“Just a little game, Harper. To draw you out of your hiding place. I figured you couldn’t resist anything that had to do with your sister and niece.”
“But...why now?”
“Because Maggie was in my way, and I knew you would be, too,” she nearly shouted, then took a deep, steadying breath. “I figured if you were dead, there’d be one less person who’d ask questions when I brought Amelia out of hiding. That’s what I planned, you know—that Gabe and I would get married, and that one day I’d hire a private detective who would just happen to find the missing child. With you gone, there’d be one less person who would wonder why Maggie hadn’t killed her when she killed Lydia. Of course, then I realized that I couldn’t have it all. I couldn’t have Gabe and my daughter. I had to kill Amelia to make sure Maggie went to jail. Only you stupidly ate the cookies.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Does crazy earn enough money to hire men to do her work for her and convince them that if they don’t keep quiet they’ll die? Does crazy plan something like this and get away with it?” She cackled with glee. “No, Harper. It doesn’t. I’m not crazy. I’m in love.”
Sandra opened a door and shoved her into a dark room.
“Only Gabe refused to see that we’re meant to be together. He needs to be punished for that.”
Somewhere in the darkness a child sobbed, and Harper’s pulse leaped.
“It’s okay, Amelia,” she called into the darkness. “Everything is going to be fine.”
“It is going to be fine,” Sandra mocked. “Right as rain, Amelia. Once I have what I want.”
“What do you want?” Harper asked, backing away from Sandra’s shadowy form, moving toward the sound of the crying child.
“For Gabe to suffer the way I have. For him to want something that he’ll never get. For him to spend the rest of his life with a hole in his heart.”
Harper’s stomach churned, her heart thudding with terror.
Behind her, something moved. She turned and nearly stumbled over her niece.
“Amelia?” She knelt, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, her mind racing with a thousand things she could do, should do. But which ones would save them?
Amelia was bound, hands behind her back, ankles together. Tall for her age. Still blond. Her eyes shaped just like Lydia’s, her face a pale oval in the darkness.
“It’s going to be okay,” she told the crying girl, and she prayed that it was true.
“She’s going to kill us,” Amelia responded through her tears, and Harper knew she was right. Sandra had one purpose, one goal. She didn’t care if she survived it, didn’t care if she lived or died. She wanted Gabe to suffer.
There was a chair nearby. A table. Nothing light enough to lift with ease, but Harper was strong from years of hauling clay, and she thought she just might be able to use the chair as a weapon.
“She’s not going to kill us,” she assured Amelia, frantically tugging at the ropes that bound the girl’s wrists while Sandra locked the door.
Sandra laughed. “You’re a good aunt, trying to make her feel better. And honestly, I’m tempted to let her live. She’s only a year younger than my Autumn would have been. She almost is my Autumn, since I gave the pastor and his sweet, sweet wife Autumn’s birth certificate.”
“I’m sorry you lost your daughter,” Harper said, sure she heard something moving outside the door.
If Sandra heard, she didn’t let on.
She was pacing back and forth in front of the door, head down as she muttered. “Not as sorry as Gabe is going to be when he loses everything,”
Harper leaned down, whispered in Amelia’s ear, “I’m going to distract her. You hop to the door, unlock it and scream as if every monster in the world is chasing you.”
“They are,” Amelia said, but she levered up onto her knees and scooted along the floor. No more sobs. No more tears. Harper didn’t know if she understood what was happening. She had no idea if Amelia even knew who she was. They were in this together, though, and the eight-year-old seemed willing to try anything to escape.
“What are you doing?” Sandra screeched, turning from the door. “I told you not to move.”
She raised the gun, and Harper knew this was it, her one chance. Her last chance.
She grabbed the chair and swung it so hard, her shoulders popped. It slammed into Sandra with enough energy to send her flying.
The gun went off, the world rocking with the force of the explosion.
Someone screamed. Screamed again.
And Sandra was up, lunging toward Harper, the gun pointed, Amelia’s screams filling the air.
Was she hurt? Unlocking the door? Going for help?
Harper grabbed Sandra’s gun arm and shoved it to the side as she fired again. The bullet whizzed past, slamming into the wall.
“You are going to pay!” Sandra screamed, throwing her weight against Harper, forcing her into the wall.
It knocked the breath out of her, but Amelia was still screaming, the sound echoing through the room, filling Harper with adrenaline and more terror than she’d ever felt. She had to save her niece. Had to.
She punched Sandra’s stomach, shoving her back, knocking her off her feet. The gun fell to the floor and skidded under the desk.
“Hurry, Amelia!” she shouted as she dived after the gun, because her niece was still at the door, struggling with the lock.
“I can’t!” the girl cried. “It’s stuck.”
“You have to,” she responded, her hand on the barrel of the gun, the cool metal beneath her fingers.
But Sandra was there, slamming her fist down on Harper’s.
“You will not win,” she growled, snagging the gun.
Harper rolled away, putting the desk between them to make sure Sandra was facing away from the door.
It was all she could do. The only thing she could offer.
Please, God. Please save Amelia.
The door finally opened, muted light from the hallway spilling in. People spilling in. Shadows rushing forward, people shouting, and Sandra was on her feet again, the gun still in her hand. She raised it and pointed it straight at Harper’s heart.
“Die!” she yelled, and the world exploded again.
* * *
One shot. That was all Logan had. All he needed.
One shot, and the gun flew out of Sandra’s hand, clattering to the floor as the lights suddenly went on.
Blood. It dripped onto the ground, pooling at Sandra’s feet.
She was still standing, though, the arm Logan had shot hanging limply by her side.
“All I wanted,” she said as an FBI agent rushed in and pulled her good arm up behind her back, “was what I deserved.”
Then the agent was leading her away, and Logan was looking into Harper’s face.
“Thank the Lord,” he whispered, and she walked forward into his arms as if she’d always been there, would always be there.
“I thought Amelia was never going to get the door open,” she said, her hands on his waist, her head pressed against his chest.
“I thought we were never going to get inside. An agent had run for the key, but I heard the gunshot...” And his heart had nearly stopped.
“Sandra is certifiably crazy.”
“Would have been a good thing to know before now,” he said, his voice gruffer than he’d intended.
He should never have left the hospital. If he’d lost Harper, he would never have forgiven himself for doing it.
“She covered it well.” Harper shuddered, pulling back a little. “Where’s Amelia?”
“Here,” Malone said, his arm around the little girl’s shoulder as he led her back across the room.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Harper,” Amelia said, her eyes fill
ed with fear. “I was so scared my fingers wouldn’t work.”
“You did great, honey.” Harper knelt so that they were eye to eye. “You’re very brave. Just like your mother was.”
“You mean Lydia? I remember her,” Amelia said. “Just a little. And Gabe, and—” she glanced over her shoulder, her eyes wide with fear “—the monster, but I just thought it was all a dream, you know? I never thought any of it was real.”
“I’m sorry, honey.” Harper reached out, and Amelia hugged her. They stayed that way as the police moved in and an emergency team rushed to make sure they weren’t injured. Stayed there, in each other’s arms. Reunited at last. Safe at last.
This was why Logan did what he did.
This was what he’d devoted his life to.
This made all the late nights, the high risk, the long weeks away from home worth it.
Harper met his eyes and smiled, a dark bruise on her cheek painful and swollen, but the look on her face one of joy, contentment, love.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, and he crouched beside her, tucking a piece of silky hair behind her ear.
“I don’t want your thanks, Harper,” he said honestly. What he wanted was forever, for always, for every moment they could have together.
He didn’t say that to her.
He didn’t want to scare her away.
She didn’t look scared, though. She looked as if maybe she wanted the same thing he did. To walk forward together and see where the road would lead them.
She took his hand, kissed his palm, closed his fist around the spot.
“What’s that for?” he asked, smiling for the first time since he’d realized that Sandra had taken Amelia and headed to the hospital.
“A piece of my heart.”
“That,” he murmured, “is the best gift I have ever received.”
And then he leaned in and kissed her gently as Amelia giggled in her arms.
FIFTEEN
Christmas.
Not a day for nerves.
A day for hope, for renewal, for promises and for joy.
But Harper was nervous. She eyed herself in the mirror and wondered if she should have worn the black dress instead of the blue one. Both were new. Both had been purchased before she’d made the trip to North Carolina.
Before they’d made the trip.
Logan had invited her entire family—a family that had grown threefold in the past month. Not just her and Picasso anymore. Gabe and Maggie. Camden, Hannah and Amelia. Even Adeline had come, because she was part of the new family that had been built, and no one wanted to leave her behind.
“You look beautiful, Aunt Harper,” Amelia said quietly from the doorway of the room.
“So do you, sweetie,” Harper said, motioning for her to enter. “I love your dress.”
“Mom made it for me.” She lifted the hem of a pretty red dress and turned so that the fabric swirled around her. “Maggie and Gabe bought me another one, but I like this better. So I told them I’d wear that to school the first day after break.”
“I think that’s a wonderful idea,” Harper said, giving her niece a gentle hug.
Despite all the trauma she’d been through, Amelia seemed to be adjusting well. Probably because Maggie and Gabe had been married by a justice of the peace and relocated to Pennsylvania. Neither wanted to tear Amelia out of the arms of the couple who had loved her for four years. They’d moved into a house down the street from Camden and Hannah, and they were working on building a family that included both sets of parents.
It was tough, but for the sake of Amelia, all the adults were trying, and they all seemed happy.
Watching Gabe and Maggie make decisions together had shown Harper what love could be if both people were willing to compromise, to sacrifice, to listen and learn. Camden and Hannah seemed to be just as connected to each other.
It gave her hope that maybe that kind of love was just around the corner, that maybe what she felt when she was with Logan would last.
Logan...
Just thinking about him made her pulse jump and her cheeks warm.
Coming to North Carolina with him was part of a fragile new beginning that they both wanted.
She’d told him that she’d given him a piece of her heart. The truth was, he had much more of her heart than that. He had every part of it. One day, she’d tell him that. Maybe today. Their first Christmas together.
“You look scared,” Amelia said, cocking her head to the side, the gesture so like one of Lydia’s that Harper’s heart ached.
“You look like Lydia,” she said, because both sets of parents had agreed that talking about what had happened was the key to healing.
“And like you,” Amelia responded. “I’m glad. You’re very pretty, and you love art. Just like me.”
“I didn’t realize you were an artist.”
“Not yet,” Amelia said solemnly. “But one day I will be. I have something for you. My very first pot. Gabe bought me a potter’s wheel a couple of weeks ago, and I threw a bowl. I had to try like a million times before I got it right.”
“A potter’s wheel, huh? That’s a nice gift,” she said as Amelia tugged her out of the room and down the wide hallway of the farmhouse that Logan had grown up in. It looked like him—steady and sturdy and strong.
“He’s trying to buy my affection. That’s what my friends at school say.”
“Do you believe that?” Harper asked, biting back a harsh response. Gabe had a lot of faults, but he was doing everything he could to give Amelia a wonderful, stable environment to grow up in.
“At first,” Amelia said matter-of-factly, “I did. Then I told Mom that I thought buying someone’s affection was stupid, and that I kind of thought Gabe was stupid for trying to do it. She set me to right.”
The words coming out of Amelia’s mouth made Harper smile. “That sounds just like something your mother would say.”
“It is. She likes Gabe and Maggie. She says they’re good people, and they want what’s best for me. She also says that Gabe isn’t buying my affection. He’s making up for lost time.”
“I think that’s true,” Harper said, stepping into a room decorated in yellows and blues. Amelia’s things were spread out on the bed, her clothes tossed on the floor.
“I guess I think it’s true, too,” Amelia said, digging into her suitcase. “Dad says that God has a plan for everything and a time for everything, and I think that’s right. I think Mom and Dad really needed me, and all the bad things that happened put me right in their arms. And, you know,” she said, pulling something out of the suitcase, “I needed them, too. They’ve taught me a lot of stuff that I don’t think Gabe could have, and now we’re all together, and that’s cool. Not everyone has two sets of parents.”
“You’re a smart girl, Amelia.”
“Maybe,” Amelia responded, pulling tissue paper off the thing she was holding to reveal a small clay bowl, the shape just a little lopsided, the colors like a winter storm—grays and whites with hints of blue.
She handed it to Harper.
“I made it for you.”
Harper felt the smooth finish, studied the swirling colors. She turned it over, saw that the bottom was painted crisp white, a small red heart in the center.
“This is beautiful,” Harper said, and she meant every word of it.
“Mom says I have talent. I don’t care about that. I just care about making things that are like what’s in my head. This is about us.”
“You and your family?”
“Me and you. We’re like those colors—kind of whipping around sometimes, wondering where we fit. If we just stop and think about it, though, we realize the truth.” She took the bowl, turned it so the heart was showing. “Where we fit is in the hearts of the people
who love us.”
“That is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard,” Harper said, her eyes burning with tears she didn’t want to shed. Not in front of her niece.
“Then, I guess you haven’t heard a whole lot of beautiful things,” Amelia said with a grin. “Anyway, I was going to wrap it and put it under the tree, but you looked nervous, and I wanted you to know things are going to be okay.” She handed the bowl back. “I better go downstairs. Adeline is making pancakes, and all those loud kids will eat them before I get any if I don’t hurry.”
Amelia flounced out of the room and left Harper standing with the bowl in her hand and tears in her eyes.
She sniffed them away, stepped into the hall and ended up in Logan’s arms.
Exactly the place she most wanted to be.
She looked up into his familiar face, his gorgeous dark blue eyes.
He was everything she hadn’t thought she needed, everything she’d given up wanting. Everything she’d once prayed that she would have. When she looked at him, Daniel didn’t exist; her mother’s and sister’s terrible track records with men didn’t exist. When she looked at him all that existed was the two of them and what they could be together if they were willing to try.
“Wow!” he said. “You look amazing.”
“Thank you,” she responded, her heart doing a giant flip as she met his eyes. “So do you.”
“I couldn’t let my brothers dress better than me,” he responded, tugging at the hem of his black suit jacket. It fit him like a glove, the sky blue dress shirt he’d paired it with perfect.
“It doesn’t matter what any of your brothers wear, you’ll still be the wardrobe winner to me,” she said, and he smiled.
“You always make me feel as if I can conquer the world, Harper. You know that?”
“It’s just clothes,” she said with a smile, smoothing his lapel. “Of course, you probably could conquer the world. With HEART backing you, I don’t think there’s anything you can’t do.”
“Including getting married and raising a family,” he murmured, offering a gentle kiss. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot.”
Deadly Christmas Secrets Page 18