The Stranger in Her Bed

by Janet Chapman

  "Then what exactly is it, Frank?" John asked, walking over and snapping a handcuff on Frank's raised right wrist. "It's a little late to be calling on neighbors, don't you think?"

  "We only came here to look for something I lost when I visited Anna last month. I'm pretty sure I dropped my pocketknife someplace in this area."

  "I don't remember you being near the back of the house," Anna said, finally stepping away from her rock to join them. "You came and went by my front door," she added, noticing that Alex also had a gun pointed at the men, in particular at the Boston guy, who still hadn't spoken a word.

  "Tell them we're partners, Anna," Frank pleaded.

  "Did you kill my grandfather, Frank?"

  "Samuel?" he said on an indrawn breath, his gaze darting over his shoulder at John, who was just fastening the cuffs behind his back. Frank violently shook his head. "I had nothing to do with that, Tate," he said in a desperate whine. "That was completely Ron and Gary's doing."

  "We were only trying to get the old man out of the way," Gary rushed to say, Ethan still holding him by the collar. "We weren't trying to kill him."

  "And Anna?" Ethan growled, giving his prisoner a violent shake. "If you didn't want to kill anyone, why set up her accident the same way?"

  "It was Ron's idea again," Gary confessed, cringing from Ethan's anger. "He said she'd just get banged up, because there was plenty of snow this time to cushion the crash."

  "Where is Briggs?" Ethan asked, giving Gary another shake when he didn't immediately answer.

  "He split. He's probably halfway to Mexico by now, since he found out a sheriff's car had visited his house."

  John stepped over and quickly handcuffed the Boston guy, who seemed way too calm and cooperative to Anna.

  John asked, "Who's your new partner, Frank?"

  "Shut up, Coots," the man said in a warning growl. "Keep quiet and I'll have us out on bail by noon."

  "Your city lawyers won't be much help to you up here," John said, grabbing his arm and turning him around. "Our judges aren't real fond of folks burning down our mills."

  John tossed a set of handcuffs to Ethan, then reached for the radio mike attached to his shoulder. "We're all secure here," he said into the mike. "Three to transport. Move in."

  "Roger that, Tate," dispatch returned. "ETA, ten minutes."

  Anna breathed a sigh of relief that more officers were on the way, despite the fact that everything seemed to have gone quite smoothly. If she could only shake the feeling that something still wasn't quite right.

  "Paul," Alex said into his own little radio, "where the hell are you? It doesn't take that long to get down here."

  He released the button and waited, but Paul didn't answer.

  "Paul!" Alex snapped more forcefully. "Answer me."

  "Shit," Ethan growled, shoving Gary toward the other two prisoners. He walked over and took Anna's radio from her and held it up to his mouth. "Dammit, if you're lost, admit it," he said. "Where the hell are you?"

  The radio remained silent.

  "He might have fallen and is hurt, and dropped the radio out of reach," Anna offered, laying her hand on Ethan's tensed arm. "Or maybe he just fell and his radio is broken. We'll go find him."

  "Sit down right here on the steps," John said, pushing his three prisoners toward the porch stairs. "Anna, you still got that pepper spray?"

  "Right here," she said, walking over to John.

  "Are you comfortable watching them while we go look for Paul?" he asked.

  She nodded. "I'll watch them."

  "They're secured, and I've patted them down for weapons. A couple of deputies will be here soon, but if any one of these guys so much as twitches," he said, addressing the three men more than her, "you just point that pepper spray at his face and pull the trigger. Got that?"

  "I got it," Anna said, holding the spray so they'd see it.

  Ethan put his arm around her shoulders, giving her a gentle squeeze. "You'll be okay," he assured her, handing her back her radio. "And we'll be within earshot. Just give us a holler if they give you any trouble."

  "Maybe you should leave me a gun," she said.

  John immediately yelped "No!" and Ethan just laughed.

  "Let's go," Alex said, already heading into the woods toward the main road. "We'll split up. John, take the lane. Ethan, you search in between us."

  "You'll be okay?" Ethan said again, this time as a question.

  "I'll be just fine," she promised, giving him a nudge to get him moving. "In fact," she said a bit louder for her prisoners' benefit, "I hope one of them does try something." She turned back toward them, aiming the pepper spray directly at their faces. "As soon as they're out of earshot, I might spray you all anyway, for intending to burn down my home," she said in a tight whisper.

  "Anna," Frank entreated, leaning away from her threat. "None of this was my idea."

  "You knew about that old sales agreement, didn't you? Is that what you were looking for, Frank? So I couldn't prove Samuel hadn't taken advantage of your father?" She kicked him in the shin, holding the pepper spray up when he yelped. "You killed my grandfather, you bastard! Over money."

  "I didn't have anything to do with that," Frank said. "That was Ron and Gary's idea. I never asked them to touch the old man."

  Gary side-kicked Frank in his other shin, and Frank yelped again, wiggling closer to the Boston guy to get away. But the Boston guy shoved him back with his shoulder just as something solid slammed into Anna's side, knocking her down to the ground and landing on top of her with a jarring thud.

  "Well, look who I got here," her attacker said, lunging for her hand just as Anna pulled the trigger on the canister of spray.

  The air immediately filled with atomized pepper, and both of them started coughing. The pepper burned Anna's nose and pricked her eyes with burning tears. She pressed the radio's talk button at the same time she shoved her elbow into her assailant's ribs and lashed out with her feet— all as she twisted to roll away from him.

  "There's a fourth guy!" she yelled just before convulsing in a fit of coughing, the acrid spray making her mouth burn nearly as badly as her eyes were.

  Even though the fourth man was coughing just as violently, he lunged for her again just as somebody else landed on top of both of them. The Boston guy, Anna realized, and she closed her eyes tight and pulled the trigger on the canister again, twisting to roll away. Handcuffed, he wasn't able to avoid the spray and shouted when it caught him square in the face. Anna rolled free and stood. Blinking through her burning tears, she pushed the talk button again. "I need hel— "

  Her plea was cut off when she was tackled again. But just as she was about to punch the guy in the face with the radio, a deep, hair-raising, lethal-sounding growl came from the shadows mere feet away and the man went perfectly still.

  Anna dropped her head and the man reared up just as Bear lunged, the primordial sound the old dog made sending a chill down her spine. Her assailant cried out when Bear bit down onto some part of his anatomy, the animal's momentum carrying them both away from her. Anna blindly scrambled to her feet, stumbled into the guy from Boston, who was frozen in surprise at Bear's attack, and gave him another shot of pepper spray to make sure he stayed down. Then she blindly ran after Bear, the vicious sounds of battle guiding her.

  Ethan suddenly appeared at her side. "Stay back," he shouted, pushing her away to go after Bear himself.

  Anna stumbled after them, but arms of steel wrapped around her. "Stay back," John said.

  Then the air filled with the sound of sirens and strobing lights. Blinking her stinging eyes, Anna was barely able to see Bear and the man locked in battle, Ethan approaching them at a run.

  Suddenly, Bear and the guy vanished.

  John let Anna go and ran up to Ethan, shone his flashlight through the trees, then finally pointed it down at the ground. Anna could just make out the gaping hole in the earth.

  She ran up to Ethan and clutched his arm to look down in the hole
. "Bear!" she cried when she spotted the old Lab's body half under the man in a foot of water at the bottom of the old well, both of them unmoving.

  "Don't get too close," Ethan said, holding her against his side like a vise. "We don't know how stable the ground is."

  "He's dead, isn't he?" she whispered into his shirt, her stinging eyes flushing with tears.

  "His neck's broken," Ethan said into her hair, obviously knowing who she was referring to. He used both arms to hug her to him. "It was instant, Anna," he whispered. "He couldn't do anything to help Samuel, but he was still able to save someone he loved. He died a hero."

  "H-he was so vicious," she said. "He went after that man like a… like a powerful young dog."

  "I saw, sweetheart," Ethan said, hugging her tightly. "He definitely got his revenge on Briggs."

  Anna sucked in a shuddering breath and buried her face in Ethan's chest. Her attacker was Ron Briggs?

  The sound of multiple sirens echoed through the forest, growing louder as vehicles sped down her lane. The blue and white strobes of two sheriff's cruisers finally broke through the trees, their headlights shining up the hill when they stopped below. Alex suddenly stepped out of the dense woods with his arm around an unsteady Paul, who was holding what looked like a torn piece of flannel shirt to his bleeding forehead.

  "Paul!" Anna said, running toward him. "What happened?"

  "Briggs was hiding just outside of camp," he said, wincing when she lifted the cloth away to see his wound. "He blindsided me when I walked past him. I'm okay," he said, apparently more embarrassed than hurt.

  "You got a ladder around here, Anna?" John asked. "We need to get Briggs out."

  "It's hanging on the back of the house," she said, wiping her eyes on her shirttail.

  Ethan appeared beside her again and started guiding her down the slope. "Let's get your face washed off," he said. "That's the problem with pepper spray. It affects its user almost as much as the intended victim."

  "Where the hell is Gary Simpson?" John growled from ahead of them. "Dammit, he ran off!"

  "He won't get far in handcuffs," Alex said, leading Paul down to the house. He handed off his brother to Ethan. "I'll go get the idiot," Alex said with a tired sigh.

  Ethan led Anna and Paul into the house, then left his brother in the kitchen to take Anna into the bathroom. "Flush your eyes with cold water," he told her. "Where's your first-aid kit?"

  "In the cupboard over the birdseed," she told him, already running the water. "Can you start the generator and give us some light?"

  "Sure." He headed out the back door. "Tate! Just bring up Briggs," he hollered. "I'll bring up the dog myself."

  Anna hung her head over the sink. Poor, valiant, big-hearted Bear. He'd rushed to her rescue with the same noble courage as Ethan. How blessed she was to be loved so much.

  Just as the power kicked on, she lifted her head and blinked through her tears at the mirror. Did Ethan truly love her? And could Delaney be right, that her uncle simply wasn't able to put his feelings into words?

  Dammit, did she have the same problem? Anna snorted and hung her head again, splashing water onto her face. What a fine pair they made— neither one of them willing to admit their feelings to each other. She loved Ethan more than life itself— hell, she'd always loved him; yet she hadn't even been able to admit it to herself, much less to him, because she'd been afraid her childhood fantasy would die a horrible death if he rejected her love.

  And Claire had known. That's why she'd sent down the condoms, jewelry, and dress clothes. Her stepmom had known it wasn't only her inheritance Anna had been coming here to claim, but also the man she'd loved since she was eleven.

  And her daddy had known, too— that's why he'd fought so hard for her not to leave, knowing that his only daughter could very well end up living the rest of her life in Maine.

  Anna sighed, and reached for a towel to dry her face. Three weeks wasn't much time to plan a wedding.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The first rays of sunshine were just breaking over the lake as Anna and Ethan stared down into the dark well. Anna was holding a quilt she'd found in a trunk in the attic, and Ethan was holding Bear's ratty old bed and a powerful spotlight.

  "Spread your blanket on the ground," he said softly. "And I'll carry him up and lay him on it. Have you decided where you want to bury him?"

  Anna swiped at her eyes and took a deep breath. "Up with Grammy and Gramps." She shook out the blanket on the ground, then set Bear's bed it on top. "In the small family cemetery up the lane."

  Ethan handed her the spotlight. "Shine this down for me, so I can see what I'm doing." He turned and stepped onto the ladder. "Don't cry," he said, his own voice thick with emotion. "We know he died happy, doing what he needed to do."

  Anna wiped away another persistent tear and shuddered out a heavy sigh, aiming the light into the well as Ethan climbed down. "I know," she said. "Just get him out of there, please."

  But carrying a seventy-pound dog out of a fifteen-foot-deep well that was only four feet wide was no easy task. Ethan finally put Bear over his shoulders, then started climbing back up the ladder. Suddenly he stopped halfway up.

  "Shine the light over here," he said, nodding toward the rocks lining the well on his right. "There, angle it a bit lower, would you?"

  Anna stepped around the well and shone the light on the dark, moss-covered rocks. "What are you looking at?" she asked, bending to see.

  Ethan laughed. "I believe I'm looking at Samuel's stash! There's a good-sized cavity hollowed out in the side of the well that's been neatly lined with rocks. And there's a big tin can sitting in it, about three or four gallons. That cunning old fox."

  Anna moved yet again, first looking across the well past Ethan, then going back and peering straight down. "It's virtually invisible from up here," she said.

  "He positioned the rocks so it would be hidden from anyone looking down."

  Ethan shifted Bear on his shoulders and continued climbing, stepped onto firm ground, and carefully lowered the old Lab onto his bed. Anna took the edges of the quilt and started rubbing him dry.

  "We'll get the tin after we take care of him," Ethan said, folding the blanket over Bear's limp body. "Bring the shovel," he told her, picking up Bear and walking down to Gaylen's pickup truck.

  Anna grabbed the shovel on their way past the house and put it in the truck bed beside Bear. They climbed in and drove a quarter of a mile up the lane until they came to the tiny cemetery tucked in the woods on a knoll. She got out, grabbed the shovel, and walked through the broken gate to Samuel and Mary Fox's headstone.

  She stared down at the granite marker. "I'm going to have to get the monument people to come out this summer and carve in the date of Gramps's death."

  "Have them add Bear's name as well," Ethan said, gently setting the dog on the ground. He straightened and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "How come you missed Samuel's funeral?"

  "None of us even knew he'd died until Tom Bishop drove up to Quebec and told us. Nobody contacted us when it happened."

  "Not even Madeline?"

  Anna shrugged. "According to Tom Bishop, she was a little shocked to find out Gramps had left everything to me."

  "She's a piece of work, isn't she?" Ethan said drily.

  "I feel sorry for her more than anything."

  Ethan's arm tightened around her as he leaned over and kissed her hair. "Still, we're not inviting her to our wedding."

  "We have to. She's my mother."

  Anna looked down to hide her smile when she felt Ethan go suddenly rigid. "Right here," she said, pointing beside her grandparents' grave. "Let's put Bear to rest beside them."

  The man still didn't move.

  Anna slipped out from under his arm, picked up the shovel, and started digging. It took Ethan a good two minutes before he silently nudged her away and took over the chore. While he worked quietly, Anna began picking up broken branches and other debris that had fallen on the ce
metery over the winter, then went over and tried to straighten the rickety old gate.

  "This cemetery needs attention," she said, looking around at the leaning older gravestones and broken fence. Only Grammy Fox's grave was tidy from the years Gramps had tended it, and from when Anna had visited when she'd arrived last fall. "I think I'll plant some tulip bulbs and daffodils to come up next year. I seem to remember Grammy loved tulips. Daddy and Claire will be arriving later this evening."

  Ethan stopped digging and looked at her.

  "I called them while you were in the shower. I'm surprised you didn't hear Daddy's bellow clear into the bathroom."