Harlequin Superromance November 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2

by Mary Brady

  The helicopter swooped dizzyingly over the rim and pointed downward.

  * * *

  DESPERATE AND MINDLESS, Nell sought a place to hide from the white light sweeping across the lava field, hunting her. She staggered and swayed, barely keeping to her feet. She knew she was almost done; each step felt like her last. But she reached a taller outcrop of lava, and feeling her way around it found a concavity on the far side. She sank down, curling herself into the smallest ball possible.

  Every part of her hurt. She felt like a wounded animal waiting to die. She wanted to die alone, not with him standing above her in triumph.

  The beam of light moved slowly over the lava field right in front of her. So close. Nell squeezed her eyes shut. If she couldn’t see it, it couldn’t see her, she decided with the irrationality of a child.

  A wind seemed to be whipping her. She hunched tighter and covered her ears against the roar that filled her ears.

  “Nell!”

  It almost sounded like Colin’s voice. I’m dying. The thought was the most coherent she’d had in some time. She shook in great shudders, hearing footsteps crunch on the lava.

  “Oh, God, Nell.” His voice again, this time breaking at the end. “He’s dead, Nell. Sweetheart, I found you.”

  She almost believed that. She opened her eyes the tiniest bit but could only squint against the light that had found her.

  “I think I’m dead,” she told him.

  “No. You’re not. Thank God, you’re not.”

  Very, very gently, she was lifted. There were too many hands to be only Colin’s. And, oh, it hurt to be touched, so fiercely she decided she wasn’t dead after all. People coming back from near-death experiences reported that following the white light was peaceful, and this wasn’t.

  “I’m sorry, so sorry,” he groaned, and the hands laid her on a flat surface that then lifted. She thought he was swearing.

  “Love...you,” she whispered, and the white light was gone.

  * * *

  NELL WAS TAKEN straight into surgery to remove a bullet lodged beneath her shoulder blade.

  The wait was agonizing.

  Jane hugged Colin and left to deal with some of the fallout of the night. Pacing the hall outside the waiting room, he did call Noah Chandler, telling him what had happened in a few terse words.

  “What the hell?”

  In a monotone, Colin continued with as much information as he had. Duane had sexually molested Maddie as a girl. The best assumption at the moment was that it was Duane who had abducted her back then. “We think there’s more. He may have murdered the boy who was buried in the park, but we don’t know why. I’m hoping when Nell wakes up...” His throat squeezed shut. After a minute, he managed to say, raggedly, “Maddie. When Maddie wakes up...”

  “All right.” Chandler sounded surprisingly kind. “Call me tomorrow when you can.”

  Maybe Angel Butte had gotten lucky with this mayor. More cynically, Colin thought, Time will tell.

  As he ended the call, he saw the Dubeaus hurrying toward him. Marc looked distraught, his wife...maybe worried. Either her face was incapable of expression, or she was incapable of emotion.

  But when they reached him, she was the one to fix him with a surprisingly desperate gaze. “Maddie?”

  “She’s...in surgery.” He hesitated. “The waiting room is right here. Why don’t you sit down?”

  Helen fumbled her way to a seat. Gripping one of her hands, her husband stayed on his feet. Both looked at Colin.

  “Was it Duane?” Marc asked.

  There was no way to soften it. “Yes. He’s dead, Helen.” Forming the next words was a challenge, but they had to be said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  A sob escaped her. She pressed her free hand to her mouth and stared at him with brimming eyes. “He tried to kill Maddie.”

  “He did.”

  “Oh, dear God.”

  Marc crouched and wrapped his arms around his wife. She leaned into him and cried silently, only the shaking of her shoulders betraying the tears. His anguish was painfully visible.

  Only when she straightened and reached for the tissues on the table beside the chair did Marc look up at Colin. “This is my fault.”

  Helen shook her head vehemently. “No, it’s mine. I’m the one who wouldn’t listen to her. Who told you he would never...”

  Colin gazed down at them from what felt like a great distance. Most of him was attuned to the double doors leading to the surgical suite. Nell was in there. He’d have given anything to be with her.

  He looked at Helen. “You had no idea.”

  “No,” she said dully. “I think... No, I knew we were both damaged by our childhoods. I’ve never told anyone but Marc.” Her face worked. “Sometimes, pride was all I had. But I never dreamed my brother would do anything like this. I swear.” She ended in a whisper. “I loved him.”

  Her pride had been more important than her daughter? Anger roiled in Colin, mixing with the volatile combination of emotions he was already struggling to contain. He had no civility left in him. No sympathy for this woman.

  “Tell me.” His voice ground like the cinders had underfoot.

  Both stared at him, alarm on their faces.

  He leaned forward a little, vibrating with that anger. “You owe me—most of all, you owe Maddie—that much.”

  Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times. After a moment she nodded. “My father was navy,” she said in a constricted voice, looking away. “He had long ship deployments. When he was home, our mother was the perfect wife. The house shone, dinner was on the table when he walked in the door, she helped us with homework....” Her laugh was caustic. “When he shipped out, she brought men home. A different one every night, sometimes. She wasn’t...discreet. Both of us saw her...doing things with them. But how could we tell Dad? It would have broken his heart. Only...then he came home unexpectedly and walked in on her. It all came out. He wondered if we were even his children. He insisted on testing, and...” For a moment it didn’t seem as if she could speak. “Duane wasn’t,” she said so softly, Colin had to lean toward her to hear. “Dad...rejected him. It was hideous. Duane ran away and...well, I didn’t see or hear from him for years. I know he ended up in shelters.”

  Colin had known that much. Like Nell, Duane had gotten his GED and been able to go on to college.

  “I’d already married Marc when Duane got in touch,” Helen finished. “I was so glad to see him.” Her face contorted.

  “He called Maddie ‘angel,’” Colin said, his voice harsh in contrast with hers.

  “Yes.” Tear-drenched eyes finally met his again. “He used to talk about how innocent she was. How pure. Nothing like our bitch of a mother. That’s what he said. ‘Nothing like our bitch of a mother.’ And he was right. She was.” Helen seemed to struggle for what she needed to say. “I spent years wishing I wasn’t a girl, because that made me like her. I suppose...”

  She didn’t finish. Didn’t have to. Colin could finish her sentence. She supposed she’d rejected her own daughter, because she was a girl. Helen presumably despised herself on some level, rejecting her own femininity.

  And he could imagine Duane worshipping everything that was pure and angelic in his niece even as he corrupted that innocence. What had happened? Had she responded too sexually to something he did, disillusioning him?

  Or had he discovered she had a boyfriend?

  God. Colin rubbed a shaking hand over his face. Yeah, that would have done it.

  All he could do was nod at the two of them and walk away. He couldn’t bring himself to sit beside them pretending they were all united in a common fear for Nell.

  They were here, and he supposed that was something. For him, it was too little, too late.

  He loved Nell, an
d he’d almost been too late.

  Had she really said she loved him?

  Damn. Out of sight of the Dubeaus, he turned, flattened his hands on the wall and bent his head, trying to regain some semblance of control.

  * * *

  NELL UNGLUED GUMMY eyelids and raised them. A monitor close by was beeping softly. Dim lighting was adequate for her to see the rails on her bed, the IV stand beside it, the pleats of a curtain that mostly circled the small space, although a gap allowed her to see the head of the empty bed that shared the room with her. Really, all of that was only background. Mostly, she saw the man who sat in a chair pulled up to the bed. Leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees, he was watching her steadily. She looked down to see that he was holding her hand.

  She’d woken up several times before, first in recovery. Different nurses’ faces had appeared above her. She’d been given ice chips to moisten her mouth. They’d asked questions that she thought she’d answered. She remembered being wheeled to a room and shifted to this bed. Later, she thought she’d even talked to Colin, but she’d still been so fuzzy.

  Nell wriggled her fingers and his tightened. “I really didn’t die,” she whispered, and he laughed, low and husky.

  “No. Why did you think you had?”

  “The white light.”

  He nodded. “That makes sense. It was a searchlight coming from a helicopter.”

  “The heavens.”

  He chuckled again. “In a way.”

  “I hurt.”

  He stood to hand her the button she could use to administer pain medication. She squeezed it once, twice, and sighed in relief. He helped her sit up a little and sip water until her mouth no longer felt as if it had been stuffed full of winter-dead sagebrush.

  “Better?” Colin asked, smiling at her.

  “Yes.” She wished she didn’t have to breathe, but at least now the pain was less sharp, more of a deep ache. “I was shot.”

  “Twice.” He smoothed hair from her forehead, stroking so gently she closed her eyes and tried to nestle her face into his big hand. “A bullet entered your back and lodged under your shoulder blade. The other passed through the muscle on your upper arm. You had surgery to remove the one bullet and they cleaned up your scrapes and cuts. You were a mess. One ankle was so swollen they thought it was broken, but apparently it’s only a severe sprain. You’ll be on crutches for a few weeks, though.”

  She did an inventory and discovered she knew which ankle was injured. She could feel each and every one of those scrapes, too. “I suppose I ruined my parka,” she said in resignation.

  This laugh sounded helpless. “Parkas can be replaced.”

  “I bought it for this trip,” she told him with some indignation. “It was expensive.”

  Colin let down the rail and sat on the bed next to her, his hip pressing against hers. “I’ll buy you a new one for Christmas.”

  “You’re laughing,” she said suspiciously.

  “No. Maybe.” Now his mouth curved. “Yes. You survived, and you’re worried about a parka.”

  She guessed it was silly. She was avoiding asking the important questions, like whether he expected to spend Christmas with her. But also...about the monster her mind had tried so hard to block from her memory.

  No more hiding.

  She didn’t have to. She’d won again.

  She heard the soft shush, shush of footsteps in the hall. They passed her room without hesitation.

  “Is he...?” She fumbled and swallowed. “Did you arrest him?”

  “Duane’s dead, Nell. I shot him.”

  Absorbing that, she searched his face, seeing grief and relief and probably a hundred other things. “Have you ever had to kill anyone before?”

  He shook his head.

  “I’m sorry. Not,” she added fiercely, “that he’s dead, but that you had to do it. He was your friend.”

  “I thought he was my friend. I still can’t believe—” His throat worked. “All those years. I’d have sworn he was a good cop, Nell.”

  She held on tight to his hand, and realized he was holding her as tightly.

  “He never should have been allowed to be involved in investigating your disappearance. As green as I was then, I wondered. But he wouldn’t take no from anybody.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I have no doubt he was the one who talked to your friend Emily, then made sure no one else ever heard a word about your boyfriend.”

  “Beck was more of a friend,” she said softly. “A really good friend. We met by accident and he... I don’t know. Recognized something in me. I told him things I hadn’t told anyone else. Except my parents. You know that.” She waited for Colin’s nod; saw the muscles tighten in his jaw. “Beck thought I should go to authorities. If I wouldn’t do that, I could run away.”

  “In the end, that’s what you had to do.” He paused. “You remember.”

  She gave a tiny nod, not anxious to move any more than she could help. “Everything. Almost everything,” she amended. “The night before, Uncle Duane took me to a movie and then to his place for ice cream. He kissed me and rubbed up against me and then he pulled down his zipper and asked me to kiss him down there. Usually I just...closed my eyes and let him touch me. You know. But that time I freaked. I yanked away from him and ran outside. He followed me and drove me home. The whole way, he kept saying, ‘It’s just a different way of kissing, Maddie. Of loving.’ And then he said I shouldn’t tell my dad, because he’d be jealous that I was more loving with him than I was with Dad. ‘He’ll be angry at you, Maddie. If he believes you. He never does, does he?’” She tried to smile. “He was right. I tried anyway, as soon as Dad got home from work the next day. But he wouldn’t listen. He said, ‘You’re back to that again? Are you so desperate for attention?’”

  Colin swore. “They were here tonight. Your parents. We talked. When you didn’t show up at their house this evening, your dad called. He told me you’d tried to tell him about Duane back then. He’d always wondered, he admitted. And he overheard your mother mentioning to Duane that you were coming for dinner.”

  “That’s what he said, when he showed up. That he wanted to drive me to Mom and Dad’s. But he wasn’t invited, was he?”

  “No, I got the impression from your father that the uneasiness has stuck with him. Enough so he didn’t want to put you and Duane together.”

  So finally he had believed her. Maybe she ought to feel some sense of satisfaction, but she couldn’t. She’d needed her daddy then, and he had failed her.

  “Duane came to dinner right after I had tried talking to Dad. I think maybe he guessed. I tried not even looking at him. The minute we were done, I excused myself and, instead of going upstairs, I got my bike out the side door of the garage. Beck and I had arranged to meet.”

  “So you weren’t on your way to Emily’s.”

  “No. I was thinking maybe I’d ask him to take me with him to the Hales. He kept insisting they’d help me.”

  “But Duane saw you making your getaway and followed.”

  “I guess he must have. Beck and I met near the river. He gave me his dad’s shirt because I was shivering. He was trying to take care of me.” She slid a shy glance at Colin. “He kissed me. It was the first time. He said as soon as I was old enough he’d marry me and then I wouldn’t have to be afraid of anyone.”

  Colin bent down and brushed his mouth over hers, his tenderness like a salve on old wounds. Then he straightened and let her continue.

  “Duane came out of nowhere. He was just...just there. He punched Beck and then he dragged him into the woods. I was screaming but there was nobody around. I heard a gunshot and saw him standing over Beck.” The scene was as vivid as when it happened. She felt the old horror and disbelief, the terror that he was going to kill her, too. “My bike was right there. I jumpe
d on and pedaled as fast as I could. It wasn’t fast enough.”

  “No. Damn.” He gathered her carefully into his arms and she leaned, taking comfort from the strength he was so willing to lend.

  Eventually he shared some things her mother had told him, about her and Duane’s childhood. And then she voiced one of her greatest fears.

  “Do you think it was only me? Or...have there been other girls?”

  “I called Paula Hale tonight. Turns out Duane stumbled on them years ago. Told them he’d lived in teen shelters, and the adults that volunteered were his salvation. The irony is, that might even have been true. He’s been mentoring kids there for years. One at a time. Sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl.” His face had a grim cast. “He’d take them fishing, hiking, whatever. They felt lucky to have a cop as a role model. Of course the Hales were grateful he’d kept his mouth shut about them. They never noticed anything was wrong with the girls, but several of them disappeared. Like they told you, it happens. Two were girls whose bodies have been found in the area, one buried in the cinders right here in Angel Butte. She was fifteen years old and pregnant.”

  “He found out she was pregnant,” Nell said with great certainty. “That she wasn’t an angel.”

  “That’s what I think.”

  “Do my parents know?” she demanded.

  “Not yet.”

  “If they’d listened to me, he could have been stopped.”

  “Yes.”

  What else was there to say? Nell closed her eyes briefly and thought of girls she’d known at SafeHold—of Clarity, so painfully young and pregnant, of Katya, who came and went, running from who knew what. Of so many others like them. And then she imagined someone like Duane preying on them, stealing their last bit of hope.

  No, she wasn’t sorry he was dead.

  Colin didn’t say anything, only waited. Patient, as he had always been with her.

  “I’m surprised you were allowed to stay like this. It’s so quiet. It must be the middle of the night.”

  “It is.” He glanced at his watch. “Four thirty-seven, to be exact. And they probably wouldn’t kick me out anyway—”