Confessing to the Cowboy

by Carla Cassidy

  As far as he was concerned Denver and Thomas were his best suspects and yet there was nothing concrete to tie either of them to the crimes.

  He couldn’t help but feel as if he was missing something...overlooking something vital, but he’d gone over the reports a hundred times and nothing had popped out. He and his men had checked each person in town they thought the right height and weight to be the perpetrator and they’d all come up empty-handed.

  He stood and grabbed his coat. Time to get Mary and get home before the roads became completely impassable. He was just about to leave his office when his cell phone rang.

  “Cameron, it’s me,” his mother said.

  “Mom, what’s up?”

  “Your damn fool father decided he needed to go out to the barn in the middle of this weather and he was walking back from there when he slipped and fell. I can’t get him up and he’s just lying out in the yard. Please, can you get out here?” There was a wild panic in his mother’s voice.

  “I’ll be there as quickly as I can,” he replied. A glance out the window let him know that the sleet still fell down from the sky.

  He then dialed Mary’s cell phone number and frowned when it went directly to voice mail. Maybe she had a few customers show up despite the weather and was busy serving them.

  “Mary, there’s an emergency out at my parents’ place. It shouldn’t take me too long, but I’ve got to get out there before I come to get you. Just sit tight, I’ll be there as soon as possible,” he said to her voice mail.

  He’d head out to his parents’, see that his father was okay and then get to the café as quickly as possible. Hopefully by then whoever had decided to stop in and eat would be finished with their meals and he and Mary could get to his house and end this long, irritating night.

  * * *

  “You don’t look very happy to see me,” Brandon said as he advanced closer to where Mary stood, still stunned and half-breathless.

  No, not Brandon. Jason. In a nanosecond her brain worked to process all the physical changes that had made her not recognize the man from her nightmares.

  He’d gained at least thirty pounds since the last time she’d seen him and his brown eyes had obviously been turned blue with colored contacts. His bald head and missing eyebrows made it impossible to tell what his hair color might have been and the scars...the makeup she’d thought he’d used in an attempt to cover his scars had obviously been used to make them. He looked nothing like the man she’d run from so many years ago.

  She backed up from him, aware of the knife’s sharp edge gleaming in the security lights overhead. “How... How did you find me?” She finally found her voice.

  “You mean after you left me half-dead on the floor in our living room?” His eyes narrowed and despite the facade of Brandon Williams, war veteran, she saw Jason McKnight’s soul shining from the hatred in his miscolored eyes.

  “It took me months in the hospital to recuperate from what you did to me.” He took another step closer and she retreated a step back, icy terror making her entire body feel wooden and difficult to move.

  “You busted my spleen, left me with a compound fracture of my leg, busted four ribs and smashed my nose.” His voice was calm, the eerie calm before a storm erupted. “It was a year before I could even start to think about finding you, but in that year you never left my mind. In the past nine years you’ve been all I’ve thought about.” He cocked his head and smiled, Jason’s smile, not Brandon’s. “I guess you didn’t believe me when I told you that I’d make you pay, that I’d kill you if you ever left me.”

  “Jason...please,” Mary started as her back hit the wall. Her gaze shot left and right, seeking something she could use as a weapon, something she could use for defense. But there was nothing.

  “Jason please what? Please don’t hurt you? Please don’t kill you? You brought this all on yourself, Samantha. I haven’t spent all the money and time of the last nine years hunting you down not to make you pay.”

  “Haven’t you done enough?” she cried. “You’ve already killed three innocent women.”

  “And with each throat I slit I thought about you.”

  Trapped.

  She was trapped between the wall and the man who wanted her dead, and escape appeared impossible. Her terror gripped her by the throat not just now, but also in memory, a regurgitation of the sensations of fear she’d suffered while married to the man.

  She was lost in those moments of his torment, the anxiety of never knowing when an attack might come or if the next one was the one that would kill her.

  At that moment the back door opened and Junior rushed in, his coat covered with a fine layer of ice. “Mary, I forgot my phone,” he said and she raised a trembling finger to the phone on the counter next to the register.

  “Thanks,” Junior said as he grabbed the phone. It was only then he focused on Jason. “Mr. Williams...you can walk. It’s like a miracle!” Junior’s childish smile quickly doused as he spied the knife in the man’s hand. “Mr. Williams...what are you doing with that knife?”

  Before he could utter another word, Jason slammed his fist into Junior’s jaw. Junior whirled around with the force of the blow, bounced off the counter and fell to the floor, not moving again.

  Mary screamed her outrage. “You didn’t have to hurt him. He liked you, he wouldn’t have said anything if you’d just played it cool.”

  “I’m tired of playing it cool, besides, he’s not dead, he’s just unconscious. Once he’s conscious and I’m finished here he can tell anyone he wants that Brandon Williams killed Mary, because Brandon Williams doesn’t exist.” He smiled at her with pride. “The honorable injured vet will disappear forever after tonight.”

  “You won’t get away. They know it’s you, Jason.”

  His smile widened, the gesture not even beginning to warm the cold of his eyes. “Knowing and proving are two different things. I have dozens of people who will swear that I never left Switzerland, that I’ve been there every day in my offices for the last year.”

  He seemed to be in no hurry to finish what he’d come here for, what he most wanted to do. “I spent a lot of money over the years trying to find you. It took seven private investigators and years before we finally hunted you down.”

  “Just let me go,” she replied, hating the begging tone in her voice. “Like you said, nobody knows you were here. You could just walk away now and nobody would know what you’d done. Even if I told, it would be your word against mine and all of your alibi witnesses.”

  Just like before, she thought. She’d been afraid to tell anyone about his abuse because it would have been his word against her own, and he’d held all the power, just like he did now.

  He laughed, the deep sound clenching Mary’s stomach with dread. “And deny myself what I’ve dreamed about for all these years?” His eyes narrowed. “You’ve forgotten, Mary. I own you and I don’t let go of what’s mine.”

  “You beat me.” She clenched her fists at her sides, remembering all the pain she’d experienced at his hands. “You choked and kicked me, you beat me black and blue.”

  “It wasn’t my fault you couldn’t figure out how to be a good wife. You had to be taught. You needed to be taught to be exactly what I want you to be and I have to say, you were a very slow learner.”

  She thanked the stars that Matt wasn’t here now, that she’d agreed to let him spend the night with his friend. She wanted Jason to forget he had a son, to kill her and then steal away in the night and never bother anyone else here in Grady Gulch again, including Matt.

  “I can kill you, go back to Switzerland and take off the makeup, grow back my hair and lose a few pounds and then I figure I have two choices. I can either play the grieving ex-husband and come back here to claim my son. Or I can tell whoever makes contact with me that you and I were divorced a long time ago and I’d rather my son stay in the town where he’d grown up, that it would be too traumatic at his age to displace him from the people he knows and
loves.”

  As he spoke he turned the knife back and forth in his hand, the light catching the razor edge each time he turned it, but she knew he wasn’t ready to use it yet. Mary had always known the second that Jason was about to attack because his left eye twitched.

  “I have a feeling your boyfriend, the sheriff, would take him on, raise the kid as his own. And every time he looked at Matt he’d think of you and what a failure he was as a sheriff. You’ll haunt him until the day he dies.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I haven’t decided how to play that out yet.”

  Tears blurred Mary’s vision as once again she looked around frantically, seeking escape and praying that the blow to Junior hadn’t killed him.

  The only thing she saw that might provide her any help at all was the switch to the security lights. If she could reach it before he attacked, then at least for a few seconds the place would be plunged into complete darkness and those precious seconds might allow her the time to get something to use as a weapon.

  She fought back the need to vomit as her stomach clenched tighter and tighter. Where was Cameron? Shouldn’t he be finished with the traffic accident and be here to pick her up?

  Hearing the sleet still pelting the windows, she realized she couldn’t depend on Cameron. The weather could keep him busy for some time.

  And she was out of time.

  With a twitch of his eye and a roar of rage, Jason lunged toward her. She had a split-second sight of the knife raised above his head when she threw herself at the switch and the café was plunged into darkness.

  Chapter 17

  “It’s just my ankle,” Cameron’s dad said and muttered a curse beneath his breath as Cameron helped him to his feet. Thankfully the sleet had slowed as Cameron’s mother stood beside the two men. She wore no coat, only a face of worry as she watched the two men maneuver to a standing position.

  “Get inside before you freeze to death, Mom,” Cameron said. “I’ve got him now and I’ll get him inside.”

  As she hurried to the front door, Jim Evans leaned heavily on Cameron’s shoulder. “Thanks for coming,” he said gruffly.

  “That’s what good sons do,” Cameron replied while the two began to slowly make their way toward the house. “They come when their fathers need them. Are you sure I don’t need to take you to the hospital to get that ankle x-rayed?”

  “Nah, I know the different between a break and a sprain. I just twisted it on the ice and went down so fast I didn’t know for sure what had happened.”

  “You shouldn’t have been out here in this weather at all,” Cameron said with a touch of censure. “And don’t tell me that you had to go out and check on the livestock because Bobby isn’t around to do it anymore. Even Bobby would have told you it was foolish to venture out on a night like this.”

  “You’re right.” Jim shot him a quick glance. “Bobby would have told me the same thing.”

  Cameron helped his father up the stairs to the slippery deck and then into the living room where he deposited him into his favorite easy chair.

  He knelt down and removed his father’s ice-encrusted work boot, then slid off his sock and raised his jean leg up enough that he could take a look at the ankle.

  It was slightly swollen, definitely sprained rather than broken in his nonprofessional opinion. “Mom, get the ice bag. Fifteen minutes with ice on and then fifteen minutes with ice off and if it’s not better in the morning call your doctor and get it checked out. Hopefully by then the roads will be in better condition and if you need to get it x-rayed, you can.”

  Before Cameron could stand, his father’s hand came to rest heavily on his right shoulder. Cameron closed his eyes and held his breath, reveling in the simple touch from a man who had scarcely even acknowledged his existence since Bobby’s tragic death.

  “You’re a good man, Cameron,” his father said softly. “I don’t tell you that often enough.”

  Cameron’s heart expanded painfully tight in his chest but before he could reply his cell phone rang. He stood and grabbed the phone from his jacket pocket.

  “Evans,” he said curtly, hoping this wasn’t another accident call.

  “Cam, it’s Bev.” Beverly Berlin always identified herself even though she’d been his secretary-dispatcher for the past seven years and he would have known her high-pitched, slightly breathy voice anywhere.

  “What’s up, Bev?”

  “The oddest thing, I just got a 911 call from Junior Lempke’s cell phone but he’s not saying anything. The line is open but all I can hear is somebody yelling and screaming in the background.”

  “Did you call Lila?” Cameron asked, already heading toward the front door. Lila had given Junior’s cell phone number to all the deputies and workers at the sheriff’s office just in case Junior accidentally called.

  It was quite possible Junior was tucked safely in his own bed at home and had accidently punched three for 911. Cameron was vaguely surprised it hadn’t happened before.

  “Lila is frantic,” Bev continued. “She told me Junior left his cell phone at the café earlier today and despite the nasty weather he went back to get it.”

  Every muscle in Cameron’s body froze solid as for a moment he forgot how to breathe. Junior going to the café, not speaking on the phone, the sounds of screams and yelling in the background—Mary was in trouble. The words screamed in his head.

  “Thanks, Bev,” he finally managed to choke out. He hung up the phone. “I’ve got to go,” he said to his parents.

  “Go do what you do best,” Jim said.

  The words warmed Cameron as he raced to his car, but the warmth instantly disappeared as Bev’s words rang in his ears. Normally from here he would be no more than fifteen minutes away from the café even without the use of his siren. But under these road conditions, it would take longer.

  Too long.

  And Mary was in trouble.

  The words reverberated through his head as his hands tightened on the steering wheel and his stomach rocked with frantic fear.

  Who had been screaming and if it had been Mary, then who had been making her scream? He couldn’t believe that he’d misjudged Junior after the debacle in the abandoned cabin. He’d believed Junior’s story about wanting a place of his own. Had he misjudged that whole situation? And yet if Junior was the killer, then why would he have dialed 911?

  No, not Junior. So who?

  He thought of the first victim, Candy Bailey, her throat slashed. Shirley Cook suffered the same fate, killed in her bed. Finally there was Dorothy Blake, her face chalk-white from having pretty much bled out from the slash in her throat.

  Not Mary. Please not Mary. Hadn’t he lost enough when Bobby had died? He’d not only lost his brother...his best friend, but had also suffered the alienation from his father.

  Not Mary. He couldn’t survive without her.

  As the back of his car fishtailed, forcing his foot off the gas, his fear of losing Mary strangled him, threatening to stop his breath.

  Too late. Was it already too late? No, he couldn’t think that way. He’d lose his mind right here and now if he didn’t think he had a chance.

  He had to get there in time to save her. He couldn’t let another murder take place, especially not Mary’s murder. She might not love him in the way he’d wanted her to, but he couldn’t live with her death.

  Bobby’s death had nearly killed him, but Mary’s death would destroy him at his very core. He’d expected her to be safe in the café until he picked her up to take her home. What had gone wrong? Who was there with her and how did Junior get into the middle of it all?

  Even the crumb of acknowledgment he’d just gotten from his father could do nothing to ease the restricting labor of Cameron’s breathing, the slide of his wheels on the icy roads and the aching fear in his heart that no matter how fast he drove, he was already too late.

  * * *

  The moment the lights went out Mary fell to the floor and crawled across the back of the counter, opening d
oors to cabinets, but knowing that these lower cabinets contained mostly linens and aprons, napkins and official T-shirts, nothing that could be used to ward off Jason’s rage or the slice of his knife.

  Small sobbing sounds filled the silence and she was appalled to realize they were coming from her, the sound of terror escaping without her volition.

  “Come out. Come out.” Jason’s voice was a singsong of anticipated pleasure. “Come on, sweet Samantha, it’s time to pay your dues.” The security lights came back on and a new sob escaped her as she scrabbled across the floor in an effort to get away.

  He advanced toward her and she jumped up to her feet, grabbing the glass coffee carafe from a nearby coffeemaker. She wielded it before her as if it had the magical power to make Jason disappear.

  But he didn’t disappear, rather, he drew close enough to loom like a monster before her. In frantic desperation she threw the coffee carafe at him. It hit his shoulder and glanced off him like a fly swatted away at a picnic.

  It was at that moment that all hope abandoned Mary. She would never again see that slow sexy smile curve Cameron’s lips. She would never experience the wonder of his strong, warm arms around her.

  And Matt. She nearly fell to her knees as she thought of the son who was her sun, her moon, her very reason to get up each morning with such happiness in her heart. She would never see him grow to be a man.

  She could only hope that when her murder was investigated Jason lost custody of Matt for she knew that Cameron would stay true to his promise to her and raise Matt as his own son.

  Without hope, she had no fight. Yet when Jason grabbed her by the arm and tried to force her toward him, the fight she’d thought gone returned tenfold.

  She wouldn’t be a helpless victim for him again. She was no longer a naive, vulnerable young woman, but rather a strong woman who had survived him once and was determined to somehow survive him again.

  She flailed her arms, kicked toward his groin, anything to keep him from advancing close enough to use the knife on her throat. A white-hot pain shot across her forearm and began to bleed at the same time she managed to connect a hard kick to his thigh.