by Julie Miller
Chance shook his head. “Too early to call it that,” he grumbled but wasn’t positive Gerard hadn’t hit the nail on the head.
How did he feel about that? Scared, worried, trapped?
Excited? Anxious?
Anxious was as good a word as any, he decided.
His cell phone rang and he was glad for the interruption from his head games. The area code was the one for Greenville but he didn’t recognize the number. It was probably the police asking another question as they fought to build their case against Tabitha Stevens.
“Hello,” he said, hoping this wouldn’t take too long. Then he paused and listened. Meeting Gerard’s glance, he finally spoke again into the phone. “Yes,” he said. “I understand. Thanks.”
“What—” Gerard started to say, but Chance shook his head.
“Lily’s phone is at my house charging,” he said. “Try calling Kinsey. Now.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lily wandered the empty street, pausing to peer into some of the more intact-looking buildings. She didn’t actually go into any of them as they were well posted with warning signs. The place could never be reclaimed. It was just a matter of time before the Hastings family would have to demolish it or risk further accidents.
Eventually she ended up at the end of town where the old mining site had existed a long, long time ago. A few pieces of rusted equipment and boards barring entry into the cave itself were all that was left of a human presence. The cave reminded her of the tunnel back at White Cliff and she stared at it for a few minutes, lost in thought, reliving that long hike through the earthy darkness and the accompanying horror of not knowing where Charlie was.
But she knew where he was now. Chance would take care of him, Chance wouldn’t let anything or anyone harm him. Charlie was safe, she was safe.
So why was she shivering?
Well, it was cold outside. The coat Chance had bought her was warm, but her cheeks stung from the breeze. She plunged her hands into her pockets and turned to retrace her steps, although she paused at the bank where the robbery signaled the beginning of the end of Falls Ridge. It was difficult not to speculate about the man who got away with the money. Where did he go? Was he able to enjoy his ill-gotten goods or did the ghosts of his former colleagues haunt him to the end?
And who was he? As far as she knew, the other three men had been locals, but the fourth man was a mystery.
A mystery. Like Chance. What was he thinking? Was he ready to bolt? How could she ever bear seeing him lose interest in her, sensing his needs had been filled and he was ready to move on to a new adventure, a new lover?
Was he the reason she shivered inside? Was this haunting fear one of rejection?
She checked her watch and saw that it was time they started home. A few more minutes and she rounded a slight curve. Jangles and Kinsey’s mount should be visible now, but they weren’t. Had the horses wandered off? She picked up her pace to ask Kinsey what was going on. But Kinsey wasn’t where Lily had left her. The stool rested on its side while the sketch pad lay on the ground, the top sheet fluttering in the biting wind. Charcoal pencils had scattered across the half-frozen earth. The small bag that held the rest of the art supplies sat exactly where it had when Lily last saw it. There were no footprints on the cold, hard-packed earth.
So, had the horses run off and had Kinsey left to get them back? Had the wind caught the sketch pad and blown it to the ground? Was that what pushed over the stool?
“Kinsey?” she called, and though her voice didn’t echo, it did sound hollow and forlorn. She kept walking, looking into dark, open doorways as she passed, calling Kinsey’s name as she went. Despite there being no evidence of foul play, it was hard to shake a growing feeling of foreboding and she quickened her pace.
She finally caught a glimpse of yellow coming from inside a heavily shadowed building. Was that Kinsey’s hat? Lily knew Kinsey would never willingly go inside one of these old deathtraps. Lily stepped up onto the wooden sidewalk, avoided a cave-in and entered the building. She plucked the yellow cap from the floor and scanned the empty room.
The only standing fixture was a counter along one wall. She leaned over it and found Kinsey on the floor. After rushing to her side, she knelt by her friend’s body and felt for a pulse in her throat. When Kinsey’s heartbeat leapt to greet her touch, Lily swallowed a sob of relief.
A red mark on Kinsey’s head suggested she’d been hit. Who had done this to her and why?
How could it be Jeremy but how could it not? Her mind refused to leap farther than him, but it didn’t make sense. He was in Canada. She searched Kinsey’s pockets for her cell phone but couldn’t find it. She had to get help. She had to know what happened. Maybe the phone was in the backpack with the art supplies still resting by the stool. She lifted Kinsey’s shoulders, determined to drag her out of this building, but that wasn’t as easy as it sounded.
Kinsey’s eyes opened. “Gerard?” she mumbled.
“No, sweetie, it’s me, Lily. Thank goodness you’re awake. Can you stand up? We have to get you out of here.”
“Gerard,” Kinsey repeated. “Gerard...”
Lily relaxed her hold on the other woman’s shoulders. “It’s okay,” she said, smoothing her hair. “I’ll get help.”
“...baby,” Kinsey whispered as her eyes closed again.
Was she talking about Gerard or was it possible Kinsey was pregnant? Oh, God, if she died in this town carrying Gerard’s baby the poor guy would never recover. Lily took off her coat and tucked it around Kinsey’s still form, then she leaned over her and listened to the sound of her breathing. It seemed steady enough.
One way or another, she had to summon aid and the best bet for that was to find Kinsey’s cell phone. She ran outside and started back toward the saloon, her gaze darting everywhere. Someone had hurt Kinsey. That someone was probably still around and there were so many places to hide...
Suddenly a man detached himself from the shadows of a covered sidewalk and stepped onto the street about a hundred feet away. “Lily,” he said in a voice that still struck terror in her heart.
She turned around and took off, the sound of his laughter ringing out behind her. “Run if you want. Where are you going to go?”
Good question, but for now all she wanted was distance and her feet hit the ground with only that in mind. She looked back over her shoulder and saw that Jeremy had started running after her. She passed the building where Kinsey lay, her only thought to get this monster away from her friend and to escape herself.
Of course it was Jeremy. Who else would it be? His stride was longer than hers and he jogged every day of his life. She knew she could not outrun him forever. She also knew she would leave the relative safety of the town very soon and be out in the open. Glimpsing an alley between two buildings, she sprinted to her right. This would take her back toward the saloon and the promise of the phone, but the alley was a dangerous place as it was too narrow to offer protection. Doors opened off it, doors that led into ramshackle structures, one more treacherous than the next. A blast from behind kicked up a puff of dirt to her left as Jeremy fired a gun at her, and she realized nothing inside those buildings could be more terrifying than what pursued her from behind.
She had to get that phone. She darted into a nondescript building and saw the door onto the street ahead of her. Sure enough, she exited a few feet from the overturned stool. She grabbed the backpack and ran into the saloon. There was no visible exit, in fact, most of the back wall had crumpled inside. Footsteps sounded outside and she took the only route open to her and that was the stairs. She stopped at the top and flattened herself against a wall as she heard the thud of Jeremy’s footsteps grind to a halt below her.
“Lily!” he yelled.
She tried to quiet her breathing as she felt around the heavy pack stuffed with K
insey’s art supplies. Momentary joy turned to despair when what she thought was the phone turned out to be only a metal case for a small package of tissues. The phone wasn’t in the backpack.
“I know you’re here,” he said. He wasn’t even breathing hard. “We can do this easy or we can do this hard.” She heard his footsteps as he approached the stairs.
She was terrified he would go back for Kinsey and try to use her as a hostage. She couldn’t think of a single thing she could do to stop him. He was stronger, meaner, and he had a gun. But he also had something else, something she understood the power of: he had nothing to lose.
“You didn’t think I’d stay in Canada without a fitting farewell to my lovely bride, did you?” he said. She could hear him moving around. What was he doing down there?
She looked around the darkened area in which she stood. It appeared to be a hallway with doors spaced along it like the rooms of a small hotel. One door stood open and light from it spilled into the dark hall. She inched along the wall. The creaks her footsteps created seemed to jump through the building.
“Might as well come down here,” he called.
She wanted to tell him to shut up, but maybe she should engage him in dialogue. The sound of their voices might mask her movement. “I’m not your bride,” she hollered.
He laughed. “My first wife is dead now, Lily. That kind of makes you my one and only.”
“Elizabeth’s not dead,” Lily yelled.
“Au contraire,” he said. Lily heard something splinter or break downstairs. “I took her out yesterday morning. One shot, right between the eyes. Damn good aim if I do say so myself. I could have done the same exact thing to you. I mean, I had you in my sights last night and this morning, too. But you’ve really been a pain in the ass. I want to put my hands around your lovely little neck. I want you to look at me when I kill you. I want you to know your lying lover is next. I’ve already done his family, I just need to find him. But I will. He’ll die after you and so will anyone else who gets between me and my kid.”
She swallowed what felt like an iceberg. “What did you do to Chance’s family?”
“Never you mind. You have your own troubles.”
“Please, please, just leave. Don’t hurt anyone else, don’t take Charlie, you don’t love him,” she said, coming to a halt across the hall from the open door. “He’ll slow you down. You’re on the run now.”
“I am not on the run,” he said. “People like you run, Lily. People like me triumph.”
She stopped moving when she got across from the illuminated room. For a second, she struggled with her emotions, tears perilously close to blurring her vision. But that was what Jeremy wanted and she would never again give him the satisfaction of breaking her. People she loved were depending on her. She would not let them down.
She focused on the room. Half the outer wall had disintegrated, showing nothing through the opening but gray skies. What kind of structure was next door? She inched her way toward the light.
Maybe she could use Jeremy’s emotions against him. He had to have a raw nerve somewhere. “What about your other son?” she called out.
He didn’t respond.
“You must have freaked out when Maria reported that you and Elizabeth had a son and that very son was sitting downtown in your jail, a confessed murderer. How would that look to the people you kiss up to? They would have distanced themselves from you. Your career would be over. I’m surprised you didn’t kill the boy yourself.”
“Who said I didn’t?” he said.
She stopped short. “You murdered Jimmy? How? He hung himself. Besides, I saw you that night, you came home and took out your anger on me.”
“That wasn’t anger, dear-heart, that was a celebration. I gave him the rope,” he added, “in a figurative way, that is. I told him I knew he was covering for someone. I promised him I would find out who it was and I would prosecute them and then pull the switch on the electric chair myself. I swore I would then go after his mother and every whacko in White Cliff. The kid almost wet himself he was so scared. He asked what he could do to fix things and I told him what I once told you.”
“You told him it would be better off all around if he was dead,” she said, reliving for an instant the moment he’d said the same thing to her. No wonder the boy killed himself. She had never met Jimmy but her gut clenched as she imagined the pain he must have felt when his long-lost father told him to sacrifice his own life to save the lives of the people he loved. Jimmy had been Charlie’s half brother and he was dead and now this jerk wanted to take Charlie. “You are a bastard,” she yelled.
“Sticks and stones,” he said. “Take a deep breath, Lily. Do you smell something?”
She had inched her way into the room and now approached the crumbled wall. She couldn’t allow Jeremy to take Charlie. She had to do something. The roof of the building next door was six feet away with a drop of about the same. The roof had caved in in one place. She might possibly survive a jump but would her weight and momentum send her crashing down through layers of rotting wood?
And then Jeremy’s last comment finally sank into her brain. She crept back toward the hall and sniffed the air—smoke!
“The flames are almost touching the stairs,” Jeremy called. “Unless you want to burn to death, you better come on down and take your chances with me. I wouldn’t wait too long to make up your mind.”
Smoke was seeping through the boards by her feet, drawn to the open wall behind her. If she went downstairs he would shoot or strangle her. If she jumped out that window, she chanced injury or death.
She turned around, gripped Kinsey’s backpack in front of her to provide some cushion between her bones and the roof, ran toward the opening and jumped. She hit the neighboring building with a crash and lay very still for a few seconds, not sure if she was just winded from the fall or hurt more badly, taking shallow breaths to control the pain and afraid to move lest the roof give in. Her leg throbbed and her hands burned.
The smell of smoke was more pronounced. A fire in this dead town would move quickly, leaping from roof to roof until there was nothing left but ashes. Kinsey was unconscious less than a block away and no one knew she was there but Lily. Somehow she had to recover enough to get off this roof, evade Jeremy and drag Kinsey out of that building.
Sensing movement, she struggled into a sitting position in time to witness Jeremy launch himself from the opening through which smoke now billowed. He landed a few feet away from her and immediately started to stand, but the stress of his impact following hers was too much for the old roof and it groaned like a tortured ghost. As Jeremy pulled the gun from his waistband, the roof cracked one last time and gave way. Lily fell downward with the wreckage, gripping the raw wood beneath her to keep from sliding into free fall.
Her sitting position helped her maintain some balance and she landed on top of a heap of rubble, jarred to the bone. Debris rained down on her head and the smell of smoke was already creeping into the building. She glanced upward and saw ragged beams torn from the walls and roof, some swinging precariously.
She turned to look for Jeremy. Caught in motion when the roof gave way, he hadn’t fared as well as she had and had landed farther down the pile of rubble. He lay facedown, his left arm twisted at a terrible angle. Even as she stared, he somehow got to his feet and lifted the gun with his right hand. The barrel pointed straight at her chest.
Lily realized she still clutched the backpack. She heaved it forward as hard as she could, her strength and aim sharpened by desperation. At the same moment the pack hit the top of his head, the gun exploded, deafening her. She fell onto her bottom and slid downward, grasping for something to stop her descent, finally coming to a halt when a jutting board caught her in the chest. For a second she sat there winded again, eyes closed, trying to breathe, waiting for searing pain to announce where Jerem
y’s bullet had struck her. Pain didn’t come.
She opened her eyes. There was no sign of the backpack but Jeremy lay nearby, on his back, staring upward at flames licking the edges of what was left of the roof. She didn’t see his gun anywhere but she fully expected him to rally yet again.
And then she saw the blood spurting from his neck where a nail-studded board had apparently fallen from the rafters, pinning him down and puncturing his carotid artery. She scrambled toward him on stinging hands and skinned knees. The glancing impact of the backpack must have knocked him off his feet. Maybe a reflex action of his trigger finger fired the gun and maybe the bullet dislodged the rafter that subsequently fell, impaling him.
He blinked and she realized he was still alive. Half afraid the geyser of blood was really a trick of some kind, she moved even closer. Thoughts of smoke and mirrors vanished as she watched the color drain from his skin, shrinking him before her eyes. She knelt beside him. The edge of a handkerchief stuck out of his pocket and she grabbed it. Kinsey’s phone tumbled out with the cloth. Lily held the handkerchief against his neck without touching the horrid board, without hearing the fire overhead or feeling the warmth of his blood splattering against her arm. The contact of the cloth seemed to signal his dying brain that he wasn’t alone. His focus shifted to her face for the briefest of seconds, recognition dawned in his eyes and then he looked straight through her into oblivion.
“Lily!”
She jerked. The action slid her against Jeremy. Repulsed, she stood on wobbly legs as Chance and Gerard ran into the building. Both men stopped suddenly as their gazes traveled from the dead man, up to her face and then to the roof.
“Look out!” Gerard yelled.
Lily glanced upward and saw a burning board teetering over her head. Caught in some kind of limbo, she saw sparks fly across the sky. The next thing she knew, Chance was beside her. He threw her over his shoulder and scrambled down the pile before shifting her weight into his arms and handing her down to Gerard who asked if she could stand. She nodded. Chance jumped to the ground and grabbed one of her arms. Gerard took the other. It felt to Lily like she flew out of there on the wings of two guardian angels. A crash from behind announced the rest of the ceiling had tumbled into the building.