Maverick Christmas

by Joanna Wayne

  He was still standing at the window when the E.R. physician who’d treated Chrysie stepped into the room. The nurse handed him Chrysie’s chart. He studied it for a few seconds, then pulled a chair up to Chrysie’s bed.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “I’m okay.”

  “You’re lucky, that’s for sure. It’s always nice to walk away from a serious automobile accident with no more than a few stitches and a mild concussion.”

  “Yeah, lucky.”

  “So how do you really feel? And don’t play tough with me. I’m the doctor, I’m supposed to hear your complaints.”

  “I’m a little stiff,” she admitted.

  “I’m afraid that’s going to continue and probably get worse over the next few days. I’d like you to stay in the hospital tonight for observation. But if all goes well—and I see no reason it shouldn’t—you can go home in the morning.”

  “I can’t stay.”

  The doctor was busy making notes on Chrysie’s chart. He didn’t look up. “And why is it you can’t stay?”

  “I have two daughters.”

  “I saw the neighbor who came to pick them up. They appeared to be in good hands.”

  “It’s been a traumatic day. I need to be with them.”

  “What you need is rest, but I’ll check in with you later, and we’ll talk about the possibility of your going home tonight.”

  As soon as the nurse and the doctor left, Chrysie pushed to a very shaky sitting position and started looking around the room. “Where are my clothes?”

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “We have to talk, Josh, but not here. And I’m not going anywhere in this hospital gown.”

  Josh knew he should start reciting the Miranda rights about now. The first sentence rolled through his brain but got nowhere near his lips. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Okay, we’ll talk, but it will be on my terms.”

  Chrysie trembled. He wasn’t sure if she was afraid or thankful. It didn’t much matter. He couldn’t make any promises.

  He dropped to the chair by her bed and took her shaking hands in his. They were cold as ice. “We can talk later,” he said. “Right now, just try to rest, like the doctor said.”

  She closed her eyes, and he thought she might have drifted off when he heard her whisper sluggishly. “I didn’t kill Jonathan.”

  It was downright scary how badly he wanted to believe her.

  JOSH PACED HIS SMALL kitchen in the wee hours of the morning, wishing now he hadn’t drunk so much of the strong hospital coffee as the afternoon had stretched into the early hours of the evening. It was after six before Chrysie had been released, making it near seven by the time they’d gotten back to Aohkii.

  Chrysie had either slept or faked sleep most of the ride home. Josh was pretty sure it was the latter since her muscles had seemed too taut to be at rest. But she’d been fully animated as they’d approached the edge of town, had insisted they stop at the Millers’ and pick up Jenny and Mandy.

  He’d given in only after he’d realized that doing what Chrysie said or shooting her were his only two options. So here he was with a murder suspect he hadn’t arrested as yet and four children under the age of seven.

  Fortunately Buck had offered to temporarily exchange his SUV for Josh’s pickup. And the always thoughtful Evelyn had fed the kids before he and Chrysie had arrived and had packed a doggie bag of vegetable-beef soup and fresh-baked bread for him and Chrysie. Supper had been a breeze. Bedtime had been an ordeal straight from hell.

  The four children had fought not over the two bunk beds but over who got to sleep on the mats on the floor in the den. So they were all in there now, spread out across the den floor so that there was hardly room to place his size-eleven feet between them—and that was the only path from his bedroom to the kitchen.

  Not that he needed to get into his bedroom, since that was where Chrysie was sleeping. That left bunk beds for him, another reason he was wandering around in the kitchen in the middle of the night. He couldn’t sleep in a bed that made him feel like a third-grader on a sleepover.

  Oh, who the hell was he kidding? He couldn’t sleep because of the tormenting thoughts roaming about in his head like a bunch of lost sheep. No matter how many spins he put on the situation, it didn’t change the fact that he was aiding and abetting a fugitive from justice. At the very least, he should have notified the Houston Police Department that Cassandra Harwell and her two children were in his custody.

  And he would—first thing in the morning. If she was innocent, she could hire an attorney and prove it. That’s the way the law worked.

  Only… He jumped to attention as he heard a bump in the den. He crossed the room and pushed the door open. Chrysie was maneuvering the quilts, pillows, arms and legs and had apparently stubbed her toe on the leg of the old pine coffee table that he’d pushed into one corner.

  Her mouth twisted into a jumble of weird faces as she hopped her way toward him. She didn’t moan until she fell into one of the kitchen chairs and pulled her foot into her lap so she could cradle the ailing little toe.

  “Guess I should have warned you about the wall-to-wall kids,” he said.

  “Don’t you have beds?”

  “No, but then I hadn’t really planned on using the cabin as a resort.”

  “Or a jail,” she said, bringing everything back into perspective as she dropped her foot back to the floor. She looked around the small kitchen as if seeing it for the first time, though she’d had a few bites of Evelyn’s soup there a few hours earlier.

  “Can I get you something?” he asked. “Water? Juice?”

  “Juice would be good.”

  He poured her a glass, then joined her at the table, feeling about as awkward as a man could get in his own kitchen. He watched as she took a slow sip of the juice, then washed her lips with the tip of her tongue. With another woman, he might have thought it was a purposely seductive act, but the troubled look in Chrysie’s eyes and the worried wrinkles around her eyes were proof she had much more serious thoughts on her mind.

  She set the glass on the table and looked up, locking her gaze with his. “We have to talk.”

  “That can wait until morning.”

  “No, it can’t.”

  “Then I should read you your rights and let you know that anything you say might be held against you.”

  “Don’t bother. The only right I’m worried about is the right to live and keep my daughters safe.”

  Damn. She sure knew how to get to him, especially since he’d been in that same spot not so long ago. He leaned back in the chair and crossed his ankle over his knee, suddenly aware the cozy scene the two of them presented. He was barefoot and barechested, dressed only in a pair of faded jeans and an open flannel shirt. She was wearing a pair of blue-and-white polka-dot pajamas that he’d rummaged from the luggage his deputy had had the good sense to pull from her wrecked car before it was towed.

  A defense attorney worth his salt would have a field day with this scenario for questioning between a sheriff and a suspect. But it was a little late to worry about legalities and proprieties now.

  “I didn’t kill my husband,” she said. “We had an argument, and I took the girls and stormed out of the house, but I didn’t kill him.”

  “So who did?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Chrysie knotted and unknotted her hands. Guilty people did that sometimes when they were lying during questioning. But then, scared people did it, too. He’d always been good telling the difference, but none of his usual objectiveness held true with Chrysie.

  “What did you and your husband argue about the night he was murdered?”

  “I’d just found out that he was sleeping with his secretary.”

  Josh swallowed hard. Talk about your classic motive. But the man had to be crazy to give at the office if he had Chrysie Atwater waiting at home.

  Only she wasn’t Chrysie Atwater, and he’d best s
tart getting that straight.

  CHRYSIE HAD BATTLED and beaten the odds for three years, but it had all caught up with her now. The night was eerily quiet, with no sounds except the wind’s low moaning and the occasional creak that was part of every old house. And the scrape of Josh’s chair on the worn linoleum as he pulled himself closer to the table.

  “How much do you know about me?” she asked.

  “I know you’re a child psychologist and that you came home early in the morning after spending the night in a hotel and found your husband murdered in his bed. I know you withdrew all your available cash and fled the area. Is that accurate?”

  “It’s true but not really accurate.”

  “So why don’t you tell me your version?”

  She took a deep breath. “We argued that night. I accused him of having an affair with his secretary. He exploded but denied it. Bottom line is that I took the girls and spent the night in a Houston hotel.”

  “And you stayed there all night?”

  “No.” This was where things got sticky, where the lies had started. “I told the police I’d arrived home at eight the next morning, but that wasn’t exactly the truth. Mandy was only three months old. She woke during the night with colic, and when I couldn’t quiet her, I decided to go home so that I could give her some of the medication her pediatrician had prescribed.”

  “Why did you lie about the timing?”

  She took a deep breath. “I’ll get to that. It’s complicated, Josh.”

  “Murder usually is.”

  “I parked the car in the garage at a few minutes after three in the morning. Mandy had fallen asleep on the ride home, so I carried her in first and put her in her crib. Then I went back for Jenny. I had planned to sleep on the sofa, but I saw the light shining through the crack beneath the bedroom door and thought Jonathan was still awake.”

  The memories were pummeling her mind now, sickening, bloody memories that knotted in her stomach and scraped along every nerve ending. “I opened the bedroom door, and that’s when I saw my husband’s body. Lying on his back. With a bullet through his head.”

  Josh murmured a curse. She didn’t look up, didn’t want to meet his gaze and see doubt in his eyes. She had to get through this, had to make him understand why she’d run—and why she couldn’t go back.

  “I don’t know how long I stood there. I thought it was a second, but it could have been longer. I’m not sure if the man said something or if I just felt his presence and looked behind me. But he was there, standing in the door, smiling as if this were all a joke.”

  “So you’re saying you saw the killer?”

  “Killers. There were two of them, though I didn’t know that until a few minutes later.”

  “Is this what you told the police?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they said if I did, they’d kill my babies.”

  “So go back to where we were. You were in the bedroom when a man came in. What happened next?”

  “He put a gun to my head and marched me into the living room. The other man was there, on the landing, dangling Mandy over the banister as if he were going to drop her.”

  “But he didn’t drop her?”

  “No, but he was laughing and saying how much fun it would be to kill her. The other man said that I was to tell the police I had just come in and found Jonathan dead. He said that if I mentioned them at all, they’d be back and they’d kill all three of us.” Finally she looked up and into Josh’s gaze. “They would have killed us, Josh, and they still will. That’s why I can’t go to the police.”

  “The police will protect you and the girls.”

  “Would you be willing to take that chance with Danny and Davy?”

  He didn’t answer. She prayed that meant he understood. “Let me go, Josh. I’m begging you, for the sake of the girls if not for me. Just let us walk away and forget you ever saw us.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  Chrysie wouldn’t have hesitated for a second to strangle him with her bare hands if she thought she could do it. She’d risked it all, told him the truth, and now he was ready to turn against her and hand that information to the police.

  She jumped to her feet and stared down at him. “If Mandy and Jenny are harmed, it will be your doing. Are you willing to live with that, Sheriff Josh McCain?”

  He stood, as well, and put his hands on her shoulders. “Calm down, Chrysie. You’ll wake the kids.”

  “If you care anything at all about my daughters, you won’t send us back to Houston.”

  “I won’t send you back to Houston, at least not until I have time to check this out. But I’m not letting you run away again, either. You’ll have to stay here.”

  “In Aohkii?”

  “In Aohkii and in this house.”

  “You mean as a prisoner?”

  “That’s not the way I’d put it, but it pretty much sums it up. If I find out you’ve lied to me or if you try to escape, I’ll fly you to Houston myself. Is that clear?”

  “Perfectly clear.” She’d be in this house with one bathroom and four kids. In this house with only one double bed and two bunks. In this house with a man who made her remember she was a woman.

  “Good. Now that we have that settled, let’s go to bed.”

  Chapter Five

  “Danny knocked over his juice,” Jenny squealed, jumping from her chair in time to miss the river of sticky beverage headed her way.

  Josh dropped the unopened carton of milk on the counter and lunged for paper towels. He absorbed what he could as the rest puddled around Danny’s plate or dripped onto the worn linoleum.

  “No more horseplay at the table,” Josh said, though he had no idea how the accident had actually happened. He opened the milk and set it in the middle of the rectangular table along with three boxes of cereal. “Take your pick.”

  Jenny climbed back in her chair and reached for the cereal, turning each box around so that she could see the front of it. “Our mom doesn’t let us eat those,” she announced. “They have too much sugar in them.”

  “Sorry, it’s all I have.”

  “Then Mandy and I have to have something else for breakfast.”

  Mandy reached for one of the boxes. “I like sugar.”

  Davy scooted his chair back and hopped down from the table.

  Josh stepped in front of him. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I’ve gotta go pee.”

  “Well, make it snappy—and wash your hands.”

  “My mom always gives us two choices for breakfast,” Jenny announced.

  But Supermom was still asleep, and Josh wasn’t about to wake her. She needed her rest. He did, too, for that matter. He didn’t have a concussion, but the last twenty-four hours had definitely been traumatic.

  Mandy’s spoon went clattering to the floor. Josh handed her another, then poured himself a cup of strong black coffee. By the time he got back to the table, Danny’s hand and forearm had disappeared into a box of cereal and sugarcoated puffs were spilling out and bouncing around the table.

  “What’s wrong with the cereal at the top of the box?” Josh asked.

  “I’m looking for the prize.”

  Danny appeared at that moment, hands dripping. “Hey, I’m supposed to get the prize this time.”

  “Uh-uh.” Davy pulled a plastic dinosaur from the box and held it up, taunting his brother. “You got the last prize.”

  “Didn’t count. It was that stupid dancing pig, and I threw it away.”

  “Then you just lost your turn.”

  “Eat,” Josh said, “or the dinosaur goes in the trash.”

  “I don’t have anything to eat,” Jenny said.

  “Right. You want choices. How about a scrambled egg or toast and jelly?”

  Mandy started crying. Josh rushed back to the table. “What’s wrong?”

  “Davy threw his dinosaur in my cereal.”

  “It was an a
ccident. I was just pitching it up in the air and it fell in.”

  “Give me the dinosaur,” Josh demanded. He tossed it to the counter and put a hand on Mandy’s shoulder. “The dinosaur’s gone. Do you want some toast and jelly, too?”

  “No, I want my mommy.”

  She’d quit crying, but she was still sniffing and looking as if she might start again at any moment. Nothing scared Josh more than a female’s tears—a secret that he didn’t want out. “Your mother’s asleep, Mandy, but as soon as she wakes up, you can go in the bedroom and see her.”

  “Is she still sick?”

  “She’s better. She just needs rest.”

  “Who’s going to take me to kindergarten?” Jenny demanded.

  “No one. It’s Saturday.” And that might be the only good thing about any of this. He’d never have gotten the four of them dressed and into town by eight.

  “I don’t like eggs, so what kind of jelly do you have?” Jenny asked.

  “Grape and strawberry.”

  “I like grape.”

  Josh’s cell phone rang. He rescued it from beneath a dish towel and checked the caller ID. It was his brother Logan in New Orleans. He started to ignore the ring, but he could use some of Logan’s sage advice about now, and the guy was harder to get hold of than a used-car salesman after the deal.

  “Okay, kids, keep it quiet—and eat.”

  He pushed though the storm door and onto the back porch before answering. “Hello, Logan.”

  “How are things in Montana?”

  “Great, unless you’re bothered by youthful chaos, flying cereal and rivers of orange juice.” And women wanted for murder sleeping in your bed.

  “Sounds as if the boys are in top form.”

  “Masters of the game.”

  “Good, they’re really why I called. Rachel wants to make a fast trip your way before the Christmas holidays. She says she wants to see holiday snow, but I can tell she misses Danny and Davy.”

  “That’s not a good idea.”

  “Don’t tell me you have problems up there in cowboy country?”

  “Complications.”

  “That sounds very suspicious. These complications wouldn’t involve a woman, would they?”