you never saw this man?” Karina asked.
“No. Not once. But I always got the feeling he was there, nearby. Once I even stood out in the yard and yelled for him to tell me why he was doing this. He didn’t answer, and the following day he sent me some photos of mutilated animals.”
Even though Cord didn’t want to believe her, he did. About that part anyway. Cord could practically see her reliving what must have been a frightening time for her.
“Someone claiming to be the Moonlight Strangler sent me photos,” Cord said. “One was of Addie and me on the porch with a woman.”
“Yes, she was a neighbor lady, Ida Kincaid, who babysat the two of you sometimes. She was watching you while I had a doctor’s appointment.” Sarah shuddered, touched her mouth again. “When I came home, I found Ida’s body in my bedroom. It was obvious someone had murdered her.”
Cord didn’t bother holding back the profanity, and he was about to jump down Sarah’s throat about why she hadn’t reported it to the cops. And he knew she hadn’t because Cord had all the names of the Moonlight Strangler’s known victims and even those who had similar MO’s.
Karina shook her head, silently begging him to pull back on the anger, and she moved closer to Sarah and slipped her arm around her shoulders. That’s when Cord realized Sarah was crying again.
“What did you do after you found the body?” Karina continued, and her voice was a lot calmer than Cord’s would have been.
“The twins were outside playing, and I was afraid he was still in the house. So, I gathered up the children and drove off as fast as I could.”
Cord didn’t hold back this time. “Why didn’t you go straight to the police station or call them before you left the house?”
“He’d cut my phone line, and I didn’t have a cell phone in those days. And he’d left me a message. A note that said he’d kill me next...after he killed my kids.”
Cord would have needed a heart of ice not to react to that. It felt like a sucker punch. Because Addie and he were those kids.
“I went to look for Willie Lee,” Sarah explained after wiping away more tears. “But he wasn’t at work, where he was supposed to be.”
Maybe because he’d been back at the house taking that selfie and the photo of the dead woman.
But why would Willie Lee have pretended to be a stalker? If he wanted to torment his wife, it would have been much more effective if Sarah knew she was living under the same roof with a deranged man.
“I kept driving,” Sarah went on. “Kept looking for him, and you had to go to the bathroom. It was dark by then, and I stopped at a gas station. You were to
o young to go into the men’s room by yourself, so I took you in the women’s bathroom. That’s when he attacked me.”
Sarah didn’t jump right into the rest of that in part because the detective motioned for them to hurry things along. Probably because the crime-scene photographer had arrived and wanted to get started. Cord would have to take the woman to the local police station, but he had to hear the rest of this first.
“How did he attack you?” he asked.
“He turned off the lights and just came crashing through the door. He punched me hard. Both you and your sister started crying. But he kept punching me until he had me on the floor, and then he got me outside. I don’t remember how. I was fading in and out of consciousness and terrified he was going to hurt my kids.”
Yeah, that fear was real, too, and Cord got just a shimmer of a memory. Of the violence. But the images were gone before he could latch on to them.
“What happened then?” Karina prompted.
“I woke up in the trunk of his car. I could still hear my kids crying. Well, one of the kids anyway. My daughter. I couldn’t hear Court...Cord,” she amended, “and I thought the worst. God, I thought the worst.”
So, maybe that’s when Cord had been abandoned. That felt like the truth, too, and he caught another image of him crying in the corner of the dirty bathroom. A roach had crawled across his shoes, and he’d been too scared and numb to react to it.
“I kept banging on the trunk,” Sarah explained. “Kept trying to get out so I could help my kids. The man finally stopped out in the middle of nowhere. It was dark, no moon that night, and he was wearing some kind of mask. Like a stocking maybe. He dragged me from the trunk, and that’s when I saw the blood on my baby girl’s cheek. The bastard had cut her face.”
Cord wished he’d been there. Yes, he was just a kid, three years old, but maybe he could have stopped it.
“I told my daughter to run. And she did. Thank God, she did. Because the man stabbed me, and he ran after her. I crawled into a ditch, trying to get up enough strength to help my baby. But the man didn’t find her because she wasn’t with him when he came back. I stayed hidden, and he finally drove off.”
“And you survived,” he concluded for her.
She nodded. “I got to a hospital eventually and gave them a fake name so he wouldn’t find me. When I was back on my feet, I went looking for you.”
No way could he keep the anger out of his voice. “You should have told the cops I was in that bathroom and that Addie was in the woods.”
“I was stupid. The man had warned me he’d kill us all if I went to the cops. And by then, I’d read in the newspapers about you and your sister being found. Not together, of course. But you were safe. So, I pretended to be dead so that he wouldn’t try to use you to get to me.”
Cord sat there, trying to process it, but he couldn’t. However, he could see that this was ripping Sarah to pieces.
“I haven’t seen you, your sister or Willie Lee since,” Sarah added. Her gaze came to Cord’s. “Has Willie Lee said anything about me?”
“He thinks you’re dead, that you were murdered.”
She didn’t seem surprised by that. Probably because she’d just said she faked her death.
Karina leaned in, and she gave the woman one of the napkins from the table so Sarah could dry her eyes again. “Why didn’t Willie Lee go to the cops with all of this?”
“I’m not sure. But it must have been something big to make him turn away from you. He loved you. Loved all of us.” Sarah paused. “I want to see him. Do you think you can arrange that?”
Cord’s first reaction was to say no, but he might learn a lot watching the two interact. “I’ll work on it.”
Sarah nodded, then stood, glancing around. “I need to use the ladies’ room, and then I guess you’ll be taking me to talk to the cops?”
“Yes,” Cord answered without hesitation. All of this had to go on the record.
And then he had to call Addie.
“But you won’t be able to use the bathroom here. Everything in the building will have to be processed.”
Sarah eyed the gas station next door. “I’ll have to go there, then.”
When Sarah stepped outside, Cord got the attention of one of the uniforms. “Could you go with her and keep an eye on her?”
“Sure, but we’re kind of busy here.” It was obvious that the officer had more important things to do, but he did follow her and then stood by the door when Sarah went inside.
“You believe her?” Karina asked right off.
“Yeah.” Cord thought Sarah was the real deal, and judging from the sound Karina made, so did she.
Cord’s phone rang. Jericho, again. So he answered it right away.
“When were you going to tell me that someone tried to kill Karina and you again?” Jericho began.
It wasn’t that Cord had forgotten about it. But meeting Sarah had pushed the attack to the back burner. “We’re okay. I’ll tell you about it when we make it back to Appaloosa Pass. In the meantime, did you find out anything about Sarah Prior?”
“Yeah,” Jericho said. “Who the hell is she?”
It took Cord a moment to get out the answer. “I think she’s my mother. Why? What’d you find out about her?”
“Not nearly enough. No records on her until twenty-nine years ago, so I’m betting that’s not her real name. Or else she made sure not to leave any trace of herself so there’d be a paper trail. She’s had various retail and clerical jobs. Nothing that stands out. But something must have stood out for you.”
“It did. She’s got a story to tell, and after Karina and I are back, you’ll get to hear it, too.”
Jericho stayed quiet a moment. “Does Addie know?”
“Not yet. Soon. Karina and I need to give our statements first. There are two deaths so that might take some time.” It’d take more than some time to get that look out of Karina’s eyes.
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Jericho added, and he hung up.
Cord stood, helping Karina to her feet, and he went to the gas station bathroom to speak with the officer who was standing guard outside the door.
“The woman inside will need to go to your police station,” Cord told him. “She has key information about an old murder investigation.” Or soon it would be an investigation anyway. “Can you make sure someone gives her a ride there?”
Of course, he could have offered for Sarah to ride with Karina and him, but Cord really needed some time to try to make sense of this and clear his head. It wouldn’t be long before Karina would be facing a serious adrenaline crash, and he needed to save some energy for that.
“I’ll get somebody out here to give her a ride,” the officer assured him.
Cord took a step, then stopped. He felt that too familiar feeling go down his spine. It was a feeling that he’d learned not to ignore.
Because it had saved him a time or two.
“What’s wrong?” Karina asked.
Cord didn’t answer. Instead, he hurried to the ladies’ room, and he threw open the door. It wasn’t a large space, just two stalls, two sinks and a window, so it didn’t take him long to see who was there.
Or rather who wasn’t.
Hell.
Sarah was gone.
Chapter Fifteen
Sarah.
The woman’s name and her story kept going through Cord’s head, and the hot shower wasn’t helping. Wasn’t helping with the images, either. Images of those two thugs who’d tried to kidnap Karina.
Who were they?
That was still the million-dollar question, and in a perfect world, the cops would be able to pin this on someone in that stupid Bloody Murder club. But so far, there’d been no arrests, and both of the hired guns were not only
unidentified, but they were also dead, so they obviously weren’t talking.
That’s why Cord and Jericho had beefed up security once again at the ranch. And it was the reason he kept his shower short. Karina had been asleep when he’d gotten up from the sofa, walked through the bedroom and gone into the bathroom, but he wanted to be there when she woke up.
In case she fell apart.
She had to be on the edge, especially after dealing with an adrenaline crash. When they’d finished giving their statements to the cops, they’d returned to the guesthouse. She’d showered, to get that blood off her hands, and had fallen right into bed. He’d checked on her several times throughout the night, but she hadn’t moved from the spot where she’d landed.
But she had moved now.
Cord saw that the moment he stepped into the bedroom. Good thing he’d gotten some clean clothes from the closet before he’d hit the shower, or he would have walked in there stark naked.
Just the thought of it seemed to give his body some bad ideas.
Of course, seeing Karina gave him even worse ideas.
She was sitting up as if waiting for him. Her hair was tumbled all around her face and shoulders. And she was looking at him as if he might have the answers to the universe.
“I didn’t hear you when you went into the bathroom,” she said.
Cord shrugged. “You’re a very deep sleeper.”
“Yes.” She flexed her eyebrows, repeated that yes. “Please don’t tell me you watched me drool or anything.”
“No drool.” But then he thought they could use some lightness. “All right. Minimal drool.”
It worked. She laughed. And it was so good to hear that. In fact, a first, and he hoped he got to hear her laugh and see her smile again.
The laughter didn’t last long, though, and she studied him. “Bad news?”
“No. More like no news.” Which some might say was a good thing. “There’s still no sign of Sarah. No change in Willie Lee’s condition. Mack’s good to go, though. He’s already home since the bullet went straight through and didn’t hit anything vital. His girlfriend is giving him some TLC.”
Laying Down the Law Page 14