by Vicki Hinze
Stall! Stall! He’s winding down and you need more time. “What about Darla Green? Did you have to kill her too?”
Surprise flickered across his face. “I wasn’t aware she was dead.” He stilled, digested. “Ah, you knew that. It was a little test. Aren’t you the clever one?” He rubbed his fingertips over his chin.
“Clever enough to know you wanted Sara alive and under your control. You didn’t plan her death.” Joe was conscious; Beth saw him blink. Thank God.
“Would I dirty my own hands if it wasn’t absolutely necessary?” Cocky, Robert looked at her down the barrel of the gun. “But you’ve been a thorn in my side since day one.”
“You’ve already said you’re going to kill me. What’s left to threaten me with?”
“There are worse things than death.” He squinted, closing one eye. “Sara would agree.”
Beth spotted the tip of a shoe at the door. “I’m sure she would, Phoenix.”
His jaw tightened. “Enough. I win, you lose.” He took aim. “Say good-bye, Beth.”
Multiple shots fired.
Robert slammed back, hit the floor with a thud.
Choking back a scream, Beth stared into his sightless eyes, at the gaping hole in his chest, and said the one thing that ran through her mind. “He’s bleeding on Sara’s carpet …”
Joe holstered his gun. “Clear.”
Jeff and Roxy came in, their guns still drawn. They’d all shot him. All of them.
“He’s dead now.”
“You okay, Joe?” Blood stained his shirt.
“Fine. The bullet just grazed me. For all his evil, Robert was a lousy shot.”
Beth didn’t seem to hear him. She just stood, staring at Robert’s body.
“Get her out of here, Joe,” Jeff said.
“Joe, he’s bleeding on Sara’s carpet.” Beth clutched at the front of Joe’s shirt. “He can’t be dead on Sara’s floor. Not after what he did to her. I’ve got to get him out of here. Can you help me get him out of here?”
Roxy answered. “I’ll take care of it, honey.”
“Okay.” Beth stood there, unsure what to do. “Okay.”
“It’s all right, sha. Everything is going to be fine now.” Joe wrapped an arm around her and led her out into the hallway.
“Okay.” She wrung her hands. “Okay.”
“Let’s get you some fresh air.” He led her downstairs and then outside.
24
Jeff joined Beth and Joe outside. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” Joe said. “We’re fine. Beth just needed a few minutes.”
She cleared her throat. “I—I never saw a man killed before—I mean, in person.”
“It’s different than viewing clips on the computer,” Jeff said. “I understand.”
She nodded. “There are a lot of police here.”
He swiped at the sweat sheen on his forehead. “Everyone responds to a 911 call.”
“What about Nathara and Tack Grady?” Joe asked.
Beth gave him a slow blink. She couldn’t feel her feet or her fingertips. Joe rubbed little circles on her back and slowly the numbness was subsiding and feeling returning. She slumped against him. “Thank you for not being dead, Joe.”
“You’re welcome, sha.” He gave her a lazy smile that made her feel safe and secure, beloved.
“You’re really okay, right?” She looked at Jeff. “They bandaged his side but he wouldn’t go to the hospital. Does he need to go to the hospital?”
“I’m not hurt.” Joe clasped her upper arms, held her steady. “Everything is going to be okay now. Understand?”
She nodded, sniffed.
Jeff claimed their attention. “Nathara and Tack are in custody. She actually tried to pass herself off as Nora. That lasted about two seconds.”
“It’s over.” Something in Beth snapped. “It is, isn’t it, Joe?”
He nodded.
Admiration lit in Jeff’s eyes. “You handled Robert well, Beth.” When she nodded, he asked, “Did he say anything about Jackal?”
“No. Not a word.” She frowned. “We shouldn’t have killed him. He might have told us something.”
“No choice, sha. He was going to shoot you.”
“But now what he knows is lost to us.”
“There’s always another Jackal,” Joe spoke softly. “No matter how many we take down, there’s always another one behind him. We do what we can, when we can, as best we can, but there’s always one more.”
“That’s why you think steel.”
Joe nodded. “You seem okay now. Are you?”
“I will be.” She nestled closer to Joe. “Jeff, those films of Sara. I don’t want anyone to see them ever again.”
“But they’re evidence, Beth.”
She glared at him. “Sara did nothing wrong and she lost everything. Don’t you dare take any more from her. I mean it.”
Jeff looked away. “I’ll do everything humanly possible to keep them private. You have my word on it.”
Joe stroked Beth’s back. “Trust him. Jeff will take care of it. He loves Sara too.”
“I should have known Robert was hurting her, and I didn’t. The signs were all there.” Tears blurred her vision and Beth swallowed hard. “I think Maria suspected it, but she wasn’t sure, and I just didn’t see the signs.”
“You’re not to blame. Only Robert is.” Joe forced her to meet his gaze. “Let it be over.”
It was over. But the women around Robert Tayton paid a steep price for being close to him. “Oh, his poor parents.” Beth thought of the Martins. “They’re going to be so … hurt.”
“Yes,” Joe said.
“I wish …”
“I know.” He pressed his fingers over her lips. “No one wins in these situations. Everyone loses and that’s just a fact. But we found the truth, sha. Sometimes, the truth is as good as it gets.”
She closed her eyes for a brief moment. “It helps to heal.”
“Yes.” He passed her handbag, then circled her waist with his arm. “Let’s get you home.”
Beth leaned into him, calmer, working toward peace. The healing would come with time and grace. For now, she was content for Joe to be with her, knowing he would be with her from now on in good and hard times. “We need to go to the cottage.”
“Jeff is on his way to tell Sara.”
“I know.” Beth sighed. “But she’s going to be told she’s a widow. I need to be there.”
“She won’t have an attack, Beth.”
“No, she won’t. She’ll be relieved and devastated. She once loved him, and considering the kind of man he proved to be, she’ll be really confused by that.”
“Sara will work through it. You said yourself, she’s not fragile.”
“No, but she is human. She’ll need her best friend.” Sara and she had taken Robert’s worst and won. They had survived his Dead Game, but not unscathed. “Wounds were suffered.”
“And survived.” Joe squeezed her hand, seated her in the SUV. “We’ll go to the cottage. But let’s give her and Jeff a little time before we arrive.”
Thoughtful. Beth smiled at him. “I believe you owe me a cup of coffee.”
“I brought it to you at Sara’s, remember?”
“I do remember.” Her smile broadened. “So I have a question. You answer it, and I’ll buy.”
“Intriguing offer.” He hiked his eyebrows. “Your question?”
“What is your real name?”
“Thomas Edward Scoffield.”
Beth hugged him hard. “You trust me.”
“Totally.” He hugged her close. “But you’ll have to keep calling me Joe.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“That’s more than enough.” He pulled back. “Now that I’ve passed the trust test, you ready for Ruby’s?” He gave her that smile, the one he reserved just for her, that melted her knees and turned her mind to mush. She thought she just might like having a mushy mind. “I’ll go anywhere with you.�
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“Wow. Tell the woman your name and she’s putty in your hands. If you’d just let me in on that earlier, you could have spared me a lot of anxiety.”
“I didn’t want to spare you. I was too busy trying to spare me.”
“Ah. Max, eh?”
Surprise streaked through her. “I never told you his name.”
“I know. That worried me, so I asked Mark.”
Joe refilled her goodness well, and after the confrontation with Robert, it had been drained nearly dry. Images of the shooting flashed through her mind. The horror on Jeff’s face. “If I tell you I’m glad you shot Robert, will you think I’m an awful person?”
“He was going to kill you. I had no choice.”
“I’m glad you and Roxy shot him at the same time Jeff did. It’ll make it easier on Jeff.”
“Killing a man, even an evil NINA operative, isn’t easy.”
“I didn’t say easy. I said easier.”
He spared her a look.
“He’ll never have to second-guess himself, wonder if he shot Robert because he’d hurt Sara—so Sara would be available to him. Doubt could have nagged him for a long time.”
Understanding dawned. Joe tapped the turn signal with his little finger. “He and Sara will be fine. All they need is a little time.”
“Will we be fine too?” Her voice sounded weak, unsure. She hated that.
Joe kissed the back of her hand. “You love me, gorgeous. How could we not be fine?”
No uncertainty from his view. “Interesting response.”
“What?”
“I said I was crazy about you. I said I adored you. But I don’t remember ever saying I love you.”
“You’ve said it, sha. In a million ways.”
She had to ask. Had to do it. Had he told her in a million ways that he loved her? Beth’s mouth went dry. “Um, Joe?”
“Mmm?” He didn’t look away from the road.
The words wouldn’t come out of her mouth. She wasn’t that brave. “Never mind.”
Jeff found Sara on a porch swing outside the cottage. Her hair was down, loose and teasing her shoulders, and her feet were bare. The swelling was going down, the bruises fading. She swung the porch swing by toeing the concrete. “Sara?”
She smiled. “Jeff.” Her eyes sparkled. She looked peaceful.
He hated to be the one to shatter it, but he didn’t dare wait. Word was already spreading through the village. “It’s over, Sara.”
She stopped swinging. “Beth?”
“She and Joe are fine.”
Sara let out an enormous sigh. “Thank God.”
Jeff’s stomach flipped. He had to tell her not only that Robert was dead, but that he’d shot him. “Robert showed up at SaBe.”
“He went after Beth.” She stared up at him. “Is he in custody?”
“He’s dead, Sara.” He paused, gave her time to absorb that.
“Did Beth …?”
“No. He was going to shoot her, so Joe, Roxy, and I shot him.”
“All three of you?”
“We had no choice. It was kill him or he’d kill Beth.”
She stared off into the night for a long moment, almost as if waiting for something. Should he say more? What more could he say?
“Come sit by me.” She patted the swing at her side.
Jeff sat down. “You okay?” Stupid question. Who would be okay?
“I’m fine.” She offered his arm a reassuring pat. “I wish I could be sad, and in a way I am. But not as a wife would be.” She looked through the twisted limbs of the giant old oak. “I’m sad for the shattered dreams of a woman terrified to love and trust, who dared to anyway and was crushed.”
Jeff covered her hand on her thigh with his. “You’ll heal and dream again, Sara. I promise.”
“Will I?” Her smile was sad, bittersweet. “Can you ever be as blindly trusting as you were before you were betrayed?”
Jeff thought a long moment. “Probably not, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe seeing flaws and faults and knowing things can go bad and daring to dream anyway is better. There’s nothing reckless in it. No abandonment. You know the risks and choose to take them. Nothing blind in that. Wisdom. You lacked it before, but it’s there now. Takes a lot of courage to trust with wisdom.”
“I guess it does.”
“You guess?” he challenged her.
“Okay, it does.”
“Why?”
She looked into his eyes. “Because you know what a rare gift being loved is. How much richer it makes your life. Holding someone’s heart is a precious treasure. Hearts are sturdy and strong and capable of enduring a lot of pain. But they also hold love, and when you love them, they’re fragile too.”
“I’m sorry for what happened to you.”
“I’m not.” She hiked her chin, let him see the truth. “I hid my heart my whole life, Jeff. After my parents died, I couldn’t let myself totally love anything because losing it just hurt too much.”
“Then came Robert.”
“Yes, and look how that turned out.” She paused and pulled in a deep breath. “But I will never hide my heart again. That wasn’t a life. It was the shell of a life. I want it all. The good and bad and indifferent.”
He smiled. “I’m glad.”
“But for right now, I just want to be relieved.”
“I understand. I’ll go now and give you some privacy.” He started to stand.
She held him in place with a hand on his thigh. “Stay.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I’ve had privacy and I’ve done my mourning. Can we just sit here and swing and be … normal? I’ve missed being normal.”
He held her hand, laced their fingers. “For as long as you like.”
“Careful.” She squeezed. “Not today, but someday I’ll tell you that I fell in love with you my first day in the village, which you probably don’t even remember.”
She’d fallen in love with him then? Then? And he hadn’t seen it? Moron. “You got run over by that tourist on the bike and landed flat on your backside.” She had looked so stunned, sitting there on the sidewalk.
“You do remember.”
If she loved him then, there was hope for the future. “I remember …”
In the shadows of Ruby’s parking lot, Beth stepped out of the SUV and Joe enveloped her in a hug so tight it hurt her ribs, cupped her face and kissed her soundly, then hugged her even harder. “Easy, Joe. Ribs. Ribs.”
“Sorry.” He gentled his hold a fraction, his whole body shaking. “When I saw Robert aiming that gun at you, I thought I’d die.”
“Me too.” She smiled. “But like you said, we survived. We’ll be fine.” A lump formed in her throat. “Thank you for everything. I couldn’t have gotten through this without you.”
He hesitated, then rubbed gentle circles on her cheeks with his thumbs. “I love you, sha.”
“I love you too.” She never thought she’d say those words, especially not to a man like him, but they tumbled out of her mouth with ease on a rush of strong emotion and truth. She couldn’t not say them.
“Finally, she gives my heart the words.” He smiled. “I was beginning to wonder, I have to say.”
“You weren’t.”
“I was.”
“You’re a woman magnet and you’re trying to tell me you were worried?”
“Very worried.”
“Joseph.”
“It’s true, gorgeous.” He crossed his heart. “Attracting women isn’t me, it’s them. The woman I want is here, right now, in my arms. And I want her there. But that’s her choice, not mine.”
Beth snuggled closer. “It’s where she wants to be—but we’ve still got a lot of talking to do.”
“I knew there’d be a but.”
“It’s a little one.” She smiled. It was, and it was fading fast. “For now can I be relieved we’re alive and kiss you instead?”
“Absolutely.” He tilted his he
ad and his mouth descended to meet hers.
Beth sighed her content. Sara and Nora were fine. Everyone was fine. And Beth was in love. In her mind’s eye, she saw Robert, heard him whisper through the chambers of her mind: I win. You lose.
No, Robert. Not you, not Nathara, and not NINA.
Not this time …
Epilogue
A thick envelope arrived.
“Tell me that’s not a bill.” David Dawson smiled at his wife.
“It’s from Beth.” Millicent returned his smile.
“Well, hurry and read it. About time that girl remembered she had parents.”
“She hasn’t forgotten.” Since they’d moved to Europe after Robert’s death, the girls had been getting their feet and finding their way in the world. “She’s let us adjust to our new nest.”
Millicent walked outside, looked out on the breathtaking coast. She loved Italy. She’d always loved Italy. Living here had been her fantasy, but with Sara married to Robert, Millicent had feared she’d never live to see a time when she felt comfortable doing it.
So much had changed …
She sat in her rocker, watched David weed a flower bed, and opened the letter.
Dear Mom:
It dawned on me that today it’s been two years since you were home. I couldn’t believe it. So much has happened in Seagrove Village, and I know you’ve got to be settled into your life there now and ready to hear news of what’s happening here. Nora says I’m late sharing, but Sara and I discussed it, and after the gray hair we’ve put in your head with everything, we decided you needed a good, long stint of stress-free time to decompress. Well, it’s officially over now. I can’t contain myself any longer.
Nora is doing well. She had some new experimental eye surgery, and it seems to have helped at least a bit. She still can’t drive or anything, but Darla takes her out to Magnolia Branch every other Sunday after church. She puts flowers on Clyde’s grave and chats with him awhile. Mark and Joe put a couple benches out there, so they have comfortable places to sit while they visit. Nora still hasn’t been to Leavenworth to see Nathara, who’s under maximum security, where Nora says she belongs. No one has any illusions that the woman is less dangerous in prison than she was out of it.