Fear, real fear caused his eyes to show too much white, the tremors in his hands turned to earthquakes has he tried to wipe the froth building up on his mouth. Kristi was surprised when the tears came. After everything he had done to her, after all the hurt, there was something in her that still loved him. “Wouldn't do any good, Corny. You'll be dead before they get here. It only takes a little to kill a cow—imagine what it's doing to you. You ate three whole tubers.”
Eyes, already wide with fear, rolled back as pain ripped through his muscles. They convulsed, driving him down, his head hitting the side of the tub. He tried to talk and choked.
“Water hemlock. I read about it in one of your stupid books. There's no cure. Nothing you can do for the pain. Don't worry, though,” she wiped the tears from her eyes, grabbed some tissue and blew her nose, “it won't take long. Not with as much as you ate.”
Cowering, hunched over the pain in his belly, he looked up, the question clear in his eyes.
“I'm tired of you cheating on me Corny. So damned tired of it,” she cried. “Kari? Why? Because she'd be easy?”
But Corny was shaking his head, “I never cheated!” His body spasmed, heaved, and green, frothy vomit hit the closed toilet lid. Trying to catch his breath, trying to fight the pain, he tried to make her understand. “Didn't cheat, just tried to help them.”
“Help them?” she sneered past her tears. “Or help yourself to them? What do you mean, Kari's sick?”
Before he could answer, he jerked forward. The grand mal seizure hit sooner than she expected. Throwing him sideways, slamming him into the wall, the poison rode his central nervous system, shutting it down once and for all.
Jumping back, Kristi slammed the door shut, leaned against it and slid to the floor. Over her sobs, she could hear him hitting the walls, the cabinets, kicking the plastic tub in the small shower, shattering it.
When at last he went still, Kristi couldn't move, couldn't breathe. She wanted to take it back. More than anything in the world, she wanted to take it back.
25
Gracie couldn't believe she was still alive. When she heard the sound of the engine, she was sure she had been right. She was sure that someone was following her, waiting for his or her chance to finish the job of destroying the life that Gracie had worked so hard to build. She had given him his chance to kill her, to end it once and for all. Instead, he had saved her. More than that, he held her while she cried, rocked her against him, soothing her.
The voices, so loud after so many years of quietly working with her instead of against her, were still yammering in the background. They told her this was ruse, a deception. Told her that he didn't care about her. Wanted to lull her into believing she was safe so that his continued torture would be so much sweeter.
Yet when he spoke his voice shook, not with anger, not with malice, but with fear and concern. When the tidal wave of emotion finally receded, leaving her feeling wiped out, cleansed, she pushed away from him and looked into his eyes.
During her mad dash on her bike, during their standoff on the overlook, she had not once seen his face. When she looked up, she couldn't reconcile the man who was holding her with the one who had been glaring at her a few hours before. If looks had been able to kill, she would have dropped dead where she stood in front of the window, while Ranger Mathews hammered away at her.
There was no anger in the eyes now. Only confusion and fear. He pulled her to her feet as he stood up, his arms still locked around her. “I need you to talk to me, Gracie. I need to understand what's happening.”
As she opened her mouth to tell him she didn't know, thunder—louder than the rush of water over the falls filled the air and the black sky came alive as a ball of fire boiled through the night behind them. Gracie screamed, ducking her head in the ranger's chest as the platform shook and the sound wave from the explosion assaulted them.
Shoving her back toward the trail, he grabbed his weapon and her jacket before following her. He steered her to his truck, pushed her in, and began to turn away. Thinking better of it, he looked back at Gracie and pointed at her nose, his eyes fierce. “Behave, Gracie. I mean it.”
Unable to talk, she nodded her head and watched as he grabbed the frame of her bike and tossed it into the back of his truck, making no effort to be quiet. Fire lit up the sky to her right, glowing like a midnight sun over the treetops. Too close to be in the village, the explosion could have only come from the cabins.
As the ranger got into the truck and hit the gearshift, slamming the truck into drive, she asked, “Are you taking me in?”
He shook his head but said nothing as he raced back up the road toward the village. As they reached the entrance, fire trucks and emergency vehicles flew through the intersection, racing towards the fire that was growing out of control. He reached over, grabbed her jacket and pulled her down in the seat, “Stay down until I tell you to get up.”
Confused, afraid, Gracie didn't cry. This was real, she was aware, and once again, her voices were silenced by the whirling reality around them. “I don't understand.”
“I need time to rethink this,” he answered, his eyes darting this way and that as the inside of the truck filled with the castoff red, white, and blue flashing emergency lights. “We need to talk.”
The lights faded, darkness reclaimed the cab and she felt the truck rise. When he patted her on the back, she rose to find them climbing the Norris-Canyon Road. She expected him to find one of the many trailheads and pull over. Instead, he kept going. Heading for the Norris Junction as fast as the truck would move.
Looking out the back glass, the view took her breath away. The valley should have been dark, a small scattering of lights to signal her home. Fire climbed into the night sky, twisted, turned, and breathed as if it had a life of its own. Hell-bent on devouring everything it touched. Steam erupted in plumes as the crews assailed the beast with high-pressure streams of water from all sides.
As the road curved away, putting one mountain top after another between them and the fire, the sky behind them continued to glow. Its reflection caught her eye in the mirror every time the road carried them back across its path.
As the miles rolled passed, the ranger remained quiet, studying the road ahead as he pushed the truck to its limit, taking curves too fast. As she had biked through the night, she thought she was running from the person who had targeted her and her friends. It had confirmed for her, or so she had assumed, that there was someone out there, someone trying to destroy her family, trying to destroy her. When they had reached the edge, she thought she was forcing the killer's hand, ending the nightmare once and for all.
Looking at his profile in the dim light from the dashboard, she realized that he was the one who looked lost. She wrestled with reconciling what she had thought she had known and what was real. If this man was what he appeared to be, he had been chasing her not to kill her, but to arrest her because he thought she was the killer.
Remembering the way he glared at her through the window, the chase through the village made sense. He thought she was guilty, that he was going to catch her red-handed, murdering someone else. Case closed. Party over.
Instead of arresting her, he had saved her life. Instead of turning her over, he ran with her. But to where? Why? She shook her head and settled a little further in the seat. The certainty that she was being followed by the killer meant that she wasn't taking the plunge into insanity. It meant the voices had been right.
If he wasn't the one destroying her life, however, it left the door wide open. It put her back on the table as a suspect in her own mind, as well as Kristi. And if he wasn't the killer, what happened five years ago? What happened to his wife?
“Did you kill Lester Dunkirk?”
His words were so abrupt after the silence of the drive the answer was surprised out of her. “I don't think so.” She shook her head, thought about it, and then decided she had to talk to someone, she had to trust someone. “But I can't be sure.”
She wanted to know where he was taking her, what he was going to do with her. He was quiet for so long she began to squirm. She wanted him to say something, anything, but she couldn't bring herself to let down the wall and screw up her courage.
“Tell me about Lester. Tell me what happened.”
26
Hudson tried to focus on the road as he barreled toward West Yellowstone. As Gracie began to speak, he found his speed dropping and he glanced again and again at the quiet woman sitting on the other side of the truck. Every word rang true and he didn't think she was holding anything back.
The description she gave of the little girl, reaching for the doorknob in the dark, was the most intriguing and the most vibrant, as if it—not the body in Sulphur Caldron—was the reality that was strongest for her. Something about it tugged at the back of his mind.
“What made you realize the body was real? Did you go back to the caldron?”
For the first time that night, he sensed Gracie holding back, keeping something from him. “Yes,” she hesitated. “I needed to know for sure.”
Before he could pin her down about it, find out what she was holding back, his phone rang. David.
He pulled over, minutes from the west gate, to keep from losing the signal again. “What the hell happened down there?”
“Looks like a propane leak in one of the cabins. It belonged to one of the four, Kari Clancy. We're still digging it out, but her car is here. Chances are she was in the cabin when it happened.” David paused, the sound of chaos in the background. “Hudson, we can't find Gracie, either.”
He avoided the question. Buying time to figure out how to handle David, he asked, “What caused the leak? Do they know yet?”
“The copper pipe that feeds the heater was disconnected, flooded the room with propane. They haven't found the ignition source yet.”
“How long after that cork was pulled would it take the place to blow?”
“Not sure yet. They still have a lot of work to do here, but the chief says it could have gone up in as little as fifteen minutes, especially if a candle or something was left burning. These units are pretty small.”
“And made of kindling.” Hudson didn't want Gracie to know what David had told him, not just yet. “Gracie is with me, David. She hasn't been out of my sight since I parked in the upper loop.”
“You think she's innocent,” the incredulity in David's voice made Hudson grin.
He wouldn't have believed it either, not if he hadn't been there on the platform with her. “Of this, I'm positive. Of everything else, I'm leaning that way. But one way or another, she's involved. I'm going to keep working with her, try to figure out what's going on.”
“If you say so, boss.” David didn't sound convinced. Hudson couldn't blame him. “Keep me in the loop.”
Gracie sat in her seat, quietly watching him as he pulled back onto the road. He could feel the questions burning there, but didn't want to give her any more than necessary. Not yet. He couldn't quiet lie to her either. “Gas leak.”
“There's no such thing as a coincidence. Not in this nightmare,” she whispered and turned to look out the passenger side window.
In West Yellowstone, Hudson circled the retail blocks and found his favorite all-night café. A table in the back of the empty restaurant and he let Gracie crawl into the booth before him. “Tell me about Mike. What happened last night at K-Bar?”
“Nothing, not that I know of. He was watching me, watching us. Not really hiding it. He bought Kari a drink or two at the bar, Kristi stayed behind, watching soccer and Julie drove me home. I didn't know he was missing until the helicopters flew over. I didn't realize it was him until we got corralled in the backroom.”
Gracie fell silent as a waitress, red hair piled high on her head, smacking noisily on a piece of gum, brought the carafe of coffee. When she was gone, Hudson asked. “After David let you go, you went back to work?”
“Yes, a couple of guys came in for supplies and gossip,” she shook her head, and offered a sour laugh. “I'd be lying if I tried to tell you who or what we talked about. After David got through with me, I was on auto-pilot, all systems in emergency shutdown.”
“When did you leave to go home?”
A cloud seemed to pass over her face, “My supervisor saw the light and sent me home. It was after seven.”
“Something happened. What was it?”
“I saw,” she swallowed hard and looked down at her coffee. A tear slid down her cheek and he had to resist the urge to wipe it away. “I saw Kari with Kristi's husband. How could they do something like that?”
He felt like a light had finally come on, but it wasn't strong enough yet to show the links that held this spider's web together. He knew it hurt her, but he pressed on. He had to know for sure. “They were having an affair?”
She looked away, crying harder now. Making him feel like a heel. “Yes.”
Gracie was right, there was no such thing as a coincidence in this twisted nightmare. “Something else happened. What was it?”
She squirmed under his scrutiny, but finally answered. “Kristi was there, in the shadows.”
“She saw them? How did she react?”
Gracie laughed but there was no mirth in it. “How would you react if you saw your wife cheating on you with your best friend?”
He felt as if he'd been slapped and pulled away from her.
“I'm sorry,” she buried her face in her hands. “I didn't mean that.”
He took Gracie's chin and turned her face to make her look at him. “It's not happening to me, Gracie. It happened to Kristi. Do you think she'd hurt either of them?” He wanted to pull her into his arms, tell her he wouldn't allow this to happen to her. He forced his hand away from her face. “Do you think she's capable of killing?”
She looked like she was wrestling with the answer, then she tilted her head to the side as if listening to someone whisper in her ear. When she finally turned back, she didn't meet his eyes. A gentle nod of her head confirmed what he already suspected.
He had the phone out in an instant, but it went straight to David's voicemail. He told him to get someone over to Kristi's and pick her up. He also warned him that her husband could also be in danger. Just to make sure David got the message, he sent a text with the same information before slipping it into his pocket. When he looked back up, her head was tilted again. “You're schizophrenic, aren't you?”
She laughed through fresh tears and shook her head. “I quit listening to people tell me what I should and should not be a long time ago. All I know is this is my home, my family. The only one that's ever mattered and it's shattering. I'm walking on ice and it's cracking around my feet. I have no idea which way to go or how to stop the ground from coming out from under me.”
He could almost see why Mike was killed. Cornelius and Kari were definitely part of the circle. Their betrayal would fall into place if they could find out a little more. But how did Lester fit into this? “All of this started with Lester's death. It was a catalyst of some kind. But how?”
Gracie refilled her cup, treated it with a healthy dose of cream and sugar while she answered. “I know it was for me. If I didn't have anything to do with his death, then finding his body knocked me off my safe little perch.”
“Did you know him?”
“I wish I could tell you no, but you couldn't be in management and not know Lester. He was a self-righteous little pig of a man. Had a serious hard-on against Canyon.” She flinched and met his eyes. “Especially Kristi.”
Hudson watched her reflection in the window, trying to puzzle out where Lester fit. If this was Kristi, and it was starting to look like it was, something had to have h
appened with Lester to cause a psychological break. One he had been too eager to attribute to Gracie.
Guilt gnawed at him as he watched Gracie's fragile, translucent image. Beyond the window, his truck sat in the parking lot, at an angle to the curb. The steel lockbox in the back caught the light, sending it in a thousand directions.
Pushing out of the booth, he headed for the door before remembering Gracie. He spun around, pointed a finger at her and said, “Stay.”
“Woof.” Her eyes were swollen from crying. Her face pale, hollowed out by the stress she'd been under, yet her eyes twinkled in the light.
“Good girl,” he chuckled and stepped outside.
The keys were in his hand as he stepped up to the truck. Everything had happened so fast, he'd forgotten all about the laptop Silvia had given him at Lake. If Lester had made a habit of getting under Kristi's skin, it might be the connection they needed. As meticulous as his hoarding skills were, Lester was bound to keep a record of anyone he targeted.
Popping the lock, he grabbed the laptop and closed the lid in time to see the waitress laugh at something Gracie said. She looked up at him in the window as Gracie hooked her thumb in his direction, and laughed harder still.
Holding back the information about Kari seemed wrong. He knew he'd have to tell her sooner rather than later, but he couldn't bring himself to do it just yet. He felt like, for the first time, he was getting a tiny glimpse of the real woman. Having built her up as such a monster, he was still coming to terms with the vulnerable, fragile woman he'd found ready to jump to her death at the falls.
Seeing her smile, hearing her laugh, he felt like this was the real woman, the woman behind the fear. Sitting in the booth with her so close to him, so warm, the madness of the past few days was a world away. An alternate world in which love was still something he could hope for.
Hearing of Kari's death might cause another meltdown and though he hadn't been close enough to see it happen, he could imagine how bad it might be. He wasn't ready to deal her another blow, even if they weren't in public.
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