'Til Death (A Rebel Ridge Novel)

by Sharon Sala

  * * *

  Wes was staring at an odd mark above the television, wondering how the outline of a man’s shoeprint had wound up that high on the wall, while his life flashed before his eyes. He was reliving every mistake he’d ever made, beginning with the day he’d stolen a candy bar out of Barney’s Groceries down in Boone’s Gap when he was ten.

  You reap what you sow, Wesley. You reap what you sow.

  He groaned. For the past few days he’d been unable to get that out of his head. Mother had always been right. It was just a damn shame it had taken him the better part of his life to admit it. When he realized the people in the news clip on the television were people he knew, he upped the volume. He was stunned that he knew them, and even more so when he recognized one of his brothers-in-law.

  “What the hell?”

  A few moments later he figured out they were looking for Prince’s body. The way he felt about the family, he couldn’t see how Prince’s death could be a bad thing. He heard the sheriff say the family had been notified, which meant Lucy knew, too.

  Lord. He couldn’t wrap his head around ever talking to her again, and yet he knew it would happen. No sooner had the thought gone through his head than his cell phone rang.

  He saw caller ID and sighed. Think of the devil and he—or she—turns up unannounced.

  Lucy.

  The thought of hearing her voice begging him to come home was going to kill him, and he knew she was going to beg, because he’d taken away the single one thing she valued most. Money.

  He let the phone ring a couple more times just to make her wait, then answered gruffly, needing the antagonism to help him keep his edge.

  “What?”

  Lucy heard the anger in his voice and wanted to scream at him, but this was not the time to be confrontational. She needed to play on his sympathy and started to weep, but quietly, not shrieking in anger.

  “Oh, Wesley, something terrible has happened. Prince is dead,” she said, and then started to sob more loudly.

  “I already heard.”

  “What am I going to do? I’m so sad I can’t bear it. I want you to come home. Please, Wes, come home to me. I need you. I can’t lose you, too.”

  “No.”

  She choked on a sob. “What do you mean, no?”

  “No, I’m not coming home.”

  She took a deep breath and turned off the tears. “Ever?”

  “Ever. I don’t know who you are anymore. I’m not even sure I ever knew you.”

  “Why did you cancel my credit cards and take the money out of our account? I didn’t think you could be this cruel. Wesley, please...what do you expect me to do?”

  “You’ve been using me for years, Lucy. I don’t intend to be used like that again. I have reparation to make, and I don’t know what’s going to happen to me after it’s done. For all I know we’ll both wind up in prison for what we did to Lincoln Fox.”

  Horror swept through her so fast she forgot she meant to stay calm.

  “No! You fool! You crazy fool! You don’t mean it! Wes, please...don’t. If you ever loved me, don’t do this.”

  “We committed an unforgivable sin, Lucy. We lied about an innocent boy, and the lie sent him to prison for a crime he did not commit.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Even now you’re lying, Lucy. When will it stop?”

  “Are you going to divorce me?”

  “What do you think?”

  She was so mad she was shaking. “What do I think? I think you’re weak. I think you’re a quitter. That’s what I think!” Lucy screamed. “I don’t deserve to be abandoned like this.”

  “Why? It’s what we did to Lincoln.”

  Lincoln. He kept harping on Lincoln. Too bad he hadn’t died in the fire, too. “I’ll get the best lawyer in the state. I’ll take you to court for all the alimony I can get,” she screeched.

  Wes sighed. “You still don’t get it, Lucy. The law is not going to ignore what we’ve done. We committed perjury, and they’ll reopen the murder case. When they do, it will be interesting to see who crawls out from under the rocks on Rebel Ridge.”

  She was still screaming when he disconnected. He laid the phone on the bedside table, and then turned off the television and closed his eyes. He’d already contacted his lawyer and made a full statement about his part in the lie and how it had come about. They’d sent the notarized confession to the sheriff’s office in Boone’s Gap and another notarized copy to the district attorney. Lucy’s anger was the least of his worries. It was only a matter of time before the proverbial shit hit the fan.

  * * *

  Prince pulled up in the alley behind Lucy’s house and parked. The air was so cold it stung his face as he got out. He turned his coat collar up around his neck, thankful for the gloves he’d found in the stolen car, and slipped through the gate leading into her backyard, confident that the eight-foot privacy fence would conceal his presence from the neighbors.

  Lights were on in the kitchen. When he looked through the window he expected to see her, but the room was empty. What he did see, however, was shocking. Dirty dishes were piled all over the counters and in the sink, while dozens of empty liquor bottles were scattered about. Lucy always had been a hard drinker. He didn’t know what was going on with her and Wes, but whatever it was, she was drowning her sorrows.

  He knocked on the back door, then waited, hoping she wasn’t passed out somewhere. A couple of minutes passed and he knocked again, louder and longer. Finally he heard footsteps, saw a curtain shift slightly at the window, and then the door opened and Lucy was standing in the doorway in her pajamas.

  “Hey, Lucy...”

  “Oh, my God,” she moaned. Her eyes widened, then rolled back in her head, and she fainted at his feet.

  Prince sighed. At least she hadn’t shut the door in his face. He slipped inside, dragged her out of the way and shut the door.

  “Lucy! Hey, Lucy!”

  She didn’t move. He put his boot on her shoulder and gave her a shake.

  She moaned, then slowly opened her eyes. When she saw her brother standing over her, she screamed and covered her face.

  “Lucy, what the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked.

  “They said you were dead. I thought you were a ghost come to take me to hell.”

  He frowned. “Well, that’s stupid. I never heard of a ghost being able to take a living person anywhere. What the fuck have you been drinking? Oh, wait. From the looks of this place, I should have asked, what haven’t you been drinking?”

  She moaned again and held up her hand. “Help me up.”

  Prince pulled her to her feet, then got her to one of the chairs at the kitchen table.

  “I’m here because Fagan said you wanted to talk to me. What’s going on? This place is a mess, I saw Wes’s car at a motel, and you’ve got the mother of all hangovers.”

  “Lincoln Fox convinced Wes that he was innocent. Wes confronted me. It got ugly after that. He’s taken away all my money, canceled my credit cards. I’m about to be homeless because he’s filing for divorce.”

  Prince frowned. This wasn’t what he’d bargained for. He’d come to her for help, not to fix her damn mess.

  “Why did you call me? I can’t fix your marriage.”

  She slapped her hand on the table, making the dirty glasses stacked up near her elbow rattle.

  “Why did I call you? What’s the matter with you? You truly are as dumb as you look. Think about it, brother. Lincoln is digging into everything, and Wes is going to tell the cops we lied. They’ll start looking for someone else to blame. Guess who’ll be the prime suspects?”

  “Well, hell.”

  “Yes. ‘Well, hell’ is right.”

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “For starters, stop Wes before he divorces me and spills his guts to the cops.”

  “How do you propose we do that?”

  She eyed him carefully. This was where Fagan had balked. Would Prince do the s
ame?

  “You could kill him,” she said.

  Prince didn’t blink. “We’ve been down this road before.”

  “And?”

  “Whatever...I don’t have a gun anymore. I pawned it, and I ain’t burning down an entire motel of people just to get rid of your problem.”

  “I have a gun.”

  “Oh, yeah, right. We use your gun to kill your husband? Seriously, Lucy, don’t you watch TV? They got ballistic tests and all that shit. You got a way to explain how your gun killed your husband and not go down for it?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Maybe.”

  “I’m all ears,” he said.

  “I’m about to become the victim of a crime. Someone is going to kick in my back door, ransack my house looking for my husband, beat me up, make me tell him where my husband is, knock me out and steal shit, including my gun. While you’re taking Wes out, I will have the police at my house making a crime report. All I’ll know is that it was a man wanting Wesley Duggan. And nobody will be looking for you because you’re already dead.”

  Prince sat there a minute, thinking. Lucy thought he was going to tell her no, and then he stood up.

  “Well, if you’re gonna convince the cops about all that, you need to take a bath, wash your damn hair and brush your teeth, then get rid of all these liquor bottles. Right now this place looks worse than mine and Fagan’s.”

  Lucy’s eyes widened. “Good thinking. There are trash bags under the sink. Help me.” Then she stopped and looked back at her brother. “Put your gloves back on. If I’m about to be robbed, they’ll fingerprint this place from top to bottom.”

  It took nearly an hour for Prince and Lucy to put the house back to rights; then, while she went to shower, he took the garbage bags out into the alley and distributed them among several of her neighbors’ garbage bins. When he came back inside she was in a clean pair of pajamas and her hair was still wet. She handed him a bag with her jewelry in it, along with some of their silver and a laptop. The handgun was on top, loaded with a fresh clip.

  “We just cleaned up the house, now we need to mess it up again,” he said. “Make it look like you fought. Where do you want to start?”

  “I’ve already messed up my room some, tore stuff out of the drawers, and then I hit Wes’s office. I’ll say I’d been getting ready for bed when I heard you kick in the door. I came running with my gun to see what was happening, and you surprised me in the living room. We need to shove some chairs around, turn some stuff over.”

  “You’re gonna need some bruises and wounds to match—including on your head—or they won’t buy it. Especially since Wes and you are on the outs.”

  She frowned. “Then do it. Start hitting me. Shove me into the furniture. I’ll fight back so that my hands will look bad, too.”

  Prince frowned. “Just don’t scratch me. They can get DNA out from under your nails.” Then he rolled his eyes. “Shit. We’re going to a lot of trouble here.”

  “If we can’t stop this from unwinding, we’re in even bigger trouble,” Lucy said.

  “Fine,” Prince said, and hit her on the side of her jaw with his fist. Her head snapped back as she fell against the sofa and end table, and just like that, the lamp went flying.

  Her lip was bleeding when she got up. She came at him with her hands curled into claws, aiming for his arm, and broke two nails when she grabbed at his shirt.

  He hit her again, and she staggered backward into Wes’s leather chair. It scooted across the floor all the way to the fireplace, leaving scratch marks on her precious hardwood floor.

  Back and forth they went, until Lucy could only see from one eye, and blood was pouring from her nose and mouth. There was a deep cut in her forehead, and large bruises were already forming on her face and arms. She couldn’t imagine what her body must look like under the pajamas, but it had to be bad, because she couldn’t quit sobbing from the pain.

  “That’s enough. Any more of this and I’ll be breaking bones,” Prince said, and picked up the bag with the loot. “Where’s your cell phone?”

  Lucy was light-headed and weaving on her feet, but this was good. It added credence to what had happened.

  “It’s in the kitchen on the table.”

  Prince went to get it, laid it facedown beneath the edge of the sofa and then glanced at the clock. “Lie down right there with the side of your face on the floor, like you were unconscious. Give me fifteen minutes, then crawl to the phone on your hands and knees. Make sure you’re crying and your voice is shaking when you call 911.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” she said as she flattened out on the floor. “Oh, my God, I hurt. I think you broke my jaw.”

  “I’m going to the kitchen now. I’m gonna turn the lock on the door, then kick it in. The door will be open and you’re gonna freeze your damn ass, but it will only add to the truth of your statement. Your description of me is going to be vague, because you only got a glimpse before I hit you in the face. After that, you were trying so hard to get away you didn’t see much. Tell them I was a white man. Don’t go the ‘black man did it’ route. Tell them you thought I was about forty, and that I had a salt-and-pepper mullet. And make me heavyset. I always wanted to be bigger.”

  “Forties, heavyset, salt-and-pepper mullet.”

  “I’m gone,” Prince said. “Once Wes is dead, what are you going to do?”

  She frowned. “I hate to say it, but I think that as a woman who was just robbed and assaulted in her home, I would be afraid to stay here. I’ll figure something out. Do you have a cell phone?”

  “I can get a throwaway.”

  “Call me. The next person who needs to go is Lincoln Fox, and then we’re home free.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said.

  “Prince.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you.”

  “We’re not out of the woods yet,” he muttered, and left the room.

  She heard the door shut, then what sounded like three sharp blows to the wood before she heard it slam against the kitchen wall. She smiled. The bases here were covered. Now all Prince had to do was get Wes.

  * * *

  Wes couldn’t sleep, and he couldn’t get Lincoln’s voice out of his head. There was a knot in his gut that kept getting bigger and bigger. What he’d done to Lincoln was horrifying. He’d prayed to God and was counting on that ask and ye shall receive verse being on the up-and-up, because he’d prayed hard for forgiveness. He didn’t expect Lincoln to forgive him, but he wanted him to know that he was making amends. Trouble was, he didn’t have Lincoln’s phone number, so calling him was out of the question.

  The couple next door was fighting, which didn’t help solve his lack of sleep. He thought they were drunk or high. These days it was hard to tell which. He got up to go to the bathroom, wincing at the feel of grit on the floor and thinking of his beautiful home and the years he’d worked to make a nice life for himself and Lucy. Now she had turned into a lying drunk and he was holed up in this half-assed motel.

  The room felt chilly as he crawled back into bed, but he didn’t like to sleep in a hot room, so he pulled the covers up tight around his shoulders instead. He was drifting toward sleep when he heard a soft knock at the door and then a high-pitched voice. He couldn’t tell what they were saying, but he figured someone had just knocked on the wrong door and ignored it.

  The knock sounded again, followed the same muffled voice.

  He threw back the covers and stomped to the door. “Damn it to hell, go away!” he shouted, and then yanked the door open. He got a glimpse of someone standing in the shadows with something pointed at his chest. He saw a flash of fire, then everything went black.

  * * *

  Meg and Lincoln were still in bed, and the rain was still coming down. The second time they’d made love it had been without the desperation that had overtaken them before. Maturity had changed the contours of their bodies, and age had given them perspective on how blessed they were to have found the
ir way back to each other. Love was still a tentative word, but it was present in every look, every touch. Linc had professed his intentions. It was enough. All Meg had to do was hope for the best and pray that he could protect himself from the trouble he was stirring up.

  When he dozed off beside her with his arm thrown across her belly, she lay without moving, taking the time to study the man he had become.

  His face was what her grandma Foster would have called noble. Even features, dark eyes below a strong brow, a square jaw and seriously sensuous lips. Just thinking what he could do with them made her shudder. But all the looking only enforced what she already knew: that she would never get enough of the man beside her.

  Fifteen

  It was still raining and nearing nightfall by the time Linc went home. Resurrecting his relationship with Meg had spurred the need to clear his name.

  After the warm, homey place he’d just left, coming back to the dark, cavelike room was jarring. He began turning on lights, then carrying out the ashes from his woodstove, thankful for the rain that kept the embers from starting a fire outside. As soon as the stove was clean he built a new fire, then showered while the flames licking at the wood were taking hold. By the time he got out, the place was snug and warm. He dug in the fridge for a snack and settled for a beer and some cheese and crackers, then headed for the recliner to watch some TV.

  He was channel surfing as he ate when he caught a news clip that made him up the volume on the remote. He recognized Sheriff Marlow as the man standing on a riverbank. Beyond him was a winch truck pulling a partially submerged pickup out of the water. When he saw Fagan White crying in the background, it only took a couple of minutes before he realized they were talking about searching for Prince White’s body.

  He grabbed his cell phone and called Meg.

  “Hello?”

  “Turn on your TV now!”

  She threw back the covers and grabbed the remote. “Which channel?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “Okay...I’m there and...wait. It’s over. Was that Sheriff Marlow?”

  “Yes. That pickup they were pulling out of the Kentucky River belonged to Prince White. Fagan was in the background all the time Marlow was talking, and he was crying. They’re looking for Prince’s body.”