Expired Cache

by Lisa Phillips

  “Sorry.”

  Dean shook his head at his brother’s apologetic expression. “What about Dad?”

  Ted just stared at him.

  “What?”

  “I have his number.” Anxiousness flashed across Ted’s face. “Maybe you could—”

  Dean said, “Text me the number, I’ll call him. If it turns out he was here when the town was founded, you can bet he knows what happened. Secrets are his specialty. The juicier, the better, as far as he’s concerned.”

  The tension on Ted’s face increased exponentially.

  “I’ll find out.”

  That comment didn’t make things any better. Dean said, “Ted, is there something we need to talk about?”

  His brother barked a nervous laugh. “No. Course not.”

  Dean shared a glance with Conroy. Neither of them was convinced. But Dean had to deal with his problems one at a time. “I’m thinking we can’t be sure Ellie’s life isn’t still in danger.”

  “You could’ve told me that.” Jess strode in. “Otherwise I’d have stayed outside with her.”

  Ellie was still surrounded by cops. But now Dean wanted, even more than before, to go out there and be with her.

  Dean was about to comment as much when Jess saw the dead gym receptionist. “Mark Ayles?”

  Conroy flashed a grin. “Welcome to the party.”

  “I’m not sticking around to hash it out all over again.” Not when he wanted to get back to Ellie. To Conroy he said, “Can you let me know if you come up with anything?”

  “In the interest of public safety, yes. All the pertinent details of the case? No.”

  “Good enough for me.”

  Jess spun around. “He really held a gun on my sister?”

  Dean nodded.

  Jess sighed. “Why is it always the cute ones that are psychos?”

  Ted looked like he wanted to throw up. Dean said, “I’m thinking that’s an overgeneralization.”

  She shrugged. “No great loss. He was always going on and on about his dad.” She mimicked his low voice, “Bought me a boat, you know? But I needed something to pull it, so he got me a new fully-loaded truck. Wanna go for a ride?” She rolled her eyes. “As if I didn’t know what that meant. He must’ve thought I was as dumb as he was.”

  Conroy said, “Remind me to never let you work homicide.”

  Before she could comment back to him, Dean said, “His father?”

  Hadn’t Conroy said Mark’s mother had been married to the doctor?

  “Yeah, he—”

  Fear squeezed his chest like chains. “Where’s Ellie?”

  She shook her head. “The doctor gave her a sedative. He’s going to take her to his car and get her to the hospital so she can get checked out.”

  Dean sprinted as fast as he could from the cave. He needed to catch up to them.

  Before it was too late.

  God, please tell me I’m wrong.

  Thirty-Four

  A low rumble was the first thing she recognized. The hum of an engine, tires on a road. Ellie blinked. Or tried to. What’s going on? She had no idea if she was able to make a sound that would be coherent. Her thoughts felt like liquid swirling in a cup. Trying to find purchase, but unable to settle for long enough.

  She shifted. A car. Right, she was in a car. She could see a blur of trees whizz past from where she lay in the backseat, looking out the window. Ellie tried to kick off the door with her feet and sit up. Her hands moved strangely. She managed to focus enough to realize they’d been tied together. She couldn’t reach the knot of the silk tie, as it was on the back of one of her hands and too far for her fingers to reach.

  Professor Tumbleweed had this tie. She’d imagined strangling him with it many times when he’d insisted on picking at her teaching style just for the sake of criticizing her.

  Probably that wasn’t what was happening here.

  Think. She’d called for God’s help before, but He hadn’t done anything to save her. Dean was the one who’d come in. Her foggy brain wanted to have an idea about that, but she couldn’t get a complete thought to manifest itself.

  Her mind only wanted to scream that everything was wrong.

  Ellie rolled. She got her hands under her and pushed up. Her elbows gave out, and her face smushed back against the seat. A breathy, “Oof,” escaped her lips.

  She heard a man curse loudly. Then he said, “You’re awake.”

  Ellie knew that voice. Knew him. Her mind flashed back to the feel of a tree behind her. Hands on her throat. The face in front of hers was Ed Summers, though. No, that wasn’t right. It was a different man. A dead man. She’d seen Dean kill him. Not Summers. The other one.

  Ellie bit her lip. Hard enough the sting eclipsed her racing mind. Think. She had to think, or all this panic racing through her veins was going to lead to exactly what she feared. What is happening? Whatever it was, things were serious. They’d been up on the mountain, with her sister there. The doctor had given her a shot.

  Was that why her head felt like this?

  It should’ve calmed her. Surely she wasn’t meant to feel this out of it. Like she couldn’t string two thoughts together.

  They were supposed to go…

  “Hospital.” That single word escaped her mouth. Ellie didn’t even know if he heard her. They were supposed to be going there, so she could be checked out. Since she’d both found a body and seen a guy murdered. Never mind that Dean had been shot.

  The blood. She remembered pushing that special gauze against his side. “Dean.”

  In the driver’s seat, the doctor said, “You’re out of luck. So is he.”

  “Where…going?”

  “You should have just left it alone.” The doctor pushed out a long sigh. “I told you to leave it alone.”

  It was Doctor Gilane? She wanted to think on that, but nothing would come. She only rolled and shifted on the seat as he took corners too fast. At one point, she nearly fell to the floor. Ellie rolled back, a flash of the interior roof, and then the sun in her eyes. Then she was facing the seat back.

  The car screeched to a halt.

  Ellie rolled toward the front. Her nose planted in the upholstery and one leg fell off the seat. Thankfully her shoe jabbed at the floor mat or she’d have tumbled off. Instead, she stopped, perched on the edge of the seat.

  A door slammed.

  Then another opened. “Come on.” He grabbed her under her arms, hauling her out. It took him a couple of tries, and he nearly dropped her, but the doctor got her bound hands around his neck and brought her upright. Her head lolled to the side.

  Get a grip. She had to fight him. To do that, she needed control of her limbs. But this stupid drug he’d given her was coursing through her veins. Everything was a blur, and she had hardly any motor control. She was probably going to pee herself. If she hadn’t already done it. Why were heroines in movies always so glamorous? They either got rescued, looking fabulous. Or they kicked the bad guy’s behind and saved themselves.

  She was neither. And she was pretty sure that she had snot from her tears smeared on her face.

  He set her feet down. Ellie locked her knees. She was pretty wobbly. When he took her arms from around his neck, she shoved him away so that he would back off—maybe even fall. Instead, she was the one who landed on the ground.

  Her hip hit the dirt, and she cried out. With the pain came clarity.

  Doctor Gilane moved toward her, intent clear on his face. He was resigned to do what he felt he had to do.

  She held up both hands. “No!”

  Her scream was followed by a flock of birds taking off from a nearby tree. Ellie looked around. They were on the side of a mountain. The road was nothing but a two-lane dirt track. On the far side was a hill. Caution: falling rocks.

  On their side, beyond his parked BMW, was a drop-off.

  She knew this place.

  Ellie had grown up in Last Chance. This was Dead Man’s Curve.

  “Don’t fi
ght it. There’s no point, Ellie.” He sighed. “You didn’t listen to me, and now I can’t have you telling everyone once you find out.”

  Panic tightened her chest. Once you find out. She shook her head but managed to keep her mouth shut. He didn’t know that she’d found the Amerasian boy.

  Ellie didn’t get up from the ground. That would take the energy she needed to think. She said, “So now what? I mean, it’s not like I know what you did.”

  Except she just might. He didn’t know that. Bluffing was the only chance she had to buy some time.

  Doctor Gilane stared hard at her. It was the first time she’d seen his expression with dead eyes.

  “Why bring me up here?” She motioned to the cliff. “If I don’t know anything, just drop me off at the hospital and leave me alone. There’s no reason to terrorize me.”

  He’d destroyed everything she had left that belonged to her grandfather. All, except, her memories—the things he’d taught her. Would that backbone of character keep her alive now? She’d doubted her grandfather’s innocence. Why else feel so guilty, if he hadn’t been a part of killing that boy and burying him there?

  “You had to know someone would find him.”

  “So now you think you know everything?” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out that green passport she’d stuffed in the back of her jeans. Right before she’d lied by omission to Dean. Gilane said, “All because of this?”

  “Tell me the truth.” Why else bring her up here, unless his sole intention was to see her demise? “You can give me that, at least. Before you do whatever you’re going to do.”

  “This means nothing.” He tossed the passport by her feet. “It will prove nothing.”

  “Not that a young boy came here and ended up dead in that cave?” Her jaw clenched, but she managed to say, “Did you kill him?”

  She’d believed, for a moment at least, that there was a chance her grandfather had done it. Now she knew what lengths the doctor was willing to go to keep it a secret.

  “Did you hurt Peter Holmford?”

  Doctor Gilane scoffed. “You experienced Mark’s hands-on expertise.” He lifted his left hand, the one holding the gun, and rotated it. Showing her. “Like I would damage these hands. I’m a doctor.”

  “One who took an oath to ‘do no harm.’ Isn’t that how it goes?”

  How could he justify terror and murder? Dean had saved her and defended his own life in taking Mark’s. Jess had told her the police considered it self-defense even before they heard her version of the events. They knew Dean. His character. The man he was every day around town.

  Would they say the same about the doctor?

  That made her wonder what people would say about her. Ellie wanted to make a mark in academia. But if she did that while having no substance to the people around her? No legacy in relationships? Where was the value?

  “How can I possibly help people, when everything I’ve built has been ruined?”

  “You made a mistake, right?” She was guessing, but calling it that—or an accident—was the best way to explain that might defuse the situation. She just wanted to know what happened to the boy. But not if he killed her for knowing. “That boy came here. Who was he?”

  “No one.” The doctor spat the words out. “The result of a momentary pleasure on the other side of the world. And then he shows up here with a gun, ready to kill me and destroy everything.” He laughed, but it held no humor. “He didn’t like hearing it wasn’t just me that kept her for the weekend. The spoils of war.” His lips curled up. “We were kids, thrown into battle. Many things that happened there would be considered questionable here.”

  Her stomach roiled. Questionable? How about unconscionable. “So you killed him?”

  “What choice did we have?”

  “Who pulled the trigger?”

  He laughed again. “Your grandfather was there. Is that what you want to know? I guess before you throw yourself off this cliff in despair over what he did, it’s right for you to know the truth.”

  “No.” She’d changed her mind.

  “So holier-than-thou. The lieutenant and his morals.”

  “He knew what you did.”

  “Of course. Like I said, the spoils of war.”

  “And when the boy showed up here?” She wanted to be sick.

  “It was his idea to leave the boy in that cave. No one needed to know. Holmford was weak.” He tossed that word at her like a weapon. A threat.

  “It was his word against yours.”

  “The kid wouldn’t quit. He would’ve never stopped.” His chest rose and fell rapidly. “We had to kill him.”

  “We?”

  “Holmford. Me. The others.”

  “And my grandfather helped you bury him.”

  He sneered. “All because some chit told her spawn a story.”

  “Like the one you told Mark?” The idea fell from her lips barely formed. “Why else would he do this with you?”

  “Another spawn. He was a mistake that never amounted to anything. In the end he was good for something, though. No one will ever connect us.”

  Ellie had more faith in the police and their powers of investigation than that. She’d grown up with the chief for a grandfather, and her sister as a cop. They would eventually put all the pieces together, or they’d never rest.

  Even if she was dead.

  Maybe especially because she was dead.

  “Holmford will wake up,” she said. “He’ll tell the police what you did.”

  Gilane scoffed. “Please. I’m a doctor, remember? He’s in the hospital, and I’m due there later for work. Unfortunately for Holmford, he won’t be coming out of that coma I made sure he ended up in.”

  He was going to kill Peter Holmford.

  “And you carry on with your life? No one knows who that boy was. No one ever asks questions.”

  “Hmm. Good point. Perhaps I could arrange for Holmford to wake up long enough to confess to me before he finally succumbs to his injuries.” He considered it. “I’ll have to work out a plan. I’m sure he can be useful, and I’m more than happy to make a statement to the police on what I heard.”

  “You disgust me.” It had to be said. “You prey on people you consider less than you and discard them when they’re no longer of any use to you.”

  “And in the meantime, everyone has a good time.”

  Bile rose in her throat. “I’m not.”

  “We could change that. I’m sure we have time.”

  “I’d rather you just shoot me right here.”

  “Why would I do that, when you could jump?” He said, “After, of course, you tell me all about your grandfather’s sins. The ones you can no longer live with. Make them juicy. The story will sound better.” He grabbed her arm.

  Ellie cried out, but it was of no use. He dragged her to the edge. She didn’t look down. “No. Don’t do this. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Jump, or I push you. Your choice.”

  “No!” She shook her head while Gilane stared down at her.

  “Hey!”

  A gunshot rang out. Gilane’s body jerked, and he let go of her. Another shot blasted right by her, washing the world in front of her in a flash of fire.

  Ellie fell over the edge.

  Thirty-Five

  Dean got in Conroy’s face. “Get out of my way.”

  “You don’t know that he has her.”

  He gritted his teeth, hands fisted by his sides to keep from shoving the police chief away from him. Dean would end up arrested. And then where would Ellie be?

  He spun to Jessica. “Talk some sense into him!”

  Tears rolled down her face. For the first time, the young police officer looked scared. Ted moved to her, sliding his arm around her shoulders. Jessica grasped a handful of his brother’s shirt and held on so tight her knuckles turned white.

  Dean turned back to Conroy.

  “I know what you’re gonna say.” Conroy held up one hand, palm out. “
We’ll find her. There’s a BOLO out for the doctor and his car, as well as Ellie. She won’t get far when everyone we have is out looking for her. It’s all over town that we need to find them ASAP.”

  “So let’s go.”

  He wanted to be comforted by Conroy’s words, but the sick feeling in his stomach wouldn’t ease. It had nothing to do with the sharp ache in his side from the gunshot graze and everything to do with the fact he’d trusted Gilane with Ellie. A man he’d respected had betrayed him. And for what?

  Dean checked his backpack, ready to hoof it down the mountain.

  “When you’re ready, we’ll head out. Mia will meet us at the parking lot.”

  Dean started walking, zipping up the pack as he moved. He swung it over his shoulders and got his rifle from where he’d left it.

  Ted said, “Dean.”

  He shook his head and headed for the path.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  Dean nodded but didn’t spare even a second to glance at Jessica.

  Every second he stayed there on the side of that mountain was a second Ellie might not have left to live. He knew how to press on and get the mission done. Dean had seen the aftermath of too many innocents caught in the crossfire.

  The cops didn’t need him to stay there. And they weren’t going to stop him from finding her.

  He stretched out his stride, tempted to run, but it was all downhill. He made quick but steady progress, praying he didn’t twist an ankle. Praying Ellie was alive.

  That she’d be alive when he got there.

  Behind him, Conroy and Ted carried on a breathy conversation about GPS on the doctor’s phone.

  Dean couldn’t get rid of the mental picture of him sitting across the table in the coffee shop, telling him he was all the way on board with the therapy center. Was it nothing but a ruse? A way to keep Dean close, so he’d know what Dean was doing. What he knew.

  No, that was when he’d barely met Ellie. So it couldn’t be about her grandfather’s will.

  But it could be about the time he’d spent with the former chief.

  Maybe the doctor had been feeling him out, trying to discover whether the chief told him anything before he died.

  Whatever the reason, the result was that he’d been played. The doctor didn’t care about Dean’s therapy center. He’d only had his own agenda.