At her sniff of disapproval, Aurora’s temper got the better of her.
“I’ll be the first to admit I had a lot to learn about housecleaning when I came here,” she said sharply. “Still do, but I can tell you, my learning curve might’ve been a little shorter if you hadn’t advised me to use two incompatible cleaners.”
Aurora meant it as a bluff, for she’d never really imagined the older woman had purposely poisoned her. But she took a step back at the malevolent look that darkened Hilda’s normally kind face.
“I told police chief Peters, and I’ll tell you,” the maid said hotly. “I’ve used those two products together dozens of times—hundreds, maybe. You’re obviously confused about what you mixed. Or just a troublemaker out to distract Mrs. Perkins from your own incompetence by getting other employees—valued, capable employees—in trouble.”
Forcing herself to take a deep breath, Aurora assured her, “I really wasn’t trying to cause you or any of the others trouble. I was just trying to help the police catch whoever’s been killing employees on this ranch—”
“I can’t think why anyone would want to kill you. You haven’t done enough honest work around here to see or hear anything that—”
Aurora pulled down her turtleneck to reveal the garish bruises she had been concealing, bruises that looked a lot worse than they felt. “Do you think I made this up, too? That I attacked myself in that dark bathroom?”
Hilda cringed, her eyes widening as she stared at the damage. “I—I never said that, and I wouldn’t. I just can’t help but wonder.”
“Neither can I,” Aurora answered, “but fortunately, it’s not my problem anymore.”
Looking down at the bag in her hand, Hilda said, “You mean you’re leaving the ranch.”
Aurora nodded. “Yes, and for good this time. I hope you’ll stay safe, Hilda, and that whoever’s doing these things is finally caught and locked up.”
“And I hope,” Hilda told her, “that you’ll find your next position something more...in keeping with your talents.”
Aurora wondered exactly what the older woman had meant before figuring that Trip’s ugly gossip—or maybe Misty Mayhew’s—had undoubtedly beaten her back to the ranch. Telling herself she had enough to worry about without caring what reputation her latest alter ego left behind here, she waited a few minutes to give Hilda time to get into her car and drive off before slipping outdoors and heading in the direction of the stolen truck.
With the cloudless skies, the temperature had fallen. Shivering despite her coat, Aurora hesitated beside the pickup, staring up at the myriad stars. Brilliant stars, so far from the town’s lights...even farther than she felt from any living soul.
Glancing back at lit windows of the Colton mansion, she reminded herself that there was only one that mattered. One who’d rejected her as firmly as he had his Colton name.
Steeling herself for what was sure to be a long drive, she grabbed the cold door handle with her bare hand—and sucked in a deep breath as what felt like the hard end of a metal pipe was jammed into her back. A pipe that instinct told her was not a pipe at all.
“You scream, I’ll put a bullet through your lungs, bitch,” the harsh whisper confirmed. “You try to fight, and you die faster.”
“Who?” Aurora started, nearly certain the speaker was a woman. “What do you wan— Unhh!”
The word turned to a groan as what must have been the barrel struck the base of her neck, a blow that dropped her to her knees and brought tears of pain to her eyes.
“Any more questions?” rasped her attacker—an attacker whose brutality left no doubt in Aurora’s mind that this was the same person who had jumped her in the women’s showers, the same mastermind who had already killed at least three times before.
Swearing she wasn’t going to be the fourth victim, Aurora shook her head and whimpered with the pain radiating between her shoulders.
“Get up,” the woman ordered. “We’re going to take a little walk now. Out into the woods.”
Chapter 20
Sweat beaded on Dylan’s brow as he went to Levi’s desk, where the extension had been ringing on and off for the past ten minutes. With Levi upstairs tending to his father, Dylan had no other choice except to answer if he wanted to get any rest at all.
Not that he could sleep, for worrying about Aurora. Had she gotten the note he’d sent asking to see her, then decided it was better if they didn’t speak again? Or had the woman he had trusted to deliver his words decided the errand didn’t fit with her agenda? Dylan wouldn’t put it past her, considering the resentful look she’d given him when he’d asked.
“Infirmary. Dylan Frick here,” he said into the phone.
“Thank goodness I finally tracked you down, Mr. Frick.”
“Who is this?” asked Dylan, unable to place the familiar male voice.
“This is Leon, Leon Nelson. You remember?”
“The electrician, sure.” Dylan wasn’t likely to forget his scuffle with the man’s ne’er-do-well son, who had clearly known more than he’d admitted. “Did you find out anything more from Junior?”
“Acts scared spitless every time I ask him about the fella who contacted him in the first place—”
“That I can understand,” Dylan said, remembering the giant bearing down on him, a giant who would never trouble Junior or anyone else again.
“But I did get one thing outta that boy—the name of the ranch employee who tampered with that deadman panel. A real quick study, he said, and real eager to make money, no matter what it took—”
“Who was it?” Dylan interrupted, reminded that, with Jethro dying, Trip’s and his family’s free ride was about to come to an abrupt halt.
But Leon surprised him, saying, “That little maid.... Can you believe it? That one with the curly black hair and blue eyes.”
“Misty?” Dylan’s gut twisted, and his pulse zoomed higher. “Misty Mayhew, you mean?”
“Yes, indeed. Seems she’s in a heap of trouble. Owes a lot of money to the wrong people, on account of gambling over at the reservation.”
Instincts blaring, Dylan thought once more of the note he’d given her, a note whose contents might have been enough to drive a desperate woman to an even more desperate act. After thanking Leon, Dylan told him, “Call police chief Peters, will you? Ask him to come out to the ranch right away.”
“But what about my boy? I know he’s done wrong and all, but he didn’t hurt anybody. And I swear I’ll straighten him up, if it’s the last thing I—”
“I’ll leave him out of this if there’s any way that I can,” Dylan promised, though he was far from sure that the older Nelson would be successful. “That’s the best I can do for you.”
Leon was still thanking him when Dylan hung up the extension and then phoned Amanda and asked to speak with Aurora.
“She’s not here,” Amanda told him, her voice shaky. “She told me she was going to pack up a few things in her room before she moved into the guest suite I had made ready in the family wing.”
“You let her go up alone?”
“I know I shouldn’t have. But she waited until I was distracted putting Cheyenne to bed, and—Dylan, I called the servants’ wing to check on her just a couple of minutes ago. One of the kitchen helpers checked, but Aurora wasn’t anywhere around. I thought she might be on her way back—or maybe she’d stopped by to see you.”
“We need to find her right away. And Misty Mayhew, too.” Quickly, he explained what the electrician had told him. “Nelson’s calling police chief Peters, but meanwhile, I’ll organize a search.”
“But you’re hurt. You should stay in bed while I call—”
Dylan dropped the phone into the cradle, then headed for the door just as Levi came in, greeting him with a look of disbelief.
“You promised me you’d rest.”
“That’s not an option right now.”
As soon as Dylan briefed him, Levi’s expression turned serious. “How can I hel
p?”
Gritting his teeth against the pain of sudden movement, he grabbed his coat, which Amanda had draped over a chair earlier. “I’m heading outside to see if Hope’s truck is still out there, or if she might’ve taken off on her own, since she’s talked about it earlier. Meanwhile, if you could concentrate on finding Misty, that’d be great. Don’t try to confront her alone, though, not unless it’s an emergency. For all we know, she’s a murderer—maybe even the mastermind herself.”
“I don’t see how she could be,” Levi said with a shake of his head. “She didn’t even work here when Faye—when your mother—was killed.”
“That’s a good point, but we definitely know she’s desperate enough to risk burning down the place for money. Desperate enough to try to kill Hope twice already, too, I’m betting, just to get rid of a threat to her plan to get close to me.”
As Dylan hurried outside, he swore that this time, Misty would be no more successful. That no matter what it cost him, he would save Aurora’s life.
* * *
Filled with panic at the thought that this walk would be one-way, Aurora reflexively looked back at her captor and immediately wished that she had not. For the figure standing behind her wore an oversize black parka with a hood, a muffler and a huge pair of ski goggles obscuring most of his or her face.
But it was the sight of the pistol in the gloved hand that had sent adrenaline spiking through Aurora. Adrenaline that had her screaming and shoving her attacker, then turning and racing through a darkness broken only by the starlight—and the sharp crack of the gun.
As Aurora ran through the stand of trees, she heard the zing of a bullet ricocheting past her. But she kept on moving, unhurt, save for the stinging slap of branches as they whipped her face and shoulders. Raising an arm to protect her eyes, she ducked around a thick trunk, only to hear another blast and feel the spray of flying bark.
Far too close, she realized, as a flashlight’s beam swayed through the undergrowth. Gulping deep breaths of air so cold her lungs stung, Aurora raced off once again. With terror riding her sore shoulders, it was impossible to move with anything approaching stealth. Leaves crunched and branches cracked or gouged, pulling grunts of pain she couldn’t hold back.
As the trees grew thicker, the branches closed in on her, and the bright beam of the moving flashlight cast black shadows that lurched eerily beside her before, inevitably, joining with her own.
An instant later, she was falling, her foot snagged by the edge of a jutting rock. As she went down, her shrill scream slashed through darkness—the scream of a woman who knew she would never outrun the next bullet...
Nor the death that had stalked her so ruthlessly, so long.
* * *
Just a few more steps...
Adrenaline flooding his body, Dylan put on a burst of speed, pushing past both pain and his instinct for self-preservation and toward the black-clad figure whose flashlight led him like a beacon. Breathing hard and intent on her own quarry, the armed figure never saw him coming, never realized how dangerously close he was to striking from behind.
But he chased a moving target, an uninjured, agile stalker who stubbornly remained a few steps out of reach. Until the hooded assailant abruptly drew up short, weapon rising to take aim—even as Dylan shouted, “NO!”
Leaping toward her, he heard the deafening report, followed by what could only be Aurora’s scream. A scream of pain and terror, from a woman who knew that she would die.
He collided with the shooter, both of them crashing to the ground. But the impact sent agony spearing through his rib cage, a pain so sharp and stabbing, he didn’t dare to breathe. Still, he grappled with the struggling figure, his hand clamping over the gun as she tried to turn it on him.
“Dylan!” Aurora cried out from nearby, distracting the attacker enough to let him shift his grip.
There was another explosion, another female cry of pain, this time from the woman in black as she clapped a hand to her upper arm. Yet within an instant, she somehow managed to slam an elbow into his side.
A wave of dizziness sent the stars spinning and had him dropping the gun. By the time he dared scoop out a shallow breath, she had rolled to her feet and come up running. Running into the blackest patch of shadows.
Follow her. End this, finally.
But with the sound of another woman’s weeping, he knew that even if he found the strength to give chase, he couldn’t do it—not without risking all he had of Aurora.
Chapter 21
Thanksgiving morning
Under the watchful gaze of the bodyguard assigned to look after her, Aurora drifted into the employee dining room. Now that Misty Mayhew had been taken into custody, she felt safer than she had before, though neither she nor any of the ranch’s other female workers showed any sign of a gunshot injury.
But as dark and confused as the night that she was shot had been, maybe Dylan had been mistaken and the bullet hadn’t struck the shooter. Misty, Aurora was certain, though the conniving little schemer had so far admitted nothing beyond tampering with the electrical panel and “accidentally” replacing the contents of a certain white bottle on Aurora’s cleaning cart with a solution containing a strong acid.
“I never really meant to kill her,” she’d insisted, “only to convince Mrs. Perkins she was too incompetent to keep on staff. I swear it!”
Police chief Peters had insisted Misty’s “mischief” was all about her desperation to pay off her debts—and snag the one man she’d been gambling could buy her way out of trouble.
A man who remained in the ranch infirmary, sedated against the pain of what had turned out to be three fractured ribs.
Blinking back tears at the thought of all he’d suffered, Aurora went to the table, which was beautifully but simply set for the employees’ meal this afternoon. Already, she smelled the rich aroma of turkeys cooking in the ovens, the spicy-fruity scents of a half-dozen baking pies. Those smells were overlaid with memories from years past: her mother’s glazed sweet potatoes, green-bean casserole and yeast rolls, her father’s smile of contentment as he pushed back from the table and praised her mother by insisting, “You’ve outdone yourself again, dear.”
Aurora dropped a folded paper into the top of the pumpkin that was the table’s centerpiece before the tread of boots warned that someone was approaching. As she turned, her jaw dropped at the sight of Dylan coming toward her.
“You’re up!” she said, recovering enough to smile nervously. “I’m so glad you’re feeling better. I thought I might miss you.”
Dylan didn’t smile back. Instead, he scowled, which, combined with the boyishly tousled hair and the misbuttoned shirt, somehow only made him more appealing. “So Amanda was right. You did plan to leave, without saying one damned word.”
At a look from her, the bodyguard gave a nod before discreetly stepping outside to guard the door.
“I’ve said goodbye,” she told Dylan. “I told you last night—”
“After whatever was in that painkiller Levi gave me, I barely knew what language you were speaking. I only knew that when you held my hand, your flesh was warm, your pulse strong beneath my fingers. And your eyes were shining with— I could have sworn it was with a lot more than plain relief.”
“It—it was,” she admitted, overtaken by an echo of that riotous emotion. She reached out as if to touch him, reached so close she could imagine the prickle of the stubble darkening his jawline before she pulled back, then drew her shaking fingers through her own loose hair instead. “When I saw you wrestling with my attacker—I’ve never been so frightened. More afraid of losing you than I was of being killed. And then to hear that gun go off, to see her get up and run off while you— I was so damned sure she’d shot you, Dylan. And my heart—I swear that it stopped, until I saw you moving.”
He took a step nearer, his expression giving way to anguish. “I thought you’d been hit, too. And I swore, Aurora, swore to myself that if by some miracle you made it, I would nev
er let you walk away from me again.”
She stared into his blue eyes, her pulse throbbing in her ears like thunder. “What choice do I have, Dylan? You know I can’t stay here, that even with my ex dead and the family in disarray, they’d find a way to get to me—”
“You’re right,” he said. “You do have to leave.”
“The helicopter’s on the way. It should be here for me in—” she glanced at her watch “—about fifteen minutes.”
Closing the gap between them, he took her hands in his. And her heart crumbled into dust, with the knowledge that she would lose the kind of bond that she had never even guessed existed, that even if she lived to be an old, old woman, she would never know its like again.
“But that doesn’t mean,” he told her quietly, “you have to go alone.”
She shook her head, pain mushrooming through her chest at his offer. An offer she could not accept. “You can’t mean that. Dylan, you have a family. Right here. Do you have any idea what I’d give to see mine one more time?”
He grabbed the back of a chair with one hand, then gingerly lowered himself onto one knee.
“What on earth are you doing? You can’t possibly mean to—”
“There’s not much time, so are you listening?”
“Are you kidding? Crazy-hot cowboy down on one knee?” She sketched a check mark with one finger. “You’ve definitely got my full attention.”
“I choose you to be my family, to be all the family that I’ll ever need in this life. Because, whatever name you go by, I know exactly who you are. I know you and I love you, and that’s the only thing that matters.”
She shook her head, her eyes closing and the dust of her devastated heart blowing in the wind. “That’s impossible. Dylan. You can’t really know me. And what if something happens? If you change your mind?”
“That’s fear talking, and I already know you’re one gutsy woman. A Jersey girl, like you say, brave enough to testify against a mob boss and carjack some good old boy’s pickup out from underneath him to come running to my rescue—”
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