Lone Star Lonely

by Maggie Shayne

  Dust. Cobwebs. Utter darkness. They might have thought to place men in the garage below, on the ground and on the stairs, but the Brands would not have thought of this.

  Phillip hauled her through the trapdoor at the top of the attic stairs, then slammed the trapdoor down. He tugged her farther. Moving backward across the attic all the way to the far wall, watching that trapdoor all the way.

  His back reached the far wall, and Kirsten glimpsed the last set of rickety steps, these so steep they seemed more like a ladder than a stairway. They had to lead to the roof. There was nowhere else to go. And then she realized…they went to the widow’s walk, at the very peak. Her knees went weak at the thought of the height.

  At that same moment the trapdoor rose upward.

  Adam’s head poked through.

  “Oh, God, Adam….” It was so good just to see his face. She felt it had been forever, when in fact it had been only a couple of hours since he’d left her. She was weak, dizzy, hurting, and yet overwhelmed at this chance to look into his blue eyes once more.

  “Are you okay?” Adam asked her.

  She nodded. “Adam, I—”

  “Shut up!” Phillip’s gun pressed hard to Kirsten’s sternum, right between her breasts, barrel slanted upward. If he squeezed the trigger just then, she thought, terrified, the bullet would rip an inclining path of hell from her chest to her throat and probably exit through the back of her head. She wouldn’t stand a chance.

  “You just get back down there,” Phillip said to Adam. “You just go, or I’ll have to kill her.”

  “Now, you know I can’t do that.” Adam came very slowly up, holding up both hands, making no threatening gestures. “I’m unarmed, see?”

  “I don’t give a damn! Get out or I’ll kill her now. Is that what you want?”

  “Now, what good is that gonna do you, Phillip? Huh? It won’t get you Cowan’s fortune. Not with so many witnesses here to testify that it was murder.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t care! And you shouldn’t either, Brand. Don’t you know what she did? Don’t you know she’s the one who killed your parents? I was there, I saw it!”

  “I know. I know. But that was an accident.” He took a step closer. “She was a kid. And it was a long time ago, Phil.”

  “If I were you, I’d want her to die for that. I’d want her to pay.”

  “Oh, she’s paid.” Adam found Kirsten’s eyes, held them with his. “She’s paid in spades for something that was never her fault to begin with.”

  She blinked as pain rose up to engulf her.

  “You…you can forgive her for what she did?”

  “Of course I can,” Adam said, still holding her eyes, his own gleaming. “See, I’ve got no choice there, Phillip. I love her. Always have.”

  Kirsten’s knees buckled. She slid downward, but Phillip yanked her upright again. Tears flooded her eyes, and she parted her lips to speak, to tell Adam how much she loved him, how sorry she was. But no sound came from her lips. She couldn’t even feel them. The pills. The electrocution. She wasn’t even going to be conscious for much longer. She couldn’t speak. But she clung to Adam with her eyes and prayed he could see her feelings in them. She tried to mouth the words I love you. I’m sorry.

  He nodded almost imperceptibly, sending her the same unspoken message in return. “Listen, Carr—” Adam began.

  “Don’t call me that!”

  Adam went silent. Kirsten tried to fight her way through the fog in her brain to understanding. “B-but it’s your name,” she whispered, surprised to hear the rasp come from her lips. A moment ago she’d tried to speak and had been unable to. Now words were coming out without her permission.

  “It’s not my name!” Phillip said. “My name is Cowan. Cowan, dammit, but Joseph would never acknowledge that. He would never give me my due. I thought you would, Kirsten. I really thought you would. But you couldn’t, could you? You’re just like her.”

  She blinked. Just like who? She was never certain if she spoke the words aloud or just thought them inside her own mind.

  “You hate me like she did. God, you even look just like her. That’s why Joseph had to have you, you know. That’s why he started this whole damned scheme. Because of what she did to him.”

  Adam came up the rest of the way, slowly lowering the trapdoor, his eyes on Kirsten’s briefly, as if to reassure her.

  “She said she loved him, and then she left him,” Phillip went on. “And six months later she left me on his doorstep. But he wouldn’t claim me as his own. No, not Joe Cowan. He named me Carr, said when I grew up I could be his driver. Big joke. Big effing joke. But I never laughed. He sent me off to be raised by strangers, my beloved father. While my mother went to the next man on her list and married him. But it didn’t matter, she left him, too. The second he had his first heart attack. The second she realized he wasn’t perfect. No man could ever be good enough for our mother, could he, Kirsten?”

  Kirsten’s head was buzzing. Adam came closer, using Phillip’s distraction to his advantage.

  “I wish I’d been the baby she’d kept, instead of you, Kirsten. I really do. I wish she had stayed with Joseph and raised me the way she should have. None of this would have happened if you’d never been born.”

  The light flashed on in her brain, and it was blinding. For just a moment the shock cut through the drugs and the pain. “My God, are you talking about my mother?”

  “Our mother.” Phillip smiled sickly. “Sis.”

  Then he jerked his head and his gun toward Adam. “Stop it! Stop trying to get closer!”

  Adam froze, hands high. “Look, we can talk this out. You don’t want to do this, Phillip. You don’t want to hurt your own sister.”

  “She hates me! Just like our mother did!” Phillip shrieked. His gun barrel jammed up into the soft underside of her chin now, his hand trembling violently as he backed up the steep stairs, pulling her with him. All that lived at the top was the widow’s walk. Three stories up. Sweet heaven.

  “Joseph told me all the things you used to say about me, Kirsten. How you called me a bastard. How you swore you’d get everything he had and throw me out without a dime once he was gone. He told me everything!”

  “He lied to you, Phillip,” Kirsten whispered, fighting hard to stay cognizant, to cling to the ability to speak. “He lied. He was a liar, you know that. I didn’t even know you were my…I didn’t even know.”

  Phillip shook his head. “At least he let me live here. Gave me a decent job. A home. At least he was my friend. That’s more than you ever were.”

  “He was never anyone’s friend, Phillip,” Adam said.

  “He was the only one I had.” Tears streamed down Phillip’s cheeks now. “He was my father. You don’t have any idea how much it hurt when he made me kill him.”

  “Then why did you do it?” Adam asked, his voice accusing. He was getting desperate to stop Phillip. Kirsten could see it in his eyes. The closer they got to the door at the top, the one that opened directly onto the widow’s walk, the more distressed Adam looked.

  “He made me,” Phillip moaned. “He had a gun pointed at me, and he put another one in my hand, laid the barrel up against his forehead and kept telling me to do it. Said he’d kill me if I didn’t. Called me a weakling and a coward and a fatherless bastard. Said I was so worthless even my own mother hadn’t wanted me. Told me the only way I’d ever have anything in my life was if I did what he said, exactly as he said. Pull the trigger, take his gun, leave the other one. He just kept going and going, and then he lifted his own gun to my head and said he’d count to three, and when he got there one of us was going to be on the floor dead. I was crying. I was pleading with him. But he kept counting. When he got to three, I…I did it. I shot him. I shot him. I shot him.”

  Sobs racked the man. The gun jerked against Kirsten’s throat, and it hurt like hell. Phillip shoved the trapdoor open and started up through. She felt a soft breeze, warm sunlight. She blinked in the brightness.
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  Phillip kicked the door shut after they passed through, and then he stood on top of it, to prevent Adam from coming up. He was still crying.

  She could hear Adam scrambling up from inside, hear his frantic efforts to shove the door open. Phillip bounced with the force of Adam’s blows from beneath the door.

  “I did everything just the way he said I should,” Phillip went on. Talking to her, or to himself, or maybe to God. She wasn’t sure anymore. “I took the gun he’d been holding…and I wiped all the prints off the one I had shot him with. And then I left it lying there beside him. And I went away. All that was left was to kill you, Kirsten. He said if I did it right, if it looked like an accident or a suicide, I’d get everything. All his money. Everything.”

  She looked up at him. At the line of his jaw, the crook in his nose. Her brother. Her mother’s son. And Joseph’s. The enormity of it rocked her. She’d known about her mother’s pregnancy by another man. Heard her mother talk about getting rid of the child. And she’d always been aware of her father’s hatred for Joseph Cowan. But she’d never put it all together until now.

  It shook her to the marrow. But her own impending death shook her even more.

  “It’s over now, Phillip. Killing me now will do you no good.”

  “You rejected me,” he said. “Just like she did. You never once acknowledged me as your brother, not in all the time you and Joseph lived in that house. You barely even spoke to me.”

  “I didn’t know–”

  “I don’t have any reason to live now, but I’m damned well not leaving you behind to collect the millions that should have been mine.”

  “Let us both live,” she whispered. “And I’ll share it with you.”

  He stared down into her eyes, and for a long moment, seemed to be thinking. Then he shook his head. “They know now. About Joseph. And Hawkins. They’ll put me in prison for that. It doesn’t matter.” He glanced down, and she was compelled by some masochistic impulse to do the same. The ground seemed a mile away, and it spun lazily below. He leaned closer to the rail.

  “Why did you kill Hawkins?” she asked in desperation.

  Phillip stilled again. “He drew up the will. And he figured out that I was the one who killed Joseph and guessed I planned to kill you, too.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t going to at first, you know. I was just going to let you go to prison. You wouldn’t have inherited a thing then. I would have gotten it all. But you had to run away. You had to snoop. You and that Adam Brand. And I couldn’t risk letting you live, because you might have found out the truth.”

  She nodded. “You didn’t want to kill me. Because I’m your sister. Your blood, Phillip. You still don’t want to hurt me. I know you don’t.”

  “I don’t have any choice now.” He blinked at her, his moist brown eyes looking like the eyes of a wounded child. “You rejected me.”

  “Joseph never told me,” she said again, enunciating each word. “He never told me, Phillip, I swear!”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He lunged forward, but taking them to the railing forced him to remove his weight from the trapdoor. Adam burst up through. Elliot shouted from below, and Kirsten was shocked to see him scaling the steep roof, feet slipping, finding a hold as he risked his life.

  But it was too late. Phillip wrenched himself over the rail, clutching her to him as he did. And then he hung there, toes on the very edge, fingers curled around the rail, his back to eternity, one arm anchoring her to his side.

  “Don’t move. Don’t move,” he said, to Adam, to her, to Elliot. She was never certain. She only knew neither of the Brands could get to her in time, and she knew Phillip was determined to kill her and himself. If she couldn’t get him to let go of her, she was going to die. There was no one to do anything about it but her.

  The pen pricked her forearm. She blinked, then worked it into her palm. “Please let me go, Phillip,” she whispered.

  “I’m sorry. But I can’t.”

  The hand holding the rail let go. At the same time, Kirsten jabbed his other hand—the one holding her captive—with the pen. And it, too, let go.

  She scrambled, paddling air with frantic arms, and gripped the rail with one desperate grasp. Phillip fell away behind her. She couldn’t look. He never cried out, never made a sound. The thud of his body hitting the earth made her stomach heave. And the weakness caused by the pills he’d force-fed her made her grip tenuous, at best.

  “Hold on!” Adam leaned over the rail, clasped her hand in his. Then he reached for her other hand, the one dangling in space. With firm, quiet power, he hauled her back over the rail and into his arms.

  And she thought that in all the time she’d known him, he had never held her as tightly as he did then. Nor had he whispered her name over and over with so much emotion. Nor had he ever, ever, dampened her hair with his tears.

  Or whispered that he loved her with quite so much conviction.

  “I’ve got you, honey,” he kept saying. “God, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I walked away. I love you, Kirsten. You hear me? I love you.”

  Was it the trauma? The stress she’d been under? The pills Phillip had fed her? Was all this some nightmare that had turned itself into her fondest dream? Or could he possibly mean it?

  Chapter 14

  Adam scooped her up, glanced over the rail and saw Garrett crouched beside Philip’s body. Garrett looked up, met Adam’s eyes and shook his head slowly, side to side.

  Adam sighed.

  “Give me a hand, will you, big brother?” One of Elliot’s hands appeared at the railing. Then the other, and then his head rose up behind them.

  Cradling Kirsten, Adam reached for his brother with his free hand and helped Elliot over.

  “She okay?” Elliot asked, once he got his feet on solid ground.

  Adam shifted her weight, examined her face. “I sure as hell hope so. She’s been through hell.”

  “Yeah, and not just today, either.”

  Elliot opened the trapdoor, then went through first and watched as Adam followed him down, ready to react if Adam stumbled. His brother seemed to think pretty highly of his woman, Adam thought, not unkindly.

  He’d have to ask El to be his best man.

  Right after he asked Kirsten to be his wife.

  It took forever, he thought, to get down to ground level, but when he did, the whole clan was there waiting. They closed in around Kirsten as he held her. Lash pulled in with the pickup truck, and Wes yanked the door open. “Best get her to a hospital,” he said. “She’s probably just been fed a half bottle or so of those sleeping pills. She’ll be okay, though.”

  Adam started to ease her into the pickup, but she stirred awake, opened her eyes, looked around at all the concerned faces surrounding her. She sniffed once and bit her lip. “You all…you all came here to help me?”

  ‘“Course we did,” Penny said. “And it’s all over now. You’re gonna be fine.”

  “But…but…” She stiffened a little in Adam’s arms as she looked up at him. “Do they know…do they know what I did?”

  “We know,” Jessi said, and she reached out to stroke Kirsten’s hair. “And it doesn’t matter, Kirsten.”

  “It was an accident,” Garrett added.

  “You were just a kid,” Wes said.

  “Honey, we all make mistakes,” Ben told her. And offered her a smile of encouragement.

  “Besides,” Elliot declared, “you’re family.”

  She shook her head slowly, eyes wide with disbelief. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say you’ll come to us next time you get in trouble, Kirsten,” Penny told her. “We’ll be there for you if you ever do. Promise.”

  Adam lifted Kirsten and settled her into the pickup truck. Then he went around to the other side and got in. As he put the vehicle into motion, Kirsten leaned against him, and he slipped his arm around her shoulders.

  “Is Phillip…?” she whispered.

  Adam swallowed hard. �
�He didn’t make it. I’m sorry, Kirsty.”

  He felt the shudder that went through her. “He…he was my brother.”

  “I know. I know, hon.” He held her closer, and she cried softly for a long time.

  When her tears eased, she lifted her head. Her eyes were clouded, dim, but she seemed more coherent than before. “I want to see my father,” she told him. “I…I need to explain…everything.”

  “We’ll do that when we go to pick him up, Kirsten. The second Doc gives you a clean bill of health and Garrett clears things up with the rangers, we’re heading for Dallas. All right?”

  She blinked up at him. “We…we are?”

  Adam nodded. “I know your head’s swimming right now, hon, but I’ve got some things to say to you that are gonna bust a hole in my gut if I don’t get them out.”

  “All..all right.”

  “I was a fool, Kirsten. I was a fool two years ago for not loving you enough. For letting you walk away from me. For not believing in what we had enough to know you wouldn’t have done that of your own free will. I should have come after you, Kirsten, but I ran away instead, and I’m sorry for that.”

  He glanced down at her, checking to make sure she was still awake and alert. She needed to hear him, to understand him. He figured he probably ought to wait until Doc had cleared her system of whatever was floating around in it to tell her all of this, but dammit, he couldn’t wait.

  “I’m even sorrier I walked away this time. When you told me the truth. But it was grief, Kirsten. It was shock, and anger, and it didn’t mean a damn thing. Shoot, I wasn’t gone twenty minutes before I knew I was making a big mistake. And it turned out to be twenty minutes that damn near cost your life. Can you forgive me, Kirsten?”

  She drew a deep breath, seemed to be struggling to keep him in focus, blinking and squinting by turns. “There’s nothing to forgive, Adam. I’m the one who needs forgiveness, if you can give it. And I’ll understand if you can’t.”