For the first time, Nate’s dislike of holiday music made sense to her. She felt it, too, a smoldering resentment for the artificial cheer, the twinkling lights and festive decorations only serving as a terrible reminder that four days from now, when Christmas dawned, her mother wouldn’t be here. Though Nate’s father might well survive his injury, neither he nor his family would ever be the same after the violence visited upon him.
Neither will I, April realized, no matter how she tried to roll back the months to a time she had been happy. Because there was no going back to that life, no pretending that recent events had not forever changed things. Forever changed her, whether or not she could let herself admit the way she felt every time Nate touched her or spoke to her—at least when he wasn’t letting pride and frustration turn him into an insufferable jack—
Feeling the flutter once more in her belly, she turned around to see him striding toward her, a pained expression on his handsome face. Or was that aggravation? Either way, she was sure to get a lecture for daring to come inside on her own, as if an assassin or even the relentless Kevin Wyatt was going to jump out from behind the Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men choir and attack her in broad daylight.
Dreading the thought of a public scene, she reluctantly headed his way. But Nate abruptly stopped, then said, “Just a second. Don’t move,” before turning to his left and trotting after a man who had been walking past him.
She wrinkled her nose in confusion—and not a little annoyance that he imagined she was taking his orders. April stood watching Nate call out to a man who looked for all the world like an older cowboy, with his chocolate-brown felt hat, a thick silver mustache that drooped down well beyond the corners of his mouth, and a pair of dark-wash jeans ironed with a crease. A second look, however, assured her this was no common cowhand, not with those boots, which looked to be made of something exotic and possibly endangered, the leather jacket and an expensive-looking silver buckle with a lone star worked in gold at its center. Whoever this guy was, he had money, the kind of serious but understated wealth she’d come to recognize from all the Texas Justice Project fund-raising galas she’d attended.
As he shook Nate’s hand, she took a closer look, wondering if that was where she knew the man from. But he was already turning and striding toward the elevators by the time Nate had veered in her direction.
“About what I said, April,” he started. “I shouldn’t have—”
“Who was that?” she interrupted, a glint of metal—gold on silver—flashing through her memory. That belt buckle, she realized. She’d seen it before, along with the man who wore it. With the thought, her stomach pitched like a life raft on a storm-tossed sea, and a sick chill rippled along her nerve endings.
“Joe, you mean?”
Ignoring the vibration of her phone in her back pocket, she asked, “Was he there, at the wedding?” Maybe she’d met him that morning when they’d been frantically working to set up the outdoor ceremony after the church flooded or spotted him afterward, in the mayhem that followed the shooting.
“I don’t remember seeing him there, but I must be wrong. That’s Joe Mueller, my dad’s old business partner, the one who—”
“The one who flew your mom out in his private plane, right? I thought you said he’d left Lubbock after flying her here,” April said, uneasiness crawling around the bottom of her stomach. Because it hadn’t been the wedding where she’d seen him. She was certain of it.
The sick chill returned, bringing with it nausea.
“I thought so, too,” Nate said. “That’s why I stopped him. He said he’d cleared his calendar to be here for my family. Funny, though, he didn’t mention he was on his way when I talked to him earlier.”
“I’ve seen him somewhere else. Recently,” she murmured as she fought to place the memory.
“Could have been at my folks’ place for a barbecue or even at the hospital last year after I got busted up. He and my dad go way back, from long before he bought Correctional Solutions.”
“Correctional Solutions—he’s the current owner?” she asked, while in her back pocket, her cell phone’s vibration ramped up to a loud tone, until she pulled it out to mute it.
She recognized the number. “It’s Max again. Could be important,” she said and walked farther from the still-singing choir to answer before the PI disconnected.
“Did they make an arrest yet?” she asked him, praying that the Austin PD had locked up the officer who’d surely sent Dennis Cobb to kill her. That the threat to her had already been contained, leaving her free to figure out what she would do next—and free to walk away from Rusted Spur and its painful memories rather than give in to Nate’s demand.
At the thought, her mouth filled with the bitter taste of loss. For along with grief and violence, friendship had taken root in her hometown, too, including a relationship that had grown to bear such achingly sweet fruit that her vision shimmered.
“Good morning to you, too,” Max said. “But, yeah, that’s why I called you. It’s all over the news here this morning, and you’ll never believe who—”
“Officer Vaughn?” she asked, her heart racing with the fear that maybe she’d been right before about the police covering for their brother of the badge, giving him free rein to exact vengeance on the people he blamed for Ross Allen Chambers’ exoneration.
“No, not him. You won’t believe this. An eighty-six-year-old man’s daughter brought her father to police headquarters. Old guy was a total basket case, crying his eyes out when he confessed he didn’t see Villareal running on that dark road until he heard the thud and felt the tires bump over his—”
“Max, please,” she said, sickened by the detail. “It can’t be. Why wouldn’t he have just called 911 then?”
“I’m afraid it’s true, April. The old man claims he panicked. He thought his daughters would use the accident as the excuse they’d been looking for to take away his driver’s license.”
“His license?” she cried, her voice slicing through a choral rendition of yet another carol. Those listeners nearest the singers turned disapproving looks her way.
Nate put his arm around her and walked her farther away until they were mostly hidden by the lobby’s Christmas tree.
But April shrugged off his touch, too upset to be pacified. “That—that old man could’ve saved Martin’s life, or at least saved him from dying alone. How could anyone with a heart possibly—are the police sure? False confessions happen, especially considering all the news coverage and the public pleas for any witnesses to come forward.”
“My source tells me they went to the old man’s house, where he still had the car parked inside his garage. He said he hadn’t been able to bring himself to drive since, could barely eat or sleep or anything. And the car had—there was body damage. Blood and hair, too, and when they tested it, the detectives knew he was telling the truth.”
She closed her eyes, the mention of blood and hair making her feel sicker than ever. “So, for all his spouting off threats, it wasn’t Officer Vaughn?”
“He’s still on leave over his comments, but Internal Affairs has cleared him of any involvement in Villareal’s death.”
“Then that means,” she said, a prickling awareness shimmering in the air around her, “that could mean that Dennis Cobb really wasn’t aiming at—I was never the intended target.”
“We don’t know that for certain,” Max warned. “We have no idea who sent Cobb up there to Rusted Spur.”
But April did have an idea, blazing through her brain in a fiery crescendo. Because she remembered now, where she had previously seen Joe Mueller.
Not only where, but with whom, on the day of Martin’s funeral.
* * *
The stricken look on April’s face changed to one of horror before she ended the call. “We—we need to—” she started, her trembling hand cradling her belly as she struggled to catch her breath.
“Slow down, April. I’ve got you.” Nate placed a hand at the small of her back. H
e’d gleaned enough from her phone call to understand that Martin Villareal’s death hadn’t been a premeditated murder but a tragic accident instead. “Just take your time and tell me.”
“I—I saw him—at the funeral.”
“You saw who? The car’s driver?”
“Not the old man from Austin. The guy who was just here. Joe Mueller.”
“That would make sense, though, wouldn’t it? If he was at the conference with the other private prison execs, he might’ve gone to pay his respects with my father.”
April shook her head emphatically, her brown eyes wide. “That’s just it, though. He wasn’t with your father. He was talking to another man. And now that I think about it, it was Dennis Cobb.”
“The shooter?” Nate asked. “But I thought you never saw Cobb.”
“I did see him. I’d just forgotten. But Mueller, I remember, and seeing him again now brings it all back. I remember looking up just as he pointed out someone to Cobb.”
Confusion spun through Nate’s brain as he tried to make sense of what April was saying. “Who did he point out? You?”
But what sense did it make that Joe Mueller would want April dead? Surely, he couldn’t blame her in particular for her boss’s criticism of Correctional Solutions’ treatment of prisoners. And even if he did, to have their wedding shot up—a wedding hosted by his longtime friend—
“He was pointing toward your father, Nate,” April explained, “and the look on Mueller’s face—it was pure contempt, not friendship.”
“He pointed out my father? To Dennis Cobb?” Nate’s heart drummed a counter rhythm to the eerily soft strains of “Silent Night.” Because what April was saying made no sense at all to Nate when Joe and his father were the best of friends. Surely, his father’s rise to the senate would only serve to bolster Mueller’s own business opportunities.
Or would it? Nate thought about something his father had said recently, something about having sold out of the business just in time. At the time, Nate had thought his dad was enjoying his retirement; he now wondered, Just in time for what? What was coming down on Correctional Solutions—and the old friend who might have felt he’d been left holding the bag?
April made a visible effort to pull herself together, straightening her spine to tell him, “We have to get upstairs. We have to catch him before he—he could be here to finish what Cobb started.”
A surge of pure adrenaline shot up the column of Nate’s spine, along with a bone-deep instinct telling him that if he didn’t act—and quickly—he’d regret it for the rest of his life. But before he did, he grabbed April’s arm and said, “I want you to go to the security office. It’s down a few doors in that direction.” He pointed out a hallway across the lobby from them. “Get them to send a couple of guys up to room 309 right away.”
April opened her mouth, looking as if she might argue, before nodding. “You’re going up, then?”
“I am, but don’t you dare. Not until I give you the all-clear. You get that?”
She shook her head. “But, Nate—”
“But nothing, April. If we’re wrong about this, you can go ahead and call me an overcautious idiot. But Joe Mueller’s an avid gun collector—so the chances are he hasn’t come unarmed.”
She gaped, her face paling, and he ducked to plant a kiss on her forehead. Then he ran toward the elevator, praying he would be in time.
* * *
Pounding heart in her throat, April hurried in the direction Nate had pointed out. But what if she was wrong, if her mind had manufactured one of the false memories eyewitnesses were infamous for coming up with?
She thought of the young woman who’d been so convinced she’d seen Ross Allen Chambers leaving the house where a couple had been murdered, an eyewitness whose mistake had cost Chambers his freedom and herself a violent assault. Like her, April could have just set into motion a confrontation that would erupt into heaven only knew what violence.
But the more she thought about that glint of sunlight off Joe Mueller’s belt buckle, that hateful look on his face as he pointed out his supposed friend George Wheeler, the more the memory solidified into something terrifyingly real. Mueller had been there, at the graveside service, where she’d spotted him using the occasion to point out the man he’d wanted dead to a man willing to do anything—even shoot up a wedding—if the price was right.
Thrusting aside her doubts, she pulled on the door of the office marked Security, only to find it locked. Frustrated, she smacked and pounded at it, shouting, “Open up! Please!” But no one came to answer.
Panic ripping through her, she glanced up and down the hallway. A door swung open, and a slim, fortyish woman in a dark, skirted suit and hip-looking glasses stepped out. “What’s all this noise about? Is there some sort of problem I can help you wi—”
“I need security right away, upstairs in Room 309. A man went up to see George Wheeler, a shooting victim, and we think he’s—he could be the person responsible.” Tears burned in April’s eyes, but with Nate and his entire family counting on her, she didn’t dare to break down.
The woman stared, jaw dropping, before shaking off her shock. “I understand. I have the number. Let me call and see where our security team is right now and how fast they can get up there. Meanwhile, why don’t you dial 911 and have them send a unit to assist?”
April wanted to argue that they needed someone upstairs now, not in the twenty minutes it might take police to arrive. But with no better option, she made the call as asked before following the woman into what appeared to be a small administrative office.
Putting down her phone, she looked at April, all seriousness behind the trendy glasses. “Security’s dealing with a fender bender in the parking lot, but I told them to head straight up.”
A fender bender? April’s stomach dropped as she thought about how large the hospital lot was and how long it might take for them to get there.
“Police are on their way, too,” April said, hoping she’d done the right thing by saying that Joe Mueller was armed. She thought of how, only yesterday, hospital security had misinterpreted the situation and ended up shocking Nate with a stun gun...
Would police be just as apt to consider a tall, athletic-looking younger man more of a threat than the smaller, older Mueller? What if another mistake was made, this one involving bullets?
“Here, why don’t you have a seat?” the woman invited, concern in her brown eyes. “Can I get you some water while you’re waiting? You’re very pale—”
But April was already backing toward the door again, head shaking. “No. I can’t afford to wait—there’s too much—he’s the father of my baby, and I never even told him that I love him.”
“Stop,” the woman said, coming out from behind her desk.
Out of the corner of her eye, April saw a well-manicured hand reaching for her, but she moved more quickly, hitting the hall at a dead run.
Chapter 12
Too impatient to wait out a slow elevator, Nate went for the staircase, taking the steps three at a time. Heart slamming against his ribs, he burst out onto the third floor, then dodged a man in green scrubs, only to bump the edge of a wheelchair the orderly had been pushing and send it spinning down the corridor.
“Hey, watch it!” the guy in green yelled. “What’s wrong with you, dude?”
“Sorry, ma’am. You okay?” When the chair’s passenger nodded, Nate took off again, relieved he hadn’t jostled the frail-looking, white-haired woman too badly.
As he rounded a corner, he saw there was no one at the nurses’ station, but he did spot his mother pressing the call button for the elevator.
“Where’s Joe, Mom?” Nate asked as he hurried toward her, sweating with exertion. “Have you seen him?”
“Oh, morning, Nate. Of course I have,” she said, looking a bit rumpled after her night at his dad’s bedside but not at all alarmed. “Joe’s in with your father. I needed to stretch my legs, so I’m heading downstairs to get some coffee for
both of us.”
“That’s good. You go on,” he told her, wanting her as far from harm’s way as possible while he confronted the man he believed responsible for his father’s condition.
But her eyes narrowed suspiciously, as if somewhere in her head, an internal mother’s alarm was bleating out a warning. “What’s wrong, Nate? You look—is everything all right with April? You didn’t muck things up again, now did you?”
More than likely, he thought, but with no time to get into it, he said, “If you run into her downstairs, she’ll explain things.”
Seeing the skepticism in his mother’s blue eyes, he sweetened the deal, adding, “I think she needs help with baby names. She wants to call him Humphrey, after her late grandpa.”
“Humphrey? For a baby? My grandchild can’t be saddled with a name like that.” The moment the elevator dinged and opened, she charged onboard, a woman on a mission.
Nate waited for the doors to close and then raced toward his father’s room.
At the threshold, he stopped short, his heart pounding at the sight of Joe Mueller, his back to the door as he leaned over his old friend’s bedside, speaking quietly to the sleeping man. The scene looked so calm, so ordinary, that Nate stood staring for a moment, certain that April had been wrong about what she’d seen.
Except the few words that drifted his way made a mockery of Mueller’s soothing tone. Angry as they were profane, they lured Nate slowly closer, his movement careful so he wouldn’t be heard. And with the prayer that he’d be able to grab Joe’s right arm, which appeared to be holding something on a level with his father’s chest, before he opened fire.
“Thought you’d sell me out to buy yourself a seat in congress, didn’t you, you bastard? Well, I’m here to tell you, I know all about your deal with your buddy-boy, the governor—and everything about your so-called secret deposition to those sons of bitches out to ruin me, you backstabbing piece of—”
Behind Nate, footsteps approached, causing Mueller to turn and peer over one shoulder. But it was the sight of Nate, now rushing toward him, that had Mueller’s hidden right hand rising.
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