Castle Rock

by Carolyn Hart

  Serena struggled away from Jed and ran to fall beside them, pulling and tugging to move Peter’s body and reaching out with her hand to try to stop the rush of blood from Will’s side.

  Serena came out of the intensive care unit. The first streaks of dawn sifted into the silent corridor from a high narrow window. She sighed wearily and looked dully at the floor.

  “Serena.”

  Her head jerked up. Somehow she had never expected Jed to come here. He must have come about Will. Do you arrest a man struggling for his life?

  She blurted out her first thought. “Will saved my life.”

  Jed came slowly toward her. A stubble of beard covered his cheeks. His eyes looked hollow and weary.

  “I know. Have they said—”

  “Whether he will live? They think so. But Jed, he’d rather die than be shut away. It would kill him.”

  “Don’t worry, Serena,” he said quickly. “It’s going to be all right.”

  “But Will was . . .” She stopped, unwilling to say it.

  “Will was one of them. I know.”

  “That’s why you came to Castle Rock.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

  “That’s why I came.”

  “You’re a . . . what did Peter call you? A narc?”

  “I guess you can put it like that. Actually, I really am a cowboy. It’s my brother who was an agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency.” Jed’s face looked grim. “He was the one who first figured Peter as head of a big ring.” Jed rubbed his cheek. “Paul was gunned down in Miami five months ago. The agency let me take his place. I swore I’d get Carey.” He sighed wearily. “I did. He’ll never smuggle another ounce of cocaine. Do you know how much he brought into the U.S. this year, Serena?”

  She shook her head.

  “Eight hundred and forty-six pounds. But that doesn’t tell the half of it. It doesn’t tell you about the lives that are ruined, the murders, the bribery, the crawling rottenness that infects everyone who touches cocaine smuggling.”

  “I know.” She understood. Uncle Dan dead. Will hurt and in terrible trouble. And Julie . . .

  “He was a nasty bastard,” Jed continued, his voice hard. “A nasty bastard. He came to Castle Rock last year, looking for a good landing place, and he liked what he saw so he gave Julie a big rush . . .”

  Yes, Serena thought, after he figured out I had no real claim to Castle Rock. That’s when he turned to Julie.

  “Poor little Julie,” Jed said quietly.

  Serena heard the pity and kindness in his voice and her heart ached. He really did care for Julie. She had been right to run away to Santa Fe. It was Julie he loved. Serena looked away. All right. Julie needed him. She really did. Now Castle Rock would be safe for Danny so she could leave. Jed could run the ranch, run it well.

  The corridor looked blanched in the early morning light, pale and ghostly and gray. A gray, gray world, but that’s the kind of world it was.

  “Do you know what Julie told me?” Jed continued.

  “What did she say?”

  “She said it had been such hell, that she was so afraid of him these last few months. It was because of her that Will cooperated, of course. Peter told Will that Julie was in it up to her neck, that if he went to jail, she would go, too. That was the club he held over Will. He told him the planes were just bringing marijuana. They were bringing it, too, but the big money came from the cocaine.”

  Serena’s throat was suddenly dry. “Jed, what will they do to Will?”

  Jed looked almost as if he might reach out to touch her but he didn’t. “Will’s going to be all right. He’s already cooperated with us. Without him we couldn’t have arrested the Minters and . . .”

  “The Minters?”

  “They were part of the distribution ring, funneling the stuff to the West Coast.”

  “The Minters. I should have known. But I thought it was the professors and . . .”

  “And me?”

  She didn’t look at him. You can’t look at a man when you have admitted thinking he was a crook.

  “You did come out of the blue and you searched Will’s room and you told me you finished at Texas, and they didn’t have any record of it.”

  Jed smiled tiredly. “I don’t blame you. I wasn’t using my full name. I did graduate, but as Jed Shelton Royce.”

  Jed Royce. It had a nice sound. Jed Royce. But it didn’t matter now how his name sounded.

  “And the professors?” she continued quickly. “Why were they always out on horseback? Why were their papers locked up in a trunk?”

  He answered the last question first. “They really couldn’t afford to have you see their papers. They were busy writing up the records of their excavations.”

  “Excavations?”

  “They are archaeologists and they pretended to be working on a physics text so they could be close to the Anasazi ruins. They wanted me to tell you they are really very sorry for the deception.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” she said quickly. She even managed a smile. “I’m glad they weren’t mixed up in it. I like them. Both of them.” Her smile slipped away. Really, there was nothing to smile about. Joe dead. Will hurt. Julie a widow. And, Jed . . .

  They looked at each other somberly. He reached out then to touch her lightly on the cheek.

  “I’m sorry we lost control last night. I finally confided in the sheriff who I was. I’d decided I could trust him.”

  “Trust him?”

  “You wouldn’t know it, but half the time the local law enforcement people have been bought off. DEA agents can’t trust anybody.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’d pretty well decided Sheriff Coulter was all right. But neither he nor I tumbled to the fact that Joe had hidden Danny to keep him safe. We both thought Peter had taken him, intending to kill him so that he could gain control of the ranch.”

  “Instead,” Serena said slowly, “Peter found the note in the Kachina. That led him to Joe.”

  Jed nodded. “He persuaded Joe to tell him where Danny was.”

  They didn’t put the rest of it into words; Joe turning and walking toward the cave entrance, Peter behind him . . .

  Jed frowned. “We were watching Peter, of course. But he knocked out the deputy and gave us the slip. Thank God Will was suspicious.”

  “Will followed him to the cliff dwellings,” Serena said quietly.

  “Yes.” He smiled at her. “We have to thank you for leading the rest of us there.”

  “Me?”

  “We stopped Hurricane as he was heading back to the stables.”

  ANASAZI. She and Joe had both done their best.

  “Still, it was Will who saved us.”

  “Yes,” Jed agreed. “If it hadn’t been for Will you and Danny would have been in bad shape.” His face tightened. “Do you know what he was going to do to Danny?”

  She shook her head.

  “He had this one planned, too. Another accident.”

  “Another one? What was he going to do?”

  “We found a gunny sack where he had dropped it. It had a gila monster in it.”

  A rattlesnake for her. A gila monster for Danny. For an instant, Serena pictured a little boy lying in the dusty dark, unable to get up and run, and the awful moments he would have spent after Peter opened the sack and loosed the lizard. Dreadful, terrifying, panic-filled moments.

  A flash of white brought her back to the hospital corridor. A nurse moved past them on rubber-soled heels. She darted a curious glance at them.

  We must look a mess, Serena thought absently, muddy and bedraggled and worn. If she could just think of unimportant facts like these and not look ahead . . .

  “It’s all over now, Serena,” Jed was saying, his voice gentle. Almost loving. That’s what she would think . . . except for Julie. But it was clear now. It was Julie he cared about. And Julie needed love.

  Everyone needs love, Serena thought bleakly, but to some it doesn’t come.

  �
��Come on, Serena, don’t look so unhappy. It really is all over but the shouting. Will’s given us the information on the next shipment. We’ll be waiting for them when the plane lands at Castle Rock. Then it will be all over for the ranch.”

  “And what will you do, Jed?” Her throat ached so she could scarcely get the words out.

  “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I had thought once about seeing if I could keep my job at Castle Rock.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Serena said stiffly. “I know Julie needs you.”

  “Julie?”

  She had started and now she must finish, though the words hurt, every one of them. “Well, I know you are in love with Julie and . . .”

  He reached out then, his hands gripping her arms so hard she almost cried out, but her heart hurt too much for any other pain to matter.

  She kept on going. “I saw you kissing her and,” she could feel tears burning behind her eyes, but she mustn’t cry, dear God, she mustn’t, “that’s when I knew you didn’t care . . . for . . . me.” Her eyes brimmed over with tears.

  “Love Julie?” he repeated, his voice incredulous, “Serena, no. Not Julie. It’s you. Serena, I love you.”

  “But you . . . I saw you and Julie . . .”

  He grimaced. “I don’t . . . Hell, I felt like such a bastard. But I had to find out more about Peter. It was part of my job. A lousy part.”

  “You never cared for Julie?”

  “No. It’s you. But that’s no good, is it?”

  She caught her breath.

  “I mean, obviously you love Will. So I guess when it’s over, well, it will be goodbye.”

  “Oh Jed, you fool. You wonderful crazy fool.”

  He looked up, startled.

  “Jed, you idiot. Of course I love Will.”

  Jed’s face sagged.

  “I love him like a brother. But I love you—” There was no more air or space to tell him as he gathered her up in his arms and his mouth closed over hers and the two of them were together and love burst like a flame between them.

  CAROLYN HART, whose prolific career has included the enduring Death on Demand series as well as the Henrie O and Bailey Ruth books, was named a 2014 Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America. A founding member of Sisters in Crime, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award and 2012 Amelia Award at Malice Domestic and has won multiple Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards. She lives in Oklahoma City with her husband, Phil.