The Runaway Bride

by Adrianne Lee

  “I anticipated that.” Payton lifted his hat and scratched his head. “I have someone coming in.”

  “Actually, that won’t be necessary.” Travis had his gun out of its holster again. He grabbed Izzy and pointed the barrel against her forehead. “All of you move back, or I’ll blow her brains out.”

  “Travis?” Izzy squeaked. “What are you doing?”

  “Shut up,” he said between clenched teeth. “Chief, Jake, put your guns on the floor and kick them to me.”

  Ralph complied immediately, but Jake hesitated. Travis jammed the gun hard against Izzy’s temple. She yelped. Jake took his gun out of the holster, set it on the floor, then kicked it toward Travis, stepping in front of Laura as he did so. “Trav, I know you’re distressed about your brother—”

  “He’s not distressed about me.” Cullen Crocker appeared in the doorway like a resurrected ghost. He picked up Jake’s gun, motioning him to move out of the way as he stepped toward Laura. “Give me that box.”

  “Cullen!” Izzy fainted and fell from Travis’s grasp.

  “Forget about her,” Cullen instructed.

  Travis aimed the gun at Payton. “He said to let her be.”

  “Give me that box, Laura,” Cullen insisted. “I’ve spent a year chasing it down. I want my reward.”

  “You? You’re the one who’s been trying to kill me?” Laura forced away the shock that kept trying to grip her. If she gave in to it, she’d lose her evidence, maybe her life. She’d come too far and fought too hard to buckle under now. “But why?”

  “Money, of course.” He reached for the box again.

  Laura still held it to her chest with one hand. She shoved her free hand into her purse. She easily found what she sought, palmed it and pulled her hand free. She made Cullen come to her for the box. The moment he grabbed it, she zapped him in the gut with the stun gun. He dropped to the floor like a felled tree, landing on top of Jake’s gun.

  In the second Travis took to react, Jake grabbed the stun gun from Laura and went for him.

  Laura scrambled for her precious evidence. A shot rang out, deafening in the small enclosure. She glanced up at Payton. He stood frozen as though riveted by shock, his eyes on something behind her. Fear ripped through Laura as she lurched around. Her gaze flew to Jake. Something about his stance struck her as odd. Then she saw the gaping hole in his shoulder. She screamed.

  Forgetting the box, and the gun in Travis’s hand, she rushed to Jake. She reached his side and caught his arm as his knees began to sag. Ralph grabbed him on the opposite side and they lowered him to the floor. Laura yanked off her coat and bunched it against Jake’s wound with all her might. “Jake? Jake!”

  His face was etched with pain. Terror filled every ounce of her. Blood pumped out of him at an alarming rate.

  Travis stepped over her and snatched the box of Venus Masque samples from the floor, then helped his brother to his feet.

  “The poison,” Cullen muttered, reaching into his pocket. He withdrew a glass vial and dropped it on the floor. It shattered, spilling its liquid contents. His male-model face twisted in an malignant grin.

  Travis said, “It’s a quick-acting, poisonous gas. Goodbye, you bunch of losers.”

  The brothers rushed to the door, doused the lights and stepped outside. The click of the lock resounded through the storage unit like a death knell.

  A foul odor filled Laura’s nostrils. She choked, coughing. “We have to get out of here. Payton, is there another way?”

  He answered in between coughs. “No. I wanted each unit to be secure unto itself.”

  Laura’s fear swamped her. Jake was losing blood at a rapid speed. And the poison was making her sleepy. This, then, was the end. Jake and she would not be given their chance for happiness. She bent close to his ear. “I love you, Jake Wilder.”

  “I love you, Laura,” he managed, but his voice sounded weak.

  Outside the room, she heard muffled sounds, like gunfire, then screams. A second later, her eyes fluttered shut and her hand on Jake’s wound went slack.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Laura opened her eyes slowly. Her head pounded as though it had been struck with a gong. Her tongue felt thick. She was in bed, in a room smelling of antiseptic, a room with stark white walls. She shoved up on her elbows and glanced around. Three of the five other beds were occupied by Izzy, Payton and Ralph. It was a clinic, she realized. Doc’s clinic.

  Dear God, Jake! Where was he? She lurched up, too anxious to be contained by the splitting ache in her head. Or the intravenous line taped to her arm. What stopped her was a nurse, the same woman who’d been tending to Kim Durant earlier. “You’re not going anywhere yet, Laura. You’ve got to get all the antidote.”

  “Where’s Jake?” Laura’s mouth was so dry the words came out strangled.

  “He’s in surgery. Doc said to tell you not to worry.”

  Not worry? How could she not? “But he lost so much blood.”

  “I know.” Doris Handley expected patients to obey her. She urged Laura back against the pillows. “Don Bowman donated and Doc had Jake’s type on hand. So, he’ll be okay on that score.”

  Don? How had Don known? She realized how immaterial that was. A sob filled her chest. She’d never had a reason before now to like Don. But at this minute she thought she loved him. The nurse’s words resounded in her head: he’ll be okay on that score. But what about the gunshot wound?

  Worry squeezed her heart. What if all Doc’s efforts failed to save Jake? What would she do without him? An awful ache traveled her body, reaching into every part of her. Laura lifted up again. “How long has Jake been in surgery?”

  “Couple of hours now.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “Try not to worry.”

  Laura fell back against her pillow, giving in to the sharp throb at her temples. Doris took her pulse. She frowned. And wrote something on a chart Laura was amazed at how gentle she was. How nice she was being. Something had changed since the uncomfortable hours in the hall at Kim’s house. “How is Kim?”

  “She’ll be okay.” Doris grinned this time, showing even white teeth. The perfect advertisement for the Milk Industry. “She’s turned into a real heroine.”

  Laura frowned. “Huh?”

  “She’s the reason you’re all here…safe and sound.”

  “I don’t understand. Just how did we get here?” Laura tried to recall anything about a trip to the clinic. Nothing came to her. “The last thing I remember is being locked in the storage unit.”

  “You were rescued thanks to Kim…and me.” Doris beamed as she tucked Laura’s sheets tighter. “About half an hour after you and Jake left the house with Chief Russell, Kim started getting coherent. She’d been repeating Cullen’s name since I got there. We all just thought she was upset about his death. But she told me Cullen was alive, that he’d forced her to take the barbiturates after she’d told him where something called Venus Masque was.

  “I telephoned Doc right away.” Pride shone in Doris’s doe eyes at her own role in this adventure. “Apparently, he located Don and Susan and the three of them rushed to the plant. As I heard it, they encountered Travis and Cullen in one of those hangars, trying to escape.

  “Some shots were fired, but no one was wounded and Don made short work of them. Then he and Susan handcuffed them inside their own truck. I got to the plant in time to see that. That pickup looked like the loser in a stock-car elimination race.”

  Laura flinched. So it was Cullen who’d tried running them off the road. The Subaru had been the real loser, she thought, relieved that the Crocker brothers were behind bars and were both alive to stand trial and pay for their crimes. “Did they recover my box of samples?”

  “I don’t know, dear.”

  Laura realized she didn’t really care, either. All that mattered now was Jake. She spent the next hour praying, clinging to the engagement ring he’d given her. Eventually, Doris told her Jake was out of surgery and in the r
ecovery room.

  But another agonizing hour dragged by without further word. Her headache abated and Payton and Ralph began sitting up and talking. Doris regaled them with her tale of heroism. Izzy finally came around. She’d inhaled the most poison because she’d been unconscious and it had afflicted her worse because she was physically smaller than the rest of them. Laura watched her recovery with immense relief, but her eyes kept swinging back to the clinic door.

  Suddenly, it banged open. Her pulse lurched. Doc wheeled Jake into the room on a gurney. The surgical nurse helped Doris transfer him to the bed beside hers. She tugged the needle from her arm and hurried to Jake’s side.

  Doc smiled at her. “You seem a bit anxious for someone who once abandoned this young man.”

  Laura realized he was teasing her and he wouldn’t be if he wasn’t confident Jake would recover. The tension freezing her insides began melting. “How is he?”

  Mel stroked his mustache. “Lucky. The bullet went through the fleshy part of his shoulder. He can expect some minor nerve damage, but otherwise, he’ll heal fairly rapidly. His youth and good physical condition are in his favor.”

  The other patients began sitting up. All, Doris reported, had responded well to the antidote.

  “Including Jake,” Doc added.

  “Hey, don’t talk about me like I’m not here.” Jake’s gaze locked with hers and her heart filled with joy.

  “Bossy as ever, I see.” She grasped his hand and kissed his forehead.

  Don and Susan came through the door. They saw Jake and hurried over. Doc held up his hand. “Don’t look so worried. I haven’t lost a patient in the last eighteen hours.” He chuckled at his own joke and received wry grins from everyone in the room.

  Don moved to the opposite side of the bed from Laura. His craggy face was haggard. “Sorry we lied to you, partner. We were afraid Laura intended to hurt you a second time and we decided the only way we could prevent that was to find out whether or not her story had any credence.”

  He didn’t look at Laura and she felt the old tension between them rearing inside her.

  Don said, “But we knew if we told you we were coming to Riverdell, you’d balk.”

  “Damn straight,” Jake said.

  “We came to find what we could. Ralph let us reexamine the Whittaker file, but we couldn’t find anything new. However, we did discover the dentist’s office had been broken into. Files disturbed. The Cs and the Fs. After Doc told us tonight about the John Doe with the crushed skull, we got hold of Dr. Peterson, the dentist, and went through the files. Someone had exchanged Cullen’s original dental records with Frankie Forks, a ranch hand who’d gone missing last year. He was last seen drinking with someone who fits Cullen’s description shortly before they both disappeared.”

  Susan stepped up beside her husband. She held the box of Venus Masque samples. “We owe you a huge apology, Laura. You were leveling with us all along.”

  Laura made no attempt to retrieve her box from Susan. She didn’t want to let go of Jake’s hand.

  Don nodded, gazing at her now with apology in his muddy-river eyes. “I was hoping maybe we could wipe the slate and start fresh. We don’t want to be shut out of Jake’s personal life.”

  Laura felt a warm glow inside. Forgiveness was a wonderful tool. Maybe even Izzy and she could find their way back together. Why not Don and Susan and she? She smiled at them. “You saved our lives tonight. I can never forget that. As far as I’m concerned the slate is clean. I’d like to be friends, too.”

  OVER THE NEXT WEEK, Laura helped play nurse to Kim and Jake, both ensconced in Kim’s house. Kim wasted little time bounding back to her old self, but Jake had to be more cautious. He and Laura had a deeper healing to face—the hashing out of the personal reasons the wedding hadn’t come off. Laura’s heart clutched with fear that they wouldn’t manage to work past their private issues.

  On the first day, he was too exhausted for their long overdue talk.

  On the second day, she brought up the subject. Jake thought he’d faced and beaten the hurt and accepted his part in the blame for all that went wrong. But examining the cause instead of the effect was like opening a wound that wasn’t healing. All their bottled-up hurt and distrust spilled out. Tempers flared. Pride ruled.

  On the third day, Laura admitted her misgivings. Jake admitted his culpability. They apologized, forgiving each other, but felt awkward and exhausted, overwhelmed by the expenditure of too many emotions.

  On the fourth day, Laura awoke with a sense of well-being. She realized she’d finally forgiven herself.

  On the fifth day, they met in Kim’s dining room with Payton. Ralph and he had had the two skin creams analyzed. Laura sat next to Jake. Payton took the chair opposite them. Kim left them alone and disappeared upstairs.

  Butterflies collided in Laura’s stomach. She reached for Jake’s hand, finding comfort in his strong grip. She addressed Payton. “You said a subtle difference was found between the two skin creams…?”

  Payton again wore a baseball cap, this one with a Mariners logo. “Yes, Murphy’s cream includes an ingredient that is usually found in disinfectants.”

  “Disinfectants?” What would disinfect—The thought burst as she recalled the “wonder cleanser” that her uncle had invented and sterilized his bottles with in order to reuse them. He’d worked on a shoestring budget—recycling because he couldn’t afford new. “Are you saying my uncle’s cream wasn’t used as the basis for New Again?”

  “No. It was.” Payton lifted the baseball cap and scratched his head. “Cullen sold it to me as his own.”

  She opened her mouth and slammed it shut. The one man she’d trusted with the cream was the very one who’d stolen it in the first place.

  Payton said, “He duped us all.”

  “Me, most of all.” Laura grimaced.

  But Jake rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand, a warm, loving touch that conveyed such support she knew she needn’t dwell on past mistakes.

  He said, “How do we know Cullen didn’t infect all Laura’s sample bottles?”

  Payton shrugged. “I don’t think we’ll ever know. Ralph says he’s not talking.”

  But Laura had given Cullen access to only one of her bottles. That was why he’d been after her to find and destroy the rest of them. No, the disinfectant had to be in Uncle Murphy’s bottles.

  Dear God, Ruthanne had been using that cream for nearly a year.

  She squeezed Jake’s hand so hard he winced. “Are there any side effects with my uncle’s lotion?”

  Payton propped his elbows on the table. “Only if the cream is stored in plastic—which this has been—then a chemical breakdown occurs. Prolonged use can simulate in the user the same symptoms as Alzheimer’s.”

  “Oh, my.” Laura felt sick to her stomach.

  Jake swore. They looked at each other, and she could see all the awful possibilities occurring to her were also occurring to him. She asked, “Will it cause permanent damage?”

  Payton adjusted his glasses. “According to my lab chemist, once use of the cream is stopped, the affected person will eventually recover completely.”

  Laura felt a thrill, but warned herself not to get her hopes up. They would have to discuss this with Doc. And she suspected it would be a while before they’d know for sure whether or not Ruthanne actually had Alzheimer’s.

  Payton said, “As to the formula, I had no idea that Cullen and Travis stole it from your uncle, but since Dell’s cream is based on Murphy Whittaker’s formula, I would like to offer you fair market value compensation, retroactive, and, of course, a percentage on past and all future earnings.”

  He passed Laura a piece of paper with an amount on it. She could probably sue Dell and win, taking all the profits. But money wasn’t her motivating factor and this offer was indeed generous. “I’ll accept, under one condition.”

  He nodded. “Anything.”

  “Rename the cream.”

  Payton wrinkled his
nose, looking as though he had something distasteful in his mouth. “Venus Masque?”

  “No. Eclipse—it was how my aunt and uncle both described it. Ruthanne, too.”

  “You could advertise it,” Jake suggested, “with something like, ‘feel New Again with Eclipse.’ That would tie in the old name with the new.”

  Laura gave him a loving smile.

  Payton nodded. “I think I can live with that.”

  “Then we have a deal.” Laura shook hands with him.

  Kim came downstairs as soon as Payton saw himself out. “Well, tell me.”

  Laura filled her in on the outcome of the meeting and on the possibility that Ruthanne might not have Alzheimer’s after all. Kim expressed distress at her part in her aunt’s diagnosis and suffering, but was as buoyed as they were by the news the effects of the cream would eventually wear off.

  Jake kissed Laura’s cheek. “I have more good news. Doc says I can leave here in two more days.”

  Kim frowned. “Darn, I’m going to miss you guys.”

  “We’ll miss you, too.” Jake told her. Kim seemed like a new person since her near-death experience at the hands of the man she’d thought hung the moon. She had more confidence and no longer hid her pert face beneath a layer of makeup. Jake felt sure she was on her way to recovery.

  On the sixth day, Laura traded her jeans and sweater for the hottest outfit available in Riverdell’s one clothing store. The skimpy red dress fitted her curves as much like a second skin as the scant red panties it covered.

  Jake’s glance started at her spiky red heels, lazily, approvingly, climbed her bare legs, her hips, her breasts, her neck, her mouth, until their gazes collided. He released a low whistle.

  “You like?” Laura sidled to his bed and sank onto the mattress.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  His voice held a husky note, but it was his eyes she noticed most. No more hurt. No more distrust Just pure, accepting love.

  Her heart took flight, a feather on the wind, no longer weighted down with doubt or distrust, but floating on pure, fearless love.